Category Archives: TV

Simon Cowell, Meet Tigerstyle

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Chickpea has been sending us tips for this video:

This is way better than Sanjaya, or that Pakistani dude who was on “America’s Got Talent” last year. And it has to be the widest exposure that Tigerstyle track (“Nachna Onda Nei”) has ever gotten. (I wonder who, if anyone, is getting royalties — since they’re sampling both Michael Jackson AND Vanilla Ice/David Bowie).

Simon’s question at the end is prescient, though. There’s not many Bhangra/pop/hip hop tracks that work as well as this one. (I seem to remember another Tigerstyle track that channels Bell Biv Devoe — perhaps that’s what these guys should do next…? Any suggestions for Suleman Mirza and Madhu Singh on how to keep up the surprise in round 2?) Continue reading →

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Reminder: Jindal on Leno tonight

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As I mentioned last week, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal will be on Leno tonight in a show he taped earlier. If Leno is on past your bedtime then you can read the full transcript here:

Leno: So, tell us Bobby. If John McCain came asking or begging you to be vice president, you’re telling us you will say “no”.

Jindal: Jay, again, I would be honored but I have a job to do and that is to be the governor of all of the people in Louisiana, republicans and democrats, rich and poor, young and old.

Leno: Spoken like a politician Bobby. You are learning fast. But, getting back to the question. Would you say absolutely say I would not serve as Vice President if asked. Remember you would be a heart beat away from the Oval Office and McCain is no “spring chicken”. Are you telling the nation tonight you would not serve no matter what?

Jindal: Jay, I have a job to do. I was voted into office by a large majority. I want to be the best Governor Louisiana has ever had and we have really had some real colorful clowns in the past.

Leno: So, that is the best we will get from you tonight, right.

Jindal: I have spoken repeatedly about this issue explaining my feelings, so let’s talk about how Louisiana is becoming a major force to be reckoned now and in the future.

Leno: Governor, first, I’ve been wondering. Tell me. How did an Indian American become Governor of the same state that almost put David Duke in the mansion a decade or so ago? Did you buy his list or something?

Jindal: (laughs) Well, Louisiana has changed so much in the past decade and will do so even more during my administration. I am pleased that the son of an Indian immigrant could become Governor in the Deep South. I was born in Baton Rouge, am an American and am dedicated to turning Louisiana around after years of neglect and poor leadership. [Link]

I have to say, he is saying all the words a person who’d accept and invitation to be VP should be saying. I don’t think you’d HAVE to resign your Governor’s job to be a Vice Presidential running mate. I guess it is in his advantage to keep his name in the spotlight by not dismissing the idea. I’ll link the video once its up.

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The Truth about Cancer

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Hey Mutineers – 1H’08 biz travel has me on the road so I missed the first airing of a documentary that many of you will be interested in.

The Truth About Cancer is a PBS documentary highlighting the current status of the War on Cancer and conveys the personal stories of several cancer patients including our own Vinay. Some of Vinay’s program segments are viewable on the web here, here and here.

VINAY CHAKRAVARTHY: This is to donor ID 068842004. Don’t know who you are, but you’ve just done something great for myself and for humanity by giving a life back, and I really, really, really am grateful to you and indebted to you forever.

Thankfully, my trusty Tivo has found at least one more airing of the entire program in the Bay Area and the program’s website lists repeat showings in other markets. Set your DVR’s.

The Truth About Cancer

Filmmaker Linda Garmon documents stories from patients, doctors, researchers and patient advocates at the same hospitals where her husband was treated for cancer.

Sat 4/19 3:00 AM

9 KQED

It’s a tiny bit of a non-sequiter but not quite worth it’s own post; as long as your setting your Tivo’s etc., Kal Penn is on Leno tonight! Continue reading →

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The “Great Khali” Attempts to Make Peace; Receives Sucker Punch

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I know, I know — there are numerous absurd things happening here. How Boston Bhangra got involved, for one thing, is a puzzle. The “Poonjabi Peace Offering” sounds, to my ear, like it’s been delivered in Hindi. Indeed, The Great Khali is ethnically not Punjabi at all, I don’t think. (His real name is Dalip Singh Rana.)

But if you’re worried about those minor inaccuracies, you’re really REALLY missing the point of the eight glorious minutes of “entertainment” contained herein. Continue reading →

From George to Jyoti: The Famous Five Get a Disneyfied Makeover

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OK, Enid Blyton fans, get your hankies out. The Famous Five are getting a 21st century makeover, courtesy of Disney. Think multicultural meets technology in the new animated series “Famous Five: On the Case” which premieres in the UK next month. The crime busting gang of George, Dick, Julian, Anne, and Timmy the dog that Enid Blyton created in 1942 with the bestselling book Five on a Treasure Island is going to be replaced with characters who are the children of the original Famous Five, including a lead Anglo-Indian character.famousfive.jpg

That’s right, the team leader is the daughter of George (the tomboy and the original gang’s leader), Jo, short for Jyoti. According to Jeff Norton at Chorion, which owns the rights to Blyton’s books,

“We tried to imagine where the original Famous Five would go in their lives …Because George was such an intrepid explorer in the original novels we thought it would be only natural that she travelled to India, to the Himalayas, where she fell in love with Ravvi. That’s the back story (to Jo). We spoke to Enid Blyton’s daughter and she thought her mother would love what we have done …” [source: BBC News]

Don’t anyone try to tell me that the Disney executives don’t know how wildly popular Enid Blyton’s books are in India. I’m sure that the decision to have the lead protagonist be connected to the subcontinent somehow had a little something to do with this fact.

Other characters in the revamped series are Allie, a Californian shopaholic (and the daughter of Anne) who is sent to the British countryside to live with her cousins; Julian’s son Max, an “adventure junkie”: and Dylan, the 11-year old son of Dick. Only Timmy the dog gets to keep his original name. Continue reading →

There goes the neighborhood

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The big news on this Sunday is that an Indian character (human not puppet) is finally (after 39 years) moving on to the storied Sesame Street!

Doesn’t Snuffleupagus look like he is eyeing “Leela” as food?

The newest neighbor on Sesame Street just happens to be Indian American, because the role was originally dreamed up with no particular ethnicity in mind.

“It was incidental,” actress Nitya Vidyasagar told India-West by phone last week from New York City, where she is currently taping the 39th season of the award-winning PBS children’s show. “The casting notices said nothing of ethnicity.”

But the New York-based stage actress made such a strong impression on the show’s producers that they found themselves willing to create her role from scratch.

Vidyasagar plays Leela, a young Indian American woman who runs the local laundromat. Unlike many of the other actors on the show, who use their own first names as their character’s names, she felt more comfortable with the name Leela. “My name is hard for some people to say,” she explained. [Link]

Sepia Mutiny went down to Sesame Street and conducted interviews to see what some residents thought of their newest neighbor. Would there be increased tension because a South Asian was moving in to the neighborhood?

First off, we found that the some Koreans were pissed that a desi is running the laundromat instead of one of their own. When pressed further they said, “why not the 7-11 one street over?” The cookie monster was also in a foul mood explaining, “great, one more mouth to feed.” Count von Count was excited that he may soon learn how to count in Hindi. Oscar threw a garbage lid at one of our bloggers and just didn’t want to be bothered. Elmo just kept laughing because he was so happy at the news but then Bert came by and slapped him upside the head for no (good) reason.

The only one that would speak to us in earnest was Grover. He turned out to be far more lucid than he comes across on television (and he wasn’t wearing a cape). He struck me as an old soul actually. He was glad to see “Leela” move into the neighborhood but expressed some remorse when learning that Nitya had chosen to go by “Leela” because she thought “Nitya” might be too hard to pronounce. “We have a mammoth-like dude named Aloysius Snuffleupagus that lives on this street. Would Nitya really have been that hard to pronounce? Even Barack gave up Barry,” said Grover.

The new Leela is quite an international woman, and speaks Hindi and Telugu. Born in Muscat, Oman, she moved to India with her family when she was a year old. She and her family lived in Kolkata, Hyderabad and Bangalore before moving to the United States when she was 12, and she speaks English with a delicate, yet hard-to-place, Indian accent. “They said I could speak with my accent, too,” she laughed. [Link]

Look for the new season to start in August. This post was brought to you by the number 8 and the letter W.

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Hussein Ibish Embarrasses Himself on The Colbert Report

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Alert Mutineer Giri hit up my wall on Facebook*, and wrote a scorching screed about something he witnessed while watching last night’s Colbert Report.

Apparently, Hussein Ibish, the Executive Director of The Hala Foundation For Arab-American Leadership was a guest on the show; he was invited on to address the whole “Is Obama actually a Muslim?”-question, or, as Colbear facetiously put it, whether Obama is “a secret Muslim”. Ibish was ostensibly offended enough by Colbear’s jocular query to utter the following stupidity to his host, as if this would clear everything up:

“If someone says…that you…are a secret Hindu or perhaps a child molestor…are we to take that as…”

I beg your pardon? Sorry, Mr. Ibish, perhaps you should beg ours?

To his credit, Colbert forcefully replied, “I’ll take care of this one” to his loudly booing audience. He went on to proclaim:

“I find it offensive, that you are implying that all Hindus are child molestors. Your words, Sir. Your words.”

I find it offensive, too. What kind of “spokesperson” is so utterly reckless, or barring that, terrible at hiding their biases? Ibish went on what is arguably an influential television program and offered a dysphemistic metaphor, when he should have– for his sake, his cause’s sake, hell, everyone’s sake– been far more diplomatic. Continue reading →

There’s Something About Majumder

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http://www.watchingsitcoms.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/unhitched.jpg It’s Sunday night and I’m getting ready for the week, while not-really-watching the final minutes of Family Guy.

Hark- the faint pinging of my browndar!

It’s some new show on FOX, one which I don’t recognize; apparently, it stars someone from The Office and an actor who played one of Carrie’s love interests on SATC (“Carrie likes a JAZZ man!!”), plus two randoms, one of whom is vaguely brown. Now I’m paying attention.

I’m confused; this actor looks familiar, but I can’t place him…then I remember! He is Shaun Majumder, and he played Kumar’s snotty, perfect older brother! Back to my TV: on the show, the foursome are standing in line, outside a club. All I can think of is Amardeep’s post about Kumar/Kal and the question of accents for actors. I wonder where this guy will draw the line…

“This place looks like it is going off the hook!”

How odd…he barely has an accent, by Hollywood/Apu standards. He’s obviously playing someone desi. Within minutes, I discover that his character is a Doctor (that’s better than convenience store clerk/terrorist, no?). The show is funny, but I’m disappointed, because everything I hurriedly read about it during the commercial break positively references Seinfeld. Way to inspire impossible expectations, critics!

Some of you have no doubt been wondering where comic/actor Shaun Majumder has been for the last year or so, ever since he (fictionally) blew up Valencia, Calif., in the opening episodes of last season’s 24.
Not to worry. The boy’s been working. Working a lot. And now, as those labours begin to bear fruit, he’s popping up all over the tube. Indeed, it’s getting so you won’t be able to turn on your TV without Majumder’s grinning mug staring back out at you.
“Been a little bit busy here in the H-Wood,” Majumder allows, checking in by phone. “Things have been good.” [TheStar]

Unhitched made its mid-season debut this month; FOX has six episodes to try out. Continue reading →

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Kal Penn @ UPenn

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This past Sunday I went down to the University of Pennsylvania for a rare, open Q&A session with Kal Penn. As readers may remember from Anna’s earlier post on the subject, Penn is at Penn this spring, teaching a class on representations of Asian Americans in the Media. He’s also shooting episodes of “House” (go, House), and stumping for Obama in his free time, though with that schedule I’m not sure how he has any.

As I understand it, there was initially some controversy about the class — is this going to be a stunt, or a real asset to a the Asian American Studies curriculum?

If it were just about bringing a little glamor to campus, I would be skeptical too. But I think it’s fair to say Penn is both an actor and a careful observer of the representation of Desis in both Hollywood and the Indie film world. If you listen to him talk, it’s clear that he’s thought carefully and self-critically about his experiences and choices (he’s very aware that his role as a home-grown, Muslim-American terrorist on 24 might be seen as “problematic,” for instance — though he still defends the choice to take the role). He’s self-conscious enough to know what a racist representation of a South Asian character is, and call it by that name. But at the same time, he’s open about the fact that minority actors sometimes need to play ball to get an entree in Hollywood.

In response to one of the questions posed by a student at the Q&A Kal Penn effectively acknowledged that this was the dilemma he faced when he auditioned for his first Hollywood movie, “Van Wilder.” Unfortunately, Penn also suggested, in response to another question, that things aren’t all that much better even now, for actors who are just starting out:

“I think things for me personally as an artist have changed dramatically, but I know that overall, that change has been slow and incremental. There is no shortage of truly talented actors of South Asian descent in places like New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and London. There are folks who majored in theater, studied film, and are experiencing the same struggles I went through when I was starting out. I think that was my main point: things for me have begun to change, but things for others are perhaps remaining the same.” (Kal Penn, from an email)

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Look Out Begum, Here Comes Rose

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We’ve sometimes blogged about the Pakistani TV host, Begum Nawazish Ali, a drag queen who hosts a variety show on Pakistani TV. rose-venkatesan-20chennai_6.jpg

Now Tamil TV (thanks, Shalini and Literary Safari) will have something similar, in Rose Venkatesan, who is not merely in drag for the TV show, but actually transgendered (meaning, she identifies as a woman socially):

“The sari is the most flattering garment,” he added, as he touched up her makeup minutes before the cameras started rolling. “It disguises manly shoulders, takes attention away from a masculine neck.”

A complex procedure even for experienced hands, the process of tying a sari is particularly hard for Rose, who was raised as a boy, and used to be known as Ramesh Venkatesan. Her mother never taught her the skill and refuses to see her wear one. Even so, the outcome was flawless.

When it is broadcast on Vijay television to an audience of up to 64 million people in the southern state of Tamil Nadu later this month, “Ippadikku Rose” (“Yours, Rose”) is expected to cause a sensation, introducing India’s first transgender celebrity to television. (link)

I like the bit about the sari as a flattering garment for transgendered women (will have to keep that in mind…).

Rose has, I gather from the rest of the article, always been effeminate (and I mean that non-pejoratively), though she’s only ‘become’ a woman in the past four years. She has a degree in biomedical engineering (!) from Louisiana Tech:

Rose said attitudes were no less hostile in parts of the United States, where she had spent three years studying at Louisiana Tech University. “There, people were aggressively homophobic,” she said. “America is very hypocritical when it comes to its stand on sexual minorities. Historically, India was very progressive about this until the British came and imposed a Victorian sense of morality, which still remains.” (link)

Interesting — a slightly different twist on the narrative we might have expected (i.e., where someone who doesn’t fit in in India finds a measure of liberation and acceptance abroad). In Louisiana, Rose encountered homophobia; in Chennai, she will be a star.

(See Ennis’ post below for video clips of both the Begum and Rose.) Continue reading →

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