Mira Nair does cities well.   She’s taken us from Bombay’s cramped lanes of the red-light district, brought us to  roam around Delhi in the footsteps of a family planning a big Punjabi wedding, and now back and forth between  Calcutta and New York in The Namesake. The movie opens worldwide in early March 2007 […]

*Or “Yes, We Have No Bandanas”   Oh, meu Deus, there’s so much I didn’t like about this film….. the background music using cheesy  portuñol lyrics (don’t they think anyone in India will notice, never mind the overseas masses?), the overwaxed physiques of Hrithik and Uday (this, after Yuva, must be the second film where […]

The bad news – for me – was that Art Malik has  only a supporting role in this film, so he’s not  on screen enough.   (And it’s already been established that he does not don a kilt.)   Then again, the title is Nina’s Heavenly Delights, not Raj’s. The good news for all of […]

  This Canadian short film shows the lengths that Pria (Natasha Chandel), a 15-year-old  South Asian  girl goes to in an  effort to lose her accent, mainly by mimicking lines from favorite movies.   She does this because she fancies a boy she sees every week at a local coffee shop, and she’s convinced he’ll […]

Pria, Twins of Mankala, Davy and Stu, Nina’s Heavenly Delights, 0:0pm, Sirah, 1001 Auditions, My Bollywood Bride.

Rehana Mirza’s locally set (New York/New Jersey) film  touches on something I don’t think I’ve ever seen represented in any Indian-American production before: mental illness. Madhur Jaffrey plays Divya, the recently widowed mother of Palini, or Linny, (Pooja Kumar) and grandmother to the teenage Jia (Madelaine Massey).   As the movie opens, we  see  Linny […]