Completely missed this – apparently little Shirley Temple turned 80 a couple of days ago! Via the Bright Lights blog, here’s an excerpt from Graham Greene’s controversial review of the Temple-starrer Wee Willie Winkie from 1937:Infancy is her dis…

Kalpen Modi told a story on Conan O’Brien last night about a drunken brown guy who was angry because everyone now calls him Coo-mahr. Penn pointed out that was better than being called Uh-poo. That was his shout-out, and his exculpation.
Like Letterman with Aishwarya, Conan seemed to treat Penn with kid gloves, not knowing […]

[Guitar Hero developer] Harmonix… was so enamored with the “Sitar Hero” parody poster (with Apu playing a 60-button sitar controller) that they asked for 20 copies. [Link]
Please note that Sitar Hero is considerably more difficult than Guitar Hero. And the wah-wah doesn’t come from a pedal. It’s some kid paid in chai and sonf.
Here’s another […]

Actor Debargo Sanyal recently filmed an ad campaign for hot food bars at Holiday Inn Express. The Office-style ads make fun of cringeworthy, late-night bar behavior. In one spot, four women leer over his waiter character:

In another, he plays a gay man making fun of his coworkers’ ineffectual flirting (watch: WMV, Quicktime). Watch for his […]

Columbia sociology prof. Sudhir Venkatesh, author of Gang Leader for a Day, went on Colbert last night for a silly interview in which he denied ever popping a cap in someone’s ass. ‘I’m a pacifist,’ he said. But he acknowledged he once had to have someone beaten. Columbia grad students beware.
(watch on their site)
Earlier […]

The character Chick Pea in the new Cartoon Network show Chop Socky Chooks is a chicken with sharpened steel fans and a bindi. It’s by Aardman, home of Wallace & Gromit. Presumably she winks at the dragon lady stereotype rather than playing to it.

Shashi Tharoor shilled his parody of Tom Friedman on Colbert last night with his admirable mop and his plummy laugh. Did he run for UN chief or prep school headmaster? Handled Colbert well, though.

Our ‘Hillary’s Dubya moment‘ post was apparently shown on CNN last night around 7pm ET (thanks, El SD and RC):

… it was on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. The voiceover called it …with her gaffe being called by some blogs as ‘Hillary’s Dubya Moment.’ Then there was a quick zoom shot of that post… […]

The Daily Show’s Jason Jones gave Starbucks free publicity for its nationwide shutdown and visited a desi-owned deli to buy coffee. He overlayed a random wedding shehnai soundtrack, unlikely to be playing at a place of business, then headed out to Times Square to make fun of a Sikh gentleman’s lack of English fluency. This […]

Both the Daily Show and the Colbert Report addressed the Obama turban smear last night, but I don’t see the humor in this Colbert clip — unless pairing ‘Obama’ and ‘terrorist’ is intrinsically funny. His coda on the line-lifting nontroversy was better.

At tonight’s Dem debate, Obama made the obvious point that Dubya has already pivoted toward his policy of targeted terrorist assassinations in Pakistan:

Clinton: … last summer [Obama] basically threatened to bomb Pakistan, which I don’t think was a particularly wise position to take. I have long advocated a much tougher approach to Musharraf and to […]

Courtesy of Vikash Yadav, via SM

From tonight’s Dem debate, still a carefully hedged non-denial by Hillary Clinton on the Obama turban smear:

Brian Williams: … Matt Drudge on his website said it came from a source inside the Clinton campaign. Can you say unequivocally here tonight it did not?
Hillary Clinton: Well, so far as I know, […]

At tonight’s Dem debate, Hillary Clinton was questioned about Russian president Vladimir Putin’s successor Dmitry Medvedev:

Tim Russert: Do you know his name?
Clinton: [Nonplussed] Med… Med…
Russert: Medvedev.
Clinton: Med-ve-duh-vuh. Whatever.
Dubya in ‘99:

“Can you name the general who is in charge of Pakistan?” Hiller asked, inquiring about Gen. Pervaiz Musharraf, who seized control of the country October 12.
“Wait, […]

The only reason I’m watching this show is Jon Stewart. Just sayin’. But he’s doing cheesy Jay Leno-style one-liners and exhorting people to vote Dem this election.
Diablo Cody (Juno screenwriter) looks delish with a red starburst on her right cheek. Jon Stewart says she went from exotic dancer to Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, and ‘How do […]

When The Simpsons tackled outsourcing in ‘Kiss Kiss Bangalore,’ the only segment on YouTube at the time was the Bollywood-style dance scene at the end. But Srini’s posted a condensed version of the full segment:

It’s got the whole enchilada — Middle Eastern music confused with South Asian, Homer as a Thuggee, non-desi voice actors reading […]

Update: Here’s the CNN interview.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer ran an interview with Bobby Jindal today keying off conservative douchebag Rush Limbaugh’s claim that Jindal should be McCain’s preferred veep, and is potentially yet another Ronald Reagan. I had somehow escaped actually hearing Jindal speak until today. Despite being diametrically opposed to his social conservatism, hard line […]

Stephen Colbert played a clip from Superman ripoff Dariya Dil on last night’s show, and for a brief, shining moment, Govinda, Kimi Katkar and Aarey Milk Colony shimmered on America’s screen:

These days, they can outsource any American job to India. Look what they did to Superman. You thought Superman 4 was bad.

The Diana-ization of Benazir Bhutto continued last night with a credulous Jon Stewart offering her U.S. spokesman free rein to rewrite her as a saint of democracy:

(watch it on their site)
Mark Siegel is counting on Americans’ ignorance of Pakistan to gloss over the fact that the kleptocrat oligarch backed jihadis to the hilt when she […]

Paromita Vohra, filmmaker, screenwriter and friend, gave me a mild scolding in Mumbai the other day, the context being that reviewers are not paying adequate attention to independent/alternative cinema and instead going on about the new developments (o…

Cambridger and The Office star Vera ‘Mindy’ Chokalingam made the cover of the Improper Bostonian’s Valentine’s issue this week, pithy as always: