Ekta Kapoor will see you now
THE INTERN is sniffy. When she was hired, she’d thought Ekta ma’m was going to ask her for ‘creative inputs’ into the TV shows. She isn’t at Balaji Telefilms to do “just this”, she gestures vaguely at the office around her with Facebook-weary hands. Does she watch the shows? No! She is horrified. “I keep...
Authenticity can be such a pain
IN THE author’s note, Aamer Hussein says, “My novel is the story of some of the paths I might have taken.” The book does bear the dull, deadening smell of authenticity — as if written in a rush of memory. Like the Urdu and Persian poetry the protagonist, Mehran, is addicted to, this is a...
The Jat Mutation
In the late 1990s, when kitsch was still cool and Channel V was the best friend everyone had been waiting for, Udham Singh arrived on his haunches. Props: a buffalo, a lathi and a dangerous, deadpan sense of humour. Udham was a Borat before his time, both playing out the stereotypes of a Haryanvi Jat...
Murder on the Wannabe Express
The PlotBillionaire Kabir Malhotra (Anupam Kher) summons a drug dealer, a Thai prime ministerial candidate, a British journalist and a Bollywood star to his Greek island for mysterious reasons. He knows something about each of them. High jinks ensue. + 10 for creating bollywood’s first malayali protagonist neil menon (Abhishek Bachchan). This following Bollywood’s first...
A big comic con
+ 10 FOR CREATING A NEW DRINKINGgame. Is this movie Inception meets Shutter Island meets The Baby-Sitters Club? Or is it The Baby-Sitters Club meetsShowgirls? Or is it Baz Luhrmann’s Matrix meets Afro Samurai? So many lovely ways to lose consciousness while watching this movie and you will want to. - 10 FOR THE MOST...
Nailing heaven and earth together
SOMETHING ABOUT Shuvaprasanna has always been a democratising force. This is Shuva at age 9. He had been sketching his father’s patients and was considered very accomplished. When he heard that Kliment Voroshilov, the president of erstwhile USSR, was visiting Kolkata, he decided he must sketch him. So he set off at a brisk...
The mistress of mildness
THE TROUBLE with Manju Kapur, five books down, is not that she isn’t exposing the dark underbelly of the Indian middle class. The trouble is that she is not prodding its fair paunch enough. Let’s get the niceties of Custody’s plot out of the way. Raman, the young corporate executive (ordinary East Delhi origins, IIT,...
The Marilyn Monroe in Shah Rukh Khan
To know why Shah Rukh Khan is a superstar, all you have to do is rent Dulha Mil Gaya (Trinidad, Fardeen Khan, enough said). His 15-minute cameo lifts the 2010 movie out of purgatory and gives it one of the most romantic gestures in Bollywood history, a middle-aged millionaire who gets up early so when...
A belly full of gags
The PlotTashi (Imran Khan) lives in a grimy room with friends Nitin and Arup. His girlfriend Sonia (Shenaz Treasurywala) accidentally becomes a mule for diamond smugglers. Through a series of unfortunate events, the smugglers (Vijay Raaz and others) get Nitin’s stool sample instead. The boys are now on the run. Tashi’s risk-loving new pal Menaka...
Seven Course Meal
+9 TO RANJAN PALIT’S cinematography that makes every frame full of tactile textures. +9 TO PRIYANKA CHOPRA FOR AVOIDING playing ‘adorable’. Plus 10 points for showing us she is capable of more than her usual competent but lightweight self in the Russian roulette scene. +10 FOR THE MOST hilariously fake CGI-generated panther that we were...
Is the nailpaint on my little toe chipped?
TAM-BRAM GIRLS of Vidya Balan’s generation were brought up to be neat but not vain, to be presentable but obsess about work. It is only incidental that Vidya, 31, unlike other girls of bilingual Palakkad descent, is not conquering the world of statistical modelling or dreaming miles of code. It is incidental that her adolescent...
‘Dear Mr. Subhash Ghai, my name is Kiran Rao’
Kiran Rao, 36, is a week away from the release of her first film Dhobi Ghat. The Mumbai office she shares with husband Aamir Khan is in a state of silent, controlled mania building towards the promotion of the film. Rao enters the room, a slight, composed person and almost immediately leaps upon a side-table...
