Hamare zamane mein ladki patana national occupation nahin tha. Boys girls ko stalk karte the, aur pyaar ho jata tha. But these days boys are having trouble pataoing girls, especially since stalking is no longer an activity they can engage in without a trip to the local thana. Hamare alert TV channels sensed a business opportunity here and first engaged Ashmit Patel and now Kashmera Shah, promising girls ki barsaat.

Kya samajhte hain yeh serial walle? Do they think that whatever c**p they dish out, that too one tiny, cr**** droplet per evening, people will just gather around their TV sets and savour it? Unfortunately, they are right.
Kisi bhi serial ko dekh lo. If you watch one episode today, where a bahu announces that she is going to take a dump, you could return to that serial six months later and the bahu would still not have reached the toilet, because the whole house and all distant relatives would be engaged in heated discussions about why exactly bahu is going to do potty now, in the afternoon!

Sometimes, when you have zero expectations from a film and it manages to surprise you, it’s a delightful feeling. Married 2 America is not entirely in the “delights you” category, though it hangs about nearby. With a little more imaginative and skilful direction, a title that made sense and lead actors with at least a hint of gravitas, Dilip Shankar’s film could have been delightful company.

Ekk Deewana Tha is being marketed as an A.R. Rahman and Javed Akhtar musical. But this film’s music is the sort that is often referred to by annoying scoffers to challenge Mr Rahman’s genius before delivering a lecture about how repetitive he is, and how limited his repertoire; and Mr Akhtar’s lyrics are the sort that make you want to sit at Gulzar’s feet and never, ever leave. So, the music in this musical ain’t really happening.

Hai, finally! Thanks Godji that you have sent us some half-decent serials. Ab tak toh our TV people had been behaving as if the only dress known to Bharatiya nari is ghaghra-choli and the only language known to ladies is of tears and quivering lips.

IF ONE were seriously into affirmative action and given to asinine political correctness, one could take a lenient, benign view of this D-grade atrocity called Valentine’s Night. But one is not and life is too short and money is hard to earn.
On paper, the story of Valentine’s Night may have seemed mildly interesting to its directors and producers, but what's on screen is a criminal offence.

Romcom, or romantic comedy, is a lazy, loathsome tag, but it’s come to stay because certain films defy explanation. They just have to be categorised and dismissed. In the broadest sense then, Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu is a romcom, but it rewrites the rules of the game of love and does so with such cleverness, care and wry mournfulness that it makes you bleat with joy.
Ek Main... is not a parody. It’s just very modern and with serious street cred.

Agneepath was always about sons and fathers. Amitabh Bachchan, under the guidance of Mukul Anand, strode determinedly to the incantation of his real father Harivansh Rai Bachchan’s poem, to extract revenge for his reel dad. This time too it’s about fathers and sons. But besides the screen Vijay Dinanath Chauhan avenging his dad, there’s an added dimension about Karan Johar and his father Yash Johar.

Salman Rushdie, taking to a TV channel from London on Tuesday evening, was calm, even belligerent. He said the fact that he was allowed to interact with authors and readers at a literary festival “is much worse than censorship, because it comes with a threat of violence. It’s tyranny”.

As a gesture of defiance, a panel discussion was held later with writer Javed Akhtar, Rahul Bose, journalist Tarun Tejpal, and two members of the Rajasthan Muslim Forum — Salim Engineer, national secretary of the Jamaat-e-Islami, and Mohammed Hasan, an academic and activist.