Girls will be girls

Life in small-town America is not always the most exciting of prospects. But Star Hollow, Connecticut, is a picture-perfect place, with friendly, if a little nosy, neighbours and there are enough good-looking girls and guys to spice things up. That’s where Gilmore Girls comes in.

They look more like sisters than mother and daughter, but 30-year-old Lorelai (Lauren Graham, picture right) and 16-year-old Rory (Alexis Bledel) Gilmore are hardly the conventional parent-child combination. Pregnant as a teenager, the headstrong Lorelai decides to raise the baby, cutting off her traditional parents. Rory is a good student and gets accepted at a prestigious school, so Lorelai turns to her parents for financial help.

Now she runs the quaint Independence Inn in Star Hollow, with the help of her loveable cook Sookie (Melissa McCarthy) and arrogant concierge Michel Gerard (Yanic Truesdale). Then there’s the staid but charming and handsome coffee-shop owner Luke Danes (Scott Patterson) and, of course, the local well-meaning gossip Miss Patty (Liz Torres), among others. And so the two Gilmore girls go through the ups and downs of life, getting into more scrapes than most.

Catch the drama series, which has enough comic moments to keep the laughter flowing, on Zee English, on Tuesdays, at 9 pm. This week’s episode features a guest appearance by the 80s band The Bangles (maybe Walk Like an Egyptian will jog your memory).

Eyes wide shut

Daryl Hannah: Back in shape

Daryl Hannah shouldn’t forgive Quentin Tarantino. In the revenge epic Kill Bill, Pai Mei (Gordon Liu) plucked out one of her beautiful blue eyes and the Bride (Uma Thurman) took care of the other. But when the credits roll at the end – as they are doing now after every morning show at INOX-Forum — there was a big question mark below the name of Elle Driver/California Mountain Snake (Hannah by two names). So, if there is a sequel to QT’s gory rampage, she is sure to return to spit more venom — even if it is with eyes wide shut.

On the real front, Hannah is doing a whole lot of good, though. She visited Jonesboro in Arkansas for a special fundraiser fashion show helping the Cardiology Foundation raise more than $ 40,000. She is, in fact, using her celebrity status to turn attention to the issue of heart disease, saying it’s the number one killer of women in the US. The event also featured four dresses from the world's top fashion designers.

And if you thought Hannah looked a touch too flabby in Kill Bill, well, she is trying to burn the extra kilos by… learning to pole-dance. That will stand her in good stead when she appears in the film Silver City, set against the backdrop of a mythic New West, co-starring the likes of Chris Cooper, Richard Dreyfuss and Billy Zane. Hannah will also feature in a film entitled Lucky 13, the story of a 13-year-old boy who tries to reconcile the strained relationship between his father and grandfather.

India abroad

Prime cine-viewing addresses in London, San Francisco and New York will turn to a piece of Bollywood in September. An Indian Film Festival is being organised in these cities by Sahara India Pariwar, as part of its Bharat Parva celebration, being taken abroad for the first time. The film fare includes Sholay, Mother India, Mughal-e-Azam, Chalti ka Naam Gadi, Bombay and Lagaan. Each film will be preceded by a half-hour screening, Bharat Ma. “The show is based on patriotic songs like Vande Mataram and a Hindi rendition of Dhana Dhanye Pushpe Bhara. The picturisation features all the big names of Bollywood like Amitabh Bachchan, Aishwariya Rai, Rani Mukherjee, Shah Rukh Khan, Karishma Kapoor and Salman Khan,” says the company’s corporate communications head Abhijit Sarkar, from London.

The action begins with Sholay on August 31, at the UCI Empire Leicester Square, London. A champagne reception attended by local celebrities — confirmations have come from the Hindujas, the Mittals and Lord Swraj Paul — will kick things off in style. Passes are flying thick and fast as prizes for contests on the films broadcast on the local Sunrise Radio. “People are mimicking Gabbar Singh to ask for Sholay passes,” Sarkar laughs. The twin stars at New York will be Meera Nair and the 80x100 ft screen (the biggest in the US) at Sony Loews IMAX.

Still on the patriotic note but closer home, the production wing of Sahara India is busy with its mega venture, Netaji: The Last Hero, directed by Shyam Benegal, which is nearing release.

Seventies revisited

Mila Kunis

The era of Led Zeppelin eight-tracks, bell-bottoms and Farrah Fawcett posters is back again with the all-new season of That ’70s Show, that started on Star World this Monday. While the episodes may be new, the characters remain the same all right. There’s the ever-popular 18-year-old Eric Forman (Topher Grace), who is a touch too cool for the Wisconsin suburbs where he lives under the authority of his parents Red (Kurtwood Smith) and Kitty (Debra Jo Rupp).

Piling on his problems are Eric’s ex-fiancee and next-door neighbour Donna (Laura Prepon), and her father Bob (Don Stark), who has a penchant for permed hair and gold medallions. Eric and Donna have some very interesting friends for company, though. There’s “the good-looking but gullible guy” Kelso (Ashton Kutcher), who wants to become an astronaut or a male model. Hyde (Danny Masterson) is a conspiracy theorist who thinks Xerox will take over the world. There’s also Jackie (Mila Kunis), a peppy cheerleader who wants to be a globetrotting stewardess and Fez (Wilmer Valderrama), a foreign exchange student who’s soaking up American culture like a sponge.

The last season ended with high school graduation and the new season focuses on the guys and girls opening the next chapter of their lives.

So, catch the new episodes of That ’70s Show, every Monday at 8 pm, to watch Eric and Donna work on their relationship while attending community college. This sixth season continues to feature the signature elements that made the series a hit, including the surreal dream sequences, the 360-degree basement scenes and the classic ’70s score.