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With a name like Prince, you’d expect the movie to have at least a decent opening at the box office.
Alas, the Vivek Oberoi starring movie Prince has been a total disaster at the U.S. box office.
Here’s how badly Prince has fared at the U.S. box office compared to a few prominent Bollywood films:
Related Stories:
Prince Review – Desi Gaand Identity; Not Junk
One of the finest novels we’ve read in a long time, Chris Cleave’s Little Bee is an unputdownable work of heartrending sadness.
What happens when the paths of two young black sisters, their pursuing bunch of crazed oil rebels and a young White tourist couple from UK collide on a Nigerian beach?
A lot, actually. Enough to fit 266 pages of a paperback!
Set in the idyllic suburbs of London and partly in the antipodean lawless corner of Nigeria, Little Bee is the moving story of our young eponymous Nigerian asylum-seeker in the UK and Sarah, an adulterous middle class woman working as a magazine editor in London.
The book has two narrators, the 16-year-old Black girl Little Bee and the 30-year-old White woman Sarah, each taking turns to talk to us in alternating chapters.
If the brief encounter of Sarah and Little Bee on the edges of an African jungle turns out to be unforgettable, the longer second meeting in the London suburb happens under no less trying circumstances.
Chris Cleave has woven such a fine portrait of both characters that it’s hard to say whose story is the more touching.
Is it Little Bee’s, whose placid life in the village is changed forever after oil is discovered in the area and soon after suffers the loss of her parents and sister Nkiruka (she was the kind of girl that could make a man forget his troubles) at the hands of the cruel oil rebels. The short passage of her sister Nkiruka’s violent end is very painful and haunting, a reminder of the recurring tragedies in parts of the world where violence is often the norm and peace an aberration.
Or is the more touching profile Sarah’s, whose life takes a turn for the worse after the ill-fated Nigerian vacation to save her crumbling marriage only ends up in a bloody disaster on the desolate beach.
Cleave is a fine storyteller, weaving magic with his vivid description of the circumstances of the two women and their surroundings.
Here are a few nice paragraphs from the book to whet your appetite. Continue reading »
All of us have regretted some decision or the other badly enough.
Say like watching a Bollywood film featuring Abhishek Bachchan or worse a Kollywood movie with Ajith in the lead.
Or saying No when Aishwarya Rai begged you to marry her (high hopes, eh). 
In our case, one of the egregiously bad moves we made lately was to drop anchor the other day at Rajbhog Cherry Hill near the Swaminarayan Temple.
We were famished and our eyes lit up at the sight of the South Indian buffet poster in the glass window of Rajbhog Cherry Hill.
Alas, little did we know the cruel ordeal that lay ahead of us.
From the disposable plastic plates to the dry Idlis, drier Vegetable Idlis to the hard Utappam and tasteless Medhu Vada to the sweets cut in a gazillion pieces, Rajbhog Cherry Hill repeatedly screams trashy, lousy, worthless Indian restaurant.
In several decades of feasting gorging on Idlis, never has such a horrible, revolting impostor encountered our taste-buds.
Instead of being soft, Rajbhog’s Plain Idlis tasted as if they had been run through a heavy-duty clothes dryer, twice. The top portion of the Idlis were peeling off like a bad paint job.
Ugly to taste, they were uglier to behold with their hard edges and a yellow tinge on the top. Plain awful.
Ditto for the awful Vegetable Idlis (strangely, they were sliced into pieces), which came with onion and cilantro seasoning.
Medhu Vadas, a favorite of South Indians, was a flavorless abomination smelling of engine oil. Way too crisp and brittle, the Medhu Vada easily crumbled in our hands before we could dip it into the Sambar.
Rajbhog Cherry Hill – Serves Awful South Indian Food
(File Photo)
Talking of Sambar, if the bilge that Rajbhog Cherry Hill serves is Sambar then our name is Barack Obama and our address is 1600 Pennsylvania Ave in Washington DC. Ha ha ha.
A watery Dal with a few onion pieces and red chili powder floating on top, that’s Rajbhog’s Sambar for you. A disgusting con-job, if you ask us.
As with most Indian restaurants in the NJ/NY area, the Coconut Chutney at Rajbhog Cherry Hill was cold suggesting it was not freshly prepared. Thank God for that flavorful Tomato Chutney. Continue reading »
It’s around 8:30PM here on the East Coast on a Friday evening.
Hell, we’re already half-way through our first glass of White Russian and listening to Usher’s new song OMG from the album Raymond v. Raymond.
So what if the critics don’t like it.
Who gives a f*ck.
We like the song mucho. We do.
Swoon-worthy fare, folks.
You bet!
We bought the song ($1.29) on iTunes a few days back.
And we liked it so much that a few moments ago we purchased the music video ($1.99) as well.
Was this our first music video purchase? We can’t say for sure since we’re, ahem, floating a bit but most likely it is.
Here’s an excerpt for all ye schumcks:
oh myyyy
oh myy gosh
i did it again, so i’m gone let the beat drop
oh myy gosh[usher]:
baby let me..
baby let me..
baby let me..[chorus]:
baby let me love you downnn
there’s so many ways to love ya
baby i can break you downnn
there’s so many ways to love ya
i mean like, ooh myy gosh i’m soo in love
i found you finallyy, it make me want to say
oh, oh , oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
ohh myy gosh
We’ve already watched the OMG music video twice. Continue reading »
No, we’re no great fans of Vivek Oberoi.
Nor for that matter fans of any of Ash’s male friends, past (Vivek or Salman) or present (Abhishek).
But Prince is not total crap like Akshay Kumar’s De Dana Dan or Kambhakkht Ishq.
Au contraire, think of Prince as the Desi Bourne Gaand Identity, albeit a lengthy, unedited one (2-hrs 15-mts).
Low Expectations
After being repeatedly subjected to the Akshay Kumar brand of Bollywood garbage on the screen, these days we are happy if a Hindi movie doesn’t turn out to be total trash.
Call it the Bollywood Law of Low Expectations.
That’s the only way to maintain your sanity after sitting through these nonsensical films.
Action+Weird Story
Prince (directed by Kookie V Gulati with the story and screenplay by Shiraz Ahmed) is an action movie with a weird story underpinning it.
That kinda makes for an ‘interesting’ combination, albeit one that can come only from Bollywood.
Vivek Oberoi plays the eponymous Prince, a legendary thief, who can pull off seemingly impossible heists a la Abhishek Bachchan pulls off crap when he walks or talks.
After a major plunder of diamonds, our Prince wakes up in Durban, South Africa with a loss of memory.
Now, don’t laugh guys. This is not the Ghajini kind of memory loss stolen shit.
This is the ‘memory loss’ from a director/story writer who likely watched the Hollywood action thriller Bourne Identity one too many times and followed it up with Iron Man and Batman a couple of times.
Since it’s Bollywood ishstyle Bourne Identity, memory loss, fast chases and all quickly turns into Gaand Identity even as our hero sophomorically mumbles It’s show time each time he attempts an impossible stunt. Continue reading »
(Via iPhone)
Intermission time now.
Prince, Maya 1, Maya 2, Maya 3 …..
God, how many Mayas?
All Mayas love Prince!
Related Stories:
Prince Review – Desi Gaand identity; Not Junk
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