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Inviting applications from any young person who has lost an immediate family member in a terrorist attack.Project Common Bond in the U.S. is looking for you to participate in an 8-day camp in July 2012 ( between the 12th and 20th). Tuesday's Children will be held just outside Boston and is an opportunity for victims to share in collective healing. If you are reading this and are eligible, PLEASE send in your contact details immediately in the Comments space.
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This appeared in Bombay Times today....
Money down the tube….?

When one watches seriously awful movies that go all over the place without going anywhere, it hurts! I watched ‘Housefull-2’ at a reasonably packed multiplex, and was both bewildered and astonished. Why bewildered? Because I actually heard a few people laughing! That too at some of the most ludicrous scenes, like a particularly nasty one in which Mithun Chakraborthy is shown running around a tree with an English maid. Nothing wrong with it…. except that the maid is played by a dwarf. And the offensive ‘joke’ revolves around her physical stature. Surely, as senior an actor as Mithun, could have refused to enact such an insensitive scene? There are enough obligatory messages that assure audiences no animals have been harmed during the shoot, and that cigarette smoking is injurious to health. What about somebody objecting to the cruel projection of people with physical problems. There were several distasteful jibes which are blatantly racist /sexist. Like referring to a dark complexioned man as a negro and implying his wife had slept with a fair complexioned chap to produce their son( Shreyas Talpade).Most of the humour is off-colour and far-from-funny. It’s the vulgar cracks in our movies that need better monitoring. Cracks, that display our deep rooted prejudices so brazenly. Of course, the four over age and over grown ‘boys’ in the film have done their best with the lousy material and put in spirited performances despite the complete absence of any logic or even basic decency. Take the ‘painfully’ long drawn out sequence involving an alligator biting Riteish’s bottom and a python going for Shreyas’s crotch .The absurd movie hurtles along on nothing more than koila gags. In all probability, it will be declared a huge hit. Which will provide the green signal to make Housefull-3. Aaaaargh!
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Finally managed to catch up with Agent Vinod three weeks after its launch. And once again, I was bewildered and amused, but for entirely different reasons.Why had this slick and stylish film been savaged and dismissed? There wasn’t a single dull or clumsy moment and the pace was breathless. Saif retained his positioning as one of the most sophisticated stars in Bollywood, with a witty, tongue-in-cheek performance in the best traditions of international spy thrillers. Who looks for a linear, credible storyline in projects like this? How plausible was Mission Impossible? Apart from Kareena’s saucy nautch girl number, with its overt lesbian moves, everything else in this ambitious film worked brilliantly. Particularly, Saif’s perfectly pitched gay scene with Freddy Khambatta, the prancing airline purser. Most importantly,one can actually see where the big bucks went in ‘Agent Vinod’.The extravagantly shot Karachi wedding sequence was pure eye candy. Still puzzled why the movie has been banned in Pakistan – are our neighbours on an over-active guilt trip??
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But the movie to watch out for is a modest, high concept, small budget quickie titled, ‘Vicky Donor’. I can’t wait to see a film about a professional sperm donor which has the tagline, “Every drop counts…”