Margaritas & miaows

Dinner and a movie

Went on hot dates with husband this weekend – Saturday night, we got all dressed up and by dressed up we mean sniffed matching orange polo-t-shirts to make sure they are not too unclean, sprayed on lots of deo, ran the lint brush once through jeans to wipe away 30% cat-hair… because it never ever really leaves you, you know (ask Stupendous, she once took back cat hair to delhi on clothes she hadn’t even worn in Bombay) and stepped out of the apartment with a chapatti-egg-roll for the road.

Destination: TAXI…. Yes, we went to a restuarant called TAXi, no we were not taking mode of transportation called TAXI.

TAXI is housed in a beautiful ancient building called Jony Castle on Wodehouse road (if it has now been named after some arbit maharashtrian son of the soil, I will have to check with the BEST that haunts that route – they are the only ones that know the new names). It has these gorgeous high high, I think 12feet high ceilings in teak. And it had stucco finished walls (on closer examination of my architectural knowledge, it turns out that I don’t exactly know what stucco is, but it sounds like what the walls look).

And pretentious art: Left wall – twin graphic paintings – right hand painting has a embroyonic baby in multi-coloured womb, which is floating on a galaxy far far away, depicted by stars which woosh into left hand painting with benevolent smily-face sun overlooking all this. I name it Divine Intervention.
Pretentious art on right wall: Blue people on red backgrounds with little whirly triangle at their feet. I do belive, their value would have appreciated if it wasn’t a dry day.

The appetizer we ordered was golden fried Brie – with strawberry-brandy compote – which was deeliciux – but the strawberry compote could have done with more brandy.
Entrees – I ordered Moussaka of garden roasted veg with a pesto & husband asked for a Balinese curry with lemon rice.
My moussaka was disappointing – I have had lamb moussake and expected something similar – instead it was more like paneer shashlik with red&yelw peppers – why do pretentious restaurants atleast expand to other pretensious veggies like zuccini and eggplant – both veggies I love grilled and never make at chez nous, since I don’t have a grill pan (which reminds me, have to tell cousin what kind of grill pan I need).

Husband’s Baliniese curry was as expected coconutty with a nice star-anisey flavour and loaded with veggies. The Lemon rice was also nice – though of course,
Husband: (in whiny tone): This is not Balinese enough
Me: And what exactly do you mean by Balinese?
Husband: Well, isn’t Bali in Tahiti???
Me: !!!!!!!!!!!! It’s lucky you were not appointed to be the suicide bomber at the Marriot in Bali. You would have really bothered some bare-breasted women and Marlon Brando’s love-children.
(asif Husband seems to know what Polynesian food should be like, because apparently before it was India Jones, the right-hand basement of the Oberoi hotels was the Outrigger)

Sunday morning, Husband dashed out to indulge me in more decadences – I had yuummmy samosa-pav for brekkers (I say, if it is not an hour that I would normally be awake, like 9.30am on a Sunday morning, the calories don’t count).

Then, we poor misguided fools who believe everything the posters tell us, went to see the Diwali super-hit GARAM MASALA.
Oooooooooh, very bad. Saw it at INOX – this horrendous, over-priced, over-staffed multiplex with silver sun metal etchings. Oh, oh – also, very over-loud and over-bassed.
Ok, now this movie has no plot, so we shall take it scenebyscene:
Openeing Scene: So, the movie starts with John & Akkibaby taking pictures of east-european bimbettes in very scanty clothing for a magazine called GARAM MASALA. (Now if I ever saw a magazine named that, I would request that it be put right next to those sleazy magazines that pretend to be trade rags like Lace&Lingerie – has anyone ever seen that magazine at the western railway platforms?? I don’t think they seel this lace&lingerie anywhere else – why would a trade magazine be available on western railway platforms?)
The Garam Masala title song is playing in back-ground this whole time.

Scene2: Neha Dhupia is sexy secretary with glasses who both men, photographers at magazine Garam-Masala, take out on date. Their wallets are pick-pocketed and they trip old waiter over three times trying to sneak away and then stick the sexy secretary with bill.

Scene3: There is some photography contest, which John wins by stealing some negatives of old photographer fallen o hard times, willing to sell prize-winning picture negative to John. The magazine wins 1crore as award. (What is this the Nobel prize in photography???) The magazine generously send John away to America for 1 month free holiday. Neha Dhupia the sexy secretary gets very excited by all this and bursts into very badly lipsynched song in garish red beaded corset and cheap garish red skirt. Akkibaby is very upset that his assistant won and tears sexy secretary skirt mid-song, but it doesn’t matter because Neha Dhupia has never been bothered much by things called clothing earlier, why would she start now????

Scene4: Akkibaby is very upset, so generous manager gives him idea of dating 3 air-hostesses who had different schedules. For this, he manages to get himself a very, very orange apartment – he is the house-sitter, in a very implausible mini-scene by some Indian who thinks Akkibaby has an innocent face. Comedy-injector- Rajpal Yadav, playing alcoholic garage mechanic gets him a cook – Paresh Raval who is Uncle Mambo. Oh, oh, btw – Rimmiii Sen is patient really really dumn doctor-fiancee who never does any doctoring but keeps popping up in white coat over khadi-salwarkameez and stetescope and unwashed sad face.

Scenes 5: Akkibaby does set-up of 3 very big-assed air-hostesses who hopefully will never ever be repated in another movie.

Scene 6-7: I spaced out – maybe there is a loud inane song

Scene 8: John Abraham returns and tries to muscle in on the whole girl-musical-chair-action. One, finally one funny scene where he flatters Uncle Mambo by saying his age must be 30-35.
Paresh Raval responds saying: well, if u take out Sundays and public holidays, yes it would be close to that.

Scenes 9 – 12: Inane, loud songs with return of the east European women in skimpy clothes and really really bad sets. Loud garish songs interspersed with scenes involiving 3 shrieky air-hostesses.

Scene finally close to the end: Akki realizes mistakes, goes to get aggrieved fiancée from air-port and escapes from wisened up big-assed shreiky air-hostesses.

What really worried me about this movie is whether Virasaat and Hera-Pheri are more true to type, or is this the real Priyadarshan – husband highly recommends they have flexi-pricing according to movie reviews, because I figured that was 75%cost of a bottle of Bacardi (90%at Pinky Wines) totally down the drain. Sigh!!!!

posted by Nish @ 8:06 AM