A close relative came down to our house the other day. Throughout her stay in the house it was as if she had taken it on herself to inform, enlighten and educate us on the grave political situation in the state.
“Will be great if the TMC comes to power” she fumed, “these people will realise the grave mistake they have made and will pay for it”. ….” Anti-socials and goondahs… that’s all there is to this party…. Will serve these people right!”
She went on to tell numerous ‘facts’ about the challenger party and how they are destroying the state already. What took the cake was her last statement before she closed her campaign- “wait, do you think even if they want to work CPM will let them work? We will not let a hair budge if they come to power”…..
I was strictly withheld by my folks and also I did not have the courage to face such an aggressive and spirited personality. But her histrionics set me thinking. Here was a person of acceptable intelligence and intellect. Not a political worker by any means. A typical Bengali bhadra-mohila (female version of bhadralok). In a nutshell- an informed, neutral, intelligent voter in a democracy. And yet, her conduct was nothing short of a enthusiastic and emotional party cadre. What was most intriguing was her absolute disregard for the welfare of the state – something which directly affected her own well-being and the sadistic pleasure which she was drawing from her doomsday predictions on the event of a change of hands in the state. She was happy at the prospect of the state getting destroyed simply because the political party which she fancied was to get voted out.
Most of us bongs remember our childhood with some degree fear and askance. The words of our guardians keep ringing in our ears- “bablu!!!! Okhaney gele kintu jujutey kheye phelbey- bhalo hobey!” (bablu- if you go there then juju will eat you up; will serve you right- will be good). “piklu!! Sweater na porley thanda legey jabey! Takhan bujhbey thela!”(piklu- if you don’t put on the sweater then you will catch cold and then you will face the music!)
Most of our mothers have been paranoid individuals. Any deviation from the straight line would result in disastrous and horrific consequences. This fact has been drilled deep into our head. And to ensure a proper appreciation of the same threats, horrific consequences and doomsday predictions have been utilised. In fact sadistic pleasure is taken to imagine the consequences of any deviation- with complete disregard to the thought of well-being of kid in question. The effort at proving the hypothesis is more important than the well-being of the kid. Just like the way my relative was feeling about her “rightness” over the well-being of her state.
Any kind of experimentation, change, new dimension has been systematically wiped out of our brains. No wonder that after 35 years of a shoddy governance we still think about whether there is any need for any change or not. After numerous Netais, Singurs, Nandigrams, Morichjhapis, Bantalas we still fear the antisocial threat of a new party. We are absolutely fine to keep living in our present misery in fear of the unknown dangers which might come in with any change. I can bet all my money on the fact that 90% of Bong kids catch cold due to heat caused by over-clothing and they have more accidents as they have never learnt to walk on their own. But this fact has not led to any change in our attitude towards our kids.
TMC means Grass-Root Congress. They have gained power through the grass roots. The rural less educated and less caring citizen. The citizen who has little to lose and less fear, thus. The citizen who is a tad higher in his risk taking abilities. Even today the mass support for the party comes from that segment. The segment where mothers do not have the luxury of over-clothing their children or watching out for them 24*7. For this very reason TMC has managed to invoke the spirit of change in rural Bengal in spite of the fascistic reign of terror which the present party has been exercising in there for the last 2 decades.
Frankly I am not very sure how the new party will be in governance. However I am dead sure on the 3 decades of mis-governance of the present government. A period which saw our hospitals being reduced to horse-stables, schools and colleges being reduced to institutions of political violence, an education system which has gone extinct a few decades back, infra-structure which is worse than the trouble hit states of North-East and a state which is in financial doom. The question is whether people of this state will finally shut their ears to their mothers’ doomsday predictions (like the ones which my loved relative was making) and vote to give a new government a chance. Or will we keep looking at our mothers in the fear of “JUJU” and keep subjecting ourselves to the masochistic ritual of torture by this present government…. Only time will tell. 3 more weeks to go.
May we get the government we deserve…..
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Eat shit
I mean for 20 years by and large I have been doing it. Every time I turn on the radio/fm to listen to music. There was one channel called MTV which means Music Television. It started with the song Video killed the radio star. What did MTV kill? Music to start with….
I mean it would have started well- in India that is. It talked about promoting clear music and all. Had some great VJs then. People who knew music. But then they wanted TRPs…
So eat shit… keep eating shit… keep watching the self glorifying sleaze and bitching show called roadies. If you like that then graduate to porn magazine called splitsvilla. You will see dumb-as-horse’s-ass guys jerking off on pornstar wannabes…equally dumbassed…
Then you have a TV where two ugly females (literally looking like female dogs on the street) with brains missed out by almighty, giving their smartassed comments on anyone in the universe. The tragedy is not the shows. The tragedy is the fact that this is what get TRPs and not the songs…And they want us to believe that…
Yeah, sure. That’s why DevD sold thousands albums, Rabbi Singh became a phenomenon, Rock On became a hit. Because all of us wanted to watch live bitching and dumb-assed reality shows. Eat shit fellows!! That’s what the Chef ordered….
There is a lot of talk of we being responsible for the deals we get. All the Vote-For –India campaigns talk of it. And I think they are right. All the smarties of the society become doctors, engineers and MBAs. The leftovers move to television…. And they produce shit. So eat shit. Dumb elephants can only shit. When you put dumb elephants for producing TV shows and radio shows you should not expect anything else.
Music Television. Whats Music Television in India? Bollywood Television. Yes, all the great Bollywood jackasses will serve their exquisite dish on the platter for you every Friday and 24X7 the same will be played on and on till the next drug is released. And then they will proclaim a super hit. This is the perfect monopoly. Air some shit forcefully a zillion times and then go about saying that the people are loving it. Great strategy. No wonder a big banner soundtrack is always a hit. One such big banner released Rabbi’s new album and gave a perfect demonstration of rape. One needed to see the title video. I mean the whole video was about promoting a half naked girl. Rabbi Shergill was incidental. Where was the song in the whole bargain? Someone forgot about it in the video…. And of course the real gems of the album- Pagri Samhal Jatta, Bandra etc were ignored blissfully. I am sure, a paan chewing joker would have made all the decisions in the big-daddy banner office… sitting in their cocooned ivory towers, the jokers who run the banner would not even know who Rabbi Shergill is or what he has achieved. Wonder why Rabbi needed to knock their doors of all places…
Some of the best talents in the country never get their albums made while petty thieves like Pritam Chatterjee bask in glory of multi-hits. That’s all because the former is indi and the latter is Bollywood… These days Mr. Chatterjee even judges music reality shows. He is supposed to be a music connoisseur!!! Will someone be kind enough to shoot me in the head? No, go shoot the Music Label bosses in the head.
Whatever happened to indi-pop? I mean I agree that 90% of that used to make one puke. With those dumb girls and dumber guys trying to be singers. But one also heard Euphoria, Silk Route etc.. good quality music. They gave legitimate hits, didn’t they?
But then our record company bosses decided Bollywood was the only place where money was. Look at West. Imagine what would have happened if such bosses were to exist there? There would be no Dylan- pop music and country music was the only hit thing back then. No Beatles, no rock and Roll…. Closer home- No GNR, no grunge no Nirvana…. Chuck all that- Rap would have remained underground….. Till now we would have been listening to Sinatra and his descendants…
But then that is US and this is India where all the rejects in the world become industry bosses in the entertainment industry. That’s why as time will go on our music will become more and more uni-dimensional. And we will keep eating shit and be happy about it. And we will have those all-knowing dumb-fucks who go by the name DJs who will tell us what to like and what not to…
Channels like Colours give hope though…. Hope!!!
I mean it would have started well- in India that is. It talked about promoting clear music and all. Had some great VJs then. People who knew music. But then they wanted TRPs…
So eat shit… keep eating shit… keep watching the self glorifying sleaze and bitching show called roadies. If you like that then graduate to porn magazine called splitsvilla. You will see dumb-as-horse’s-ass guys jerking off on pornstar wannabes…equally dumbassed…
Then you have a TV where two ugly females (literally looking like female dogs on the street) with brains missed out by almighty, giving their smartassed comments on anyone in the universe. The tragedy is not the shows. The tragedy is the fact that this is what get TRPs and not the songs…And they want us to believe that…
Yeah, sure. That’s why DevD sold thousands albums, Rabbi Singh became a phenomenon, Rock On became a hit. Because all of us wanted to watch live bitching and dumb-assed reality shows. Eat shit fellows!! That’s what the Chef ordered….
There is a lot of talk of we being responsible for the deals we get. All the Vote-For –India campaigns talk of it. And I think they are right. All the smarties of the society become doctors, engineers and MBAs. The leftovers move to television…. And they produce shit. So eat shit. Dumb elephants can only shit. When you put dumb elephants for producing TV shows and radio shows you should not expect anything else.
Music Television. Whats Music Television in India? Bollywood Television. Yes, all the great Bollywood jackasses will serve their exquisite dish on the platter for you every Friday and 24X7 the same will be played on and on till the next drug is released. And then they will proclaim a super hit. This is the perfect monopoly. Air some shit forcefully a zillion times and then go about saying that the people are loving it. Great strategy. No wonder a big banner soundtrack is always a hit. One such big banner released Rabbi’s new album and gave a perfect demonstration of rape. One needed to see the title video. I mean the whole video was about promoting a half naked girl. Rabbi Shergill was incidental. Where was the song in the whole bargain? Someone forgot about it in the video…. And of course the real gems of the album- Pagri Samhal Jatta, Bandra etc were ignored blissfully. I am sure, a paan chewing joker would have made all the decisions in the big-daddy banner office… sitting in their cocooned ivory towers, the jokers who run the banner would not even know who Rabbi Shergill is or what he has achieved. Wonder why Rabbi needed to knock their doors of all places…
Some of the best talents in the country never get their albums made while petty thieves like Pritam Chatterjee bask in glory of multi-hits. That’s all because the former is indi and the latter is Bollywood… These days Mr. Chatterjee even judges music reality shows. He is supposed to be a music connoisseur!!! Will someone be kind enough to shoot me in the head? No, go shoot the Music Label bosses in the head.
Whatever happened to indi-pop? I mean I agree that 90% of that used to make one puke. With those dumb girls and dumber guys trying to be singers. But one also heard Euphoria, Silk Route etc.. good quality music. They gave legitimate hits, didn’t they?
But then our record company bosses decided Bollywood was the only place where money was. Look at West. Imagine what would have happened if such bosses were to exist there? There would be no Dylan- pop music and country music was the only hit thing back then. No Beatles, no rock and Roll…. Closer home- No GNR, no grunge no Nirvana…. Chuck all that- Rap would have remained underground….. Till now we would have been listening to Sinatra and his descendants…
But then that is US and this is India where all the rejects in the world become industry bosses in the entertainment industry. That’s why as time will go on our music will become more and more uni-dimensional. And we will keep eating shit and be happy about it. And we will have those all-knowing dumb-fucks who go by the name DJs who will tell us what to like and what not to…
Channels like Colours give hope though…. Hope!!!
Monday, March 30, 2009
what a film really means for the viewer
Ok. Split the hairs if you want. Does not matter. It will be fine. Even trash and smash it if you do not have the stomach to digest it. I know your stomach and what it can take. Every Friday faeces creep out of the amoebic corners of Bollywood. We have all smashed popcorn with our bare teeth in frustration and come out happy and satiated. From our pop corn eating, not the movie. Whoever was watching the bladder bursting treacle of RDB; or for that matter the utter rape of sensibilities which were thrown in by Akshay Kumar and his goons? We were eating pop corn and drinking coke and inflating our already inflated bodies in hope of an early end.
Digest and keep taking in shit if you want. Who is complaining? Whoever complained when for 15 years the demonic daughter of jeetendra in her sadistic glory kept pushing the slime of a thousand swamps in the name of the saas-bahu serials down everyone's lubricated throats? We all digested that and were happy and ran in front of our TV sets punctually at 9 every evening.
When a movie like Gulaal comes after a lull of 3 decades (since the demise of parallel cinema and the sucking in of everything by the johars and the chopras) you all are free to react any which way you want. Who cares?
You can talk about edgy characterization; I will agree and even talk further about the half baked teacher by Jessy Randhawa. You can talk about excess violence and I will agree that it should be made mandatory that all Indian movies should only have Switzerland songs and chiffon clad navels and violence in style of Dev Anand of 60s. You can talk about no good songs and I will desperately miss the tunes which likes of Pritam Chatterjee shamelessly robs from wherever he can get them.
I will agree with you on everything you talk about not liking or negative in Gulaal. I will not even talk about the brilliance of the body hanging on the chowk and “jab seher hamara sota hain” playing ominously in the background. Or the gripping violence of the climax and the final journey of the main protagonist bleeding his way to his shack and his death. But in your split-hair analysis and over-analysis of the movie (something u cannot do with the big banners as your newspaper takes money from them) you will miss out something which will make you the loser.
You will miss out the heart of the movie. The anger of the maker, the heart wrenching agony of the lyricist. The sheer agony which flows out of the pen and into our ears in the startling retake of Sahir’s “Yeh DUniya Agar mil Bhi Jaye to Kya Hai”. Rising above all the rough edges of a movie made in 7 years is the soul of the movie. The soul of the everyday men who get turned into the werewolves under the moon of the greater cause; of the society; of twisted and trampled sense of power. Power lost power regained and lost again. The cycle which has been going on since man started becoming a social animal.
The power of the rogue students over the lady teacher, the power of lust of the lady over the hapless man, the power of the man of the house to debauch or kill people at will. And then the ultimate manifestation of power. The one which converts the brother-sister duo into the monsters they have become- the power that they derive from rejection. It is the power of Hate. That is the ultimate power. Hate. It takes over all souls who fall for it. It makes a brother shoot another point blank and hang him in the main market. It makes a normal girl become a whore to get a position of power. It is what hate does to you. Rejection and hate. This is another cycle which keeps turning on. The crusades, the world wars, the Napoleons and the Mongols, the Talibans and Bin-Ladens of today. It starts with rejection and then hate and then the ultimate struggle to overcome.
Gulaal in itself speaks of this very cycle. And it does so, so brilliantly. For all the loudness and the gore, this very theme of the movie is so subtle that it is silent. At the fag end, after the poet has lamented on the world and that even if the world is served on a platter, nothing changes. It is only half a minute. Announcement of the untouchable as the Senapati of the revolution- the ultimate recognition. And a silent stare between the brother and the sister. A trickle of a tear drop from the hardened eyes. Telling one another- we have done it. And then the poet asks again the futility of it all- yeh duniya agar mil bhi jaye to kya hai?
The ultimate power game speaks to us and wonders at the futility of it all. We hold our breath for a few minutes. We forget to munch our pop-corns. And then it ends. We go out of the theatre. We walk our into the next Mcdonald store and start our hair-splitting and or show of stupidity.
Long live johars, chopras and the nerve gases which help us to stop thinking…
Digest and keep taking in shit if you want. Who is complaining? Whoever complained when for 15 years the demonic daughter of jeetendra in her sadistic glory kept pushing the slime of a thousand swamps in the name of the saas-bahu serials down everyone's lubricated throats? We all digested that and were happy and ran in front of our TV sets punctually at 9 every evening.
When a movie like Gulaal comes after a lull of 3 decades (since the demise of parallel cinema and the sucking in of everything by the johars and the chopras) you all are free to react any which way you want. Who cares?
You can talk about edgy characterization; I will agree and even talk further about the half baked teacher by Jessy Randhawa. You can talk about excess violence and I will agree that it should be made mandatory that all Indian movies should only have Switzerland songs and chiffon clad navels and violence in style of Dev Anand of 60s. You can talk about no good songs and I will desperately miss the tunes which likes of Pritam Chatterjee shamelessly robs from wherever he can get them.
I will agree with you on everything you talk about not liking or negative in Gulaal. I will not even talk about the brilliance of the body hanging on the chowk and “jab seher hamara sota hain” playing ominously in the background. Or the gripping violence of the climax and the final journey of the main protagonist bleeding his way to his shack and his death. But in your split-hair analysis and over-analysis of the movie (something u cannot do with the big banners as your newspaper takes money from them) you will miss out something which will make you the loser.
You will miss out the heart of the movie. The anger of the maker, the heart wrenching agony of the lyricist. The sheer agony which flows out of the pen and into our ears in the startling retake of Sahir’s “Yeh DUniya Agar mil Bhi Jaye to Kya Hai”. Rising above all the rough edges of a movie made in 7 years is the soul of the movie. The soul of the everyday men who get turned into the werewolves under the moon of the greater cause; of the society; of twisted and trampled sense of power. Power lost power regained and lost again. The cycle which has been going on since man started becoming a social animal.
The power of the rogue students over the lady teacher, the power of lust of the lady over the hapless man, the power of the man of the house to debauch or kill people at will. And then the ultimate manifestation of power. The one which converts the brother-sister duo into the monsters they have become- the power that they derive from rejection. It is the power of Hate. That is the ultimate power. Hate. It takes over all souls who fall for it. It makes a brother shoot another point blank and hang him in the main market. It makes a normal girl become a whore to get a position of power. It is what hate does to you. Rejection and hate. This is another cycle which keeps turning on. The crusades, the world wars, the Napoleons and the Mongols, the Talibans and Bin-Ladens of today. It starts with rejection and then hate and then the ultimate struggle to overcome.
Gulaal in itself speaks of this very cycle. And it does so, so brilliantly. For all the loudness and the gore, this very theme of the movie is so subtle that it is silent. At the fag end, after the poet has lamented on the world and that even if the world is served on a platter, nothing changes. It is only half a minute. Announcement of the untouchable as the Senapati of the revolution- the ultimate recognition. And a silent stare between the brother and the sister. A trickle of a tear drop from the hardened eyes. Telling one another- we have done it. And then the poet asks again the futility of it all- yeh duniya agar mil bhi jaye to kya hai?
The ultimate power game speaks to us and wonders at the futility of it all. We hold our breath for a few minutes. We forget to munch our pop-corns. And then it ends. We go out of the theatre. We walk our into the next Mcdonald store and start our hair-splitting and or show of stupidity.
Long live johars, chopras and the nerve gases which help us to stop thinking…
Sunday, December 14, 2008
difficulties of commercial cinema: rab ne banadi jodi
i have always been amused by film makers (especially the 'parallel' ones) announcing in costly events, with a smile on their face- "i am planning to make typical bollywood masala movie". for residents of timbuktu- masala means "commercial"- which means what i do not know....
last time someone made an announcement like that.... hero hiralal happened. ... then happened 'phir bhi dil hai hind...' then 'serious' commercial cinema came with the name of mangal pandey.. whose mangal happened i am knoT sure... there have been such attempts at 'commercial cinema' off and on. thanks to these attempts we kept getting some real cheesy movies... off an on. i am yet to see an announcement of this kind getting resulted in a successful movie....
true, 90% of masala flicks in bollywood are unpalatable. 90% of bollywood smells strongly of the disease called mediocrity. but then is'nt that the case everywhere? i mean, how many of these art films are really the memorable ones? i still cannot figure out why albert pinto used to get so angry (ok- there was the 70s oppression thingy and all that- but make a full blown movie about it???), or why was maya memsaab made? i believe the director was obsessed with his wife's genetilia and wanted to share the same with the rest of the world. and in the days without mms etc movie would have been the only option. not that i mind... anyways, that's not what i want to talk about....
the fact is good movie directors- art and commercial both, just direct the movies they want to. it is just their self expression. so a david dhawan even in real life reflects the persona of his movies. and so does a kjo. and the sharp sarcasm of farah khan oozes into the wit which is there in her movies. these guys just cannot think otherwise. tell david saab to make a tight 'bourne'-isk thriller and see the abs mess he comes up with. or tell subhash ghai to make a movie relevant to the millennium.... i mean you better not tell him. he already is trying and torturing us in every possible way. imagine a guy with a surname of yuvraaj... its ok as a rarity in real life. but imagine a director thinking as such for his main protagonists. and with horror everyone will remember black and white. that was when he wanted to make an art movie....
having said all this the problem which happens to many really good directors is that they fall into the trap of the formula. in some cases it succeeds for some time but in most cases it fails. you can take the cases of so many directors who showed so much promise and then went caput. yash chopra started a career on really honest movies. Dharmaputra was a really strong movie for a first timer. then he discovered the magic of love. he started making absolute brilliant movies to start with. then he got sucked in. love triangle, quadrangle, pentagon.... then one day he wanted to make the ultimate formula movie with all the masala-he made parampara... he he! and films which followed- chandni etc were really very ordinary. he did have the moment of inspiration in lamhe. but instead of making a movie from his heart he again tried to put the formula thing inside the movie and it became a mish-mash. the last time he took the director's chair he made a really forgettable "dil to .... " which was a torture sans the almost edible female leads and shiamak davar's choreography.
when aditya chopra started making ddlj, obviously he was unaware that he was in presence of greatness inside his own self. when ddlj became the movie to have defined rommance in our times, i am sure he would have been overwhelmed at what he had ended up achieving. success and success of this kind right at the beginning has its own trappings. aditya chopra started believing in his own self image. that is very clear by the fact that he ventured only twice in the next whole decade to make a movie and both the times he has been trying hard to make that ultimate romantic movie instead of just making a movie he wants to. you cannot create greatness. you just do what you want to. sometimes you get great results. when you are in the process of creating greatness you usually fall flat on your face. how do you define greatness? how can you the hidden wishes in the hearts of millions of viewers? how can you reach the innermost regions of a million hearts every time?
even if you look at the career of his illustrious father, yash chopra managed greatness only a few times in his four decades of film making. the positive side to his career was that his non-great movies were very watchable as he was seldom living or working in any make-believe aura. once he wanted to make that ultimate love quadrangle. he roped in the best actors, the best technicians etc. and then he delivered silsila- better known as silly-sila..
or the other greats if we look at.. raj kapoor in mera naam joker, guru dutt in kagaz ke phool (much as i love the movie, i cannot help even today admitting the ultra heavy streak of self pity which ran through it and which was more responsible for its failure and not because it was ahead of time or any such crap- truth is quality of content only receded post 50s)....
the question here then remains as to why did the really good director in AC did not realise this fact even after delivering a whimper in mohabbatein? the problem is shahrukh khan. and AB. the fact is, the box office success of this movie was delivered by these two gents and some great music. and in spite of the abominable presence of overaged school "kids". or perhaps he did get the message... i cannot say obviously...
the promos of RNBDJ had this attaempt at greatness thing all over it right from the start. "extra-ordinary love story in every ordinary couple" bla bla bla......all the attempts at novelty- having the new heroine and all.... new look of sharukh...
and then there was the brilliant idea. ordinary guy- extra-ordinary love story. guaranteed mass heart-touches. and that was the idea that killed the movie. the movie just did not move ahead of this great idea.
was ddlj success because of the idea of the nri-good-locales-indian values thing? i guess not... there was much more to it than the idea. think of the contrasting fathers, the punjabi munda-gabru suitor, the over-smart sister, the cliched but lovely mother. then there were those dialogues- "bade bade shahron mein chhoti ....", the "senorita" thing, the chemistry of amrish puri and shahrukh... then those scenes.. the mustard field embrace, the final climax, the scene between the mother and daughter where she asks them to run away.... think of the songs...
the truth is, ddlj or any movie which achieves greatness has much much more to it than just the first idea.
this is where RNBDJ fails miserably. the movie moves around 3 characters and exactly 3 characters. for 3 hours we have 3 characters to look at. and at the end of it what do we come to know about them? nothing much really. yes surinder is a geek and very "ordinary" (the wife keeps telling every second scene), the alter-ego raj very smart bubbly etc... dunno how the former manages to put on such a good show in his avtar as the latter. we have the girl who has lost everything and is hell bent on leading a very bad life. she is obviously shattered. but how does a very bubbly girl suddenly start giving up everything she ever stood for from her childhood? then there is the eternal freind. with a heart of gold. also a barber- which is really handy! plastic characters in a plastic set up. would it have taken more than 25 minutes to know these characters? or forget them? the director was not paying attention to these silly details obviously. he was too busy in his creating the greatness....
the songs? you take one of the more ordinary music director duos for a film like this? your magnum opus? what were you thinking? yes they gave some good numbers in chak de. but there is a sea of difference between an out and out romantic music and other genre songs. not many are able to breach it. but i would like to give the benefit of doubt to the director. the duo came up with a copy for a title song and we don't even remember the rest. and all the while they were doing this what was the director doing?
so we have plastic characters- 3 in total, one semblance of a song- that too a copy. what else? scenes.... from the time the lady comes in till the end does anyone remember what happened? some vaguely memorable ones were there to be fair. the golgabba scene will make you laugh if you try hard. the sumo scene gives some scope to shahrukh to work something up, the entry of vinay pathak raises hopes ( only to dash them)... but then what? and those catch lines? Taani-partner- the sound of this term makes me want to go to the loo. compare this with the way shahrukh utter senorita in ddlj? the tragedy is that then mr. chopra was not trying to get any legendary catch-line. this time he was. and what was that about that parting shot of those movie names? for a moment was having a feeling that i had come into the wrong theatre to watch some old rajshree production movie. and that song!!!! when was the last time we saw a multi-starrer song charting the history of hindi cinema? and in all this was there even an iota of ingenuity or creativity? well one scene i cannot forget. the heroine asks RAB who is the person who is her RAB or jisme usse rab dikhna chahiye. and then we see SHarukh! and then she realises everything in life. wow! so subtle and so innovative!!!
finally the dialogues! uff!remember the efforts of raj being funny. or the punch lines of vinay pathak's charracter? you do remember? god bless you!
to put the nails in the coffins, we have sets designed by drama-school freshers. one feels sad for the 3 actors who have tried very hard to lend credibility to the movie and the hollow charracters. and there are moments which almost deliver a promise of magic. but every time the director burns own fingers. remember the cliamx which inspite of the bad sets etc delivers warmth. only to be brought down by the dialogue - "rabji mujhse naraaz to nahin ho jayengey ke mein tum se unsey bhi zyaada mohabbat karta hun?" OH MY GOD! i remembered a song (song not dialogue!)from sohni mehwal made 25 years back!
the fact of the matter is that the director was really not bothered. he was to caught in with his "ultimate big idea". the fact of the matter is, he should have tried to make a movie. because when you are making a movie and NOT a magnum opus (term which all the paid trumpeteers kept trumpeting to describe the movie) you focus on the movie. not on the idea, or the heroine ( remember James by RGV?) or the hero (Barsaat anyone?) or the action scenes (did not watch mission ista...)bla bla bla.... and you put the right people for the job and you can spot where you are going wrong.
some times people learn. RK learnt from mera naam joker which almost finished him, yash chopra learnt from silsila and focussed on things other than lead actors, rakesh roshan started focusing on quality when his koyla left him black faced. and RGV never learnt. nor did dev anand.
will RNBDJ prove to be adi's mera naam joker? i hope it does. i am praying hard that does. for a relatively serious film enthusiast, watching an out and out commercial venture (ddlj) more than a dozen times is equivalent to magic. and when you have tasted magic once, you keep craving for more..... so adi- saab, stop trying to make magnum opuses and just make a movie. the magnums and the opuses will keep happening on their own sir!
jai hind!
last time someone made an announcement like that.... hero hiralal happened. ... then happened 'phir bhi dil hai hind...' then 'serious' commercial cinema came with the name of mangal pandey.. whose mangal happened i am knoT sure... there have been such attempts at 'commercial cinema' off and on. thanks to these attempts we kept getting some real cheesy movies... off an on. i am yet to see an announcement of this kind getting resulted in a successful movie....
true, 90% of masala flicks in bollywood are unpalatable. 90% of bollywood smells strongly of the disease called mediocrity. but then is'nt that the case everywhere? i mean, how many of these art films are really the memorable ones? i still cannot figure out why albert pinto used to get so angry (ok- there was the 70s oppression thingy and all that- but make a full blown movie about it???), or why was maya memsaab made? i believe the director was obsessed with his wife's genetilia and wanted to share the same with the rest of the world. and in the days without mms etc movie would have been the only option. not that i mind... anyways, that's not what i want to talk about....
the fact is good movie directors- art and commercial both, just direct the movies they want to. it is just their self expression. so a david dhawan even in real life reflects the persona of his movies. and so does a kjo. and the sharp sarcasm of farah khan oozes into the wit which is there in her movies. these guys just cannot think otherwise. tell david saab to make a tight 'bourne'-isk thriller and see the abs mess he comes up with. or tell subhash ghai to make a movie relevant to the millennium.... i mean you better not tell him. he already is trying and torturing us in every possible way. imagine a guy with a surname of yuvraaj... its ok as a rarity in real life. but imagine a director thinking as such for his main protagonists. and with horror everyone will remember black and white. that was when he wanted to make an art movie....
having said all this the problem which happens to many really good directors is that they fall into the trap of the formula. in some cases it succeeds for some time but in most cases it fails. you can take the cases of so many directors who showed so much promise and then went caput. yash chopra started a career on really honest movies. Dharmaputra was a really strong movie for a first timer. then he discovered the magic of love. he started making absolute brilliant movies to start with. then he got sucked in. love triangle, quadrangle, pentagon.... then one day he wanted to make the ultimate formula movie with all the masala-he made parampara... he he! and films which followed- chandni etc were really very ordinary. he did have the moment of inspiration in lamhe. but instead of making a movie from his heart he again tried to put the formula thing inside the movie and it became a mish-mash. the last time he took the director's chair he made a really forgettable "dil to .... " which was a torture sans the almost edible female leads and shiamak davar's choreography.
when aditya chopra started making ddlj, obviously he was unaware that he was in presence of greatness inside his own self. when ddlj became the movie to have defined rommance in our times, i am sure he would have been overwhelmed at what he had ended up achieving. success and success of this kind right at the beginning has its own trappings. aditya chopra started believing in his own self image. that is very clear by the fact that he ventured only twice in the next whole decade to make a movie and both the times he has been trying hard to make that ultimate romantic movie instead of just making a movie he wants to. you cannot create greatness. you just do what you want to. sometimes you get great results. when you are in the process of creating greatness you usually fall flat on your face. how do you define greatness? how can you the hidden wishes in the hearts of millions of viewers? how can you reach the innermost regions of a million hearts every time?
even if you look at the career of his illustrious father, yash chopra managed greatness only a few times in his four decades of film making. the positive side to his career was that his non-great movies were very watchable as he was seldom living or working in any make-believe aura. once he wanted to make that ultimate love quadrangle. he roped in the best actors, the best technicians etc. and then he delivered silsila- better known as silly-sila..
or the other greats if we look at.. raj kapoor in mera naam joker, guru dutt in kagaz ke phool (much as i love the movie, i cannot help even today admitting the ultra heavy streak of self pity which ran through it and which was more responsible for its failure and not because it was ahead of time or any such crap- truth is quality of content only receded post 50s)....
the question here then remains as to why did the really good director in AC did not realise this fact even after delivering a whimper in mohabbatein? the problem is shahrukh khan. and AB. the fact is, the box office success of this movie was delivered by these two gents and some great music. and in spite of the abominable presence of overaged school "kids". or perhaps he did get the message... i cannot say obviously...
the promos of RNBDJ had this attaempt at greatness thing all over it right from the start. "extra-ordinary love story in every ordinary couple" bla bla bla......all the attempts at novelty- having the new heroine and all.... new look of sharukh...
and then there was the brilliant idea. ordinary guy- extra-ordinary love story. guaranteed mass heart-touches. and that was the idea that killed the movie. the movie just did not move ahead of this great idea.
was ddlj success because of the idea of the nri-good-locales-indian values thing? i guess not... there was much more to it than the idea. think of the contrasting fathers, the punjabi munda-gabru suitor, the over-smart sister, the cliched but lovely mother. then there were those dialogues- "bade bade shahron mein chhoti ....", the "senorita" thing, the chemistry of amrish puri and shahrukh... then those scenes.. the mustard field embrace, the final climax, the scene between the mother and daughter where she asks them to run away.... think of the songs...
the truth is, ddlj or any movie which achieves greatness has much much more to it than just the first idea.
this is where RNBDJ fails miserably. the movie moves around 3 characters and exactly 3 characters. for 3 hours we have 3 characters to look at. and at the end of it what do we come to know about them? nothing much really. yes surinder is a geek and very "ordinary" (the wife keeps telling every second scene), the alter-ego raj very smart bubbly etc... dunno how the former manages to put on such a good show in his avtar as the latter. we have the girl who has lost everything and is hell bent on leading a very bad life. she is obviously shattered. but how does a very bubbly girl suddenly start giving up everything she ever stood for from her childhood? then there is the eternal freind. with a heart of gold. also a barber- which is really handy! plastic characters in a plastic set up. would it have taken more than 25 minutes to know these characters? or forget them? the director was not paying attention to these silly details obviously. he was too busy in his creating the greatness....
the songs? you take one of the more ordinary music director duos for a film like this? your magnum opus? what were you thinking? yes they gave some good numbers in chak de. but there is a sea of difference between an out and out romantic music and other genre songs. not many are able to breach it. but i would like to give the benefit of doubt to the director. the duo came up with a copy for a title song and we don't even remember the rest. and all the while they were doing this what was the director doing?
so we have plastic characters- 3 in total, one semblance of a song- that too a copy. what else? scenes.... from the time the lady comes in till the end does anyone remember what happened? some vaguely memorable ones were there to be fair. the golgabba scene will make you laugh if you try hard. the sumo scene gives some scope to shahrukh to work something up, the entry of vinay pathak raises hopes ( only to dash them)... but then what? and those catch lines? Taani-partner- the sound of this term makes me want to go to the loo. compare this with the way shahrukh utter senorita in ddlj? the tragedy is that then mr. chopra was not trying to get any legendary catch-line. this time he was. and what was that about that parting shot of those movie names? for a moment was having a feeling that i had come into the wrong theatre to watch some old rajshree production movie. and that song!!!! when was the last time we saw a multi-starrer song charting the history of hindi cinema? and in all this was there even an iota of ingenuity or creativity? well one scene i cannot forget. the heroine asks RAB who is the person who is her RAB or jisme usse rab dikhna chahiye. and then we see SHarukh! and then she realises everything in life. wow! so subtle and so innovative!!!
finally the dialogues! uff!remember the efforts of raj being funny. or the punch lines of vinay pathak's charracter? you do remember? god bless you!
to put the nails in the coffins, we have sets designed by drama-school freshers. one feels sad for the 3 actors who have tried very hard to lend credibility to the movie and the hollow charracters. and there are moments which almost deliver a promise of magic. but every time the director burns own fingers. remember the cliamx which inspite of the bad sets etc delivers warmth. only to be brought down by the dialogue - "rabji mujhse naraaz to nahin ho jayengey ke mein tum se unsey bhi zyaada mohabbat karta hun?" OH MY GOD! i remembered a song (song not dialogue!)from sohni mehwal made 25 years back!
the fact of the matter is that the director was really not bothered. he was to caught in with his "ultimate big idea". the fact of the matter is, he should have tried to make a movie. because when you are making a movie and NOT a magnum opus (term which all the paid trumpeteers kept trumpeting to describe the movie) you focus on the movie. not on the idea, or the heroine ( remember James by RGV?) or the hero (Barsaat anyone?) or the action scenes (did not watch mission ista...)bla bla bla.... and you put the right people for the job and you can spot where you are going wrong.
some times people learn. RK learnt from mera naam joker which almost finished him, yash chopra learnt from silsila and focussed on things other than lead actors, rakesh roshan started focusing on quality when his koyla left him black faced. and RGV never learnt. nor did dev anand.
will RNBDJ prove to be adi's mera naam joker? i hope it does. i am praying hard that does. for a relatively serious film enthusiast, watching an out and out commercial venture (ddlj) more than a dozen times is equivalent to magic. and when you have tasted magic once, you keep craving for more..... so adi- saab, stop trying to make magnum opuses and just make a movie. the magnums and the opuses will keep happening on their own sir!
jai hind!
Thursday, December 11, 2008
back again
it has always been difficult for me to develop a habit especially the ones which need me to make any semblance of any effort. i remember a scene in a movie where a character tells the hero that if he had tried harder he could have become a genius. and saying so he opens his bottle of desi whiskey and drinks away to full glory. these days i can identify so well with that scene....
was watching anthony bourdain touring post katrina new orleans...in a chat with a comedian and a bar man he asks how much time it took for him to start joking about the hurricane. he said it took him 2 weeks.... in 2 months he was doing shows only on the hurricane. burdain talked about the time when no one was cracking jokes on 9-11. then finally someone said it after months. no one laughed. but every one was relieved.
will we be able to laugh about 26-11 ever? i guess not. we as a nation take ourselves too seriously. americans kept laughing on 911 and kept on ensuring that no one dared to look at their country for the next 6 years. they kept on laughing about katrina and doing everything to recover their lives which had been so bizzarely taken away from them in that hurricane. people left jobs and started volunteering to rebuild the city. laughing all the while about it all. the twin towers are getting rebuilt to show the world that america will not be pinned down. 9-11 jokes are quite common these days.
we indians will always go silent for a minute every time after mentioning 26-11 and do nothing. we will blame our government for 2 weeks, light candles for 2 days and ostracise anyone who even think about laughing at that day. but thats all that we will do. all of us including me.
frankly i am not sure right or wrong. i feel blocked evry time i try to see any funny side of 26-11. i just cannot. i also do not know what to do. how to contribute. i cannot leave my job just like that.so what do i do? how does one contribute? sitting in another city? and how does one lighten it up and focus on the job at hand?
god knows....or does america....
was watching anthony bourdain touring post katrina new orleans...in a chat with a comedian and a bar man he asks how much time it took for him to start joking about the hurricane. he said it took him 2 weeks.... in 2 months he was doing shows only on the hurricane. burdain talked about the time when no one was cracking jokes on 9-11. then finally someone said it after months. no one laughed. but every one was relieved.
will we be able to laugh about 26-11 ever? i guess not. we as a nation take ourselves too seriously. americans kept laughing on 911 and kept on ensuring that no one dared to look at their country for the next 6 years. they kept on laughing about katrina and doing everything to recover their lives which had been so bizzarely taken away from them in that hurricane. people left jobs and started volunteering to rebuild the city. laughing all the while about it all. the twin towers are getting rebuilt to show the world that america will not be pinned down. 9-11 jokes are quite common these days.
we indians will always go silent for a minute every time after mentioning 26-11 and do nothing. we will blame our government for 2 weeks, light candles for 2 days and ostracise anyone who even think about laughing at that day. but thats all that we will do. all of us including me.
frankly i am not sure right or wrong. i feel blocked evry time i try to see any funny side of 26-11. i just cannot. i also do not know what to do. how to contribute. i cannot leave my job just like that.so what do i do? how does one contribute? sitting in another city? and how does one lighten it up and focus on the job at hand?
god knows....or does america....
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
State vs Terror
Rejoice and be happy. We live in the largest democracy of the whole goddamned world. We are the unique race to have it all- money (post liberalisation), spirituality and freedom.
Some time back in a village in West Bengal the whole state machinery converged to ensure whatever took place in the early mornings remained lost to the rest of the population. Some 2-3 days later some of my smart friends taunted me on my being a Bengali and Bengal being so hopelessly jobless to prevent the victorious march of modernization and industrialization and overall human development. National media carried out debates on whether what was going on in terms of protest in Nandigram was right or not. Learned intellectuals and communist theoriticians fought over the need for development and the cost of it.
Thank God so much- not a single child from Nandigram was able to see or understand all this. Perhaps thats why all this time she still lives with some hope of a better tomorrow. Quite a few... in fact many perhaps, of her friends were slaughtered like lambs in a slaughter house. So were so many of her aunts and uncles. She would have escaped barely. Perhaps she got lucky. She was too sick to be taken out that day. They were to be used as human shields to prevent police from coming into the village. People thought police will not harm a child. But they did not know that police were not even coming.
I was also talking rationally after the Gujarat riots. I was arguing in favour of the Hindu forces. I was arguing as to how muslims never blend into the mainstream of any society, etc. Thank God I was not a journalist. Thank God i was not doing undercover on the riots. I was not in a position to risk my sanity. I had a musllim friend who had the cheek to go to the state during these times. He actually actually had to undergo treatment. He went on Haj later. That helped him a bit. He used to be a "semi" believer, if you understand what I mean.
When I was a kid, I had a friend in school. Harmeet Singh Khalsa. He was actually quite small for a sardar. I had for the first time heard " Mujhe Rang De Basanti" from him. He had played the tabla while singing. I am still hopelessly in love with that song. It makes me cry. I do not know where Harmeet is today. I had moved out of the school early.
We were in Class IV when one day our school teacher came out and told us that someone had shot Indira Gandhi. We were almost happy. They closed the school early that day and we had more play time. I am not so sure about Harmeet. I never got a chance to talk to him about it. He did not come to school for almost a month. Then he came one day with the teacher walking him down to his seat. He used to sit besides me. I saw a black sash inside his shirt. I was sure he was a Khalisthani. Or his father was. I told my mother. She did not say much. She only said that it was nothing of that sort.
Much later I came to know from others that his house had been attacked by angry Congress workers. The family lived in perpetual fear for a long time. Harmeet used to wear the sash to say that he WAS AGGRIEVED at the death of the great leader. He was luckier than his cousin though. Back in Delhi the whole family of his aunt had been massacred in the bizarre show of grief for Mrs. Gandhi. Rajiv Gandhi had aptly drawn the analogy of the tree. Thankfully TN was far away from Delhi when his time came.
We continue to live and thrive in the largest democracy in the world. Only don't get caught on the wrong side of the democrats. Do not be a farmer in Nandigram, or a muslim in Gujarat or a Sikh after death of Indira Gandhi.
Just ensure that much and you will always have all the freedom that you want.
Protest on non-selection of Dravid. Do not try protesting against CPM in West Bengal. Criticize SHahrukh as much as you want. Be careful before criticizing Karunanidhi, or Rahul Gandhi....Speak whatever you want as long as you are politically correct. Take part in the Delhi marathon. But be very careful if you are demonstrating for justice at India Gate.
Yes we have all the freedom we need. Just need to look away when the governments have to get down to do the dirty jobs. All will be fine then. When government does its dirty job then no one- no one can protect you from it. The media, the police, international support.... no one.
Who questions the government?
WE THE PEOPLE..........
Some time back in a village in West Bengal the whole state machinery converged to ensure whatever took place in the early mornings remained lost to the rest of the population. Some 2-3 days later some of my smart friends taunted me on my being a Bengali and Bengal being so hopelessly jobless to prevent the victorious march of modernization and industrialization and overall human development. National media carried out debates on whether what was going on in terms of protest in Nandigram was right or not. Learned intellectuals and communist theoriticians fought over the need for development and the cost of it.
Thank God so much- not a single child from Nandigram was able to see or understand all this. Perhaps thats why all this time she still lives with some hope of a better tomorrow. Quite a few... in fact many perhaps, of her friends were slaughtered like lambs in a slaughter house. So were so many of her aunts and uncles. She would have escaped barely. Perhaps she got lucky. She was too sick to be taken out that day. They were to be used as human shields to prevent police from coming into the village. People thought police will not harm a child. But they did not know that police were not even coming.
I was also talking rationally after the Gujarat riots. I was arguing in favour of the Hindu forces. I was arguing as to how muslims never blend into the mainstream of any society, etc. Thank God I was not a journalist. Thank God i was not doing undercover on the riots. I was not in a position to risk my sanity. I had a musllim friend who had the cheek to go to the state during these times. He actually actually had to undergo treatment. He went on Haj later. That helped him a bit. He used to be a "semi" believer, if you understand what I mean.
When I was a kid, I had a friend in school. Harmeet Singh Khalsa. He was actually quite small for a sardar. I had for the first time heard " Mujhe Rang De Basanti" from him. He had played the tabla while singing. I am still hopelessly in love with that song. It makes me cry. I do not know where Harmeet is today. I had moved out of the school early.
We were in Class IV when one day our school teacher came out and told us that someone had shot Indira Gandhi. We were almost happy. They closed the school early that day and we had more play time. I am not so sure about Harmeet. I never got a chance to talk to him about it. He did not come to school for almost a month. Then he came one day with the teacher walking him down to his seat. He used to sit besides me. I saw a black sash inside his shirt. I was sure he was a Khalisthani. Or his father was. I told my mother. She did not say much. She only said that it was nothing of that sort.
Much later I came to know from others that his house had been attacked by angry Congress workers. The family lived in perpetual fear for a long time. Harmeet used to wear the sash to say that he WAS AGGRIEVED at the death of the great leader. He was luckier than his cousin though. Back in Delhi the whole family of his aunt had been massacred in the bizarre show of grief for Mrs. Gandhi. Rajiv Gandhi had aptly drawn the analogy of the tree. Thankfully TN was far away from Delhi when his time came.
We continue to live and thrive in the largest democracy in the world. Only don't get caught on the wrong side of the democrats. Do not be a farmer in Nandigram, or a muslim in Gujarat or a Sikh after death of Indira Gandhi.
Just ensure that much and you will always have all the freedom that you want.
Protest on non-selection of Dravid. Do not try protesting against CPM in West Bengal. Criticize SHahrukh as much as you want. Be careful before criticizing Karunanidhi, or Rahul Gandhi....Speak whatever you want as long as you are politically correct. Take part in the Delhi marathon. But be very careful if you are demonstrating for justice at India Gate.
Yes we have all the freedom we need. Just need to look away when the governments have to get down to do the dirty jobs. All will be fine then. When government does its dirty job then no one- no one can protect you from it. The media, the police, international support.... no one.
Who questions the government?
WE THE PEOPLE..........
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
just so blabber
last time i had thought about putting something about the director who does not fail to wow me after so many years of film watching. just so entry- this one... completed one more year in this world...
what next?
what next?
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