HI Again,

By now every person who has access to a TV or the Internet would have heard about the split between HRH Prince William and his girlfriend Kate Middleton.


Without official statements from Clarence House (William’s official residence) or from Kate’s family, I would have classified it as just another tabloid editor trying to sell some extra papers. However Prime Minister Blair has now commented (during one of the chat shows that he is so fond of attending) that the people should “leave the two of them alone, now that they have broken up. But don’t believe the reasons the papers give you,” he added helpfully, “they usually get the reasons all wrong”.
Apart from officially confirming something that was private and not his to confirm, he was wringing his hands and trying to steal the moment for himself.

He had to do all he could to stop himself from eulogizing her and saying “She will never be a future Queen but she will always remain in our hearts as the People’s Princess….. now sadly back with the people..”

The poor girl (and the Prince) is probably just heartbroken as any normal person would be at the end of a relationship but the Press seems to be going overboard trying to find “reasons” for their breakup.

Some say that her mother wasn’t really liked by the courtiers. She was apparently too pushy. I don’t know about pushy but she is an ex-stewardess and that can’t have gone down well with the snobs in Buckingham Palace. But didn’t a certain Lady Diana Spencer prove that aristocratic blood alone is no guarantee of happiness.
Just ask HRH Camilla the Duchess of Cornwall.
She is as bourgeois as they come and yet there she is, as Queen Consort in Waiting.

The present Queen, apparently is ‘distraught’ over this. She had, again apparently, really liked Kate and had even gone riding with her. She and Prince Philip feel that in a few years Wills will realize that he let his soul mate go and has lost his true love.

Again I don’t know how much of that is true but if Kate indeed did manage to squeeze and wring some kind of emotion out of Prince Philip then that alone makes her ready and fit to be Queen.
Even his own sons and daughter in law’s could not get some kinda approval from him. Again to be fair look at the crop he has. Cabbage Eared and Sour Charles, Boozy Andrew, Ugggg Ugly Daughter Anne, the Royal Wimp Edward and to top it all the Ever-Preening Diana and Toe Licking Fergie.
Can’t say I blame the man really. I am surprised he didn’t just feed them to the corgis.

AND I can’t blame the tabloids either. Just look at me and my blog. :-)

Just wish them both a lot of luck.

If indeed the break up wasn’t mutual and if Wills did dump her, a royal kiss-and-tell book would be the best way to get even. Are you listening Kate?

Aahh by the way MOVIE NEWS.

I watched PROVOKED.

Sorry all you Ash fans but this movie is not her finest (and I use the word finest very loosely)
It was almost like watching a school play, which is what most Indian-English movies end up sounding like. Somehow actors, who are otherwise perfectly fluent in spoken English in real life, seem fake and put-on once they come on screen.

Thankfully Ash starts of as an Indian bride (Kiranjit Ahluwalia) in England who is “I no speak English” but after a couple of years in the jail with some dodgy East-Enders as friends, she not only manages to speak fluently but seems to pick up a nice upper crust accent as well. I wonder who gave her lessons on that.
And a couple of scenes later when Nandita Das asks her to tell her story, she is again “But I afraid people laugh my English”

People laugh this Movie not your English.

You may ask why I am nit-picking here but the point I am trying to make here is that when you set out to make a ‘serious’ movie you have to get the details and nuances correct.
Its one thing having Salman in a frivolous Salaam-E-Ishq going Raoooool and quite another to have a battered Indian wife stammer in broken English in 1 scene, speak the Queen’s English perfectly in the next and then go back to being coy, saying “You show Busum and you win.” in the third.
(and if you didn’t get it, she meant bosoms and please don’t ask what is the reference of bosoms in the movie)

And after the initial wide-eyed, ‘scared’ & disheveled bit of ‘acting’ dispensed with, Ash quickly got back to being pretty and wide-fluttering-eyed.

I have always maintained that we seem to think any acting involving handicaps or abuse is automatically good.
Just look at Black.
Rani’s character was melodramatic and loud and utterly fake, not to mention too perfectly groomed & color coordinated for a blind girl. But the worst part was that her character was pointless.
She fights, overcomes great hurdles and passes college and does what???
Nothing. Zilch. Zero.
Struggles just for the sake of struggling.
And since I am dissing everyone here let me also say that Amitabh by the end of the movie was equally fake. He is supposed to have Alzheimer’s but seems to display symptoms of Parkinson’s.
It’s like saying, “My head is hurting, please hold my leg.”

If you really want to know how badly they have messed up Provoked then watch the otherwise brilliant Nandita Das. The poor girl is one dimensional and stilted throughout. And because it is an ‘English’ movie, when she meets Ash (who is Punjabi) Nandita says she only understands Punjabi and so replies in English for the benefit of the audience.
Two stupid little girls! It never strikes them to try another common language they’d both understand.
Hindi perhaps?

And once the “Wow! You are great! That’s a brilliant idea!” scene gets over (and believe me there are quite a few of those) she even has to mouth clichés like “Baby, You ain’t seen nothin yet”.

And its not just the Indian actors, the British are equally bad. McFadden playing the detective is as cardboard as they come as is the mandatory prison dyke. The only one actually working for her pay is Miranda Richardson who shows flashes of brilliance but is too mired in the awful script to be able to rise above it.

It is based on the real life story of Kiranjit Ahluwalia who was convicted for the murder of her husband and then subsequently freed using the Battered Wife Syndrome defense. Her husband, in her own words, had a split personality. However in this movie he is painted all black. Just bad. No grey shades at all. In simple, a caricature, like all hindi villains are supposed to be.

The credits at the end inform us that this was a ‘monumental’ case in British legal history. I am sure the correct word they were looking for was ‘landmark’ but what’s one more error in a movie filled with them.

And the “humor’ is provided by various British characters struggling with her name stuttering Aloo… Aloo... Aloo

Provoked! Yes, you will be if you spend money to watch it.