|
|
 Not
so candid are we!: Was it love at first sight with Bipasha
Basu? It was pretty instantaneous, admitted Dino. I was
reminded of a talk-show incident involving Ms Basu some
months back. When she came to record for Rendezvous With
Simi Garewal, Bipasha simply refused to talk about her
current boyfriend.
****
|
Flavour
of the month |
Public
monkey deserves to be whipped?: The problem is, when you don’t
have an impressive body of work to your credit, what do you talk
about for half an hour? This week the two most newsworthy personalities
on television were Kaizad Gustad and the wannabe Miss World -
Tanushree Dutta. Gustad for all the wrong reasons, got widely
discussed, dissected and finally demolished on the media.
It
was like an instant-replay of the Salman Khan accident. As far
as the electronic media was concerned, Kaizad was guilty as hell.
Even the generally dispassionate NDTV tried to get Javed Jaffry
to bitch about Kaizad on Mumbai Live. Jaffrey remained
courageously noncommittal. He refused to do the fashionable thing.
Instead of damning Kaizad (noticed how Kaizad’s unknown assistant
got his moment of fame by telling all the channels how disgusted
he was with his boss’ behaviour?) Jaffrey said he was as
"good or bad" as any director on the sets.
****
News
channels or drama queens: But hang on! What were the teevee
channels up to? Playing impromptu shrinks? Trying to discover
skeletons from the persecuted (and finally prosecuted) director’s
cupboard? NDTV even flew off to visit the poor dead girl’s
family in London. We were shown home-sweet-home pictures on the
wail….and I mean wail, since grief was the final goal for
the journey into televised tragedy.
Beauty
versus news |
Tragic
in its own right was the anticipation built around Miss India's
possible victory at the Miss World contest. Aaj Tak even trudged
down for a live telecast of Tanushree’s parents’ reactions
in Jamshedpur. It was a full-throttle soap opera out there with
neighbours of the beauty queen clamouring to break down her parents'
privacy….or so we were told. On camera, I couldn’t see
much activity happening.
"Please
ask the parents if they’ll set the alarm for 5 am when the
pageant starts," counselled the Aaj Tak correspondent in
the studio to his colleague in Jamshedpur. "Of course we’ll
set the alarm. But I don’t think our neighbours will let
us sleep tonight."
Sheesh!:
‘ Riotous’ indignation, what? Channel V has me splits….every
time they start, I wanna split. Last week I saw a very young veejay
interviewing a very young pop singer named Tara, who didn’t
seem to know the difference between flirtatiousness and fatuousness.
So he tried a blend of both. When the singer said she wanted to
marry someone who loved dogs, the veejay pipped in, "Damn,
I don’t like dogs. But I can start?"
All
in a day's work! |
Canine
please pass on to Saaksshi, where I must admit I’m
getting mighty confused with the goings-on. There’re some
very self important men dressed to kill—in more ways than
one—who constantly bully the heroine into shooting guns,
confronting terrorists and making herself "useful to society"—whatever
that means. At home Saaksshi’s mom bullies her into eating,
staying home and stop being a busybody.
If
Saaksshi is a soap about women’s emancipation, I’m
somehow missing the point. Or maybe we need to look at the larger
picture—whatever it may be.
The soap scene shows no signs of slipping out of Ekta Kapoor’s
clever hands. And those who think she’s slipping up had better
watch the growing popularity of Kesar, her new afternoon
soap on Star.
