Salon writer Stephanie Zacharek loves how Harold and Kumar shows unremarkable, assimilated hyphen-Americans instead of relegating minorities to ethnic curio shops (thanks, Razib):

“Harold & Kumar”… may have said more about race in America today than any other movie of last year. .. [W]hat’s most impressive about “Harold & Kumar”… is that it didn’t dawn on me until the movie was nearly over that its two protagonists weren’t your usual average white kids… There’s something freeing in the way “Harold & Kumar” treats its characters’ ethnic backgrounds not as a novelty, as a stumbling block or even as an advantage, but as a simple fact… Race is an issue in “Harold & Kumar,” but it’s not the issue…

Of course, Zacharek is using Spanglish as her benchmark, so make of that what you will. I think we know her inspiration for the story:

“Harold & Kumar” is a reminder that our great land is made up of people from many nations, and a few of them are quite stoned. Let he who is without sin light the first joint.

Here’s more on how Harold and Kumar deals with race.

The U.S. version of the Bride and Prejudice trailer was recently released (thanks, Abhi). It’s getting heavy promotion, it runs before The Aviator in New York City.

What happened in the marketing speaks volumes about how the world perceives Americans. The trailer has been recut not as a musical but as a romantic comedy. The U.S. version cuts down the bhangra centerpiece and the pajama song from the international trailer. The plot has been simplified, like the U.S. version of Bombay Dreams; the subplot with the second male lead has been removed.

In a nod to the U.S., Martin Henderson gets a lot more lines, the R&B artist Ashanti is featured prominently in the voiceover, Indira Verma makes a crack about American Idol, and there are a couple of Baywatch, L.A. and surfer shots that weren’t in the international trailer. India’s Third World-ness is played up for comic effect, there’s no mention of Amritsar in the subtitle and there are precious few turbaned guys for a film set in Punjab (the ones who do exist hurry by, out of focus).

I watched the trailer live last night and heard very little audience reaction. Either it fell flat, or the audience didn’t know what to think. The serpent dance sequence at the very end drew a few titters. It wasn’t what I expected from a New York crowd, which is generally pretty down with desi culture.

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Director Wes Anderson did right by Sikhs in his latest film:

I saw The Life Aquatic last night, a hilarious, laid-back Jacques Cousteau parody… The director was very respectful of the handsome, turbaned actor / fashionista Waris Singh Ahluwalia: it was not a token role, the Sikh was a bona fide character. He had an American accent. He had a real name, Vikram Ray (though Ray is a Bengali name, perhaps a play on Satyajit). He was addressed by name several times, he had plenty of lines, he was an integral part of the crew. He even had three glamor shots in the submarine scene at the end, close-ups with light reflecting off his eyes. There was an Asian-American on the crew as well, and assorted Europeans; the casting was like the Star Trek bridge minus the aliens…

On the flip side, the marketing campaign cropped Ahluwalia out. It’s a shot of the submarine scene, where Ahluwalia was seated at far left. On the U.S. poster, the guy in the turban and the black guy are missing.

In this particular case, it’s probably because Ahluwalia… isn’t a recognizable star. However, in many movies (e.g. Sandra Oh in Sideways), minorities don’t figure in the marketing campaigns, even if they have substantial roles… The kinds of people you’ll see [featuring minorities] are producers at the top and the bottom: those who are either already successful enough to take the risk, such as Wes Anderson and his cult of fans, or so indie that they don’t care.

Read the full piece.

Yep, that’s right. The DVD all you sex-crazed ignorant South Asian men have been waiting for has arrived, and it’s dirtier than ever…or is it? From The Houston Chronicle:

Now’s your chance to catch up on ketchup hounds Harold and Kumar. The only question is, do you get the film’s “Extreme Unrated DVD” or its original R-rated theatrical cut?

In truth, it hardly matters — just as it didn’t for The Girl Next Door and Eurotrip. Like Harold and Kumar, each came to DVD in R-rated as well as unrated versions, with the latter suggesting more raw and revealing material. Yet in each case, it was tough to tell the difference.

The fact is, Mary Poppins would be “unrated” if Disney added several more seconds of kids flying kites and didn’t resubmit the altered film for a new ratings review. “Unrated” doesn’t mean the equivalent of an NC-17. It just means unrated.

In Harold and Kumar’s case, it means a bit of incidental footage was added to a film already riddled with sex and vulgarities. But unlike Harold and Kumar, we don’t need to gorge.

More enticing are the unrated edition’s unique bonus features. These include another commentary track, a music video and more outtakes.

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The above quote is one of the most poignant soliloquies in film history, and many of you may recognize it from 1996’s Independence Day starring Will Smith and Bill Pullman. Well at least one person isn’t as stirred by these words as you and I. He is quite enraged. Veda Naik has been seething for nine years and he ain’t gonna take it no more. From Sify.com:

An NRI film scriptwriter has dragged Hollywood studio giant Twentieth Century Fox to the Supreme Court [Indian] for allegedly stealing his script to make the mega blockbuster Independence Day (ID).

Veda Naik has moved the apex court against a Karnataka High Court judgement refusing to direct the Los Angeles-based studio to pay damages for infringing the copyright of his film script Extra Terrestrial Mission (ETM).

Extra Terrestrial Mission (ETM)? Geez, with a name that bad it deserved to be stolen. Continue reading →

Hotelier-turned-actor Vikram Chatwal announced on Thursday his engagement to long-rumored girlfriend Priya Sachdev.

Chatwal was in India to promote his film “One Dollar Curry” at a film festival in Goa. During a visit to Bombay, he asked Sachdev to accompany him to a gurudwara. She describes the rest to The Indian Express:

In true filmi style, after they both did the matha tek, he slipped a 10-carat diamond ring on her finger. “He said, ‘This is an engagement ring. Do you accept?’” says Sachdev. “I was stunned. We couldn’t even hug in the temple. But we called his family and then called mine and everyone was very surprised.”

Delhi-based Sachdev, a former New Yorker, currently splits time between modeling and working on her new television show — an “Entertainment Tonight”-like rundown of films, celebrities and gossip. Like Chatwal, she has big-screen aspirations:

Bollywood offers have already poured in for this Bharatnatyam and Kathak dancer, but most of them have involved playing the third angle in a love triangle. “I don’t want to start as the other woman,” says Sachdev. Apparently, certain producers have also offered striptease roles claiming that she could be the next Bipasha Basu of “Jism.”

The pair have not set a wedding date, but agree that “Jism” is the greatest movie title ever.

The Indian Express: Heroine addict
Endless Sepia Mutiny coverage: On the trail of Vikram Chatwal…, Win a date with…Vikram Chatwal?, One more dream for Chatwal, and Vikram Chatwal…actor?

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A daily part of too many of our late twenty-something, early thirty-something lives seems to revolve around the question of finding someone, simply to get our parents off our backs. 37 year old Priti Chowdhury, who is a pediatric anesthesiologist in Chicagoland, decided to finance and film a semi-documentary about her search for Mr. Right titled, Finding Preet. From the Philadelphia Inquirer [free registration required]:

At first glance, the dilemma sounds familiar: A successful woman in her late 30s isn’t married, and her well-meaning but old-fashioned mother and father nag her to find a husband.

But two things set this story apart.

The victim in question, Priti Chowdhury, 37, a pediatric anesthesiologist named one of Chicago’s most eligible women, spent a quarter of a million dollars to make a movie about her misadventures in love and dating. (And instead of objecting, her proud South Jersey parents are in it.)

I can already imagine dozens of my female friends looking for advanced tickets to this movie. Hell, with that many girls going, I may as well go too 🙂 Continue reading →

About a year ago, a friend asked me if I could spare a couple hours to talk with her film director friend as well as a lead actress who needed to conduct some basic background research on a film about the 1984 riots against the Sikhs in India that they were working on. They wanted mostly for us to give them our impressions upon returning to India after a long absence. In my case I talked about living in Delhi and doing volunteer work there and how my perceptions of India had changed between the 14 years that passed between the time I visited as a child and when I returned as an adult. The other person she interviewed happened to have been Sikh, and was a small child in Delhi at the time of the Riots. His recollections were perfect for the type of research they needed. It seems that the director, Shonali Bose, is set to release her film next month. From the AFP:

US-based Shonali Bose is set to release a film next month depicting anti-Sikh riots that hit India following the assassination of then prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1984, after accepting cuts demanded by Indian censors.

She told AFP that “Amu”, based on her novel of the same name has been shot in English and cleared for release in India by the Central Board of Film Certification.

“Amu” tells the story of an orphan named Kaju [Actress Konkona Sen Sharma], adopted and brought up in Los Angeles by American parents, who returns to India to discover her roots and finds that her real parents were killed during the anti-Sikh riots.

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