Monthly Archive for October, 2011

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Superheroes in Desi movies? Old Hat

Published on October 11, 2011 in Bollywood. 38 Comments

[Original word-limited version was published in DNA Sunday. Sans these pictures]

Can someone tell me what all this hullabaloo is about? Krrish and Enthiran and Ra-One—-a new wave of Indian superhero movies, the so-called next level, reflective of the recently acquired international taste of the Indian audience?

What? Superheroes new  to Indian cinema? I beg to disagree.

All our action heroes, for decades, have been superheroes. Spiderman and the Green Lantern can just stuff it.

Sure our Indian superheroes did not wear Tron-and-Ironman inspired suits (Ra-One) or  Zorro and Shiva (played by Jackie Shroff)-like masks and capes (Krrish). They did not need to, being comfortable in their own skins. They also had enough fashion sense not be caught wearing a underwear over their trousers or over-tight, trapeze-artist-like body-suits.

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The Cult And the Man

Published on October 8, 2011 in Technology. 51 Comments

The way I see it, Steve Jobs will be remembered for having created the world’s biggest corporate cult, a cult so blinding in its hold that its devotees no longer cared if others were making more technologically advanced products at a lower price. As far as they were concerned, if it was not an Apple, it would never be perfect.

This is not to say that Apple devotees were mindless zombies. Okay maybe they are but you could not blame them, just like you could not blame a moth for flying into the flame. Jobs was that awesome.

Like those who claimed to speak to Gods, Jobs delivered Zennish koans and inspirational commandments . Like cult leaders, Jobs abhorred technological and organizational glasnost, used a fearsome legal team to pursue anyone who was perceived as a threat, even a nineteen year old blogger and was intolerant of criticism to the point of being petulant—he removed all books of John Wiley and Sons from Apple’s retail store because they had published a book about him that he did not approve of.

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Shakti-Man

Published on October 5, 2011 in Bollywood. 71 Comments

[I have been busy putting finishing touches to my next book "The Mine", releasing next January. Hence the long hiatus. Sincere thanks to all who inquired.]

I have always been a fan of Shakti Kapoor. One of the reasons for my admiration has obviously been his career-defining performance as the Vitamin Sex-amped, ambigosexual, killed-in-a-ladies-bathroom-by-Prabhuji-through-cutting-off-of-male-organ Chutiya in one of the most influential Hindi movies of the last century, Kanti Shah’s “Gunda”. But even before I came across this life-altering celluloid classic, I had been keenly following  Shakti’s acting career, marveling at his histrionic abilities.

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