A commenter on Soul Strut’s message boards spots M.I.A.’s D.J. lover, Diplo, showing off his nose-picking thumb prior to her performance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
M.I.A.’s Diplo spotted on ‘Kimmel’
Category Archives: Arts and Entertainment
Bollycat
Now here are a group of guys who’ve set out on a rather formidable task –
Here we catalog plagiarism and forgotten inspirations in the Indian movie industry. Bollywood, India’s movie industry, churns out over 800 flicks a year. But with all those numbers it’s hard for them to keep up with the creative work. So a lot of movies turn out to be ‘inspired by’ movies from all over, especially Hollywood. And at the rate they are going with good and hit movies, very soon we’ll be seeing a copy of “Plan 9 from Outer Space”. Therefore to keep ourselves, and you people of course, up-to-date with this ever increasing theme, script, scene and music stealing – or borrowing – trend in Bollywood, we have created BollyCat.com. Help us catalog Bollywood’s acts of shame!
The plot summaries & commentary are quick, witty reads – for ex. Kaante / Reservoir Dogs and Hum Kaun Hai / The Others.
I dug around, however, and couldn’t find my personal favorite – Indian Superman – notable because it didn’t restrict itself to merely copying the storyline, music, and costuming but went one better and directly spliced in the special FX footage itself. Bollywood sure knows how to economize.
For the curious, Manish recently pointed me at a clip of this landmark film available on the web where Darmendra saves a planeload of 70s-clad desi’s from tuxedo-clad hijackers.
DOH. My bad. I knew this sounded a tad too familiar. Previous SM coverage of Bollycat by Apul here. Continue reading
Creep
A new biography argues that the British commander who ordered the Jallianwala Bagh massacre on Vaisakhi day, 1919, was every bit as sadistic as reputed. Nigel Colletts’ damning take on General Reginald Dyer is rightly called The Butcher of Amritsar (via Amardeep Singh):
… Indians… were also incensed by the General’s notorious “crawling order.” In the street where a female missionary had been left for dead, Dyer decreed that between 6am and 8pm Indians could only proceed on their bellies and elbows and were to be beaten if they raised a buttock… a series of outrages… ensured that the indigenous elite would seek fulfilment in a government of their own race… [the book] helps retire the notion that the end of the Raj was anything but a good thing.
Surprisingly, Dyer’s instruments of butchery were desi soldiers from remote areas, not Brits. (The U.S. has pursued a similar strategy by using Kurdish soldiers in Sunni areas in Iraq). You’ve got to wonder what the hell Dyer’s soldiers were thinking as they methodically murdered their countrymen with manual rifles:
He chose from the troops at his disposal those he thought would harbour the least compunctions in shooting unarmed Punjabi civilians: the Nepalese Gurkhas and the Baluch from the fringes of far-off Sind… His “horrible, bloody duty”, as he called it, consisted of ordering his soldiers to open fire without warning on a peaceful crowd in an enclosed public square. The General directed proceedings from the front, pointing out targets his troops had missed, and they kept shooting until they had only enough ammunition left to defend themselves on their way back to base. While Dyer made his escape, a curfew ensured that the wounded were left to linger until the following morning without treatment… nearly 400 had been killed, including 41 children and a six-week-old baby, and around 1,000 injured.
MIA and Diplo sittin’ in a tree studio
Yesterday, Ennis reported that NPR had featured yet another story on hot chocolate MIA. A few of us wondered about the identity of someone mentioned in the “teaser” for today’s story, “the man who helped to spark the MIA Buzz.”
Let me kill your non-existent suspense: it’s Diplo, the 26-year old producer/turntablist out of Philly, whom MIA apparently “fancied”. 😉
Here are my futile attempts at transcribing NPR as fast as I can (clip here):
Maya called last year and asked (Diplo) if he would produce a cut for her debut record…he wound up producing two tracks for the album and they started dating.
From the baile funk-consumed DJ’s mouth, about the mixtape “Piracy funds Terrorism, Vol. 1”, which started it all:
“This is me and Maya, two artists doing it from the street, we didn’t have like her manager with a bright idea, her label with a bright idea…this is purely, like, in the hands of the artist which is where it should be anyway. It’s like the perfect music because it’s everything, you know?”
Yup, I know. 😉 Continue reading
DiCaprio and the 300 dwarfs
I know you are wondering, so let me be clear from the start. This is not an attempt by Disney to win a seat at India’s table. An upcoming movie by director Ron Howard will involve Leonardo DiCaprio and 300 South Asian little people. Yahoo Movies India reports [tip from Kishan Thomas]:
Leonardo DiCaprio, the Titanic hero is to play the lead role of the Hollywood remake of a Malayalam film Albhudhadweep. Prithiviraj played the role in the original version.
The story is about four navy officers Hari (Prithiviraj), Joseph (Jagathy), Jagadish and Indrans being marooned on a remote island after their helicopter crashes in the sea. They reach this island where all men are dwarfs but the women are normal and beautiful. According to the folklore, some local deity has cursed the men who became dwarfs!
About 300 dwarfs have acted in this film. The fantasy fairy tale directed by Vinayan was a slow starter but gained momentum later.
This is some straight-up bulls*it. Don’t you guys see the hidden message here? This is just a plan by “Whitey” (a.k.a. the Man) to rub in the fact that South Asian men are somewhat shorter. They think they can just come to our “island” and take our beautiful women from us. I am totally going to protest this. In the meantime I am trying to decide who makes a better leading man.
New CNN ad with Dr. Sanjay Gupta
CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta betrays his roots by giving free, albeit useless, medical advice (“I probably would see a dermatologist”) in a new spot entitled “Melanoma.” Unfortunately, you have to register with CNN to watch the ad, and then fumble around with a clumsy Flash interface.
Bonus: In an ad entitled “Gandhi,” Lou Dobbs pops up as a creepingly lurking, know-it-all, third wheel. No registration required for that one.
Previous post: Gupta engulfed in romance with viewer
Murderous Mirchi
Coming soon, to the purse of an auntie near you, a hot sauce so hot it could literally kill you:
Ultra-concentrated “16 Million Reserve” is the hottest science can make. The sauce is 30 times hotter than the spiciest pepper and 8,000 times more fiery than Tabasco. Diners must sign a disclaimer recommending “protective gloves and eye wear” — but even sweating testers in safety gear were blinded by tears for 30 minutes. Medical experts fear it could kill asthmatics or hospitalise a user who touches a sensitive part of the body afterwards. It is made of pure capsaicin, the chemical that makes peppers “hot”. [UK Sun, via BoingBoing]
MIA CD RLR @ NPR’s ME
Oliver Wang gave a discerning review of MIA’s CD Arular on NPR’s Morning Edition, sidestepping the political hype and keeping the spotlight firmly on her music. He’s no slouch of a wordsmith either:
“Many music critics have played up her exoticness as she was the love child of Neneh Cherry and Che Guevara or the prodigal daughter of the third world returning home to soundbomb the empire”
The radio clip [RealAudio], is only 4:34 long, and worth listening to. Tomorrow, Morning Edition will be interviewing “the man who helped to spark the MIA Buzz.” Continue reading
He blinded me with science (updated)
As Abhi posted, Amal Dorai of MIT threw a party for time travelers last Saturday. He begged visitors to bring a cure for cancer or some other proof of their travels. Here’s a report from Afua, the Samoan particle physicist-slash-bouncer:
“Two surfer dudes named Bill and Ted showed up claiming to be from the year 1989. I asked them to prove it, but all they said was ‘way!’ and ‘bogus.’ So I threw ’em out. They yelled ‘Party on, dudes!’ and disappeared into a phone booth.
“A crazy-eyed old man with Van der Graaf hair showed up in a DeLorean. I ejected him, and he peeled out at 88 mph stuffing garbage scraps into a blender.
“Some huge thug showed up in a monster suit. He gave his name as Moore Locke, shrieked loudly and bit someone’s head off.
“A tall, thin man with pointy ears wandered by muttering something about a whale.
“A guy named Spicoli showed up stoned out of his mind. ‘Dude, I’m, like, from 30 seconds in the past,’ he said, adding, ‘huh-huh-huh.’
“So there were no time travelers at the party.”
By the end of the party, the only confirmed time travelers were Dorai’s purple leisure suit and zebra-stripe shirt. No other travelers showed up, so the party was a bust. The MIT boys squabbled over the only female-like creature in the room, a girl from BU who took a wrong turn and got trapped in Morss Hall like a dinosaur surrounded by velociraptors. Thousands of years later, they will find her bones.
Angelina Jolie expresses opinion for some reason
Angelina Jolie isn’t a big fan of Pakistan’s plans to push U.N. refugee camps back into Afghanistan:
Actress Angelina Jolie, a goodwill ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency, said that Pakistani plans to relocate refugee camps from Pakistan to Afghanistan would not help the Afghans living in them. “I don’t think it is a good idea,” Jolie told reporters at a press conference on Saturday when asked to comment on remarks made by Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf about relocating the camps. [AFP/Yahoo!]
Non-existent sources report that Musharraf responded in-kind, saying he didn’t think Jolie’s move from sexy bombshell to sexy homewrecker was all that good of an idea either, but you didn’t see him complaining.