| |
Eyecatchers
Top gun
 |
| Jennifer
Lopez in The Cell |
He's a post-Shekhar-Kapur-and-Manoj-Shyamalan
phenomenon. India-born director Tarsem Singh's
The Cell raked in $25 million in its first week in the US, and
is expected to earn $125 million worldwide. "I don't apologise for
the film," he says, when quizzed about the stomach-churning scenes
in this story of a psychotherapist (Jennifer Lopez) who enters
the mind of a comatose serial killer. Singh has been in the news before.
He won the Best Video Award at the 1991 MTV Music Awards for R.E.M.'s
Losing My Religion. The Oscars, now?
Talking
head
 |
| The
latest Canadian-Indian beauty queen |
If it isn't
a Miss India, it's a Miss India-Canada. After the success of Ruby Bhatia
and Kamal Sidhu, Komila Jagtiani is
the latest Canadian-Indian beauty queen to talk her way into the desi
music channel world. The new veejay at V, whose parents migrated from
Mumbai when she was just eight, is a trained western dancer who used to
perform professionally in Canada. Veejaying, says the 20-year-old, "is
like having fun at work and getting paid for it". But there's more
to her than just her on-the-job chatter. Jagtiani's dream is to be a successful
criminal lawyer; she also wants "to be known as great western dancer";
she may also try out films. Ambition or confusion? What do you call that?
Fancy
That!
 |
| Raja
Reddy, Birju Maharaj
and Geeta Chandran |
Eating healthy
is old hat now. Heard of dancing healthy? The classical way? At a press
meet in Delhi last week for the MTNL Perfect Health Mela 2000, dancers
Raja Reddy (Kuchipudi), Birju Maharaj
(Kathak) and Geeta Chandran (Bharatnatyam)
explained how Indian classical dance is great exercise. The organisers
hope they'll do it again for the public at the fair in October. Says Reddy,
who did a demo for the journalists: "We (his two dancer wives and
he) never get colds or headaches because we exercise our eyes, eyebrows,
lips, every limb of the body. Dance gives full blood circulation and keeps
the senses in control." Think of aerobics in fancy dress!
Cho Show
 |
| Cho
Ramaswamy |
It's been
a long break. Political commentator and Tamil playwright Cho
Ramaswamy has returned to the stage after eight years with
his plays When Integrity Goes to Sleep and Judgement Reserved.
Both are satires written about two decades back, so he can't resist this
off-stage dig: "Thank our politicians for keeping them relevant even
today." Not one to reserve his judgements.
Compiled
by Anna M.M. Vetticad
Top
|
|
Is
the market right in backing cartelisation by cement companies, asks India
Today Associate Editor V. Shankar Aiyar in Au ContrAiyar 
