Providence Invests $640m in Aditya Birla Telecom

Providence Equity Partners is investing $640 million in Indian wireless communications company Aditya Birla Telecom. Providence’s investment, which is one of the largest private equity investments in India, will be used to fund the network rollout and ongoing operations of Aditya Birla Telecom. Aditya Birla Telecom owns the telecom UAS license for the Bihar service […]

Indiana Jones…Crystal Skull – Ain’t No Magic Here

The fedora is there. And for sure, there’s Harrison Ford beneath the fedora. Yes, Steven Spielberg is there again – calling the shots behind the camera as director, as he was for the previous three Indiana Jones movies. But the magic just ain’t there in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which […]

Tamil Nadu Bhavan – A New York Rat Hole

Update: Tamil Nadu Bhavan Re-opened by NYC Health Dept Our earliest memories of South Indian restaurants are of dark and dingy interiors, food served in dirty plates or banana leaves and water poured into tall tumblers by sweat-drenched waiters in the dusty small towns and cities of Tamil Nadu in South India. Four decades and […]

Ultimate Shame for Indian Cinema

May 18, 2008 will forever remain a dark day in Indian cinema. After all, this is the day when Indian cinema made an ass of itself on the world stage. If reports are correct, today is the market screening of that Tamil horror show Billa at the Cannes Film Festival. No one in his right […]

Before the Rains – Nandita Das, Rahul Bose Disappoint

Before the Rains Language: English Year: May 2008 Actors: Rahul Bose, Nandita Das, Linus Roache, Jennifer Ehle Director: Santosh Sivan Producer: Mark Burton Music: Mark Kilian Screenplay: Cathy Rabin When bimbos like Kareena Kapoor and Nayantara or buffoons like Abhishek Bachchan and Ajith Kumar show even a faint spark of acting talent, we are startled. […]

Bhoothnath – Box Office Disaster

Bhoothnath is a disaster at the U.S. box office. This crap of a movie grossed a pitiful $330,246 in its opening weekend (May 9-11, 2008) in the U.S. Eros Entertainment was the distributor for Bhoothnath in the U.S. It’s no surprise that Bhoothnath was a damp squib at the box office here. As SearchIndia.com wrote […]