My Minor Encounter With the Stars

I was cleaning up some of my picture files tonight and found this--it's from SALTAF 2008 in Washington DC (and not the greatest quality, mostly because I was too excited to take a non-shaky picture).

I'd been planning on going to SALTAF (the South Asian Literature and Theatre Arts Festival) for months prior to the actual weekend of the event, but I got a bit of a late start that morning and that combined with some nasty weather made me more inclined to want to just stay in my nice warm bed rather than trudge downtown to the Smithsonian.  In a bit of an effort to motivate myself to wake up I checked the website for the event again, as a sort of "Melissa!  Get off your ass and get out the door!" gesture.  And it's a damn good thing I did, because they'd updated their guest list overnight with some last-minute arrivals.  The first was Sooni Taraporevala, who is one of my all-time favorite screenwriters and who would be there to premiere her new film "Little Zizou."

The second was Boman Irani.  Boman Freaking Irani!  I don't have words to express how much I love that man.  Love love love.  He was flying in with Sooni to take questions about the film (which he starred in).

If there's anything that'll get me out of bed, showered, dressed, and onto a packed metro train at 7am, it's the prospect of meeting Boman Irani.  So off I went--and here he is, looking dapper and awesome in the only picture I took that came even remotely close to being decent.

Boman Irani, center, and Sooni Taraporevala, left.

Song of the Day--Zara Jhoom Jhoom (Tom Dick and Harry)

It's, uh, been about a month since I posted here.  I've got a ton of half-written posts lingering on my dashboard that I'm not quite ready to finish yet, so this post is mostly just me sending up an "I'm still alive!" flare from my island of unproductiveness.  (Shut up Firefox and your little squiggly red lines, "unproductiveness" is totally a word.)

I think this post is as good a time as any to insert an important caveat about my Song of the Day posts:  just because I call something my Song of the Day does not mean I think it's good.  I mean obviously I find the songs tolerable or I wouldn't have taken the time to seek out a decent vid of them, but this song is case in point.  Four or five years ago I thought this song was, like, totally badass.  "Look at those dancers!  They're wearing leather!  There are girls.  On motorcycles.  This is soooo MTV.  I am cool by virtue of listening to this song.  Himesh just really likes hats guys--I'm sure he has a full head of hair under there.  He just wears hats for street cred.  DUH."

Now I watch this video and sort of cringe a bit.  You probably do to.

But let's not lie:  in secret we're all totally jamming to this song.  ;)

Conan O'Brien Does India

This is pretty much my new favorite thing.  It's an extended version of Conan's Amex ad, shot in India and it's beautiful.  I think I've watched it about twenty times tonight and still crack up when he starts gossiping with the women doing their laundry.  Check it out.

Sridevi--My Top 5

Another belated Sridevipalooza post!  I amassed a pretty decent number of vids during Sridevi Week and thought I'd organize a few and do my own little Sridevi countdown.  What would your top 5 Sridevi videos be?  Here are mine...

(A drumroll would be appropriate here I think...)

#5

Dhak Dhak Jiya Kare (Joshilay)

#4

Tandav Dance (Chandni)

#3

Main Tere Dushman (Nagina)

#2
Morni Baagha Maa (Lamhe)

#1

Mere Hatoon Mein (Chandni)

Jelena Karleusa, or "The Reverse Pritam"

Every once in a while I like to take the opportunity to take a little jab at Pritam.  Bless his crazy beard, I love him, but he's got a pretty well-known track record when it comes to writing "totally original, I swear!" music that sounds, note for note, like stuff previously recorded by other groups.  He notably stole half of the Jab We Met soundtrack from an Indonesian rock band, thinking that audiences in India would never make the connection.

Well.  Imagine my surprise when I discovered (and by discovered I mean "joined what are surely many many other people in learning") that Pritam has a bit of competition in the "composer of dubious originality" award.

Ladies and Gentlemen, meet Jelena Karleusa (seen here in the most modest picture of her that exists on the internet).  Karleusa is a Serbian pop star who has been nicknamed "the Queen of Lust."  I can't tell you a lot about her music because that would require me to watch more of her videos than the one I'm about to show you, and frankly I don't think I've done anything in my life to deserve having to go through that torture.  Suffice it to say that she dabbles in the pop/rock arena and seems to exist mostly as a silicon-stuffed sex symbol.

In 2010 she had a big hit with a little song called "Insomnia."  The video was one of the most viewed of the year on Youtube, and featured a strange little Alan Cumming lookalike.  Here, take a listen:

Sound familiar?  Wondering where you've heard that song before?  Ah yes...you heard it here:

That's "Dance Pe Chance" from the hit film "Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi."  But this time, rather than an Indian music director ripping off an international musician, an international musician ripped off an Indian music director.  Namely the team of Salim-Sulaiman.  "Dance Pe Chance" came out first, and is the original.  When I first noticed this, the only information I could find online were some accusations posted under Youtube videos and on somewhat obscure Serbian pop forums.  As Karleuse's song grew in popularity this line appeared in her Wikipedia entry:

"Jelena's last song, 'Insomnia', featuring Mirza Hamzić, was downloadeded 1.5 million times from her website, just a day after its official premiere on the final night of the famous reality show Big Brother. 'Insomnia' also took the third place on the world list of most viewed videos on youtube, with over 4.000.000 views for 2 weeks. The song is a makeover of the Bollywood mega hit sang by Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (RNBDJ) - Dance Pe Chance. Jelena's PR confirmed that the copyrights were bought from the original author, and that plagiarism accusations are false."

This is the only "official" acknowledgement of the similarity between the songs. I've yet to find a website or forum which didn't quote that sourceless assertion as proof that Karleusa didn't plagiarize "Dance Pe Chance." The scant liner notes of the album which features "Insomnia" give no credit to Salim-Sulaiman.

I'm going to go ahead and call this one what it is: outright plagiarism.

At least it wasn't Pritam again.