Category Archives: Arts and Entertainment

Sikh fashionista in ‘The Life Aquatic’

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Waris Singh Ahluwalia plays a henchman in oddball auteur Wes Anderson’s latest film, The Life Aquatic, with Bill Murray and Owen Wilson. Anderson also directed The Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore and Bottle Rocket.

Ahluwalia was last spotted in a recent Time Out fashion spread pimped out urbanwear and turban. He doffs the pug in one scene, but manages to preserve his manly modesty under a neoprene scuba suit (clip 1, clip 2).

It’s not clear whether this is the same Waris Singh Ahluwalia who reported a hate crime in NYC a few months after 9/11:

Four friends and myself walked into Joe’s Pizza on Carmine + Bleeker. About a minute after we arrived, a man standing a few feet away from me looked at me and said “You’re the perfect target.” He smiled as he said this… He walked by close, smiled and repeated the same thing- “You’re the perfect target.” Before he got to finish saying it he punched me in the face.

Ouch…

Also check out the Sikh couple in the ‘Welcome to Atlanta’ booty video by Jermaine Dupri and Ludacris:

 

Are these Sikh actors being used as silent, exotic henchmen? Probably. But any exposure in a non-bad guy role is a good thing.

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Chopra tackles comics

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Last week the NYTimes Business section went into details about self help guru Deepak Chopra’s effort to bring western style comic books to India.

The newly formed Gotham Studios Asia is a joint venture between the media company Intent, run by Mr. Chopra with Shekhar Kapur, the director of movies like “Bandit Queen” and “Elizabeth,” and Gotham Entertainment Group, South Asia’s biggest licensee for international comic magazines such as Marvel Enterprises, the publisher of “Spider-Man” and “X-Men” as well as DC Comics and Warner Brothers Worldwide Publishing.

Gotham Studios will offer an adaptation of “Spider-Man” [see previous SM post here] in which the hero is a young Indian named Pavitr Prabhakar, who is shown bouncing off rickshaws in a dhoti, a loose Indian garment. There will also be a comic-book version of “Ramayana,” an Indian tale about faith, loyalty and war, to be retold in a sweeping style reminiscent of the “Lord of the Rings.” The titles are to be released in the middle of next year.

Gotham Studios is one of many companies trying to take advantage of an expected boom in the sale of books and music in India, fueled by rising literacy rates and buying power and changing spending habits. India’s population of more than one billion is the youngest in the world. Projections are that, by 2015, India will have 550 million people under the age of 20.

Imagine edgy western style comic book art used to re-tell the Indian classics. Comic books don’t just have to be marketed to kids and teens either, but can be used as a way to reach a larger Indian population with social messages (such as the way Art Spiegalmen did with Maus). Whatever you think of Chopra’s self-help philosophies, this seems like a very profitable venture. I hope there is not to much cross-over with his other books and he can keep his characters from being too preachy.

Mr. Chopra will infuse spirituality and mysticism into the characters. For instance, in the Indian version, Spider-Man gains his powers from a mysterious yogi, not from a radioactive spider. Spider-Man’s enemy, the Green Goblin, is the reincarnation of an ancient Indian demon called a rakshasa. “The superheroes of tomorrow will be cross-cultural and will transcend nationalistic boundaries,” said Mr. Chopra, the chairman of the new company. His son, Gotham Chopra, who is the story editor of the comic book “Bulletproof Monk” and was executive producer of the movie version, will write many of the comics for Gotham Studios.

NYT reviews Naipaul’s ‘Magic Seeds’

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The NYT reviews Magic Seeds, V.S. Naipaul’s sequel to Half a Life. Naipaul’s protagonist Willie Chandran join a pointless communist group in India, a metaphor for the reign of Marxists in the author’s native Caribbean:

Willie is the latest exemplar of a type familiar to Naipaul’s readers: the fanatical idealist drawn to… “socialist mimicry.” Cheddi B. Jagan, the orthodox Marxist who rose to become prime minister of Guyana; Michael X, the black power leader who ends up a murderer in Trinidad… Naipaul is infuriated by their charade, the fraudulent progressive ideology that masks their will to power.

Chandran is eventually disabused of his fuzzy-minded notions. Naipaul also mocks hopes for a postracial society, and not gently:

Willie attends the wedding of the half-English son of Marcus, a West African diplomat “who lived for interracial sex, and wanted to have a white grandchild.” The groom, Lyndhurst (“very English,” Roger comments dryly), is marrying a white woman, a union that will result in the culmination of Marcus’s dream. The wedding takes place at a grand house fallen into dereliction in the English countryside. A passage from Othello is read, an “Aruba-Curacao” band plays…. just as the mixed-race couple is about to exchange vows, one of the children they’ve had out of wedlock audibly passes gas, no one is certain which: “But the guests lined up [with political correctness] on this matter: the dark people thought the dark child” had done it; “the fair people thought it was the fair child.”

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The next M. Knight Shyamalan?

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I’m guessing their subsequent flicks will be doomed to a mediocrity vs. their first movie – Reiter’s Camera Phone Report: Indian student porn MMS video results in expulsions, cellular phone ban –

Two Indian students used a camera phone to film a short porn video, resulting in their expulsion and the banning of cellular phones, according to several media reports, including one in Sify News. Two students in New Delhi — a girl honor student and a boy from a wealthy family — were expelled after they circulated their 2.37-minute film to other students.

A more desi-friendly Zara

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This post is in honor of the busiest shopping day of the year. A fashion entrepreneur might do very well with a more desi-friendly Zara:

Zara is paradise for sexy men’s clothing. It’s my all-time favorite store…

  • It’s one of the vanishingly scarce stores in America which do fall colors and deep jewel tones, like Indian formalwear, instead of those sickly pastels which look terrible on desis
  • Its fabrics are beautifully textured, like sherwanis, so subtle details appear upon closer inspection
  • It does dramatic tapered cuts rather than the shapeless American box cut; it’s the only non-designer store where I can get any semblance of a V-shape and waist…

The Economist compliments its speed:

Zara is the world’s fastest-growing retailer… Zara can make a new line from start to finish in three weeks, against an industry average of nine months. It produces 10,000 new designs each year; none stays in the stores for over a month…

Someone please clone this store, quick. The number of dark-haired people in the U.S. (black, Latino, Asian, desi) is enormous and growing. Zara with a more desi-friendly line and deeper supply chain could be an absolute gold mine…

Also focusing on the underserved dark-haired, olive-skinned market is fellow Berkeley grad Lubna Khalid’s startup, Real Cosmetics.

Continue reading…

West Wing Desi Love

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I just finished watching tonight’s episode of the West Wing on NBC. Maybe it is John Wells (the producer of ER and The West Wing), or maybe NBC has simply discovered the Desi market in the U.S., b/c this episode of The West Wing featured who I thought was Pragna Desai (she starred in ER’s episodes based in the Congo and The Ben Affleck flop The Sum of All Fears) as Leo McGarry’s nurse.

In the episode, Leo has lost his appetite, and Desai, as his nurse–ok, so we still only play health care professionals (but it is a start!)–uses Indian food and her good looks to charm McGarry into eating.

Is a South Asian woman, dressed in her wedding best and bearing Indian food better than certain illicit substances at giving people the munchies?

Also interesting was some of the dialogue between Desai and McGarry. In the episode, McGarry was considering joining the board of some sort of corporate chemical company. The company seemed quite similar to Union Carbide, because at one point McGarry asked Desai if she was from Haryana, and that that the company was trying to make up for all of the damage it had done there in 1986. Perhaps this was a reference to the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal in 1984, and the upcoming 20th anniversary of this tragedy on December 3. The issue of a name-change was also discussed, a la Union Carbide to Dow Chemicals.

Halle Brockovich

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Since we were just discussing the merits (or absurdity) of Brad Pitt in a movie about the life of the Buddha, I thought it would be appropriate to point out Halle Berry’s upcoming role as “Vanita Gupta.” From Apunkachoice.com:

Academy Award winner Halle Berry is likely to play the role of an India-born law graduate in America, Vanita Gupta, whose campaign helped overturning the judicial ruling in one of the biggest drug bust cases in the US.

Vanita Gupta is like the Erin Brockovich for the colored people in the Texas town of Tulia where 10 percent of its African-American population was arrested in a drug bust case in 1999, based on the sole testimony of under-cover narcotics agent Thomas Coleman, who was also a Ku Klux Klan member.

Halle Berry portraying an Indian woman, though? Well a short haired Halle does look a little like Arundhati Roy doesn’t she? Well…the face at least. I am quite sure their bodies aren’t as similar.

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Aishwarya may play Buddha’s wife

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Aishwarya Rai may play Buddha’s wife in a biopic coinciding with the 2,550th birthday of the Gautama. The film’s backers have signed up Shekhar Kapoor and should find it easy to recruit Hollywood stars who dabble in Buddhism.

The chance to play opposite Aish would turn me into a monk any day, but there’s a catch:

Buddha’s wife Yashodhara became a Buddhist monk soon after Buddha’s enlightenment… Gautam Buddha… was married to Yashodhara at the age of 16 and he left the palace soon after the birth of his son Rahul… Yashodhara became a nun when Buddha turned 36.

Buddha turning Aishwarya celibate? Methinks I’ve figured out who’s really holding the cards.

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Vikram Chatwal….Actor?

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photo.cms.jpgSepia Mutiny’s favorite Desi Playboy never ceases to amaze. His movie “One Dollar Curry” opened up this week in Paris to pretty flattering coverage – Sify reports & graciously links back to Sepia Mutiny

“One Dollar Curry” by France-based Indian filmmaker, journalist and writer Vijay Singh takes a comic look at tolerance while lifting the curtain on an exotic side of the French capital unknown to many visitors. … “One Dollar Curry” is set in the French capital’s well-established home of immigrants from the subcontinent, the 10th district on the northern side, packed with grocery stores, restaurants, clothing stores and video rentals with cheap “phone home” facilities, bringing colour and exotic spicy smells to the grey streets. Its star however is Vikram Chatwal, a New Yorker whose family runs a chain of hotels and restaurants in the United States. He plays Nishan, a young Sikh political refugee who hawks curry from a cart in the streets but claims to be related to a line of chefs who cooked for the great names of the world from the Moghul emperors to Winston Churchill and Michael Jackson.

Word on the street is that Chatwal extensively researched the role by dismissing the maid for an evening and doing his own dishes before going to bed.

The Times of India has more.

Previous SM coverage on Chatwal – One More Dream for Chatwal and ON the Trail of Vikram Chatwal

Naveen Andrews is Easy

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Naveen Andrews who plays an ex-Iraqi Republican Guard soldier on ABC’s Lost, will be co-starring in an upcoming movie titled Easy (as in Sex is, but Love isn’t). From the movie’s website:

Lately, lighthearted stories about single urban chicks looking for love in a world of noncommittal guys flood our newsstands, televisions, and Cineplex screens. EASY confidently rises above the ranks of these romantic comedies, offering a less glossy, more penetrating vision of lovelorn life. Jamie Harris, portrayed with sparkling intelligence by actress Marguerite Moreau, is a neurotic, bright 25-year-old with a career naming peculiar consumer products. Though she gives them their identities, she’s rather confused about her own. After dating a string of jerks, she’s bewildered about whom to trust or how to find true intimacy. When two seemingly honorable men orbit around her, Jamie must confront what she is most afraid of. As in Shakespearean comedies, writer/director Jane Weinstock’s playful, nuanced script adroitly tosses competing desires up in the air, offering audiences the delicious pleasure of watching characters squirm and wriggle before everything falls into place.

…Marguerite Moreau (“Runaway Jury”) portrays the irresistible Jamie Harris. Naveen Andrews (“The English Patient”) is John, a sexy, sensitive and brilliant Anglo-Indian poet.

…The Production Designer was Aradhana Seth (“The Guru”)

After viewing the clips it looks like the movie has some potential. But then again I am a sucker for movies about angst ridden urban chicks.

The full trailer can be seen here. Continue reading →