We, at UberDesi have been waiting for this movie ever since we saw the promos and little bits of this movie last year. And it is finally here.

The movie boasts of an eclectic cast of characters played by an impressive bunch of actors, heavy weights in their own right.

LOINS OF PUNJAB PRESENTS stars Shabana Azmi (Fire, Arth, City of Joy), 5-time winner of National Award for Best Actress in India; Ajay Naidu (Office Space, Suburbia, Bad Santa); Ayesha Dharkar (Bombay Dreams, Star Wars Episode II, The Terrorist); Darshan Jariwala; Seema Rahmani; Jameel Khan; Ishita Sharma; Michael Raimondi; and Manish Acharya.

And audiences the world over have agreed. LOINS OF PUNJAB PRESENTS has won a bunch of prizes in film festivals round the world including New York, San Francisco, LA, Copenhagen, Rome
and Dubai.

The #1 English language comedy ever to open in India, LOINS OF PUNJAB PRESENTS has screened and garnered prizes at international film festivals including: New York’s First Run Film Festival (Winner Best Feature Film); New York’s 2007 South Asian International Film Festival (Opening Night Film); 2007 San Francisco International South Asian Film Festival; Rome’s 2007 AsiaticaFilmMediale (Special Jury Mention); Denmark’s 2008 NatFilm Festival, Copenhagen; 2007 Dubai International Film Festival; and the 2008 Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (Audience Award for Best Feature).

If you are the NY Metro area, head out to the ImaginAsian theater on 59th Street or the Quad Cinema on West 13th Street on September 12. Else, keep an eye out for this movie to open in your home town.

LOINS OF PUNJAB will make its U.S. theatrical premiere on September 12 at New York City’s Quad Cinema (34 West 13th St.) and the ImaginAsian Theater (239 E. 59th Street). The film goes on to open throughout the fall in cities around the country including: San Francisco and San Jose, CA; Chicago, IL; Union City, New Jersey; Connecticut; and Dallas and Houston, TX.

As for me, I am going to put my hands in the air, turn a bulb and go bhalle bhalle with the Turbanator.


‘Dhol Beat’ music video from mv atlarge on Vimeo.

(P.S: If you like the video, be sure to check out the soundtrack on the ITunes store.)

Make way for the Loins… - Über Desi

‘Research shows that most BMW customers love to keep their cars clean – but dog fouling is a constant irritant.’

They even brought in an animal rights group to sell their case, albeit with a weird choice of words.

But Lola Forpi, from campaign group Put Animals First, said: ‘All motorists must expect to go through the odd puddle here and there. As well as going for a drive, we’d recommend owners regularly go for “walkies” as well if they want to have a very relieved pet.’

Even though the acronym (and the names) smelled strongly of a gag, one wouldn’t have given a crap about it, for BMW’s penchant for weird acronyms is rather well known. For example would V care for A car called GINA? Particularly if the body work was all cloth and the publicity pics showed an unfortunate tear that reminded one of feminine plumbing. Sorry, no pussy footing around THAT bush. So, C.R.A.P.S would have hardly caused me to blink.

But the date was what made it a no brainer. It was a straight forward April Fools gag and it made Jalopnik’s Ten Best…Or Worst…April Fools’ Day Automotive Gags. And today when I saw this post on Jalopnik’s feed, I was in splits. It seems that some Indian journalists failed to get the message about April 1 (or the highlighted disclaimer that Metro.uk put below the article!)

Four months since, some lazy moron at IANS lands up at the C.R.A.P.S post on Metro.uk. His/her eyes light up since no one seems to have caught on to this yet in India. And bam, its on the newswire. And then today, the TOI picks it up and it is history.

Everyone and their pet dog in India has known for years that the collective IQ of TOI staffers is rather low. And now via Jalopnik, the rest of the world knows too.

The TOI screams “holy C.R.A.P.S!!” - Über Desi

The Mumbai - based producers at Mirchi films should not therefore have been surprised when Warner brothers slapped a defamation suit on them

Warner Bros. has filed a lawsuit against Mumbai-based producer/distributor Mirchi Movies related to the title of its upcoming film “Hari Puttar — A Comedy of Terrors,” which Warner feels is a tad too similar to its franchise about a certain young wizard. (link)

“Puttar” means “son” in Punjabi and the “Hari Puttar ” jokes started shortly after the books took off. In fact the movie “Kal Ho Na Ho” had some dialogue around the Potter/Puttar theme - Karan Johar should probably get some good legal advice!

Whatever the merits of this particular case, its a good lesson for the Indian film industry.After years of ripping off plotlines, tunesand even scene by scene ( albeit awful) recreations of English movies and music, its time they realized that in an increasingly connected world they cannot hope to get away with flagrant plagiarism (Anu Malik - are you listening?)

Meanwhile the Mirchi folks have predictably come out with a very lame tepid response:

“Since the case is sub-judice, we can’t comment as of now,” Mirchi Movies CEO Munish Purii said. “However, we registered the ‘Hari Puttar’ title in 2005, and it’s unfortunate that Warner has chosen to file a case so close to our film’s release. In my opinion, I don’t think our title has any similarity or links with ‘Harry Potter.”‘

Watch this space for more updates!

Previous UD post on Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling and Kali.

Harry Potter and the Copyright Infringement - Über Desi

“In Delaware, the largest growth of population is Indian Americans, moving from India. You cannot go to a 7/11 or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.”

Obama and Biden make it official with a hug
img: via ABC News

This post is an attempt to look beyond “7-Eleven” Joe Biden and put those remarks in context and the pros and cons of Barack Obama selecting him as running mate.

Pros:
-Foreign Policy: Biden offsets Barack Obama’s relative lack of experience in foreign policy. Biden is a long-time member and current chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. As chairman of the same committee, Biden was instrumental in the India-US Civilian Nuclear deal.
-High profile: Biden is as high-profile as any vice-presidential candidate in recent memory. Not only will John McCain have a tough time matching Obama’s pick in terms of relevance, but whoever McCain picks will have the unenviable task of going up against Joe Biden, an accomplished debater.
-Swing states: As an Irish-Catholic, Biden’s presence will generate significant support for the Obama-Biden ticket not only in Biden’s birth state of Pennsylvania, but also in Ohio, another swing state with a significant Irish-Catholic population.
-Blue-collar appeal: Biden has tremendous pull among the key voting block of blue collar workers. Think little facets about his life like taking the Amtrak home from work daily resonates with working class people? [link]
-Not a “yes” man: While this may be construed as a disadvantage in certain quarters, Americans are overall tired of Presidents appointing incompetent “yes” men and campaign insiders to vital cabinet positions. By appointing someone who criticized him earlier, Obama might’ve displayed the ability to move on beyond the good ol’ boy networks that plague Washington.

Cons:
-Inside man: Obama largely ran on a platform of bringing change to Washington D.C. While to astute political observers, Biden is hardly a typical insider, Obama’s choice of a 6-time senator with one of the longest terms in the Senate, might send mixed signals to the average voters.
-Controversy: Biden’s “7-Eleven” remarks, are but a part of his image as a “loose cannon”. Biden with his penchant for firing off with his mouth is hardly a stranger to avoidable controversies. Earlier in the 2008 race, he called Obama as “the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy” which caused an uproar and effectively ended his campaign at the very start. He also described Obama as a superstar, something the McCain campaign has latched on to in recent attack ads.
In his presidential bid 20 years earlier, Biden was accused of plagiarizing speeches from various world politicians without attribution.

Final word:
Given that Barack Obama has a perception problem as not being experienced on foreign policy, and given the field of potential candidates, Obama probably made a great choice in Joe Biden. Biden will generate a lot of press coverage not only because of his long service record, but also in part because of his ability to attract controversies.
Biden is a weapon. Depending on how the Obama campaign uses him, Biden could use neutralize McCain or one of Biden’s gaffes could put a serious dent in Obama’s chances.

Biden is a strong personality, as is Obama. Traditionally, presidential candidates have picked lower profile running mates to keep the spotlight on themselves. I remember John Kerry picking John Edwards in ‘04 and remember thinking “really?”. John Kerry was dull and uninspiring and so was John Edwards. This could partially explain why they lost to an unpopular incumbent. Obama has done the opposite in ‘08 by picking Biden. Both Obama and Biden are flashy high-profile candidates, the antipodes of Kerry-Edwards from ‘04. Whether it inspires voters or not, tune in on the night of November 4th 2008.

Biden: Beyond 7-Eleven - Über Desi

But in today’s world where people use Facebook to announce their engagement and Youtube to announce their breakup, I have a strange feeling that the 7-11 video will be the Achilles’s heel in Obamas quest for the White House.

Obama picks Joe Biden, 7-11 hands McCain the win? - Über Desi

She saw a Gandhi in Edwards
img: via Hollywood Gossip

Newsweek’s Johnathan Darman, who covered the Kerry-Edwards campaign in 2004, recounts his encounters with John Edwards’ other woman Reille Hunter. [NewsWeek]

When Edwards finally confessed to the affair, he gave the timeline as 2006. [Wiki article]

Recounts Darman: [Newsweek]

It was July 7, 2006. I’d been sent to Iowa to write a piece on John Edwards. We were on our way to Des Moines, where I would be the only national reporter following him around the state for two days. From a few rows back, I tried to observe Edwards before the plane took off. Most of the other passengers seemed to have no idea who Edwards was. But this blond woman, putting away her bags, was visibly captivated by him. She tried repeatedly to engage him in conversation, but he seemed uninterested in talking.

Uninterested in talking, or trying to avoid public attention? Because as we’ll see later in this story, he probably already knew her at this point.

Darman also reminisces when Reilly Hunter actually turned some heads and got tongues wagging when she tagged along with Edwards’ team as a movie maker.

She showed up at his first event that day in Des Moines with a video camera. She was trying to get as close to the candidate as she could. “Does she work for the campaign?” I asked Edwards’s press secretary, Kim Rubey. “Oh, she’s working on a documentary project,” said Rubey. “We’re not sure if it’s going to work out.” But it was soon clear that she was on Team Edwards. When it came time to drive to the next event, she rode in the car with the candidate. I drove behind in a rental car.

Darman then decided to chat up with this woman, to find more about her. He discovered that she was a bored New-York socialite ………..

She’d been a New York party girl, she’d been married and divorced, she’d been a seeker and a teacher and was a firm believer in the power of truth.

how she was working as a documentary-film maker, living with a friend in South Orange, N.J., but how she’d previously had “many lives.”

…. who was starting to dabble in new-age spiritualism and the fancy jargon that goes with it.

She’d worked, she said, as an actress and as a spiritual adviser. She was fiercely devoted to astrology and New Age spirituality.

At this point, you can already see the path this is going down on.

Remember when we talked earlier in this post about how Edwards and Hunter were not two strangers meeting on a plane?

She told me that she had met Edwards at a bar, at the Regency Hotel in New York.

And why did she continue pursuing him?

She thought he was giving off a special “energy.”

Her purpose on this Earth, she said, was to help raise awareness about all this (new-age spiritualism), to help the unenlightened become better reflections of their true, repressed selves.
Her latest project was John Edwards.

So she was an enabler, nothing wrong with that.

Edwards, she said, was an old soul who had barely tapped into any of his potential. The real John Edwards, she believed, was a brilliant, generous, giving man who was driven by competing impulses—to feed his ego and serve the world.

And all this to what purpose? Ready, or not, here it comes.

If he could only tap into his heart more, and use his head less, he had the power to be a “transformational leader” on par with Gandhi and Martin Luther King. “He has the power to change the world,” she said.

The reason this story resonated with me was because Gandhi, as remarkable of a political leader he was, was notorious for unusual sexual shenanigans in his personal life - from his vow of celibacy as a married man, to his (non-)tryst with a prostitute, to his experimentations on sexual self-control with younger women. (reliable online links to these incidents needed)

Whether Rielle Hunter was able to transform John Edwards into a political leader of the stature of Gandhi, only history will tell, and right now I’m betting against it.

But she did achieve something. Remember her goal?
“If he could only tap into his heart more, and use his head less”
Edwards did use his head less and tapped something.

The Gandhi-fication of John Edwards? - Über Desi

India’s Sushil Kumar won the bronze medal in the men’s 66-kg freestyle category on Wednesday at the Beijing Olympics ending a 56 year drought. The last bronze medal won in wrestling was by KD Jadhav who won a bronze in the 1952 Helsinki Games (link)

( Sushil Kumar’s moment of glory :Image via TOI )

Sushil Kumar is an employee of the Indian Railways which also had another employee, Yogeshwar Datta competing at the Beijing games.

Meanwhile part-time model Vijender Kumar, whom we talked about earlier on here as one of India’s brightest hopes for a medal lived up to expectations beating Ecuadoran boxer Carlos Gongora in the men’s bantamweight event 9-4 to give India a guaranteed first ever medal in boxing.(link)

What is specially heartwarming about these victories (beside the fact that this is the first time ever an Indian Olympic contingent will return with a haul of 3 medals in individual events) is that both the Kumars ( no relation to each other) come from small town backgrounds.

Two of these boys—one from an unknown village, Baprola, situated on the outskirts of Delhi and the other from nearby Bhiwani, one a wrestler, the other a boxer— did the impossible on Wednesday and wrapped the tricolour on their broad chests with pride as the world looked on.

Vijender Kumar gets his groove on
Image via TOI and BBC

To climb to Olympian heights from decidedly humble roots is a testament to sheer tenacity and hardwork. Not for them the glory and glamor that usually belong to India’s indulged cricketers. Instead it meant a lot of sheer hard work- grit,grind and finally glory. Sushil Kumar in an interview to an Indian news channel thanked his father who unfailingly woke him up at dawn and made sure that he got his daily quota of milk before sunrise! Vijender’s father was also interviewed and said that the whole village was celebrating and that forty people went to see off their hero proudly when he left for Beijing. There is something so quintessentially Indian about these statements that it just adds to the sweetness of an Olympic win.

Congratulations to the Kumars and heres hoping that this means generations of Indian kids will dream to aspire swifter, higher, stronger!

Update : Our intrepid blogger Santosh tips us to the fact that Bipasha Basu has promised to go out on a date with Vijendra if he brings home the gold medal.

The actress told a television channel, Aaj Tak that she is ready to go on a date with the boxer after a reporter informed her that Vijender is a great fan of hers.(link)

(Reports that Abhinav Bindra finds this offer to date a hunky boxer highly discriminatory against bespectacled,gold medalist shooters are highly exaggerated.)

Whether he heard this or not, Vijender firmly has his sights set on the gold.

“I’ve achieved what I came here for and none can take it away. That surely takes the pressure off my shoulders and I’ll be in a free state of mind tomorrow,” said Vijender, ahead of his 75kg semi-final bout against formidable Cuban Emilio Correa Bayeaux at the Worker’s Stadium.

“But that does not mean I’ll just go through the motions. It will be the same vigour and the intensity too would remain same. I’m going for the gold,” Vijender said.(link)

Victory - it only took 56 years !(Updated) - Über Desi

“Chooooo chweeeeeet”, says President Prathiba Patil
img: via Hindu

After Abhinav won the first gold medal ever for India, life was supposed to be all hunky dory. Then he met the President of India who insisted on pulling his cheeks like a true desi aunty. In fact, this photo captures something so desi, yet so common in the des and abroad even Presidents and world champion gold medalists are not immune to it.

Once Abhinav was able to feel his cheeks again, his life took another turn when he received “Z plus” security from the government. Of course, he seems to shrug it off with the same nonchalance he displayed after winning an Olympic gold medal.

Another interesting fact for our U.S. readers, Abhinav is an University of Colorado alumni [wiki] and practiced in Colorado Springs for the Olympic. [Rediff]

Abhinav Bindra now a target - Über Desi

Macaca nation turns 61 - Über Desi

Besides different ways of spelling his name, here are some other Raj Bhavsar search terms for your amusement:

Questions about his ethnicity
raj bhavsar origin - (from his mother’s womb is my guess, what’s yours?)
raj bhavsar nationality - (hint: he’s on the USA Olympic team)
is raj bhavsar indian? - (looking to open up a can of cultural identity whoopas)
is raj bhavsar of indian heritage? - (even search terms have to be politically correct these days)
raj bhavsar marathi - (Further proof Bal Thackeray has internet access)
raj bhavsar religion - (maybe he’s one of ‘em Hindoos)
where is raj bhavsar parents from in india? - (parents “are” not “is”, at least ask the right question if you’re expecting a half-decent answer)

Questions about his personality, availability, anatomy, and, ready or not, sexual orientation
raj bhavsar arrogant - (is he being a diva? We sure haven’t heard anything confirming or denying that)
raj bhavsar naked - (Eh, thanks but we’ll pass)
raj bhavsar girlfriend - (awww, some love struck girl is interested in Raju, or is it some love sick guy, which brings us to …………)
“raj bhavsar gay” - (get it? Male gymnast must be gay, not that there’s anything wrong with that. True or not, stereotyping is alive and kicking)

Totally random questions
“raj bhavsar” racism - (Which by the way brings up this humble blog as the #1 search result
raj bhavsar + schedule - (Raj, you’ve got yourself a stalker)
raj bhavsar infosys - (He’s desi. Hence, must be a low paid software worker. Lou Dobbs’ corollary)
raj bhavsar self help book - (It is reported Raj did use self help books to keep himself motivated. But Deepak Chopra might be a better bet on that topic)

and finally, the quintessential
who is raj bhavsar?

Raj Bhavsar brings ‘em to Über Desi - Über Desi