I subscribed to HBO intending to watch both In Treatment and the critically acclaimed Boardwalk Empire. Sadly, it didn’t take long for the labored, and ultimately flat, Boardwalk Empire to lose my interest. No such thing happened with In Treatment, which engaged me right into its third season’s final episodes. To the point where, this… Read More In Treatment: the work they did together.
Diversity on television is sort of my “issue.” Anyone who regularly reads my column in WEEKLY, The Soapbox, has gotten an eyeful, on more than one occasion, of how all I want is to see more representation of America’s melting pot culture. I’ve often said that those of us who want to see ourselves reflected… Read More Desis In Treatment
Earlier this year, when the initial promos for NBC’s half-hour comedy, Outsourced, began circulating, I cringed. Rife with racial stereotypes, relying on juvenile humor, I just knew “here there be unfunny.” Having watched the full premiere last night, that opinion has only strengthened. This show left a seriously bad taste in my mouth. Affable white… Read More Outsourced is outrageously unpalatable
1975’s Sholay, an homage to American spaghetti westerns, is a fan favorite cult film in India for many reasons — Gabbar Singh’s classic one-liners, the Amitabh Bachchan/Dharmendra bromance — but the one I always come back to is “Mehbooba Mehbooba.” Sung by Rahul Dev Burman, who does the most amazing things with his voice, and brought to… Read More The face that launched a thousand hips
I read some positive reviews of Neesha Meminger’s Shine, Coconut Moon last year on a few book blogs, so when I recently found it at the New York Public Library, I decided to give it a shot. The novel is a post-9/11 coming-of-age tale about Samar “Sam” Ahluwahlia, whose entire life changes when, just a… Read More Shine, Coconut Moon, by Neesha Meminger
Dharma Productions’ new release I Hate Luv Storys vexed me from the get-go because the title is misspelled. My shields went up, and I automatically assumed the film was going to be just cringe-inducing and cutesy as the title…which I quickly realized was kind of the point. I enjoy it when Bollywood does movies about Bollywood —… Read More I Hate Luv Storys…except when I’m ambivalent about them.
A scant month after Andrea Miller’s “humorous” ‘How to Date An Indian’ piece in The Huffington Post comes another oh-so-funny offering: comedian Joel Stein’s My Own Private India in the July 5 issue of Time magazine online, which discusses the Indianization of Edison, N.J. I think there’s a very real problem in media today, if respected publications… Read More Stein’s own private joke is no laughing matter
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