My thoughts on the mega buster Race now playing across Karachi in select cinemas, starring Saif, Katrina, Bipasa, Akshay Khanna & Anil Kapoor

• Saif Ali Khans Sunglasses are the best thing in this movie.
• Akshay Khanna has more hair on his chest than his head.
• Biapasa makes hay burn and Katrina pale in ooomph factor.
• Atif Aslam and Indian movies are a match made in heaven
• Anil Kapoor should have played a panwalla in this movie, because he looks and talks like one.
• After all the twists and turns the movie is totally ruined by (get this) Saif flying!
• Glamorous locales or not in the end its a total masala flick
• For the love of god, we have experienced so much censorship in Pakistani cinema, was the censor board asleep when this goody bag landed? Read slowly Soft porn scenes…do not take children!

Verdict: If you watch movies for eye candy… then this is your Gladiator if not? you will be racing for the exit after the first half an hour.

My take? 6.5/10 (The 0.5 is for the locales)

‘Good Taste Required’ reads the tagline of this new website resource dedicated to listing the best the city has to offer. Came across it while searching for restaurants and it has a very decent selection of places.

Could use some Web 2.0 style features, such as commenting and photo uploading, but overall, a very nice resource.

Add your own places using the Suggest A Listing feature.

Not just another Pizza Hut rip-off, yet not as satisfying an experience as i expected it to be, La Pizza Pie, located adjacent to Anjarwala’s, opposite BBQ Tonite, is a new pizza joint i tried out last week.

The menu offers up soup, pizza, salad and pasta which is pretty much the staple of pizza houses in the city. We tried the Cream of Chicken soup, which turned out to be sour(?) and something Arabian pizza, which had very predictable ingredients, but with a spiraling mayonnaise topping which gave it a good luck while not adding anything to the taste.

The interior is small, cramped but not very unfriendly, and the staff is quite helpful. Good place to try out if you are bored with Pizza Hut.

As far as comedy routines go, Saad Haroon has it down pat. He has a jovial face, an infectious laugh and a complete set of theatrics and musical numbers which makes his comedy routines very engaging. The one place he lacks, however, is a collection of jokes, with many being recycled over a number of routines, Saad Haroon is a must see, if you haven’t seen him before. After that, its just pretty much the same.

On friday night, he performed at IVSAA and i went expecting an hour of gag-inducing laughter. What i got was almost a yawn during the performance, since… well… i had seen it all before.

But all was not lost that night. The evening was saved thanks to the theatrics of Danish Ali, a fellow comedian who appears with Saad on their TV show, The Real News (TRN). He started off the routine with jokes and gags about weird school names, parking tonight BBQ tomorrow (a pun on BBQ Tonight) and the ever engaging mortien and their sadistic method of killing a cockroach over 90 days (it says on the back of their can, Kills for three months) where he had another fellow, Umair, perform improvisational acting of a cockroach who was on his way to a 90 day death.

Overall, the evening didn’t do too bad, and though i wouldn’t go see Saad Haroon again anytime soon (or unless he adds new stuff to his act), he did pull off two acts, Saads words of wisdom, which was both thought provoking and funny and Aliens landing in Desi Land, which was funny because of theatrics.

Images courtesy of Raja Islam

Saturday night was when a one of a kind event happened! The funny was brought up front and center, right on the stage of PACC. Sami shah, in his second stand up performance, once again rocked the crowd and brought us all down to our knees laughing!

If you know sami shah, you know he’s going to be very predictable.. he’s going to rant, and being a geek, he’s going to rant in a superhero style! (Thank god his undies were the right side up though!) The show started, albeit half an hour late, with a jab at the advertising agencies of Pakistan, who’ve made us think that if we are fair, good things will happen to us. This continue, with various brands being taken down a peg or two, starting with fair and lovely and ending up with state life insurace’s beema policy! 10 minutes into the act, the guy had the audience in stiches!

His next pieces concerned the kind of people who work in banks, the job hunt and the kind of people who seem to have the same career aspirations as him and keep following him from place to place. How he knows that? Cuz they do the same thing, no matter which office he’s in. Up next was karachi’s dug up situation and the crazy 7 hour traffic jams we had whenever our dear ol’ president and the prime minister went to town. The performance ended on how the comic book world was slowly becoming so real, when our real life ‘heros’ (the general obviously) act like batman! mild mannered president by day… and The General during times of trouble!

All in all, it was definitely a performance not to be missed. A bit overpriced, at 400 a pop, but still very much worth every penny, as the over-filled auditorium of PACC would give testament to.
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Spider magazine, who recently started a regular section on blogging, covered the Pakistani cities part of the Metroblogging network in their September issue. The article is written by the talented Karachi based writer Hafsa Ahsan (who also writes the regular column Dot Com in Dawn‘s weekly technology supplement Sci-Tech World). It isn’t up on the Spider website unfortunately, so you’ll have to go get a copy from your local bookstore to read the entirety of it, but here’s some of the praise we received:

Yes, the Karachi Metblog is definitely the place to discuss all things happening in Karachi from literary events and exhibitions to the traffic jams at Shahrah-e-Faisal and power break downs in specific areas. Every once in a while, a single post can attract a number of conflicting opinions leading to heated debate and arguments. However, the posts generally make for a very interesting read.

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On Wednesday, Jan. 23, 2002, I stood at the gate of my rented house in Karachi, watching my friend Danny Pearl juggle a notebook, cellphone and earpiece as he bounded over to a taxicab idling in the street. He was off to try to find the alleged al-Qaeda handler of “shoe bomber” Richard Reid in Pakistan. “Good luck, dude,” I called, waving cheerfully as he strode off, a lopsided grin on his face. His pregnant wife, Mariane, stood smiling and waving beside me as the taxi pulled away. A gaggle of parrots swooped through the trees above, squawking in the late afternoon sun.

Disregarding for a while, the subject matter of the movie, I decided to watch ‘A Mighty Heart’ for the simple reason that it was shot in Karachi. I was in for a disappointment. The movie, starring Angelina Jolie was majorly shot in Pune, India because the producers didn’t consider Karachi a safe location. While many a fan of the diva may have been greatly disappointed at this decision, it was the movie itself that disappointed me.

While I wholeheartedly condemn Daniel Pearl’s murder and console with his widow and the child, I see no point in sensationailsing such a sensitive issue. Thanks to the movie, Daniel Pearl has been eternetised, yet no one will remember Saud Memon nor the countless unidentified citizens who have been mysteriously missing for a long time. Not only that, Hollywood has successfully tarnished what little dignity we as the citizens of Karachi had.
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The final two days of the shanaakht festival, organized by the Citizens Archive of Pakistan, were just too good to miss! In addition to a full day of documentaries, talks, lectures, picture and art exhibits, each day ended on a high note.

The third day saw the live performance of Loose Talk, featuring the icon’s of pakistani television media themselves, Moin Akhtar and Anwar Maqsood. Running for over 5 years, having produced more than 280 episodes for television, Loose Talk has redefined how satire is delivered to the audience. Be it political, social or even religious! The live show was no less specatular! The duo had the audience in stiches from the moment Anwar Maqsood came on stage to introduce the performance. The skits included Moin Akhtar as a poet, a guy who hates cable TV, the cricket lover, a shop owner, the poor husband of a very healthy woman and finally a representative of PML-Q! Each performance was a gem in its own right, and its hard to say which was my favourite. And judging from the standing ovation and the over 5 minutes of continuous clapping the duo got, i was not alone in thinking so.

The next day brought with it, a concert aptly titled Rock your Shanaakht. An event which ended the whole festival on just the right note. The event started with a surprise stand up comedy performance by Saad Haroon, who had the audience in stiches about with parody songs like Pakistani Pie and Mr. Dakoo. Not to mention skits on the defence bubble, why there are no terroists in Pakistan, the mobile snatcher, why giving directions in defence is almost dirty and last but not the least, the dream (and big movie idea) which shattered when sonia ghandi stepped down from accepting the prime ministership of India. (The movie ofcourse was based on the love relationship between the two leaders). Next up were Taal Charisma, a new band formed by students of NAPA, another prestigious institution of the city nurturing the arts, and their new genre, Body Percussion. The rest of the evening was filled by performances from zaeb and hania (from lahore), ali alim and the aunty disco project. The festival ended with the whole crowd joining the artists on stage in singing our national anthem! Definitely not a night to forget!

Yesterday, i dropped by the shanaakht festival, being held by the Citizens Archive of Pakistan at Arts Council of Pakistan – Karachi, and was pleasantly surprised by just how good the whole thing was arranged. Volunteers were available everywhere to help out with the experience, and you hardly felt left out or abandoned while roaming around taking in the various exhibits.

While i was there, the students of Visual Arts Department, Karachi University put up a street theater performance in the open auditorium on the theme of shanaakht. Comprised of three skits, one serious, one semi comic and one comic, it was something you had to be there to enjoy! The first play was based on suicide bombers, with a head cleric trying to convince one of his student to ‘gain shahadat’ by blowing himself to bits. The play revolved around a dream the student has, of one of his fellow student who had recently commited the act and was now paying penance for taking another human beings life. The second skit was based loosely around the partition era, which then cut through to present day and one of the most sensitive issues in our society today was addressed. The ‘want to lecture’ anyone anywhere that we so proudly possess. The play then veered off into a comedy routine with various skits intermingling with each other leaving the audience in splits.

The performances by the students were stunning! Spectacular even! with each and every emotion delivered not only through their expressions, but also their body movements and voice modulations, the whole presentation came to life in a brilliant fashion! Hats off to the KU Visual Arts Department!

Thomasina shares his thrilling experience with Bank Alfalah customer service. It pretty much reveals where we stand in terms of customer support and services, and why there is so much that needs to be done to be at par with international standards.

Did you have a similar experience with your favorite organization? Send it to us using suggest a story link on the side bar.
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