Raj Kumar Hirani is the bearer of a lost art, the art of story telling. The problem is sometimes, he overlaps his piece of art with another of his own, that is still fresh in your memory.
And I’ll try to keep the review clean of any spoilers.
3 idiots is a movie ‘loosely’ based on one of India’s ‘best-selling’ novels, “Five point Someone, what not to do at IIT“, by Chetan Bhagat. A book, that critics love to hate and take a jab at it’s ‘popularity’, while a particular section of …

You may have heard of the movies ‘Bwana Devil’ (first American 3-D Color movie) and ‘The Ghost and The Darkness’ (starring Val Kilmer, Michael Douglas and our very own Om Puri) that were based on real life incidents connected to the Tsavo man-eaters of Kenya.
New research suggests that the number of victims may have been much lesser than previously thought.
Over nine months the two voracious hunters claimed 35 lives _ no small figure, but much less than some accounts of as many as 135 victims.
It was 1898, when laborers from …

In recent days, there has been increased chatter in desi media about Walter Semkiw’s books. [HT]
Did you know that Mahatma Gandhi has been reincarnated as Van Jones, the celebrated American civil rights and environmental activist who was named Time magazine’s “environmental hero” in the US in 2008?
“Objective evidence that forms the basis of past life studies prove that Jones is the reincarnation of Gandhi,” world’s leading past life researcher and best-selling author from the US Walter Semkiw told IANS in an interview.
World’s leading past life researcher? He certainly seems …

The Fall directed and (partially) written by Tarsem Singh (The Cell) proves one thing, Tarsem can direct one heck of a cinematographic masterpiece, but needs to stay away from tinkering with the storyline.
The Fall is a visual masterpiece with a haphazard storyline.
The story starts with Alexandria, a 5 year-old daughter of Romanian immigrants, meeting an injured stuntman, Roy, in a hospital set in 1920s Los Angeles. Roy has not only been temporarily paralyzed but is also dealing with a myriad of personal issues and quickly spiraling down a dangerous path, …

* zopdi (zopadpatti) = Mumbai slang for slum
So I caught a screening of “Slumdog Millionaire” at a theater near me and I’d have to say I liked the movie. *** spoilers follows ***
“You wanted to see the real India. Now you’ve seen it”, says a teenage Jamal clutching his left eye after the Indian driver of an American tourist couple unfairly blames him for their car getting looted and lays a beatdown on Jamal.
In the age of instant information, does knowledge gained from life experiences count for anything?
Slumdog is an …

For most level headed people, falling in love with a person that you have only spoken to over the phone is the stuff movie scripts are made of. Yet for others, it is what marriage is all about.
Priya Sethi is one of the latter. Even though she is engaged to marry a suitor chosen by her father who disapproves of her working in a call center, she is intrigued by the prospect of falling in love with advertising executive Granger Woodruff, a customer who calls in to report fraudulent charges …

SPOILER WARNING :This post discusses several key plot points of the NBC series “Heroes”! If you have not yet watched the third season episodes and intend to, please do not read this post!
When “Heroes” began with a scintillating first season sometime last year, having a desi as a major character was just the icing on the cake for comic -book geeks like me. Sendhil Ramamurthy’s character Mohinder Suresh acted as the “sutradhar” ( aka narrator) who pulled together the disparate histories of the assorted misfit heroes into a …

Chennai born Arvind Adiga has won the 2008 Man Booker prize and £50,000 prize for for his debut novel The White Tiger. Adiga, only the fourth first time novelist to win the prize, beat out established names such as Amitava Kumar and Sebastian Barry to win the prize for his novel that the Guardian describes as “a bracingly modern novel about the dark side of the new India”.
Adiga was born in Chennai in 1974 and was raised partly in Australia. Having studied at Columbia and Oxford universities, he became a …

It is a truth universally acknowledged by people in the know that when you get a bunch of immigrant desis from the length and breath of India into a single room, chaos will reign. Some would say its organized chaos, but nevertheless. Manish Acharya’s debut feature, Loins of Punjab, turns this organized chaos into a howl-arious laugh fest, thanks to an stellar ensemble cast.
Somewhere in the 29th state of India a.k.a New Jersey, the reigning king of pork loins in the North East decides the best form of advertisement for …

Phoonk blows.*
(Image from: indyarocks.com)
Ram Gopal Verma is consistent. His movies after ” Satya” are consistently awful.
I watched “Phoonk” this weekend. At the end of it my feeling is one of deepsorrow.That would have been the easiest Rs.500,000 that I could have made!
Full disclosure requires that I let you know that I am a complete coward when it comes to Horror movies. I try to avoid them and if I must watch one, I need lots of company around me and maybe a cozy blanket so that I can …

In our continuing coverage of the movie “Love Guru”, we have some posts left including the review of the movie itself, our opinions on whether the movie was really as offensive as self proclaimed leader of the Hindus, Rajan Zed, proclaimed it to be and, perhaps, another surprise post ***hint***. All these post will feature under the section titled “The Love Guru Central:” for obvious reasons. Presenting the first post in out “Love Guru Central”, a broad review of the movie.
The Love Guru has Austin Powers Mike Myers exchanging his …

*Note : This review contains spoilers so please do not read it if you intend to see the movie and do not want to anticipate the fun ! *
“The Happening” – a much awaited release from M.Night Shyamalan debuted at a strong # 3 position this weekend with a $ 30 million take. I contributed some money to that total as I saw the movie along with the family. This movie is going to be universally panned by serious critics so I have to take a stand and confess that …

*** Some Spoilers ***
Don’t expect anything new out of the new Indiana Jones movie. Lucas, Spielberg and Ford get together and revive the franchise after Indy rode off into the sunset couple of decades ago in the Last Crusade. The movie is set in 1957. Everything is intact – Indy’s penchant for adventure, street smart skills, ability to get in and out of tough situations, puzzles in ancient languages, Indy’s hatred for snakes, exotic half naked natives and even more exotic gods, temples and pyramids, thrown in with mind control …

Be scared of the latest Bollywood movie, Bhootnath ….. real scared. Be scared because you have to pay real money for the ticket.
Regarding, Bhootnath. I watch desi movies in theaters because I get so few of them. Normally I don’t read reviews or hype, so I can form my own opinions. Ditto for Bhootnath, I went in with zero background on the movie. I decided to use this movie to experiment with some live blogging on my now almost defunct blog. The way this works is – I text (SMS, …

I recently watched Wes Anderson ’s “The Darjeeling Limited” on DVD.
The film stars Adrien Brody, Owen Wilson and Jason Schwartzman (who also co-wrote the movie). The three play the Whitman brothers who have not spoken for a year- since the death of their father. Their mother is missing from the funeral – much as she seems to have been missing from their lives most of the time. Francis (played by Wilson), the eldest type-A sibling organizes a reunion-cum- spiritual journey to India where Peter ( Brody ) and Jack(Schwartzman) join …

The best part of a visit to India (next to meeting family and friends) is , for me, the ability to unabashedly give up any pretense of dieting and gorge on all kinds of gastronomic delights. On every trip to the des , I try to hit all my favorite restaurants at least once. This time , while in New Delhi, I had a great experience at Punjabi by Nature in Gurgaon .First off, it gets two thumbs up for what has to be my favorite restaurant name ever (edging …

(Note: Special thanks to Santosh for allowing me to write this one )
Jodhaa Akbar is like a cupcake : sweet, ornate, decorative but not substantial. In essence it is a love story but with swords, sand, elephants and lots of color. Ashutosh Gowariker’s labor of love /depiction of labored love -is a 3 and a 1/2 hour spectacle sprinkled with homages to LOTR, the Matrix, Kung-fu movies, Chandralekha ,Gladiator and Troy. Gowariker has of necessity taken liberty with the story of Jodhaa Akbar – which as umpteen protesting groups in …

After having read multiple comments about ‘bastardized‘ cheese dosas, I walked in with with a lot of skepticism. I fully expected everything to suck and in a lot of ways, I wanted it to.
Dosa, located on 995 Valencia St., San Francisco was different in most ways. Just like my other favorite restaurant on the right coast, Dosa was trendy, pleasant and we were the only Desi’s in the restaurant, save the owner.
After a look at their menu, I settled for Bhel Puri and my friend for Pani Puri. Yes, my …

Author of “A Golden Age”, Tahmima Anam was featured on this morning’s NPR Morning Edition Show.

Over the weekend I had the misfortune to watch Goal or as the title is supposed to be “Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal”, directed by Vivek Agnihotri.That mish-mash of a title itself should have warned me. There is a particular pain to watching a bad Hindi film – I cannot describe it exactly but it is a mixture of sorrow, disappointment, and anger at having wasted close to 3 hours on an essentially unfulfilling experience.
The story of the movie itself is rife with possibility. A struggling South Asian …