Category Archives: Arts and Entertainment

M.I.A., fashion victim

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M.I.A. is now officially overexposed, but this Pitchfork interview is fascinating (via Chapati Mystery). A musician with something real to say: she’s making some PR flack very happy right now. She’s the anti-Anna Kournikova, with a story that’s more substantial than her stage presence.

She highlights the perils of highlights:

I have brown bits in my hair, and my Mom was practically on her knees screaming, “Nooo! You have to dye your hair before you leave the house or I’ll kill myself!” I’d be like, “What are you freaking out about?” and she’d explain the Tamil Tiger girls have been in the jungle for so long that their hair goes brown, and if you walk out like this, you’re going to get shot because people will think you’re a Tamil Tiger girl…”

Why bikes are banned in LTTE-controlled areas of Sri Lanka:

Bicycles are banned, gasoline’s banned, there’s no motor transportation… because they think you can use the inner bicycle tubes to make landmines. They banned rubber bands, so the Tigers apparently used inner tubes to make rubber bands. So they banned the whole bicycle! And that, to a Sri Lankan, is the main mode of transport…

Her dad is a Dylan fan, and terrorist is too crude a label:

When I watch President Bush on the telly going, we need to fight the axis of evil and kill these terrorists by all means necessary, I just go, “Shit, poor Dad.” In the 70s all he wanted to do was be a revolutionary like Bob Dylan. He had idealistic views about changing the world for the better and fighting for people who don’t have a voice– the same thing that Bob Dylan wanted to do. Now, he’s like this straight-up, evil terrorist; a gunned masked man with a semi-automatic ready to take down and behead people. It’s not like that; it’s really not. It’s so much more complex. They’ve made a cartoon character out of a terrorist…

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What Would Rushdie Do?

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Salman Rushdie recently jawboned a NYT reporter for calling his wife a common hustler. Today, that same reporter wrote about India Fashion Week. The good news: Delhi is in the NYT. The bad: Guy Trebay sounds like the condescending love child of Lord Macaulay and Rudyard Kipling:

On one hand there are the neo-minimalists, deploying traditional handicrafts with restraint and confidence. On the other are designers whose response, when presented with a blank slate and access to those same crafts traditions, takes the form of horror vacui. More is more, in other words, with a dollop of too much. For every even marginally subtle designer like Mr. Varma, there are five others whose work looks as if it is destined for a camel fair in Rajasthan…

Earth to Trebay: it’s an ornamented culture. You don’t see people dinging the Chinese for silk mandarin jackets. And when Tamarind goes with an all-beige, Ralph Lauren-meets-Sears comforter theme, some of us see that as a downgrade.

Trebay expands:

“I’m here to see clothes that speak to a larger, more global vision,” said Michael Fink, a buyer for Saks Fifth Avenue. “I keep saying to people: ‘Designers come from abroad, take your fabrics and crafts and present extraordinary clothes. What’s wrong? Why aren’t you doing that here?’ ” Mr. Fink was not alone among those hopefuls who made the trek from the United States or Europe only to find disappointment in collections not yet likely to translate for foreign markets…

Translation: we do Indian clothes better than the Indians. Yes, people, why can’t you rip off your shit for Kmart like we do? You water down your milk, we water down your yoga. You dilute your petrol, we dilute your tunics. By the time we’re done, nobody’ll remember they were ever called anything else. What’s a little bastardized fashion between friends?

But wait, he’s not done yet:

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M.I.A. on Jimmy Kimmel tonight!

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Alert Mutineers, set your Tivo’s – M.I.A. will be performing on tonight’s Jimmy Kimmel show @ Midnight PT.

Didn’t know that Kimmel had his own show? Neither did I. But I can’t be the only one who finds Kimmel’s pasty, overweight, dude-next-door schtick an odd place for the national broadcast debut of MIA’s edgy, ethnic, conflict-inspired tunes. Pray she doesn’t inspire Jimmy to dance.

[previous SM coverage – too, numerous, to mention]

UPDATE – Apul’s got the torrent / video clip. Continue reading →

Chandrasekhar spotted at sushi restaurant

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A reader of Defamer, an L.A. gossip blog, sends them a Jay Chandrasekhar-sighting:

Saw Broken Lizard’s Jay Chandrasekhar & Paul Soter (SUPER TROOPERS, CLUB DREAD) dining at Sushi Katsu Ya with three lovely ladies (two of which seemed to be sig others of Jay and Paul). Relatively uneventful sighting until the bill arrived and I saw them start to divy it up. Well, Fox Searchlight must not pay very well because when the waiter came to collect they asked to split the ~$200 bill between three cards (one belonging to Jay, one to Paul and the third to the third woman). Now maybe it’s just me but you would think that A.) they would be doing well enough to treat the group to a sushi dinner and B.) that since they were talking business it was easily expensed….right? Regardless, seems like their next project will be a sequel, “Broke Lizard’s Super Cheapers”. I guess no one eats for free in this town. Last note, both the guys looked a bit chubby, I guess they let themselves go after getting buffed out for CLUB DREAD. [Defamer]

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Oberoi-Ash marriage speculation

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Vivek Oberoi tells a television show that he plans to wed Aishwarya Rai next year:

“I will marry Aishwarya Rai,” Bollywood star Vivek Oberoi said today confessing his love for the former Miss World. “She has been very lucky for me. A right girl brings stability in one’s life,” Oberoi told “Seedhi Baat” programme on Aaj Tak. [Chennai Online]

Then something, or someone (smart Rs. on the latter), compels Oberoi to backtrack:

As news broke out of Vivek Oberoi’s 2006 marriage plans with his green-eyed girlfriend, the actor clarified that his remarks had been taken out of context…“My intentions are honourable, but there are no such impending plans,” Oberoi clarified through an SMS sent to Sunday Mid Day about his throwaway remark. [Mid-Day]

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Asians disappear on prime-time

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It’s not a magic show for May sweeps:

A study of Asian Americans in prime-time television, released Monday, shows that Asians, who make up 5 percent of the U.S. population, play 2.7 percent of regular characters. It also shows virtually no Asian actors are on situation comedies, and the characters they play in dramas tend to have less depth than most regulars, with minimal on-screen time and few romantic roles. [AP/Yahoo!]

One of the few bright spots:

…the study’s authors particularly lauded ABC’s “Lost,” which has a South Asian character and a Korean married couple who speak Korean on-screen — with English subtitles, something almost never seen on prime-time shows. [AP/Yahoo!]

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Gotham releases Indian Spidey

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The long-awaited debut of “Spider-Man India”:

Gotham Entertainment Group (GEG), based in Bangalore and New York, has launched four issues of the comic in the United States and will introduce the first of the four-part series in India next month, in a deal with Marvel Enterprises Inc. [Reuters/Yahoo!]

The first issue is available directly from the publisher. Possible drinking game: Take a shot every time you catch a peek up Pavitr Prabhakar’s dhoti.

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Kill the TV, Cut her throat, Spill her blood

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TVFuneral.jpg
Blogging has become a real family affair for me of late. My parents and brother keep sending me interesting tips. This one comes from my dad. He writes:

Abhi: This is from Ahmedabad’s today’s Gujarat Samachar. An old fashioned school established in Ahmedabad few years ago called “TAPOVAN”. Middle and elementary school kids decided that TV has been a bad influence lately, so they decided to have “Funeral” for the TV on the street and took a TV to the cremating place and burned it. Only in India.

The scene above looks quite Lord of the Flies-ish to me. I would not want to cross the path of this bloodthirsty mob. My contacts on the Indian Street (our family is from Ahmedabad) inform me that this violence was precipitated in part by frustration over the plot twists of this season’s ALIAS. My sources in the State Department tell me that, as of now, it looks as if the Prime Minister will call upon KPS Gill once more, to end this before more blood is shed.

I think this whole affair is especially depressing in light of the latest “research” proving definitively that television makes you smarter. When violence such as this breaks out it’s important to keep things in perspective. Just because you see a picture of yet another brown mob DOES NOT mean that brown people are naturally violent. This simply shows that the cut-throat competition that is considered “education” in third world countries does not allow for these kids to have enough time to know the joys of good tv. I am convinced that given a choice, free from an opressive regime, all men/women would choose to watch t.v. God wants this even. Do you think this scene would have unfolded if Nanny 9-1-1 or the Surreal Life aired in India? I will let you think about that.

The silver lining here is that all of us TV loving Americans can breathe easy knowing that this wave of violence won’t spread here. These kids will surely have their Travel Visas denied if they come to preach their hate here. Continue reading →

Posted in TV