Ajay Devgan drinks some Koffee with Karan

This was one of the more candid and refreshing episodes of KWK.  Having Ajay as a guest and hearing from the horse's mouth tidbits about his life was very interesting.  Ajay is media shy so this was a coup of sorts.  Fun episode.

Toonpur Ka Superhero trailer

First Look: Toonpur Ka Superhero

I'd advise Kajol not to make those wrestler poses. It's scary. :-O

thanks to dim..

Son of a Devgan

Kajol gives birth to a baby boy

Look who is Bollywood's new mommy, second time on though...it's the lady who was marketing her film We Are Family till sometime back and has now added a new addition to her own.

Kajol gave birth to a baby boy at 0920 hrs IST today morning. It's a joyous moment for the Devgn family as both the baby and mother are doing fine. The family of three, Ajay, Kajol and their daughter Nysa have a welcome addition of a third family member.

SOURCE

Stole SRK's joke for the title. :P

We are Family reviews

Subhash Jha/IBOS:  4 stars

Taran Adarsh/BWHangama: 3.5 stars

Pankaj Sabnani/Glamsham: 3 stars

SpiceZee: 3 stars 

Filmfare/Sukanya Venkatraghavan: 3 stars

Saibal Chatterjee/NDTV: 2.5 stars "lack of depth"

Sonia Chopra/Sify: 2.5 stars "old-fashioned tearjerker"

Renuka Rao/DNA: 2.5 stars "disappointing tearjerker"

Aparajita Ghosh/Apun Ka Choice:  2.5 stars "watch for Kajol, if you must"

Padma Preetham/Total Filmy:  2 stars "grossly sentimental"

Deepa Garimella/Full Hyderabad: 2 stars "not a happy watch"

Mayank Shekhar/Hindustan Times: 2 stars "stunning Kajol, appears superior to Susan Sarandon"

Aniruddha Guha/DNA: 2 stars "watch it only if you're a Kajol fan"

Minty Tejpal/Mumbai Mirror: 1.5 stars "weepy, forced, set-like, poorly translated dialogue" 

Preeti Arora/Rediff: 1 star "don't even watch the trailer"

Khalid Mohammed/PFC:  1 star "Kajol is the saving grace"

Sanjukta Sharma/Livemint: "regressive, boring film"

Nikhat Kazmi/Times of India:  "watch it for the all-woman show"

Shilpa Jamkhandikar/Reuters Blog: "pretty but shallow"

Upperstall "it’s entirely possible that WAF is the result of outtakes of other Dharma films and basic Photoshop tools. No, wait. That’d require creativity and talent."

Avg rating: 2.37 stars (38/16)

We are Hacks

DHARMA PRODUCTIONS OFFICE

CIRCA 2009

While designing men’s fashion, hosting TV shows, and throwing parties, KARAN JOHAR had a few hours extra one day when despite frequent calls and texts to SRK, he remained uninvited to Mannat.

He had the brilliant idea to use this bonus time wisely and summoned a lackey.  Appeared SIDDHARTH MALHOTRA-

SID: You called, Sir?

KJo: Sid, it’s time for Dharma to venture out. To make an impact on the world. To show what we’re made of. We at Dharma are always forging ahead.

SID: You are right, KJo. Your MNIK is going to save Islam. You are the finest director in India. You are also the best dressed and you are also thin now.

KJo: That is true. My time is very valuable indeed. That is why you should make our next film for us. I will only produce.

JOHAR and MALHOTRA excitedly begin a brainstorming session. Suddenly MALHOTRA has a light bulb blink in his head-

SID: I’ve got it. I know what’s next. After loving your family, loving gays, loving others’ wives, we will take the next illustrious step, loving your souten. Voila.

KJo: You make me proud. You have learned well. Let’s get to work.

SID: Let’s make both women live together.

KJo: How is that possible? We only want realistic, subtle stories here at Dharma. Okay, let’s give one of them cancer. The other one can move in to help her.

SID: By golly, you are a genius, KJo. How did you come up with something so amazing?

KJo: I have been thinking of this for 20 years, Sid.

SID: But now I recall seeing something like this before. I can’t remember exactly. Oh yeah, there is that Hollywood movie Stepmom!

KJo: * GASP *

VigilIdiot's take on We are Family

A must read for one and all...

We are family Box Office

.

We Are Family had a below average start to its first Friday, this was probably due to fact that the film had seen a partial Thursday release which was a holiday and collections tend to fall after holidays.

The Ugly Truth

by Seema Goswami

Would you sign up for a dating site that announced proudly that it was meant for the 'aesthetically challenged'? Which was called TheUglyBugBall.co.uk and abbreviated to the very appropriate-sounding acronym TUBB? And which declared proudly on its home page, “If you are one of the millions of people who don’t like what they see in the mirror, then this is the place for you!”

Well, when they put it as charmingly as that, who could possibly resist? And certainly, there seem to be lot of people who have posted their pictures – some frankly ugly, some less so – on the site but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out if it was for real or just one big wind-up.

Take these sample quotes from the home page: “Instead of fishing in a small pool of prettiness and getting nowhere, dive into an ocean of uglies and have more choice”; “a recent TUBB survey also proved that they (ugly people) try harder in bed”; or even “once with an ugly partner it is unlikely that anyone will try and take them from you meaning you can let yourself go completely once you are together”. I mean, this has to be someone taking the mickey out of those with self-esteem issues. Surely, all these people who sign up looking for love, romance (or a particular favourite: ‘anything’) on this site cannot be serious? But when you think about it, the site is only saying upfront what the rest of us don’t have the courage to acknowledge (except maybe in the privacy of our own hearts and minds).

The truth is that pretty people like to date other pretty people. Good-looking folk tend to marry other good-looking folk. Beauty gravitates towards beauty. Look around you. The odds are that you will find that the couples around you are well-matched in terms of attractiveness. The beautiful women tend to be paired with handsome men. The merely pretty have to make do with those who could be described as attractive. And those who aren’t at all physically appealing end up with other aesthetically challenged people.

We are Family updated Kareena interview vid

Listen to full soundtrack here: We are Family

Rajeev Masand interviews Kajol

Part 1


Part 2

My Name is Khan- International Reviews from Second Phase Release

Bollywood Does America
My Name is Khan ... and I am Not a Terrorist!
By CHARLES R. LARSON

I missed this important Bollywood movie when it was released commercially in the United States in a PG-13 version in February. Unfortunately, it didn’t stay around long enough for many people to see it. Fox Searchlight, the American distributor, must have believed they had another Slumdog Millionaire, but the movie failed with American viewers no doubt because of its depiction of racism in the United States in the aftermath of 9/11—especially, the violent acts against Muslims or perceived Muslims by mainstream Americans. Too bad, because My Name Is Khan is every bit as uplifting as Slumdog, but Americans have never been good at trying to understand their racism.

The film is flawed, yes, because it attempts to do too much, but its strengths far outweigh its weaknesses—notably its unflinching look at America through non-Western eyes and the quite dazzling acting by Shah Rukh Khan, a huge Bollywood attraction, who many people have thought is not much of an actor. In My Name Is Khan, he plays a man with Aspergers Syndrome, and the result is more than convincing, major acting by any standards. If this were an American film, he’d be up for an Academy Award next year, but that’s not likely to happen because, well, again our ethnocentrism.

My knowledge of Aspergers Syndrome is too limited to know if all of Khan’s mannerisms (never looking anyone in the face, difficulty controlling his extremities, repeating phrases ad nauseum, avoiding physical contact with others) are authentic, but Khan, the actor, is so convincing that my wife assumed that the film was not fiction but the documentary account of a real person suffering from Aspergers’. Shah Rukh Khan has two or three incredible scenes in the film when you’ll find it difficult not to be all choked up. And the rest of the time he is so believable that he clearly steals the entire movie, becoming in the process a soul brother of Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump (there are other similarities between the movies also—especially their scope.)

Putting events in chronological order, there’s a scene when Rizvan Khan (six or seven years old), his mother, and his older brother witness an attack on Muslims, in a retaliation riot by Hindus. Rizvan’s mother tells him that there are only two kinds of people in the world—not Hindus and Muslims—but good and bad. Some years later, the young boy’s older brother leaves for America, and after the passage of additional years when Rizvan is an adult, he too goes to the United States because his mother has died. Rizvan begins selling beauty products for his brother, who has become a successful entrepreneur.

One day, Rizvan meets a young Indian woman, a Hindu named Mandira, who is divorced and has an eight-year-old son named Sam. Their courtship is complicated but eventually they marry (to the consternation of Rizvan’s older brother who henceforth has nothing to do with him because he’s married a Hindu). Eventually, Rizvan closely bonds to Mandira’s son. Then 9/11. In the ugly aftermath, Sam is killed by young schoolboys because of his last name: Khan. The marriage abruptly ends because of the boy’s death, but Rizvan leaves on a quest because in her anger Mandira screams at him to tell the President of the United States that just because someone has the name Khan, that person is not a terrorist.

Thus begins Khan’s quest to meet with President Bush, a search somewhat like Forrest Gump’s trek across the United States. Khan knows that he can’t simply show up at the White House and expect to be admitted for a meeting with George Bush so, instead, he tracks the President’s speaking engagements throughout the country and prays that he’ll gain admission to one of them and deliver the message—not only that he himself is not a terrorist but that his son was murdered because of the name “Khan.” There are a number of ugly incidents that follow because of the search but, also, a final love affair with America.

What is so memorable about My Name Is Khan is not simply director Karan Johar and his co-author Shibani Bathija’s decision to make a Bollywood movie set mostly in the United States but the choices of the settings. There’s a tense scene after Khan first arrives in the United States, in San Francisco, when he’s paralyzed by an approaching trolley because the grids on the pedestrian crossing are painted with yellow stripes and the trolley is also yellow, a color we have learned earlier that terrifies Khan. There he is trapped between yellow stripes as the trolley heads directly towards him. The scene is one of many tense, but humorous scenes in a movie that veers seamlessly back and forth from the tragic to the comic.

Another powerful incident comes at the end of Khan’s bonding with another boy, after Sam’s death. He carries a black boy home to his family after the child is injured and subsequently stays with the family in Georgia for some time as a sense of mutual respect develops between the two. At the end of this interlude, Khan stands up in the boy’s church and narrates the story of his life, including the loss of Sam and his wife, Mandira. It is one of several powerful moments when Khan—often inarticulate—discovers his voice.

How can you see My Name Is Khan? A week ago, the film was re-released in New York City in an unrated version called “The International Director’s Cut.” You might also go to an Indian grocery store and purchase or rent the film. The only trouble with the imported DVD is that not all of the dialogue has been translated into subtitles. Or you can wait a little longer until the American DVD is released, presumably with all the spoken lines in the subtitles. But don’t miss this Bollywood take on America—with a fabulous soundtrack--or you’ll miss one of the great roles of recent cinema: Shah Rukh Khan as Rizvan Khan.

My Name Is Khan
Fox Searchlight: Directed by Karan Johar
With Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol Devgan

Charles R. Larson is Professor of Literature at American University, in Washington, D.C.

LINK

My Name is Khan too, say Syrians
By Sami Moubayed

My Name is Khan too, say Syrians
By Sami Moubayed

DAMASCUS - In a bygone era, cinema-going in Syria was a popular event, shared by young and old. Men would dress in full attire, women in evening gowns, and children with bow ties, to attend blockbuster films in Damascus.

That came to an abrupt end in the 1960s when the importation of foreign films fell under the strict monopoly of the government, which then practiced a radical brand of socialism. All films from the United States were banned and replaced with those cranked out by the Soviet Union.

The only American films in the country were those smuggled in on VCRs. By the 1990s, satellite television had arrived, then came today's plush cinema complexes with state-of-the-art technology. These made use of a law passed by President Bashar al-Assad that broke the state's monopoly over the importation of foreign films and Damascus now boils with international blockbusters.

During the early years of cinema in Syria movies were still silent, much to the pleasure of ordinary people who spoke only Ottoman Turkish and understood neither English nor French. That, along with cheaper rents for American films, explains why Syrians went for American movies containing plenty of action and little talk.

Westerns and the slapstick comedy of Charlie Chaplin were particularly favored. The Little Tramp was so popular in Damascene society that in 1929 Chaplin made a publicity stop in Syria before heading to Egypt. This was right after Chaplin's classic The Circus had topped box-office sales throughout the country, drowning all French productions. Ticket prices in Syria were not cheap, however, costing 10 US cents - a day's wages - towards the 1940s, meaning that only a certain class could go to the cinemas, while most ordinary Syrians relied for entertainment on the majestic voice of Egyptian diva Um Kalthoum, who could be heard on the radio every Thursday.

By the early 1940s, most major newspapers had a cinema column and there were 40 cinemas in Syria and Lebanon, holding approximately 22,000 seats and selling 2.3 million tickets a year. Topping the charts was the remarkable novelty - motion picture cartoons, which first came to Syria via Walt Disney's 1928 black-and-white, Steamboat Willie. Charlie Chaplin, Mickey Mouse and Tarzan did more for bilateral relations between Washington and Damascus in the 1920s and 1930s than US presidents Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover combined.

Now, films like 2012, which walk that extra mile to promote the US, depicting a heroic African-American president who wishes to die with his people on the streets of Washington, are being freely shown in Damascus. The fact that ticket prices are at an affordable US$6.5 should help US films drum up pro-American sentiment in the Arab world, as was the case in the 1950s and 1960s during the Cold War.

Unexpectedly, the blockbuster hit this year is a Bollywood film, My Name is Khan, starring seasoned Indian actor Shahrukh Khan and the immensely capable and beautiful actress Kajol Devgan, two of the top figures in the Indian motion picture industry.

At first glance this may seem strange - an Indian film doing well in Syria and the Arab world - but a closer look reveals that one of the most successful films of all time in Syria was 1961's Jungleestaring Shammi Kappour with the hit song Suku, Suku.

Khan's film, however, is different from what most Arab audiences have experienced; it does justice to Islam and with award-winning Indian music it portrays events that are still strong in the memory, especially the younger generation. It talks about September 11, 2001, America and the aftershocks of the terrorist attacks on the Muslim community at large, both within the US and abroad.

The film starts in India where Rizwan Khan, a Muslim, lives with his mother and brother in Mumbai during Hindu-Muslim riots in the early 1980s. He suffers from Asperger's syndrome, a form of high-functioning autism, and is gifted with the ability to repair anything that is broken. The elder brother heads off to the US and then takes Rizwan there after their mother dies.

The young man works for his already established brother at a cosmetics company, peddling products while continuing to suffer from particular disorders, due to his autism, like breaking into a fit of nerves when he hears a loud noise, or sees the color yellow. He takes everything that is said to him at face value, and does not know how to tell a lie.

During his work he meets Mandira, a beautiful Hindu Indian hairdresser who lives with her son Samer, who is from a previous marriage. Rizwan falls in love with her and tries to impress her by cranking out the entire history of San Francisco - somewhat imitating Dustin Hoffman in 1988's classic film, Rain Man. They fall in love and because he is so good to Samer, Mandira gives her son her new husband's family name - he becomes Samer Khan.

Their fairytale life comes to an abrupt end when planes crash into the World Trade Center on 9/11. Suddenly, America - the land of opportunity for Khan and so many Muslims - is not so safe for Muslims, or those married to Muslims.

The family neighbor, Mark, a TV producer, travels to cover the war in Afghanistan and is killed during his work, explaining why his son, Samer Khan's best friend, suddenly stops talking to him, blaming Islam for the death of his father.

Samer is harassed day and night by friends at school, due to his color and name, and at one point finds his locker stuffed with Osama bin Laden photos. The young boy is killed in a prejudice-driven racial attack on the school football field - beaten until curtain fall by older boys - breaking the heart of both Mandira and Rizwan, who, on hearing the news, solemnly repeat verses from the Koran, "Inn Ila Allah wa Inna Ilayhi Rajioun" (We were made by God and to him we return).

In a hysteric fit, Mandira tells Rizwan to get out of her life, claiming that because of their marriage - because he is a Muslim - her son died. Innocently and due to his autism, Rizwan nods accordingly, but before leaving asks her, "When should I return Mandira?" She frantically replies, "When you tell every person in this country that you are not a terrorist. Go up to the president of the United States and tell him, 'Mr president, my name is Khan, and I am not a terrorist!'"

Taking her words at face value, the heartbroken Rizwan sets off to meet George W Bush to tell him just that, and en route gets picked up by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for his funny looks, accent and for blurting the words "not a terrorist" at one presidential event attended by Bush.

Like many Arabs and Muslims who were put in similar situations, Khan is interrogated and tortured by the FBI. He is eventually released, reunited with Mandira and granted an audience with "the savior of Muslims in America", Barack Hussein Obama. Fortunes are reversed and Khan is approached by a security officer who says, "Mr Khan, the president wants to meet you!"

At every screening in Damascus, the full-house audience walks out of the Cham Cinema City complex in tears. Many weep for the lead actresses' loss of her son in the film, but at a deeper level the film touches on something inside every Arab and Muslim: a raw nerve of how unjust the world was to them after 9/11.

My Name is Khan has created a certain pride in being a devoted Muslim, as the lead character is shown in the film. He prays five times a day, as most Syrians do, uses phrases from the Koran in his daily conversation and believes that justice will prevail both in this world and the afterlife for those who uphold the Prophet Mohammad and Islam.

Many Syrians and Arabs see a mirror reflection of themselves on the screen through the life of Rizwan Khan, a simple man who leads a simple life, is devoted to his family and religion and who yet is accused of being a terrorist by the US. The fact that Rizwan Khan was actually Indian and not Arab did not really matter to Syrian viewers.

Khan literarily looked like thousands of Arabs and Muslims who were forced to dress in a funny way, speak with a different accent, change their names or take off their headscarves because of the difficult political conditions enforced upon them after 9/11. This is why My Name is Khan - rather than Louis Leterrier's epic action adventure Clash of the Titans or Martin Campbell's crime thriller Edge of Darkness- is taking over cinemas in the Arab and Muslim world.

Since the film opened worldwide this April it has grossed over US$36 million - with $300,000 in the Middle East on day one alone. By the end of the first week, the film had earned an impressive $1.75 million.

Sami Moubayed is editor-in-chief of Forward Magazine in Syria.

LINK


Riveting tale of a simple man in a complex world

2010/05/08

by Johan Jaaffar

LIFE imitates fiction. In the movie My Name Is Khan, Rizwan Khan, who suffers from Asperger's Syndrome, is pulled aside by United States Immigration officers upon arrival in San Francisco. Shah Rukh Khan, the actor who plays Khan, was subjected to an equally humiliating security check when he arrived at Newark Airport in New Jersey to promote the movie.

Shah Rukh was luckier, the global icon got away with just a bruised ego. Later, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger invited him for dinner "in a bid to defuse what has become a slight diplomatic row".

I salute the filmmakers for addressing the prejudices post-9/11 head on. It has no patriotic strings attached, no jingoism to appease anyone. It is about the lives of people devastated by what happened to the New York Twin Towers.

True, the victims portrayed were mostly Muslims, but the lives of others were also very much affected. American paranoia has reached an absurd level. Suspicion is the rule of the day. America and the world will never be the same again since that fateful day on Sept 11, 2001.

Shah Rukh is one of the greatest actors India has ever produced. He has acted in simply too many movies -- 73 in all. Many are fondly remembered, others are box- office hits. He is the most bankable in the constellation of stars today. Some say he is a one-man film industry. If at all the Hindi film industry revolves around one man, then he is the one. Shah Rukh made his name playing heroes, saviours and villains, and has sung and danced with the prettiest, the best and the most famous actresses of the Hindi film industry.

He never seems to age. He has played heartthrobs more times than Errol Flynn, James Dean, Robert Redford, Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio combined. He has tried every character there is -- even a flawed lover in Devdas. He has played "special people" before in Koyla. He has thrilled millions with Dil To Pagal Hai, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Mohabattein and Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham. He experimented with characters from the seedier side in Karan Arjun and Don. He made audacious moves working in controversial movies like Hey! Ram and Dil Se. He played a comic in Badshah and a mythological figure in Asoka.

But the character Khan is different. It takes someone as confident as Shah Rukh to pull it off. It was a big gamble, too, for the director, Karan Johar, better known as the one who "redesigned" Hindi films with his flamboyant, technicoloured and fashionable Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, the opulent Mohabattein and the luxuriously textured Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham. While the other three films harped on incredibly well-choreographed song and dance sequences, there is none in My Name Is Khan.

You won't find total strangers dancing with perfect unison at the slightest provocation. What you hear is the Sufi-like rendering of music by the maestro, Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy.

Reality as we know it, in most Hindi fare, leaves much to be desired. It is always the make-believe world Bollywood-style. The Hindi dream factory seldom reinvents itself.

Most of the time it churns out the tired old formula. Since Raja Harischandra, said to be the first, produced in 1913, some 19,000 Hindi movies have been made. Bollywood produces at least 900 movies a year, watched by an average 11 million people a day in India alone. It is the biggest film industry in the world. A staggering 3.6 billion tickets are sold worldwide compared with 2.6 billion tickets a year for Hollywood.

My Name Is Khan is not the first "realistic" offering from Bollywood. But it takes Karan and Shah Rukh to make it big and impactful.

Not that My Name Is Khan detached itself entirely from the Bollywood formula, but its attempt to take the route of artistic believability as is required by most standard movies is commendable. This was a difficult movie to make and even tougher one to sell.

Not even the pairing of the most ideal couple in Hindi cinema could guarantee success.

The last time Shah Rukh and the evergreen Kajol were together was Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham nine years ago. Not surprisingly, My Name Is Khan did remarkably well in India and in most countries it was shown. In fact, it is becoming one of the most successful Hindi films on record.

The character Khan, a Muslim child, is brought up by his mother with the belief that there are only good people and bad people, and they are not defined by race or religion. When his mother dies, he goes to America to live with his brother Zakir (Jimmy Shergill) and his wife Haseena (Sonya Jehan). Khan meets Mandira, a widowed Hindu woman who lives with her son Sameer (Yuvaan Makaar). They get married.

Then 9/11 comes and their lives take a different turn. When Sameer dies in an attack, Mandira blames Khan for it: had Sameer's name not been Khan, he would not have been killed.

It is a journey unlike any other for Khan traverses the US in search of the president of the United States, to tell him that "I am Khan and I am not a terrorist". It is a riveting tale of a simple man trying to change the complex and jaundiced world. It is heart-wrenching to watch an autistic trying to make sense of what happens to him against the backdrop of a world that has gone berserk with prejudice.

His journey takes him to Wilhemia, Georgia, where he befriends Mama Jenny and her son Joel. Black America has something in common with the Muslims. Khan finds peace as the people of Wilhemia accept him as one of their own. Khan repays their kindness when his obsession to help them during a hurricane melts the hearts of millions.

We can find fault with My Name Is Khan. After all, it is still Bollywood looking at the world through its lens. I agree it is not about terrorism redefined; it is about the heart of darkness in humans. Even the US president in the movie acknowledges that in the post-9/11 world, it takes someone like Khan to make a difference and bring us back to sanity.

That is the message of the best Hollywood movie I have seen in years.

LINK


COLUMN - My name is not Khan and I'm not your audience

By Anuvab Pal

Recently in New York city, I sat behind a motley group of New Yorkers as they settled in to watch Karan Johar's "My Name is Khan", an epic film that's been declared a global hit with a message of peace that as some press nugget said "has spread across the world".

Maybe they were confusing it with volcanic ash, as this message clearly got lost in travelling from Washington D.C., where the film's lead (Mr. Khan, played by, yes, in a clever twist of words, Shah Rukh Khan, who, that's correct, is also named Khan), shakes hands with President Barack Obama (the actor playing him looked like Anupam Kher) to New York's Times Square where ten days ago, a young Pakistani man tried to blow up an SUV. His name was Shahzad and he was a terrorist.

In this geopolitical mess, a film that supposedly deals with it head on, opened in the U.S. across many art house theatres now, some months after the money machine that it became in India (revealing clearly that at the core of it a lightly handicapped megastar walking across Colorado and Alabama to get to DC is what Indian audiences identify with).

It has arrived here, shorter by 45 minutes, edited by the team that did the romantic comedy "500 Days Of Summer" (no, they didn't change the title to "132 Minutes of Khan"). One Chicago newspaper described it as '"Monsoon Wedding" meets "Hurt Locker'".

The day I saw it, the motley crowd in front of me had a professorial looking Jewish man, with the unkempt look that only the extremely wealthy business owner can afford, one African-American corporate sort (blackberry being the clue) and his African-American actress girlfriend (the iPhone and red shoes being the clue) and a frail Japanese lady who brought some sort of milk drink and that deceptive shyness hiding perhaps a world famous fashion designer or cellist, or both.

This was not a special screening for a multicultural melting pot, this was the average audience of downtown Manhattan, a cluster of globetrotting over-achievers, with backgrounds from Manila to Memphis.

This was also, arguably, the exact demographic the new Bollywood wants to go after.

When Karan Johar went one-up on Yash Raj studios relocating our Bollywood romance from Swiss valleys to Manhattan in the mid 90s, first the immigrant cab drivers and shopkeepers were mesmerised, then together with Shah Rukh Khan, they entered the middle-class homes of professional NRIs, New Jersey doctors, London barristers, and took the second generation from being ashamed of Bollywood to making nightclubs have Bollywood nights worldwide.

The final blow for NRIs came when they saw their white friends dancing to "You are my Sonia" better than them from some lesson at a Delhi winter wedding. The conquest was complete.

So now that the global Indian is done and the Indian Indian was always in the pocket, Mr Johar and Mr Khan and all the studios began eyeing the next big market -- the non-Indian world cinema lover.

The sort that reads Suketu Mehta, shows up at the Jaipur literary festival, is comfortable in a western winter with a scarf bought in Goa and enjoys fusion Indian dinners every other week.

A perfect sample of which sat before me.

These were people fluent in their Almodovar, Woody Allen, Wong Kar Wai, Jacques Audiard and could debate the finer nuances of "Amelie" or new German cinema. So they assumed what they were about to watch was somewhere between "Bend it like Beckham" and "Persepolis".

First, they were given a trailer for "Kites", the next Bollywood offering to the world. "Who is that guy? He looks like Sinbad", asked the Jewish man of another megastar Hrithik Roshan as he bounced around deserts in New Mexico.

Once MNIK (as Bollywood loves abbreviations, this one's pronounced Manik) began, a few things happened, when Mr Khan said he would walk to tell the President that he was not a terrorist, a moment clearly intended to be poignant, the Jewish man started laughing.

At a scene where a large number of students are cheering for President Bush at a California campus, the Asian woman said, "I'm from California and no one has ever cheered for Bush".

Finally, when an African-American gospel choir started singing "We shall overcome" in homeless robes after Khan saved them from Hurricane Katrina, the African American couple walked out.

Clearly, it seems that we have a longer journey to make than Mr Khan's to get this global audience. Maybe instead of MNIK's catch phrase what they needed was someone to say 'My Name Is Story And I Will Make Sense'.

(Anuvab Pal is a playwright and screenwriter. The views and opinions expressed here are his own and not those of Reuters)

LINK

My Name is Khan- International Reviews from Second Phase Release

Bollywood Does America
My Name is Khan ... and I am Not a Terrorist!
By CHARLES R. LARSON

I missed this important Bollywood movie when it was released commercially in the United States in a PG-13 version in February. Unfortunately, it didn’t stay around long enough for many people to see it. Fox Searchlight, the American distributor, must have believed they had another Slumdog Millionaire, but the movie failed with American viewers no doubt because of its depiction of racism in the United States in the aftermath of 9/11—especially, the violent acts against Muslims or perceived Muslims by mainstream Americans. Too bad, because My Name Is Khan is every bit as uplifting as Slumdog, but Americans have never been good at trying to understand their racism.

The film is flawed, yes, because it attempts to do too much, but its strengths far outweigh its weaknesses—notably its unflinching look at America through non-Western eyes and the quite dazzling acting by Shah Rukh Khan, a huge Bollywood attraction, who many people have thought is not much of an actor. In My Name Is Khan, he plays a man with Aspergers Syndrome, and the result is more than convincing, major acting by any standards. If this were an American film, he’d be up for an Academy Award next year, but that’s not likely to happen because, well, again our ethnocentrism.

My knowledge of Aspergers Syndrome is too limited to know if all of Khan’s mannerisms (never looking anyone in the face, difficulty controlling his extremities, repeating phrases ad nauseum, avoiding physical contact with others) are authentic, but Khan, the actor, is so convincing that my wife assumed that the film was not fiction but the documentary account of a real person suffering from Aspergers’. Shah Rukh Khan has two or three incredible scenes in the film when you’ll find it difficult not to be all choked up. And the rest of the time he is so believable that he clearly steals the entire movie, becoming in the process a soul brother of Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump (there are other similarities between the movies also—especially their scope.)

Putting events in chronological order, there’s a scene when Rizvan Khan (six or seven years old), his mother, and his older brother witness an attack on Muslims, in a retaliation riot by Hindus. Rizvan’s mother tells him that there are only two kinds of people in the world—not Hindus and Muslims—but good and bad. Some years later, the young boy’s older brother leaves for America, and after the passage of additional years when Rizvan is an adult, he too goes to the United States because his mother has died. Rizvan begins selling beauty products for his brother, who has become a successful entrepreneur.

One day, Rizvan meets a young Indian woman, a Hindu named Mandira, who is divorced and has an eight-year-old son named Sam. Their courtship is complicated but eventually they marry (to the consternation of Rizvan’s older brother who henceforth has nothing to do with him because he’s married a Hindu). Eventually, Rizvan closely bonds to Mandira’s son. Then 9/11. In the ugly aftermath, Sam is killed by young schoolboys because of his last name: Khan. The marriage abruptly ends because of the boy’s death, but Rizvan leaves on a quest because in her anger Mandira screams at him to tell the President of the United States that just because someone has the name Khan, that person is not a terrorist.

Thus begins Khan’s quest to meet with President Bush, a search somewhat like Forrest Gump’s trek across the United States. Khan knows that he can’t simply show up at the White House and expect to be admitted for a meeting with George Bush so, instead, he tracks the President’s speaking engagements throughout the country and prays that he’ll gain admission to one of them and deliver the message—not only that he himself is not a terrorist but that his son was murdered because of the name “Khan.” There are a number of ugly incidents that follow because of the search but, also, a final love affair with America.

What is so memorable about My Name Is Khan is not simply director Karan Johar and his co-author Shibani Bathija’s decision to make a Bollywood movie set mostly in the United States but the choices of the settings. There’s a tense scene after Khan first arrives in the United States, in San Francisco, when he’s paralyzed by an approaching trolley because the grids on the pedestrian crossing are painted with yellow stripes and the trolley is also yellow, a color we have learned earlier that terrifies Khan. There he is trapped between yellow stripes as the trolley heads directly towards him. The scene is one of many tense, but humorous scenes in a movie that veers seamlessly back and forth from the tragic to the comic.

Another powerful incident comes at the end of Khan’s bonding with another boy, after Sam’s death. He carries a black boy home to his family after the child is injured and subsequently stays with the family in Georgia for some time as a sense of mutual respect develops between the two. At the end of this interlude, Khan stands up in the boy’s church and narrates the story of his life, including the loss of Sam and his wife, Mandira. It is one of several powerful moments when Khan—often inarticulate—discovers his voice.

How can you see My Name Is Khan? A week ago, the film was re-released in New York City in an unrated version called “The International Director’s Cut.” You might also go to an Indian grocery store and purchase or rent the film. The only trouble with the imported DVD is that not all of the dialogue has been translated into subtitles. Or you can wait a little longer until the American DVD is released, presumably with all the spoken lines in the subtitles. But don’t miss this Bollywood take on America—with a fabulous soundtrack--or you’ll miss one of the great roles of recent cinema: Shah Rukh Khan as Rizvan Khan.

My Name Is Khan
Fox Searchlight: Directed by Karan Johar
With Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol Devgan

Charles R. Larson is Professor of Literature at American University, in Washington, D.C.

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My Name is Khan too, say Syrians
By Sami Moubayed

My Name is Khan too, say Syrians
By Sami Moubayed

DAMASCUS - In a bygone era, cinema-going in Syria was a popular event, shared by young and old. Men would dress in full attire, women in evening gowns, and children with bow ties, to attend blockbuster films in Damascus.

That came to an abrupt end in the 1960s when the importation of foreign films fell under the strict monopoly of the government, which then practiced a radical brand of socialism. All films from the United States were banned and replaced with those cranked out by the Soviet Union.

The only American films in the country were those smuggled in on VCRs. By the 1990s, satellite television had arrived, then came today's plush cinema complexes with state-of-the-art technology. These made use of a law passed by President Bashar al-Assad that broke the state's monopoly over the importation of foreign films and Damascus now boils with international blockbusters.

During the early years of cinema in Syria movies were still silent, much to the pleasure of ordinary people who spoke only Ottoman Turkish and understood neither English nor French. That, along with cheaper rents for American films, explains why Syrians went for American movies containing plenty of action and little talk.

Westerns and the slapstick comedy of Charlie Chaplin were particularly favored. The Little Tramp was so popular in Damascene society that in 1929 Chaplin made a publicity stop in Syria before heading to Egypt. This was right after Chaplin's classic The Circus had topped box-office sales throughout the country, drowning all French productions. Ticket prices in Syria were not cheap, however, costing 10 US cents - a day's wages - towards the 1940s, meaning that only a certain class could go to the cinemas, while most ordinary Syrians relied for entertainment on the majestic voice of Egyptian diva Um Kalthoum, who could be heard on the radio every Thursday.

By the early 1940s, most major newspapers had a cinema column and there were 40 cinemas in Syria and Lebanon, holding approximately 22,000 seats and selling 2.3 million tickets a year. Topping the charts was the remarkable novelty - motion picture cartoons, which first came to Syria via Walt Disney's 1928 black-and-white, Steamboat Willie. Charlie Chaplin, Mickey Mouse and Tarzan did more for bilateral relations between Washington and Damascus in the 1920s and 1930s than US presidents Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover combined.

Now, films like 2012, which walk that extra mile to promote the US, depicting a heroic African-American president who wishes to die with his people on the streets of Washington, are being freely shown in Damascus. The fact that ticket prices are at an affordable US$6.5 should help US films drum up pro-American sentiment in the Arab world, as was the case in the 1950s and 1960s during the Cold War.

Unexpectedly, the blockbuster hit this year is a Bollywood film, My Name is Khan, starring seasoned Indian actor Shahrukh Khan and the immensely capable and beautiful actress Kajol Devgan, two of the top figures in the Indian motion picture industry.

At first glance this may seem strange - an Indian film doing well in Syria and the Arab world - but a closer look reveals that one of the most successful films of all time in Syria was 1961's Jungleestaring Shammi Kappour with the hit song Suku, Suku.

Khan's film, however, is different from what most Arab audiences have experienced; it does justice to Islam and with award-winning Indian music it portrays events that are still strong in the memory, especially the younger generation. It talks about September 11, 2001, America and the aftershocks of the terrorist attacks on the Muslim community at large, both within the US and abroad.

The film starts in India where Rizwan Khan, a Muslim, lives with his mother and brother in Mumbai during Hindu-Muslim riots in the early 1980s. He suffers from Asperger's syndrome, a form of high-functioning autism, and is gifted with the ability to repair anything that is broken. The elder brother heads off to the US and then takes Rizwan there after their mother dies.

The young man works for his already established brother at a cosmetics company, peddling products while continuing to suffer from particular disorders, due to his autism, like breaking into a fit of nerves when he hears a loud noise, or sees the color yellow. He takes everything that is said to him at face value, and does not know how to tell a lie.

During his work he meets Mandira, a beautiful Hindu Indian hairdresser who lives with her son Samer, who is from a previous marriage. Rizwan falls in love with her and tries to impress her by cranking out the entire history of San Francisco - somewhat imitating Dustin Hoffman in 1988's classic film, Rain Man. They fall in love and because he is so good to Samer, Mandira gives her son her new husband's family name - he becomes Samer Khan.

Their fairytale life comes to an abrupt end when planes crash into the World Trade Center on 9/11. Suddenly, America - the land of opportunity for Khan and so many Muslims - is not so safe for Muslims, or those married to Muslims.

The family neighbor, Mark, a TV producer, travels to cover the war in Afghanistan and is killed during his work, explaining why his son, Samer Khan's best friend, suddenly stops talking to him, blaming Islam for the death of his father.

Samer is harassed day and night by friends at school, due to his color and name, and at one point finds his locker stuffed with Osama bin Laden photos. The young boy is killed in a prejudice-driven racial attack on the school football field - beaten until curtain fall by older boys - breaking the heart of both Mandira and Rizwan, who, on hearing the news, solemnly repeat verses from the Koran, "Inn Ila Allah wa Inna Ilayhi Rajioun" (We were made by God and to him we return).

In a hysteric fit, Mandira tells Rizwan to get out of her life, claiming that because of their marriage - because he is a Muslim - her son died. Innocently and due to his autism, Rizwan nods accordingly, but before leaving asks her, "When should I return Mandira?" She frantically replies, "When you tell every person in this country that you are not a terrorist. Go up to the president of the United States and tell him, 'Mr president, my name is Khan, and I am not a terrorist!'"

Taking her words at face value, the heartbroken Rizwan sets off to meet George W Bush to tell him just that, and en route gets picked up by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for his funny looks, accent and for blurting the words "not a terrorist" at one presidential event attended by Bush.

Like many Arabs and Muslims who were put in similar situations, Khan is interrogated and tortured by the FBI. He is eventually released, reunited with Mandira and granted an audience with "the savior of Muslims in America", Barack Hussein Obama. Fortunes are reversed and Khan is approached by a security officer who says, "Mr Khan, the president wants to meet you!"

At every screening in Damascus, the full-house audience walks out of the Cham Cinema City complex in tears. Many weep for the lead actresses' loss of her son in the film, but at a deeper level the film touches on something inside every Arab and Muslim: a raw nerve of how unjust the world was to them after 9/11.

My Name is Khan has created a certain pride in being a devoted Muslim, as the lead character is shown in the film. He prays five times a day, as most Syrians do, uses phrases from the Koran in his daily conversation and believes that justice will prevail both in this world and the afterlife for those who uphold the Prophet Mohammad and Islam.

Many Syrians and Arabs see a mirror reflection of themselves on the screen through the life of Rizwan Khan, a simple man who leads a simple life, is devoted to his family and religion and who yet is accused of being a terrorist by the US. The fact that Rizwan Khan was actually Indian and not Arab did not really matter to Syrian viewers.

Khan literarily looked like thousands of Arabs and Muslims who were forced to dress in a funny way, speak with a different accent, change their names or take off their headscarves because of the difficult political conditions enforced upon them after 9/11. This is why My Name is Khan - rather than Louis Leterrier's epic action adventure Clash of the Titans or Martin Campbell's crime thriller Edge of Darkness- is taking over cinemas in the Arab and Muslim world.

Since the film opened worldwide this April it has grossed over US$36 million - with $300,000 in the Middle East on day one alone. By the end of the first week, the film had earned an impressive $1.75 million.

Sami Moubayed is editor-in-chief of Forward Magazine in Syria.

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Riveting tale of a simple man in a complex world

2010/05/08

by Johan Jaaffar

LIFE imitates fiction. In the movie My Name Is Khan, Rizwan Khan, who suffers from Asperger's Syndrome, is pulled aside by United States Immigration officers upon arrival in San Francisco. Shah Rukh Khan, the actor who plays Khan, was subjected to an equally humiliating security check when he arrived at Newark Airport in New Jersey to promote the movie.

Shah Rukh was luckier, the global icon got away with just a bruised ego. Later, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger invited him for dinner "in a bid to defuse what has become a slight diplomatic row".

I salute the filmmakers for addressing the prejudices post-9/11 head on. It has no patriotic strings attached, no jingoism to appease anyone. It is about the lives of people devastated by what happened to the New York Twin Towers.

True, the victims portrayed were mostly Muslims, but the lives of others were also very much affected. American paranoia has reached an absurd level. Suspicion is the rule of the day. America and the world will never be the same again since that fateful day on Sept 11, 2001.

Shah Rukh is one of the greatest actors India has ever produced. He has acted in simply too many movies -- 73 in all. Many are fondly remembered, others are box- office hits. He is the most bankable in the constellation of stars today. Some say he is a one-man film industry. If at all the Hindi film industry revolves around one man, then he is the one. Shah Rukh made his name playing heroes, saviours and villains, and has sung and danced with the prettiest, the best and the most famous actresses of the Hindi film industry.

He never seems to age. He has played heartthrobs more times than Errol Flynn, James Dean, Robert Redford, Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio combined. He has tried every character there is -- even a flawed lover in Devdas. He has played "special people" before in Koyla. He has thrilled millions with Dil To Pagal Hai, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Mohabattein and Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham. He experimented with characters from the seedier side in Karan Arjun and Don. He made audacious moves working in controversial movies like Hey! Ram and Dil Se. He played a comic in Badshah and a mythological figure in Asoka.

But the character Khan is different. It takes someone as confident as Shah Rukh to pull it off. It was a big gamble, too, for the director, Karan Johar, better known as the one who "redesigned" Hindi films with his flamboyant, technicoloured and fashionable Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, the opulent Mohabattein and the luxuriously textured Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham. While the other three films harped on incredibly well-choreographed song and dance sequences, there is none in My Name Is Khan.

You won't find total strangers dancing with perfect unison at the slightest provocation. What you hear is the Sufi-like rendering of music by the maestro, Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy.

Reality as we know it, in most Hindi fare, leaves much to be desired. It is always the make-believe world Bollywood-style. The Hindi dream factory seldom reinvents itself.

Most of the time it churns out the tired old formula. Since Raja Harischandra, said to be the first, produced in 1913, some 19,000 Hindi movies have been made. Bollywood produces at least 900 movies a year, watched by an average 11 million people a day in India alone. It is the biggest film industry in the world. A staggering 3.6 billion tickets are sold worldwide compared with 2.6 billion tickets a year for Hollywood.

My Name Is Khan is not the first "realistic" offering from Bollywood. But it takes Karan and Shah Rukh to make it big and impactful.

Not that My Name Is Khan detached itself entirely from the Bollywood formula, but its attempt to take the route of artistic believability as is required by most standard movies is commendable. This was a difficult movie to make and even tougher one to sell.

Not even the pairing of the most ideal couple in Hindi cinema could guarantee success.

The last time Shah Rukh and the evergreen Kajol were together was Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham nine years ago. Not surprisingly, My Name Is Khan did remarkably well in India and in most countries it was shown. In fact, it is becoming one of the most successful Hindi films on record.

The character Khan, a Muslim child, is brought up by his mother with the belief that there are only good people and bad people, and they are not defined by race or religion. When his mother dies, he goes to America to live with his brother Zakir (Jimmy Shergill) and his wife Haseena (Sonya Jehan). Khan meets Mandira, a widowed Hindu woman who lives with her son Sameer (Yuvaan Makaar). They get married.

Then 9/11 comes and their lives take a different turn. When Sameer dies in an attack, Mandira blames Khan for it: had Sameer's name not been Khan, he would not have been killed.

It is a journey unlike any other for Khan traverses the US in search of the president of the United States, to tell him that "I am Khan and I am not a terrorist". It is a riveting tale of a simple man trying to change the complex and jaundiced world. It is heart-wrenching to watch an autistic trying to make sense of what happens to him against the backdrop of a world that has gone berserk with prejudice.

His journey takes him to Wilhemia, Georgia, where he befriends Mama Jenny and her son Joel. Black America has something in common with the Muslims. Khan finds peace as the people of Wilhemia accept him as one of their own. Khan repays their kindness when his obsession to help them during a hurricane melts the hearts of millions.

We can find fault with My Name Is Khan. After all, it is still Bollywood looking at the world through its lens. I agree it is not about terrorism redefined; it is about the heart of darkness in humans. Even the US president in the movie acknowledges that in the post-9/11 world, it takes someone like Khan to make a difference and bring us back to sanity.

That is the message of the best Hollywood movie I have seen in years.

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COLUMN - My name is not Khan and I'm not your audience

By Anuvab Pal

Recently in New York city, I sat behind a motley group of New Yorkers as they settled in to watch Karan Johar's "My Name is Khan", an epic film that's been declared a global hit with a message of peace that as some press nugget said "has spread across the world".

Maybe they were confusing it with volcanic ash, as this message clearly got lost in travelling from Washington D.C., where the film's lead (Mr. Khan, played by, yes, in a clever twist of words, Shah Rukh Khan, who, that's correct, is also named Khan), shakes hands with President Barack Obama (the actor playing him looked like Anupam Kher) to New York's Times Square where ten days ago, a young Pakistani man tried to blow up an SUV. His name was Shahzad and he was a terrorist.

In this geopolitical mess, a film that supposedly deals with it head on, opened in the U.S. across many art house theatres now, some months after the money machine that it became in India (revealing clearly that at the core of it a lightly handicapped megastar walking across Colorado and Alabama to get to DC is what Indian audiences identify with).

It has arrived here, shorter by 45 minutes, edited by the team that did the romantic comedy "500 Days Of Summer" (no, they didn't change the title to "132 Minutes of Khan"). One Chicago newspaper described it as '"Monsoon Wedding" meets "Hurt Locker'".

The day I saw it, the motley crowd in front of me had a professorial looking Jewish man, with the unkempt look that only the extremely wealthy business owner can afford, one African-American corporate sort (blackberry being the clue) and his African-American actress girlfriend (the iPhone and red shoes being the clue) and a frail Japanese lady who brought some sort of milk drink and that deceptive shyness hiding perhaps a world famous fashion designer or cellist, or both.

This was not a special screening for a multicultural melting pot, this was the average audience of downtown Manhattan, a cluster of globetrotting over-achievers, with backgrounds from Manila to Memphis.

This was also, arguably, the exact demographic the new Bollywood wants to go after.

When Karan Johar went one-up on Yash Raj studios relocating our Bollywood romance from Swiss valleys to Manhattan in the mid 90s, first the immigrant cab drivers and shopkeepers were mesmerised, then together with Shah Rukh Khan, they entered the middle-class homes of professional NRIs, New Jersey doctors, London barristers, and took the second generation from being ashamed of Bollywood to making nightclubs have Bollywood nights worldwide.

The final blow for NRIs came when they saw their white friends dancing to "You are my Sonia" better than them from some lesson at a Delhi winter wedding. The conquest was complete.

So now that the global Indian is done and the Indian Indian was always in the pocket, Mr Johar and Mr Khan and all the studios began eyeing the next big market -- the non-Indian world cinema lover.

The sort that reads Suketu Mehta, shows up at the Jaipur literary festival, is comfortable in a western winter with a scarf bought in Goa and enjoys fusion Indian dinners every other week.

A perfect sample of which sat before me.

These were people fluent in their Almodovar, Woody Allen, Wong Kar Wai, Jacques Audiard and could debate the finer nuances of "Amelie" or new German cinema. So they assumed what they were about to watch was somewhere between "Bend it like Beckham" and "Persepolis".

First, they were given a trailer for "Kites", the next Bollywood offering to the world. "Who is that guy? He looks like Sinbad", asked the Jewish man of another megastar Hrithik Roshan as he bounced around deserts in New Mexico.

Once MNIK (as Bollywood loves abbreviations, this one's pronounced Manik) began, a few things happened, when Mr Khan said he would walk to tell the President that he was not a terrorist, a moment clearly intended to be poignant, the Jewish man started laughing.

At a scene where a large number of students are cheering for President Bush at a California campus, the Asian woman said, "I'm from California and no one has ever cheered for Bush".

Finally, when an African-American gospel choir started singing "We shall overcome" in homeless robes after Khan saved them from Hurricane Katrina, the African American couple walked out.

Clearly, it seems that we have a longer journey to make than Mr Khan's to get this global audience. Maybe instead of MNIK's catch phrase what they needed was someone to say 'My Name Is Story And I Will Make Sense'.

(Anuvab Pal is a playwright and screenwriter. The views and opinions expressed here are his own and not those of Reuters)

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Mums, listen to your kids: Kajol

LINK

Bollywood has some and then a few more. Yummy mummies, we mean. But we chose the lovely actress Kajol to be TOI’s guest editor for this special Mother’s Day issue.

Not because she’s acting in Karan Johar’s Stepmom that will release later this year. But because she’s the only actress who twice in her hugely successful career has unselfishly stepped back from the top to gladly accept motherhood.

The first time after daughter Nysa, Kajol returned in 2006 to win the Filmfare Best Actress Award for Fanaa opposite Aamir Khan. Then this year, just after another stunning performance in My Name Is Khan with her favourite co-star Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol completed Stepmom and settled down to her second baby. It must take some doing. The actress, however, dismissed the putting-career-on-hold and making-a-comeback theory with a toss of her auburn hair.

“Your career is part of your life, your family is part of your life, and your whole life — your personality — is made of every part put together. It’s upto you to strike the right balance,” she said. “I learned from example. My own mother (the actress Tanuja) always put her family first. Even when she was working, we were her top priority, she gave us quality time — when she was there, she was with us 120 per cent. I’m lucky to have had her. And I hope to be like her...”

She’s glowing with the early stages of pregnancy, and she’s comfortable with her condition, she made no fuss about the great commute from her home to our office in peak summertime to take the chair for this issue. Dressed casually in a loose white top and black trousers, feet encased in soft slippers, she slipped into the role emphatically... brown eyes flashing with expression, fists thumping the table to make a point. When coffee and sandwiches were placed before her, Kajol’s face lit up. “I’m so pregrant, aren’t I,” she giggled.

She was unhappy with Mother’s Day, per se. “Mothers are fab and kids bring out the best in women,” she said, “but you can’t relegate your relationship with your mother to just one day in a year. For a child, the mother is God... the mother has the same responsibility to her child as God has to the world. And just as you wake up each morning and worship God whether you’re 14 or 40, you should respect your mother... even when you are grown up, in complete control of your life and are probably looking after her.”

And she had a word of caution for troubled mothers in today’s society of suicidal children: “They should listen to their kids... a mother’s gift to her kid should be the power of speech. Don’t be impatient. Don’t close yourself to your child by expecting her/him to be what you want them to be. Your message to them should be, ‘I love you for what you are and will support you whether you pass or fail your exams.’ Mothers should also stop to consider what they would do if their kid was suddenly taken away from them today. I would die! Compared to that, you can make make every situation work...”

There were more tidbits from this mother and mother-to-be even while she discussed work (“I’m a nice boring person, you won’t get gossip on me!”), babies, motherhood, growing up, families (“they teach you and make you who you are”), the need to discipline kids (“spanking is not bad as a means to get attention... it’s not the punishment, that’s much worse, and devious”) and pregnancy itself (“don’t become a mother unless you’re ready, don’t let this decision be thrust on you, because then everybody will suffer... especially your child”).

Plus, a final word of advice to mothers: “Advice itself is bad, don’t be weighed down by what society says your kid ought to be doing, rely on your own instincts and decisions. As a mother, you know what’s best for your kid, by learning, by instinct, by habit... And, practise what you preach. Your kid learns by watching you. In future, your child takes reference from you.” We had just one question for Kajol, did she subscribe to the public opinion that she was Bollywood’s yummy mummy? “Absolutely,” she declared, giving the Kuch Kuch Hota Hai smile, “I was yummy even before I had my baby!”

Mums, listen to your kids: Kajol

LINK

Bollywood has some and then a few more. Yummy mummies, we mean. But we chose the lovely actress Kajol to be TOI’s guest editor for this special Mother’s Day issue.

Not because she’s acting in Karan Johar’s Stepmom that will release later this year. But because she’s the only actress who twice in her hugely successful career has unselfishly stepped back from the top to gladly accept motherhood.

The first time after daughter Nysa, Kajol returned in 2006 to win the Filmfare Best Actress Award for Fanaa opposite Aamir Khan. Then this year, just after another stunning performance in My Name Is Khan with her favourite co-star Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol completed Stepmom and settled down to her second baby. It must take some doing. The actress, however, dismissed the putting-career-on-hold and making-a-comeback theory with a toss of her auburn hair.

“Your career is part of your life, your family is part of your life, and your whole life — your personality — is made of every part put together. It’s upto you to strike the right balance,” she said. “I learned from example. My own mother (the actress Tanuja) always put her family first. Even when she was working, we were her top priority, she gave us quality time — when she was there, she was with us 120 per cent. I’m lucky to have had her. And I hope to be like her...”

She’s glowing with the early stages of pregnancy, and she’s comfortable with her condition, she made no fuss about the great commute from her home to our office in peak summertime to take the chair for this issue. Dressed casually in a loose white top and black trousers, feet encased in soft slippers, she slipped into the role emphatically... brown eyes flashing with expression, fists thumping the table to make a point. When coffee and sandwiches were placed before her, Kajol’s face lit up. “I’m so pregrant, aren’t I,” she giggled.

She was unhappy with Mother’s Day, per se. “Mothers are fab and kids bring out the best in women,” she said, “but you can’t relegate your relationship with your mother to just one day in a year. For a child, the mother is God... the mother has the same responsibility to her child as God has to the world. And just as you wake up each morning and worship God whether you’re 14 or 40, you should respect your mother... even when you are grown up, in complete control of your life and are probably looking after her.”

And she had a word of caution for troubled mothers in today’s society of suicidal children: “They should listen to their kids... a mother’s gift to her kid should be the power of speech. Don’t be impatient. Don’t close yourself to your child by expecting her/him to be what you want them to be. Your message to them should be, ‘I love you for what you are and will support you whether you pass or fail your exams.’ Mothers should also stop to consider what they would do if their kid was suddenly taken away from them today. I would die! Compared to that, you can make make every situation work...”

There were more tidbits from this mother and mother-to-be even while she discussed work (“I’m a nice boring person, you won’t get gossip on me!”), babies, motherhood, growing up, families (“they teach you and make you who you are”), the need to discipline kids (“spanking is not bad as a means to get attention... it’s not the punishment, that’s much worse, and devious”) and pregnancy itself (“don’t become a mother unless you’re ready, don’t let this decision be thrust on you, because then everybody will suffer... especially your child”).

Plus, a final word of advice to mothers: “Advice itself is bad, don’t be weighed down by what society says your kid ought to be doing, rely on your own instincts and decisions. As a mother, you know what’s best for your kid, by learning, by instinct, by habit... And, practise what you preach. Your kid learns by watching you. In future, your child takes reference from you.” We had just one question for Kajol, did she subscribe to the public opinion that she was Bollywood’s yummy mummy? “Absolutely,” she declared, giving the Kuch Kuch Hota Hai smile, “I was yummy even before I had my baby!”

American version of My Name Is Khan to be shorter by 35 minutes

If the name Alan Edward Bell doesn't ring a 'bell' in your mind, then, let us tell you that, he is the same man who is responsible for the crisp editing of 500 Days Of Summer. And it is going to be this man who will very soon be the talk of the nation (or is that 'globe'?), as he is the man responsible for 'taming the hurricane'. For the uninitiated, we are talking about the climax of Karan Johar's My Name Is Khan wherein the characters get stranded due to a hurricane. Post the release of the film in India; while the story and screenplay were appreciated to the hilt, this was one particular scene that was panned by critics alike. But, for its US release, KJo has let Bell's hands to do the talking (read 'snipping').

Karan Johan candidly admits that he was expecting this scene not to work in the same wavelength as the film's story. He also added that, it was for this reason, that he let Bell to do his job (without any interference from him) since he wanted an outsider's perspective to the story. This has now resulted in the chopping of the hurricane scene in the US version of My Name Is Khan. Bell's work will be visible in the film, which releases on May 7th in the US, and will have its subtitles and voiceovers in English for the audiences there.

LINK

American version of My Name Is Khan to be shorter by 35 minutes

If the name Alan Edward Bell doesn't ring a 'bell' in your mind, then, let us tell you that, he is the same man who is responsible for the crisp editing of 500 Days Of Summer. And it is going to be this man who will very soon be the talk of the nation (or is that 'globe'?), as he is the man responsible for 'taming the hurricane'. For the uninitiated, we are talking about the climax of Karan Johar's My Name Is Khan wherein the characters get stranded due to a hurricane. Post the release of the film in India; while the story and screenplay were appreciated to the hilt, this was one particular scene that was panned by critics alike. But, for its US release, KJo has let Bell's hands to do the talking (read 'snipping').

Karan Johan candidly admits that he was expecting this scene not to work in the same wavelength as the film's story. He also added that, it was for this reason, that he let Bell to do his job (without any interference from him) since he wanted an outsider's perspective to the story. This has now resulted in the chopping of the hurricane scene in the US version of My Name Is Khan. Bell's work will be visible in the film, which releases on May 7th in the US, and will have its subtitles and voiceovers in English for the audiences there.

LINK

Life before and after MNIK

BEFORE THE EVENT

Year 2006 - I convinced my wife that we had to watch KANK, and cannot MISS it. So she obliged, and i have regretted ever since the mistake i made :) Bottomline - I was told in future no more KJo movie watching. PERIOD. I was not worried at that time, since i never knew what Karan had in store...

Year 2009 - Kadz my idol was in my town for MNIK shoot. Since i had my priorities right, managed to go and watch the shoot, at just the cost of a work day. Now i made a vow that i will watch MNIK no matter what.

Late 2009 - MNIK's release date is out.. “Feb 12th 2010”. I mark it up on the calendar and start plotting to watch it, after 18 months of drought of movie watching in theatres. Then the light goes off in my head. Why not take the spouse for MNIK on Feb 14th, as a Valentine's day surprise...

Feb 12th 2010 - D-Day.. Movie gets released, and it gets a mixed review, and even good friends who are SRK fans give it a lukewarm review. So now I am in a state of PANIC.. I don’t want to screw up my Valentine surprise, and be in the dog house for the rest of the year.. So changed the plans, and moved out MNIK watching for a later date..

THE MOVIE - MNIK - Nomadic Journey from San Francisco to Sacramento

Here are my scattered thoughts about the movie:

One rarely hears SRK talking about doing research for his character, and going to town with that. For MNIK he did both, and i think the disciplined approach to the role shows in the movie. He has delivered a very good performance as Rizwan with lot of consistency through out the movie. I would rate this is as his best performance to date.
(Individual Score = 4.5)

Kajol as Mandira has ably supported SRK, but that’s just about it. For a Kadz fan in me, it was a disappointment. She has acted as though she walked off from K3G sets. Her mannerisms and interaction with her son in the movie is so K3Gish. Her Screams were very jarring. OFC she has excelled in emotional scenes.
(Individual Score = 3.0)

Technically the movie is of a high calibre. Especially, Ravi Chandran has done a marvelous job of capturing the city by the Bay, in all its magnificent splendor. Editing is good within the context of lack of screenplay (more about it later). Background score is passable.
(Individual Score = 4.0)

Post K3G, Karan has been trying to move towards serious contemporary cinema and his sincerity shows in MNIK. He clearly lacks touch and vision and it shows in the second half. Second half is very poorly executed.
(Individual Score = 2.0)

Rizwan who could “repair anything” probably could not repair the script. Shibani has continued her downward spiral as a script writer with MNIK.
(Individual Score = 1.5)

Overall the movie did not live up to my lowered expectations. First half of the movie was like driving through the Mojave desert. Flat and emotionless, even though there were few good moments and chemistry between SRK & Kajol was exceptional, as usual.

Second half of the movie was like driving DOWN the CROOKED street (in SF). The journey part of the movie is its biggest letdown. The timeline of the journey has been unnecessarily extended to include most recent political events in US, and hurricane episode just did not fit in.

In short, it is a movie of many missed opportunities. I feel for SRK who has delivered an exceptional performance only to be let down by other aspects of the movie.

Rating: 3 STARS (4.5 + 3 + 4 + 2 + 1.5 = 15/25) 

AFTER THE EVENT

As Rizwan Khan starts to shake his hands with the POTUS and the end credit starts to roll, my mind starts going into over drive. Usually, the walk from the theatre to the car is the toughest 5 min walk of life, if the movie is NOT to the Spouse's liking. More so if i am the ONE who chose the movie.

Then as we are about to walk out of the unreal world, light bulb goes again (trust me, it does not happen too often) in my head. I immediately act upon it. Placed a call to the Baby sitter who was taking care of the Lil one...and was hoping that she will stay on the line till we reach home... Luck was on my side I guess, as i was talking, the better half took over the phone to talk.. and i got home before the end of conversation. For the rest of the day, it was all about Lil one at home, and thus i thought i had dodged the 'bullet'.

Now i had to do something to avoid any reference to MNIK... Worked out a plan, and told the better half.. "I have a surprise" Response - "Oh yeah". Me – “Yes i will take you to a place and show you something which you never seen before, just like Rizwan did :)”.. "Ok. Will wait" is the response.

One fine afternoon took the family to workplace and then took the better half to the open patio on the 25th floor.. and asked her "Had you seen this before ?" showing the overview of the bay :-)

It worked, and here i am narrating my life story.

DISCLAIMER: All the characters and incidents in BEFORE and AFTER THE EVENT are fictitious and any resemblance to any real people and real incidents are intentional.

Life before and after MNIK

BEFORE THE EVENT

Year 2006 - I convinced my wife that we had to watch KANK, and cannot MISS it. So she obliged, and i have regretted ever since the mistake i made :) Bottomline - I was told in future no more KJo movie watching. PERIOD. I was not worried at that time, since i never knew what Karan had in store...

Year 2009 - Kadz my idol was in my town for MNIK shoot. Since i had my priorities right, managed to go and watch the shoot, at just the cost of a work day. Now i made a vow that i will watch MNIK no matter what.

Late 2009 - MNIK's release date is out.. “Feb 12th 2010”. I mark it up on the calendar and start plotting to watch it, after 18 months of drought of movie watching in theatres. Then the light goes off in my head. Why not take the spouse for MNIK on Feb 14th, as a Valentine's day surprise...

Feb 12th 2010 - D-Day.. Movie gets released, and it gets a mixed review, and even good friends who are SRK fans give it a lukewarm review. So now I am in a state of PANIC.. I don’t want to screw up my Valentine surprise, and be in the dog house for the rest of the year.. So changed the plans, and moved out MNIK watching for a later date..

THE MOVIE - MNIK - Nomadic Journey from San Francisco to Sacramento

Here are my scattered thoughts about the movie:

One rarely hears SRK talking about doing research for his character, and going to town with that. For MNIK he did both, and i think the disciplined approach to the role shows in the movie. He has delivered a very good performance as Rizwan with lot of consistency through out the movie. I would rate this is as his best performance to date.
(Individual Score = 4.5)

Kajol as Mandira has ably supported SRK, but that’s just about it. For a Kadz fan in me, it was a disappointment. She has acted as though she walked off from K3G sets. Her mannerisms and interaction with her son in the movie is so K3Gish. Her Screams were very jarring. OFC she has excelled in emotional scenes.
(Individual Score = 3.0)

Technically the movie is of a high calibre. Especially, Ravi Chandran has done a marvelous job of capturing the city by the Bay, in all its magnificent splendor. Editing is good within the context of lack of screenplay (more about it later). Background score is passable.
(Individual Score = 4.0)

Post K3G, Karan has been trying to move towards serious contemporary cinema and his sincerity shows in MNIK. He clearly lacks touch and vision and it shows in the second half. Second half is very poorly executed.
(Individual Score = 2.0)

Rizwan who could “repair anything” probably could not repair the script. Shibani has continued her downward spiral as a script writer with MNIK.
(Individual Score = 1.5)

Overall the movie did not live up to my lowered expectations. First half of the movie was like driving through the Mojave desert. Flat and emotionless, even though there were few good moments and chemistry between SRK & Kajol was exceptional, as usual.

Second half of the movie was like driving DOWN the CROOKED street (in SF). The journey part of the movie is its biggest letdown. The timeline of the journey has been unnecessarily extended to include most recent political events in US, and hurricane episode just did not fit in.

In short, it is a movie of many missed opportunities. I feel for SRK who has delivered an exceptional performance only to be let down by other aspects of the movie.

Rating: 3 STARS (4.5 + 3 + 4 + 2 + 1.5 = 15/25) 

AFTER THE EVENT

As Rizwan Khan starts to shake his hands with the POTUS and the end credit starts to roll, my mind starts going into over drive. Usually, the walk from the theatre to the car is the toughest 5 min walk of life, if the movie is NOT to the Spouse's liking. More so if i am the ONE who chose the movie.

Then as we are about to walk out of the unreal world, light bulb goes again (trust me, it does not happen too often) in my head. I immediately act upon it. Placed a call to the Baby sitter who was taking care of the Lil one...and was hoping that she will stay on the line till we reach home... Luck was on my side I guess, as i was talking, the better half took over the phone to talk.. and i got home before the end of conversation. For the rest of the day, it was all about Lil one at home, and thus i thought i had dodged the 'bullet'.

Now i had to do something to avoid any reference to MNIK... Worked out a plan, and told the better half.. "I have a surprise" Response - "Oh yeah". Me – “Yes i will take you to a place and show you something which you never seen before, just like Rizwan did :)”.. "Ok. Will wait" is the response.

One fine afternoon took the family to workplace and then took the better half to the open patio on the 25th floor.. and asked her "Had you seen this before ?" showing the overview of the bay :-)

It worked, and here i am narrating my life story.

DISCLAIMER: All the characters and incidents in BEFORE and AFTER THE EVENT are fictitious and any resemblance to any real people and real incidents are intentional.