Category Archives: Arts and Entertainment

Eyes wide shut

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Satisfy the voyeur in you by peeping the literary orgy in Manhattan:

 Pankaj Mishra, in puffy shirt and boho beard, was the absolute star with a hilariously barbed passage from Butter Chicken in Ludhiana.
Only two of the authors reading were second-gen: Jhumpa Lahiri and Vijay Seshadri, the O.G. ABCD in his 50s who teaches at Sarah Lawrence. ‘Thelma,’ a love poem from The Long Meadow: baritone wit, a thatch of gray hair and vulnerability.
Read his iconic passage on the Bombay monsoon from Maximum City.
Spying a courgette in his ex-lover’s hand, Shamsie’s protagonist asked, ‘Is that domesticity or a dildo?’
Flip-haired, moddish diplomat with the rich tones of a British lord read aloud about book markets in Baghdad.

Anna, Turbanhead, Prashant Kothari and Deepa represented. We left the authors and their groupies at a dimly-lit bar and gorged on tricorner dosas shaped like pirate hats. Over dinner, one moblogger and one guy checking email. Gay racehorses and fowl necrophilia were on the table, and a tipsy mutineer kept yelling, ‘This is so gonna be blogged!’ The wine was free, oh yes, the wine was free.

Update: DesiLit has more.

No runaway ‘Bride’

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Bride and Prejudice has done just $3M in the U.S. so far, $17M worldwide. With a production budget of $7M and likely a similar marketing budget, it’s probably just crossed break-even.

A couple of months ago, the film increased its U.S. presence by 400% to 156 theaters, but its revenues jumped only 100%. To some degree, that’s to be expected as it expands out of culture vulture cities. But the dropoff has been quite severe.

Bride has the same marketing problem as Bombay Dreams: an old-school plot with the trappings of exoticism. The foreign element brings in film critics who are disappointed with the unironic plot. At the same time, it scares off mainstream viewers.

You have to have some affection for a movie that melds mariachi, gospel and filmi music and throws Nitin Ganatra around in an American flag thong. There’s some serious novelty value there. But the final cut felt messy and unfinished. And not all fusion works: Hindi tunes sung in English can be jarring, especially with a desi accent, and the novelty of hearing them for the first time in Fourteen Songs, Two Weddings and a Funeral has long since worn off.

A much better attempt is the Bollywood/Hollywood version of ‘Mera Naam Chin Chin Choo.’ The singer seems to switch effortlessly between ’20s swing and Hindi, it’s a marvelous mix.

Harvey Weinstein, head of Miramax, showed up in person at the Bride and Prejudice New York premiere and said he was looking for the next Moulin Rouge ($70M invested, $178M gross). Bride and Prejudice did well in the UK, but in America he’ll still be looking.

Previous posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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Drumming up some cash

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Authorities in the city of Rajahmundry in Andhra Pradesh state are sending drummers around to create a noise outside homes until [tax] evaders cough up. Officials say they recouped 200,000 rupees ($4,600) on the first day. Harried residents emerged from their homes to be told by accompanying tax collectors to pay up or continue facing the music. [The Municipal commissioner] … said he was confident people would pay up to avoid embarrassment as everybody now knew that the drums meant there was a tax evader inside. [BBC]

If this fails, they can always play classical music, rock or rap to pound the scofflaws into submission. Continue reading →

Bowdlerizing the best

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Earlier we pointed you to Salman Rushdie and Zadie Smith’s latest novels, due this fall. Bibliophile Punjabi Boy has tracked down the plot synopses. Whoever bowdlerized these vigorous authors managed to strip most appeal, like film trailers badly cut. Or both authors really are succumbing to that artistic curse– damn you, marital bliss.

Shalimar the Clown (Rushdie): Maximilian Ophuls, former Resistance hero, postwar economics guru, counter-terrorism expert and a popular US Ambassador to India whose tenure was abruptly ended by a scandalous liaison with a dancer, is murdered in his old age on his daughter’s doorstep in Los Angeles – his daughter India, who dislikes her name. ‘She didn’t feel like an India, even if her colour was rich and high and her long hair lustrous and black. She didn’t want to be vast or subcontinental or excessive or vulgar or explosive or crowded or ancient or noisy or mystical or in any way Third World.’ The assassin is Max’s driver, who goes by the name of Shalimar, a handsome Kashmiri man in his forties, a former tightrope-walker and clown in a band of travelling players. Salman Rushdie’s new novel is the story of the dead man, his killer and his daughter; the story of the violent termination of an extraordinary life stretching from Nazi-occupied Strasbourg to Hollywood via India, Kashmir, and many of the world’s most dangerous places. [Amazon UK]

Avoiding Lahiri-itis and Mukherjee syndrome (taking ‘write what you know’ as the Eleventh Commandment), On Beauty will be Smith’s first novel set mainly in America.

On Beauty (Smith): Howard Belsey, a Rembrandt scholar who doesn’t like Rembrandt, is an Englishman abroad and a long-suffering Professor at Wellington, a New England Liberal Arts college. He has been married for thirty years to Kiki, an American woman who no longer resembles the sexy activist she once was. Their three children passionately pursue their own paths: Levi quests after authentic blackness, Zora believes that intellectuals can redeem everybody, and Jerome struggles to be a believer in a family of strict atheists… Then Jerome, Howard’s oldest son, falls for Victoria, the stunning daughter of the right-wing icon Monty Kipps. Increasingly, the two families find themselves… enacting a cultural and personal war against the background of real wars that they barely register. [Smith’s agent]

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I’d pay more if it meant no commercials before the flick.

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I’ll never bitch about spending Rs. 435 at the Sony Metreon ever again;

According to the cinema index from market researcher Screen Digest, tickets in India cost an average of 19 cents which means moviegoers here have to work for just 16 minutes to earn enough to buy a ticket, reports BBC.
In India, workers earn an average of 70 cents an hour, whereas, across the globe, the average working time needed to pay for cinema admission is 57 minutes.
Cheapest countries for cinema tickets, according to the survey, are: 1. India – 16 minutes’ wages 2. US – 24 minutes’ wages 3. China – 26 minutes’ wages 4. Luxembourg – 28 minutes’ wages 5. Ireland – 30 minutes’ wages

The most expensive countries? Well, I wouldn’t worry your pretty heads. Four out of the five are Eastern European nations that are rather Orthodox places. The fifth? Thailand, where nothing is orthodox. 😉

via Rediff. Continue reading →

“Suicide Girl” to die for

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Alternative community/pin-up site Suicide Girls features a blog and photo collection from a U.K.-based desi named “India” (NSFW). She’s an aspiring mathematician, and daydreams about numbers:

FANTASY: to solve one of the clay institutes seven prize math problems (http://www.claymath.org/millennium/)…

First Navi Rawat, and now “India.” When did math become the new black? One thing’s for sure — she shouldn’t have any trouble finding an algorithmically-inclined South Asian suitor. Oh, and for the record, I was on Suicide Girls in order to read a scintillating interview with the always-hilarious David Cross.

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The Filmigame

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My friend Atul R. at HBS emails me about a recent alumnus from his program coming up with the hottest game since Star Wars-opoly: The Filmigame filmigame.jpg

THE FILMIGAME is a fun and exciting experience for all Bollywood Movie Lovers. With over 1200 trivia questions on your favorite Movies, Stars, Songs, Dances, Dialogues and Movie Clips. THE FILMIGAME is packed full of fun for everyone.

Play THE FILMIGAME, the first ever Trivia Game on DVD!

The Best of Bollywood comes right to your living room! Watch your favorite movie moments from blockbusters like KABHI KHUSHI KABHIE GHAM and KAL HO NAA HO to all time favorites like NAMAK HALAAL and SHARAABI!

See how much you know with over 1,200 questions on your favorite Movies, Stars, Songs, Singers and Dances – All on DVD!

Challenge your friends and family to a night of unforgettable fun and entertainment!

This sucks actually. I am super competetive. If any cute girl invites me over for game night to play this thing, I will totally lose. I know jack about Bollywood films. Hmmmm. Maybe I could use it as a tutorial instead. They should totally market it that way.

THE FILMIGAME has been designed and developed by two dynamic Asian women based in the US, Sunaina Anand and Prita Uppal. Their main goal as UNAMEDIA is to bring people the most innovative and creative, culturally targeted entertainment. They aim to do this through advanced gaming and entertainment techniques, such as THE FILMIGAME.

Both Sunaina and Prita feel very passionate about this new game and are confident that it will be a hit with movie lovers all around the world. Ms Anand says: “We are developing cultural connections between people in a fun, entertaining and unique way. Our goal is to help people understand and enjoy Indian culture and traditions. And we believe THE FILMIGAME is a giant step in that direction.”

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SF Asian American Film Festival – Mar 10-20

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left_3.jpg A quick shout-out for Bay Area / Cali mutineers – the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival starts tomorrow, Thursday, Mar 10 and extends until Mar 20.
left_4.jpg They’ll be playing 16 Desi flicks including –

I’ll be representin’ SM with a crew of friends who are coming up from LA. The socializing promises to continue late into the evening 😉 Continue reading →

Chutney Lady

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The Gray Lady discovers chaat. Next, they’ll be telling their readers about this great new thing called roti 🙂 But then the piece goes all sensual on you:

The contrasts are, as one fan said, “a steeplechase for your mouth,” with different sensations galloping by faster than you can track them… Chaats can be made with almost anything crispy: … fresh ginger, mung bean sprouts and spice-dusted toasted lentils. Chaat masala usually includes amchoor, a tangy powder made from green mangoes, mint, cumin and pomegranate, but it must always include kala namak, a black salt with a pleasant whiff of sulfur… “In India a guy might have a Mercedes and live in a house on a hill, but he still puts on his slippers and goes to eat chaat…”

A fine tribute to pani puri… by Ganghadar Gopal Gadgil… “In that state of beatitude the Maharashtrians stop being surly, the Marwaris look at the millions of stars without being reminded of their own millions, the Sindhis admire the horizon without any intention of selling it, the Gujaratis speculate on the moon instead of the scrips they should have sold, the North Indians dream of things other than Hindi as the official language of the United Nations, and even the Parsi ladies stop nagging their husbands.”

Be still my gurgling stomach. And, more importantly, the story tells you where to get your fix, though Dimple’s been open for years:

… two popular, top-quality chaat specialists have opened in Midtown Manhattan: Dimple Fast Food and Sukhadia’s Sweets. Manhattan has lately been seized by a craze for Indian snacks, with upscale new places like Spice Market, Bombay Talkie, Von Singh’s, Devi, Lassi and Babu all claiming Indian street food as an inspiration…

… Chowpatty Foods [of Iselin, NJ]… has just imported a chaat cart from India in the red-and-white color scheme of the Chowpatty chaat wallahs… a traditional chaat wallah sits surrounded by his mounds of dry ingredients… and his own mix of jal-jeera, the “firewater” that is used to fill the habit-forming pani puri.

Previous posts: 1, 2, 3

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Salman and Padma

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I guess Salman Rushdie and his supermodel turned cook-book author-wife Padma Lakshmi are of the school that there is no such thing as bad publicity. After their most recent appearance in the New York press, you know when Rushdie threatened to beat NY Times writer Guy Trebay with a bat, Rush and Molloy are reporting in the New York Post that Rushdie will be writing his wife a screenplay.

Rushdie told Webster Hall’s Baird Jones: “I am working on a script for Padma to direct. It starts as a comedy, then becomes tragedy and finally ends in horrendous violence.”

This wouldn’t be that unusual, but the thing is, Padma can’t really act (Have you seen the Mariah Carey bomb Glitter or Kaizad Gustad’s Boom?). What makes him, or anyone, think she can direct?

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