Word: prem
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...favorite scene in Slumdog Millionaire comes toward the end, in the tense battle of wits between the supercilious game-show host, Prem, and the hero, Jamal. Prem expects Jamal to lose, and when he doesn't, assumes that he's cheating. Once Prem realizes that a kid from the slums might win - fairly - he angrily tosses him off to a waiting police van. "It's my show," he says. In two tight shots, with just a few lines of dialogue, the film manages to capture the ambivalence and, sometimes, anger that Indians often direct at those who don't stick...
...Watching the arc of Slumdog Millionaire's reception in India - it has moved speedily from obscurity to minor phenom to backlash to major phenom and now backlash again - I thought of all those indignant Indians denouncing the film as real-life versions of Prem the game-show host. India spent several years, and millions of dollars, promoting the story of "Incredible India," a shiny new world of prosperity, innovation and opportunity. That world certainly exists for millions of Indians, and for a while it was nice to believe that the lucky inhabitants of "rising India" would somehow lift...
Tiptoe Through the Tulips. O.K., it may not be tulip season quite yet, but OpenSkies has a special on fares from JFK to Amsterdam in Prem+ class (i.e., almost-business class, with 52 inches of legroom, and a 140-degree seat recline) for just $1,000 round-trip, inclusive of all taxes and fees. It's a good deal, considering that fares are usually around $1,700 to $2,000. Book...
...problem with Nightmare in Bangkok, and books like it, is that it is hard to sympathize with the narrator. Botts, who is eventually transferred to a U.S. prison and granted parole after spending less than five years at Klong Prem, is not a lovable rogue but a thief and heroin trafficker, and his time behind bars prompts little self-reflection. Seeming to sense this, he closes the book with a lame attempt to recast his dismal life as a parable about overcoming addiction, with the suggestion that he should never have been jailed. I agree with him that criminalizing drug...
...Klong Prem's reputation as one of the world's most productive writer-in-residence programs looks set to flourish. One current inmate said to be writing his story is suspected arms dealer Viktor Bout. One that I hope will do the same is Harry Nicolaides, an Australian arrested for supposedly insulting Thailand's crown prince in a self-published novel called Verisimilitude that sold only seven copies. Already famous for turning criminals into writers, is Thailand now turning writers into criminals? Now that's worth writing a book about...