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22-28 May, 2012
small world
Twilight clones
After Zombies, Attack of the Vampires
Aastha Atray Banan

MUMBAI ~ First Bollywood abandoned the tried and tested chudail formula for a more new-age ghoul fit for the big screen— the zombie. And now, they are bringing in vampires as well. Film producer Sidhartha Jain of iRock Media, who is behind the zombie movie Shaadi of the Dead, starring Abhay Deol, wants to be the man responsible for India’s first vampire movie.

“We want to make high concept movies for the youth. When we did our research, we realised that zombie and vampire movies, along with adult comedies, were hits with the youth all over the world. Such movies also have the possibility of becoming a franchise. So we worked for two years to make a script that wasn’t just a rip-off of a Hollywood movie.”

Bloody Veer, which Jain says should hit screens early 2013, is a coming-of-age film about a young boy who is grappling with the idea of being a vampire—and one in love.

However, it was the Ramsay brothers who first brought the vampire to India as early as in 1988, with Veerana, and then Bandh Darwaza in 1990 (which had a Dracula-like vampire who slept in a coffin by day, and transformed into a bat at night to hunt humans). Now, Jain may even have competition from director Satish Kaushik, with rumours doing the rounds that he’s making a vampire movie based on Shantanu Dhar’s book The Company RED. Last year, even Star One latched on to the Twilight phenomenon and launched its show about a romance between a vampire and a mortal, Pyaar Kii Ye Ek Kahaani, which ended in December 2011.
Jain, though, is sure that his movie will be very different. “The Ramsay aesthetic was very different. Ours is a Wake Up Sid-meets-vampire angle,” laughs Jain.

The first-look poster shows a pale-skinned guy and a tagline that says ‘half vampire, fully screwed’. Rumours suggest that Ranbir Kapoor, Imran Khan and Prateik Babbar are being considered for the role of the gorgeous blood-thirsty monster. But Jain has rubbished this and says he is looking for a new face. All we can hope is our desi vampire is as desirable as Edward Cullen. And the heroine is not nearly as irritating as Bella Swan.

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Take Two
The Seedy Sting
Madhavankutty Pillai

To club India TV with journalism is a joke. Journalism, for all its faults, is an exercise in truth. India TV is a channel that has been roundly identified with reincarnations, ghosts, magical mountains, haunted police stations, Rakhi Sawant and anything bizarre which will make a rural farmer’s jaw drop. For some time now, it has also been acting as a PR agent for Baba Ramdev. Watch the imperious demeanour of the man on the channel and you feel as if he owns it.

To such a channel, which would in a sane society go under the tag of ‘seedy’, the ethics of a sting operation wouldn’t be anything to worry about. But sting journalism is an ethically dark-grey area. At the very least, it needs to be exercised with some thought about the merits of doing it. If Amar Singh can do a sting, and if CNN-IBN can do a sting, there must be a difference in motivation, intent, the limits to which they would go and, above all, whether it is virtuous, a quality not in fashion anywhere nowadays.

The present IPL sting is without any virtue. It targets the weak and gullible. It uses volume play by approaching three dozen targets in the hope that five will be stained. Even News of the World—another paragon of seedy journalism—went about its sting on Pakistani players in a better way. The NOTW reporter portrayed himself as a man wanting to be involved in a criminal activity and was then offered an expose of an already existing  racket. The India TV reporters went as a sports management company offering a legitimate business deal and then baited young cricketers. They were creating a criminal enterprise where none existed. They were essentially doing a morality test on cricketers. And what gives anyone the right to do that? Especially India TV?

All such travesties are done in the name of the greater common good. Look around and there are a thousand better stings to do. The public good in ridding the IPL of cricketers of weak character would be somewhere at the very bottom.

After all, it is a game run by a private club where the teams are the toys of the rich who themselves are trading corruption charges against each other.

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Grandeur
Bullet Train Bug Bites Bangalore
Anil Budur Lulla

It hasn’t even completed the metro rail network in Bangalore yet, but that has not stopping the Karnataka government from making bigger plans. Now it wants the Bullet train. Murugesh Nirani, the state’s industries minister, said during a road show—held in Japan to promote a Global Investors’ Meet in Bangalore—that the Japanese want to invest in high speed rail connectivity a la Japan’s Shinkansen or Bullet Train network. The Indian Railways has sought feasibility studies for a nation-wide Bullet Train project, including one along the Chennai-Bangalore-Mysore route, but Nirani hastened to add that the government’s involvement would only be for acquiring land for laying rails. The state is exploring two high-speed rail projects connecting Bangalore with Belgaum along the existing National Highway 4 and another rail project linking Bangalore with Gulbarga, a north Karnataka town 600 km from the state capital, on the PPP model.

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Smart Talk
Women on Call
Aanchal Bansal

Gender stereotypes and differences have crept into the virtual world of smartphones and mobile apps too. According to a recent Nielsen survey on the behaviour of smartphone users in India, women talk and chat more than men. While both men and women spend roughly the same time, about 81 hours a month, on their smartphones, women spend three hours more than men making phone calls. They also spend about four times the amount of time that men spend on texting and instant messaging services using WhatsApp, Google Talk and Nimbuzz.

While the survey has noted that users in India spend about 40 per cent of their smartphone time on data-centric activities, men spend about 50 per cent more time web browsing as compared to women, who stick to social networking sites. Women also lag men in downloading apps—only 11 apps compared to about 16 apps downloaded per month by men. However, another gender stereotype is reiterated by the survey, which found that men access Google Maps more than women do—men hate pulling aside and asking for directions.

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22-28 May, 2012