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| Jennifer Love Hewitt: |
A big, fat, lazy cat with a wit that?s legendary ? that?s Garfield to all his fans. He?s not your regular, friendly pet. Garfield is a feline with oodles of attitude and a sarcastic tongue that?ll scorch anyone silly enough to not give him what he wants. And now, the orange cat has moved from comic strip to big screen.
Garfield: The Movie is out in INOX and 89 Cinemas this Friday. The only animated creature in the film is the cat, with Bill Murray?s voice. The rest of the characters are all real, including Odie the dog. When Jon Arbuckle (Breckin Meyer) takes his pet to vet Liz, played by Jennifer Love Hewitt, she turns his, and Garfield?s life around. Hewitt (who has a dog named Mia as a pet in reality) gives them Odie.
Played by a brother-sister pair of dogs ? the sister was the talented one, doing all the fancy tricks while the brother was used for the close-ups, according to Garfield creator Jim Davis, who was very involved in the film-making process ? Odie changes both their lives. Jon loves the dancing, prancing dog, Garfield finds Odie, well, odious.
But then, the little pooch is kidnapped and Garfield suffers very uncharacteristic pangs of guilt and, in a very-unGarfield-like way, lifts himself from in front of the TV, forgets his favourite lasagne, and sets out to find the dog. With the help of a mouse and his girlfriend.
Although reviewers haven?t been going ga ga over the film, the kids are sure to enjoy the show.
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| Meera: New babe on the block |
It?s cross-border harmony through cinema again. First Fuzon and Strings took the Indian airwaves by storm. Then Shashi Ranjan?s Dobara saw Pakistan superstar Muammar Rana coming up with a brilliant cameo. And now, Mahesh Bhatt has cast Meera, the gorgeous Pakistani actress, as the lead in wife Soni Razdan?s directorial debut Nazar, also starring Ashmit Patel and Koel Purie.
Even before her images have hit the small or the big screen, she is being labelled by the media as the Aishwarya Rai of Pakistan. In fact, some scribes went on to ask her during the Nazar shoot on whether there is space for two Aishwaryas in this country.
Meera?s reply was short and sweet. She said that although being compared to Aishwarya is a measure of the respect and love for her, she definitely wants to be known as Meera and by no other name in India. Now whether Meera can do an Ash, only time will tell?
CNBC is back with Young Turks, only this time they are younger.
The show had started off in 2000 wanting to script new success stories. ?There is a whole lot of young successful people who are the essence of New India. We want to introduce them,? says Menaka Doshi, chief of bureau, Mumbai, CNBC-TV 18. In its earlier avatar, the show had featured the likes of A.R. Rahman, Falguni Pathak, Manish Malhotra and Jyotiraditya Scindia.
But now the age limit has been lowered to 35. ?It is an inspirational and aspirational series and with the tech boom, lots of entrepreneurs are making it young,? says correspondent Tania Bhardwaj. Thus Alok Kejriwal of contest2win.com shares his dotcom dreams while Aparna Piramal of the Piramal Group reveals her plans.
The channel plans to feature people from diverse backgrounds. This Thursday at 10.30 pm, for instance, it will be Shiraz Minwalla, one of the youngest faculty members at Harvard University and a string theory expert. But Young Turks is not a sit-down chat show. ?We shoot them at work in their home or busy with their hobby,? smiles Bhardwaj. Thus if the physics professor is gulping down bhelpuri on camera then Aparna Piramal is riding a horse and Rahul Malhotra of Procter & Gamble plays with his band Parikrama at the nightclub Not Just Jazz By the Way.
Though Delhi and Mumbai are the regular venues, there are plans to come to Calcutta as well. Till then, Shiraz Minwalla, engaged to a Bengali girl here, remains the show?s closest local connection.
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If you?re into the latest international music, the desi avatars of MTV and Channel V may be quite disappointing with their Bollywood focus. But later at night, when the prime-time viewer supposedly falls asleep, out comes the international fare.
There?s nothing more exciting than rapper Eminem?s latest offering, Just Lose It. Controversial as ever, this time Eminem has angered Michael Jackson himself with his spoof on the ?king of pop?. In the video, Eminem makes fun of Jackson?s alleged child molestation, his plastic surgery as well as an incident of his hair catching fire during a commercial shoot.
There?s a dig at Madonna, too (with Eminem dressing up like her and sporting the trademark conical bras, which blow up), but it was Jackson who took grave offence. One scene shows Eminem-Jackson searching for his nose on a crowded dance floor, while another shows him sitting on a bed with kids jumping behind him. Terming the video ?outrageous and disrespectful?, Jackson felt Eminem was being demeaning and insensitive, and even asked music networks to pull it off air. Understandably, very few did.
