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 […]

  This black and white short film by Stephanie Argy and Alec Boehm is done in the style of the old Movietone newsreels and is based on a story by Chet Williamson that appeared in The New Yorker in 1983.   The story is that Gandhi comes to New York and visits Yankee Stadium to […]

  J.P. Dutta, who previously gave us such man-laden war epics as Border, seems to have  gotten in touch with his feminine side, producing a costume drama that will have Merchant Ivory Indophile types (hallo!) swooning over the clothes, jewels and sets, with his remake of Umrao Jaan, the story of the heartbreak and misfortunes […]