Berlin-based Khan of Finland never fails to hit the G-spot with his dirty, sweet tunes, that mix deep lets-all-love-each-other Chicago house with naughty electro beats. His new single Candy Love, for his forthcoming album plays with the idea of a polysexual sweetheart, a Joseph Fritzl swanning over Angela Merkel. A Lil Kim who tastes just like candy, blown back into the neon 80s, and serenaded by a vampyrish Khan. The creepy-sexy Candygirl video was produced by Italian artists Miro Mastropasqua and Onze. For downloading the track, check out
Cookie-cutter versions of New York’s Sex & the City might be exciting fare for the Russians, but not for the geekier Belarussians, who go for more underground fare. Their choice is perfectly befitting a country that’s so frozen in Soviet time that it’s become a cult destination among a certain jetset. Why copy Desperate Housewives, The Office, Prison Break, when you can recreate HBO’s Big Bang Theory.
Most of you might not have heard about the series, but it’s a brilliant homage to geekdom, hitting so close to home it makes me twitchy. (I studied theoretical physics at Caltech for a year!) Already into its third season, Big Bang Theory ranks with Curb Your Enthusiasm and Breaking Bad as one of my favorite TV shows. Featuring four geeks, comic books, hardcore video games, one Jewish mother, one ditsy blond, and enough arcane science references to boggle a Bill Gates, watching the show feels like reading a comic version of Scientific American. You can gloat over their social ineptness and sexless lives, while feeling smart and brain-boosted at the same time. It’s a perfect antidote to a mindless night at Shooters picking up teenie boppers!
Scientists are sexy in America these days cos many of them go on to found multi-million dollar tech startups. In Belarussia, in contrast, they’ve always been sexy. During the Soviet era, scientists were the empire’s elite, powering its high-tech race against the United States. With Belarus a mini-replica of the Soviet Union—a statue of the KGB founder still graces one of its main squares—it’s no surprise that they chose Big Bang over Prison Break. (The latter would hit too close to home, given all the opposition leaders behind bars!)
Their version is called Theorists (lame!) and follows similar plot lines, with the geeks stumbling around wooing the blond waitress when not holed up in a Soviet flat playing video games, or doing time at the lab. Their names are the same, and there’s even an Indian character, Raj, as in the American series. However, the horny, Jewish scientist Howard is replaced by his older uncle. Ha! And, Natasha, like all good Belarussian babes, seems to prefer older men, bemoaning at one point why an older, richer scientist hasn’t noticed her. For that, we’ll take Minsk over Pasadena.
Like most of you, I had thought that the Taliban had a monopoly on gore films from the region, until I stumbled upon Islamabad-based Omar Ali Khan’s masterful ‘Zibahkhana’, Pakistan’s first horror film. Released in 1997, the landmark pulp flick is a Taliban-version of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, with a burqa-clad wearing serial killer chasing down five city slickers lost in the woods on their way to a rock concert. Set to Pakistani rock & dark, Bollywoodesque overtures, the slaughterhouse debut uses Pakistani’s already-creepy backgrounds and Jihadist cast of characters, and throws buckets of blood upon them, with body parts—courtesy of Lahore’s butcher shops—flying in every direction meanwhile. Think of all those Taliban videos of women being beaten for adultery, and children lopping off men’s heads, and then imagine those characters doused in blood & chasing terrified teens through a forest, similar in feel to those wild border regions where US drones drop bombs to snuff out Al-Qaeda operatives, and you get the picture.
Check out the trailer for the film here
Interestingly enough, the film’s 45 year old eloquent director, Omar Ali Khan, who studied in the States, runs a cult ice-cream parlor (inspired by an independent ice-cream outlet in Boston) in Islamabad called “Hotspot”. I-Scream, huh! Their innocuous ice-cream parlor is also a high temple to horror: it publishes its own horror magazine, Scream, and funds Omar Ali’s slaughterhouse ventures. Its entire interior is also postered wall to wall with cult B-film posters, and the soundtrack you bet would give even Freddie Kruger a sweet tooth. You can check out their brilliant website (http://www.thehotspotonline.com/hotspot/main.htm), which is also a trove of information on subcontinental horror/pulp/trash and other genres.
Thanks to Bangalorean writer Achal Prabhala for having turned me onto Lollywood horror.
