Earn college credit by studying something/someone you love!

What if you're asked by your supervisors to attend a conference on Shah Rukh Khan or get some college credit by studying Twilight??

Makes me feel like I've been living on the wrong track of life all along. I have to finish this study first if I want to shift course to avoid getting penalized for breaking the term of my scholarship.. but still, I wish I had the courage to throw caution to the wind and just quit so I could work at something I like.. comics of course. I want to work in a comic publication environment!

This is one of those times where I utter under my breath.. "Wish I had not gone on and done what my parents wanted me to do" ....hmmm.

International Conference in Vienna

In recent years the circulation of Indian Cinema in a globalized world has become a focus of academic research from a wide range of disciplines and theoretical perspectives. A growing number of publications and conferences have been dedicated to the topic that embraces films and audiences as well as diverse cultural practises and performances. Furthermore, the role of the ICT in these processes has emerged as a new point of interest, in particular in regard to the study of participant audiences and fan cultures. The relationship of Bollywood with post colonialism, global flows, and transcultural processes functions as the overarching framework that shapes cinema contexts today.

Located in the centre of Europe the conference wants to act as a meeting point between European and international scholarship on Shah Rukh Khan and Global Bollywood. In addition, it aims at engaging with young scholars on the topic and at providing a platform to showcase their studies.

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Earn college credit for studying Twilight!

Posted by Pamela on September 18th, 2010 | Comments (37)

Ever wish you could get college credit for studying “Twilight”? Well, if you’re lucky enough to attend California State University San Marcos in Southern California, now you can!

According E! Online, students at CSU San Marcos can now register for a course entitled “Twilight: The Text and the Fandom,” offered by the university’s Women’s Studies department.

According to the course description, the class covers:

“vampire lore, the romantic core of the series, female characters and fans, the depiction of men and masculinity, religious contexts, race and white privilege, the franchising of Twilight, and various cultural contexts such as abstinence only education and the rise of internet fandoms.”

Do you think there’s a place for “Twilight” in a university setting? If your school offered this class, would you sign up? Let us know in the comments!

You can also click here to check out E! Online’s full article, which includes a list of courses offered at various universities around the United States revolving around current pop culture phenomenons such as Lady GaGa and Harry Potter.

Some guys should take a leaf out of this woman's book and just grow up..

.. and seeing that one of them is 7 years short of going into middle age, the situation for him seems rather pathetic, I think. She's happily married now and probably is working towards getting a baby soon. It's really tasteless and crass of her ex-boyfriends to yap about their past incidents together as if kissing (or hitting?) and telling would open opportunities ( for a comeback for one of them?) or make people understand them better.

And it's so typical for the guys to blame the girl, as if they hadn't a thing to blame and as if they had not been bringing the whole schbang unto themselves. Next time you want to impress your girlfriend by holding a press conference to broadcast your enmity towards her 1st ex-boyfriend who has been known to publicly hound and pester her to the point of violence, ask her opinion first whether you should go ahead with it.. comprende? Watching this clip, I sorta understand how Ash could go through all that muck with these two schmucks and still move forward as a winner in her personal and work life. She's a really cool customer.. strong-willed and clear-headed. Gorgeous too, yumm.

I was really surprised to know that Veer-Zaara was written for her though. What happened?? And when she talked about the domino effect, it makes me wonder at the intricacies involved in the dealings going on in a movie industry. No wonder Shah Rukh said that it's a very tough job, that the glamour exists only on screen after they've put on the make-up and lighting. I like thinking about such stuff coz I'm an escapist. I like wondering about things that I know I will never get involved in, that way I can be philosophical about it without getting hurt (hehe).

MJ's influence on the Bollywood dance scene

So it's only right that the Hindi movie & music fraternity made a tribute to him, produced by Shah Rukh's company, Red Chillies Entertainment. Shah Rukh is, as always, the most aware personality and at the forefront of every cool wave ever to make a splash in the Indian entertainment scene so I'm not surprised at all that it's his company who came up with this tribute idea. And he's always loved MJ (clip), not to mention his good friend Farah Khan is a die-hard MJ fan too. It's a great tribute video:



"In what can be easily termed as musical history, Seagram's Royal Stag has created a special video 'Make it Large- A tribute to Michael Jackson', to be released on music channels across India on the 29th of August to celebrate the pop legends 51st birthday."

Suddenly, I have a craving for Justin Timberlake

I have always had my eye on only Justin in all the Nsync video clips I've ever watched. The other boys could be backup singers and dancers for all I care. After he went solo, I've sorta abandoned him.. not coz he's no longer as good as I found him before.. just that I was doing my own share of growing up. I was spending less & less time listening to American songs and more & more time watching Brit dramas on telly coz that's the dimension I found myself located in at the time.

But as the years went by, turns out that Justin Timberlake was doing just fine without me... ha! (lol). I love all his later songs that I manage to catch online. In a way, for me at least, he's like Britney Spears in that he's never done a project that I haven't liked yet. He's not very brilliant in interviews though, but comparing all the stars on talk shows to the likes of Colin Firth and Shah Rukh Khan is unfair, I guess. Not everyone has the vocabulary, the articulacy, and the wit those two have. Not to mention the brilliantly controversial one-liners.

Btw, I thought it's awesome that Eminem did a colab with Justin. Eminem with Justin?? Far out, man! Although, if you think about it from the ex-girlfriend angle, it sorta makes sense. Eminem has always had a thing with not having a thing when it comes to Britney, and Justin's always having a thing for Britney that he'll be forever in denial about. So the project is like karma waiting to happen. Oh, and Eminem is also another artiste whose project I just cannot dislike. Whatever he dishes out, no matter if the lyrics are simply incomprehensible to me (and everyone else in my planet, to tell the truth), I'd still be riveted to the material. He is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G.

When I think about it, people who stay the longest and the most successfully employed in the creative industry always seem to be those who have the "IT" factor. It's either you have "IT" or perish trying to acquire it, really. "IT" seems to describe that inexplicable, indefinable, intangible quality that jumps out at a crowd from a far distance... whether out of a silver screen, a TV monitor or an iPOD... grabs them by the neck and makes them want to 'be' with you all the time. Anyway, I'll stop blathering and paste the clip now (this is Justin's original music video for the song)

I think that there're some distinct patterns to the men I adore...

...and when I spot similarities, I record them coz I'm a crazy fangirl LOL. I was reading through Colin Firth's interview (I absolutely adore his interviews) and found some parallels to what Shah Rukh has been saying over and over in some of his interviews. I thought it was interesting to note so here they are:

Full interview: Source

" I'm delighted I didn't have the chance to play Colin Firth. I wouldn't know how to play him. There's nothing more difficult than playing yourself. When people say "Do you like such-and-such an actor? He always plays himself!" I think "Christ, he must be talented!""

" Yes, I do. Because I think that we're all illusionists and I think we reach people. If we're doing our job properly, we have the capacity to reach people on some level and that creates an emotional response which can be intimate in some ways, and I think people want to pursue that. It's human instinct to, it's a kind of mystery that you want to get behind........ It’s like novelists who write something incredibly personal. You pick up the novel, you read it, and you make this connection. You think "Christ that's me he's writing about. I want to meet this guy." And then you meet the person and they’re just a normal person with all the usual barriers. There's no great intimacy there, you just met a stranger, and probably the best you'll ever know him is by going back and reading the book again. And I think that we do that—somebody gets curious about the character I play and that leads them to be curious about me. They're not really going to satisfy their curiosity knowing about my very ordinary life. If there's any magic at all, it's there, it's not behind the acting."

Q: Would you ever consider moving to Hollywood and what is your relationship with Hollywood?

"I like it here. I have very good friends here. It's appealing in that it's a place where a lot is happening and a good friend of mine, he's a writer here, he says he loves it because he likes to be able to drive past studios knowing all those things are going on, it's productive, active, and everybody wants to make a deal. And I think that would be appealing. But culturally I'm very very attached to London. I love to travel, I love to work in different places, but it would be very difficult for me to uproot from there. It's benefited me and the work still comes to me if I'm there, so I haven't felt the need to migrate for those reasons. I've never been tempted to put roots down here. I'm not convinced it would serve me better."