Kitsch-mish

For your kitschy pleasure:

‘Indian God.’ A music vid of Ganesh as petulant recording artist.

I’m a fuckin’ Indian god, baby that’s a fact
I’m a fuckin’ Indian god, girl I want you baaack
How can you leave an Indian god, baby that’s fucked up…

Fuckin’ Indian god, man, you can’t leave that.
It’s too good, mmm!

He said he’s an Indian god, baby, not a fuckin’ songwriter. Watch the video.

‘Handy Hindus’ finger puppets. They’re Hindu gods done up Elmo / Sesame Street style in cheap plastic.

‘Hindi Bendy’ toy. Here’s a quick way to make money: take a boring old toy, slap on a bindi and add some extra arms.

Here’s their entire section of Hindu products; Archie McPhee sells novelty products by mail-order:

“I study customer’s actual orders. I see 100 voodoo dolls going to a software firm in Palo Alto. What does this mean? A Manhattan buyer wants every nun and Catholic religious item we carry and wants them by air. What’s the rush? And here’s yet another order to Japan. What are they doing over there with all this glow-in-the-dark string they order?”

Lest you think they specifically tweak Hindus, you should see the rabbi punching puppet and the bobble-headed Jesus. They don’t sell Islamic novelties, can’t imagine why.

Deadly building collapse in Bangladesh

Tragedy struck earlier this week at a sweatshop in Bangladesh:

Rescuers pulled two more bodies out of the rubble of a nine-story garment factory that collapsed four days ago, taking the toll to 32 on Thursday with more than 100 workers still feared trapped…The factory at Palashbari, 30 km (18 miles) from the Bangladesh capital Dhaka, was built without planning permission, officials and engineers said. Its owners have not been found since the worst tragedy in the country’s accident-prone garment industry struck in the wee hours of Monday. [Reuters/Yahoo!]

The factory produced clothes for export to the U.S, Belgium and Germany. The companies haven’t been named, or stepped forward. Seeing as how their oversight of the factory was lacking, they probably don’t even know yet. Once they do, surely their hell-bound executives will mourn the loss (of revenue, not life).

Reuters/Yahoo!: Hopes for Bangladesh factory survivors fade as death toll hits 32

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Mo’ mehndi, mo’ problems

Night of Henna claims to be the first-ever Pakistani-American film, which if true would be remarkably overdue (thanks, Turbanhead). It looks to be more arranged marriage with bad accents yadda yadda. Will she marry a desi, or will she stay with her white beau? It’s what we all struggled with — back in the days of Motley Crue.

Pooja Kumar, the print ad model for Bombay Dreams, stars. Craig Marker, from the most excellent Neil LaBute play The Shape of Things, co-stars, as does male model Suhail Tayeb. DJ Cheb-i-Sabbah did the soundtrack, which is promising; he does a soulful take on ‘Kaise Kaise.’

Watch the trailer. Here are showtimes. The film plays NYC’s Imaginasian starting Apr. 22.

Reclaiming Apu

Seven.11 turned out to be insanely good, and if you’re in NYC you have only five days left to see it. This series of seven short plays, each 11 minutes long is absolutely hilarious, and the performers were obviously having a blast.

I love this deeply about NYC, you can see desi American scripts you can’t see performed anywhere else: it’s custom culture. Anuvab Pal’s piece was good, as usual, but the consistency was surprising — maybe five or six of the seven microplays were really, really good, or at the very least funny, and the rest is forgivable. The off-off-Broadway aspect of the whole endeavor lowers expectations, but I could see some of these, fleshed out, doing well on a large stage.

Soonderella is destined to be a cult hit. It’s definitely the only desi parody musical I’ve ever seen. Debargo Sanyal’s stammering, braying swain F-F-Fofatlal brought down the house. Pal’s Paris is a sharper, more malignant Before Sunrise; as in Chaos Theory, he has quite the ear for the advance and reverse of flirtation, it’s love as war zone. My only real complaint is the purely classicist flavor of the references, Sartre is no longer a young Turk.

Color Me Desi is a takeoff on Goodness Gracious Me’s rude boyz, and S.A.M.O.S.A. (South Asian Men Organizing Sci-Fi somethings) is a gut-busting Asian version of Napoleon Dynamite. And the in-jokes were fabulous. One actor had a line in the first piece, ‘C’est la vie — it’s your line.’ In the final play, the same actors: ‘C’est la vie.’ ‘Deja vu?’ Winky tone, blink and you missed it. 

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Musical is first to perform Lennon’s ‘India, India’

Yoko Ono, the almighty creator of cacophony and destroyer of institutions, allows a Broadway-bound musical to perform a pair of unpublished songs written by her late husband, Beatle John Lennon. One of those songs, “India, India,” received yesterday its first-ever public performance:

Lennon wrote ‘India, India’ in the late 1970s for a musical of his own writing named after his song The Ballad of John and Yoko. However, the show was never performed and the track remained unheard. It seems likely that in ‘India, India’ Lennon was writing about his 1968 visit to India, when the Beatles indulged their spiritual side at the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Rishikesh. [Apun Ka Choice]

Apun Ka Choice: Lennon’s ‘India, India’ on Broadway
Times of India: India, India lyrics

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Flaming purple Kali

Sounds like a cocktail, no? Pixar artist Sanjay Patel illustrates Hindu mythology in a style reminiscent of Suck, Demian 5, Virgin and Bewitched (thanks, Turbanhead). It’s gorgeous work, although his Rama does look a bit much like Hrithik Roshan, and any kid-safe interpretation of Kali is bound to cross the line into kitsch.

Patel’s site says he came up with its name, Ghee Happy, via obscure analogy: reducing the rich strokes of Hindu iconography to their essence is like clarifying butter into ghee. He self-published a children’s book of Hindu gods and also sells 11″x17″ prints on his site. Check it out if you have any little ones in need of full-color indoctrination or just dig the visual style.

Update: Drawn has more (thanks, Harry). A commenter there says:

We were actually joking with Sanjay that he SHOULD do this with every religion, but I guess the problem with the monotheistic religions is that there would only be ONE page in the book…

Noureen Dewulf in ‘National Lampoon’s Pledge This!’

Actress Noureen Dewulf plays an Indian sorority pledge named Sanagarvarapoopoo “Poo Poo” Gandosimi in this summer’s “National Lampoon’s Pledge This!” The film reads like a female rehash of “Van Wilder,” and stars wealthy porn star Paris Hilton as the sorority president. Peta Cooper (PC) interviews Dewulf (ND) for DesiClub.com:

PC: Does your character have a lot of “fobby” qualities?
ND: Fobby? Not really, I mean she speaks with an accent, wears Indian clothes and is really innocent until she gets corrupted.
PC: Does she wear deodorant?
ND: Peta – Shut up! (laughs) I kind of like FOBs anyway. They are cute and funny plus ignorance is bliss right?
PC: So you’re in this movie with Paris Hilton, how do both of your characters interact?
ND: Well, Paris’ character, Victoria, is the president of a sorority (Gamma Gamma) that my character Sanagarvarapoopoo Gandosimi aka “Poo Poo” is trying to pledge. So basically, she tortures me and the other pledges throughout the film, which is really funny. [DesiClub.com]

Even if it is funny, it’s going to be pretty damn hard to top the hilarity of Hilton picking up a cell phone during the sex scene in her previous masterpiece, “One Night in Paris.” (NSFW)

DesiClub.com: Noureen DeWulf — in hot company with Paris Hilton

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Hard Rock Café coming to Bombay

Twenty years ago when everyone was sporting Hard Rock Café t-shirts, this would have allowed us to be culturally-appropriate posers:

…global cafecum-entertainment giant – the USD 426-million Hard Rock International – has made the move to enter India. Industry sources said Hard Rock International has signed an exclusive arrangement up with two Indian franchisee partners – Jai Singh and Sanjay Mehtani. The first Hard Rock Cafe is expected to come up in Mumbai, in September. [Times of India]

Times of India: Hard Rock to enter India

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Brown on the Boob Tube

2 TV events that might be of interest to Mutineers –

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  • Kiran Rao on 24 — Sepia Mutiny’s favorite ABCD actor (Kal Penn, alas, is but a close #2) has a recurring role on the Fox hit 24. He writes –

    I will be on two episodes of “24” in the next couple of weeks. It looks like I will be on the 4/18 and 4/25 episodes, but there is a small chance you may see me in tonight’s as well. While I don’t have an accent, I do get to carry a gun! 9pm on Fox if you want to catch it.

    The curse of the brown actor in Hollywood – you unload several AK magazines without hitting a thing and get popped on the first shot by Jennifer Garner / Arnold Schwarzenegger / Kiefer Sutherland. He had a great writeup of his experience on Alias awhile back.

    In between terrorizing the good guys, he occasionally saves their lives as well – but in the hospital rather than during a covert op.

    Kiran took a little heat on this earlier and had this to say (read the comments here)-

    WHY WHY WHY do brown folks take parts like this!? congratulations to your friend, big time boo hoo for the rest of us. …Kali: would you mind explaining “why why why” this part offended you so much? Was it because there was a brown person playing a plastic surgeon (stereotype #1) or helping terrorists (stereotype #2) or dying quickly (stereotype #3)?…

    Read the rest. Whatever the case, I still think it’s cool.

    (previous SM coverage of Kiran – here; some of his previous roles were covered on my blog here; Kiran also runs a website focused on desi’s in Hollywood called Hollywood Masala)

  • Raj Bhakta judges Miss USA — You know, there’s just something really special about seeing someone reach for and achieve their dreams.

    Competing with Kiran’s (potential) time slot on 24 tonight will be the Miss USA pageant judged by Mr. Raj Bhakta.

    Pageant rules strictly prohibit fraternizing with the contestants before the contest. Consoling the runner’s up afterwards, however, is another story I’m sure.

    (previous SM coverage of Bhakta – too numerous; Hat tip to SM reader Pooja who alerted us via the tipline!)

  • One man’s a terrorist. The other a terrorizer. Continue reading

    Posted in TV

    Brief film updates

    A whole bunch of stuff going on in the world of movies. Some we’ve missed; some yet to come:

    • Amitabh Bachchan — Film Society of Lincoln Center pays tribute to the actor by screening 12 of his films (estimated total running time: 3683 hours). The undisputed king of Bollywood also appears in person on April 15 to talk about his long and storied career (estimated total running time: 3683 hours). (via BBC News)
    • Mughal-E-Azam” — Bollywood’s biggest film of all time is restored, colorized, re-recorded, and possibly molested (I mean, c’mon, they’ve done just about everything else to it). Film purists aren’t crying foul though. The production company behind the colorization says it was merely completing the unfulfilled dream of its creator. Playing in theaters now.
    • Continuous Journey” — Ali Kazimi’s film won the Best Documentary Feature Audience Award at the 23rd San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. It documents a period when Canadians weren’t as nice as they are today:
      Continuous Journey is an inquiry into the largely ignored history of Canada’s exclusion of the South Asians by a little known immigration policy called the Continuous Journey Regulation of 1908. Unlike the Chinese and the Japanese, people from British India were excluded by a regulation that appeared fair, but in reality, was an effective way of keeping people from India out of Canada until 1948. As a direct result, only a half-mile from Canadian shores, the Komagata Maru was surrounded by immigration boats and the passengers were held in communicado ­ virtual prisoners on the ship. Thus began a dramatic stand-off which would escalate over the course of two months, becoming one of the most infamous incidents in Canadian history. [Continuous Journey]
    • Morning Raga” — In their own words:
      Morning Raga is about the meeting of worlds. It is a story that brings the modern and traditional together, unites the past with present, Carnatic music with Western music, the comic with the tragic, fate and coincidence with individual choices. It is a story of our times where our worlds are interacting with each other. [Morning Raga]
      Even tougher to figure out is where it’s playing. As far as we can tell, it’s slowly popping up in theaters around the country.
    • Bomb the System” — The title screams, “movie about the digestive consequences of a bad batch of pani puri.” The official web site says, “first feature in over 20 years to delve into the world of graffiti art.” Let’s hope they read this, and find some way to combine the two. The film (Exec: Kanwal Rekhi, Prods: Ben Rekhi, Smriti Mundhra) opens in L.A. and N.Y. on April 22. (thanks, Abhijay Prakash)
    • Kal Penn — Yahoo! Movies hosts production stills from the actor’s new flick, “A Lot Like Love.” Gawker, a Manhattan gossip blog, published this Penn-sighting from one of their readers:
      on the afternoon of sunday the 3rd, i saw kal penn (from the new superman sequel, the lead role in the movie adaptation of jhumpa lahiri’s bestselling book “the namesake” and the role of kumar in “harold and kumar go to white castle”) at whole foods in Columbus circle. he was wearing a knit wool cap, a black fleece patagonia jacket and a vest over the fleece. was it really that cold? he noticed me squinting at him, so i asked him, “what’s your name?” he replied, “kal.” i then asked him, “were you in a movie?” he said, “yes.” then, i asked him if the movie had been “harold and kumar go to white castle.” he replied in the affirmative and asked me if i had seen it. i replied honestly that i had not. He seemed to be annoyed and bewildered at the same time by my answer. i guess his annoyance was compunded by the fact that i am asian and the movie i asked about was supposed to be the movie that proved asians could produce a mainstream hit. well, it bombed at the box office. at least he has now gotten those two nice roles that i just mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph. [Gawker]

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