(Read the Kuruvi Review here)

Vijay’s new movie Kuruvi is releasing on May 2 in the U.S.

Directed by Dharani and produced by Udhayanidhi Stalin and LSS Sathyan, Kuruvi also features Trisha Krishnan, Suman and Vivek.

Vijay’s last movie Azhagiya Tamil Magan was a horrendous piece of trash. Let’s hope Kuruvi is better.

Here are the showtimes for Kuruvi in the U.S.:

Bay Area - San Jose

Century Berryessa 10
1171 North Capitol Ave
San Jose, CA 95132

May 08 |  4:00 PM | 8:00 PM
May 09 |  6:00 PM | 9:30 PM
May 10 | 11:30 AM | 3:00 PM | 6:30 PM | 10:00 PM
May 11 | 11:30 AM | 3:00 PM | 6:30 PM | 10:00 PM
May 12 |  4:00 PM | 8:00 PM
May 13 |  4:00 PM | 8:00 PM
May 14 |  4:00 PM | 8:00 PM
May 15 |  4:00 PM | 8:00 PM

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Falls Church - Virginia

Loehmann Twin Cinemas
7291 Arlington Blvd
Falls Church, VA 22042

May 09 | 9:15 PM
May 10 | 3:15 PM | 6:15 PM | 9:15 PM
May 11 | 3:15 PM | 6:15 PM | 9:15 PM
May 12 | 7:30 PM
May 13 | 7:30 PM

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Tashan has fared badly at the U.S. box office with one of the poorest openings for a Bollywood movie in recent months.

Starring Akshay Kumar, Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor, Tashan comes from Yash Raj Films.

For the opening weekend (April 25-27, 2008), Tashan came in at No-24 with a gross of $301,226.

Average gross per theater for Tashan, which opened in 75 theaters, was $4,016.

Tashan did better than Aaja Nachle in opening gross but worse than Continue Reading…

Having conquered the world’s markets, China’s countless millions have now embarked on a new mission - to master the English language, the global language of art and commerce.

The New Yorker has an interesting piece on the Chinese’ obsession with English in the latest issue:

China has been in the grip of “English fever,” as the phenomenon is known in Chinese, for more than a decade. A vast national appetite has elevated English to something more than a language: it is not simply a tool but a defining measure of life’s potential. China today is divided by class, opportunity, and power, but one of its few unifying beliefs—something shared by waiters, politicians, intellectuals, tycoons—is the power of English. Every college freshman must meet a minimal level of English comprehension, and it’s the only foreign language tested. English has become an ideology, a force strong enough to remake your résumé, attract a spouse, or catapult you out of a village. Linguists estimate the number of Chinese now studying or speaking English at between two hundred million and three hundred and fifty million, a figure that’s on the order of the population of the United States. English private schools, study gadgets, and high-priced tutors vie for pieces of that market. The largest English school system, New Oriental, is traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

Having watched the relentless determination of the Chinese Continue Reading…

For the sake of the honor of Tamil Nadu and 77 million Tamils worldwide, we hope that the reports of Ajith’s Billa being screened on May 10 at the Cannes Film Festival turn out to be false.

Featuring the two non-actors Ajith and Nayantara, Ajith’s Billa (the remake of the old Billa starring Rajinikanth) is one of the ugliest Tamil movies we’ve seen in several decades.

As if watching Ajith’s Billa was not bad enough, now comes the horrifying news that this horror show is going to be showcased at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival.

All these years, we thought the Cannes Film Festival was the occasion to showcase high-art not serve as a bastion of low-fart.

Upon hearing of the Ajith’s Billa-for-Cannes report, we were reminded of what the British author Theodore Dalrymple wrote in the book Our Culture, What’s Left of It:

To be a man of artistic taste now requires that you have no standards at all to be violated: which, as Ortega y Gasset said, is the beginning of barbarism.

When there are far better movies like Mozhi and Sathum Podaathay, it’s an affront to all notions of fair play to send garbage like Billa to an international film festival. It’s like awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to monsters like Continue Reading…

(Tashan Fares Miserably at U.S. Box Office) 

Even the inmates in the asylum or a tramp on the Mumbai streets would have made a better movie than this Friday’s Bollywood release Tashan.

What in the heck were the bozos at Yash Raj thinking when they unleashed a trashy movie like Tashan!

Utterly bereft of anything worthwhile and an ugly amalgam of bad logic, rotten story, pitiful acting, ordinary photography and ear-damaging music, Tashan is a complete horror show, the likes of which have not been seen in Bollywood in a long, long time.

And the architect of this monumental disaster is Vijay Krishna Acharya, who takes credit (it should really be discredit) for Tashan’s story, screenplay, dialogs and direction.

Even after making movies for over eight decades, the cavalcade of Bollywood idiots has yet to realize that story, screenplay, dialogs and direction are separate departments requiring the full-time attention of separate people. 

This clown Vijay Krishna Acharya has penned a story so bizarrely bad that it’ll surely be Continue Reading…

If Gayathri Sreekanth undertakes her ophthalmological work with the same callous carelessness as her shoddy biography of Tamil film star Rajinikanth (The Name is Rajinikanth), there must be a lot of unfortunate souls moving about in Chennai with blurred vision, or worse, without any vision.

Besides being a pathetic attempt at hagiography, almost every page in the book The Name is Rajinikanth is riddled with spelling errors, grammatical errors, factual errors or arguments that are sheer nonsense.

As every page in this so-called biography amply attests, Gayathri Sreekanth is a literary bimbette who has no more than a passing acquaintance with the English language. If the task of writing in English was too heavy a cross for this dolt to bear, she should have stuck to Tamil and got the book translated.

Great biographies by authors like Carl Sandburg (Abraham Lincoln), William Manchester (Winston Churchill) and David McCullough (Harry Truman) firmly set their subjects in an age and then weave a fine tale that brings both the age and the individual to life.

Neither Rajinikanth nor his milieu, be it the superstar’s early days in Bangalore, his later years in neighboring Chennai or the Tamil movie industry, come to life Continue Reading…

Bollywood film Tashan from Yash Raj Films starring Akshay Kumar, Anil Kapoor, Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor is set to release this week across the U.S. and Canada.

Here are some of the U.S. and Canada showtimes for Tashan:

Tashan Showtimes in USA - Read the Review

New York

New York City

The Imaginasian
239 East 59th St
New York, NY 10022

May 01 | 12:00 PM | 3:15 PM | 6:40 PM | 10:00 PM
May 02 | 12:00 PM | 3:15 PM | 6:30 PM |  9:50 PM
May 03 | 12:00 PM | 3:15 PM | 6:30 PM |  9:50 PM
May 04 | 12:00 PM | 3:15 PM | 6:30 PM |  9:50 PM
May 05 |   3:00 PM | 6:15 PM | 9:30 PM
May 06 |   3:00 PM | 6:15 PM | 9:30 PM
May 07 |   3:00 PM | 9:30 PM
May 08 |   2:30 PM | 9:45 PM

Long Island

Farmingdale Multiplex
1001 Broad Hollow Road
Farmingdale, NY 11735

May 01 | 12:15 PM| 3:40 PM| 7:05 PM| 10:20 PM
May 02 |  3:40 PM| 7:00 PM|10:15 PM
May 03 |  3:40 PM| 7:00 PM|10:15 PM
May 04 |  3:40 PM| 7:00 PM|10:15 PM
May 05 |  3:40 PM| 7:00 PM|10:15 PM
May 06 |  3:40 PM| 7:00 PM|10:15 PM
May 07 |  3:40 PM| 7:00 PM|10:15 PM
May 08 |  3:40 PM| 7:00 PM|10:15 PM

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Edison, NJ

AMC Loews New Brunswick 18
17 Route 1 Raritan Heights
New Brunswick, NJ 08902

May 01 |   1:35 PM | 5:05 PM | 9:00 PM
May 02 | 10:20 AM | 1:35 PM | 5:05 PM | 9:00 PM
May 03 | 10:20 AM | 1:35 PM | 5:05 PM | 9:00 PM
May 04 | 10:20 AM | 1:35 PM | 5:05 PM | 9:00 PM
May 05 |   1:35 PM | 5:05 PM | 9:00 PM
May 06 |   1:35 PM | 5:05 PM | 9:00 PM
May 07 |   5:05 PM | 9:00 PM
May 08 |   1:35 PM | 5:05 PM | 9:00 PM

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San Jose, Bay Area

Century San Jose 25
1694 Saratoga Avenue
San Jose, CA 95129 Continue Reading…

U Me Aur Hum, Ajay Devgan’s ugly copy of the fine Hollywood flick The Notebook, has crashed at the U.S. box office in its second week (Please click here for U Me Aur Hum opening weekend gross collection data.)

For the April 18-20 weekend, gross collections for U Me Aur Hum fell 73.3% to $171,503.

Besides starring in U Me Aur Hum, Ajay Devgan also directed and produced this mediocre movie.

In the overall ranking at the U.S. box office, U Me Aur Hum slipped to #29 for the second weekend from #19 for the opening weekend. Total gross for U Me Aur Hum amounted to $903,680.

Overall, U Me Aur Hum has not fared well at the U.S. box office compared to some recent Bollywood films. Neither has Krazzy 4, which has done much worse.

Eros was the distributor for both U Me Aur Hum and Krazzy 4 in the U.S.

Take a look at how some recent Bollywood films fared in the second weekend at the U.S. box office:

Movie                    2nd Weekend Gross   Down From Opening Weekend

Om Shanti Om                  $756,342                   - 57.1%
Jodhaa Akbar                   $702,120                   - 46%
Race                              $241,938                   - 69.8%
U Me Aur Hum                  $171,503                   - 73.3%
Saawariya                       $150,208                   - 72.3%
Krazzy 4                          $68,248                     - 78.8%

We’ve heard of Low Carb Diet, South Beach Diet, Low Fat Diet, Atkins Diet, Low Sodium Diet, Vegetarian Diet and a variety of other diets.

Penis Diet, what the heck is that? Sounds like what some desperate pornographers would be peddling in junk e-mail. You know, the kind that arrives uninvited in your inbox with headers like Add four-inches to your…, Surprise Your Girlfriend and the like.

But Penis Diet is not the desperate attempt of an e-mail marketer to fleece you out of your money. 

Penis Diet is actually what two U.S. doctors have come up with for men who are not quite convinced that drugs like Viagra are the best way to achieve an erection.

Penis Diet is also the name of a 75-page book co-authored by the two doctors Damon Z. Cozamanis, D.C. and Marc D. Grobman, D.O., F.A.C.P.

Since we were utterly flummoxed by the Penis Diet, we called one of the authors of the book Dr.Grobman and interviewed him about this new Diet.

According to Dr.Grobman, the Penis Diet Continue Reading…

Desi film producer and financier Deepak Nayar has launched a global digital entertainment studio and online creative community called Filmaka for aspiring filmmakers.

Deepak Nayar is the producer of English movies with Indian themes like Bend It Like Beckham, Bride & Prejudice and The Mistress of Spices.

Here’s Filmaka’s mission in its own words:

Filmaka is committed to inspiring, celebrating, and rewarding creativity and talent by providing professional opportunities for undiscovered filmmakers and writers from all corners of the world through a variety of competitions that are juried by industry leaders.

To be announced on April 28, the winner of the first Continue Reading…

The landmark political fact of our time is the replacement of our middle-class republic by a plutocracy.

- Thomas Frank, author of What’s the Matter with Kansas? 

Source: Wall Street Journal, April 21, 2008 P. A17

Mumbai’s cattle cars a.k.a. commuter trains have killed over 20,000 people in the last five years, according to local railway officials in this teeming metropolis.

Worse than the Nazi era cattle cars, Mumbai’s commuter trains carry seven million people everyday with people clinging on to the sides and many sitting precariously atop the train during rush hour because there’s just no space inside the train.

These killer trains take the lives of at least 10 people a day, railway officials say.

And you whine that the New York subway is dirty and dangerous.