Kaminey

Kaminey has some catchy, funny original dialogues for sure. An example

इस दुनिया में कुत्ते का एक ही जवाब होता है – कमीने

It is unfair to not like the movie because it is not an “Omkara” or a “Maqbool”. Its not the same genre. And the genre it is from, it is a well executed movie. Pretty tight. I am not too much into the crime-comedy genre. So, I don’t have elaborate observations.

But acting is fantastic. And it feels great to observe that Shahid Kapoor is arriving as an actor. He is not just good as the rich or upper-middle class lover boy, he is equally at ease as a Mumbai gangster. And he has played the twin brothers – very different from each other – effortlessly. Unlike Saif Ali Khan as young sardar in Love Aaj Kal, neither of Shahid Kapoor’s roles look like it is forced on him. If he continues to choose wisely and experiments enough, we are looking at the next great actor probably. Priyanka Chopra and other actors have done well too.

So, definitely worth a watch.

Love Aaj Kal

People are wondering if microblogging (read twittering) is threatening the use of blogs. I certainly seem to be a case in point Even when I am twittering, I am unable to find time for blogging. Its sad! Microblogging has its merit in conciseness, but some things are enjoyed best when you are not worried about character limits. Anyway!

More than one person (read ‘two’ – both living outside India) told me recently that they like to follow my blogs to decide on which bollywood movies to watch! Not bad for a sketchy and non-professional reviewer like me And this year has not be very good in terms of recommendable movies to watch. So, here is my short take on Love Aaj Kal.

To begin with, Love Aaj Kal’s director is Imtiaz Ali. The same person who directed “Jab We Met”. Long time readers of this blog would be able to recall my fascination with “Jab We Met“. And I was waiting for this movie only because it was by Imtiaz Ali. Compare to Jab We Met

• +ve of Love Aaj Kal: Much meatier story idea
• -ve of Love Aaj Kal: Not that directorial and acting magic that made “Jab We Met” so addictive despite a predictable, flat story.

So, unlike Gulaal or 99, I won’t strongly say “Go watch it”. But not much harm in watching for some entertainment.

Now, generic pluses and minuses (can have spoilers)

• Story wise, the juxtaposition of yesterday’s and today’s stories are good. Differences are accepted, and the point is made that some universal things have not changed. So, the stories are parallel, but not the same. That’s the good part. Narration of the story, however, seems forced. Rishi Kapoor’s character would have done better if he had watched and waited for the story to be repeated rather than being instrumental in the repetition. That was a cliched approach (the ‘expert’ mentoring the ‘novice’) and probably the main cause of the narration appearing forced.
• Missed opportunities on acting front: Saif Ali Khan, in his double role (not the judwa bhai kind, not ‘Kaho Na Pyaar Hai’ kind either, and definitely not ‘Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi’ kind), had an opportunity to give a memorable, though not lifetime, performance. As if to compensate for the silent hero of “Jab We Met”, he even had all the lines, while the heroines looked on. But he does not really hit you with his acting! Too much of production burden, was it?
  The relatively silent character of Deepika Padukone had the opportunity of expressing silence as well as occasional outbursts to give a wonderful performance. In the beginning I thought her expressionlessness was deliberate – a part of acting. But slowly it just started looking like an inadequate performance. The other female lead, Giselle Monteiro, did much better.
• Dialogs were not natural: I think dialogs played a major part in making “Jab We Met” what it became. They flew naturally. One thing seemed to flow from the other. They never sounded like someone is reading from a book, which is what the dialogs in “Love Aaj Kal” often sound like.
• Couple of good sequences
• • The picturization of one song that shows Saif Ali Khan’s journey from the time he joins his dream job, the excitement of every moment to when it all starts becoming routine and not-so-exciting to when he lands up in outright depression! Wonderfully done. With or without the love story, that’s a part that is so easy to identify with and which can be generalized for so many of our dreams. You dream and you work hard to achieve it. Once you are there, then what? So many other people are there too. And soon its all routine and life has lost the purpose!
  • Music listeners would have known it, but I hadn’t noticed from the promos that the background music in “The Twist” was the बीन (been – the Hindi word) sound of yesteryears (Nageena!). The “yesterday” and “today” juxtaposition comes out really well when Saif Ali Khan starts playing music in his car, the been sound starts (and you wonder what the hell!) and it turns into “The twist” song! Don’t know if that’s what the intention was, but it does feel like a nice musical tribute to the title and concept!

If you have read all this anyway, you can make your decision!

No Smoking

This piece comes after watching No Smoking and needs some further background on how I came to watch the movie in the first place.

So, I watched Gulaal and was fascinated. And as it happens every time I am fascinated with a movie these day, I came back and started researching on the director. I knew Dev-D was also from the same director, but it did not give me the same kind of high that Gulaal gave. So, the research started after Gulaal. And I landed on PFC (Passion for Cinema) website. The director Anurag Kashyap is an active blogger there and also responds to the comments quite frequently. I was hooked on to the site his blog over the weekend and read through several entries. His writing has a “this is my opinion and if you don’t like it, you have a clear option – don’t read it” attitude and resulting honesty, which I appreciate. So, I read up most of his posts.

It is during this reading and research that I figured that we, average movie goers, would not have noticed it, but apparently in their world, the movie had sparked strong reactions. The critics had given bad to insulting reviews and the director had reacted strongly to them too. From there on, there is huge debate over the movie as well as whether the director should have reacted so. I will leave the latter part out for this post (and probably write another post on this). Instead concentrate on the movie.

Having read through the comments, reviews and bunch of director’s posts, I was curious enough to watch No Smoking. Found the VCD in Sapna Book Store (and not in newly opened Odyssey on 100 feet road, Indiranagar) and watched it as soon as I got back.

With some help from author’s article, Abhaya’s discussions and my understanding – here is my interpretation of the movie and where the story comes from:

• We have a writer-director with two of his movies, made after years of hard work, facing many obstacles in absence of producer backing, not cleared by censors. He is angry and depressed. For him the system is powerful and hell bent upon changing him, if he wants to survive. And why change him? Because he is not what the powerful folks in the system think is ‘right’. So, he must change; else he has no rights to survive. But changing him is not easy. He has his soul – going strong despite his problems. The only way to change him is to rid him of his soul. But he wants revenge on the system. He wants to get back at the system. He still can not destroy the system, but he wants to laugh at them. It is in this context that this particular movie is written.
• Before getting into the actual story of movie, let’s think of a slightly revised story. Suppose that Baba Bangali was not trying to rid K of his smoking habit. Instead he was trying to rid him of his art (yeah – suppose he was an artist). And the rest of the story was same. Does it now become easier to decipher some things in the movie? Here is a powerful system, who for some reason thinks that an artist is not the right kind of person for the society. So, the system will go any extent to ensure that artist no longer remains an artist. But art is his soul. The only way he could stop being an artist is by getting rid of his soul. His soul has to be snatched away from him. And that is what has happened in the movie. The soul is snatched away.
• It actually becomes a rather simple story here. Because the relatively ‘liberal’ world we live in, we’d obviously be sympathetic towards the artist. We, the audience, can not get in the frame of mind of the powerful people of the system, who strongly feel that the artist needs to change, for whatever reason.
• So to engage the audience with the conflict, the director could choose a more gray concept – say homosexuality. If the system is trying to rid somebody of homosexuality, is it fair or not? The debate is on the today’s world. It’d have brought some conflict into the mind of the audience. But even here, the impact is mild. You may not absolutely believe that system is right. Our homosexual character still remains more of a helpless victim, than an arrogant man of choice, who is up against the system.
• Now that is not the motive of the writer. He is projecting himself in the character. He does not want to project a meek, helpless victim of system. He is trying to project an arrogant character – ‘Nobody tells me what to do’. Plus this arrogant characters needs to laugh at the system. And where is the system? Just a few characters in the movie is not enough to laugh at. So, he converts the entire audience into the system who thinks that K should change. How does he achieve that? Not by posing art or homosexuality as the problem. But smoking as the problem. Now, the entire audience is there in the skin of the system against K/writer. K should change. Of course, smoking is bad.
• But K is arrogant and so is writer. Its about the soul. The same soul that we could have easily visualized as something that incorporates K’s artistic tendencies is now shown to be incorporating K’s smoking habit. For the arrogant writer, soul is essentially the person – with his pluses and minus – not something distinct, universal, not something always ‘right’. We find is easy to see that art is in his soul, but find it difficult to comprehend that smoking is in his soul. Because the soul to us is something right and pure – that’s how we popularly use the word. But whose right, what purity? The writer has made the soul individual. You find all this bizarre. Fine. The writer of the story does not care. He has achieved what he wanted to achieve. He has made you the part of the system who wants to change K. You are suddenly guilty of taking away the man’s soul and probably forced to feel bad. And if you are uncomfortable with where you are, he is laughing. He has taken his revenge.

Now, that I have written it, I am wondering if my interpretation (or rather its expression here) has not become more incomprehensible than the movie itself.

But if the above makes any sense, I guess as the audience you can only say ‘what the hell’. How can he do that to me? Well – he has done it. That’s why it is an arrogant, self-indulging piece of work, as the director and the critics both agree. Someone may say that this is not fair to the audience, but that’s not reason enough not to create such work.

Finally few disclaimers:

• This is purely mine (and Abhaya’s) interpretation. There is no claim that this is what the movie means
• This interpretation does not mean that the movie says that smoking is good or harmless. This aspect is immaterial in this interpretation actually.
• The thought process outlined here is something that helped me understand it. This most certainly was not director’s/writer’s thought process.
• The movie is also supposed to have borrowed concepts from some movie and/or book, which I haven’t seen/read. So, my interpretation remains solely based on the sources cited earlier.
• I am an average movie-goer, who likes to see good and different cinema, but does not appreciation for all possible kinds of genres, experiments and techniques involved in movie making. So, the interpretation could be limited by that.

The odd moments of Delhi – 6

It shows promise at times and then takes a track which make you go – “Oh! Why this?”

So, here are some selected odd stuff from Delhi-6:

WARNING: May have spoilers

• The born-and-brought-up-in-America grand son is in India with his grand-ma, fights with a policeman, barges into a neighbour’s house when he is trying to fix his daughter marriage to tell him and his guests that the girl does not want to get married, meets the girl at the dusk and gets accused of trying to run away with her and the dadi does not have a word of advice to give. Okay, she has lived with his son’s family in the US for five years and has probably learnt not to interfere in their lives. But for God’s sake. Her grandson knows nothing about the ways in India and can get into trouble. Not a single word of advice anywhere?
• The whole scene concluding “India works” is so, so, so artificial. Would have looked good between people discussing business. Not there. Not to ultimately confess that he is in love!
• The “talking-to-dead-grand-pa” scene was another awkward one…
• Finally I just did not get how the crowd suddenly changed its attitude towards our hero. How did the realization dawn on them that he was not the Kala Bandar, but became so for “their” love!

A disappointment after Rang De Basanti.

Gulaal

I spent almost 20 minutes thinking of an interesting title for this post. But each one seemed like doing injustice to one aspect or the other. So, I went for the plain one – the name of the movie.

Anurag Kashyap rocks. There were some aspects of Dev D that felt odd, out of place, not quite reasoned out like rest of the movie. Like I just did not get the enlightenment of Dev there. How he realizes that he should abandon the path of self-destruction and how he manages to come back and find Chanda living happily ever after… But it was still wonderful for all the other things. For the brashness of its characters, for its take on the old story in current times, for its dialogs, actions and actings!

Then comes Gulaal… As usual, a full review is not my cup of tea. So, here are a few observations <potential of spoilers>

• Its not just the brashness of the characters, but also a brashness in the way story is written and told. It is like “This is how things are. You feel uncomfortable? You find it coarse? You’d rather have it slightly different? So be it. We aren’t going to change things due to that. Take it or leave it.”
• You need some sense of history and appreciation of Hindi poetry to be able to fully enjoy the movie.
• All the time the use of poetry and music gives a street-playish effort. After coming back, I found that the lyricist cum composer indeed has that kind of background.
• “जैसे दूर देश के टावर में घुस जाए रे एरोप्लेन” – It is a wonderfully folklorish expression. In this world of direct information, being able to think of such expression that gives you the information and yet has a feel of it being distant is not easy. I am hooked on to it.
• Acting is brilliant for everyone.
• Too bad it won’t do well You know it while watching and enjoying it.
• This is one of those movies which make bollywood come of age! Not Slumdog Millionaires of the world.
• I am going to watch this movie again, and also the older movies of Anurag Kashyap which I have missed out on.

May the good entertainers flourish in bollywood.

Why do I have to feel apologetic that I did not like Slumdog Millionaire :)

It is becoming funny. The moment you say something against “Slumdog Millionaire”, you are being an elite, hypocrite, who does not want to look at the darker side (read slums, poverty) of a city like Mumbai and country like India.

No – for God’s sake! I have absolutely nothing against someone showing poverty in a movie. I am not offended by it. I know it is a reality and let them show all they want.

I don’t like it because it simply was not a good movie. The entertainment aspect was a dud. The “real India” aspect unimpressive.

Let me elaborate.

The entertainment aspect of the movie was based on a very interesting concept. One person with an extremely humble background comes to a game show and knows all the answers. How? There is a story connected to each of them. I am not looking for whether the premise is realistic. I have some expectations from it because it is interesting and intriguing. A good story can come out it. But…

• This “slumdog” knows that the picture on the the dollar bill is that of Benjamin Franklin. How? From another blind “slumdog” who is a beggar and has lived even less privileged life than himself. It did not answer the “How” for first “slumdog”. Instead it created a “How” for the second one. Pray, what is the answer to the second “How”. Nowhere to be located in the movie. A mind expecting something interesting becomes frustrated instead of becoming entertained or satisfied.
• Why on earth did our hero need to jump into a pit of shit to know that Amitabh Bachchan was the lead actor in Zanzeer! For God’s sake. Was it a subtle depiction of unhygienic conditions on slums? No, it was a gross depiction of something which I will call “sensationalization of unhygienic conditions and sensibilities of slum dwellers”. Really, there was no need to have a story behind knowing that Amitabh Bachchan was the lead actor in Zanzeer. After all as our “slumdog” himself says – He is the most famous man in India. And unhygienic conditions were depicted very well without this scene.
• Why would the host of a show take it so personally that a person from a humble background is winning the money. If anything, he should be happy. If the “slumdog” wins all the money, it will be great for the TRP of the show and the host should love it. It is not his money anyway. Let the producers and sponsors worry. Mind you, the host was not just being suspicious (which would have been a genuine concern since if later it was revealed that the guy cheated, it’d be bad for the show). He seemed to be taking it as a personal offense that this guy is winning the money. Funny. And no host whose mind is in the right place would so overtly insult the participant on the show. Whatever might be his personal feelings, if he is worth hosting the show and has any professionalism to speak of, he would be cordial and respectful to the participants while the show is being recorded. We have seen enough of these shows, haven’t we? I am not surprised that Amitabh Bachchan felt bad about this movie – his character has been so absurdly villainized. Of course he never spoke of this aspect
• Half the characters speak English with Indian accent, one fourth with American accent and all these American English speakers speak Hindi in their childhood. Now, what are we trying to do here? Are we trying to make a movie where everything, including language, is authentic. Then let’s keep it Bombay Hindi/Hinglish all through and give subtitles in English. Are we trying to keep the language as English, so that the intended American audience gets something; but we also want to give an Indian flavour to it? Then let’s have everyone speak English with Indian accent (and still give subtitles). Or are we trying to abstract out the language, since we are making it for American audience anyway. Then let’s leave the language out of the way and have everyone speak American English. What on earth is that mixture doing there? That mixture of language (American English, Indian English, Sophisticated Hinglish and Hindi) looks relevant in the new economy corporate circles, not in the situation the movie is trying to depict.

The realistic poverty aspect is unimpressive. “So, you don’t like the fact that it shows poors in an attitude of ‘I am poor, but I am happy’. Right?” The fans would immediately ask. Wrong. All I am saying is that the depiction was mediocre. All the claims of Indian Film making can take a leaf out of it is non-sense. Don’t know what I am talking about? See a bunch of wonderful Bollywood movies in last decade or so, if you want to see the underworld nexus. And you don’t need to go that far for “I am poor, but I am happy” either. Just take out some time to watch “Traffic Signal” by Madhur Bhandarkar. Or are we talking about the situation of girls in prostitution and dance bars. Check out “Chameli” and “Chandni Bar”.

In short, let’s stop getting overwhelmed just because an American British (pardon my not checking the nationality of the director) of the stature of Danny Boyle cared to make a movie on India. It is a great movie for Americans (and others with fancy notions about India). Fine. Let it be. We don’t need to fall head over heals on that. “Pardes” (remember Mahima Chaudhary? She is hosting a show “Salaam-e-Ishq” on Star one these days by the way.) was a great film for India. But it wasn’t a great film to depict American society to Indians. Americans won’t fall for that movie, right? We have seen much better ones on India in India and will continue to see them in future. It is not a Indian Film. It is an American Film and great for them. Let the buck stop there. With due respect to all the awards, both Gulzar and Rahman have done much better work in past. And let’s hope they continue to do so in future.

इति-श्री।

Watch Luck by Chance

Farhan Akhtar rocks again! As the worldly wise charmer… Reviews are all over the places of course. I have three things to say (has spoilers).

• Technically, at times it feels like a bunch of snapshot, documentary like – instead of a well flowing story. But all these snapshots are entertaining. And essential. Although sometimes you wonder if this particular piece of information could have been woven more tightly in the story instead of being presented as what looks like patch. Like abusive childhood experience of Neena Walia (Dimple Kapadia) or the story of Sona (Konkana Sen Sarma) before she comes to Mumbai. The scenes that delve into those look like the ones that are almost put up as an afterthought. But they were essential to the experience of the story and hence I am glad, they came out. Would not do much nitpicking on this part though. After all, what do I know about film-making. At the end of the day I enjoyed it
• One of the last scenes, where Vikram (Farhan) tries to come back to Sona (Konkana), is I think a brilliant one. For two reasons.
• • First is how a scene that looks like a typical “all will end well” scene takes a ‘U’ turn. Vikram is sincerely telling Sona, how she has been the only constant support for him through his days of struggling and how even in his life as a superstar, she can be an anchor for him etc. and how he committed a mistake by ignoring and misunderstanding her. A typical “subah ka bhoola” coming back in the evening. There is all the sincerity in what Vikram is saying. You, as audience, is convinced of a happy ending. But Sona has an observation. An observation on how everything he said had only to do with him, his well being. There was nothing about her, her life, her aspirations, an anchor and support for her. How she expects him to go away as soon as the next excitement in his life comes. And hence, no all is well ending.
  • Second is a statement she makes. “पर इसमें तुम्हारी कोई गलती नहीं है। कुछ लोग होते ही ऐसे हैं।” It can be seen as a sarcastic statement. But there is something realistic and subtle about it too. He is not willfully bad. When one set of things happen to him, it somehow goes into the back of his mind that there are other things to take care of. Its not that he did not want to be with Sona any longer. But her thought conveniently sat at the back of his mind when he overstepped his boundaries while playing the charmer! And probably there is a bit of that Vikram in all of us. In different forms. There are things we don’t do very consciously thinking about the harm it is doing to others. There are such things, which even when we become aware of, we can not get rid of from within us. And probably by the basic nature all of us are selfish. So, simply casting off Vikram’s character as a selfish one will be an over-simplification. There are subtleties of human nature involved, which may be difficult to understand in the first place. But even when understood, there may not be an obvious way to deal with them. Probably I don’t make much sense here. Skip to te next poin then
• Watch the movie, if you haven’t

Grrr….

As if Tashan was not enough, I watched Ugly aur Pagli this afternoon (

At least they could have chosen a more innocent and younger face than Mallika Sherawat to act as a college junior!!

What am I upto?

Well in carrying 37 Kgs of paper from paper market on two wheeler!! Bad that it is for my back and for my scooter, its good that things are progressing at Pothi.com.

Many interesting books have come and some more are in pipeline. Collection of English stories by Santwana Chatterjee, another collection of short stories in Hindi by Hem Chandra Joshi and this Start Programming with C# book by Anoop Unnikrishnan are some of the examples. More are in pipeline including a book on Yoganidra and a Self-Development book.

And in the “Old Gems” section, you would soon see “Sinhasan Battisi”.

Life has become hectic, but some people are working with us part time now. And that is helping immensely.

And in case you are wondering if I have nothing else to write about, its not so true. I am squeezing time out for “Jaane Tu”, a family day party at a friend’s company and a play in Rangashankara (Love Letters), this weekend.

Party was the like usual company parties, with event management firm’s staff pulling you into the games somehow and trying to sound excited about it all.

“Jaane Tu” has an unbelievable sort of beginning, but the director carried it off very well later. I would admire that way the total time pass comedy and heavily emotional sequences have been tied in together and neither of them seem out of place. “Love Letters” was also beautiful in the same way. Although it had two different phases depicting light moments and heavy ones, with some transition; rather than a totally entwined two facets like “Jaane Tu”. Something else that intrigues me in “Jaane Tu” were some characters other than the lead ones. Particularly Aditi’s brother Amit and Jai’s girl friend Meghna. Both these characters seem to have something to say, which has been left unsaid. They could be a movie by themselves. Ordinarily, such a thing would remind you of those movies, which try to depict too many things and manage to do not even a single one. But the beauty here is that while these characters have put in their moments in the movie, they don’t annoy by their presence, nor do they irritate by not having enough presence.

Okay, okay. If you think this is too much of word-play, probably dealing with books all the time does that to you But that’s precisely what is lovely about this venture.

Spare yourself some hours of torture

Don’t watch Tashan. I think my tolerance level is pretty high for bad movies. But for the first time in life, I could take it no longer and left the theater before it ended. Why did you even have to attempt watching it, you would ask, that too in a theater? Well, I was trying to entertain a guest and given the timing this was the only possible movie we could have watched. But I warn you, don’t do it even if you have nothing else to do in life. We could at least have sat at home and chatted a bit So, I attempted watching it, because I had withstood Race. And I have sat through quite boring movies in past. But this time – I had to leave before the climax and now I have to write so much to get those hours of torture out of me.

This movie could have better been called “Tension”. I can still feel it!