just off to get new material

I'm trying something here.

Just a short note:
- i am in Zürich for the weekend to visit family.
- i did not bring my macbook (big mistake, i know, but how was i supposed to know, that Akshay Shah of naachgaana.com would link to my Bhool Bhulaiya post, while i'm gone *g*)
- so i'm typing on my shiny new iPod Touch and that is kind of tricky. I have no idea how this turns out.

- on a filmi note... I did manage to get quite a few dvds today
And last but not least... The first thing i saw after leaving the plane today was an ad saying "Oerlikon is Bollywood" ?? I have no idea what that part of zurich has to do with BW. But then a few meters further it read "Oerlikon is Shanghai"... They are a weird but nice people here

Outsourced - Go and watch it.

Picture this:
A small Seattle based mail-order company is selling patriotic kitsch to Americans. And then one day their whole call center is being outsourced to India. Todd (Jeff Hamilton), the call-center manager, has no real option than going to India to train his replacement if he wants to keep working for his company. So he goes. And he´s forced to jump head-first into a life altering adventure. Having to adapt to cultural differences, wandering cows, endearing call-center employees, love and the pressure from his company at home.












Sounds corny? Not by far! It´s quite the opposite.

John Jeffcoat made a movie that captured the audience at the opening screening in Stuttgart in its first 5 minutes. (Like predicted by the german distributor before the film).
It´s funny. Very funny actually. Endearing. Smart. Schnuffelig. With a great cast (Ayhesha Dharker, Asif Basra and Jeff Hamilton in peticular) And apart from a few scenes, shot entirely in/around Mumbai.

One great thing about Outsourced is,that it is a true "cultural-crossover" film. Some reviews compare it to "My big fat Greek wedding", a statement that only true in parts. As here Jeffcoat took the American guy and put him through the "real" thing. Not only a westernized Immigrant suburb.
And really everbody in Stuttgart seemed to love it. The German Bollywood fan crowd, the Arthouse film buffs who usually frown upon mainstream movies, the Indian filmi-people. Some have been in India before and had a deja-vu experience on some of the scenes and others who only knew life in Mumbai out of movies or the news. You could sense from the timing of their laughter where the various groups sat in the cinema hall. No surprise that it won the Audience Award...











Starting September 26th it is opening on a limited release across the USA. So, anyone who has not seen Outsourced yet and lives in the vicinity of these movie theaters just needs to go and watch it. A post on the movies blog also announced a release in Germany this autumn. And there are plans for a release in India too.

Got curious? Here´s a link the trailer and the movie´s website

Hah. Look what I found.

This is the downside of having a 4 Gig memory card in your compact camera. Never had to wipe it since Stuttgart until today, so I finally downloaded all the pictures taken during the summer and found these 2 small video-snippets from the Bombay Boogie night in Stuttgart in July on it. Don´t expect too much, they are very dark, but still you´ll be able to make out some slick moves:

Surya, Rita and Pooja burning the dancefloor



and here another 25 sec snippet.



And no, there are none with me in them. Count your blessings :D

Bhool Bhulayiaa. Strangely attracted.

I had a ball watching Chandramukhi a while back. Rajni Superstar rulez. No discussions about that.

Now the Hindi remake will come out on October 12th. With Akshay Kumar in Rajnikanth´s role as the a tiny bit wacko psychiatrist. Directed by Priyadarshan.
Hmm. If you just read those last two sentences, its nothing to get that much excited. Especially if you know that at first AB 1.0 was in talks to play that role.

But.

1) Due to Akshay´s almost monopolistic presence in Hindi films in the Indian cinema history here in Vienna during the last 3 years, I somehow grew rather fond of him. Sharp tongues might say I got brainwashed. But I really do like Akshay in comedies. Such hai.














2) The story has enough potential to make for an delightfully entertaining evening. Pyaar. Suspense. Masti. Probably crazy stunts and SpecialFX. Spicy enough for a well rounded Masala fair.

3) Vidya Balan. Finally in a more traditional get up again. In Jyotika´s role from Chandramukhi. Maybe that will make me forget her Heyy Babyy performance.

4) The soundtrack rocks. Love the title track. And Akshay´s swami get up.

Still there are some risky points.

Amisha Patel. No comment. Shiney Ahuja. He has yet to repeat his great performance from Hazaron Khwaishein Aisi, hai naa? Don´t have much hope for it here too. Bhool Bhulayia is a Priyadarshan comedy. And it has been a while since he delivered too..














So all in all, you can count me in for a first day show. If only for Akshay and Vidya in the climax dance.

got a problem. solved it. you live with it. bas.

I started to write a preview of Bhool Bhulayia. And then stopped. Kyu? Bear with me for another short ramble.
Just because I did not blog for the last weeks/month(s) does not mean I did not surf the net and read up on my daily dose of filmi news bits. One of my favorite sites doing that and a daily stop-over is PFC. I love reading their posts and comments, but some of the guys (certain special dear darlings excluded) posting/commenting there are way too intimidating for me. So apart from my not having the guts of posting comments there, it went even so far that I started to question my kind of postings here. But today when I started writing the afore-mentionend Bhool post, I stopped, thought about it and then came to the very healthy conclusion that I don´t care. And that I really shouldn´t.
This is my blog. I like it the way it is. You read it. If you like it, read more. If you think I´m just a white chick who should better zip it, your bad. If you think it´s too mainstreamy, same accounts. My, anyway not too small, self-esteem is back up. I ´ll continue to do my thing. My way. [/end ramble]

Restart. Even I can recognize a sign when I hear it

What does yesterdays "the Police" concert in Vienna have to do with the end of my blogging hiatus?

Ketan Anand. Stuttgart. And Ehsaan Noorani. An early phone interview this morning.... Kya? What is she talking about?

Ok, let me start at the beginning. I came home from Stuttgart in July and despite being super motivated by meeting all the great people I did there and having the time of my life, I just had to take a break from posting. I had a great summer. Workload at office was ok, Eros started screening their movies (Partner, My Father Gandhi, Heyy Babyy) at release-time in a Multiplex here, Birgit came home from India and there were rumours of a big Bollywood production shooting from September in Austria. But I just did not feel like blogging. So I decided that if things got even more relaxed I would start again..
Well the last 3 weeks have been hell, workwise and with so much happening here in Vienna, so I thought I might take a little more time off.
And then we went to the Police concert yesterday. You know the Sting, Steward Copeland, Synchronicity, Every Breath You Take - kind of Police. A concert I´ve been waiting to attend since 1983 (!) The guys came on stage. And I remembered an anecdote Ketan Anand told us in Stuttgart.
Sometime during the Eighties the Police were in Mumbai and staying at the Anand´s house on the beach in Juhu. The day the guys were supposed to leave, Steward Copeland (the drummer) decided that he just had to take a camel ride on the beach. To make a short story even shorter, an idea that sounded harmless (just like a LOT of ideas do when certain substances are involved in the idea-finding process) turned out to be just the opposite since the camel took off with him for hours and they almost missed their plane...
What ever. All of a sudden a Bollywood connection was even there (Especially since the guy standing in front of me at the concert was smoking weed LOL)
Then this morning I had a phone interview scheduled with Ehsaan of Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy for the German Bollywood magazine I sometimes write for and when I called instead of the usual ringing sound "don´t stand so close to me" by Police was playing. And as it turned out Ehsaan Noorani is a huge Police fan.
If this is no sign then what is, hai naa? I had a perfect reason to start blogging again.

So I´m back. This time for good. Workload is still hell, but maybe that is another perfect reason to write anyway.