Early on in “Sherlock Holmes”, Watson tells Holmes that he knew a man in India who was able to predict not just the time and date of his death but also how many bullets would kill and where he would be shot. This was Watson’s attempt at suggesting to Holmes that magic may exist. I’m [...]
The most entertaining put-down I’ve read recently was a long blog comment directed at all those annoying people who ask movie reviewers the question, “Why can’t you just enjoy the movie for what it is? Why do you have to analyse it?” Do read the …
Aziz Ansari apparently played the same character in Scrubs as in Funny People and Parks and Recreation. But that one character is hilarious.
Here’s how he was written off when he landed Parks and its inevitable schedule conflict. Playing an underperforming desi med student is breaking stereotypes of a sort:
Inspired by flash mob musicals, employees of Portugal’s national airline staged one of their own at Lisbon airport two days before Christmas. Tracks included lots of Mariah, ‘Stayin’ Alive,’ ‘Dancing Queen,’ ‘Mack the Knife,’ a Portuguese pop song and, of course, some Bollywood-style music. At 5:46, they dance to ‘Chori Chori Hum Gori Se‘ from [...]
The smartest thing about “3 Idiots” is that director Raju Hirani uses the student crowd of his IIT-inspired engineering college as a laughter track. This means when an idiotic joke is cracked, everyone in the audience thinks the next person laughed and so they laugh too. Which is ironic because one of the things that [...]
Watched Paa a few weeks ago and liked it overall. Made my peace early on with the fact that it isn’t a “Progeria film” – that the medical condition is mostly incidental to the Parent Trap-style story about a child reuniting his estranged parent…
It’s Friday, the day when new movies hit the movie theatres and the film world hopes like hell that all of us will scurry to the box office and buy tickets for the week’s releases. The news this Friday is that all the theatres with James Cameron’s Avatar are full. There were 700 prints of [...]
Dileep Rao shows up briefly in this clip from Avatar, James Cameron’s high-tech yet Luddite tale of a soldier going native. The story evokes some obvious parallels like the European colonization of the New World. Cameron reportedly paid close attention to fashioning a bow-and-arrow culture which rides steeds bareback going up against white men with [...]
Journalist Anup Kaphle embedded with British troops in Afghanistan and got this fantastic footage of Gurkhas bonding with Afghans over Bollywood and Urdu:
The report was partly funded by SAJA. (via Andrew Sullivan)
Related posts: One more ride on the Kabul Express, Retro ‘Express’, The yellow badge of courage
Now that an 11/26 recon man was found in the U.S., says Aasif Mandvi, India has no choice but to invade the U.S.
Seen an American TV show recently? Invasion underway.
Reading this news item about the possibilities of “laboratory-grown meat” got me thinking about the two or three times in my life I’ve flirted with vegetarianism. As a child, after seeing a struggling chicken being carried to its doom through a l…
On Parks’ all-Aziz special, Ansari passes out at a strip club, mooning over the green card wife he just divorced. Then gets man-carried home. Bullocks, she’s from Canada.
Related post: ‘Parks’ a re-creation
In this entertaining snip from the documentary Good Hair, Chris Rock returns from Chennai to meet an Indian-American hair merchant. Vijay Gupta carries $15K of weaves in a rolling suitcase, selling to Beverly Hills salons:
The real juice of the doc is a barbershop discussion when a black man says the last time he was allowed [...]
Wyclef Jean, Cyndi Lauper, DJ Rekha and Neel Murgai performed ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ on Letterman last night (thanks, Joolz). The track’s sweet, poppish melody sounds like Maya lyrics crossed with Cornershop sitar.
And to answer your burning question: Cyndi’s 56, but she still rocks it.