Archive for Rocky
Doston Ko Salaaam, Dushmano Ko Double Salaaam, Rocky Mera Naam- Rocky Mera Naam. Paanch Shauk hain Apne Janaab- Shayari,Shabaab ,Sharaab,Chalchitra aur Amitabh!
November 10th, 2008
Doubting Dubai
By Scott MacLeod Wednesday, Nov. 05, 2008
Saif Ahmed began living the Dubai dream five years ago. Armed with an M.B.A. from the University of Toronto, the Canadian entrepreneur moved to the gulf city-state and co-founded property developer Universal Canlink Inc. By 2006 the firm had annual revenues of $15 million, luring foreign investors with tales of “meteoric” growth in the local property market. Lately, with the global financial downturn spreading to the Middle East, Ahmed has come back to earth. “Before, people were buying blindly, without asking much about the details,” he says. “Now such risk takers have disappeared.”
Among the signs of the changing mood: Nakheel, the developer of Dubai’s proposed 200-story skyscraper, has announced it is reassessing its needs. Boardrooms and coffee shops alike are buzzing with talk about the coming fall. The Cairo-based investment bank EFG-Hermes recently predicted that Dubai property values could tumble 20% in the next three years. Shares of Emaar, a Dubai company that has become one of the world’s biggest real estate developers, have fallen almost two-thirds since January.
Read the rest from LINK
November 10th, 2008
When a centre-left political party notches up a dramatic victory, public discourse sometimes gets flooded with talk of redemptive change. An unexceptionable base argument is used to create a fancy superstructure.
Put this argument to test in two cases. Barack Obama’s win in America in 2008 and the Congress’s win in India in 2004. The unexceptional base argument in both cases is that parties of the centre-right who had grown politically arrogant were humbled by voters. That’s deserved punishment. But centre-left enthusiasm ascribes to these verdicts a radical political-economic cohesiveness that’s simply not there.
So the Congress’s win was interpreted and continues to be interpreted as a popular verdict against economic reform. Those who say this won’t look at facts presented many times. The BJP lost in urban centres, where reform beneficiaries live. The Congress didn’t sweep poorer states like Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, where the BJP did relatively well. From the time the Congress lost monopoly over national power, all national incumbents bar two have lost. So 2004 was the rule, not the exception.
From the mid-1980s, all governments abandoned reforms mid-term, much before general elections came around. Therefore, governments went to voters minus fresh-in-mind reformist activism. Clearly, therefore, it’s hard to make a case that the 2004 Indian verdict was a “revolt of the peasants”, as the Guardian had so nicely and so wrongly put it.
Read the rest from- LINK
November 7th, 2008
We have introduced sound of Amritsar in Rab Ne’
Rab Ne… have chosen not to trek the beaten path as Adi wanted the music to completely feel like it belongs to the spirit of the film
November 7: : Background scores, for Salim-Suleiman, would remain as special as their latest as music directors – Aditya Chopra’s gigantic Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi
When a certain Aditya Chopra decides to step behind the camera, with Shah Rukh Khan in his frames, we don’t expect sparks, we bet on fireworks. And if anything leaves music director duo Salim-Suleiman with goose bumps, it has to be this. “I am usually nervous when I do music for a film,” laughs Salim Merchant right before the music release of Aditya Chopra’s ‘Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi’. Expectations, are often unreasonable feels Salim. “There seems to be popular demand for thumping, racy dance tracks. There has to be at least one such track in a film,” says Salim.
Rab Ne…, however, chooses not to trek the beaten path. Chopra wanted the music to completely feel like it belongs to the spirit of the film, and not just full of random chartbusters. “People often have funny expectations but we have tried to make the music true to the film,” says Salim.
October 22nd, 2008
Mumbai Cowboy
Kumar Ketkar
Posted: Oct 22, 2008 at 2346 hrs IST
: It is a win-win situation for Raj Thackeray. He must have desired to get arrested. That keeps him in the headlines and also steals the media limelight from his main rival, the Shiv Sena. To his followers, indeed to a large number of Marathi youth in Mumbai and Maharashtra, the arrest confers on him the status of a saviour. The more he is seen on the non-Marathi channels and among the Hindi-speaking political classes as a monster, the more he is perceived as a spokesperson by the angry and volatile urban/semi-urban Marathi youth. The law and order establishment in Maharashtra is totally confused as to how to deal with this not-so-sudden rise of an outlaw. Raj likes and adores the Hollywood westerns in which the horse-riding sheriff challenges whole towns of American Indians with his cool, daring and sharpshooting skills. What is a calculated riot for Raj is a “spontaneous rebellion” for his widespread following of lumpen youths. The more they are condemned, the more reckless they become. They are the new cowboys, mainly from the sprawling metropolis of Mumbai.
The rise of Raj can be directly attributed to the total non-performance of the Congress-NCP Government as well as to the slow fading of Balasaheb Thackeray. The criminal neglect of Mumbai and other emerging urban centres like Pune, Thane, Nasik, Aurangabad for the past decade or more has raised the level of frustration and anger across the cities. More so among the so-called “local” Marathi populace that has been feeling overwhelmed and marginalised. But the fault is not of those “bhayyas” who are seen as “invaders”. The main culprits are the state government and the Shiv Sena-BJP-led corporation which have shown complete disregard for the basic necessities of the city. So it is not as if only the Marathi-speaking people of the city have lost hope. Even the migrants, from all over the country who come to Mumbai and then spread out to other cities, feel despair.
Life is extremely difficult for them and in no way do they compete with the local Marathi youth, who may be unemployed but are not ready to work for 16 hours a day in restaurants, laundries, shops or run taxis and sell bhelpuri and work as unlicensed coolies. They sleep on footpaths, railway stations, under the staircases, in cement pipes brought for massive construction work going on all over the cities. They have very few demands from life except seeing Bollywood films and catching the occasional glimpse of actors. Back home, in some village in UP or Bihar, they are believed to be part of glamorous Mumbai.
Read the rest from the Link above-
October 21st, 2008
http://www.funenclave.com/fun-stuff/bollywood-and-hollywood-lookalikes-21761.html
Some One had emailed me this!
October 20th, 2008
PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL
OCT 19, 2008 - YOU’D THINK THE ONLY PEOPLE AFFECTED by the Drona debacle would be the ones who actually made the movie, but universal disenchantment over a much-anticipated film can apparently make its effects felt even on someone who merely reviewed it. No sooner than I’d awarded the film a three-star rating, one reader wrote in to enquire if I was on Abhishek Bachchan’s payroll, while another, very politely, wondered that, as a “respected writer whose views are valued, surely there are a lot of people there ready to buy you out.” The infamous instance of the disgraced Hansie Cronje was then invoked, and I was asked, “How easy is it to stay clean to your conscience when it’s just a matter of putting an extra star on the rating?” I wish that question had been put to me after I’d been made richer by a couple of crores – if only because I’d know, then, what a couple of crores looked like – but with no such windfall in the offing, I went back to my older reviews of Bachchan Jr. films to check if, indeed, there was something about the actor that made me look at his work with undeserved lenience. More to the point, I was curious whether I’d ever written about him as – the way a third disgruntled reader put it – some sort of “great actor.”
The earliest reviews I located were of his films released in 2003. Writing about Run, I observed that “the jury is still out on whether Bachchan Jr. can be as all-round a leading man as his father, but he’s definitely on par with the lighthearted stuff,” and about Zameen, I wrote that the actor was “out of his element as a toughie.” Five years later, I find I still hold the same opinions about Abhishek Bachchan – that he’s lipsmackingly good with the light stuff, but his success in other kinds of roles possibly depends on the skills of his directors (like how Ram Gopal Varma shaped him in Naach and Mani Ratnam guided him through Guru). So does this mean I think he’s a great actor? And that is what I’m coming to (somewhat tangentially, I’ll admit) with this week’s column – which is not about, as it would appear, the cleanliness of my conscience (if you think I‘ve sold out, why would these 1000-odd words convince you otherwise?), but rather, why I find it easier to sit through the films of certain actors. I’m talking about the newer bunch, because a large part of my liking, say, Amitabh Bachchan and Kamal Hassan and Naseeruddin Shah has also to do with my growing up with their performances; ineffable variables like nostalgia, therefore, creep into the viewing experience.
Read the Rest from Here
October 16th, 2008
•Hello and welcome to Walk the Talk. I am Shekhar Gupta and I am at Bangalore’s Bishop Cotton School and my guest this week is one of its most illustrious students Nandan Nilekani. Welcome to the Walk the Talk
Thank you Shekhar. Great to be back.
•Great to be back. I know this is your second appearance on walk the talk. Much has changed since then. That’s why this time, not IIT Bombay, which was the case last time, and neither is it Infosys. Because all of us see you as this great new corporate citizen, a new category of the Indian corporate citizen.
Thank you, that’s very kind of you. And its good to be here in the school that I went to in the sixties, so it’s a great nostalgia for me too.
•You could say it’s a cliché to say that much has changed since the sixties. But much has changed since the last 10 years. You know, we talk about the flat world, we talk about being Bangalore-d/ but much more has happened that is complicated and complex within the Indian society. How do you look at that sitting in Bangalore?
No, I think that’s a very important point. Because we thought we had the whole globalisation argument, the Flat World, Bangalore and all that. And I did spend a lot of time in the last 3 years trying to build India’s brand globally, whether it was Davos or India at 60. But after some time I realized the challenge is not building the brand globally, the challenge is within.
October 16th, 2008
Lilavati Hospital # 1101, Mumbai October 10, 2008/ written on October 16, 2008 6:26 pm
I have repaired ! And alive ! And due to leave tomorrow morning and my heart and thanks go out to all my fans and well wishers, who through their prayers and tidings have yet again stood by my family and me to see me survive.
Your continued support and faith, your concern and the strength of your convictions on my well being has been that potent force that revives me and my energies. That gives me the strength to fight. To face adversity in most uncalled for situations. I am bankrupt for words and expressions, no matter how sincere, will and shall never be able to truly assuage the gratefulness that I feel.
Read the Rest from Here
October 15th, 2008
At India call centers, tales of woe from U.S.
Debt collectors’ fantasy of America as a wonderland of luxury dissolves as they confront sobs of the financially defeated
By Emily Wax | The Washington Post
October 15, 2008
GURGAON, India — With her flowing hot-pink Indian suit, jangly silver bangles and perky voice, Bhumika Chaturvedi, 24, doesn’t fit the stereotype of a thuggish, heard-it-all-before debt collector. But lately, she has had no problem making American debtors cry.
For the past three years, Chaturvedi has been a top collection agent at her call center, phoning hundreds of Americans a day and politely asking them to pay up. With the U.S. financial crisis plunging Americans into debt, her business is one of the fastest-growing sectors in Indian outsourcing. It also is one of the few sectors of outsourcing in India that is still aggressively hiring.
Sitting in a narrow cubicle, her headset switched on, Chaturvedi listens every night to increasingly disturbing tales of woe from the other side of the globe.
“My mortgage payments are just too high, honey. I just can’t make the payment this month,” a weeping woman with a Southern accent recently told her in response to a call for a $200 credit card payment. “I’m sure y’all heard about the credit crunch and gas prices. I’m flat broke.”
October 10th, 2008
A different encounter
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Rating: Shekhar Gupta
Posted: Oct 11, 2008 at 2224 hrs IST
It is not for the first time that you have seen a beleaguered minority community go into a mood of complete denial. It happened with the Sikhs in the mid-eighties. There was widespread refusal of the idea that the Bhindranwale phase, and the subsequent phase of terror, was indigenous, local, and mostly voluntary. For a long time, it was all blamed on Indira Gandhi’s and Zail Singh’s machinations. Bhindranwale was widely believed to be their creation. Initially, as his gunmen targeted policemen and leaders of the Nirankari sect, the dominant view within the Sikh community was that somehow this was part of a diabolical operation run by Indira Gandhi to embarrass the Akalis and give the Sikhs a bad name. Immediately thereafter, as hit squads began to pull Hindus out of buses and massacre them, or in one case shoot everybody inside a barber shop, most ordinary Sikhs you met told you, with genuine conviction, that there was no way a real Sikh could have done this. Sikhs and Hindus, joined like fingers and nails, how is such a thing possible.
It was much later, around 1992-93 as armed Terror bands to began to hold sway over the countryside that the sad reality, inevitably, came to be accepted. Those running the terror campaign were “our own” and were doing a great disservice to the “qaum” and Punjab. From then on, it took just a few months for terror to wind up. I can never forget conversations with a large number of militants who had surrendered as their campaign ended and were kept in the Punjab Armed Police campus in Jalandhar. Many of them, still in their early 20s, answered to the ranks of “lt-gen” and “maj-gen”. The story of one 21-year-old “maj-gen” was typical: Until now people used to welcome us to their villages, even gave us food and shelter; now they began throwing us out, reporting us to the police.
This long preamble is no digression, or a session in storytelling. The Muslim community today is caught in shocked denial as well, particularly after the Jamia encounter and subsequent arrests in many states. It feels isolated, targeted, maligned and, above all, abandoned by the political class, particularly those it has always voted for. It has no leaders of its own to talk to and it no longer trusts those of the UPA, the political formulation closest to them. They feel victimised and see no hope. At the same time they do not believe even a fraction of the claims made by the police forces of six states and a union territory working in close coordination. Not only are they not willing to believe the story of the Jamia encounter, they believe the whole thing, the bombings, the arrests and “framing of young Muslim boys”, is one giant conspiracy against them. Why the police forces of the Central government, Modi’s Gujarat and Mayawati’s Uttar Pradesh, among others, would join hands to hatch such a comprehensively diabolical conspiracy is not a question that is asked often.
On the specifics of the Jamia encounter, there are detailed answers to questions most commonly asked: why was Sharma not wearing a flak jacket, why was the bullet that killed him not found, how did two boys manage to escape from such a tight grip. These questions have been answered in a series of stories reconstructing the encounter in this paper earlier this week. Without repeating any of those details, here are two relevant points. Our police forces are no novices to the business of “encounters”, such as they usually are. But one principle has been followed in all such “encounters”, that nobody is taken alive. It is really suicidal to kill some people in an encounter and keep an eye-witness alive, as happened in this case. Second, if the whole thing was a fake encounter or a cover-up for a friendly fire death in a Keystone Cops operation, where was the need for the police to say that two suspects had escaped? Our encounter cops are by now far too experienced at this business to be so stupid with a cover-up.
October 7th, 2008
“I am just another common man” says Naseeruddin Shah in the hit film A Wednesday, as he threatens to set Mumbai on fire. It is a strangely seductive idea — of the long suffering middle-classes being able to wield violence more effectively than either the neutered state or faceless terrorists. In contrast to (flop) films like Swades which chronicle the boring task of middle-class engagement, A Wednesday joins recent (hit) films like Rang De Basanti in advocating middle-class vigilantism in the face of a defunct “system”. These films reflect new angst, quite different from the ‘angry young man’ persona of the 1970s, whose aspirations were within the gift of the Nehruvian state. As film researcher Lawrence Liang observes “While Amitabh Bachchan in Zanjeer exemplified the anger of those demanding their rights as citizens…[films like A Wednesday] are based on the rejection of those very citizenship values
The spate of films celebrating middle-class violence has coincided with the reinvention of another controversial theme: Bhagat Singh. This year, his 101st birth anniversary, has seen his controversially turbaned statue unveiled in Parliament, an ongoing exhibition on his court trial in, where else, the Supreme Court; and a brilliantly introspective exhibition in Teen Murti Bhavan that will open on October 11.
The timing of these films and a renewed middle-class interest in Bhagat Singh is no coincidence. They are both motivated by a growing scorn for the institutions that govern modern India. Bhagat Singh is today built up by the middle classes as a counter to the Nehru-Gandhian vision of passive pluralism, a vision blamed for India’s current problems. Films such as A Wednesday are based on the same thumbs down to the Indian nationalist project.
Bhagat Singh’s own life defies simple icon-making. Born to a Sikh nationalist family, he rejected God at an early age. Though closely linked to Veer Savarkar, he turned against Hindu nationalism and advocated Marxist-socialism. An early follower of Gandhi, he was to reject civil disobedience, flirt with violence, and take part in killing a British police officer. He never justified his violence, and deliberately surrendered to the gallows, “in the process” as the eminent historian and Teen Murti Director Mridula Mukherjee says “making the trial the biggest propaganda coup for Indian nationalism”. His early death ensured that he never had to deal with the messy compromises that transfer of power entailed
Read the rest from the link
September 29th, 2008
Youth arrested for sending threat messages to Bachchan
youth was on Monday arrested in Rajasthan for allegedly sending threatening SMSs to Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan demanding Rs 25 crore and a role in movies.
Devi Singh Rajpurohit, 25, was arrested from Jalore by Mumbai Crime Branch officials on the charge of sending a threatening message to Bachchan on September 26 demanding Rs 25 crores.
In the SMS, Rajpurohit had told Bachchan that he had only three days to live if he failed to pay him the money, Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Rakesh Maria said.
September 26th, 2008
Whatever happened to the ’silent majority’ in India? Is it not time for all of them to speak up?
Let me begin with the Muslims. Today when you hear about a terrorist attack in some city the knee-jerk reaction is to blame it on a Muslim fundamentalist group. The secondary reaction, a corrosive by-product of the first, is to dub all Muslims as ’supporters of terrorism’.
That is just insane! The vast majority of Muslims are neither terrorists nor supporters of terrorism. I would go so far as to say the average Indian Muslims despises those buffoons who dream of recreating the India of Aurangzeb.
So why does the ’sane’ majority persist in remaining the ’silent’ majority? From time to time the occasional Muslim cleric issues a denunciation of terrorism. But such rare chirping is simply not good enough any longer, Muslim terrorists must be flayed from every pulpit across India when the Friday sermon is delivered. And this must be done not once or twice but for years on end.
September 26th, 2008
How the stars define ‘Bollywood’?
Salman Khan: Of blockbusters and multiplexes
The prevalent corporate climate hasn’t altered my scheme of things much. I never signed any agreement or contract. I still don’t do that. I believe in trust. Nothing has changed for me, just that the prices have shot up phenomenally. The only perceivable change is that moviegoers have gone back to the theatre. And it isn’t just the multiplexes. People are also watching films in single-screen theatres because of the upgraded facilities all around. Things are really looking up.
Vidhu Vinod Chopra: More than business
When I saw ‘Loins of Punjab’, I realised that there is an alternate cinema quietly taking shape in India. With ‘Rock On!!’, my belief has just been strengthened that maybe young filmmakers can steer clear of the kind of compromises that many have had to make to get their foot into this very competitive but intoxicating world of movies.
September 25th, 2008
Godhra pre-planned, Modi not involved: Nanavati panel
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Rating: : 9 based on 12 vote Agencies
Posted: Sep 25, 2008 at 1644 hrs IST
Godhra incident was a pre-planned conspiracy, according to first part of report submitted by Nanavati Commission.Gandhinagar, September 25: The Sabarmati Express coach burning was a ‘pre-planned conspiracy’, a probe panel has said also giving a clean chit to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and the state police in the subsequent post-Godhra riots that claimed over 1,000 lives.
The report which went into the coach burning in February, 2002 in which 58 kar sevaks returning from Ayodhya, were killed, ‘was a pre-planned conspiracy’ which was hatched at the Aman Guest House in Godhra.
September 12th, 2008
Minimum city
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Rating: The Indian Express
Posted: Sep 13, 2008 at 0123 hrs IST
Raj Thackeray is always desperate for provocation. So it was entirely to be expected that he would eagerly take offence to a Mumbai police officer’s statement that the city is nobody’s preserve. Joint Commissioner of Police K.L. Prasad was stating, if colourfully, the only reaction that law enforcement authorities could have to the kind of intimidation and disruption Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navanirman Sena has unleashed on Mumbai. No, Thackeray’s bully tactics of asking the cop to meet him on the street do not surprise. What surprises is how lonely that official voice of defiance is. Ever since Thackeray hit upon his violent insistence that all of Mumbai swear by Marathi and pledge their devotion to the state, the state Government has absented itself in word and action. By this sustained abdication, the government has allowed a single bully to prosper and tarnish the city with xenophobia.
September 12th, 2008
Oh ! Kolkata !
Nostalgia ! 1963 my first job. 7 years of existence in this remarkable city. The city where I decided to join films. Here today for the premire of one of them. 1963 - 2008. When did it go by ??
I collapse on the bed for a short 40 winks and get up startled not knowing where I am. I dream of some very near ones but on getting up am not able to bring out their names. I think my brain tires, or perhaps I am losing it ! I call Jaya to remind me of them and quickly note them down before I get another moment of amnesia.
September 12th, 2008
New Delhi, September 12: Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan says he is happy and relieved.
“I am happy that people will be able to see my movie now,” Bachchan said at a promotional event of the film The Last Lear in the capital.
The actor was reacting to the withdrawal of agitation by the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena against his film The Last Lear.
September 12th, 2008
By Michael Phillips | Chicago Tribune critic
Rating: 3 stars (good)
A poor, skinny young man (Venkatesh Chavan) hides in a tree atop a hill near the backyard of a wealthy man’s home in Panjim, Goa, along India’s west coast. No one ever goes in the pool. For the illiterate 18-year-old, gazing at the water becomes a symbol of attainment, freedom, escape. From this premise, Milwaukee-based filmmaker Chris Smith, best known for work in the documentary field, relays a simple, optimistic slice of life.
Chavan’s 11-year-old friend (Jhangir Badshah) works in a restaurant; Chavan cleans toilets and changes beds in a nearby hotel. When Chavan finally meets the owner (Nana Patekar), Smith and his co-writer Randy Russell, who wrote the original short story, unpack a few secrets having to do with the owner’s family, and why the pool sits unused. It’s a bit schematic and sweet-natured, yet the faces linger. Smith and his mixture of actors and non-actors remind us that an act of generosity is all it takes to change a life.
Running time: 1:44. In Hindi with English subtitles. Opens Sept. 12 at Landmark’s Century Centre Cinema.
September 3rd, 2008
Warner Bros. sues Indian film HARI PUTTAR over title. Someone should retroactively sue makers of Lord of the Singhs
MICHAEL JACKSON turns 50. Nose turns 14
Reality-show professional KIM KARDASHIAN joins Dancing with the Stars
SHOCKINGLY PREDICTABLE
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1837239,00.html
September 1st, 2008
Paris, France September 1, 2008 7:25 pm
Paris !!
Just spelling the name romanticizes the attitude. Exquisite ! Artistic ! Avant Garde ! Sophisticated ! Style, elegance… just about everything that you see, oozes finesse and a unique formality in informality..
So much has been written about it, spoken about it. You may visit it a million times, yet every time seems like a fresh visit with a fragrance that never seems to end. What is it about this city that makes you fall in love all over again and again and again with it. Even Hitler during his ruth less conquests over Europe, when he reached Paris and seeing its beauty had ordered that nothing be damaged in it - no bombings nothing. He wanted it to remain in its pristine state. Regal and majestic, dripping with unimaginable culture and art and aesthetics.
http://blogs.bigadda.com/ab/2008/09/02/dat-132/
August 12th, 2008
Since Indian film icon Amitabh Bachchan launched his career nearly 40 years ago, in 1969, he has been in what he estimates to be 150 films, and stopping isn’t an option.
The living legend is as recognizable today as ever, and he’s able to count modern stars such as his actor son, Abhishek, and his new daughter-in-law–hugely popular actress and Miss World 1994, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan–as contemporaries. Indeed, with a little help from event organizers, the younger set managed to persuade him to tour the world with them and a cast of other top-tier Indian stars, dancing and singing live onstage in a “bestof” blowout musical production dubbed “The Unforgettable Tour.”The tour passes through six U.S. cities boasting sold-out venues with seating for about 10,000 people each, according to Monty Saiyed, one of the promoters with Chicago Live Bollywood Shows, the company behind the Chicago date.
“It must be centuries ago that I did my last tour,” Bachchan says, laughing. “Many, many years ago I stopped doing shows. At age 66, it’s not advisable to get back on the stage, but the organizers, managers and other artists involved, particularly Aishwarya, were very keen that I come along.”
August 10th, 2008
Just came back, wow what a show
The house was full and fully into the show,
Ritesh came first, then Priety, then Abhishek , then Ash, then Vishal Shekhar and then the Man him self.
Amitabh Bachchan got a standing ovation, he sang a few songs and then later he recited Agneepath and then the Deewar dialouges, people just went crazy.
I saw him from may be 50 feets distance. It was magical.
Abhishek’s intro was very good and elaborate.He did a good job with the audience.
Ash Sucked big time, she came accross as fake and plastic doll. Ritesh looked tired and Disinterested.
All in all , I had a great time as my seats were near the stage and near the bar.
My daughter kept saying Papa- why is he not saying anything from Bhootnath or from K3G
The negatives-
1.Started one hour late, the local promotors had some third class fill ins.
2.The Intro of each star was done thru A/V, IMO it should have been done by a live person, preferably a Comedian.
3.The Interaction with the crowd was not as good as it could have been.
Good Night, Have to go for a Golf outing In the morning !!!
July 17th, 2008
TELE SCOPETruth or dare link-
Shailaja BajpaiPosted online: Tuesday, July 15, 2008 at 0104 hrs Print EmailS&M game shows,
The girl wears a dress so mini, she couldn’t sit on it; a smile so evil it stretches into a grimace; her hand carries a black belt, her words the menace of fearful retribution; “Ok, you dumb, f..,ass…, are you ready?” The two men in front of her eye the belt with sado-masochistic pleasure. “Yes, yes…”
They bend over, mouths open, teeth bare to ensnare chocolates from a vessel crawling with cockroaches. The mini lady cracks the belt and whips out: “C’mon you d…f…a… (or a juicier equivalent!), you losers — can’t you do better than that?” Eventually, time is up and the loser gets a special treat (fish oil as mouthwash) from a guy who conforms to the worst possible stereotype of a gay man (flutter eyelashes, hands, speak with lip perpetually pursed, at a high pitch and walk as though ants were crawling all over you): The winner gets a spanking sum of Rs 50,000 for challenging cockroaches and enjoying the lady’s tongue lashings.
This is Dadagiri on Bindass, where you are paid to be the whipping boy. Each challenge is more revolting than the previous one — last week Aaron and Balraj were ordered to drink raw eggs (“enjoying it, na?”, gloated the whipper-snapper) while the loser had to shove his face into a bowl of…you really don’t want to know. And you thought reality talent shows were degrading, aggressive, offensive and insensitive?
Rakhi Sawant may strike you as perfect for Dadagiri but she’s striking a new pose now. On her talk show on Zoom, she uses her tongue to great effect on hapless guests. Her first victim was Aamir Khan, whom she greeted with effusive indulgence of the kind normally restricted to one’s pets (“My darling, I like you so much!”). Aamir seemed to enjoy her tongue in cheek conversation eshtyle — “tell me, who is your dost, who is your dushman in the industry?”, to which Aamir replied with a face straighter than his backbone, “I have only friends…Salman, Shah Rukh, Saif.”
July 17th, 2008
For the few Americans who’ve heard of it, cricket conjures up images of fastidious Englishmen in white outfits who scarcely break a sweat during “test” matches that stretch over five days–with regular breaks for tea! But the newest format of the game, known as Twenty20, is shorter than a Major League Baseball game, as fiercely contested as a National Hockey League match and between teams dressed more colorfully than the Los Angeles Lakers. For the spectators, there is rousing music between plays … and cheerleaders!
The only way the sport could be more American is if a big Texas tycoon were bankrolling it. Oh, have you met Allen Stanford? The wealth-management billionaire from Mexia, Texas, is forking out $20 million in prize money for a single winner-take-all game in his adopted home of Antigua on Nov. 1. It is far and away the largest purse for any team sport, and Stanford, 58, is betting the match will attract a TV audience of 700 million. His primary motivation is to revive cricket’s fading fortunes in the Caribbean, but he’s also hoping it will stir up interest in the final frontier: the U.S. His countrymen, Stanford says, “are going to see a form of cricket they can completely identify with.”
July 17th, 2008
My Picks-
1.Sad Song
Dil Aisa Kissi ne Mara Toda…
2. Romantic
Chookar Mere man Ko , kiya Tune kya ishara
3. Funny
Jahan Chaar Yaar mil Jaye
4.Anger
Anamika Tu Bhee Tarse…
July 17th, 2008
FIFTH COLUMNWhen godless Marxists and religious Islamists got together to hate America
Tavleen SinghPosted online: Sunday, July 13, 2008 at 2320 hrs Print Email
Of all the objections to the nuclear deal the most mystifying and intriguing is that the Prime Minister should desist from going ahead with it because it offends Indian Muslims. First information of this came from of all people a supposedly godless Communist MP by the name of M K Pandhe. Commissar Karat was quick to disown his comrade’s comment, but by then it had been picked up by other people, including the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh and the Indian Union Muslim League whose representative in Dr Manmohan Singh’s government is E Ahamed, Minister of State in the External Affairs ministry.
This newspaper quoted one of his party colleagues as saying, “The Muslim community is worried about the deal. The IUML would ask the Congress to consider the community’s concerns while going ahead with the deal”. If you surf the net, as I did to research Muslim sentiments on nuclear matters, you will come upon various Islamic organisations who state that they do not approve of the deal. This has nothing to do with some ancient injunction in the Quran or the hadith, thereby above the realm of debate, but to do with the more modern phenomenon of anti-Americanism.
The world’s Muslims hate America, the argument goes, because the American government has been killing Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan. So, for the Indian Government to get close to America in civilian, military or strategic terms would be seen as a direct affront to Indian Muslims. The Muslim organisations who take this view appear not to have noticed that Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan are Muslim countries and all very close to the United States. How do they explain this? They do not. Just as Commissar Karat does not feel the need to explain why he hates America so much that he was ready to blow the only chance the Communists have ever had or will have to control a government in Delhi.
June 25th, 2008
We’ve all heard about the Amitabh - Shahrukh cold war, and now they’re taking it one step further with their concert tours! But which one will come out on top? Well, that’s where we come in to break it down for you on a step by step level…
read the rest here-Link