Footnotes from the dark

My Favourites: Best of 2007!

2007-12-29T18:18:00.000-08:00

Hindi Top 5

We’ve never had 25 films worth talking about in a single year in a very long time. 2007 has yielded a rich harvest for Hindi cinema.

While rating these films, I’ve not only taken into account the primary function of Indian cinema – that it has to entertain a diverse audience, but also factors such as intention of the filmmaker, originality, repeat viewing and fatigue, grammar of cinema, quality of writing, inventiveness of story-telling, devices employed, experience of the filmmaker, scale of production and star appeal.

Since different people look for different things from cinema, it is impossible for any two people to agree on the same list. With that disclaimer in place, let’s start from the bottom.

No.5:
Jab We Met:
This is Dilwale Dulhaniya’s sequel in spirit. If Dilwale tried to define Indianness in manufacturing parental consent for love, Jab We Met goes deeper into the heartland of the country and tries to understand relationships in the context of a highly self-centric India where love blurs right and wrong. With fine writing, top-rate performances aided by the Shahid-Kareena chemistry, this has to be among the top five films of the year despite its rather slow second half.

No.4:
Om Shanti Om:
Has there been a more irreverent film in the history of Indian cinema? One that does not take anything, including itself, even a wee bit seriously while sincerely paying tribute to an era of implausible plots, melodrama and revenge themes. Just by sheer quantity of laughs and goofs and quality of style and choreography, Om Shanti Om, in spite of the silly twist in the tale towards the climax, is a colourful musical that is shamelessly entertaining as a celebration of cinema.

No.3:
Chak De:
Because Shah Rukh Khan is not Shah Rukh Khan, only for the third time in his career after Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa and Swades. Because, the girls are amazing. Because Jaideep Sahni has written a kickass script that combines girl-power, women’s liberation and the importance of team-spirit in a plausibly convincing underdog drama with authentic sporting action, gorgeously shot. Near flawless but for the predictability associated with the sports genre.

No.2:
Johnny Gaddaar:
Here comes a quality suspense caper after ages. What’s more, it’s slick and stylish. It’s a rollercoaster of a mind-game. And it’s one hell of a trip for the movie-buff. Never has a tribute film been this exciting with all the cheeky referencing. Not only is it unpredictable, it has a brilliant ensemble cast who score off each other. Also, because it has Dharam Paaji show us what a fantastic actor he is even today. A perfect film.

No.1:
Taare Zameen Par:
This one’s hardly perfect but it is so full of life and innocence that it makes you laugh, cry, reminisce and re-look at life and children, quite effortlessly. Films are where reality meets fantasy and fact meets fiction and no other film in a long while has walked these two worlds at the same time, often blurring the lines associated with the distinctively different genres while also tripling up as effective social commentary. No Indian film has ever captured childhood like this before. Outstanding effort.

The Others:
No.6: Ek Chalis Ki Last Local – A rare whacko neo-noir comedy
No.7: Life in a Metro – A ‘Closer’-like candid look at relationships
No.8: Loins of Punjab – Have you ever laughed more this year?
No.9: Honeymoon Travels – A refreshing, modern look at marriage
No.10: Cheeni Kum – But for the climax, this offbeat romance ought to rank higher.
No.11: Apna Aasman – Promising debut conveniently resolved.
No.12: Manorama – If this weren’t a remake, this mystery would rank higher.
No.13: Khoya Khoya Chand – Soha’s miscast in this time machine to the 60s
No.14: Black Friday – Though authentic, loses pace structured like the book
No.15: Dharm – Pankaj Kapoor, you are God!
No.16: Water – Talk of bad casting and location ruining a great script
No.17: Eklavya – The cinematography is sheer poetry
No.18: Namastey London – A surprisingly endearing Katrina-Akshay rom-com
No.19: Bheja Fry – But for Vinay Pathak’s brilliance, a shameless rip-off
No.20: Partner – Govinda-Salman work their magic in this Hitch remake
No.21: Salaam-E-Ishq – This mushy overdose worked for Valentine’s Day
No.22: Apne – This boxing drama has Dharam Paaji’s heart
No.23: Saawariya – Strictly for world-class cinematography and some of the music
No.24: Dil Dosti Etc – A daring gutsy anti-thesis to Dil Chahta Hai
No.25: Aaja Nachle – For Madhuri Dixit alone

English Top 5:

Considering that some of the best films don’t release here the same here as they do around the world, this is a tough list to compile since we are limited to films that actually released here in India – and that includes all the sequels, the tri-quels and mass-based action entertainers with tons of visual effects. Not that they are silly or easy to make, but lavish assembly-line productions get by with a microchip-thin script being just an excuse to unleash a spectacle. Besides while the likes of Babel, The Prestige, Apocalypto, Pursuit of Happyness, Beerfest, Little Miss Sunshine released only this year, they’re too old to be part of this year’s madness.

No.5:
Pirates of the Caribbean - At World's End:
Yeah, Gore Verbinski and team seemed to have made it up as they went with the convoluted twists and turns but then, we are so fanatically obsessed with the world that harbours Captain Jack Sparrow that we don’t mind this spectacular improvisation show with possibly the best finale sequence ever this year. Yup, even better than Spidey’s.

No.4:
Die Hard 4.0:
Yippi Ka Yai Bleep Bleep! Good old John McLane’s came back to do some serious butt-kicking taking on the big villain of our times: Technology. Why is it surprising who kicked whose in a brain versus brawn match? This was among the best of comebacks, ranking right up there with Rocky Balboa.

No.3:
A Mighty Heart:
Maybe because this is closer home and since we all followed the Daniel Pearl case with great concern, A Mighty Heart sucks us into the turbulent aftermath of the disappearance, putting us right into the shoes of his widow. Plus, the performance of her career from Angelina Jolie.

No.2:
The Namesake:
Tabu and Irrfan Khan show us once again why they are world class. In a shrinking global village, how do you arrive at what your identity is? How do you find out who you are? Mira Nair’s The Namesake tries to give us some serious answers in one of the most moving films of the year.

No. 1:
Bourne Ultimatum:
Paul Greengrass gave us a reckless chase film that moves at breckneck speed, every bit living up to the high standards set by the first two in the Bourne franchise. We watched two hours evaporate in no time and were blown away by the splendor of cinema.

The Others:
No.6: I am Legend - Moody apocalyptic drama with eerily real visual effects.
No.7: Superbad – Because ‘Knocked Up’ didn’t release here this year.
No.8: Oceans 13 – Danny Ocean and crew return to form
No.9: Ratatouille – Nearly flawless animation of a deliciously wicked script
No.10: Zodiac – Seen a better serial killer movie this year or in recent times?
No.11: Disturbia – For keeping you hooked with all of one room (for most parts).
No.12: Beowulf – For the brilliance of animation and Angelina’s Golden Globes
No.13: Transformers – Visual effects, fun and action.
No.14: Shrek The Third – More the mayhem, the merrier.
No.15: Music & Lyrics – For being the only decent romantic comedy this year

Taare Zameen Par: Return to Innocence

2007-12-22T14:15:00.000-08:00

Genre: Drama
Director: Aamir Khan
Cast: Darsheel Safary, Aamir Khan, Tisca Chopra
Storyline: A dyslexic child gets a little direction from a caring Art teacher to tackle his difficulty.
Bottomline: Five stars for Taare, simply out of this world!

It doesn’t take more than the first 20 minutes of the film to establish that Aamir Khan has arrived as one of the finest filmmakers in mainstream Hindi cinema today.

At a fundamental level, there are at least three possible paths he could’ve chosen from right at the start.

1. This is a film he could’ve made for the Oscars. But he didn’t. Because making a films for awards and acclaim at the international level means keeping the focus on cinema than the issue itself. Clearly, Aamir made this because he believed it was a story that had to be told to as many people as possible.

2. This is a film he could’ve milked exploitatively for melodrama pretty much like Bhansali did with Black. But he didn’t. Because a dash of melodrama would create a larger-than-life disconnect with the issue rooted in the reality of a competitive, contemporary world. After all, Aamir is the guy who once asked Ashutosh how would his character Bhuvan (from Lagaan) have time or inclination to be clean-shaven in times of drought.

3. This is a film he could’ve made as an insightful social awareness documentary on dyslexia just like how Revathy made a touching Phir Milenge on AIDS awareness. But he didn’t. Maybe because when people go to watch an Aamir Khan film, they expect mischief, light-hearted fun, singing and dancing.

Aamir Khan’s filmmaking is calculatedly flawed because it is all-heart. While it is world-class in terms of sensibility, craft and performances (almost), it does feel the need to reach out, please and educate a mass. While it is sensitively nuanced and subtle (again, almost), it still feels the need to moist your eyes just a little to drill home its emotional depth and remind you of the power of cinema. And though painstakingly researched, it feels the need to simplify and entertain.

Very few filmmakers have had the conviction to make a film that balances aesthetics and art, social relevance and entertainment to bring about a change in the way we as a nation raise children in an extremely competitive standardised world. This is as close as any filmmaker in India has come to achieving perfect harmony between what a creator wants as someone who loves cinema, what people as an audience want from cinema and what the system needs from cinema. Imagine a three-circle Venn Diagram with the common subset area amounting to nearly 90 per cent of total area of the circles.

Ishaan (Darsheel) is the life of the film and we see the world through his eyes as we share his dreams, laugh at the mischief, feel the ache (try holding back your tears during the song his parents leave him at the boarding school) and snap out of it the very next moment, distracted like a child, thanks to Aamir’s flair for changing mood. The first half of the film is an emotional roller-coaster of a time-machine that instantly refreshes memories and takes you back to the days you cried in school. The pangs of home-work and the bliss of innocence.

Dyslexia apart, Ishaan has been part of our past… childhood has never seemed more real on screen, full credit to the filmmaker Aamir Khan and writer-creative director Amole Gupte. Especially, for showing us how differently Ishaan sees the world as he bunks school one day after not doing home-work: He does not see uniforms, he sees individuals making their lives out of their own hands, painting their future… that drop of paint falling on his cheek, accompanied to Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy’s music is a touch of genius.

Movies are where reality meets fantasy. So at the halfway point, enters radical Arts Teacher Ramshankar Nikumbh (Aamir Khan) to the rescue of our little hero, with the fairytale song and dance. Yes, he is too much of an angel when he goes out of his way to discuss the issue with the parents, who are representative of the average Indian middle-class with advice bordering on preachy but starting this dialogue with a diverse mass audience is the function of responsible mature cinema.

So even if it does seem out of the way for the father to come back to resume the discussion, you let it pass because the intent of the filmmaker is noble and in fact, remain impressed with the effective indirectness of the advice. In fact, these are the most crucial parts of the film, even if a little divergent from the core narrative (to the extent that this advice has no bearing on the outcome of Ishaan’s journey) simply because they are relevant and contemporary as social commentary.

The film though rich in sub-text as much as it is in colour, imagery and detail (researched and edited by Deepa Bhatia) for those with the eye, remains rather simplistic at its core as a story of a child with a problem getting the right kind of encouragement, love and support.

By far, Taare Zameen Par is the movie of the year. One that is likely to sweep awards for Darsheel, Aamir and team all around the world. It’s not just out of the box, Taare is simply out of this world.

Dus Kahaaniyan: Bas… Stop stealing, Mr.Gupta

2007-12-09T10:36:00.001-08:00

Genre: Drama
Director: Sanjay Gupta, Hansal Mehta, Rohit Roy, Meghna Gulzar, Apoorva Lakhia, Jasmeet Dhodi
Cast: Sanjay Dutt, Suniel Shetty, Arbaaz Khan, Shabana Azmi, Naseeruddin Shah
Storyline: Ten short stories – stolen, adapted and some credited – with a twist in the tale.
Bottomline: Film students make more original films.

Sanjay Gupta is a thief and an obsessive, compulsive kleptomaniac at that.
After recycling Reservoir Dogs (Kaante), modifying U-Turn (Musafir), plagiarising ‘Old Boy’ (Zinda), he turns to books this time. Thanks to Shilpa for letting me know about the source stories.

For the first short story, Sanjay Gupta rips off Roald Dahl’s ‘Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat,’ calls it ‘Matrimony’ and takes the writing credits for the story about cheaters.

The eccentric cinematography, crisp editing and the grainy grading once again proves that Gupta is technically competent, so much that you are hooked to the story-telling than what his actors Mandira Bedi and Arbaaz Khan can do by way of histrionics.

Hansal Mehta’s ‘High on the Highway’ too is stylistically shot to suit the mood, with a non-linear narrative that seemed intelligent until you learn that Jimmy Shergill is supposed to be passing out of college. Masumeh’s presence more than makes up for the casting mistake and the silly plot.

Meghna Gulzar’s ‘Pooranmasi,’ is also about sexual choices. Set in a rural milieu, this short has very little going for it and makes you understand why Minissha Lamba jumped into the well. I switched off halfway watching a middle-aged Amrita Singh wake up in the fields in the arms of her half-naked lover.

Sanjay Gupta then returns with ‘Strangers in the night,’ an excuse to Neha Dhupia strut her stuff, with suggestively phallic imagery. Erotic no doubt, by why these porn-movie metaphors if the story was not about lust but about nobility? Oh, okay, that’s the twist.

His ‘Zahir’ that follows next, credited to Rajeev Gopalakrishnan, packed a nice twist towards the end – the only story to have actually caught the fancy of the audience. Manoj Bajpai acquits himself pretty well too. This short story made in Tamil, I’m told, played on Doordarshan many years ago, with what seems to be a much better twist.

After five stories woven around different excuses to set up sex scenes, Jasmeet Dhodi’s ‘Lovedale’ post Interval, tries a supernatural spin bordering on incest. With Aftab doing the chunk of acting, this is as boring as it gets.

Apoorva Lakhia’s ‘Sex on the beach’ is just a showcase for Tarina Patel’s golden bikini. Dino Morea evokes a few laughs but this is seriously the kind of fare you don’t mind from film students.

Rohit Roy’s ‘Rice Plate,’ a reworking of Jeffrey Archer’s ‘Broken Routine’ (again, uncredited) has Shabana struggle with a Tamil accent but this is clearly among the more watchable stories of the lot, especially with her facing off Naseeruddin Shah. A pretty decent debut for Rohit Roy.

‘Gubbare,’ written by Gulzaar is a beautiful tale, completely misdirected by Sanjay Gupta. What should have been a well-concealed twist that tugs at your heart-strings turns predictable half-way in spite of Nana Patekar’s heart-breaking performance.

Sanjay Gupta’s ‘Rise and Fall’ is spectacularly shot, highly stylised and inspired by Matrix Revolutions with Sanjay Dutt and Suniel Shetty doing what they do best: fight in slow-mos.

With no common thread running through the films (no, different excuses for sex and violence cannot qualify as a theme for an anthology film), nothing original about these stories, ‘Dus Kahaaniyan’ is not half as good as shorts made by film students with much lesser budgets.

Wait for a cheap DVD copy.

Khoya Khoya Chand: A voyeur's take on the lost world

2007-12-09T08:31:00.000-08:00

Take a sneak peak of what went in behind the scenes of the Hindi cinema of the fifties and the sixties, from a voyeuristic, insider point-of-view.

Right from the moment Vinay Pathak as Shyamal, an assistant director, takes the spotlight to tell us how a struggling writer Zafar (Shiney Ahuja) first met the central lady of the piece, the emerging starlet Nikhat (Soha Ali Khan), we know this is going to be an insider’s account of the love story.

Though the narrator disappears, the quirky, restless hand-held camerawork suggests that this thirty-party account is possibly as much we would know about the truth. After all, we are not being told the story from Nikhat’s or Zafar’s point of view.

This is the film’s biggest plus and biggest minus point. Plus, because, it does gives us a more or less objective account of how flawed, human and vulnerable they were.

The lack of specifics makes this story applicable to the closely-knit film industry of the period that used to comprise of starry-eyed Nikhats, who, seduced by promises of stardom by the Prem Kumars, were unable to balance their passion and idealism, represented by emotionally turbulent writers like Zafars and the populist demands of the Khosas (producers), only to end up becoming the suicidal Ratan Balas of the tale.

In many ways, Nikhat’s story is more or less the same as her senior, Ratan Balas. In many ways, the Zafars, the Prem Kumars, the Khosas and the Shyamals of the era would have used the Nikhats and the Ratan Balas to further their interests and yet have come together at some point, to make a film that immortalised all of them forever.

This bird’s eye view of the era also is the film’s minus because, the filmmaker stops just short of giving us a peek into their individual minds, fears and dreams. Exactly, what would have made us feel the pangs of filmdom and the angst of incompleteness each of these characters faced.

Something, which a flawed ‘Factory Girl’ did brilliantly by sucking you into all that Edie Sedgwick (Sienna Miller) went through. Edie and Nikhat are not too different. But Factory Girl was hard-hitting, intimate, voyeuristic and gut-wrenchingly depressing.

Khoya Khoya Chand fails to do that in spite of the potential presented and the role sexual politics played during the tumultuous times the film industry went through.

Soha Ali Khan, though an exciting promising actress who turns in her best role of her career, in spite of the time the movie spans, continues to look like a girl, hardly the battered woman Nikhat would have been in her self-destructive last phase of life. Sonya Jehan (who plays Ratan Bala), on the other hand, is pure magic.

Shiney Ahuja’s intensity sees him through as Zafar and it is impossible to believe that he’s the same guy who began his career as a wooden porn-star (Sins) and the ever-reliable Rajat Kapoor manages it with a wig, like a natural.

The writing in the film is top class, a true homage to the era, just like Shantanu Moitra’s haunting music that transports you almost instantly to the era of mujhras, pianos and cabarets.
Vintage cinema like this needs your patience for it is no easy task to set the mood, make a completely constructed era breathe life, and have characters spouting lines of great literary value in staged settings, with archaic music and yet, never look like a spoof.

Sudhir Mishraji, your passion for cinema shows.

Beowulf: Angelina gets Golden Globes!

2007-12-09T08:26:00.000-08:00

Cast: Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Angelina Jolie, John Malcovich
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Genre: Drama
Storyline: A warrior comes to the rescue of a town traumatised by a monster, only to find himself succumbing to temptation.
Bottomline: Take the train to Hyderabad, catch it on 3D IMAX

First, dear parents, this is not a movie to take your kids to unless you want to expose them to Angelina Jolie’s animated Golden Globes-worthy performance in all its glory and all other things gory. Imagine the ugliest of monsters and dragons spilling their guts out, not to forget the effects of debauchery and alcoholism of yore.

Beowulf is for wicked adults who like their movies playful. Beowulf (pronounced to rhyme with Werewolf) is full of edge-of-the-seat thrills and cliffhangers but unfortunately, those of us in Chennai, do not get to experience half the action because this is a film best enjoyed in 3D IMAX, like Zemeckis’s last trip via ‘The Polar Express.’

Zemeckis once again employs the miracle of motion capture to bring to life characters created by hours and hours of painstaking animation. For a large part of the movie, you are never sure how much is animation and how much the actors have contributed to the shapes and speech of the characters they are playing. Like his previous works, Zemeckis intentionally exaggerates the animation so that it is not too life-like, just to keep your willing suspension of disbelief intact.

Like most fairytales, Beowulf is about the titular warrior who has come to Hrothgar’s (Anthony Hopkins) kingdom to slay the monster Grendel, who often gatecrashes the meat-house parties for his fill of human meat. The scenes of gore are delightfully wicked and keeps the child in you thoroughly entertained, especially when Grendel chews the head of one of the warriors.

But there’s a twist to the tale. Beowulf is not just about the hero in human form, it is also about the vulnerability of being human no matter how big a hero. All it takes is Angelina to seduce your sanity.

We forgive you Beowulf. Even the Gods couldn’t have resisted such a beautiful monster.

By all means, make your trip to the cinemas.

Better still, book tickets to Hyderabad to get your glimpse of the marvel that Angelina Jolie is, in 3D IMAX.

The Brave One: Angry young woman misfires

2007-12-01T08:40:00.000-08:00

Genre: Drama
Director: Neil Jordan
Cast: Jodie Foster, Terrence Howard, Naveen Andrews
Storyline: A woman attacked goes on a termination spree.
Bottomline: Jodie kills Bill, Tom, Dick, Harry and shoots every other bad guy in town.

What happens when you try to explore the angry-young-man-angst towards a near-dysfunctional inefficient system, through a woman protagonist? You get ‘The Brave One’.

Conventionally, in the movies, women are only known to avenge personal wrongs. Or kill husbands who abuse or boyfriends who cheat. People they love, as a detective in the film observes.

This film’s only stake to your 200 bucks is that it marks the arrival of the female vigilante with a grudge against the system.

Jodie Foster kicks it like nobody’s business. Now, if only the storytelling matched the earnestness in her performance. It never seems like a film anyone would take seriously.

That’s primarily because in spite of the dark moody narrative and constant rambling through hushed voiceovers that remind you of a ‘Night’ Shyamalan film, this script relies too much on co-incidence to take the story forward.

How much disbelief can you possibly suspend when a wronged radio jockey goes back on air live to pour her heart out, emotionally connects with the man who seems to be investigating hers and every other case in town, and instinctively narrows her down to be the killer because of an elevator bell he heard when she hung up the phone while talking to him one night when she didn’t get sleep. This is too easy, man.

Minus the pretentious blabber that tries hard to sound profound and meaningful, this might have actually worked as a hardcore racy action film or a tight psycho thriller. But the makers are more ambitious.

They want to make it a meaty socio-political thriller. Hence, the screenwriters load it with gender politics by empowering a feminist angry-young-woman out to cleanse the system of evil lecherous men and then add to it the dimension of gun-culture and morality of vigilante executions associated with the genre.

Apparently, it was Jodie’s idea to be a radio host, compared to the journalist the writers wanted her to be. We don’t know what else the star brought to the table, but ‘The Brave One’ is just another trigger-happy Hollywood assembly-line revenge film, one that Vijayshanthi would have done in the nineties. Or maybe did.

A Mighty Heart: Heart-breaking

2007-12-01T08:35:00.000-08:00

Genre: Drama
Director: Michael Winterbottom
Cast: Angelina Jolie, Dan Futterman, Irrfan Khan, Archie Panjabi
Storyline: As her journalist husband goes missing, Ms. Pearl has a long agonisingly arduous wait.
Bottomline: Hits you hard with what it does not show

When was the last time your heart actually went out to a person on screen that you actually shed a tear, shared her grief, felt her agony and hoped against hope waiting for the man who you right at the beginning of the film know will never come back?

A Mighty Heart transports you right inside the mind-space of Mariane Pearl in Karachi after her husband Daniel Pearl went missing as she, friends and the investigating team try to put together all available information and follow leads in their attempts to find the missing journalist.

The film plays out like a documentary with a hand-held video feel starting from the day of his disappearance, pieced together from various accounts of people who had seen him or heard from him during the day.

At no point in the film does the director ever show you things you could not have known. Like, how he was taken, where he was kept, how he tried to escape or the execution itself.

That, precisely, is what makes the canvas utterly credible and brutally realistic, yet remaining immensely sensitive. What they don’t show scares you more in this thriller that makes you forget the various lanes you traveled in search of a man who seems to have been taken by a ghost.

A Mighty Heart is that journey that leaves you shaken, choked and feeling extremely scared of the world we live in, yet comforting you in its final moments with the brave, steely resolve of the spirited woman who refuses to be terrorised.

Is it Angelina Jolie as Mariane Pearl? We forget. The actress wears the heart and soul of Ms. Pearl in the performance of her career, one that makes her Academy Award winning ‘Girl, Interrupted’ feat look like an out-take.

Is there a more natural actor on this planet than Irrfan Khan? Quite possibly, none. In one of the most understated performances of his career, Irrfan breathes so much credibility and authority in his role of the investigating officer. It is one of those roles that will never be considered for an award because it never, even for a fleeting second, looks like a performance.

The ensemble cast, with first-rate performances, makes that entire horrifying episode come alive in front of our eyes.

Disturbing, gut-wrenching, with a flicker of hope that deceives, only to die.

This film terrorises you. And yet, asks you not to be terrorised. Are you as strong as Ms.Mariane Pearl?

Aaja Nachle? Na Ja! Bach Le!

2007-11-30T09:59:00.000-08:00

Aaja Nachle is the kind of film that makes you shudder to think about a Hema Malini comeback. Imagine the Dream Girl in Iyengar-meets-International Airport twang, fat-ass figure-hugging denim, sleeveless blouses pouring out Mommy-cleavage… okie, let’s stop right there.

The kind of film that makes you thank God and Dr. Nene that Madhuri didn’t wait a couple of more years to wear her dancing shoes again.

It’s the kind of film where change-of-heart happens as often as change of underwear should. Or maybe musical as a genre gave Jaideep Sahni, an otherwise reliable screenwriter, the licence to keep changing tunes.

There are over half a dozen instances:

Time taken for politician to undergo change of heart after having his boys destroy the theatre: The time it takes to order lassi.

Time taken for jilted lover nursing a grudge to undergo change of heart after tearing her poster down: One night’s sleep.

Time taken for casting Miss Runny Nose as Laila who can’t dance to save her life or the worn-down structure’s: One sobbing piece of dialogue.

Time taken for half the town to turn receptive towards the idea of reviving theatre: A song.

Time taken for best friend to turn against Dia: Ummm! None

Time taken for her to repent: Ding! None.

Time taken for best friend’s evil scheming husband to undergo change of heart after watching the very show he didn’t want: Duh! None.

Let’s not even get started about time taken for change of art. Not even drop of a curtain, because there is none.

The ruins of a community centre turn to an amphitheatre that can host even Bombay Dreams, the kind that can conjure up an array of fountains, a revolving stage and suspended swings that make you believe you are watching David Copperfield and not a desi-Dixitised version of Honey.

What is it with Yash Raj Films really?

If you have so much money, why not subsidise ticket prices for improvisation shows like these.

After all, why should we pay when Aaja Nachle is the kind of fare we are used to in Nach Baliye and Jodi No.1, with an excuse of a plot, the plot being: What happens when Madhuri makes people dance?

What’s extremely tragic is that Aaja Nachle ended up being just about a dance show (which no doubt is spectacular, in fact too spectacular for our own discomfort) when it promised much more in terms of sub-plot and sub-text with its motley crew of characters and context of art in a world-run by commerce.

But that seems to be the price you have to pay for making a film centred around your superstar. Would the audience like it if the diva-like Goddess found true love in the form of a chai-wala who looks like Ranvir Shorey?

Madhuri just has to play herself and bank on her natural charm while Ranvir, Vinay, Konkana, Kunal, Irrfan and Akshaye Khanna come up with performances you will remember for a long time to come. The kind that will give make your heart glow.

Too bad it just remained The Vaibhavi Merchant Show.

Especially in the Hindi fillum context jahaan naach-gaana raita hota hai, puri biryani nahin.

Goal: Great players, bad match

2007-11-27T13:06:00.000-08:00

Genre: Drama
Director: Vivek Agnihotri
Cast: Arshad Warsi, John Abraham, Bipasha Basu, Boman Irani
Storyline: An underdog Asian football team must win a championship to save its club.
Bottomline: The Gadar of sports films

Goal is not half as bad as you think it is.

It only suffers in comparison to the other three great films made in the sports film genre in the last decade.

So there, we’ve seen sport as part of folklore (Lagaan), sport as part of an underdog’s triumph with a sensibility that appealed to the multiplex audience (Iqbal) and sport that appealed to the critics and the classes – refined, gender-sensitive and restrained yet dramatic (Chak De).

In comparison, Goal is just your average Hindi masala film. Only that here, the dishum-dishum happens on the field. The sporting action per se is not bad at all and the cast too is pretty solid.

Then why do the critics hate it?

Goal has no clue how to dribble sensibilities.

It wants to be subtle and restrained as Chak De, but it also wants to be overtly patriotic as Lagaan and it also wants to lighten up the mood like Iqbal but it does not have the ball-game that is considered a religion or one that wears the National Sport tag to reignite lost passion.

So Goal, right from the word Go, comes across as a wannabe trying to embrace an foreign sport and fumbles in trying to forge a credible context for us to go gaga over football in the UK.

Look at the challenges: First, why would anyone here root for an underdog football team there? The team can’t possibly be full of Indians living in the UK. That wouldn’t be realistic at all.

Hence, the filmmaker’s compulsive need to manufacture pop-patriotism by adopting an all-inclusive pan-Asian identity grouped together by colour, so that rivals can be classified as Us browns (Hindustani, Pakistani, Bangladeshi) versus Them (the whites) using racism as the context for conflict.

This, Vivek Agnihotri achieves by blurring the lines between the Indian, Pakistani and the Bangladeshi identity. He makes the Pakistani run a joint called Little India, he has the Indian being called Paki by a rogue white racist player and includes in the team, an affable Sikh and an emotional Bangladeshi whose identities extend beyond geographical boundaries.

What stands to be lost here is the pride of Asian football – the Southall United Football Club – that also resembles the state of the sport in Asia with lack of funds, facilities and infrastructure.

Setting this context is an achievement by itself but Goal but is more ambitious. It does not stop at letting us buy this already contrived context, it wants to add more drama, trigger tragedy and orchestrate your sympathy. This is where Goal starts going horribly wrong.

I cringed in my seat when the father figure of the Club dies of a heart attack after hearing the news that the City Council will take away the land because of its inability to pay the lease. Just a moment before that, Arshad with tears escaping his eyes, keeps referring to the Club as their “zameen”. Fighting for your pride and space is one thing, fighting for “desh ki dharti” in foreign land is not just contrived, it is stupid.

The first act is ridden with such cringe-inducing clichés and devices of convenience employed in the narrative. They need a coach, they find one, he is initially hesitant, one scene later, he’s game. They need a strike player, they find one, he doesn’t give a hoot, two scenes later, he’s game too. They need a bus, three scenes later, they get one.

Sports films as a genre have a predictable arc and the only way you outplay those limitations is by making the seemingly predictable developments difficult and interesting.

Goal is full of lazy screenwriting.

What’s the game-changer then?

There is this speech somewhere in the middle when the coach (Boman Irani) breaks down out of helplessness and frustration. Unlike Chak De, he’s no Tuglak. Boman’s Tony is a soft-spoken coward. It is impossible to ignore such sincerity in performance.

Even John Abraham seems at home having a ball. One of his best, most natural performances, simply because he seems to be enjoying all that he’s doing – playing ball, stealing kisses from Bipasha and looking bratty enough to fit the role. Raj Zutshi as the Sikh, with the best lines in the film, always manages to score.

But it is Arshad Warsi who carries this film. He breathes life into cardboard and manages to inflate his Shaan into a 3D character – whether he’s in the shoes of the player, the brother or the husband, Arshad’s a natural, a delight to watch. When the otherwise level-headed leader of the pack (he waits till he scores two goals on the mark before making his mates cheer for him) loses his cool seeing John on the field, his team-mate gently reminds him: “If we had to play like this, why ask Tony to coach?”

Or later in the film when without a word being spoken, a two-shot reveals that the rival heroes make up with a simple gesture of putting their arm around each other before taking the field.

With this team of actors at play giving earnest performances, you are tempted to forgive the umpteen number of melodramatic twists slapped into the film. Like the sub-plot about John’s father. These moments seem to belong to a completely different movie. That’s how inconsistent the sensibilities within the film are.

But for a while, just for a minute, forget Chak De or Iqbal or Lagaan. Goal, in spite of its patchy playing ground of a screenplay, manages to make you take note of a few talented blokes who are having fun passing ball.

Saawariya: The fairy's tale!

2007-11-10T15:57:00.000-08:00

Since it's impossible for me to review the film in my current frame of mind, here's my interpretation of how Sanjay Leela Bhansali interpreted "White Nights" with Saawariya, the first Indian movie to pay tribute to fairies. Will put up a more serious review later in the week...

Like Rani as Gulabji tells us right at the beginning, the movie is all about a rockstar fairy.

Soon enough, the fairy with pink lips (Ranbir) comes to Blue Light Area, turns down the hottest hooker (obviously, duh!) and bonds with the sisters before telling old hag, silly Lilly (Zohra Sehgal) that he will do the Full Monty to pay his rent. Soon, music director Monty sets up an appropriate number for him to drop the towel. In America, since it’s not unusual for fairies to show their ass on screen, he got to flash. Here, apparently the Censors took it.

By now, we so know Bhansali’s sensitivity towards the mentally ill. Tired of being attacked for his melodrama, this time he shows us with sublime subtlety without never ever directly mentioning that this fairy is mentally ill (check out the Prison Break 'Haywire' expression when fairy does Masha Allah) and sometimes stalks random chicks with backless blouses waiting at the bridge.

One night, the fairy thinks he has met his twin when he spots Sakeena waiting under an open umbrella when it’s not raining. Though initially hesitant, Sakeena soon recognizes him to be a fairy and thereon, feels safe with him. In no time, they are hopping over patterned potholes and bonding like sisters.

Sakeena: Fairy likes that name so much that he wants it. He practices signing her name in all the walls of Blue Light Area before climbing the pipe to get home to sleep on top of the piano because he can’t find his football. Yes, we forgot to mention this fairy likes to use balls for a pillow.

Fairy wants to bond some more with Sakeena too but she prefers to wait at the bridge for her lover appropriately called EMan, the virtual lover who in spite of his absence turns her on and makes her sleep-row her boat to the bridge.

When fairy learns about EMan, he’s consumed by jealousy. Sakeena had a boyfriend. He didn't.

Fairy turns evil and burns the letter Sakeena writes for EMan and then secretly goes to find EMan himself with the hope of tracing him in the hotel she had mentioned. But no such luck.

He returns without getting laid. Feeling lonely, fairy tries to pick up regulars at the club as he teaches Sakeena to dance to Saawariya with the hope of brainwashing her to forget EMan. No such luck either.

Fairy then goes back to hook up with hooker Gulabji who has played his conscience all through the film. She kicks him out hoping that would help him get over his denial and come out of the closet.

Sakeena ends up with EMan.

Fairy, on seeing EMan finally, is heartbroken.

It was love at first sight for the fairy. But Sakeena bitch finally got her EMan.
All she left back for him was her umbrella.

And, now Fairy continues to wait at the bridge for his EMan.
Amen!

Om Shanti Om: Om-My-Gawd! Nothing's Sacred!

2007-11-10T14:32:00.000-08:00

Genre: Comedy
Director: Farah Khan
Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Deepika Padukone, Arjun Rampal, Shreyas Talpade
Storyline: A junior artiste from the 70s is reborn as a superstar to avenge the death of his lady-love.
Bottomline: Time Machine! Gets you past 150 minutes in no time.

They call it the climax for no ordinary reason.

Because, by definition, it is the single highest point of the film’s glory, the culmination of all the great moments generated, including the resolution of conflict and the point where boy finally gets the girl.

That’s probably where Om Shanti Om stumbles.

The climax of OSO is anything but the film’s glorious high, the culmination, though via a cheeky twist, works out to be an anti-climax and the ‘Happy Ending’ that we have been promised isn’t as happy as we would have wanted it to be, especially at the end of the most hilariously entertaining moments of political incorrectness in the history of Hindi cinema.

Om Shanti Om is a light-hearted tribute to Hindi cinema the way we know it and love it, in spite of its flaws, improvisation and implausibility. It is also a premeditated celebration of willing suspension of disbelief, as one of the characters reacts to SRK when he tells her she won’t believe it if he told her about his rebirth. She talks for most of us Hindi movie buffs when she says: “I believe you when you say you can beat up ten guys, I believe you when you say you can jump from top of the building… Why would I then not believe you when you tell me this?”

Believe it or not, you better buy this tale if you want your popcorn to disappear before you know it.

Right at the very beginning when Rishi Kapoor in silver pants dances to the original ‘Om Shanti Om’ from Karz, Farah defines where they are coming from. From the audience. As fans, seeing the song and dance routines of the seventies and picturing themselves right there, taking nothing seriously.

So even if she’s getting a Manoj Kumar duplicate chased around with a lathi, or in all probability mocking Bhansali with a spoof showing a lover with multiple disabilities of eyes, ears and speech on a wheelchair with no arms to push it, using his mouth to spit out the flowers on his unrequited lover’s wedding or coming up with digs at Abhishek Bachchan for his ghost appearance in Dhoom 5 or poking fun at SRK for doing the same thing in different movies and getting nominated, Farah also neatly ties it all up right in the end sparing not herself either. She walks down the red carpet at the end of the movie to find the audience has already left the hall.

That’s what irreverence is all about. The ability to laugh at everybody, including yourself.

Nothing is sacred, anything goes. As long as it can make someone laugh.

This is a film that works so well because of the free-flowing improvisation, the way scripts used to be written in the seventies (in fact, scripts are still improvised and made up as they shoot for a majority of the films produced). But that’s also why the final act seems like an after-thought.

It’s almost like Farah got this great idea for a twist in the tale and just slapped it right at the end after setting it up for the great glorious revenge saga we are anticipating with all the Karz references.

Honestly, we as the audience don’t care too much about how the bad guy gets his cheeks kicked as long as the love story is neatly wrapped up and the ‘Happily-ever-after’ follows. Which is why we are bound to be a little let down at the abruptness and the drama in the end. Revenge does not dish out the feel-good factor. Love does.

That’s why we go to such movies, especially, the ones where SRK does the same thing over and over again.

That apart, the movie is a hell of a party, a bits-and-pieces blockbuster strung together with a series of laughs, songs and dances. And, stars of course.

SRK shows us why he’s the rockstar of our era. Deepika is the next hot thing. Shreyas with little to do is still an endearing performer and Arjun Rampal should’ve got a meatier role. Kirron Kher with horrible make-up in the second half gets to reprise her Maa role and even says exactly the same line from ‘Main Hoon Na’ (Yeah, yeah… we noticed the movie poster in the room when she does that!).

The score gives you goose-bumps and Farah shows Bhansali what a musical really needs apart from great music: energy, style, soul, drama and the laughs surely help.

Don’t take this review seriously, Farah sure as hell is not fishing for compliments. Like Om Kapoor would say reading criticism: What the fish!

Go dancing with the stars. Go Om Shanti Om.

Jab We Met: Return to Innocence

2007-11-02T01:57:00.000-07:00

Genre: Romance
Director: Imtiaz Ali
Cast: Shahid Kapoor, Kareena Kapoor, Dara Singh
Storyline: Suicidal boy meets chirpy girl on a train and change each other’s lives forever.
Bottomline: Sweet little love story

How good can a Shahid Kapoor movie possibly be?

You will be surprised watching ‘Jab We Met.’

It not only gives Shahid a break and a role that helps him out of his Shah Rukh Khan hangover, it also exploits Kareena’s bubbly persona to make an author-backed role one of the most memorable characters in recent film history.

In spite of its predictable plot, the film is refreshingly natural and full of life (with plenty of help from cinematographer Nutty Subramaniam), with director Imtiaz Ali having a flair for dialogue, especially in bringing out larger-than-life elements from relatable characters set within a realistic sensibility, in a way that it reminds you of what the Chopras used to be, till they made Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge and eventually deteriorated to assembly-line productions.

Coming to think of it, Jab We Met is even what Barjatyas used to be: With great emphasis on writing, creating beautiful bonds that developed into love, milking the emotional connect and feel-good from a sense of family and friendship, drenched in the innocence of every day life and the warmth of simple people with simpler needs: love.

The first half is completely The Shahid-Kareena Show as they brilliantly anchor the film with their natural chemistry of the opposites, reminding you of Linklater’s ‘Before Sunrise.’ She meets him on the train on the verge of suicide, infuses some life back into him with a little humour, optimism and infectious dose of energy (déjà vu Elizabethtown?), before continuing her adventure of a life whose sole mission is to run away with the man she believes she loves.

The parts immediately after interval slow down proceedings but the film does find its way back to the plot eventually when the couple connects back with each other.

It is a delight to watch this young couple be themselves.

Shahid does a great job when he’s underplaying his suicidal depressed mood though his chirpiness still seems a little awkward and forced while Kareena pulls off the role of her career with her chitter-chatter chirpiness to the degree of likeability – the way Hema Malini did as ‘Basanti’ or Sonali Bendre did in ‘Sarfarosh’.

Can’t wait to watch more from Imtiaz Ali.

No Smoking: How many ciggies can a pack hold, K?

2007-10-27T12:21:00.000-07:00

Director: Anurag Kashyap
Cast: John Abraham, Ayesha Takia, Ranvir Shorey, Paresh Rawal
Storyline: A chain-smoker is coerced into quitting by a mysterious, dangerous rehabilitation centre.
Bottomline: You can’t smoke without a match, can you?

There are many ways to light up.
Many years ago, they used to rub stones together.
Then came matches.
And soon enough, lighters.

There are many ways to express.
Many years ago, they used to scribble on the walls with stone.
Then came paint.
And soon enough brushes, canvas, paper and film.

Evolution. All to make life simpler for us. Ready-made solutions. Assembly-line productions. To make sure we save time. Walk in, walk out. Be entertained. Smile.

Until, we ushered in the era of designer-wear, tailor-made solutions customised to suit individual tastes. Multiplexes. Boutiques. Galleries. To give art a platform. To make people think. And appreciate.

Anurag Kashyap has gone one step further and made a film meant for the future.

One that will appeal to a select few. Could be immediate family. Friends. Pet. Or maybe just for his nicotine stick to enjoy it while it lasts. Before it turns impotent and becomes ash.

No doubts about it at all that John Abra-born-to-ham, Anurag Kashyap, Vishal Bharadwaj and Kumar Mangat deserve five stars for effort and the decision to attempt a genre that nobody in the right mind would have dared to produce.

Anurag Kashyap comes up with a truly brilliant idea that borders on genius and ruins it only because he tries too hard. Imagine, you have rolled up the perfect joint… And instead of just smoking it, you get adventurous. You try lighting it by rubbing stones together just to prove a point.

But K, the brilliance of abstraction always lies in simplicity. No matter how complex you want the construction of semiotics to be, no matter how layered you want the thoughts and statements to be, the overall idea behind the entire process of expression needs to be a fairly simple one. To put it simply, we don’t care how you light your joint as long as you don’t ruin the joint itself.

For the benefit of all those who swore at the screen at the end of the film demanding for a book explaining the film, here is my most charitable guess at what was in Anurag’s joint in the first place.

The film is trip into the mind of a smoker who has been forced to quit. He is made to pay by cheque (i.e. a heavy price that seems unreasonable), threatened by a Baba who has three ‘Sri’s before his name (Art of Living anyone?) about the ill-effects of his smoking… That first, his family would be gassed (i.e. he would be endangering his family’s health by forcing them to inhale poison gas, a metaphor for passive smoking), his fingers would be chopped off (that he will cause himself bodily harm by his continued stint at smoking), his beloved would die (they would leave him) and finally, his soul too (his body will incinerate and he gets no chance at redemption). And that his salvation or healing lies in his ability to make more people give up smoking.

The plot from Stephen King’s story Quitters Inc aside (maybe it is pure co-incidence that Cat’s Eye treated the addict’s urge to smoke with a surreal hallucination sequence), if you’ve seen Vanilla Sky, you will guess the signifiers hinting lucid dreams and the nightmares to follow used within the first ten minutes of the film. If you’ve seen Lost, you will get the whole Alice in Wonderland trip down the tunnel (there’s also the Lost Season 2 score reproduced just to re-emphasise the homage). If you’ve seen Hostel, you will get an idea about this dangerous cult that targets people and makes them sign a telephone directory-thick-contract book, which if you’ve seen Bedazzled, you would connect with the deal he made with the Devil. If you’ve seen Mullholland Dr., you will get an idea of the signifiers employed and be able to deconstruct why Ayesha Takia is Annie and Anjali (who he wants her to be and who she really is compared to who she was and who she becomes in Mullholland Dr.) and so on…

Hence your success in deconstruction of the film is directly proportional to how many films you have seen that Anurag has. There is a good chance that, given that K has seen many films than the average J.

The fact that he’s further coded the film to include a personal parallel with his life and the film industry (by equating smoking to radical ideas that the system has asked him to quit to ensure the financial health of his producers and family and inside jokes/references to writer Abbas Tyrewala) only adds to the number of signifiers and metaphors used in creating the abstraction with some of them not quite fitting the context.

As a result of this semiotic diarrhea, No Smoking is reduced to video graffiti drawn by a disturbed individual after repeated visits to his video library, thanks to his movie addiction. The more the signifiers, the more sketchy and amateur the artistry.

The extra ‘drags’ in No Smoking kill you before it all kicks in.

Moral of the story, K: Now that you know that this kind of smoking is injurious to your health and soul, hopefully, you will keep in mind what you need to light it up. An audience. And, a match would really help. Strike to connect. Illuminate.

Bhool Bhulaiyaa: The case of the missing marbles!

2007-10-18T16:02:00.000-07:00

Director: Priyadarshan
Cast: Akshay Kumar, Shiney Ahuja, Vidya Balan, Ameesha Patel
Storyline: A newly-wed couple try to dispel notions of a ghost in their haunted mansion only to find themselves caught in its spell.
Bottomline: Priyadarshan loses it in translation
Genre: Thriller

If bad remakes amounted to murder, Priyadarshan’s a serial killer going by his track record, box-office figures notwithstanding.

How bad a filmmaker should you be to stay so faithful to the screenplay of the Malayalam original ‘Manichitrathazhu’ and yet churn out such horror?

At least if the filmmaker had to deal with changes/touches/twists to the tale, you could’ve blamed it on the screenwriter. But here’s a film that stays as close as possible to the screenplay of the much-acclaimed classic and yet falters, purely because of its execution. By execution, I also mean CAPITAL punishment for us viewers.

It is an ordeal to sit through the first one hour of ‘Bhool Bhulaiyaa’ and its attempt at comedy. Because, in this segment, even the usually dependable Paresh Rawal’s timing is all bollocks and you end up giggling only when you are supposed to be scared.

While the original was rooted in a credible rural milieu with an endearingly believable bunch of village simpletons who are convinced about the presence of a ghost, Priyadarshan’s take is filled with his regular inventory of caricatures – Rajpal Yadav in yet another ‘Chottey’ avatar, Paresh Rawal bumbling around like an idiot, Asrani hamming it up… you get the picture?

Add to this, there’s the phenomenally expressionless Ameesha Patel to hoot at.

Akshay finally makes his entry ten minutes before interval and gives you something to look forward to: The over-priced popcorn.

Jokes apart, Akshay is the only entertaining proposition of the film, using his seasoned comic flair to keep the proceedings light, carrying what’s left of the film on his able shoulders. Vidya Balan has two left feet and Shiney Ahuja’s sincerity shows in the scene where he breaks down. What a long way he has come since Sins.

Where Bhool Bhulaiyaa fails and Manichitrathazhu scores, is in the filmmaker’s ability (or inability, in this case) to set up a face-off between science and superstition. Fazil played a gripping mind-game with us keeping us guessing on what was causing all hell to break loose – was it really the ghost or was it someone with a dissociative identity disorder?

There were many cues thrown around in Manichitrathazhu, some to mislead, some to distract and some to hint and help you participate in the guessing game. For all his claim to have worked on the film, Priyadarshan doesn’t even seem to have got hold of the basic idea behind the film: a science-meets-superstition-based-thriller where parapsychology and exorcism flow seamlessly into the narrative.

While we can understand P.Vasu’s commercial considerations that made him ignore these finer aspects and just dumb it down as a Superstar film for the masses, Priyadarshan’s claim of being faithful to the original is superficial and unreal, just like the film he has made.

‘Bhool Bhulaiyaa’ is yet another example of a classic lost in translation, another victim of Priyadarshan’s obsessive compulsive urge to make a career out of other people’s films with only buffoonery for a USP.

Laaga Chunari Main Daag: Didi's Tragedy Show, Rom-Com style

2007-10-18T15:29:00.000-07:00

Genre: Drama
Director: Pradeep Sarkar
Cast: Rani Mukerji, Konkana Sen Sharma, Kunal Kapoor, Abhishek Bachchan
Storyline: Small town girl goes to big bad Mumbai and becomes an escort.
Bottomline: Sarkar's sense of feminism goes hanky-panky, with special emphasis on the hanky.

There are moments in the film where Pradeep Sarkar breaks the predictability associated with the stock-story with a few new touches.

Like the bit when she does not take the money the first time she gets a 'daag' on her chunari. She slaps the guy instead. Like the part where she chooses to do it on her terms and in style instead of signing up for Madhur Bhandarkar's Chandni Bar-girl's desperation of doing it for pocket change. Like the point that she always has an
exit-route option open, throughout the film.
These touches are the only saving grace of a film that tries hard to be a feminist take on the issue but fails due to one basic flaw: The fact that she goes through all this in an attempt to be the "son" her father wanted and in the end, her exit from this path is guaranteed only by the entry of the son-in-laws, the family's new male
protectors.

This ruins everything.

Maybe this is Pradeep Sarkar's way of telling us that this candy-floss pseudo-feminism is a picture perfect reflection of our times where morality as defined by the rich and the famous differs from the morality of the middle-class. Once you've made the jump who cares what others say? Love is all that matters. Perfect for the multiplex-goer sensibility.

It does not squeeze the sentiment enough to dampen your hanky. Nor is it bitter-sweet. At best, it's a feel-good tragedy.

It's not an author-backed role for any of the characters, so you are wondering why Jaya Bachchan's name appears first in the credits. Maybe because the director wanted to keep his promise of writing a role tailor-made for her, he literally just keeps her going at the sewing machine day and night. You didn't get the metaphor? Without her putting the stitches on the petticoats, the family's fortune would be reduced to rags.

Wait, there are more. From the predictable Ganga of the Benaras epitomising the purity of the protagonist to the deteriorating condition of the family (through father's health) and their ancestral home, literally, to the stack of falling chips to the professional courtesan's in-your-face assessment of Rani's innocence, every thing is spelt out that it would be no surprise if the next film from the Yash Raj Banner has arrow-pointers and footnotes explaining the motifs and metaphors employed to make the film artistically richer.

This need to spell out everything probably only emerges because every situation, character and location is bathed in the Yash Raj-banner-sensibility of manufacturing cinema – good-looking people in great looking clothes singing and dancing around in gorgeous locations.

Thanks to the picture perfect cinematography we hardly know that their palatial nest was supposed to be on the verge of ruins as the dialogue suggests.

There's nothing visually dirty about the job she takes up – we see her get herself a makeover, strut around in the best of clothes, fly business class to Zurich and almost do a Dilwale Dulhaniya all over again. And, we are supposed to feel sorry for her? The sensibility demanded of the screenplay is the biggest casualty of the Yash Raj Films stylization.

Konkana's chirpiness borders on annoying but blame that on the dumb thing she plays. Rani has a cakewalk of a role that demands no more than her Mona Lisa smile and she 'sleeps' through it, not sure what to do in the bedroom scenes.

The film is so old-school that it is refreshing to see Kunal Kapoor improvise with a burger, spilling mayonnaise on his shirt and provide the film its romantic comedy moments. Abhishek Bachchan with all of 15 minutes of screen-time banks on charm and chemistry with his not-so-Babli pair this time.

The only reason it is worth catching on TV is that it takes every single cliché from the genre of the past and juxtaposes it with updated contemporary, modern-day reactions which have become clichés too.

Sample: How the sister comes to know about her 'job': Cliché. How she reacts to it: New age cliche. How the family comes to know: Cliché. How they react to it: New-age cliche. How the boy comes to know: Cliché. How he reacts to it: New-age Romantic Comedy cliche.

These sort of twists against the tragedy genre work, but only in a Sooraj Barjatya-kind of a way.

One Minute Reviews

2007-10-18T13:12:00.000-07:00

Licence to Wed:
Cast: Robin Williams, Mandy Moore, John Krasinski
Director: Ken Kwapis
Storyline: A lovey-dovey couple decides to take a marriage preparatory course and find the Reverend to be a bone in the kebab.
Ups: The chick-flick mood, the romantic comedy with some genuinely funny moments, Robin Williams and his adorable sidekick minister-kid, Mandy Moore’s appeal that helps her skip through yet another role bravely without the skill better known as acting and John, who seems to be a natural.
Downs: Predictable like any film in the genre, uni-dimensional characters, completely unbelievable Reverend… Bugging apartments of couples to crackdown on their sex life? Only Robin Williams could’ve made this work.
Bottomline: Perfect date movie but if you are dreading the M-word, don’t take her for this one.

Wrong Turn:
Cast: Desmond Harrington, Eliza Dushku
Director: Rob Schmidt
Storyline: A bunch of friends trespass into Cannibal-zombie-land and end up playing hide and seek with death.
Ups: Hot babes who you know will last longest in the film, plenty of thrills, jump-scenes, scary moments and a credible landscape.
Downs: For a film that came out in 2003, even the sequel is out on DVD. Not an iota of class or subtlety, highly predictable plotline and why don’t the zombies just eat the hot ones like they did with the boys instead of taking them captive? Oh, wait, that’s a no-brainer.
Bottomline: Awesome B-movie stuff.

Resident Evil 3:
Cast: Milla Jovovich, Ali Larter, Ashanti
Director: Russell Mulcahy
Storyline: The survivors of Part 2 need to head to Alaska before they are eaten up by ugly zombie creatures and crows.
Ups: Milla Jovovich, Ali Larter, many more Milla Jovovichs in her favourite choice of wardrobe in the series: None. Come on, why else would anyone watch this series that looks like a videogame?
Downs: What on the planet is happening? Something that went wrong because of Umbrella Corporation’s classified confidential project.
Bottomline: Only for Milla fans or addicts of the game.

Johnny Gaddaar: Are you game?

2007-10-05T04:27:00.000-07:00

Genre: Thriller
Director: Sriram Raghavan
Cast: Neil Nitin Mukesh, Dharmendra, Vinay Pathak, Rimii Sen
Storyline: A con betrays his gang during a two-and-a-half crore deal.
Bottomline: A slick, riveting, intelligent game of cards.

Finally, someone’s demonstrated the difference between tribute and plagiarism.
Johnny Gaddaar though derivative of many schools of filmmaking across genres and sensibilities (right from James Hadley Chase to the Coen Brothers to Vijay Anand to Steven Soderberg), still comes out trumps in a delightfully original rollercoaster of a mind game that keeps you guessing till the last minute.

If you just read it, it would seem like a Hadley Chase novel. Once you meet the realistically fleshed out characters double-crossed by the absurdities of fate, they would seem straight out of a Coen Brothers film. If you just listened to the music, it would sound like a free-flowing fusion between R.D.Burman and the jazzy sophisticated score from Danny Oceans franchise. If you paid attention to the way it is shot and edited, you will spot half a dozen influences ranging from Guy Ritchie to Tarantino to Vijay Anand.

And yet, all these inspired parts fall perfectly in place for an gripping game of cards, with Raghavan winning every round except maybe one (almost everyone in the audience can spot a dream-sequence when they see it), the master stroke being the not-so-Blood Simple finale.
Not that this film completely belongs to the crafty technician.

It’s been a really long time since we’ve seen a film where actors have completely surrendered to the characters they are playing. Dharmendra breathes some heavy-duty drama into the proceedings with his restrained body language and the angst-filled voice modulation (the usual ‘Kuttey Kamine’ updated to ‘son of a beach’). Your heart goes out to this fine actor. And there’s the ever-reliable Vinay Pathak playing an endearing gambler with his cheeky punch-lines and flawless timing. Watch out for the scene where he convinces his wife to mortgage her beauty parlour as she watches Amitabh Bachchan in ‘Parwana’ (one of the biggest sources of inspiration for the film’s plot and protagonist). From the story-telling point of view, this scene is an ace.

Zakir Hussain is a revelation. Be it displaying frustration or anger or just lecherously leering at women, the man’s a natural employing his flair for comedy to lighten up proceedings.

The Gaddaar, Neil Nitin Mukesh is the find of the year as he walks through his graph from the innocent, helpless, remorseful con to pure cold-blooded evil.

No, this is not a suspense film in the classical sense. Right from the first act, you know he’s the traitor but it’s not about the ‘what’ or ‘who’. Johnny Gaddaar is all about the how things unfold and that’s the mind-game the director plays with the audience.

Putting you into the shoes of the traitor, Sriram takes you through a reckless, dangerous dark path full of surprises at every corner. There are a few speed-breakers, like the mandatory build-up song before the finale (a staple of the Hindi cinema of the seventies) but as long as it all stays true to the spirit of the homage intended, it’s all good.

This fanboy celebration of films is pure delight for movie buffs.

Take a bow, Raghavan. Double Thumbs Up. Five on five stars.

A must-watch for the likes of Sanjay Gupta and Priyadarshan. A crash course on the huge difference between tribute and plagiarism.

Dhoka: Posters could betray

2007-09-21T04:25:00.000-07:00

Genre: Drama
Director: Pooja Bhatt
Cast: Tulip Joshi, Muzzamil Ibrahim, Gulshan Grover, Ashutosh Rana, Aushima Sawhney, Anupam Kher
Storyline: A Muslim cop tries to understand why his wife turned a terrorist and diffuse a terrorist plot.
Bottomline: Don’t say the title didn’t warn you

Please don’t step into the cinemas to watch Tulip Joshi just because she’s in the posters of Dhoka. If MTV produced this film, they would’ve called it ‘Bakra’.
This movie is largely about Pooja Bhatt’s experiments with dead wood – an inanimate, inarticulate object called Muzzamil Ibrahim. How do you make a wooden puppet believable?
She tries all the tricks in the book.

1. Underplay: Muzzamil says all the lines like he’s reading them off a teleprompter during a script reading session.

2. Lights On: This is a tactic Pooja employs within 15 minutes of the film knowing underplaying alone will not help. She puts him in an police interrogation room and throws harsh light on him to make him squint and say his lines from a teleprompter.

3. Silhouette: This is a smart one probably offered by the cinematographer Anshuman Mahaley. Shoot his scenes in silhouettes so that nobody knows what on the planet his face is trying to tell us.

4. Distraction: Get a co-star with a squint (Aushima Sawhney) so that it intrigues the audience on who is she talking to. Always make sure she has a new excuse to show her shoulders in every single scene in the film because her stock expression – the stare – does give them a scare.

5. Wood-cutting: This is a technique the editor came up with. The best way to deal with a wooden actor is to cut him off so often and focus on the better actor in the scene – Gulshan Grover, Tulip Joshi, Manish Makhija and the fat guy/girl with the lipstick and long hair to keep the audience guessing about his gender identity.

6. Music Cues: The overdone orchestral background score suggests the mood of the scene lest you can’t decipher it from Muzzamil’s look. This is a serious film even if the lead actor looks like a joke.

But it’s not just bad acting that’s the bane of this film, it is extremely slow-paced with an obvious lack of conflict until the cop finally meets the man who brainwashed his wife into becoming a terrorist at the end of the second act. The crucial revelation earlier (the backstory on why she became a terrorist) is predictable and been done to death many times before, with the only twist in the tale apart from the mandatory rape is that the bad cop Ashutosh Rana also took an MMS clip.

The only thing intriguing about the film is that shot in the poster of Tulip Joshi emerging out of a dip in water. It appears as a split-second wet-dream sequence that Muzzamil has before waking up in fright. Or was it was happiness? Or excitement?

Apna Aasman: Super-natural and intelligent

2007-09-15T04:19:00.000-07:00

Director Kaushik Roy’s intentions are noble, characters believable and this thought-provoking plot can’t be more relevant in a plastic world on the brink of technological breakthroughs.

The multi-layered narrative replete with references from mythology and literature begins slowly and steadily… The story of a family that’s become dysfunctional after the father Ravi (Irrfan breathes so much life into his role as a plastic salesman) drops his son Buddhi (Dhruv is the find of the year) as a child, causing brain damage.

After dwelling into the resulting angst in the lives of the parents (Shobana slips under the skin of the mother with unbelievable conviction), Kaushik sets it up as a psychological thriller of a mythical quality when the father comes across a miracle drug – a ‘brain booster’ that could help Buddhi overcome autism and transform him into a genius.

Since such things happen only in fables, Roy employs cinematic techniques to connect us with the surreal and the larger than life – psychedelic dreams, metaphorical montages and heightened exaggeration from the sensational TV camera point of view – while keeping the emotional core credible, rooted in the realism of the fast food and quick-fix solutions.

The only stumbling blocks are product placements and an overdose of blatant referencing – Like the moment when Rajat Kapoor, the voice of the conscience in the film, quoting Kahlil Gibran, hands over a copy of the book to the parents to find their peace.

Yes, we understand the director’s predicament of ensuring a politically correct resolution for the film to drive home his message to other parents with differently-abled children but the quick fairy tale ending here is simplistic. It comes across as too convenient and seems forced on to an otherwise intelligent film.

Here’s to the arrival of a promising, sensitive filmmaker.

Dhamaal: It's a mad mad mad remake!

2007-09-14T04:14:00.000-07:00

Genre: Comedy
Director: Indra Kumar
Cast: Arshad Warsi, Riteish Deshmukh, Javed Jaffery, Sanjay Dutt
Storyline: Four friends and a cop in a Rat Race of a Road Trip to find money buried under the big W.
Bottomline: It’s a mad mad mad mad retake

Dhamaal is one of those movies you so want to hate, right from the minute you hear of the plot of the big W – stolen from ‘It’s a mad mad mad mad world’ with a formulaic line-up of Hindi Cinema’s funny men and plenty of recycled PJs (Phaltu Jokes) and sequences lifted straight out of Road Trip and Rat Race.

Yet, somehow, it all strangely works – at least in the first half of the film. And that’s a good enough reason to watch the film. Ninety minutes of entertainment.

Put off completely by Adnan’s Sami’s dated ‘slipping-on-a-banana-peel’ score – a set of stock comic instrumental cues from the low budget comedies of the seventies, I braced myself for a torturous two and a half hours.

Instead, I found myself laughing at the stupidest of jokes, the lamest and the oldest of them, in spite of the silly score and the stereotyped characterisation of four jobless losers unable to afford rent.

That’s what good actors can do. Arshad, Riteish, Javed, Aashish, Sanjay Dutt, Asrani, Tiku Talsania have probably done these roles many times before but with brilliant comic timing and delivery, they make the stalest of jokes refreshing.

There’s this bit in the early portions when a dying criminal (a hilarious Prem Chopra) kicks the bucket, quite literally. That’s the point you completely surrender to the madness, put your brain on pause mode and decide to smile, forgiving the unapologetic, irreverent lack of originality. The means justify the ends. Entertainment.

The second half tumbles downhill as the friends split up providing you a few laughs along the way, nevertheless.

But by then, your brain’s gone numb to the insanity and you just decide to recover cost of tickets by way of jokes that come your way.

‘Dhamaal’s a mast-watch, goes perfectly well with pop-corn and cheese balls.

Darling: Another grave mistake!

2007-09-14T04:04:00.000-07:00

Genre: Thriller
Director: Ram Gopal Varma
Cast: Fardeen Khan, Esha Deol, Isha Koppikar
Storyline: When married man Fardeen accidentally kills his pregnant secretary after an affair, she comes back to haunt him
Bottomline: Blink. It’ll be gone.

When Darling wants to seduce her boss, he warns her “Log Dekh Rahe Hai.” And she asks him to close his eyes so that he can’t see them.

Ram Gopal Varma doesn’t need to worry about the first part. People aren’t watching. Darling is certainly not a word they would want to associate with him. Not after ‘Aag.’

Take a cue from the film and close your eyes. It’ll go away in no time.

The good bit first.

Darling is way better than ‘Aag’ because it does not have decent raw material to begin with. The horror show includes a fat chap hero with a butt-shaped chin, one heroine who looks like a man trapped inside a female’s body and another that looks like woman in a man’s.

No prizes for guessing who’s who. And hey, none of them can act to save their life or Varma’s. Which is what adds a spark of comedy to this grave spooky tale.

In spite of this flush-worthy line-up, Ram Gopal Varma does manage to keep things engaging, thanks to some seriously haunting cinematography in the first half. The bits before the ghost arrives, when all you see are the bhooth’s point of view remind you of the director’s class in setting up the stage for the film to take off.

Smartly crafted because that segment focuses on the psychological after-effects of a man guilty of causing his secretary’s death. This would’ve worked with a better actor. But Fardeen can’t manage close-ups for he does not understand underplaying. He’s Bollywood’s fat answer to Keanu Reeves.

Once the ghost makes an entry, even the cinematography can’t save the film. So what does he do for pay off? Realising he can only do so much with bad actors, he turns the second half into a comedy packing it with laughs. Some you laugh with, many you laugh at.

Like his recent films, Darling at least in a couple of scenes, flickers with the promise of a debutant director with potential.

What’s scary is that Varma has become the ghost of a filmmaker he once was. Sometimes there in the film, sometimes gone.

Aag: Bh-aag!

2007-09-07T20:13:00.000-07:00

Genre: Horror
Director: Ram Gopal Varma
Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Mohanlal, Ajay Devgan, Prashant Raj
Storyline: A cop hires two buddies to capture the dreaded gangster Babban Singh.
Bottomline: Miracle cure for insomnia.

When Asif Ali, a music director and the eldest son of the Prince of Arcot, bought a new handycam, he got together his family and friends and remade about 20 minutes of Sholay – as a home video. All they did was re-enact the scenes just the way they had been shot, with the same frames that had been used in the classic, with even the same original audio track. So we had Ramgarh transported to Amir Mahal. He hired horses, extras, costumes, quite a bit of detailing for someone who just wanted to learn how his handycam worked. He had never shot anything before.

We're talking about Asif Ali's Sholay because it's worth more space than Ram Gopal Varma Ki… [Insert appropriate cussword, if you are a fan of the original]. Also, because its only fair to compare one remake with another.

What Asif Ali did was a tribute, even if it was just to test out his new toy.

David Dhawan made ‘Jodi No.1,’ as a cheeky tribute to Sholay.

Though irreverent, that was true homage. Unpretentious, it interpreted the classic effortlessly, confident in its own skin and consistent with the director’s style.

Ram Gopal Varmaa Ki… [Insert appropriate Hindi ‘gaali’, if you are a fan of the original] is an insufferable eighties potboiler about a bad ass bandit called Gabbar.

The kind of film that makes turkeys like ‘Daag – The Fire’ look infinitely slicker.
There’s no stopping Varma’s ‘Aag,’ especially, after he cuts off his editor’s arms (in the original, Gabbar cuts off Thakur’s). The film agonisingly runs for over two and a half hours, unleashing its sadistic streak with bursts of Babban (Bachchan playing out his childhood fantasy, just like a child possessed) and we find ourselves at the butt of all cruel jokes: Nisha Kothari’s “performance”.

It’s difficult to review ‘Aag’ because I kept nodding off to sleep, waking up to be occasionally frightened by the name mothers will drop in the coming weeks to scare kids crying in the cinemas: “Soja, nahi to Nisha Kothari aa jaayegi.” She makes ‘Su-side’ sound like a good idea.

Hema Malini should be granted anticipatory bail and Presidential pardon for it will be no crime if she shoots Nisha in the face on grounds of self-defense/pain-relief.

Sholay was way ahead of its times with elaborate set-piece action sequences of an epic scale – remember the painstakingly shot and orchestrated train-being-chased-by-dacoits sequence in the original? ‘Here, when Ramu on a Lazboy, rents out run down ruins of a fort and let’s his Steadicam operator run amok.

Deserted ruins instead of a speeding train crashing into timber for an impact? The metaphors can’t be more definitive of the respective narratives or the audience response.

Watching stuntmen who’re shot fall down animatedly, you let it pass thinking maybe he’s just recreating the seventies feel all over. You may have forgiven him for that too, if it were consistent.

‘Aag’ is a confused product with conflicting sensibilities for an identity crisis.

Just as you think it’s recreation of a bad eighties (come on, the seventies were way too classy and stylish) film, it opts for the slickness and subtlety of Company. One moment, you have the remix of 'Yeh Dosti' and the next moment, Ramu remixes 'Ek Pal Ki Zindagi' (from D) as 'Do Pal Ki Zindagi.' He wants to marry his realistic sensibility to the stuff legends are made of. Mythology. One moment, you see a healthier Mohanlal reprise his role from 'Company,' and another, you see him prance around doing the 'koothu' with unflattering wide-angle extreme close-ups.

Sholay came across as a seamless narrative, in spite of the motley crew of unforgettable characters. Here, in spite of its attempt to trivialise, simplify and omit key moments and lines, the screenplay is terribly disjointed, at times even making you forget characters who exist in the film that it is impossible to connect with the caricatures.

There are all of three scenes to write home about. Veerendra Saxena as A.K.Hangal is heartrendingly good. Two, Bachchan as Babban when he saws off the Inspector’s fingers is psychotically effective and the third, I forget but that Prashant Raj chap isn’t half-bad.

There’s so much to bitchslap Ramu for but this film isn’t even worth talking about.

The Host: GobbledlyGook Monster

2007-08-25T13:52:00.000-07:00

The Host makes you miss Johnny Sokko

Cast: Kang-Ho Song, Hie-Bong Byeon, Hae-il Park, Du-Na Bae, Ah-Sung Ko
Director: Joon Ho Bong
Genre: Thriller
Storyline: Gobbledygook monster plays hide and seek in the sea before gobbling down the gooks.
Bottomline: Dubbed a disaster. Subtitles, please.

How you wish they hadn’t messed with the original and not dubbed this Korean visual effects masterpiece into English!

It is rather difficult to take this monster film seriously with the flippant, often distracting, dubbing. It’s almost like the dubbing artistes decided to have their bit of fun, taking digs at the film, the dialogue delivery sounding rather tongue-in-cheek.

Had it been subtitled and retained in Korean, ‘The Host’ (‘Gwoemul’ in Korean) would’ve been immensely watchable. In English, it sounds like a sequel to the Hong Kong-made madcap entertainer Kung Fu Hustle.

The story isn’t new to us Asians, especially to those of us who grew up watching Godzilla on the big screen or Johnny Sokko and his Flying Robot on the small. We’ve seen creatures of all shapes and sizes on a rampage; assorted monsters on a munch-fest umpteen number of times. So why should we warm to ‘The Host’ today when it sounds like a spoof on the Grindhouse cinema of the seventies?

One, it works as a throwback to a bygone era, a homage made richer by state-of-the-art visual effects. Two, there seems to be some sort of poetry to the visuals with director opting for silence and quietness to add drama to the horror usually represented by characters shrieking loudly and running away. Here, they stand rooted in fear, terrified to even scream. Sometimes, the narrative distances itself from the thick of action and strives for objectivity and realism, even at the risk of making the sequences appear ridiculous. Sample a bunch of tourists on a bus who are briefed by their guide about the Han River look out only to witness a giant reptile chase scores of people all around the bank. Within moments, we are back in the middle of the bloody chase where a helpless father clutches the hands of his daughter and flees, only to turn back and look he has got hold of the wrong girl. The music goes quiet again and we feel for the character in the middle of all that comedy.

That’s the kind of movie ‘The Host’ is. Funny, unpredictable, moody, spectacular, cheesy and poignant.

Rush Hour 3: Same old traffic, different road

2007-08-25T13:49:00.000-07:00

Cast: Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker, Noémie Lenoir
Director: Brett Ratner
Genre: Action
Storyline: Inspector Lee and Detective Carter go to Paris to take on the dangerous Chinese Triad.
Bottomline: Rush Hour is Rush Hour in any part of the world – only the ambience changes, the action is just the same.

The funniest part of Rush Hour 3 was the slide at the beginning that showed the local distributor’s corny title card that read more like an obituary ad, with the mug shot and all. If only the rest of the movie was as hilarious and not as cheesy.

What we get instead is another dose of the race stereotypes, borrowed jokes and stale situations, which you will only enjoy if you go with an open mind and an empty head.

It is surprising that Rush Hour 3, in spite of being helmed by Brett ‘Prison Break’ Ratner, who directed the first part, is in no hurry to get to the plot. This is assembly line cinema at its laziest.

The script for Rush Hour and its sequels were probably made up during a quick drive down an empty street: Two cops, an East-meets-West version of Lethal Weapon or Bad Boys, kick it (like the poster says) yet again, crack some jokes about each other’s race before showing off their respective talents – Chan with his gravity defying stunts with other Asian stuntmen/women and Tucker with his loud-mouthed black American stand-up act.

Hence, the only plot point that differentiates the third part from the first two is the location: Paris. The location dictates that the duo has to check out women at the cabaret, make friends with at least one French guy and hang out at the Eiffel Tower, literally, for the stunts.

Pretty predictable.

If you’ve seen Dude Where’s My Car and Austin Powers, you would’ve already got bored of the Mi/Me and Yu/You jokes. Else, you have something to laugh about.

So why would you want to watch this?

For Jackie Chan, of course. We love Jackie for the guy he is, for his never-say-die spirit and love for action.

Who wants a plot when you can see Jackie still kicking it, right?

Chak De: Ballsy!

2007-08-10T14:10:00.000-07:00

Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Vidya Malvade, Sagarika Ghatge, Shilpa Shukla, Chitrashi Rawat, Tanya Abrol, Anaitha Nair
Director: Shimit Amin
Genre: Sports/Drama
Storyline: A fallen hockey hero must redeem himself by coaching the reluctant Indian women’s team for the World Cup.
Bottomline: Hindi cinema finally gets what teamwork is all about.

Hindi films have always been about a few ‘star’ players, like every other sport in the country. When did we last make a solid ensemble film about sports - one that’s not about a few players saving the day but about the triumph of teamwork?

Come on, even Lagaan needed the star of the film, Aamir as Bhuvan hitting a six of the last ball. Iqbal was about a whiz kid’s spirit and talent winning it for the team. Jo Jeeta was a tale of personal triumph.

Chak De is that rare film where the hero watches from the stands and lets a bunch of ‘what’s-her-name-again’ girls do all the winning.

Jaideep Sahni is surely one of the finest screenwriters of our times, probably the best mainstream Hindi cinema has seen – Company, Bunty aur Babli, Khosla Ka Ghosla and now, Chak De!

It's high time screenwriters got their due.

Just getting Yash Raj Films excited about a non-formulaic script like this is a goal by itself. A winner! Especially, considering that making a sports film is one of the most physically and logistically challenging tasks for Hindi cinema that thrives on a staple of melodrama and star theatrics.

Sahni’s other masterstroke is to pitch it to a nuanced director who likes to work with the subtlety needed to make the story on the triumph of the underdogs realistic, especially since this is based on a real life hero – Mir Ranjan Negi.

The sporting action is riveting, like any good game of ball. As the film begins, we are right in the middle of the climax of an India-Pakistan Hockey World Cup final. Khan takes the penalty corner. In a typical Johar/Chopra film, the slow-mo that follows the dramatic tension-building shots would've introduced us to the triumphant demi-God hero.

But here, what we see is a hero fall and fail. Without the opposition's cheating or foul play. And then, a few moments later, embodying the true spirit of sport, our Muslim protagonist rises to shakes hand with the opponent: The Pakistanis.
This is India and that is blasphemy, right?

Chak De is not just a commentary on the way sport is run in the country, it also gets deep into the psyche of the typical Indian player, divided from his/her team by race, religion or language, playing for the self, doing what it takes to survive, biding time at training camps and complaining about the coach.

There are plenty of digs at cricket and the attitude of our celebrated cricketers. Be it the flashy Indian Cricket Vice Captain who believes that success is about making sure that none of your team-mates get anywhere close to where you are or when SRK stops a goonda about to attack his girls with a cricket bat from behind saying: "Hamare Hockey main Chakkey Nahin Hai".

At another level, Chak De is about women's liberation. It is one of the best feminist films of our times. That scene at McDonalds when the gang of girls get together to beat the burgers out of boys teasing them is not just a political statement about gender supremacy, it is symbolic of national integration, team spirit and also, a beautiful, cathartic release of their collective angst combined with the guilt of chucking their coach out of the team, triggered by what is otherwise a routine incident of everyday sexual abuse. This is truly one of the finest, layered, understated, game-changers in screenwriting in Hindi cinema of all times, ably handled with mature, clever direction.

Next, the girls themselves are the closest we've seen to a representation of India in any sports movie we've seen. They aren't 16 pretty young things. The casting is first-rate; even for the smaller parts, the choice of actors makes up for the lack of detailing. The rawness in the performances actually makes you forget these are actresses. Within moments after meeting them, you surrender to the types.
Though we begin by warming up to the ethnic/race differences among the players, soon enough, Amin skirts their inter-racial conflicts behind the uniform – the great leveler.

After all, sport isn’t about celebrating diversit, it is about the unifying spirit of playing with passion for the country and the team.

It is as authentic as it gets in a sports film: Multiple-camera set-ups, long-continuous shots of the field and action (which requires that the actors know to play hockey and play it at least reasonably good – which the girls do), racy narration, crisp training montage sequences, motivational speeches and a plausible road map for the underdogs to emerge victorious. It’s a fairy-tale told with utmost conviction, realism and logic.

Shah Rukh Khan, the star, is a delight to watch. As a performer here, he’s even better. After Sunil in Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa, Mohan Bhargav in Swades, here comes Kabir Khan, who once again lets his eyes speak volumes. Watch him savour his moment of triumph quietly, standing alone and watching his team from far away. That’s the kind of stuff legends are made of. He can choke your heart without saying a single word.

There’s just one thing that stops this film-of-the-year from becoming a classic – the music. Salim Sulaiman’s music is functional and it works at a very ho-hum level. The title song is hummable too.

Now, if only… If only this had A.R.Rahman doing the score… it would’ve been quite a match and an award-winning team!

Partner: David Dhawan's 'Hitch'-hike!

2007-07-26T15:54:00.000-07:00

Cast: Salman Khan, Govinda, Katrina Kaif, Lara Dutta
Director: David Dhawan
Genre: Comedy
Storyline: Hitch
Bottomline: Knot exactly Hitch, tied up David Dhawan style

The thing about David Dhawan movies is that you know that the knot is just an excuse to unleash some unpretentious insanity on screen, as the lead pair improvises with great flourish, backed with the cheesiest of lines.

Sample this: When Prem (Salman Khan of course) thinks the bumbling Bhaskar (Govinda) died in a bus accident, he sits beside the corpse, and in all sincerity says: “Pata hai pyaar karna sab ke BUS ki baat nahin nahin, Par kya pata tha ki tu BUS pakadkar, hum sabko beBUS karke chala jayega.” (It’s impossible to translate these dialogues Sanjay Chhel and make them sound funny in English)

Instantly, you know here’s a film that does not take itself too seriously. Earlier, there’s a scene where a kid launches a baby missile that responds to the verbal cue: 'Go baby go' and hunts down the person mentioned after those words. So when the kid helplessly cries for help saying ‘Maama,’ the missile chases Jet-Skiing Salman Khan giving him ample scope to showcase his stunts. Wait a minute, didn’t we say it was about Hitch?

Yes, that’s because stupid Bhaskar (chubby klutzy Govinda) wants to woo Marie Claire model Katrina Kaif and seeks Love Guru’s help.

With that storyline as an excuse, David Dhawan gives the common man plenty to laugh at with digs at everyone including Shah Rukh Khan (Rajpal Yadav plays Chotta Don in a cheeky sub-plot that never quite takes off), Aamir Khan (there’s this hilarious Aamir duplicate on screen when Salman takes the mischievious kid for a movie) and the lead players Govinda (as the man breaks into Sarkailo Khatiya to showcase his dance skills before Love Guru tells him that times have changed and he has to make his moves more stylish and ‘Just Chill’ – one of the finest moments in the film, almost autobiographical) and Salman himself (at a security check, Salman takes his shirt off and says: “Main Toh Mauke main rehta hoon yeh sab karne ke liye” (I just wait for opportunities to do things like this)
David Dhawan has been criticised for being inconsistent about delivering his films and sometimes scenes within the film – some work, others fail. That’s because he helms a genre called improvisational comedy that solely depends on the mood of the unit (mainly the actors and his writers) during that particular day.

If you think about it, there is simply no other way David Dhawan films can be made. Because most of the jokes surely wouldn’t sound funny the second time you read it in a bound script.

The scenes work purely because of the improvisation and comic timing by the actors. Here, Govinda returns to form and cracks you up as Salman sits back and lets the under-rated actor take centre-stage.

In fact, that scene in the theatre where Prem babysits the kid and cheers ‘Go Aamir, Go’ is testimony to Salman’s attitude of sitting back and having a good time watching his contemporaries try hard to entertain. In a recent interview, Salman said: “Shah Rukh puts in 100 per cent, Aamir puts in 200 per cent… and me, I put in two percent.”

And when you see Partner, you tend to believe the man. His performance is effortless indeed.

If Hitch was a date movie, this one’s for buddies.

Die Hard: John McLane kicks ass!

2007-07-26T15:04:00.000-07:00

Cast: Bruce Willis, Justin Long, Maggie Q, Timothy Olyphant, Kevin Smith
Director: Len Wiseman
Genre: Action
Storyline: A bunch of hackers unleashing virtual terrorism need their backsides kicked and John McLane obliges.
Bottomline: Yippi Ka Yay! Mo-friggin’ good.

For most Die Hard fans, it’s paisa vasool just to watch John McLane say: ‘Yippi Ka Yay Mother…’ This breed could die of a happiness overdose watching Die Hard 4.0.

John McLane is back doing what he does best – kick as soon as he gets a chance to, the good old-fashioned way.

Like always, he is the man at the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s not Christmas but it’s the fourth of July this time.

Pretty much like Rocky Balboa in his last installment, John McLane too now spends a lonely life. No wife, a daughter who’s bitter with him. “Know what you get for being a hero? Nothin’. You get shot at… Your wife doesn’t remember your last name…”

He’s not exactly dying to be a hero and yet always near-dying when he becomes one, out of no choice. Like he says, “If someone else would do it, I would gladly let them.” Speaking for the rest of us, the hacker kid he’s protecting (Justin Long) tells him: “That’s what makes you the man.”

It’s that emotional core of Die Hard 4.0 that raises the film above the mindless-action-based sequels, even bettering the original.

Not that the sequels were all bad. The original Die Hard (1988) was a classic action flick that made profanity sound cool. Die Hard 2 (1990) was really pushing the scope of possibilities to plausibility-defying proportions and yet managing to land smoothly as McLane gives the bad guys a ‘Yippi Ka Yay’ send off with his cigarette lighter. Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995) started off on a promising note with the ‘Simon Says’ game but the key revelation happens too early in the film and we’re left with nearly an hour of an explosive steeple-chase which after a point becomes really redundant.

Thanks to Wiseman, with the emotional core intact, Die Hard 4 explodes into a recklessly racy video game – a cat-and-mice (come on, the bad guys are always mice compared to John McLane, our cool cat) game too like the previous films.

We always knew McLane hated technology, so here they pit him against something he has no clue about and that is what makes him vulnerable. The villain is technology, not the guys specifically. Like the bad guy Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant) says, “You are a Timex watch in a digital age.”

Even when it’s about combat, McLane is dealing with sophisticated fighters. Maggie Q plays a martial arts specialist. “Mai? Asian chick, likes to kick people? Yeah, last time I saw her she was at the bottom of an elevator shaft with an SUV rammed up her ass...” goes McLane after taking her on: “Enough of this kung fu shit.”

McLane sticks to basics. He knows someone is responsible for wrecking chaos and he knows he has to find them and kick their assembly. In the process, he sends cars flying, takes on an F-35 jet sitting in a truck and yeah, like the John McLane Guyz Nite tribute song tells us, “the greatest car-explosions by far.”

Justin Long (Accepted, Herbie Fully Loaded) plays the perfect foil to McLane, speaking for us most of the time, like when he observes: “You just killed a helicopter with a car.” “I was outta bullets,” reasons McLane with his trademark cool.

Bruce Willis just seems to get better at this with age and it would be a pity if he signs off the franchise with this one. The man carries the film with his profanity and timing, getting beaten, battered and bathes in blood before he finally gets to say: “Yippi Ka Yay Motherfucker!” (Jerkoffs wouldn't like that on print, would they?)

Beerfest: Drink before you think

2007-07-20T17:25:00.000-07:00

Cast: Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Cloris Leachman, Paul Soter
Director: Jay Chandrasekhar
Genre: Comedy
Storyline: A bunch of friends challenge the Germans to a beer-drinking competition.
Bottomline: *Laugh out loud* What was it again? Hic! Never mind, pour me another one!

Half-naked women (Full, if you grab a DVD). Gross jokes about throwing up. Absolutely ribald. Juvenile to the core. Inane. Crude. Crass. But come on, it’s a night out with the boys.

After all, the irreverence is among the many other casual, fun things that the spirit of beer stands for.

Now, I don’t drink Beer. Mostly, because I don’t like the taste of it.

But strangely, I liked the bad taste in this one.

Beerfest made me love everything that Beer stands for. It’s the kind of movie that makes ‘Dude, Where’s My Car’ look sober.

Which means that you just should not, must not and cannot look for a story or a plot in here. Because, like good beer, it’s all about the froth and the foam, the strong flavour and a light kick. Beer is not the food for thought or a plot. It’s an excuse to lose your mind.

Hence, the film itself is constructed like one of those all-guys frat-house parties where you arrive knowing what to expect, meet the weirdest assortment of drunks and before you know it, the games begin and guys get-together bonding over beer and, well… More beer.

There’s non-stop nonsense, junk food, Baywatch on TV and a bunch of guys rolling on the floor laughing about something they don’t remember anymore.

Relate to that? Then, Jay Chandrasekhar’s movie is your pitcher of beer.

Jay himself can’t act for nuts but he’s fun to watch.

And Hey! If he was adequately drunk when he wrote and directed this ultimate Beer Movie ever, it’s only fair he got himself sloshed before the make-up man messed with his face.

Want to really enjoy the Beerfest experience?

Get together with the boys, get plenty of booze and rent it out. If the movie doesn’t make you laugh, the beer surely will.

Apne: This Rocky Baldeva pulls no punches!

2007-07-01T16:50:00.000-07:00

Cast: Dharmendra, Sunny Deol, Bobby Deol, Katrina Kaif, Shilpa Shetty
Director: Anil Sharma Genre: Drama
Storyline: A champion boxer banned on doping charges swears to make his son a world champ only to find him unwilling.
Bottomline: Three for the price of one!

Anil Sharma’s recent films haven’t been about a plot, they’ve been tales spun around excuses to let Sunny Paaji swear endlessly in Punjabi and plant his ‘dhai’ (two and a half) kilo fist on the bad guy’s face every few minutes.

I’ve always been a fan of this kind of cinema simply because I get my kicks with a wholesome dose of laughs.

The funniest Hindi film I’ve seen till date (funniest Indian film ever would have to be T.R.’s ‘Veerasamy’) is Anil Sharma’s previous collaboration with Sunny Deol – The Hero, the love story of a spy – the most expensive film ever made, that had him sporting over a dozen clever disguises, most of them involving a mere change of sunglasses.

‘The Hero’ was a movie that made me go ahead and watch even Sunny’s serious attempts at comedy like ‘Jo Bole So Nihaal’ where he proclaims “No If, No But, Sirf Jat.”

Hence, with Apne’s three-for-the-price-of-one Jat unique selling proposition staring at my face from the posters, it was an offer I couldn’t refuse.

Not to let me down, it was one of those good old Sunny Paaji films. And a super emotional one at that.

As a prize bonus, there’s Deol Junior.

Bobby is girly (to the extent that one is inclined to pun his name with an unprintable nick) and he’s better off not removing his shirt because when he does that, it’s not a scene. It’s obscene. Those slow motion shots only make it worse in otherwise brilliantly staged and shot boxing sequences. (Since this is a blog and not the version that made it to print, I think I can say I was unable to sleep traumatised by memories (mammaries rather) of Booby Deol's KNOCKs OUT after being repeatedly being punched there in slow mos, this chest wobbling like a milk packet...)

What I didn’t bargain for, however, was Dharmendra’s powerhouse performance and a half-decent script buried in all that sentimentality and name-calling. The film belongs to the veteran. In that scene where he pleads to his protégé to let him continue coaching him, your heart goes out to the under-rated actor.

If the script seems this half-decent (the support characters are all effectively fleshed out) even after being ravaged by Anil Sharma and Sunny Deol, it surely must’ve been a winner had it been treated by a better director. Not that this doesn’t work; It does for a different kind of audience. The one that made ‘Gadar’ an embarrassingly huge super-duper hit.

Sunny, as a friend noticed, clearly eats ham for breakfast, lunch and dinner and to expect refinement out of him is plain unfair. Here he has to worry about monumental, never-ending bad hair days that make him look like he’s wearing one of those hideous wigs – or maybe it’s one of those disguises from The Hero.

To his credit, in ‘Apne,’ he actually saves up/postpones the trademark hot-bloodedness to the last Act when he finally explodes – the moment we Sunny fans had been waiting for.

So much that Garam Dharam, who in the film plays a sincere tribute to Rocky Baldeva, a well-etched out character obsessed with boxing and coaching, gives in to the moment and says: “Uda do saale ko.”

Suddenly, the excitement in the halls is infectious. Near euphoric.

Now, this is the kind of a moment where a filmmaker with a sensibility different from Sharma’s would’ve used to let the Dad step in as the coach subtly giving him the killer boxing tip that would help the hero deliver the knock out punch. And there I was half-expecting a tip like what Rocky Balboa got: “To beat this guy, you need speed - you don't have it… So, what we'll be calling on is good ol’ fashion blunt force trauma. Horsepower. Heavy-duty, cast-iron, pile-driving punches that will have to hurt so much they'll rattle his ancestors. Every time you hit him with a shot, it's gotta feel like he tried kissing the express train. Yeah! Let's start building some hurtin' bombs!”

“Uda do saale ko,” indeed.

Forget the rural-urban sensibility disconnect, here’s good old Indian cinema for you in all its glory.

Apocalypto: Gibson spills out guts and gore

2007-06-30T17:22:00.000-07:00

Cast: Rudy Youngblood, Dalia Hernandez
Director: Mel Gibson
Genre: Adventure/Drama
Storyline: The peace of a tribal village is disrupted when Mayans ravage homes and take the villagers captive for human sacrifice.
Bottomline: Do you have a stomach for this?

Be warned, this, despite cuts is not for children, the faint-hearted or pregnant women.
Mel Gibson revels in fleshing out a recklessly raw, ultra-violent edge-of-the seat chase drama that relentlessly explores savagery and the dark side of an ancient civilization.

Gore fills the frames, guts spill out, lives are lost and you not just see blood on screen, you can almost smell the rotting flesh of corpses. In many ways, it’s voyeuristic – Ever wondered what a human head chewed on by a Jaguar or the insides of a Brazilian tapir would look like? Gibson shows you with fascinating detail that could make you throw up.

Certainly not the kind of movie Granny would approve of.

Yet, purely on the basis of cinematic merit, ‘Apocalypto’ is a must-watch for the unflinching passion Gibson displays in crafting and layering a rather simple story of tribals being taken captive for human sacrifice (with superstition related to the Solar Eclipse included) with heart-stopping adrenaline.

What appears to be an age-old tale begins with a quote that puts the film in the context of the world today, insinuating references to contemporary politics and the greed of man that will lead his world to destruction.

With that context established, Gibson’s approach is paradoxically two-pronged. He’s as subtle as a sledge-hammer slamming your senses with some seriously savage story-telling yet, as smooth as silk, spinning in the subtext – the lessons to learn from history.

Employing the Maya language for realism and credibility, the director manages to use the abstractness of the language we don’t understand to alienate us from the events and successfully suspend disbelief. The fact that you don’t know any of the cast makes the characters further unpredictable.

The indigenous bunch led by Rudy Youngblood consists of able unknown Mexican actors who’ve evidently worked hard on their physically exhausting roles. Add to that some painstakingly shot larger-than-life visuals and meticulously detailed production design and what you get is a triumph for cinema.

Personal tastes, factual inaccuracies and historical inconsistencies, if any, cannot take away credit due to Gibson, the filmmaker.

Stay away if you are in the mood for popcorn entertainment.

This one needs a solid stomach.

Jhoom Barabar Jhoom: Of ear-plugs and eye-candy

2007-06-24T16:02:00.000-07:00

Cast: Abhishek Bachchan, Preity Zinta, Lara Dutta, Bobby Deol
Director: Shaad Ali
Genre: Musical
Storyline: Two of Bollywood’s Usual Suspects wait for a train Before Sunset.
Bottomline: A stage-play that pretends to be a musical

Shaad Ali’s idea of a musical is to have the same song play on loop for over 20 minutes non-stop. Okay, different variants of the title song actually.

Plus, there’s a variant of that when the film opens, another when the film is halfway through and yet another when the curtains come down, all accompanied by Bachchan doing an item sporting a double-necked guitar and costumes stolen off the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ set.
With the extended mixes playing half a dozen times in the film, no prizes for guessing why the film’s called ‘Jhoom Barabar Jhoom.’

With nearly one hour of the 132 minute-film being dominated by naach-gaana, the rest dedicated to dialogues smattered with the native tongue of South Hall – Punjabi – be warned that this is only for those in the mood for eye-candy and the title-song playing on loop.

You will pretty much predict the entire story before the first act ends. After that, you have nothing to do but wait agonisingly to be proven right, the loud soundtrack giving you not a chance to catch 40 winks. The blessed song keeps coming back.

Long-winded conversations can be interesting, like the Before Sunrise/Before Sunset series have already proved.

But wait, what’s with Yashraj’s fascination with those Richard Linklater’s films? In 1995, Aditya Chopra inspired by ‘Before Sunrise,’ made Raj and Simran fall in love over Eurorail and made them spend a night together before their train next morning. For Kunal Kohli’s ‘Hum Tum,’ Yashraj borrowed the opening sequence from ‘Before Sunset’ with a few nods to the earlier film (apart from many to ‘When Harry Met Sally’) and now 12 years after Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, Yashraj returns to churn out yet another remix of ‘Before Sunrise,’ with a touch of ‘The Usual Suspects.’

The outcome?

Preity's sagging face reflects the audience’s hopes as the film meanders along like a one-act stage play with musical flashback interludes borrowed from the Farah Khan-Sirish Kunder school of storytelling.

Bobby's inadequacy steals adjectives about the script, if at all there was one.

Screenwriter Habib Faisal’s theatre background shows. You can’t have two people talk sitting over a table for half the movie if you don’t have the lines to back this misadventure.

Abhishek’s Bling-it-like-Bachchan act would have been adorable, if not for that Amritsar-Born-Confused-Desi-in-London accent. O Blimey!? Surely Sunny Paaji was more convincing saying ‘No If, No But, Only Jat.’

You can swear that Lara is the only good thing and use some of that swearing to react to the rest of the ham-fest.

Yes, Shaad Ali has been very brave to try and do something different but not everything different is worth watching on the big screen.

Shankar-Ehsaan-Joy may have done a swell job on the music but this overdose is strictly for party animals. ‘Jhoom Barabar’ is a film you won’t mind watching on MTV with its kitschy choreography. It is a concert you won’t mind watching on stage if these very stars are performing live.

As a film, however, it’s an extremely excruciating experience… extended.

The Prestige: A simple hat-trick, well-disguised

2007-06-24T15:49:00.000-07:00

Cast: Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Scarlett Johansson, Michael Caine, David Bowie
Director: Christopher Nolan
Genre: Drama/Suspense/Thriller
Storyline: Two rival magicians are obsessed over outdoing the other.
Bottomline: One helluva trick!

“Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it because you're not really looking. You don't really want to know the secret... You want to be fooled.”

Those lines from ‘The Prestige’ are as much about filmmaking as much as it is about magic.
‘Are you watching closely’ asks the tag line. But if you resist the multiple distractions intended to misdirect your attention and do watch it closely enough, you might find the secret early on in the film because Christopher Nolan has decided that the best place to hide something well, is in plain sight.

So it’s best to watch this beautifully crafted piece of celluloid willing to be fooled, willing to be distracted and mislead.

Based on Christopher Priest’s novel about two rival magicians obsessed with outperforming the other, ‘The Prestige’ is as much about magic as it is about obsession, jealousy and vengeance. Angier (Jackman) and Borden (Bale) are rivals trying to steal the show. Each other’s show, that is.

A knot in the plot turns the rivalry personal and each goes all out to outdo the other.
Christopher Nolan borrows a few tips from magic to style his narrative pretty much the same way a trick is performed. Given the advantage of being able to bend time and space on film, Nolan also employs his signature back-and-forth storytelling to make it all the more fascinatingly complex.

After all, a good trick is about telling a story in three acts: The Pledge, The Turn and The Prestige. A magician takes something ordinary, makes it something extraordinary, and then pulls something out of his hat, something you never saw coming (The Prestige).

The Prestige is the most difficult part of the trick because the audience knows you’re going to trick it and is watching closely. More so in a film that, unlike a stage trick, lasts infinitely longer, a medium whose construct, unlike magic, requires that you do place all your cards before the audience, just to be fair and make it more participative.

A lot of what Nolan does to the film is pure magic. Career-best performances by both Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman trying to outdo each other (both of them are equally solid), Michael Caine and David Bowie cast to make ordinary roles extra-ordinary characters and a sassy Scarlett Johansson to distract and deceive.

The quality of writing is top-notch, the editing clever enough to conceal and cinematography every bit deserving the Oscar nomination. Clearly, one of the best films of the year.

It’s only when you watch the film a second time, you realise how simple it really was.

But then, like Borden says: “The secret impresses no one. The trick you use it for is everything.”

Sivaji: A review of reviews!

2007-06-17T19:29:00.000-07:00

I’m not gonna take names of critics or link blogs since I just wanted to address points made in other reviews. My arguments are against criticism of the film and not against the authors. So if you think this is about your review, please don’t take this personally.

First, get this. Superstar can act. He’s proved it enough times. He does not need to prove it anymore. I had written in an earlier post how there is a rigid dichotomy between the function of an actor and a matinee idol.

While an actor is expected to change colours and showcase his artistic range, an icon is expected to consistently embody all those traits that people love about his personality and reprise them in whatever story he is a part of. Because he’s an icon, a superhero – THE reason why people go to watch that kind of cinema.

Obviously, the gratification superheroes provide is different from the kind of gratification actors provide. Sometimes, though not always, even the audience differs. We’ve always had a Sivaji for every MGR, a Kamal for every Rajni, a Vikram for every Vijay (at least, until Vikram decided to change roles from actor to icon!)

Let’s not forget that Superstar has done his share of intelligent classy cinema in the past.

Now, he’s into something more intelligent. Reaching out to a huge far-from-homogenous mass of people. We’re talking about a diverse bunch that takes the aruval out over culture, chastity, caste, class, colour, ideology, politics, religion, language, state boundaries and water among other things.

Why should Superstar reach out to this huge a mass again?

Because that’s what superheroes and icons do.

They reach out to stand up for what is right, to fight for the oppressed majority.

They reach out to assure people that no matter how screwed up and complicated life maybe, there’s always one person they can turn to.

Or, at least fantasise that there’s someone who’s gonna kick bad asses and spread hope.

The word associated with superheroes, my friends, is fantasy. The thing about the format of a fantasy, as a genre, it does not need to delve into plausibility, rational thinking, logical reasoning or what people call a “tight” screenplay.

Think fantasy again.

Think about the free-flowing Alice in Wonderland that probably gave you no idea where in the burrow it was heading.

Think Superman who turned the planet back in time after losing Lois Lane.

Think James Bond, who gets his ass covered by women who bare their ass most of the time.

Think Peter Parker, who recently blubbered when Mary Jane broke up with him.

Think Captain Jack Sparrow.

Wait a minute, Captain Jack Sparrow runs away all the time. He got fooled by a woman, got himself handcuffed to the Black Pearl at the end of ‘Dead Man’s Chest.’ When he realises there’s no way out, he goes down fighting, with his head held high.

Does that make him any less heroic? Or does the fact that Shriya saves Sivaji at the end of what was a light-hearted comic segment? Interestingly, Superstar does hop around around like Captain Jack Sparrow as he sees the train approaching and then when Shankar changes gear from the comic to the serious, Superstar stands his head held high, ready to embrace death, much like Sparrow. The point really isn’t that Shriya saved him. The point is that she was willing to die for him.

A Superstar is timeless. His age does not matter. How does Bond remain the same age when the world around him changes as suggested by technology? How many years did Peter Parker be a college kid? How many years did Superstar live in America to earn Rs.200 crores? What’s his business model? Why does Peter Parker take Mary Jane on his scooter when he can just swing around the buildings in the dark of the night? Superheroes have a comic book license that excuses them from having to answer such smartasses. Things said have to be taken for granted. That’s common sense.

To get back to the analysis, this is not just a Superstar movie.

This is as much a Shankar film as much as it is Superstar cinema. Shankar is one of those few idealist filmmakers who believe that cinema can bring in reform. After addressing capitalist educationists (Gentleman), corrupt bureaucrats (Indian), lazy-ass politicians (Muthalvan) and indifferent apathetic citizens (Anniyan), he wants to address a more basic function that involves the common man. Paying taxes. He knows most people think taxes are unfair, a “fine” for doing fine. He hates the fact that there are many among the rich who don’t pay taxes. Now, how do you make the prospect of paying taxes more attractive to the common man?

You get a brand ambassador, someone they all like, to tell them: “Listen up guys, Black money is bad. Not paying taxes is bad. We’re not a poor country. The richer get richer, the poor get poorer because the rich get away not paying tax and the poor need to keep paying for getting anything they want – starting from basic education.”
That’s a noble thought, a well-intended message, that in order to reach a mass of Superstar crazy fans needs to be said within the format of a six-song six-fight routine, with the mandatory happy ending.

Why is the happy ending so important?

Kamal Hassan could afford to die in ‘Indian’ and ‘Nayakan’ because he’s an actor. An actor becomes immortal when he dies in a film. People give him a standing ovation. A Best Actor award. But, a superhero is reduced to a mere mortal when he dies in a movie. Which is why Shankar and Mani Ratnam knew they had to keep him alive in ‘Thalapathy’ and ‘Sivaji,’ no matter what the odds against them were.
It’s not a compromise. It’s common-sense. It’s what people go to fantasies for. To see their hero kick butt.

So why is Sivaji among the most memorable Rajnikant films ever despite a rather weak romantic track?

Oh, let’s think about that critically slaughtered romantic track again. There’s clearly a shift in Superstar’s philosophy. From ‘Thou Shall Choose Who Loves You Over Who You Love’ (that emerged in Valli and continued till Baba… Listen to Dippu Dippu:
thaedi cheLLum kaadhaL/kaadhaliLLai nanbaa/uNmai kaadhal soLLava/
naLLa kaadhal enbadheNNa/thaedi vandhey kaadhalae) to ‘Best To Live With Who You Love Than What You Get.’ (Kadachavangaloda Vaazhradhoda Pudichavangaloda Vaazharadhuthaan Santhosham).

A complete volte-face.

Why? I guess it is to make Superstar contemporary from being a pragmatic chauvinist to a die-hard romantic because Shankar’s brand of idealism needs a romance to die for. Colour is such an important part of the South Indian’s psyche. Shankar exploits that complex inherent in his audience by having their icon endorse their ‘Fair and Lovely’ aspirations. ‘Velai Thamizhan’ (mentioned in the Style song) is part of that fantasy of the dark-skinned man’s obsession over fair and lovely maidens from Mumbai (starting from Nagarrth Khan known as Khushboo, Rishibala Naval a.k.a. Simran Bagga, Namrata Sadanah a.k.a. Nagma, Jyotika Sadanah and now Shriya Saran). Shankar turns that sentiment into a feel-good fantasy by coating it with the comic treatment and then making the girl say that the dark colour is the best part of their favourite hero. He’s trying to tell them that even if by some miracle they do manage to turn fair, it’s still ‘coool’ to be dark.

Let me get back to the observation with which I started this piece. Stars or Icons are known to consistently embody all those traits that people love about their personality and reprise them in whatever story they are a part of.

Not all the traits Superstar has been known for are politically correct.

Now, Superstar has been criticised by politicians and health activists that he has glamourised the Cancer stick. Superstar, in his last two outings, has tried to make amends – Biscuit in Chandramukhi and Chewing Gum in Sivaji. Superstar’s heroines, over the years, have often been dependents – college students or village belles, often being slapped by the hero. This sort of unabashed chauvinism might not work in the 2000s and in an attempt to make it progressive, Shankar gives us a middle-class working woman. It’s also contemporary because finally, the woman is an equal with who Sivaji shares his life and secrets, and she’s also capable of saving him.

Yes, she’s still the meek submissive lover but hey, things can’t change overnight in Tamil cinema.

I was amazed at the focus of Shankar’s screenplay (I hated his character mix in Anniyan!). He begins Sivaji with the classic Flashback structure, establishing the intentions of the protagonist in the very first three scenes. At the airport, we know he’s come to settle down in India with the line-up of girls waiting to snare him. At the get-together later, we know he wants to get to the root of poverty that he has seen (the beggar at the crossroads sandwiched between the scenes of his arrival and his declaration of intent) – empowering through education.

Once he lays down the agenda for the film, he gets to the other objective of the protagonist – his search for a life partner, an epitome of everything Tamil. He then addresses the social problem of families being so fiercely protective of their space with a strict regard for boundaries that they don’t encourage the courting ritual. Romance needs healthy grounds to blossom. And since at the basic level, marriages in India are about the union of families than just two individuals, he shows us how one family manages to woo the other through a light-hearted comic segment (not all of which I approve – certainly not the bit where Thalaivar goes red with chillies and washes it down the basin graphically but Shankar has always loved to show us what’s gross). This track is smartly paralleled with the protagonist’s efforts to build the college facing hurdles with the ground realities of red tape that leads to corruption… that further escalates politics. He shows us the rich have become too powerful to take on. No matter how much money you have, they can still pull you down and leave you penniless. It doesn't get tighter than this.

At the interval block, his twin intentions of getting the right girl and building the college are the lowest point. Things can only get better from here and as that coin turns, so does his fate and Shankar flips mode from reality to fantasy. Now, this is the part we’ve been waiting for. The part that Shankar absolutely revels in. The part that puts Sivaji in the list of his most memorable films.

We see Rajni fight his way back, like in Annamalai, like in Padayappa, like in Baasha, he gets his chance to payback… Line for line, coin for coin… “Kooti kazhichu paaru, Kannakku Seriya Irukkum… Yenkitta Kannakku Pesuraanga. Yedu Vandi!”

Now, all those films were about personal triumph, this one is a little larger than that. It’s about a triumph for the society, issues are large and complex and they need to be simplified with comic book storytelling. The villain needs to be someone you hate with all your guts and having a despicable soft speaking scum is a nice touch. After all those Perarasu films, I was turning deaf with all the yelling.

Settling a score is what most films have been about. And seriously, who does it better than Superstar. What makes Sivaji memorable is that it also plays out like a Best of Rajni compilation. It has features his best looks, get-ups, gestures, dialogue delivery, plot-devices and also enriches his existing repertoire of style, facilitating a connect with the Rajni we know from the past to the Superstar he has become to what he could be – the reformer, a Sivaji (the actor par excellence) who could also be MGR (the messiah).

Entertainment has never been so explosive. The last act is pure dynamite. Climax as its orgasmic best if you’re a Rajni fan. Something that works like a charm especially because of the extended foreplay in the slightly flawed first half.

To Shankar’s credit, even those stray scenes of mediocrity are salvaged by a classy Vivek whose timing in Sivaji is probably a career-best. Jalra has never made itself more audible during a one-man orchestra in concert.

Now that I’ve taken my critic’s hat off, Thalaivaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!
:D

Three's a Crowd

2007-06-15T17:29:00.000-07:00

Suderman reads between the lines of the third-term report cards of Spider-Man, Shrek, Pirates, Danny Ocean and friends.

Spidey found himself tied up in multiple knots. Shrek has some serious thinking to do about family planning. The Pirates have come a full circle at World’s End. And, Danny Ocean and team have turned number 13 into a lucky charm.

No matter what critics have said, box office figures only seem to further encourage the high-profile class of 2007 to come back again for yet another term. The universal appeal of these unforgettable characters have transcended megabytes of hardcore criticism from all around the world and reached out to a starved lot of loyalists.

True, the ‘triquels’ this year have been a mixed bag. But these films have more in common than you would think – ‘more’ being the key word there.

Considering that none of these four were designed as a trilogy (three films broken down into first, second and third acts) and yet had ambitions of creating a franchise (more adventures of the same guys), the function of the first part was to introduce you to a bunch of people you would fall in love with and package the film around a set of values that would define the world they are set in.

If Spidey was about celebrating the superhero by showing us the human face of the person behind the mask, Shrek, an anti-thesis to fairytale stereotypes, was about creating new ones to further the fantasy of the underdogs. If Pirates was designed to capture the free-spirited happy-go-lucky old-world charm in a bottle of rum with Captain Jack Sparrow onboard as a mascot, Ocean’s was Soderberg’s way of unwinding with the boys and rewinding to the spunky sixties – to an era of good old-fashioned heists.

Sam Raimi, Andrew Adamson, Gore Verbinski and Steven Soderberg successfully brought alive on screen characters who are timeless – a comic-book superhero, a fairytale stereotype turned on its head, a comic hero born out of pirate-lore and a retro bunch of good-looking, smart-thinking, well-dressed-up robbers.

Thanks to perfect casting, these memorable, adorable characters banked on the charming personas of some very fine actors – Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Johnny Depp, Keira Knightley, Orlando Bloom, George Clooney and Brad Pitt. By the end of the first installment, the lines between the actors and the characters they were playing, were blurred. With the success of the second, it was proven to the makers that the first wasn’t a flash in the pan.

Then came the summer of 2007, and the stage for the third act – the acid test for any franchise. Had the characters indeed become legendary that people would come back just to see them do their thing? Going by the box office success, maybe they have.

Let’s examine the plot-lines of the third installments again. Spidey had to fight the evil within him but there were two villains too many for MORE conflict. Shrek just had to deal with the prospect of responsibility and kids but the makers ensured they accommodated everyone from the first two parts – that’s everybody from the telephone directory of fairyland – for MORE entertainment. Pirates just had to bring back Captain Jack Sparrow from World’s End but the producers packed enough crooks in it to spoil the brawl, all for MORE action. And, Oceans 13 had to come up with something MORE difficult to pull off. The word is ‘more’.

“People want more of it? Let’s give them more of the same thing,” seems to be mantra and the plot just an excuse to unleash more of the same set of values that the franchise is built around.

Which is why the critics have had a problem while fans queued up to meet their favourite heroes again.

If the triquels have taught us anything this summer, it is that a film belonging to a franchise is like a re-union or an alumni meet.

You already know the guys, their friends and family. You aren’t there to judge them anymore.

You already know who they are and what they do. You just want an opportunity to catch up with their lives, their adventures. You want to feel good about having them around. The more the action, the more the fun, the better the re-union.

Besides, they are not just entertainment anymore. They are company. People need people.

What better people to turn to, in regular intervals, than your favourite heroes going about their lives, inspiring you to do good and bringing cheer to your life. And, not just during those 100 plus minutes, but for days after they sign off as they make you wait in anticipation till they’re back again – with a brand new excuse, another pretense of a plot – just to make you happy.

Pirates of the Carribean - At World's End: What was I drinking?

2007-06-01T15:37:00.000-07:00

I’m not sure if I watched the movie after an excruciatingly long hectic day or if the latest installment should be taken with a pinch of salt, lemon and Tequila shots.

Remember those Santhoshi Maa/ Kali Maa/ Amman films where devotees in need of a miracle pray to the Goddess and she obliges, striking down the bad guys with lightning and thunder. Pirates 3 actually gets into that league, only on a multi-million dollar scale. Only that here Kali Maa becomes Calypso, the Amman for the pirates.

Now, I’m reasonably savvy Pirates fan. I was sure I would like this film. I even had my list of predictions after watching the second part closely for about four times. I had predicted that Will Turner was gonna die trying to keep his vow, clearing the way for Jack Sparrow to get Elizabeth, especially because Will has nothing much to do in the first two parts apart from brandishing his sword every ten minutes. Killing him would give his character some dignity, I thought. I thought that the magic dust or the ring he steals from Tia would've saved Jack Sparrow and the Black Pearl from the Cracken.

No surprise then that I’m really disappointed with this lets-make-it-up-as-we-go narrative written under the influence of barrels of stale rum. Because this version doesn’t bother connecting the second part with the third except for basic facts like Jack Sparrow is dead, Will Turner has made a promise to free his Dad from Davy Jones and the East India Company is cracking down on pirates.

What about the questions we want answers for? What happens to Jack Sparrow after he marches towards the Cracken with a sword in hand and gets swallowed? How did he end up in what looked like Wachowski Brothers’s Matrix set, with the animation department testing out the Agent Smith multiplicity trick on Jack Sparrow going nuts? Why was he carrying that jar of dust in the last episode when it served no purpose?

After all that build-up towards the end of the second part when the pirate’s friends team up to bring Jack back, all we get is a anytime check-in/check-out Davy Jones Locker that can be accessed by winners of a primary school combination puzzle contest.

If people who die can come back alive anytime with no problems at all, why all that sword-fighting and double crossing?

And where’s all the fun gone, mate? But for one 'That's my peanut' joke, the first half takes itself so seriously that I found myself dozing off, at least twice. Calypso? What? Is there a Chosen one too? Council of pirates?? What was that again? Was that welcome drink at the premiere laced? Was I drunk? Or was the second half going to feature Jedi knights fighting with light-sabers? And, why is Jack Sparrow swinging around so much like Spider-Man?

Or maybe it would’ve been more interesting to watch Karibbean Kallarai Theevu that would’ve opened with the mass execution scene where a little boy probably sang “Paapa Paadum Paatu” with the crowd of prisoners joining in the chorus as sidekicks run up to Beckett to give him the news, “Baas, avanga paatu paaduraanga” as Beckett replies: “Molam naa Adikiren.”

Or when the pirates pray to Calypso saying “Aatha, Suyaroopathey kaatu aathu” as Tia Dalma grows up like Gulliver… And No, I’m quite sure I wasn’t watching ‘Dude, Where’s My Car’. (Remember this scene in that whacko movie when a bystander father makes sure his son doesn’t get to see the giant woman’s panties?)

Okay, I reserve further comments until I watch it the second time on Sunday afternoon. I still find it difficult to believe the disaster it was, especially since the last half an hour was so good.

Shrek The Third: Bring it on

2007-06-01T02:40:00.000-07:00

Cast: Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, Eddie Murphy, Antonio Banderas, Justin Timberlake, Julie Andrews, John Cleese, Rupert Everett
Directors: Chris Miller, Raman Hui
Genre: Animation/Adventure
Storyline: Shrek has to convince a reluctant high schooler to be King, after King Harold passes away.
Bottomline: A perfect hat-trick!

Not many movies make you want to be an animated character, just so that you could enter their world and be part of all the action. The Shrek franchise is now officially no more like a trip to the movies where a meaty plot is mandatory. It’s more like a party you go to catch up with old buddies. You end up having a good time anyway. You not only get to meet characters you have always liked, you meet some that you met last time around and some new admissions.

The anti-thesis to classic fairytale stereotypes, in its third installment, continues to be a celebration of the uncool. For the benefits of those who have never been to the party, this is the world where the ogre is the great guy and Prince Charming is actually the chap harming innocents.

A little similar to ‘Asterix and the Vikings’ plot-wise, Shrek 3, is about the journey Shrek (Mike Myers) makes along with Donkey (Eddie Murphy) and Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas) to convince Artie (Justin Timberlake joins the voice-cast), the butt of all jokes in high school, to be the King of Far, Far Away after Fiona’s father King Harold passes away. If it was Sean Austin as the metrosexual Justforkix playing reluctant warrior in ‘Asterix…’ here it is Justin Timberlake as Artie who seems to under-prepared for his new role as King. The boy has a confidence problem.

So, to the cue of feel-good music (the film surely knows to take a dig at itself), Shrek delivers the “You-know-who-you-really-are, who-cares-what-people-think” speech that has now become a tradition of the franchise, just to remind you about the core values the films stand for.

With that formality done, Shrek sets out to do some good old fairytale hero-bashing with all help from the bra-burning brigade of Fiona, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and Queen Lillian (doing a nice little Charlie’s Angels reprise), the underdogs Artie, Gingerbread Man and Pinocchio, and the regulars, Donkey and Puss in Boots.

To add to that motley, there’s the wizard Merlin who creates a little confusion between the rival “annoying talking animals,” the three little pigs, the big bad wolf, talking trees, blind mice, Mrs. Dragon Donkey and her kids (part Donkey, part dragon), Prince Charming, Rapunzel, sidekicks Captain Hook, Lancelot and Cyclops and a whole bunch of Artie’s high-school bullies and cheerleaders. Whoa!

In spite of this huge a cast, director Chris Miller (who had been a part of the story department of Shrek and had headed it in Shrek 2) seems to have no problem in harnessing the characters together with a clear-cut sense of purpose, as he mixes contemporary pop culture references with fairytale mythology to keep the punchlines coming in at regular intervals with an extended climax to accommodate everyone.

If the franchise continues getting bigger with every episode, with Shrek 4 announced and slated for 2010, we know what to expect. Less story. More fun.

Bring it on.

Shootout at Lokhandwala: Shoot yourself instead

2007-05-31T14:35:00.000-07:00

Cast: Sanjay Dutt, Vivek Oberoi, Arbaaz Khan, Tusshar Kapoor, Suniel Shetty, Amitabh Bachchan and Abhishek Bachchan
Director: Apoorva Lakhia
Genre: Pure Horror
Storyline: Events that led to a shootout at Lokhandwala.
Bottomline: Shoot yourself instead

There is a difference between being objective and sitting on the fence, faking concern.
Dishonesty creeps out of every frame in this C-grade potboiler that hides behind Ray Bans, Sanjay Gupta-signature-swagger-shot of heroes walking in a row to slo-mos and DVDs of Ram Gopal Varma’s gangster films that director Apoorva Lakhia seems to have watched in fast forward mode.

Imagine how terrifying a movie this is if baby-faced Tusshar Kapoor, in an attempt to look mean, uses language like ‘Teri Ma Ki,’ sounding like Tendulkar, and not only expects people to be scared of him but also wants us to believe that he kicked Suniel Shetty’s bottom.

The only thing worse than watching Tusshar and Suniel fight is the duo engaging in a verbal duel. It was a close call to figure out who’s bad, not in the evil sort of way, but purely from the point of view of acting honours. Tusshar may have just outdone record-holder Shetty here in this ham-fest.

Vivek Oberoi is the biggest disappointment of the film. Wasted potential. Maybe he’s forgotten his ‘Company’ days as an actor where he brought alive the crude gangster with simmering raw intensity and gritty menacing presence. Here we see Vivek Oberoi, the star. The guy is in total awe of himself, regularly smiling to showcase his dimples like he’s doing ‘Saathiya’ all over again, dressed in clothes and jewellery stolen from Mansoor Khan’s ‘Josh’ set and mouthing cheese-coated gems like: “Bhagwan ne hamari Supari Yamraaj ko di.” Not to forget his slick moves on the dance floor choreographed to numbers like: “In the Mumbai, all over India, we are the Bhaiz… Shake your A” or the jilted lover’s cheap shots at Ms. Rai in the ‘Ganpat’ song.
Only that ‘Ganpat’ is no ‘Kallu Maama,’ the gangsters here are as real as Huey, Dewey and Louie. Sitting ducks surrounded by cops in an apartment in Lokhandwala.

But it’s not before the climax does the shootout actually begin. The film plays out as the version that the police officers responsible for the shootout give their lawyer. So the character to immediately strike a chord with the audience is the lawyer, played by Amitabh Bachchan. Especially, when he asks bad actors Suniel Shetty and Arbaaz Khan to shut up and let the ever-convincing Sanjay Dutt talk.

The problem with the film is its obsession with style and stylisation. More so because it is based on a true incident and this exaggerated stylisation makes it impossible for us to empathise with either sides. The good guys walk in a row in slow mos, the bad guys walk in slow-mos too. Then, there’s this TV journalist who tells us the cops are bad and there’s the lawyer, who was echoing public sentiments earlier in the film, now changing colours to defend the cops. This sort of moral ambiguity arises because the film insists on hero worshipping the cops and the gangsters, and tries to con us into believing that this is what objectivity is all about.

“What everyone saw was real. What no one saw was the truth,” say some of the posters. And some others say: “Based on true rumours.”

Mr. Gupta, Ms. Ektaa and Co, you guys ought to have made up your mind BEFORE you started on the script. It is too late to fight over it at the poster level and in any case, the film is far away from realism or anything connected to the word “true.”

The only truth about this film is that it is flimsy enough to insert itself into an episode of ‘Kyun Ki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi,’ showing the gangsters in positive light – a shameless promotional exercise by co-producers Balaji Films (also the reason Tusshar Kapoor gets to beat Mr. Body Builder Shetty).

Small mercy that Vivek Oberoi didn’t insist pulling the trigger on Abhishek Bachchan himself.

Cheeni Kum: Drama Extra!

2007-05-31T01:56:00.000-07:00

Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Tabu, Paresh Rawal
Director: Balki
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Storyline: 64-year-old boy meets/loves 34-year-old girl
Bottomline: A flawed ode to consumerism and a world without boundaries

"What is this O-K? It's neither here nor there. Neither good or bad," the 64-year-old perfectionist chef tells his staff, lashing out at mediocrity. If the first few minutes of the film are any indication, it is evident that debutant director and advertising maverick Balki sets his standards high. Like his protagonist, he wants to make sure his film has all the ingredients of a winner, in exactly the right quantities.

The lines sparkle. Look at them individually, they make great copy, at least in the first half of the film. Flawless. The characters are impeccably well fleshed out. And, delivered perfectly by the finest Indian actors in any part of the world.

R. Balakrishnan, popularly known as Balki in advertising circles, seems to have no problem whatsoever in making us fall in love with his lead characters and them, with each other. That would've been the most difficult part for most directors. But then, the ambitious filmmaker finds himself in tricky territory as he tries to pit a new-age product of consumerism and globalisation, the Indian chef at a London-based restaurant, a Versace-sporting Buddadeb (Bachchan) against the khadi-clad old-world senior citizen (Paresh Rawal) who lives his life by Gandhian principles of Swadeshi and satyagraha (only selectively though). Now, for many this Versace-versus-Khadi conflict would be sheer blasphemy.

Like Hindi cinema has often tried to do since Raj met Simran's parents in 'Dilwale Dulhaniya,' the later part of the film is all about manufacturing consent for love.

Which is where the advertising maverick succumbs to formula and loses his way. The final act is a disaster.

Post Dil Chahta Hai, Hindi films have unabashedly celebrated the self, the individual and one’s right to live life in one’s own terms. While making a shameless ode to consumerism (it is quite amazing how many products Balki manages to sell in the film but we will come to that later) and while dealing with more than grown-ups, there is very little need to try to manufacture consent. Spare us the family drama, Sir. That is clearly a step back.

It's not entirely downhill though. Balki finishes with a nice touch hinting that the twain, Mr. Versace and Shri Khadi, might finally see eye to eye. Cricket, the biggest product of consumerism, with its ability to whip up pop patriotism, serves as the perfect bridge.

Where Balki succeeds is in successfully placing products, ideas and solutions for a world without boundaries or barriers. He sells the idea of insurance for the security of life, plugging it shamelessly in the final speech, Sugar-Free (He actually manages to make that the tag line of the film – a Sugar Free romance), gyms for keeping in shape (as his 90 year old mom keeps telling him) and condoms for safe sex.

As a screen-writer Balki gets the brief right, sneaks in the back-stories effectively and sets up the right kind of characters to illustrate that life expectancy has nothing to do with age, contrasting the 90-year-old perfectly healthy mom (Zohra Sehgal infuses the role with her infectious zest and spirit) with the cancer-afflicted nine-year old confidante (Swini Khara, a little stilted sometimes, is largely convincing). In an attempt to resolve stories of all characters, he mistimes one terribly that it only further affects the final act.

This brand of melodrama seemed too out of place in a film so light and young at heart. In the histrionics department, Bachchan is top-notch exuding the quintessential charisma needed for a role like this. One moment he's the supremely confident chef running the restaurant, another minute he has butterflies in his stomach. One moment he goes through the angst of love seeking advice from his nine-year-old philosopher and guide, the other moment he has the boyish nervousness of facing a father-in-law younger than him. It is very unlikely that any other actor his age would've convinced us for a 34-year-old falling for him.

Tabu lends the character ample solidity and substance to turn on the thinking man, living the role with her razor-sharp repartees, holding her own against the veteran. Paresh Rawal is a comic delight as always, reveling in a role tailor-made for him. Watch him in the Satyagraha scene as he clasps his daughter like a kid holding a toy. Endearing.

Ilaiyaraja's score borrows from his earlier works, jazzes it up a little perfectly to suit the mood. The new lyrics are sure to sound a little odd for fans who can't get 'Mandram Vandha' out of their heads.

Overall, the film that could've been among the most perfect pieces of cinema created this year ends up watered down by a forced sense of drama towards the end. The film ends up Okay.

Probably, a little better than that too.

But then, we didn't lecture on the importance of perfection. The film did.

Ek Chalis Ki Last Local: Pulp Fiction before Sunrise

2007-05-24T14:32:00.000-07:00

Cast: Abhay Deol, Neha Dhupia
Director: Sanjay Khanduri
Genre: Black Comedy
Storyline: A call centre executive who misses the last local (train) ends up making two and a half crores in two and a half hours.
Bottomline: Tarantino-meets-Coen Brothers outside Kurla Station

Hindi cinema arrives at yet another brand new destination this year with ‘Ek Chalis Ki Last Local.’

For starters, since the story can be written at the back of a platform ticket (or your movie ticket), the filmmakers decide to put it right on the poster. Because, it’s not about the story as much as it is about the story-telling.

So even before you enter the hall, thanks to the poster, you know that Abhay Deol makes two and a half crores in that many hours. Okay, how?

The film moves in almost real-time, after the opening scene introduces the protagonist walking off with the bagful of money at 0410 hours. The clock at the station then rewinds back to the moment he misses the train. 0140 hours. Yes, the numbers have reversed his luck too.

In no time, debutante director Sanjay Khanduri establishes our down-on-luck hero, Nilesh, more like Mr. Zero with 67 rupees in his wallet, with no means to go home to Vikhroli. If missing the train wasn’t bad enough, he finds himself in a sticky situation literally with a bubblegum on his bench, gets thrown out of the station, finds himself without an umbrella during a storm and no autorickshaw willing to take him home. Nothing seems to be going right until he bumps into the mysterious Madhu (Neha Dhupia).

Ek Chalis… starts off like a Richard Linklater tribute (with the romantic knot of a couple having to spend the night, walking around the city, till the train in the morning), but then this is no Vienna or Paris. This is Mumbai, home to friendly neighbourhood gangsters, good-hearted eunuchs, trigger-happy cops and dons who are into kink.

The dark comedy, then takes the ‘Is Raat Ki Subah Nahin’ route, once in a while reminding you of ‘Waisa Bhi Hota Hai’.

Sanjay outscores ‘Is Raat Ki’ and ‘Waisa Bhi’ by successfully marrying Tarantino’s brand of stylistic violence, razor-sharp lines laced with pop-culture references and wickedly funny dark humour to the realistic absurdity of the kidnapping-going-wrong associated with the Coen Brothers signature, in an authentic, contemporary Indian milieu, without really moving too far away from the romanticism of Hindi films. The free-flowing narrative here walks many worlds, all in a night, quite effortlessly.

Because of the late night setting and real-time narrative, the film does make you restless here and there but overall, it is a largely fulfilling experience, if you appreciate the offbeat.
Interestingly bizarre. You may actually like it if you go with an open mind. More than anything, watch it for one big reason: To support irreverent cinema.

The last 10 films!

2007-05-19T13:36:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure if I'm becoming lazy to review films or addicted to TV shows. Before there are more films overdue, here's a quick look at some of them I saw recently.

1. Chennai 600028: Finally, here's a Tamil film that's actually 'Game' in every sense of the word. It is ground-breaking effort and surely deserves a full-fledged review but like I said, I've become incredibly lazy. Not for a moment does Venkat Prabhu's film take itself seriously nor does it treat cricket like a religion, like most movies made on sport here do. In Chennai 28, it's just a game where anything is possible and then you live.
Also, making an ensemble film is one of the most challenging things for any debutant filmmaker and Venkat Prabhu pulls it off like a master. I mean who would've had the balls to make a film with a bunch of absolutely new actors, a plot where there's absolutely no room for heroism or sentiment or melodrama. Just good old fashioned street-cricket hanging out with the guys.

2. Ek Chalis Ki Last Local: I caught this a few hours ago on Baddy's recommendation. And boy, I think I'll just put off watching Miller's Crossing by a day. I want to believe that we've finally managed to crack it. Marrying Tarantino-ish stylisation of violence to the Coen Brothers signature of the realistic absurdity in an authentic contemporary Indian milieu, without really moving too far away from the romanticism of Hindi films (It's as much a nod to Raj Kapoor as it is to Linklater). Yes, I did find myself restless a few moments here and there but overall, it was a largely fulfilling experience. Interestingly bizzare and you may actually like it if you go with an open mind. Like I told another friend a while ago, watch it just for one reason: To support irreverent cinema. If you can spend 150 bucks to watch all the assembly line trash that's been coming out of Yashraj, please spend 85 on this poor offbeat film that's been sidelined to a single night show.

3. Life in a Metro: Surprisingly fresh. This is probably what Karan Johar would've wanted to do with Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna after watching Closer. A 'closer' look at relationships in a contemporary cosmopolitan metro. We haven't seen such a free-flowing ensemble in recent times and all the actors, even Shilpa Shetty, come out with convincingly credible performances. You can't help falling for the Konkana Sen-Irrfan Khan track, though Sharman Joshi is particularly effective as the unconditional lover. I'm not sure if I'm imagining it, but Anurag Basu does seem to plug in a couple of Cameron Crowe tributes... For a second there, I saw the suicidal Kangana Ranaut as Penny Lane in the middle of all that rock (in a Hindi film!!) sutradhars and also the trivia about the fish, specifically, the Pacific Northwestern Salmon, travelling hundreds of miles against the current, with a single purpose (the line also features in Elizabethtown). Yes, there are a couple of nods to 'Closer' too. I haven't seen 'The Apartment,' so can't really say how much is borrowed. But the thing is, Basu underlines most of these things we've seen before with his own signature, in a way that would only make the original filmmakers smile.

4. Periyar: Though it did start off with a jerky narrative with isolated incidents tied together for the sake of establishing character, the transitions turn smoother towards the middle, setting the stage for an almost credible biopic on the man considered to be the "Father" of the state. Satyaraj turns in a pretty underplayed performance and is easily one of the best things about this film that tries to stay true to the spirit of the man and his ideology. It did turn out to be engrossing attempt at that, especially, given that I was in no mood to watch a film after being horrified at the sight of the dirty, bug-infested, paan-stained seats at Rupini theatre, in Rohini complex. Just as we were wondering if we should leave and try to get to Abhirami (a
marginally better theatre), the credits came on and there were only a dozen people in the hall when the film started, including a few drunk and the homeless who had showed up for a few hours of air-conditioning on an extremely humid summer night. The only thing to put me off was the literally last-minute attempt to lick the Chief Minister's ass clean. The extra seconds could've surely been done away with for it takes away from the credibility.

5. Ta Ra Rum Pum: There were a lot of scenes I liked in the film until the director, desperate to win our sympathy for the kids in this fantasy film, resorts to cheap tricks like making them eat food from the trash. I can understand this in an early nineties Vikraman film with S.A.Rajkumar music to boot but in something that tries to be refined and sophisticated... excuse me, Siddharth Anand, whatever happened to your sensibility? Even if you excuse the 'Days of Thunder'-meets-'Life is Beautiful' plot, there are a lot of things that irk. First, that Saif Ali Khan, who created a new type, the uber-cool critic of Hindi cinema corn with that song in 'Dil Chahta Hai,' is now getting slotted so consistently into that type ('Hum Tum,' 'Salaam Namastey,' 'Kal Ho Na Ho' and now this!) so much that it is turning into a stereotype. And, why is Rani who has never ever looked slutty now appears so? She too, like Saif, has done this role many times before (Saathiya, Chalte Chalte, Hum Tum and now again this!). But despite all this, the film will work for kids. Come on, Indian kids are one of a kind. Only they could have made 'Koi Mil Gaya' spawn a sequel and honestly believe that Krissh is better than Batman and Superman.

6. Marie Antoinette: I loved Knight's Tale. So it's not like I have a problem with stylising a period film with contemporary influences of music and costume. But I surely expect a little consistency in style and pattern that justifies the stylisation. Sophia Coppola's take was beautiful. Period. Apart from looking good visually, there's not much the film actually achieves. Or maybe that was exactly what she wanted to tell us about the Queen. The only thing that kept me going was Kirsten Dunst needing help with change of clothes. But seriously, what's with Kirsten Dunst and transparent clothing? Not that I'm complaining.

7. The Hills Have Eyes 2: I'm just gonna cut and paste from my draft for the official review that was toned down.

The Hills have eyes 2?

Well, if only they could fill the movie halls too.

The thing about an immensely forgettable film is that your memory fails you every passing moment as soon as you’ve left the hall.

To his credit, the director compensates by giving you a storyline that’s impossible to forget. A bunch of soldiers all die one by one.

This marathon of bad acting is flagged off by a Training-Day Denzel Washington Wannabe, a possible second-grade school play reject, who plays the no-nonsense Sarge, screaming the corniest orders in predictable Black American slang.

In a landscape so barren and dry of any talent whatsoever, the mutants emerge out to be the best ‘actors.’ Yes, ‘actors’ because they do the right thing – they kill this bunch of bad actors one by one.

So purely on the basis of acting talent, it is easy to guess who would die next. When there’s just one watchable face in the pack, the quintessential blonde, you know she would hang around till the very end.

There’s a scene right at the beginning that warns you of what to expect. A cadet goes to empty his bowels when a mutated hand shoots out of the potty. Holy four-letter word… Exactly!
That kind of failed because the girls were too grossed out to even look and the guys, veterans of the Grindhouse that they are, have seen better stuff.

The film, thereon, just played out as a long bland ordeal where you had to wait for them to be done, one by one. The only thing left to see was how, and in which order. But since you knew they would save the pretty young thing for the end, even that wasn't so nail-biting.

Violence can be enthralling, as Tarantino has often proved. This movie, however, tries its best to make you throw up, with that last-ditch attempt of the mutant rape scene. But by then, chances are, you would have left the hall.

If you were among the kind fans of the original, you would wish upon the makers a death at the hands of the mutants. But since the mutants here just looked like a bunch of deformed retards with no essential powers like the ability to snatch one's intestines through the throat or grind the writers into a fine pulp, you are out of options.

So now, they are at it again. The end was the beginning of all horror actually – a set-up to yet another sequel. Be scared, very scared.

8. The Last King of Scotland: If you don’t feel too bad for Will Smith losing out on the Best Actor at the Academy Awards, it’s only because Forest Whitaker creates a frighteningly powerful persona that will haunt you till death as he brings to life one of the darkest dictators in history and the most colourful villains of contemporary cinema.

If movie buffs had to vote for the best villain in recent times, this portrayal of the ‘Cannibal’ President Idi Amin will only lose to Hannibal Lecter and, maybe, Kaiser Soze. Knowing pretty well that a role like this comes only once in a lifetime, Forest Whitaker gives it everything he has.

But hang on, his performance, worth every gram of the statuette, is not the only reason you must watch ‘The Last King of Scotland.’ There are many.

Director Kevin MacDonald crafts an edge-of-the-seat riveting thriller from a fictional account of a biopic that begins slowly and smoothly, introducing us to Uganda through the eyes of a young Scottish doctor, Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy), whose casual, carefree life changes forever when he befriends the President.

The film is essentially about the bond between Amin and Nicholas as the makers put us into the shoes of the physician quite early in the film. Through the film, you get to know the President, through the eyes of Nicholas. In the beginning, you, like Nicholas or the people of Uganda, begin to actually like him, given his sense of humour and child-like affability.

Like the doctor, you mistake the psychotic quirkiness for harmless eccentricity, underestimateing the childish arrogance. So when Nicholas tells the President “You’re just a child. And that’s what makes you so scary,” he’s actually speaking out your observation of the man. Performances perfectly tuned to the intention.

Which is why this is such an effective film born of out a brilliant script (Jeremy Brock wrote the screenplay based on Giles Foden’s novel.)

Whitaker’s greatest histrionic achievement lies in his seamless transformation from a charismatic leader to a murderous monarch. So even when you see his dark side, you still can see its origins and the traits of the person you once liked. Whitaker’s presence looms so large over the film that poor McAvoy, who probably clocks more screen-time, is reduced to a support act. It has to be said here that McAvoy manages to pull off one of the most complex and under-rated roles in recent times, as the epitome of vulnerability, a man faced with a moral dilemma of what he values more – loyalty towards his friend or the country and the people he has come to serve.

As the tension builds between the two main characters, the director capitalises on the mood, steps up the pace and sets the stage for a dark, gripping finale.

It’s not just the lead performers, McAvoy and Whitaker, who deliver their flawed characters with flawless execution and conviction. The support cast is terrific, the score rocking with African rhythms and the cinematography, vividly haunting.

Surrender to ‘The Last King of Scotland.’ He rules.

9. Bheja Fry: Not everyone's gonna like this. For starters, the word has spread that it is a rip off of a French film. Also, the kind of humour employed in the film is subtle, the pace laid-back, the setting (and the set) very sit-com. But despite all that, I loved it for Vinay Pathak. The actor has a ball, making the character his own, fleshing it out to great detail, nuancing it with nice touches of body-language, making even the most ordinary lines funny with sheer timing. The film's sorest point, for me, was that there is not even an attempt made to explain the exact reason why his wife (Sarika) leaves Rajat Kapoor. Come on, if you are going to base your entire film on the premise that the wife left the guy, then we need to know more. Why exactly? But for the sake of Vinay, let's just let that pass. Like I said about Ek Chalis, if you can go watch any film out of Yashraj just out of curiosity, why not extend support to small films that can really do with your support.

10. Unnale Unnale: I'm pretty sure that this film was edited even before it was shot. Jeeva went to a DVD library, hand-picked 20 romantic comedies (some Hindi and many English), grabbed all the scenes he liked (or understood) and got an editor to come up with a first draft of the script. So liking this film entirely depends on your moral take on the issue of originality. I interviewed Jeeva recently and asked him why he did it. What he told me was this: "If you are a medical student, you go to the library to read books on medicine. Similarly, when we are making films, we refer to a lot of films. We don't use it completely but are inspired by them. Like how music has only 7 tunes (he probably meant notes), there are only a few ideas." Well, that reminds me of that old joke that spells out the difference between plagiarism and research. Plagiarism is when you copy from one source. Research is when you copy from many.

Spider-Man 3: Trapped in its own web

2007-05-11T01:21:00.000-07:00

Cast: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Thomas Haden Church, Topher Grace, Bryce Dallas Howard, Rosemary Harris, J.K.Simmons
Director: Sam Raimi
Genre: Action/Drama
Storyline: As fame gets to his head, Peter Parker finds his relationship with Mary Jane and his friendship with Harry strained. When an alien symbiote takes over him, the biggest enemy he has to fight is himself.
Bottomline: Complex overdose of contrived drama and spectacular visual effects.

With great power comes great responsibility, all right.

But the responsibility in this case seems to have taken its toll.

Especially, on director Sam Raimi and leading man Tobey Maguire. If there’s anything wrong with the film, it’s not the lack of effort but too much of it.

Spider-Man 3 spins multiple cobwebs, involving half a dozen characters, that fall apart only because Raimi and Tobey bite into more than what they can chew.

Raimi gives Spidey an overdose of problems just to be triply sure that the superhero is adequately challenged and the audience super-engaged with the proceedings.

First, his relationship with Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst) is on the rocks because success goes to his head. Next, his best friend Harry Osborn (James Franco) now wants revenge for stealing his girlfriend and killing his Dad. Also, Uncle Ben’s real killer (no, the guy they showed in Spider-Man 1 was only an accomplice we learn) Flint Marko (Thomas Haden Chase) has now become King Kong-sized Sandman, after a freak accident. Then, Peter has to deal with competition from another freelance photographer Eddie Brock (Topher Grace) at the Daily Bugle. To add to Spidey’s woes, even this shrewd human rival transforms into the larger-than-life villain, Venom. And, there’s another damsel in distress waiting to be rescued and kissed upside down in Gwen Stacy (Bryce Dallas Howard). If all this were not enough, an alien symbiote looking for a host decides to corrupt Spidey. Finally, there’s a full-fledged Aunt May-track to give Spidey his dose of moral instructions. Very poorly written, this. Plus, there’s the Bruce Campbell cameo, the Bad Spidey dance, the making of the bad guys and visual effects and action sequences that make time disappear into thin air. All thrust into one movie, like there is no tomorrow. Or another film left in the franchise.

If Raimi goofs up by soaking these sub-plots with the trademark sentimentality and soppy melodrama that the franchise has been associated with, Tobey botches it up with incredibly bad acting. His performance is only made worse with his double-chinned, cherubic, balding presence, and an effeminate demeanor – especially his pansy portrayal of bad Spidey. When the 31-year old actor begins to sob, so do we. Is this the same chap we so adored in the first two installments of the franchise?

Let’s not even get started on how much the film departs from the comics. Wasn’t Gwen Stacy killed by the Green Goblin? What’s she doing in the film much after Green Goblin is long dead and gone?

But hang on, Spider-Man 3 is not a bad film at all, in spite of Raimi’s and Tobey’s collective failure, thanks to the ensemble of actors, especially James Franco, J.K.Simmons, Topher Grace, Thomas Haden Chase and, of course, the outstanding ultra-spectacular visual effects. With most of these actors having an electric screen presence, the director decidedly does away with their masks, further distancing the film from the comic book.

It is not easy to make a film on the theme of forgiveness that is both effective and entertaining. The message only becomes effective if Peter Parker finds himself on both ends of the spectrum – as the guy who has to be forgiven by his best friend and the guy who refuses to forgive Uncle Ben’s killer. To personify the inner evil within, Raimi employs the symbiote from outer space and gets the lab guy to explain how it only amplifies the values we stand for. While the intention of the makers is commendable indeed, the creation of such a complex web of character graphs calls for a convincing resolution of their sub-plots too.

Instead, Raimi resorts to age-old tricks like memory-loss and taking a bullet for a friend that seem lazily borrowed from Hindi cinema of the seventies.

That’s quite unfortunate because the first two films transcended comic-book juvenilia.

Hence, the best way to enjoy Spider-Man 3 is to leave your brains home. The child in you will sit back and love every moment of it.

Suderman Comics: Sidey Spidey!

2007-05-07T16:18:00.000-07:00

Spider-Man 3 Review coming up soon!

Disclaimer: The movie isn't as bad as people/critics say it is. And my review's gonna make up for that mean comic-strip I made up I promise. Spider-Man 3 isn't bad. It's just gay.

The original Spidey theme!

2007-05-07T04:31:00.000-07:00

If you got here before I could post the review, enjoy the original theme and come back. The review of Spider-Man 3 will be up shortly.

Maayakkannadi: A Spell Cast Wrong

2007-04-15T16:15:00.000-07:00

What to expect:
1. Cheran as urban youth. Who wants to go boling and eat pissa with his gaerlfrend. But they are 'yezhai' lovers unable to afford pissa after bike gets punture and maama takes mamool.

2. Cheran changing before the camera, revealing his diaper-like underpants. Though this scene happens in the background, the sheer imagery shocks you with its lucid irony. Though he's urban youth, he still wears lungi tied up as diaper inside his pants. Whatta statement: You can take villager to the city but you can't take him outside his pants.

3. Cheran as style icon. He plays a hair-stylist at upmarket salon. See pics for proof. His yezhai lover/gaerlfrend is also hair-stylist and together, they make-out in changing rooms at Shoppers Stop. If you spot him wearing sleeveless, beware of gross sights... or what he has up his (missing) sleeve.

4. Cheran as Superstar wannabe. Yes, he borders on blasphemy insinuating that to become Superstar you just need to learn to chuck the cigarette into your mouth. Just because Boobman Sarath Kumar (not seen Pachaikili Muthucharam yet?) tells him anyone, including him, can become an actor.

5. Cheran as break-dancer. Oh, there's this one minute long shot of Cheran dancing that's supposedly choreographed to bring the roof down. It surely does. God bless Ilaiyaraja. It is a kickass track nonetheless.

6. Cheran indulging in more obscenities in the pretext of duets. The comic above is self-explanatory in that regard. Also, Cheran doing kaamedy. Intentionally and otherwise.

7. If you are going for the night show at Rohini complex like I did, the interval break happens at 12.20 a.m. And Cheran finally decides to get to the point around 2 a.m.

8. Radha Ravi's two minute long monologue in the end that delivers the message of the movie. Very effective. Saving grace of the film. Oh yes, even the actor playing Cheran's workaholic roomie is quite good. One of the rare credible performances in the film.

9. Anti-rich propaganda: All rich people are evil rapists or ganja smugglers. All good rich people call themselves poor because they struggled to make it.

10. Guest appearances: Malavika, Sarath Kumar, Arya, Director Raj Kapur, Balachander's office, Cheran's armpit...

What went wrong:
1. Cheran as actor. What was he thinking when he cast himself? There are so many scenes with the mirror in the film. Did he bother looking into it just once?
No doubt he did a decent job in Autograph as an actor but here he should've gone in for a younger actor like Bharath. The movie would've at least been watchable and probably even effective.

2. Cheran as director. It is time he stopped being indulgent and realised economy of scenes. With merciless editing, this might have been a fine film, with a different actor in the lead, of course.

3. Cheran as casting director. It is not essential to pack your film with ugly people just to give it a realistic feel. I wouldn't mind unattractive actors as long as they are effective in their roles. The guy playing wannabe rapist couldn't even act to save his balls. And did you really direct that scene, Cheran? Ham-fest!

4. Cheran as dialogue writer. There are some very good lines in the film no doubt but there are some equally corny ones too borrowed from Nayakan-rejects. And that actor playing Nayakan, I assume, is the producer. Can't imagine any other reason he was cast for the role.

5. Navya working overtime. She seems to be a talented actress but here, she goes way over the top. Or maybe it was Cheran pushing her for an award-winning performance.

What works:
1. Ilaiyaraja.

2. Ilaiyaraja.

3. Ilaiyaraja.

(Even if he insists on singing most of the songs himself these days)

Provoked: Or Don't let your wife beat you to it.

2007-04-10T07:30:00.000-07:00

For Abhishek's wedding gift, we heard good old Jag made this beautiful movie previously titled: Back-Fire (Tag line: Beat Your Wife But Hide The Candle.)

Yes, the ultimate male fantasy. What would we not do to watch Aishwarya Rai get bitch slapped. That too, in a movie by the Jerry Bruckheimer of porn.

For the benefit of fruitbaskets reading this, here's a quick refresher on Jag Mundra. Now, this is the guy who got Helen Broadie to show her body in 'Moonsoon' [If you are at work or in the presence of the faint-hearted elderly, open that link at your own risk]. More recently, Jag was creative enough to let Laila Rouass (nope, I'm not making up these names) jump into bed with Rahul Khanna to lighten the mood and have a little fun in the middle of a film about gang-rape that ended with Nandita Das complaining about the use of a body double.

What joy it would be. To see Aishwarya in the porn filmmaker's latest attempt at critical acclaim.

So much lipsmacking potential all in one movie.

But hey, hold your monkey here a second. Don't let your expectations rise too much, the movie is a let down. The Four Letter Review for the film would go: KLPD. Yes, or KLPRR or KLPIB as you know it... (RR being Road Roller and IB being Iron Box!)

Aishwarya Rai proves her class (third to be precise) in a film with porn movie extras clearly demonstrating that they can, on any given day, do a better job acting than she ever can with her clothes on.

Everytime she went over the top with her annoying shrieks, me and a friend were rooting for Naveen Andrews, who plays the husband. "Bring it on man... Slap the bitch... YES... YES... YES!!" These were the best parts of the movie. We wanted cheerleaders around the hall, sink deeper into the seats and dig into the popcorn. Bliss! If only our Censors were more relenting.

But then, we discovered Jag has changed his preferences. No bare, sizzling Laila Rouass. Just a unbearably gross, sizzled Andrews's, thanks to squirrel-brained Aishwarya having grown up watching one of Jag's previous works called: "Burning passion: Candle with Care". The kinky woman sets his pants on fire.

'Provoked' is Jag's attempt to do a Deepa Mehta sort of a trilogy. Many years ago, he made a film on flesh trade called 'Kamla'. Then he got interested in gang-rape and made 'Bawander' and now another exciting idea. Wife-beating. If Deepa can do 'Fire,' he could come up with his own feminist statement: "Back-Fire." But the mistake he makes here is that he doesn't give people what they walk into the theatre to watch his movies for.

Now, a Jag Mundra film without porn is like Saravana Bhavan without masala dosa, right?

Alright, I am exaggerating a bit.

The movie isn't that bad nor is Aishwarya. She is actually half-decent when she shuts the fuck up in prison and talks only when required to. Thankfully, we are not Dhoomed again to hear her go "Are you, like, checking me out, like?"

Also Madhu Ambat's cinematography shows us an Aishwarya who looks fine with no make-up whatsoever. Having said that, the movie is a bore. Especially, when Jag decides to do a Princess Diaries in prison and gets her a makeover. Here's the thing, Jag: If you think you're going to switch camps and start making chick flicks, Sorry mate. The chicks don't like it either. Stick to your soft porn. You manage to make it interesting with the babes and guns thrown in. Apparently, even Tarantino digs that kinda stuff.

Naveen Andrews, Miranda Richardson and Robbie Coltrane are the only actors who seem to know what they are doing in the film. Strangely, even Nandita Das is found wanting. She turns out to be animated in the company of the firang natural actors. Or maybe, after her previous outing with Jag, she just signed up for sweet revenge.

Maybe she was the one who was 'Provoked'.

Anyways, it's good that Jag made something that will hopefully provoke Little B to beat her regularly.

Also, I hope he hides the candle.

Following: No wonder he has one!

2007-03-27T15:54:00.000-07:00

You wouldn't believe this is a first film and a no-budget film at that. Shot with about $6000, Christopher Nolan foxes us with an intriguing Hitchcockian thriller. Following (1998) so well-written, intelligently structured and smartly directed.

I wish we played this film at the Roof Top Film Festival. It is a must watch for film students and indie filmmakers. I don't want to give away anything, just get yourself a copy and watch this first.

Roof Top Film Festival - First Edition

2007-03-27T15:43:00.000-07:00

We had such an awesome time at the Roof Top Film Festival.

We watched four movies in all. And there were a few entertaining short films, including one called 'Hi Dad' made young local talent, Krishna and T.U.Dinesh. I hope the future editions of the festival features more short films by local filmmakers.

The choice of films for the first edition was made keeping in mind the nature of the audience and people who had registered. Most of them wanted to make films. So the focus was to screen films that were made by people with little or no experience, by people with little or no money.

Hard Candy (2005): I had recommended this film after having watched it, thanks my buddy Karthik who gave me the DVD. It's such a brilliant independent film that manages to hold you by the balls with just two characters for about 100 minutes. Absolutely riveting stuff. The best part about the movie marathon was the discussion that followed these movies. It was such an enriching experience to see how different people perceived a film they had all seen together. I learnt a lot from these observations.

Blood Simple (1985): Sagaro managed to download this rare film exclusively for the movie marathon. I'm indeed grateful to him for that. The first thing that strikes you about Blood Simple is how the Coen Brothers first introduced the elements that we have now come to associate with them. Ordinary, real, small-town characters caught in the most absurd situations. You can also see that the Brothers' obsession with kidnapping and adultery started right from the first film. Frances McDormand... Whoa! What an actress. And what a long way she's come from Blood Simple to Fargo (1996) to The Man Who Wasn't There (2001). All these three films incidentally are about a husband hiring/kidnapping/blackmailing his wife and how things go out of control.

Annie Hall (1977): I've been meaning to watch this for years now. Since I recently managed to buy my own copy, I brought it along to the movie marathon, just in case we needed a different genre. And after the first two thrillers, everybody wanted to watch something funny. So we figured we were going to go with the movie that made Woody Allen. I really wish I had seen this before I made That Four Letter Word. There's a lot I could've learnt from this movie, especially the way he reminds people very often that it is a story. This movie demonstrates most efficient use of alienation techniques. The stuff text-books are made of. Also, this was a largely autobiographical movie. And so was mine. At least at the surface level.

As the discussion into how I, in my own way, had tried to differentiate between fact and fiction, reality and fantasy, and life and film, some of those in the audience wanted to watch That Four Letter Word (2007). Personally, I thought it was a very bad choice for a film at the crack of dawn. Let's see how many survive, I said. I was quite surprised only five were out at the end of it. And most of these boys had already seen it at least once.

So then, since I had an audience, I showed them deleted scenes and exclusive glimpses of the first version of That Four Letter Word -- something I hadn't shown anyone apart from my cast and crew.

Sid has the most amazing rooftop with sea breeze providing the airconditioning. Ganesh, Hats off to you and the rest of the gang. We must do this more often.

P.S: Personally, I think you ought to keep the booze out of it lest it becomes an occasion to drink than watch films. Maybe you guys should keep in mind that you are not going to get too many women from this city attending a fest with strange boys drinking into the night. :)

Feeling miserable? Here's the prescription.

2007-03-27T14:26:00.000-07:00

It's right up there among my favourite films of all-time. Feel good at its best. This is strictly only for those who have the time. I guarantee no matter how depressed you are, at the end of this film, you are bound to feel great. About you and about life.

I'm not sure I've said this before. Cameron Crowe is my idol. If you've seen That Four Letter Word and if you are a Cameron Crowe fan, you just might be able to catch the internal references. The direct and the indirect.

It's been a while since I last saw 'Elizabethtown'. It was so good to watch this for the umpteenth time. I hadn't watched it in a long while because I was saving up for the day people would call TFLW a fiasco. Since that didn't quite happen, I couldn't stay away from the film anymore.

:D

Just Married: Sequel to Vivah?

2007-03-22T17:13:00.000-07:00

What is otherwise a barely bearable trip, goes off the road when Meghna Gulzar loses her balance between realism and willing suspension of disbelief. Though she does present a sensitive, realistic take on newly wed couples on their honeymoon, the filmmaker betrays her sensibility by forcing a rather filmy, gravity-defying cliffhanger on her multiplex audience.

It is not just the climax that is symptomatic of the director’s struggle to marry two sensibilities – the urban and the small-town – maybe because her central characters are the epitome of modern day sensitivity and small town conservatism respectively.

But then, how dramatic can a conflict between sensitivity and conservatism get? The foreign-bred Abhay (Fardeen Khan) understands his bride’s predicament. He knows his small town-raised wife Ritika (Esha Deol) needs time before she would let him touch her, let alone share the bed. He’s willing to wait. She’s happy that he understands her. So far, so good.

To her credit, Meghna Gulzar fleshes out the first act with ease, punctuating the interludes of the newly married couple with a breezy song or two (Pritam does full justice to Gulzar’s lyrics) while exploring the distance and dynamics between the strangers bound by matrimony. Also during the first act, she also introduces us to the other couples on a holiday, and though this juxtaposition initially seems like a good idea, the sub-plots slow down the central one. By the time we get through with the second and get into the third, the bride does test our patience. Or maybe it’s the actress.

To be fair to her, though miscast, Esha Deol delivers a well-nuanced career-best and Fardeen Khan banks on natural charm with restrained underplaying.

Of the other four couples, Satish Shah and Kirron Kher are adorable with their everyday quibbles. Perizaad Zorabian is once again typecast as the free-spirited girl opposite the hunky Bikram Saluja, while Sadia Siddique and Mukul Dev as the platonic childhood sweethearts manage to bring a smile to your face. Raj Zutshi buries himself under Lonely Planet for most of his screen time as his companion rattles of lines in fake American accent.

Though you connect to some of these characters instantly, the sub-plots here, compared to ‘Honeymoon Travels,’ hardly spring any surprises.

If ‘Honeymoon Travels’ was a macro-level look at relationships, ‘Just Married’ is a more intimate, microscopic look at the space shared between man and woman under the institution of marriage.

Comparisons are inevitable not only because of the timing of release of these two films but also because the sensitivity lent to the plot by two different woman filmmakers. The difference emerges in the sensibility employed.

If Reema drove ‘Honeymoon Travels’ with a classy, urban, romantic-comedy sensibility and stopped for a brief lecture (Shabhana Azmi challenging the sanctity of marriage), Meghna drives all the way to the edge of the cliff to force some melodrama to please the masses and swear by its sanctity (as discoursed by the senior couple, Kirron Kher and Sathish Shah).

If Reema’s cinema branches out of Farhan Akhtar’s, Meghna’s seems like an ode to Sooraj Barjatya.

Water: Packaging takes away the freshness

2007-03-14T15:10:00.000-07:00

There are films that aim to be hard-hitting with their portrayal of graphic violence against women, their no-holds barred accounts of numerous cases of abuse unleashed upon the innocent by evil, perverted villains. Films like 'Matrubhoomi,' for instance.

And there's 'Water,' which in spite of its subtlety and calmness, reflects how disturbingly dirty the pond can get.

No doubt then, that films like Deepa Mehta's 'Water' hit you harder and right at the gut.

The casting may not be perfect. The milieu isn't authentic either. But we can't really blame the filmmaker for that. She was refused permission to shoot in India. Besides, we know how Shabana Azmi and Nandita Das had shaved their heads in vain.
So, Mehta transports Varanasi to Sri Lanka, but just calls it India. She uses a largely South-Indian looking cast (most of them Sri Lankans) and indicates that the story is set in a South Indian village, with some of the characters calling the mothers 'Amma,' and yet, they all talk in Hindi. So right there, we can say that this is hardly a film that deserves an Oscar nomination. But it is certainly a film that we in India need to watch.

It is almost impossible to imagine this story set anywhere else but in Varanasi. It is indeed a shame that Deepa didn't get to tell her story the way she originally wanted to. Especially, because the film examines issues that are still alive – widow-remarriage, gender roles, superstition and blind-faith.

The film unfolds as a series of events that examine the plight of widows, as seen and discovered by the latest entrant to the house – a child widow.

The mischievous Chuhia (Sarala) is at the centre of all action. There's Madhumati (Manorama), the strict fat old widow who runs the house that Chuhia never gets along with, there's Shakunthala, who's like the mother-figure to her (Seema Biswas) and there's the law-breaking angelic Kalyani (Lisa Ray) who becomes her best friend. When Gandhian Narayan (John Abraham) visits his village, he falls in love with Kalyani, woos her reciting poetry from Kalidas' Meghdooth, and seems on the verge of a breakthrough before the complexity of the larger picture emerges.

Seema Biswas breathes so much credibility into her role, completely overshadowing the rest of the pack, but for little Sarala, who with her vulnerability, zest and playful demeanour makes Chuhia immensely likeable. Lisa Ray seems a little miscast but lends the role radiance and charm, acquitting herself as Kalyani creditably. The surprise is John Abraham, who though miscast, manages not to embarrass himself. In fact, he delivers the underplaying that the role requires with great sincerity. If he still looks like a star doing an experimental role, it's probably that long hair. A close-crop would have not only made him unrecognisable, but also helped him shed his image and reinvent his onscreen persona.

Mehta keeps the mood light for most parts, using humour to address serious issues, and employs water as the visual leitmotif all through the story, quite comfortable with the other associate metaphors, given that this is her third in her trilogy. This is certainly not the best despite being the best-looking film of the three. '1947:Earth' continues to be the best of the three, with superlative casting, a haunting score running through the compelling yet credible narrative that captured the angst of the bloodiest separation in the history of world geography.

'Water' seems a little watered down with an eye on the international market but it still manages to drown you in its drama.

Grindhouse: Trailers, real and fake

2007-03-14T01:39:00.000-07:00

That was the official trailer for Quentin Tarantino-Robert Rodriguez's double-feature releasing in the US in less than a month. I've never wanted to visit America but for this!

What's also interesting is that there are plenty of fake trailers doing the rounds on Youtube. Apparently, there was a contest where people could send in their own fake trailers of Grindhouse movies.

The idea is really cool.

I heard Sagaro and Co are organising the Rooftop Film Festival. How about getting participants to make and bring their own fake grindhouse trailers? Of course, our own desi versions... Remember Ramsay Brothers? You don't need a huge budget to make trailers of films like that. I can give you guys my handycam (provided you guys take full responsibility and return it safe) and I'm sure you can shoot in haunted graveyards, with tomato ketchup for blood and chicken curry for gore.

Anybody game? :D

Mozhi: Make way for Tamil cinema's Hirani!

2007-03-13T14:56:00.000-07:00

Radhamohan has to be our own Rajkumar Hirani.

With 'Mozhi,' he once again brings to Tamil cinema, a brand of feel-good that we usually associate with Rajkumar Hirani.

I couldn’t help thinking about Munna Bhai and Rajkumar Hirani all through 'Mozhi.'

The mood is light throughout. There are some truly memorable moments extracted from slices of everyday life. There are well etched out support characters letting their sub-plots play the perfect foil to the overall scheme of things.

But it’s not just the feel and approach. The similarities start right from the content and the kind of stories they want to tell us.

Like Hirani, Radhamohan too believes in clean entertainment, and their films seem to brim of idealism. They both surely seem to hope that their films would bring reform and social change, with their protagonists personifying all the goodness in the world.

Both these chaps seem to adopt a classy sensitivity in portraying political correctness and still manage to deliver their stories and the message to the mass, without compromising their script.

They both love to keep their dialogues simple and casual, slowly building empathy towards all the support characters and setting the stage for the resolution, with the quintessential burst of melodrama.

This is the kind of stuff that should find its way into textbooks as far as sub-plot development goes. Remember the paralysed bald man in a coma (Anand, if I remember the character’s name right) in Munna Bhai? Now think about the mentally-disturbed bald professor stuck in the eighties. In both these movies, these sub-plots are introduced fairly early on, and kept hanging for a bit as the directors milk your sympathy, before finally letting human kindness (that’s why I say these guys are idealists) produce that moment you have been waiting for: The soppy finale. You want to see the man in the coma sit up and smile just as much as you want to see the professor get back his mental balance.

The filmmakers hold these cards back, diverting your attention towards the larger plot resolution before sneaking in the sub-plot resolution in a way that it totally compliments and completes the larger picture. Your eyes well up, just as that of all the other onlookers in the frame. The directors cut to the close-ups of these onlookers as they wipe their tears, a cue for you to hold yours back. Funny how both these guys use hardcore soppy drama to enhance the feel-good factor in their otherwise light films.

In both these films, there is plenty of comic book alienation and vibrantly larger-than-life song choreography, techniques that Hirani uses best. Be it the ‘mike-testing’ in 'Munna Bhai' or the bulb coming on and bells-ringing in 'Mozhi.'

Both these guys seem to do pretty well in bringing out the drama in everyday life, with smart editing. If it was the carrom-board in 'Munna Bhai,' we have a cricket match in 'Mozhi.'
You just can’t miss the similarities in content, approach and genre.

As excited I am about Hirani's American outing with Munna Bhai, I can't wait to watch what Radhamohan will do next.

The Pursuit of Happyness: Mr & Jr. Smith make us happy

2007-03-09T03:19:00.000-08:00

The thing about underplaying is that it is under-rated. Will Smith does it so well in ‘The Pursuit of Happyness’ that he makes you wish they did give him that little piece of sculpture after a well-deserved Academy award nomination.

Yes, it’s one of those ‘role-of-a-lifetime’ portrayals. Uplifting. Equally endearing is Smith Junior’s supporting act. The real-life father and son are the perfect foil to each other in this film that somehow seems inconceivable without their chemistry. The Smiths are the pillars of the film.

Though based on the biography of stockbrokerage entrepreneur Chris Gardner, the film takes a few liberties, exaggerates a few facts (Gardner was paid a $1000 stipend during the internship but in the movie he gets none), simplifies some (Gardner’s son was hardly a year old when he takes custody of his son and was secretly homeless for a year but in the movie his son is five and they have to survive homeless only for a few months), but stays true to the undying spirit of the man in his pursuit of happiness, or ‘Happyness’ as the daycare run by Asians teaches his son.

Director Gabriele Muccino makes the most of Steve Conrad’s screenplay to give us one of the most memorable films of the year, working around the predictability of a rags-to-riches narrative (a broke-to-broker story rather) by floating moments of hope in the middle of all that struggle and despair, punctuating the ups and downs with heartwarming moments of father-son bonding.

Even the heavy Bone Density Scanners that Gardner sells in the film, probably metaphorical of his swinging fortunes and times (a madman actually calls it a time-machine) are characters by themselves. Every time he loses one, you can feel his angst. Losing one meant losing a month’s groceries.

Will Smith breathes life and spirit into the role, underplaying it with the right nuances, toning down the histrionics just a little to make it realistic. Watch him break down softly in the restroom, feeling helpless about letting his son sleep there, with people knocking the doors into the night. Simply fantastic.

The finest moment of the film arrives right at the end, the moment the director had kept us waiting for: Happyness. And that’s the moment Will Smith reserves his best for. His face takes you through the increasing levels of happiness in his ultimate moment of triumph. This is kind of stuff that brings cheer to the heart. The kind of stuff that should have won him an award.

If you want to know what happiness is all about, ‘The Pursuit…’ is a must-watch.

Ghostrider: Skeletor on a Motorcycle

2007-03-04T03:17:00.000-08:00

There used to be a time when we were starved of entertainment, and waited eagerly to catch ‘Giant Robot’ on Doordarshan.

We didn’t care much for the quality of visual effects, logical reasoning or the corn-ball excuses needed for Johnny Socko to open his little watch and order: Giant Robot, come soon. Or remember ‘He Man and the Masters of the Universe’ fighting Skeletor?

Years later, we find ourselves watching Ghost Rider pretty much the same way. It needs large doses of willing suspension of disbelief. A normal hero who transforms into a blazing ghost-fighter riding a cruiser that also transforms into something that’s probably common mode of transport in Hell. You can’t help but remember He-Man here, only that Ghost Rider looks like Skeletor on a motorcycle.

Only that, today, we have a wide range of choice from reality shows to crossover cinema to spectacular epic films with zillion visual effects and there is pretty much no reason to watch Ghost Rider but for the child that in you that digs mindless action and comic-book visual effects.

Ghost Rider, at least visually, seems to be a faithful re-creation of the Marvel Comics superhero. And, Nicolas Cage coasts along comfortably in a black-leather biker suit and a stunt cruiser, in a role that he could have very well sleepwalked through. Or maybe he did. Eva Mendes, as his childhood sweetheart, provides the much-needed relief in a film dominated by ghosts spouting the silliest lines.

Given the cheesy lines, it might actually be a good idea to catch Ghost Rider in Tamil. Hitch a ride with Kaalabhairavan. Time-travel to the days we didn’t have satellite television.

Nishabd: Sucks, this Lolly-Pop

2007-03-02T03:14:00.000-08:00

When the 60-year old hero looks towards the open door, out of which his 18-year old object of affection has just run out of after expressing her love, we are left with a pretty photograph of his wife in her prime, framed on the wall right beside that door.

A few scenes later, when the shocked wife shuts the door on him literally, the fallen hero stands in the corridor, halfway between a door that’s shut and another that’s open, with the girl anxiously waiting inside. If only the rest of 'Nishabd' was as subtle.

But for these two scenes of individual brilliance and maybe the final monologue, there is very little in 'Nishabd' that bears the stamp of the master filmmaker.

Not only does he make 18-year old Jiah wear very little, Ram Gopal Varma also tells us very little about what led to the unlikely romance in the first place. Yes, we know they spent a day out in the estates, pretty much like ‘The Bridges of Madison County’ and all, with photographer Vijay (Bachchan) finding reason to sing again, thanks to the arrival of his daughter’s friend Jiah (Jiah Khan).

There are things we must be told. Like, what was the first conversation the old man ever had with the girl who is his daughter’s age. It begins on an interesting premise, with what could also be a one-line self-explanatory excuse for having shot the film the way he did, Varma makes the photographer say: “It is not necessary that the rest of the world sees it through my perspective.”

Brilliant. But, moments after that first line of serious conversation they’ve ever had, Varma decides it’s not important to tell us what they spoke about next. He increases the background score and shows them talking. Lazy screenwriting or weak direction?

What we see more of is a skimpy Jiah getting wet endlessly, pouting like a Playboy pin-up with her index finger in her mouth, and sometimes, with a lolly, perhaps the perfect metaphor for the entire romance.

No doubt Jiah is a pretty photogenic bombshell, but there is a difference between making her look innocently sensuous and professionally raunchy. While Vijay’s own photographs bring out that innocence of a teen having fun with a hose-pipe, Varma’s own frames throughout the film seem pretty distracted by her anatomy. It’s also another thing if Varma’s intention was to tell us that it was lust and physical attraction that led the old man into grey territory.

But he insists it is that pure emotion called love.

Full credit to Amitabh Bachchan’s finely sensitive portrayal of that angst of falling for his daughter’s friend. But Varma lets him down drastically, using silly jokes borrowed from SMS forwards as ice-beakers between the couple. If he wants us to understand their predicament, Varma ought to tell us more than what Bachchan can do with the depth of his eyes. The intensity of the romance appears watered down by weak screenwriting. As a result, the entire episode comes out looking like an old-man hopelessly infatuated by a teen with a crush on him.

Equally annoying is Varma’s way of hammering down what is implied and understood as he makes Jiah ask Vijay: “Do you like my spirit?” or her telling her best friend “I don’t recognise boundaries” during a tiff over her metaphorical ‘foul’ play during a game of badminton or Jiah asking Vijay: “What is black and white at the same time?” and actually making her say it: “Nothing.” Yes, yes, we got it in the first place, it is not radio-drama, Mr.Varma.

Revathy stands dignified in an otherwise sketchily etched out film, Bachchan emotes with all his heart and Nasser lends a little maturity to a support role. The camerawork (Amit Roy), probably intentionally quirky and at times lucidly metaphorical, only distracts an already wandering narrative. Amar Mohile’s score haunts, thanks to Vishal’s melody of ‘Rozana’ – the only song finds no place in the film.

Somehow everything seems too rushed up and hurried with unrealised, pregnant potential.

Or maybe, we are reading too much from a shallow script that might have worked just right for a 10-minute short.

Honeymoon Travels: A delightful trip

2007-03-01T03:15:00.000-08:00

Somewhere towards the end of ‘Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd.,’ an intoxicated Kay Kay Menon breaks into an improvised jig as the chartbuster of the song ‘Sajnaji Vari Vari’ sneaks into the proceedings and before you know it, one by one, all the characters in this ensemble join in to dance what will be known as Hindi cinema’s most spontaneous dance choreography. They characters are all on a high. And you just can’t wait to join the party.

That is the trip that ‘Honeymoon Travels’ is all about.

Bonding, love, caring, sharing and letting your hair down.

Everything else seems to be an excuse to get to that point in the story where six couples with different dynamics to their relationship discover each other and themselves in this sequel in spirit to ‘Saalam-E-Ishq.’

‘Saalam-E-Ishq,’ though episodic, was long-winded and conformist, sticking to the mandatory angst-ridden song before the final act (but then even Reema Kagti’s mentor and producer of ‘Honeymoon Travels,’ Farhan Akhtar, couldn’t do away with that in his own ‘Dil Chahta Hai’) whereas ‘Honeymoon Travels’ is far more simple, crisp and snappy, using quick flashbacks to give us the back-stories of the love stories in an unconventional narrative structure.

Reema only tells you what you need to know, leaving the rest to your imagination, playing her cards smartly all through her narrative laden with clever twists and cheeky turns. Though you can see some of these coming, the director still manages to keep you engaged in the stories by random, yet, fluid inter-cutting between the couples and their respective stories.

Amisha Patel finally makes her acting debut (Yes, we know she’s appeared in films before, pretending to do the job but failing miserably) as one of the film’s most vivid characters, Pinky. But it is Kay Kay Menon who once again surprises you with his range and energy, paired opposite an immensely likeable Raima Sen. Shabana Azmi and Boman Irani are reliably solid in their roles, playing it with the right sort of sensitivity and refreshing zest. Abhay and Minnisha are adorable as the perfect couple with a secret each. Sandhya Mridul’s track makes up for the overdose of feel-good in the film and the fine actress acquits herself without overdoing the histrionics. And trust Ranvir Shorey to breathe life into even the most single-dimensional of characters. He’s brilliant in a role cut short by the screenplay, paired opposite his reluctant bride Diya Mirza, looking pretty in a rather ‘filmy’ role that ironically challenges the very institution of marriage and the validity of a wedding.

Given how refreshing her story-telling is, Reema could’ve done away with the lecturing on love in the end, making Shabana Azmi deliver the message of the film in the middle of the road, to the driver, who probably represents the old-fashioned people who run the system. The new generation is on her side literally and the driver has little choice but to abide by democracy. “We have paid for these tickets. If you can’t drive, step aside. One of us will,” she says, emphasizing on the right of every individual to decide how to live his/her lives.

But for these minor quirks, ‘Honeymoon Travels’ is a refreshingly delightful trip exploring the complexity of human relationships with the disarming simplicity of everyday life. The mood is light all through and life is beautiful.

Just one word of caution. Don’t take any of the storytelling too seriously. And don’t take it at the surface-level either. If you find it difficult to accept the cinematic liberties taken, ask yourself this: Is there anything called a perfect couple or a couple that has never had one single fight? That should make you see the brilliance of the larger-than-life elements in the film.

Enjoy.

Eklavya: An exercise in self-actualisation

2007-02-27T03:11:00.000-08:00

A chap called Abraham Maslow once said that as humans meet their basic needs, they seek to satisfy higher needs that occupy a set hierarchy – physiological, safety, social, esteem and finally self-actualisation.

If Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s ‘Eklavya’ is any indication, the man who gave us ‘Parinda,’ ‘1942 – A Love Story’ and ‘Mission Kashmir,’ seems to tell us that he’s done fulfilling all the first four needs including esteem.

Only a filmmaker who does not care a hoot to what anybody thinks about his films would set out to do something like ‘Eklavya’ – an exercise in self-actualisation. Quite understandably so, given that his own protégés like Rajkumar Hirani and Pradeep Sarkar are today among the most esteemed filmmakers in the country.

When dying queen Rani Suhasini Devi (Sharmila Tagore) utters the name of the royal guard Eklavya (Amitabh Bachchan) on her death-bed, the king Rana Jaivardhan (Boman Irani) is enraged. The guard is the keeper of a secret about the birth of the queen’s children Harshvardhan (Saif Ali Khan) and Nandini (Raima Sen). As the queen dies, the stage is set for a drama that would’ve made Shakespeare smile.

Chopra’s ‘Eklavya’ is that thumb a student of cinema would offer his masters, for everything that cinema has taught him. A fearless tribute to the spirit of filmmaking that gets most things right. A Shakespearean script laden with heavy-duty drama (duty also because it’s about the royal guard and his dharma), a top-notch ensemble ranging from stars to actors, indulgent story-telling, an old-world setting very painstakingly etched out with elaborate cinematography on a lavish canvas, stylishly edited, and composed visually and aurally with great passion.

It’s an expensive film to make. But a filmmaker has to do his duty. His dharma is to tell a story without giving in to anybody’s diktats – not the stars’, not the market’s, not the critics’. The actors deliver. Every single one of them, in their limited roles.

Bachchan, of course, anchors the movie with great restraint and simmering intensity, using his eyes to depict his inner turmoil and steely resolve. Saif is splendidly effective in yet another serious role, holding his own against the veteran, with natural flair and underplayed majesty.

Cinematographer “Nutty” Subramanian’s camera makes the most of the huge cranes, giving us some of the most spectacularly framed visuals seen in recent times, with due credit to the locations and art director Nitin Chandrakant Desai. Chopra camp regular Shantanu Moitra turns in just one song and props up the rest of the film with a magnificent score to punctuate the visual poetry.

But then, this is also not the kind of parallel cinema associated with Ray, Benegal, Adoor or Nihalani. This is more of Tarantino-ish celebration of pop cinema churned out with complete conviction, indulgence and John Woo-ish flamboyance.

Despite what he’s been inspired by, he makes sure the film wears his own signature – nods to elements from his own movies, cross-referencing, repeating old favourites and even a direct insert of a clip from ‘Parinda’.

However, when you see how he ends the film, you can’t help but get the feeling that commerce might have just got a little better of Chopra. The pre-release marketing sent out all the wrong signals. The slickly cut trailer promised a racy thriller. Big stars meant bigger theatres. The result has turned out to be disastrous. As the few first days in the halls have demonstrated, the restless crowds aren’t patient enough to appreciate the indulgence.

Eklavya is clearly an up-market multiplex film for a niche audience.

If you plan to go for a movie, take a rain check. If you’re in the mood for serious cinema, make sure you just don’t miss it.

Babel: Watch closely

2007-02-08T03:08:00.000-08:00

If you watched Babel and came out feeling indifferent to the film, chances are that you probably just lost the plot.

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu comes up with a cleverly crafted complex ensemble, layering his paradoxical portrait of mankind with the kind of diversity and the sameness that divides and brings together people across continents.

Yes, just like the complex construction of that sentence takes away from what it tries to say, Babel too, could do with a second reading.

Especially, when the tag-line goes: If you want to understand, listen.

The filmmaker who made ‘Amores Perros’ and ‘21 Grams,’ uses his trademark non-linear episodic narrative connected by one incident, this time around, to explore the politics of communication and the factors that keep the human race divided in an increasingly volatile world.

Yes, it helps to understand the Biblical context before you head to the hall. In fact, it is that context that ties everything up in a film that’s subject to varied interpretation.

At the surface, Babel merely seems to be the story of an American couple holidaying in Morocco, whose world is shattered, moments after a goatherd kid pulls the trigger to prove to his brother that the rifle (originally belonging to a hunter in Japan) given to them, could hit distant targets. In a remote village called Tazarine where surgeries and anesthesia are unheard of, the couple awaits medical aid.

With the parents stuck in Morocco, the Mexican nanny taking care of the American kids, is left with no choice but to take them along to her son’s wedding across the border with an eccentric, reckless nephew.

And far away in Tokyo, the Japanese hunter has a deaf-mute daughter who has a difficult time making the boys understand her quest for love.

But, as you catch and connect instances of weapons, lust/love (it once used to be the same thing as the director implies) sometimes manifested through incest (the censoring of a critical portion towards the end does take away a significant layer from the film) and the most primal needs of man (to hunt, to love, to endure and survive) scattered across the four stories, and, traces of all the needs in each of the stories (watch closely), you see the larger picture emerging.

The characters in the film suffer because they cannot understand each other. They have to deal with barriers of language, borders, moral codes, attitudinal differences and technological disparities to understand that in spite of the differences of how they live, they still are the same.

Characters in each of the four stories are primal at some level, they all get violent at some point, they are all animals looking to mate or looking out for their mates and children, they all are fiercely territorial and guarded about people of other races and yet, at some level, they are all still capable of survival, bonding and in understanding each other, if they tried.

The fact that Brad Pitt stars in the film is rendered irrelevant by uniformly first-rate performances by the entire ensemble, especially the raw talent from Morocco. Technically, the film, though not as stylised as his earlier works, is heart-wrenchingly credible in its portrayal of people with the docu-style cinematography and minimalist background score.

Pure cinema, it is.

Hollywoodland, Flags of our Fathers & Heroes

2007-01-31T03:05:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure if it's a co-incidence that the last three things I saw with my buddy D turned out to be about heroes and what they are made of.

Hollywoodland:

Based on the true story of George Reeves, the guy who played Superman and shot himself, the film examines a very basic question, which incidentally, also turned out to be the starting point for my own That Four Letter Word: What do we want from the rest of our lives?

The guy everybody likes to watch on TV, George (Ben Affleck), does not want to play Superman ("I look like a damned fool," he says seeing himself in costume, later wondering: "You can't see my penis, can you?"). He wanted to be a real actor. He would chase this dream to no end. But the big question was: Was he capable of being a great actor?

The guy investigating his death, Simo Louis (a fictional character created by cinematic licence played by Adrian Brody) the guy who watches over people's lives, wants to be the greatest detective. But the big question was: Was he capable of being a great detective?

We all want to be heroes, don't we? But were we meant to be? Do we have it in us? How do we know unless we've tried? When and where do we stop?

These questions fascinate me. Because, these in many ways, captures our deepest insecurities and fears. With two weeks for release, I keep telling myself: If I don't turn out to be a decent filmmaker, I'm not quitting till I become one. I'm raring to go with my second.

Anyways, the next film I saw right after Hollywoodland was:

Flags of our Fathers:

This one's puts heroes under the microscope. Do real heroes see themselves as heroes? What makes them heroes? Did they start out trying to be heroes or did a set of incidents put them on a pedestal?

Clint Eastwood delves deep into the minds of a bunch of unlikely heroes -- American soldiers who shot to fame because a photograph of them hoisting a flag in enemy territory made it to the headlines.

Thanks to a picture, people perceived them as heroes but these are guys who've been traumatized by the war, seen their friends die and fought hard to stay alive. The fact that they were being celebrated when many of their friends died sudden explosive deaths doesn't help that trauma.

As the son of one of these heroes later says in the movie:

"I finally came to the conclusion that maybe he was right, maybe there are no such things as heroes, maybe there are just people like my dad. I finally came to understand why they were so uncomfortable being called heroes. Heroes are something we create, something we need. It's a way for us to understand what is almost incomprehensible, how people could sacrifice so much for us? But for my dad and these men, the risks they took, the wounds they suffered, they did that for their buddies. They may have fought for their country but they died for their friends. For the man in front, for the man beside him, and if we wish to truly honor these men we should remember them the way they really were. The way my dad remembered them. "

I can't wait to see Eastwood's take on the Japanese side of the war, 'Letters from Iwo Jima.'

If 'Flags of our Fathers' got two Oscar nominations for the year and 'Letters from Iwo Jima' has got him four nominations including Best Director, Best Picture and Best Screenplay this year. You can imagine my excitement.

I saw the first two movies last night. Tonight, in the middle of my colour correction (yes, I did manage to brighten up a couple of scenes which people found dark in That Four Letter Word), I watched:

Heroes:

It's a new TV series D downloaded off the net because he heard a lot of good things about it.

After watching the pilot, I'm hooked. It's super promising if you are a comic book lover and also if you like what the film versions have done with Spidey and X-Men: Exploring the human side of heroes.

The reason for the post is because somewhere in the middle as one of the key characters Mohinder (supposed to be from Madras of all places) tells his class in University of Madras (wearing a suit and all, speaking to sethji type extras):

"Man is a narcissistic species by nature. We have colonized the four corners of our tiny planet. But we are not the pinnacle of so-called evolution. That honor belongs to the lowly cockroach. Capable of living for months without food. Remaining alive headless for weeks at a time. Resistant to radiation. If God has indeed created Himself in His own image, then I submit to you that God is a cockroach. They say that man uses only a tenth of his brain power. Another percent, and we might actually be worthy of God's image. Unless, of course, that day has already arrived. The Human Genome Project has discovered that tiny variations in man's genetic code are taking place at increasingly rapid rates. Teleportation, levitation, tissue re-generation. Is this outside the realm of possibility? Or is man entering a new gateway to evolution? Is he finally standing at the threshold to true human potential?"

Soon, we find him getting profound:

"Where does it come from, this quest? This need to solve life's mysteries, when the simplest of questions can never be answered. Why are we here? What is the soul? Why do we dream? Perhaps we'd be better off not looking at all. Not doubting, not yearning. That's not human nature. Not the human heart. That is not why we are here."

And a coupla scenes later, he has this for an answer:

"Some individuals, it is true, are more special. This is natural selection. It begins as a single individual born or hatched like every other member of their species. Anonymous. Seemingly ordinary. Except they're not. They carry inside them the genetic code that will take their species to the next evolutionary rung. It's destiny."

Now, is there anything at all called co-incidence?

Oh, yes, it does seem like one big co-incidence that I've been watching movies/TV series about heroes. And, I just remembered that in a few hours from now, I have to go for the press preview of 'Rocky Balboa'!

To wrap up this post on heroes, their insecurities and the need to keep fighting, I leave you with the punchline from Syl Stallone (from Rocky Balboa):

"Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It is a very mean and nasty place and it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't how hard you hit; it's about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward. How much you can take, and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done. Now, if you know what you're worth, then go out and get what you're worth. But you gotta be willing to take the hit, and not pointing fingers saying you ain't where you are because of him, or her, or anybody. Cowards do that and that ain't you. You're better than that!"

Salaam-E-Ishq: Overdose of Mush & Corn

2007-01-26T03:01:00.000-08:00

Watching Saalam E Ishq is like trying to eat a jumbo-sized Mushroom-Cheese-Corn Burger, with a lot of masala for flavour.

First, be warned that you need a huge appetite to do finish it.

Besides, you need to be able to digest huge amounts of mush, cheese and corn - the staple diet of Hindi cinema lovers.

So if you're looking at it as a meal for two, it is the perfect date. It is long enough for you to get cozy, get to know the characters and catch up with their lives, share a laugh with them, relate to the issues of love and commitment and see them find themselves and in a way, yourself in them.

If you are going in a gang, like I did, it could spell disaster. Your friends are likely to ruin it for you with their impatience and restlessness. More so, if they are single.

First, things to consider while booking a ticket to Hindi movie, especially, if its running time is known to be 200 plus minutes at least:

Why bother if you don't have the patience to sit through four hours? Did Nikhil Advani personally insist with you that you catch it asap? Don't all promos suggest that it atleast, structurally, resembles "Love Actually"? Then, why go for it if you don't have the tolerance for a desi take on it?

Maybe it is time to get over your Hollywood fixation, at least while watching our cinema.

It's not like Hollywood is all original anyway. 'The Departed' was among the best last year by one of their best directors but see 'Infernal Affairs' and you'll see even the master rips off scenes, lines and even shots.

BTW, I still love 'The Departed' for the language, attitude and energy with Scorcese adding value to an already explosive script. That's exactly what Nikhil Advani does here too.

He adds plenty of value and roots many Hollywood script-devices in the Indian mainstream genre. And in a way that you can barely find any resemblances with the original source of inspiration. Unlike, The Departed.

Since I knew just what to expect here, I wasn't let down at all.

I loved every bit of the film.

Even the bits when it just dragged and dragged and dragged towards the end, with the mandatory pathos song in the end in no mood to end, inter-cutting between the climax for each story in what is the among the longest Last Acts seen on screen. (Everytime the song re-started, the crowd went Ohhhhh No! I, on the other hand, didn't want it to end!)

Yes, Saalam E Ishq borrows plots from Hollywood romantic comedies quite liberally, but infuses it with what is at the heart of Hindi cinema: A sense of sentimentality that nobody in the world does better than us. And it does this across the vibrant spectrum of desi characters: starting from an old-fashioned God-fearing/trusting taxi driver (Govinda) waiting for his 'Dreamgirl' to the new-age post DCH Indian commitment-phobic single male (Akshaye plays Akash this time) who develops cold feet before his wedding (with Ayesha Takia), from a flashy item queen (Priyanka), faking a romance with a mysterious Rahul (Salman), desperate for a change in image to a sober forty-year old (Anil Kapoor married to Juhi) nursing a crush on someone half his ag and from a happily married couple (John and Vidya) whose world is shattered by an accident to another 'Just Married' couple (Sohail and Isha) whose honeymoon is jinxed and kabab is filled with haddis.

In between all the light-hearted moments, feel-good and irreverence, Nikhil shows his brilliance and mastery over the craft, the true test for any Hindi cinema filmmaker, with his control over melodrama, punctuating it with sensitivity, lacing it with humour, underlining it with detail, spiking the sad moments with the sweet, taking a cue from his ex-boss Karan Johar, and also cheekily paying a fine tribute to Hindi cinemas new master of mush.

The film also works as the most comprehensive tribute to love stories seen on screen over the years presented with contrastingly different styles. I mean watch Govinda regain his lost touch, especially when he says "Yeh Shaadi Nahin Ho Sakti" and you'll know what I mean. Nikhil confidently struts through various moods and stories with some of the best scene transitions seen in recent times, though the film does stroll around leisurely, the narrative taking its own time to unfold.

Half an hour less would've done miracles for this film and saved it from the savage criticism it is likely to generate, but for those who like mush, this overdose is just perfect for the Valentine's season.

Guru: Mani Re-Mixed!

2007-01-24T02:53:00.000-08:00

I'm not going to attempt a review because I've read far too many by now and so have you.
Some quick thoughts that race through my mind after watching Guru this late in the day. Spoilers galore.

1. Mani Ratnam pays tribute to his own earlier works. How weird is that? In a lot of ways, it does look like a rehash of his scenes and techniques from his earlier films but I would credit the filmmaker with more intelligence. He has made only one film before in Hindi, a language still alien to him. And given that Dil Se bombed because of its radical ending, Mani probably decided to play it safe and stack up his best from his earlier films, all into one movie.

What do you get if Nayakan (1987) met Roja (1992), moved to Bombay (1995) and had twins, played Godfather to a terminally ill Anjali (1990, instead of spastic, he makes her a patient of multiple sclerosis), had an ideological clash that broke a friendship between Iruvar (1997) that results in the all-powerful hero challenged by a young and honest cop (Nayakan)/IAS officer (Thalapathy, 1991) and now reporter (Guru) married to someone he loves? You get a Mani Ratnam showreel. Guru is exactly that.

The storyline is just an excuse to unleash some superlative moments, especially the ones that underline the director's sensitivity in handling relationships (Guru's relationship with his old friend, the relationship between Madhavan and Vidya, the relationship between Guru and Mithun, his relationship with his father, his relationship with Vidya and his relationship with his wife): super sensitively crafted.

2. The movie introduces to mainstream Hindi cinema a genre rarely seen. The biopic. That too, a biopic of not a necessarily honest man but of an ambitious man who had a vision and won. Mani Ratnam revels in showing us the greys of his protagonist.

He marries for dowry, he has no problem bribing or evading taxes and later tells the hearing commission that he's only a product of the system that was not considerate to the poor. He only did what it took for a poor man to run a business in an environment not conducive for business.

You can't help feeling that Mani has bought into Guru's ideology and sacrificed the objectivity he maintained all through the film. But if a columnist has a right to take sides, why not a filmmaker?

3. Abhishek Bachchan, as even people who hate the movie agree, is certainly among the finest actors we have today. This is HIS film. Yes, he does deliver the role of a lifetime. I don't like Aishwarya at all, but I thought she did manage a few scenes quite well towards the end. For once, they look like a couple in love. Having said that, an actress like Rani Mukherjee would've taken the same character to new heights. The rest of the cast is first rate and never have I seen these many top class performances all in one movie.