No Kemistry, Not Even Kute

Kismat Konnection, a Red Chilies venture  directed by Aziz Mirza, which opened this Friday, is  a big disappointment.   I wanted to like it, I really did.   I’ve enjoyed Vidya Balan since her debut in Parineeta, and, now that Shahid Kapoor has gotten a little older, I no longer feel guilty for even contemplating […]

If you’re in NYC….

  …get ready for  a terrific documentary opening here on August 1: America the Beautiful. More about it in a little while, but I’d strongly urge anyone interested in media, magazines, celebrity or fashion to check it out.

They’re back!

  A while back I lamented the fact that the suits at NDTV decided to cut off the Indian ads when they beam the signal for NDTV 24/7 to those of us living off the Subcontinent. Instead, they subjected us to loop after loop after loop of the same, same, same, same clips of their […]

Tum? Yahaan??

  Finally got around to watching Ang Lee’s Shanghai-based period film Lust, Caution, and who  should appear – close to the end of the film –  as the protagonist cautiously enters Chandni Chowk Jewellers, but hamara Anupam Kher, seated behind a desk, as the jeweller/owner Mr. Said Khalid Uddin. It’s a small role, he only […]

Bollywood Back in North Bergen

Good news, filmi fans:   Hindi movies have returned to the Columbia Park Stadium 12 cinema in North Bergen. One year ago ejackly  I was lamenting the former Cineplaza cinema’s  disappearance as one by-product of an enthusiastic real estate move.   But oh, how the murukku crumbles…… The very same cinema has returned to the […]

Playing by Melanie Abrams

My review of Melanie Abrams first novel, Playing, has just run in Mint. There, Abrams talks about what it’s like to write a novel that contains heavy  dollops of S&M and an Indian character who figures prominently in that story line, when you happen to be married to a well known Indian literary figure – […]