tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35035087358433162822024-03-13T10:17:30.926-07:00Dolce and Namak Talk Indian MoviesDolce and Namakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13403089235872528987noreply@blogger.comBlogger102125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3503508735843316282.post-19735772662536759562013-11-07T21:05:00.000-08:002013-11-07T21:05:13.175-08:00Bombay Talkies - 100 Years of Indian CinemaWow, am I ever late to this 100 years party! But what's a girl gonna do if Bollywood keeps spamming our theatres with nonsense while holding back on the real gems from this year! But chalo, I'll forgive them, not like I've been paying much attention lately, so I guess we're even.<br />
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(Seriously though, is it just me or can we count on one hand the movies that have had any thought put into them this year? Don't answer that! I still have hope for the last 2 months of the year.)<br />
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Happily, Reel Asian Festival decided to expand its reach and bring in some South Asian flavour as of this year, so we got treated royally to Bombay Talkies on opening night! And what a treat this little film is!
Four stories, four short films, each about an aspect of Bollywood that sets Indian cinema apart from everything else (it really is all about Bollywood, so I won't try to sell this as a tribute to Indian cinema, they didn't). Each director was given free hand provided they stuck to the theme: how is cinema a part of the common man's life? And a fitting theme because nowhere else in the world is cinema such a huge part of everyday life. <br />
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<b><span style="color: purple;">Karan Johar - Ajeeb Dastaan Hai Yeh</span></b><br />
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KJo showcases what he does best (and what Bollywood does best too): the big emotion. In his trademarked larger than life (and slightly over the top) style, he gives us a film about the struggle for identity, for acceptance, for companionship. And in between, music filling in the blanks of everything left unsaid. Because only in Bollywood can we find a song for every moment, no matter how big or small. Music, whose magic can break even the highest walls that people build around themselves without requiring an invitation. <br />
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Kudos to Karan for being all balls and tackling a topic that is clearly close to his heart: homophobia. And a topic that needs to be talked about more in Indian cinema in general. The right way, not that comic relief bullshit we often see in "comedies". <br />
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This segment means more for Indian cinema as a concept than the story itself. It shows how far they've come from the days when the father of the bride would punch the potential groom to keep him away from his precious daughter. And what makes this step even more powerful is that it wasn't one of the niche, hindie directors giving us this story, it was one of the most mainstream, most high-profile directors in Indian cinema these past couple of decades. Karan, sincerely, I am so proud of you!<br />
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<span style="color: purple;"><b>Dibakar Banerjee - Star</b></span><br />
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It's hard to think about Dibakar Banerjee's movie without laughing out loud because in an otherwise very serious film about a man trying to find work to support his family in a big city, the thing that makes the most impacty is Anjali, the emu. I don't know how, or who, or why they put that emu into every shot of this film, but was that ever a stroke of genius!<br />
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Though, in all fairness to the director and the actors, when I'm done laughing I think about this segment fondly because it carries a simple message about family: stories are the glue that keeps people together. And what good are stories if there is no one to share them with?<br />
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The film itself is about a failed actor who gets a two-hour job as an extra in a Ranbir Kapoor movie. Sunken hopes, unmet potential and harsh life realities are indeed the director's staples, so we're not surprised to see these themes in his short, but what surprised me was the warmth that Nawazuddin Siddiqui brought into the film. I don't know if his antics were supposed to be funny or endearing but he sure managed to put a bitter-sweet smile on everyone's face. This segment got a huge round of applause from the audience when it ended and rightfully so. <br />
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<span style="color: purple;"><b>Zoya Akhtar - Sheila Ki Jawaani </b></span><br />
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On the surface Zoya Akhtar's film is about following your dreams, about filmi idols inspiring us to venture on paths previously unexplored, driving us to fulfill our potential. And it's about Katrina Kaif dressed as a butterfly (coughWTF!!cough).<br />
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But when has Zoya Akhtar ever told a simple story? <br />
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It's astonishing how much social commentary Zoya can cram into a half hour short with each line driving another point home. Her film doesn't just talk about a boy choosing a career path. She talks about consumerism and how it's become such a part of the Indian culture; she talks about the differences between raising a girl and raising a boy, even for a middle class family; she talks about homophobia; she talks about making it in Bollywood; she talks about patriarchy; she talks about family dynamics.<br />
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And she does this while showing the power of dance, another staple of Indian cinema that I hope never goes away.<br />
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And how much did I love that it wasn't some yesteryear actress doing complicated pirouettes, but Katrina Kaif shaking her bellybutton to Sheila Ki Jawani. Because yes, Zoya, even I have had enough of people lamenting the golden days long gone. This is Bollywood's present and it's about time we owned it. Good and bad, progressive and regressive. Own it, live it, love it! (Even though you'll find me on Twitter annoyed with various episodes of regression... What? I'm not perfect either!)<br />
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<span style="color: purple;"><b>Anurag Kashyap - Murabba </b></span><br />
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This is Bollywood comedy at its best! I've been very disappointed this year with the amount of silly comedy (and I am being extremely kind with that adjective) coming into theatres. So much so that I started to doubt why I ever enjoyed any kind of comedy coming out of India. Thankfully Kashyap and Dibakar reminded me why I absolutely love a story that can weave in an intelligent amount of silliness without resorting to dumb gags.<br />
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Dibakar's emu and Kashyap's absurd quest for a star's acknowledgement, topped off with the delightful twist at the end, were some of the best elements in the movies. And they reminded me that, when it doesn't leave its brain at home, India can make some pretty fabulous comedy. Extra points for showing the absurdity of filmi fandom in a very subversive way. <br />
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This segment, like Dibakar's, was mostly about storytelling and family. But in true Anurag Kashyap style, it took the topic and showed us another side of it: storytelling brings all kinds of emotions out of people. And they're not all good emotions. I loved how this film was as much about keeping tradition alive through stories, as it was about navigating the present through them, sometimes to unexpected results.<br />
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But... since nothing can be perfect in Bollywood, this excellent collection of stories and thoughts ends on the most unforgivably bad note. This song!<br />
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I don't even know where to start. The choreography? Yeah, I know, don't say it: what choreography? The tacky gold costumes? The really REALLY bad lip syncing? The horrendous song? The cheesy dramatic turn that each star does as their "entrance"? The shower of gold? The slow motion grandpa SRK shots? No but really... Who put this together? It's atrocious! Not even Kareena rocking that sexy dress can save it for me! What a waste of all these stars!<br />
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Still... If I remember to turn off the film right before it in the future, Bombay Talkies makes for a delightful experience. A treat for the senses, for the brain, and for the Bollywood lover in all of us. Nothing makes me happier than a movie that gives me more than just a narrative. And Bombay Talkies is so much more than the four stories it so skillfully tells. It's a snapshot of the diversity, the creativity and why not, the pizzazz, that Bollywood has given us for the past 100 years. Here's to 100 more!Dolce and Namakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13403089235872528987noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3503508735843316282.post-25060602095259499912013-02-21T15:16:00.002-08:002013-02-21T15:16:37.919-08:00Kai Po Che ReviewLet me start by apologizing publicly for what seems to be a criminal sin these days among the Twitterati: I have absolutely no bias against Chetan Bhagat. Judging by everything I read in my timeline it feels like I should, because everyone with a brain does, so I do feel entirely inadequate here, but... well... I just have nothing against the guy. I read Five Point Someone and actually found it much better than the movie. [insert gasp] Not in the way it's written necessarily, it's certainly not great prose, but for what it has to say. I actually felt that 3 Idiots failed glamorously at capitalizing on the true messages of the book. In fact, it completely missed the point in its attempt to glorify Aamir Khan's character. [moar gasp] But oh well, the movie was a huge hit, so what do I know? And to be fair, even I liked it and saw it 3 times. <br />
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But having learned my lesson, I decided against reading the book that inspired Kai Po Che, The 3 Mistakes of My Life, so even though I went in with many other biases, the book was not one. That said, I unfortunately can't comment on whether or not the movie was better, so I guess that's my loss (but hey, it makes the review shorter, so your gain!).<br />
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I'm not sure why but it feels like Kai Po Che has been massively anticipated. Has it? Sometimes I can't tell if it's just the crowd I chat with or the whole universe (the two entities tend to merge in my head), but it feels like it's been talked about forever. Despite all that, I couldn't get into the trailer, and ultimately the only two reasons why I went to see it were a) the irresistible company of blog pals <a href="http://www.totallyfilmi.com/" target="_blank">Katherine</a> and <a href="http://paayaliya.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Larissa</a>, and b) THAT song by Amit Tridevi. You know which one.<br />
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The comparisons will be inevitable, so let's get this out of the way early: it's no Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara and it's no Dil Chahta Hai. Well, apart from the fact that it has three male characters and the relationships between them. But whereas in those two films the characters sucked you in principally because of the brilliant dialogues between them, here the dialogue almost sabotages the characters by giving them so little to fall back on. The script is the ultimate dude-communication showcase: brief, snappy and only when absolutely necessary. It's not loaded with meaning either, so you won't take away any brilliant quotes or anything like that. And somehow that worked really well for me because when they do get emotional, it's powerful and primal.<br />
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Luckily for it, Kai Po Che is more than just a bro-story about how Ishaan, Omi and Govind grow up, become responsible and face their inner demons. Sure, there's that too, but on top of that there's this other layer of growing up in the world as it is right now, a world that forces you to pick sides. This is no Rang de Basanti where corruption was something that the elders were involved in while the heroes were pure as snowflakes. It's not Shanghai where politics exist only to be fought against. And it's certainly not the easy living spirit of Dil Chahta Hai and Zindagi.<br />
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No one is an idealist in this movie, and the fact that every one of the 3 heroes walks a fine line between selfish prick and devoted friend is what makes them real. I appreciated the ambiguity of their "why"s: why is Ishaan so adamant about protecting Ali: is it to satisfy his own ambitions, or because of his fatherly affection for the kid? Why is Omi so easily sucked into his uncle's political shenanigans: does he truly believe in it or is he just trapped? Why is Govi so ambitious: is he the only one acting like a grown-up or is he just greedy? We're free to think of our own answers, and I'm sure some will pick the worst answers and outright dislike all three characters. Me, I just found them believable, which sometimes is more valuable than finding them likeable.<br />
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Sadly what stops it from being a great movie is the pace, and the unnecessary accent on details that everyone knows. We didn't need to be shown the communal riots in Ahmedabad in such detail, even I knew about them. We didn't need to see every single run of every single cricket match, we get it, they're down, then they win (apologies if this is a spoiler but it's supposed to be a historic cup match, so even more of a reason for people to already know what's gonna happen). And we certainly didn't need to see the wounded carried away from the sites of the earthquake crashes. This plague of underestimating your audience's intelligence seems to still be going strong in Indian film makers, and that's sad for a movie as polished as this. The events shown are part of the story, it's true, in fact they <i>make</i> the story, but they should be recognized as catalysts and not given centre stage. Because at the end of the day all we care about is how they'll affect the characters.<br />
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One leitmotif that I did appreciate however has to do with the cricket matches and for this I will forgive some of the excessive attention given to the various crickety episodes. I found it telling that almost every make-up scene happens during a cricket match, and throughout the movie it's a theme that keeps coming back: money, politics and religion separate people, sports bring them together. There's one scene in particular that is masterfully done, and that's Omi and Ishaan making up after one of their fights against the backdrop of a cricket match. No words are needed, and no explanations for the audience either, we can feel how powerful that moment was and why such passion simply had to be shared with a best friend. And while on the topic of cricket (of which there's a lot in the film, too much even), I have to say that as a hockey fan I chuckled every time Ishaan would make everyone stand still during an important play. Superstitions are such a big part of watching sports, maybe one of the most fun parts, so it was cool to see that acknowledged, like an inside joke that everyone knows.<br />
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Of course none of this whole exercise would work without the performances and, especially with such a sparse script, it's impressive how natural the chemistry is between all these characters. Sushant Singh Rajput is a live wire and we can see why everyone gravitates towards him, he's <i>that guy</i> who makes everything more fun. Raj Kumar Yadav is not surprisingly fabulous in his understated way, and he wins you over from the first scene with Amit Sadh when he breaks into an uncomfortable smile. Speaking of that first scene, Amit Sadh didn't impress me in the whole movie as much as he blew me over in the "present day" scenes. The sorrow in his eyes, his slouched posture as if the weight of the whole world was on his shoulders, his hesitant gestures, we forgive him before even knowing the story. And let's not forget the radiant Amrita Puri who has the difficult task of playing an innocent airhead and a relentless seductress at the same time.<br />
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Though I doubt we can forgive her for dressing poor Govind in THAT:<br />
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Don't get me wrong, that dandiya song rocked, but was that terrible outfit really necessary? Ugh!<br />
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But anyway, since we're talking about songs, I'll spare you the requisite Amit Tridevi homage and just talk about how much I loved the way the songs were juxtaposed with the story. It truly felt like they were traveling with the movie, a string sewing together the different scenes in the story. And with a movie as beautifully shot as this, what more can you ask for?<br />
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If there's one objection I have against Kai Po Che is that it tries to be too many things: a sports movie, social commentary, a bromance, a love story, a drama, a disaster movie, and as expected, it can't possibly succeed at all of them. But even while realizing that during the film, by the time the end credits roll up you have to think long and hard about what didn't work for you. And that's what makes a movie worth while. I'd be surprised if this one did poorly at the box office, though if there's a country you can count on for surprises at the box office, it's definitely India.<br />
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<u><b>Kai Po Che (2013, Hindi)</b></u><br />
<i>Starring: Sushant Singh Rajput, Raj Kumar Yadav, Amit Sadh, Amrita Puri</i><br />
<i>Director: Abhishek Kapoor</i><br />
<i>Music: Amit Trivedi</i><br />
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PS: Last but not least because this has been bugging me: WHICH makers of Rang De Basanti?? Dear Indian trailer copywriters, please stop trying to subliminal message us. It may backfire on you. I for one was put off by the mention of RDB because it's one of my favourite movies and I wasn't in the least bit curious to see a movie that claims to be similar to it. Luckily for me, the two have nothing in common. Well, except for the producers, who happen to also have their hands in just about every moving image that comes with a censor certificate in front of it. So yeah... whatever. <br />
<br /><br />Dolce and Namakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13403089235872528987noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3503508735843316282.post-39586966542436195722013-01-22T13:57:00.000-08:002013-01-31T14:09:32.037-08:00Filmy Moments in IndiaA lot of people asked me when I came back from India if I was going to blog about it. And I said: naah. With so many travel blogs out there, who cares that one more gori went to India, right? But for the past couple of weeks I've been remembering different moments from this trip, most of them having to do with movies, and they were moments I was wishing I could share with you guys even as they were happening, so I guess I will blog about my trip to India a little bit. Don't worry, I won't dwell on culture shock and opinions on India as a country, this is a full-on filmy post.<br />
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I should mention I am writing this while listening to Radha, because, as fellow Bollywood lover and travel companion <a href="http://paayaliya.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Larissa</a> noted, it was the song that followed us everywhere. Guess I underestimated KJo's ear for a popular soundtrack. This was omnipresent!<br />
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Our trip started in Varanasi, for the first part of a three-part wedding celebration, where pretty much everything was filmy. Having ladoos in the bridal suite while waiting for the sangeet, sneaking out of the bride's party to go meet the baaraat outside, helping the bride drape her sari for one of the many poojas (I'm particularly proud of this one), participating in the haldi ceremony, chasing some kids around in a (successful) attempt to steal the groom's shoe, sneaking things in and out for the bride, chilling with the aunties, none of this stuff happens at weddings here, so it was all new and very filmy for me. Everything reminded me of some movie or other.<br />
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I thought Varanasi itself would remind me of a film I had seen recently at TIFF, The Bright Day. It didn't, and I understand now why the director Mohit Takalkar and the cinematographer Amol Gole were so highly praised for this film. One thing I will have to say about Varanasi though: it's a ridiculously photogenic place. <br />
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After Varanasi we went to Hyderabad. And any Tollywood fan will know exactly where we went first.<br />
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Golconda Fort!!!<br />
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Our guide was not impressed with the fact that we wanted to be shown the exact spot where Pokiri was filmed (in fact I suspect he didn't even know because he dodged the question until we found it ourselves), but we didn't really care. And luckily there were no guides to frown upon our excitement the next day when we went to see the Char Minar. Eeeeee!!!<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Char Minar</td></tr>
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The next stop was Mumbai. And Mumbai turned out to be less filmi and more boring than it looked in the movies. The only time we came close to Bollywood was running into a huge crowd in front of the Taj. Unable to see anything past the crowd, we stopped to ask some backup camera crew people who were just chilling by the trailer. The conversation went like this:<br />
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Dolce: What are they shooting for?<br />
Camera guy: Oh, it's for an ad.<br />
Dolce: Who's the star?<br />
Camera guy: Uh, it's a film star.<br />
Dolce: Yes, but who?<br />
Camera guy (dismissively): It's a Bollywood actor.<br />
Dolce: Arre yaar, WHICH Bollywood actor??<br />
Camera guy (tentatively): Vivek Oberoi.<br />
Dolce (while exchanging a disappointed look with Larissa): Oh. It's only Vivek Oberoi. Let's go.<br />
Camera guy picks up jaw from the floor.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Victoria Terminus</td></tr>
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But Mumbai had other more delicious meetings reserved for us. I had one of the best dinners in India with, fittingly, a food blogger: the gorgeous <a href="http://www.theweekendepicurean.blogspot.ca/" target="_blank">Swati Sapna</a>. And it was exactly how I imagined our first meeting: fillums fillums fillums. We covered everything from upcoming releases to classics like Pithamagan, to AR Rahman soundtracks, the IIFAs and just about every Bollywood and Kollywood star out there (granted, some more than others). In between we talked about food from all parts of India, living in Mumbai, traveling, work, but really, who am I kidding, it was back to filmi talk within a minute of trying to talk about anything else. In short: a perfect night!<br />
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The filminess continued the next morning when we left Mumbai because our driver was in love with the Zeher soundtrack. So we heard Woh Lamhe (one of my favourites) and Agar Tum Mil Jao about a dozen times on the way to the airport, which was cool by me.<br />
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And so, to the sweet sound of Atif Aslam's voice, we were off to Chennai, where another blog friend had promised a long time ago to give me a filmi tour of the city. <a href="http://greatestbattlelieswithin.blogspot.ca/" target="_blank">Mukundh</a> met us at the airport and hung out with us quite a bit while we were in Chennai, which was great because it's the city where I would have felt the most lost. It helps that he's a very attentive host and <strike>all kinds of adorable, but he'll kill me if he gets to know I said that in public, on top of being</strike> a knowledgeable tourguide. So not only did I get my filmi tour of where everyone lives and works and where cool stuff (read Mani Ratnam stuff) was filmed, but I got most of it from the back of a motorbike. Howzzat for cool?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Checking out the Broken Bridge in Adyar, a reminder that I have to watch Ayudha Ezhuthu already!</td></tr>
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Of course when you're not on a motorbike in Chennai you have a very big chance of being in a rickshaw all done up with filmi heroes. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Vijay is EVERYwhere in Tamil Nadu. Everywhere!</td></tr>
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TN definitely takes it away for hero worship, and it's the only place where I can't even remember whose picture we saw first on a hoarding (could be because I had a helmet three sizes too big on my head, but I'll never admit to that). In Mumbai it was Salman followed shortly by Katrina (coincidence, I swear!). In Hyderabad it was obviously Mahesh Babu. Kerala was all about Aishwarya, though the very first hoarding we saw in Kochi was none other than blog-favourite Prithviraj. But I'll be damned if I can remember who we saw first in Chennai. Madhavan, Vijay, Rajini, Surya, they're all everywhere, from stickers and t-shirts in malls, to hoardings and shop signs. We even saw a stand in Mamallapuram selling cutouts of all the heroes (or maybe selling the opportunity to take a picture with one? We'll never know, we refused to pay to click a picture).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Lighthouse in Pondy</td></tr>
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We did the obligatory daytrip to Pondycherry and had the obligatory steak, but my favourite place was by far Mamallapuram, with its unassuming beaches and elegant ruins. It was the first time when I felt, truly felt, that I was visiting a country and a culture with thousands of years of history.<br />
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Next on our filmi itinerary: Dabangg 2 in a single screen theatre in Kochi!! Our lovely and very funny host in Kochi was none other than Amrita, of <a href="http://masalazindabad.blogspot.ca/" target="_blank">Masala Zindabad</a> Podcast fame. Amrita told us all about Kochi back in the day, took us to some of her favourite spots (and her favourite restaurant immediately became my favourite restaurant too!), helped me do some jewellery shopping, and, this is the moment everyone's been waiting for, took us to see Dabangg 2!<br />
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Now the movie is really not much to talk about, in fact we had already forgotten the plot by interval (probably because there was none), but I could tell you stories about this experience for hours! It was the only time in India when I found the curiosity surrounding us perfectly justified: 2 goras, 2 goris, plus Amrita walking into a single screen theatre on opening day. Need I even mention that the audience was over 90% males? And that some were dressed for the occasion (read Salman style)? No, I don't think I have to. Either way, as soon as the movie started, the atmosphere was a blast. I want to lament the fact that "the atmosphere" also included an asshole who was answering his phone during pretty much the entire first half, but I already said we went to see this movie in India, so I have a feeling that's implied.<br />
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But let's be honest. I wasn't there to hear the dialogues. I wasn't there to see Salman headbutt a fist (though that was a great bonus). I wasn't there to watch a good movie. I was there to watch this:<br />
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And man was that ever a treat! Watching that theatre clap, cheer, whistle and catcall during the entire item number made me understand why item numbers won't be going anywhere for a loooong time to come. It also made me understand why actresses who we think are not worthy of them get paid royally to dance in item numbers. Because it's not about the dancing. It's not about the acting. And it's not about the significance of the song in the context of the film. It's simply about Kareena Kapoor being sexy as hell in a backless choli for 5 whole minutes. And that, my dear readers, was the most valuable filmi lesson I learned in India.<br />
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From Kochi we went to another filmi destination: the Athirapally Waterfalls. <br />
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If the name doesn't tell you anything, it's the place where they filmed this beauty!<br />
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Definitely worth a trip if you're in the area, though maybe not two days before Christmas because it's packed.<br />
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Another favourite place in India was our next stop, but nothing filmi happened there so I have no excuse to post a picture. Oh but wait! I do! Guess who was omnipresent even around the canals of Alleppey?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Vijay's jewellery ads were matched in number only by Madhavan's</td></tr>
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And Larissa and I had a little debate about whether or not that's his mom in real life, so any knowledge on the topic is welcome. Though most of the time we were just quietly enjoying scenery such as this:<br />
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And this:<br />
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We left Alleppey to the soothing sound of another great AR Rahman song: the lovely Jashn-e-Bahara. He seems to have followed us around on this trip too, but I suppose that's to be expected in India. And we certainly missed Rahman in Kanyakumari where we spent Christmas. Because little did we know that these giant speakers that can be seen in pretty much every open space, in every village and town,<br />
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... would keep us up all night AND all Christmas day by playing - nay - blasting music like it was the end of the world. I used to like Nakka Mukka.<br />
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Now I kinda wanna shoot myself when I hear it. <br />
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But luckily our nightmarish stay in Kanyakumari was followed by the peaceful tea plantations in Munnar. And to go back to the AR Rahman themed soundtrack of our South-India trip, the song that will always remind me of Munnar is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q5duWVfDJo" target="_blank">Challa</a>, because it was playing on someone's boombox while I was taking pictures of our spectacular view. What a perfect moment!<br />
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After a very chilled out visit to Mysore, which I loved, one last filmy meet-up was waiting in Mumbai. They say you should only do things you enjoy on January the 1st because that's how the rest of the year will pass too. And if that's true, I'm looking at a deliciously fun 2013 because I spent my January 1st with the super-cute <a href="http://vichaarkhaana.blogspot.in/" target="_blank">Vistrit</a>, discovering ice-cream flavours (custard apple FTW!), shopping for Indian sweets in Bandra and getting schooled on the do's and dont's of fancy desi-wear (closed toe shoes are a resounding NO with saris, apparently. Ooops!). Couldn't have dreamt a better ending for this trip!<br />
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It's hard to describe your first visit to India when people ask. It's such a whirlwind of impressions, good and bad, so many stories you can tell and so many moments you can't even begin to describe. But the one thing I never fail to mention in my stories about India is how many cool people I got to meet and hang out with. Because for me that was the best part of the whole trip and it's the reason why I can't wait to go back. <br />
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Well... ok, fine, and the food.Dolce and Namakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13403089235872528987noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3503508735843316282.post-37550760406108125642013-01-13T15:36:00.000-08:002013-01-13T15:36:07.592-08:00Matru ki Bijlee ka MandolaMan this title is a mouthful! And well... so is the movie. And an earful. And an eyeful. (Do all these words even exist?? No matter. Nor do pink buffaloes.) I went to this one with little excitement after reading all the disappointed tweets and reviews. Could this be the first time that my favourite director lets me down? Because while I have come to expect duds from pretty much everyone else, Vishal Bhardwaj was standing alone as the only director who has not made a single bad movie, in this blogger's opinion anyway (and I know many don't agree). His new venture, a film about a wacky trio and their messed up relationships, is set against the backdrop of a village trying to save their land from the scheming politicians and the greedy industrialists. With so much stuff going on, I was ready for anything.<br />
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So... how did it go, you ask?<br />
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Matru ki Bijlee ka Mandola is my least favourite Vishal Bhardwaj film. But that said, the man has yet to let me down, because even my least favourite film of his has me going back to the theatre for a rewatch. And I'll say it right from the beginning, it's my least favourite because I am used to Vishal Bhardwaj running a much tighter ship than this. With his previous projects one thing was always certain: you either liked the whole thing, or you didn't. There were never half measures, or scenes that could be taken out, there was never room for improvement from the direction point of view. Maybe his characters were objectionable (7 Khoon Maaf), maybe his script was too twisted (Kaminey), maybe his setting was too perplexing (Maqbool), but his sense of what's important for the movie could never be questioned. With MKBKM this did not hold true. It was as if, unable to choose which scenes would get the most laughs, or the most emotional support, Vishal just decided to leave them all in and let people choose their own adventure. Not an unpardonable sin, for sure, but an unexpected slip from such a confident director. <br />
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That said, I've always adored his sense of humour, even in films that were not meant to be comedies, so how could I not love the first film where he goes all out on the LOLs? And as it turns out, despite the uneven pace, a few days later I still laugh out loud thinking about some of the scenes in MKBKM, having forgotten all the times when the film fumbled. Now some would say that a few scenes are not enough to make a decent movie, and I would normally agree. But if you add to those scenes a wicked soundtrack (with picturizations to match), exquisite visuals (a VB trademark), a superb performance from its leading actor (no, not Imran Khan, the real leading actor) and a pink buffalo, then it's a different conversation altogether. Because, and this is key, in order to fully enjoy Matru ki Bijlee you have to always keep in mind that it's the kind of movie where there is a pink buffalo, sitting on a bed, laughing. And if you shrugged your shoulders or raised your eyebrow reading that, I suggest you skip this one, I doubt you'll consider your money well spent.<br />
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The film begins with the most hilarious smoking warning that essentially tells you that everything you're doing, from texting to drinking lemonade can cause you harm. As if that was not enough, the first scene sees Matru (Imran Khan) and Harry Mandola (Pankaj Kapoor) driving a limousine into a liquor shop to get to their precious beer on a dry day. Now don't get your hopes up, not everything in the film will have you howling with laughter as these two scenes did. But there will be plenty more where that came from, that's for sure.<br />
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What I love about Bhardwaj's sense of humour (and not to take anything away from the execution, but I'll get to that in a minute) is that he plays so well with contradictions. So when a drunk Harry Mandola leads a procession against himself, complete with the best song on the soundtrack, you don't even go WTF!, you skip straight to laughing because it just makes sense.<br />
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Similarly, when the power-hungry politician asks why the fields that she was going to seize from the villagers are now singing with bountiful crops, and she gets the answer: "It rained. On time.", you once again crack up because nothing in India is EVER on time and it's so hilarious that something being on time can actually ruin one's plans.<br />
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Then of course there are the more subtle ironies, which are even more satisfying. One of my favourites involves Matru taking the plight of the farmers to a multi-million, multi-national company with offices in a sky-scraper in order to get the grains sold overseas. This in the context of preventing a local multi-million company from seizing the lands and building what? A mall and some skyscrapers. It's a scene that seems a little bit tacked on and I wondered for a while why it was even in the film, but the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced Vishal Bhardwaj was fully aware of the irony of this situation.<br />
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And lest I forget, the most delectable irony of them all is Harry Mandola himself, a character who is more of a human being when drunk than sober. Only Bhardwaj could even think of such a character. In a world where entire films get made about abusive drunkards and about the tragic consequences of alcoholism (and nothing against that, awareness is a great thing), Mandola is a man who is not only fun and loving when drunk, but he actually has us cheering against his attempts at staying on the wagon because sobriety turns him into a cold-hearted greedy realist.<br />
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Then again, on the topic of contradictions, it's interesting to notice that not just Mandola, but every important character in the film has an alter ego that prevents them from doing the right thing (or that serves as a mask when they do it). No one is who they seem to be, everyone has something to hide about themselves. A theme that comes back again and again throughout the film in covert or explicit ways. For crying out loud, there are two avatars even for the pink buffalo! And this alter ego motif extends somehow to the entire film: a social satire disguised sometimes as a comedy, sometimes as serious drama. If only the two sides had been weaved together as well as the two Harrys, or the two Matrus, or the two Bijlees.<br />
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And I can't move on without mentioning a contradiction that is very close to my heart (and I say this tongue in cheek, as always), namely the fight to preserve an agrarian society (deemed ethically superior to the capitalist pigs) made possible by the leadership of a communist icon (or rather his Indian avatar): Mao. And I won't even begin on this one, I'll just say it always amuses me that this rivalry still exists and it still makes for entire movie plots. It's like love at first sight, it simply won't go away.<br />
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It's almost redundant to speak about performances in a Vishal Bhardwaj film because, well, they're always stellar. And certainly the man is doing everyone a favour by having the fabulous Pankaj Kapoor do what he does best: act. Please, Vishal, keep him in business forever so he doesn't get any more ideas about directing. Okay, thanks! Seriously though, I've always liked Pankaj Kapoor and I always looked forward to his performance in a movie, but in this film he outdoes himself. The drunken mumbles, the deadpan expressions, the sleazy-flirty passes at Shabana's character (whose over the top delivery reminded me of her delicious character in Makdee), the zest with which he throws himself into the songs, Pankaj Kapoor is a one-man-show that keeps you entertained even when the rest of the film falters. Truly an outstanding performance for which he will probably not even see a nomination because such is the way the world turns.<br />
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The film's supporting actors (because next to Kapoor everyone else is just filler) all do a good job, though I'm sad to say that for all the support I have given him over the years this is the first time when Imran Khan disappoints me. It doesn't help that he's never looked hotter and that his chemistry with Anuskha Sharma delivers one of the most intense kisses we've seen in Bollywood (as an aside, I think I have a soft spot for women throwing themselves at him, it totally worked for me in Delhi Belly too).<br />
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So with all this good stuff helping him, I would have expected to love him in this, and yet his performance is the weakest link in this film. I can't put my finger on it because I've seen him deliver better in similar situations in other films, but something was missing from this performance. Then again... dude knows how to rock a beard and earrings, so that gets him off the hook. This time.<br />
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Anushka Sharma still has my vote even though I was hoping to see a different role from her. And to be fair, in this one, her trademarked sunny disposition turns out to be nothing but a cover-up for the disappointments in her life. If her poor rich girl character had been a little more developed there was definitely room for Anushka to experiment with a more serious role. But no matter. She does this role well so I'm ok with seeing a good thing repeated. Plus, give it to Vishal to include some cheeky dialogues about her penchant for skimpy clothing. Nothing like a good dose of meta-commentary.<br />
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Sadly, for all the good stuff crammed in this film, there is also room for plenty of details that don't quite work. For example as much as I appreciated the tribal vibe of the songs, and for all my love of a woman who can deliver a good booty-shake, the inclusion of the South African performers was completely gratuitous and poorly justified. Either that or I didn't get the joke. Maybe I'll get it when I see the film again this week.<br />
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In the meantime I'll just keep laughing to myself at all the clever dialogues and all the quirky visuals because they're the main reason why this film worked for me. They don't seem to have been enough for most reviewers, so unfortunately this is not a one-size-fits-all movie, but then comedy hardly ever is. And it's safe to assume that most reviewers are not as easily distracted by eye-candy as me. Uff!<br />
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<u><b>Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola (Hindi, 2013)</b></u><br />
<i>Director: Vishal Bhardwaj</i><br />
<i>Starring: Pankaj Kapoor, Imran Khan, Anushka Sharma, Shabana Azmi, Arya Babbar</i><br />
<i>Music: Vishal Bhardwaj</i>Dolce and Namakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13403089235872528987noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3503508735843316282.post-26407583183182831452012-10-24T09:29:00.001-07:002012-10-24T09:29:13.590-07:00Saagar - an Unexpected FavouriteA couple of weeks ago I saw Naseeruddin Shah at a TIFF Bell Lightbox event in Toronto and, among other entertaining topics, he talked about his experience shooting Kamal Hassan's Hey Ram!. Naseer complained that the make-up he was required to wear to play Gandhi was so elaborate that he could barely act from behind it. After refusing to wear some parts of the mask, he allegedly even told Kamal to play the role of Gandhi himself, since the actor's personality would not come through anyway because of the prosthetics. This made me laugh a lot because I've been complaining about Kamal's obsession with prosthetics for a long time now: it's distracting to the point where I can't enjoy his acting and it's been getting worse. I'm terrified of Vishwaroopam for that very reason. But anyways, all this to explain what made me decide to hunt down Kamal's older movies, from before all this make-up nonsense even existed. This is how I ended up watching Saagar. And good thing I did because it confirmed why Kamal is considered one of the greats in Indian cinema! I absolutely adored him.<br />
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Saagar reminded me a lot of Rangeela (though reminded is the wrong verb since Saagar preceded Rangeela by a good decade), minus the brilliant <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbEVPe4vvk4" target="_blank">Pyaar Yeh</a> and minus Jackie Shroff's bikini. You win some you lose some, I suppose. Saagar has a very similar love triangle: childhood friends Raja and Mona live in a fisherman's village where they have everything they need despite being poor. In comes Ravi, the rich heir to the developing fishing business, and falls in love with Mona. Ravi and Raja become friends without realizing that they love the same girl. And the story goes on from here.<br />
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Part of the reason why I can't stand older films is because they rely so heavily on silly plot devices to create over the top melodrama. So the whole time while watching Saagar I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. When Raja and Ravi start becoming friends and singing songs together I thought: Oh God, any minute
now they'll discover they love the same woman and they'll start
competing for her and turn into assholes. Luckily this fabulous song was not ruined by such a follow-up.<br />
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When Raja later confesses his love for Mona to Ravi asking for his advice on how to express his feelings, I thought: Here we go, cue in lame scene where one character confesses someone else's love while secretly confessing their own. And I know you know exactly what I mean which is why I won't even bother to clean up that sentence and make it intelligible. Surprisingly, that doesn't happen.<br />
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Finally, about halfway through the film, when Raja finds out about Mona and Ravi and he's running heartbroken on the beach I thought this is it, for sure he'll trip on one of those rocks, hit his head and fall into a coma that will prompt a guilty Mona to give up Ravi. And imagine my surprise when that didn't happen either! As it turns out, the entire movie was written with common-sense and, barring the occasional "nahiiiiiiin" and "yeh shaadi nahin ho sakta" scene, the filmi tropes didn't poke their ugly noses into the story in an offensive manner.<br />
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What I liked most about Saagar was that all the main characters make their choices based on their own moral compass. Not because of the family honour, not because of the societal pressure and certainly not because of emotional blackmail. Actually, for once, the emotional blackmail goes the other way! Do you have any idea how refreshing it is to see a movie like this coming out of the 80s? I mean, sure it has the required twists and turns later on, and yes, some of them employ some of those pesky tropes, but it is Bollywood after all, not even I would expect it to be completely devoid of melodrama. What's important is that the three main characters keep it real and honest, they speak their minds when needed and don't leave room for misunderstandings and silliness.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dimple is so gorgeous in this movie, even more so than usual!</td></tr>
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For once I never felt the need to yell at the TV or throw shoes at it. Believe me, this is a first for me while watching a movie older than 2001. Well, I did get bored towards the end when all the drama-shrama was happening (and coincidentally, that was also the time when Kamal wasn't around for a good half hour of the film), but hey, it's a small price to pay. Especially when you're bribed with exquisite filmi moments such as this one:<br />
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Saagar surprised me in more ways than one. It's also the first movie where Rishi Kapoor was completely out-charisma-ed by his co-stars. Dimple is always a joy to watch, especially when she's looking as glamorous as she does here (despite her "common girl" status, but hey, what's Bollywood without the designer clothes?), but the real star of this movie is Kamal Hassan who steals every scene, every song, every frame. He has these little gestures, this light in his eyes, these little eyerolls, chuckles and smiles, I tell you, I was mesmerized. Of course it helps that he was so easy on the eyes too back in the day.<br />
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For crissakes, he even pulls off the all-demin + unbuttoned shirt outfit! How many other actors can do that without looking like complete fools?<br />
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I don't think I'll ever subscribe to the belief that old is gold, but if a movie ever came close to swaying me, Saagar was that movie. And it feels right for it to be the first oldie to get a full blogpost around here. I wish more people would talk about it, but maybe it's not melodramatic enough. Oh well, it was just the right amount for me, so if you haven't already seen it, I highly recommend it!<br />
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<u><b>Saagar (1985, Hindi)</b></u><br />
<i>Director: Ramesh Sippy</i><br />
<i>Starring: Dimple Kapadia, Kamal Hassan, Rishi Kapoor</i><br />
<i>Music: RD Burman</i>Dolce and Namakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13403089235872528987noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3503508735843316282.post-45508880811005330192012-09-17T16:56:00.001-07:002012-09-18T09:15:27.348-07:00Barfi! is a Delicious FairytaleThe last time Ranbir Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra, two of my favourite actors, were in a movie together I was supremely let down. While they both looked exquisite, the story of Anjaana Anjaani turned out to be disappointing to say the least. Barfi! is the exact opposite: their looks are entirely unappealing (lose the mouche, Ranbir, I beg you!) but the story is a fantastic dream! The type of modern fairy-tale that we see so little of even in World Cinema, let alone coming out of India.<br />
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The trailer leads you to believe that Barfi! is the love story of a deaf-mute manic-pixie-dream-boy (as one of my Twitter friends hilariously calls Ranbir) and the gorgeous out-of-towner Shruti (played by long-time favourite from South-Indian movies Ileana D'Cruz). With a dash of tear-jerking moments provided by what seems to be the autistic sister (or close friend).<br />
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None of that is true. Barfi/Murphy is not a manic pixie dream boy, in fact he is very much his own character even though his influence on Ileana's character could match a loose definition of MPDG/B. Also, the film is not a love story. Or better said, it's not ONE love story. Add to that the very well-played mystery factor (yes, it plays a bit like a whodunit too!) and a dash of comedy and you're closer to what Barfi really looks like. I was extremely pleased with the way the film was put together overall, with the flashbacks taking their time to reveal the story and with different characters telling the story at different times. Narration is hard enough to handle even from the point of view of one character, let alone several, so I was truly impressed with the outcome.<br />
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The other reason why Barfi! blew me away visually, and this may also be my TIFF hangover, was how well they used close-ups and details. Whether it was zooming in so close that I could trace the liner on Ileana's eye-lids with my finger, or making old Barfi's white hair stand on end in a giant mess, everything about these characters felt so close to you and endearing. But, and this is the impressive part, never overbearing. (Of course, they could still improve on the wigs, but heh... nobody's perfect.)<br />
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Speaking of Ileana, one of the reasons why I'll be very happy to see Barfi! succeed is because it will mean seeing more of Ileana D'Cruz in Bollywood. Not that I don't love her in the South (where they make full use of her exquisite body shape, unlike Barfi!), but she deserves more than just being arm-candy for the hero.<br />
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I must admit that on occasion I can be very easily amused by old-school movie gags like people walking into lamp-posts or pies thrown in someone's face. But it can also get old for me just as easily. Barfi! uses a lot of physicality for its comedy, but considering a lot of it had to do with Saurabh Shukla rolling his eyes and making faces as the police officer always on Barfi's tail, I didn't mind it too much. I would have found Barfi unbearable if the antics had been only on Ranbir's side, but with an actor as entertaining and hilarious as Saurabh Shukla, he was well balanced (and dare I say, out-goofed!).<br />
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When a movie like "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" is your benchmark for characters with mental illness, it's really hard to not be apprehensive about other actors and actresses attempting these roles. Because nothing can top that movie for me. So despite my well-documented love for Priyanka, I was afraid. I was very afraid. At the same time I have very little real life experience with this type of issue, so that usually works in my favour when I watch movies because I tend to be forgiving if everything seems reasonably realistic. As it turns out, it was a good place to watch Barfi! from. Priyanka was adorable and so hug-able and with the exception of a couple of over the top moments she got it as right as one could hope for.<br />
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It's not just that she's not relying on her looks to stun us, but apart from Saat Khoon Maaf I've never seen Priyanka use her body, her eyes and even her hands so much to develop a character. My favourite scenes would be too spoilery for this review, but let's just say she had me at the headbutt. <br />
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I was also afraid of Ranbir overdoing his Charlu Chaplin act, which in this fan's opinion has been done to death and I was ready to never see him goof around like that ever again. Go figure, even that turned out to be an unfounded fear. It's not that he doesn't abuse it, but it didn't bother me one bit because there were plenty of serious moments to make up for it. His character has far more depth to it than the trailers had us believe and mercifully he's not running around banging his head against a wall the entire movie. His permanent smile is not, as I had thought, just an expression of permanent optimism, but also at times a mask behind which he can hide when the words he cannot speak fail him.<br />
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I think the moral of the story here may end up being that I need to stop watching trailers and base my expectations on them, huh?<br />
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Because despite all these expectations that the trailers built (for better or worse), Barfi! is not a goofy story. It may be a fairy-tale, which means its characters seem to live in this world that is conveniently supportive, but it's one well-wrapped in a healthy lesson about unrestrained love and loyalty. About settling or moving on. And about recognizing that you found what you were looking for even in the strangest places.<br />
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Barfi! has a simple message: companionship and having fun with each other are the key ingredients to making a relationship last, not teenage crushes. And oh, how I love a movie that shows love is not a one-time deal! Few Indian films subscribe to this philosophy and you all know it's one of my biggest pet peeves with Indian cinema, Bollywood and elsewhere. So with that as the cherry on an already sweet and delicious cake, what more can I ask for?Dolce and Namakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13403089235872528987noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3503508735843316282.post-50140855288224391482012-09-17T13:04:00.000-07:002012-09-17T13:04:36.125-07:00The Reluctant Fundamentalist ReviewSometimes this is the problem with TIFF: you navigate so many movies in so little time that you don't have the luxury of getting "in the right mood" for each film. I saw The Reluctant Fundamentalist after English Vinglish and before Gangs of Wasseypur Part 2. And its subtlety was maybe too much for me. I came out of it disappointed that it lacked the punch I was expecting. Perhaps it really did lack teeth (and reading excerpts from the book now, I am tempted to say that it did), or perhaps I failed to dial in on the right frequency. Or maybe I was too distracted by my blinding crush on Riz Ahmed (seriously! those EYES!!) to take note of other aspects of the film. Anything's possible.<br />
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This is the story of a Pakistani/Punjabi young man, Changez, who goes to the US to study and work. After graduation he gets hired into a valuation firm where he quickly rises up the ranks through his gift for thinking outside the box and through his ruthless approach to optimizing profit for companies, oftentimes at the expense of their workers. He's a confident, even cocky young man who wants... everything. Then of course 9/11 hits. And between episodes of racial profiling and pressure from his family (and from other people he meets) to choose a side, he ends up moving back to Pakistan where he becomes a teacher at the University of Lahore. But his life is far from peaceful even here as he continues to be under suspicion of terrorist ties, so when an American professor gets kidnapped in Lahore, his allegiances have to be tested once again.<br />
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I won't spend too much time on the present-day part of the story because as gorgeous as the opening scene is - the music from a qawwali concert attended by the Khan family (Om Puri and Shabana Azmi play Changez's parents) playing over images of the American professor getting roughed up and taken away in a van - it's a pretty bland ride from here. The dialogues between Changez Khan and his interviewer Bobby (Liev Schreiber) sound like every other Hollywood movie script, so while the action keeps you engaged, there's not much to be learned from this.<br />
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The real story is told in flashbacks by a bearded Changez and it takes us through his love affair with New York and the American Dream, and then through his disenchantment with the land of the free in the paranoid post-9/11 world. The first part of the story is extremely well told: in several short but highly effective scenes we learn about the growing distance between Changez and the culture of his parents, we get to know him as a caustic, sometimes arrogant but always charming young man, we see him winning over his colleagues and superiors, and we root for his budding romance with Erica (a brunette Kate Hudson who should henceforth forget that any colour other than blonde even exists).<br />
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And through all this, while we're waiting for the other shoe to drop, we're perfectly in sync with this complex character. We laugh at Changez's self-deprecating dry humour even though we know it will turn sour later on. We rejoice with him when he gets promoted even though we know he'll only fall harder. We cheer for him when he tells Erica "All these pictures of me? Come on, you must have a little crush on me." even though we know that relationship can't end well. But then 9/11 happens. And this strong character starts closing up and we lose that connection we thought we had with him.<br />
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This was, for me, the biggest flaw of the film. There's an episode where Changez talks about how he felt as he was
watching the planes hit the towers on 9/11 and he says (quoting from
memory) "Before I got to think about the loss of human lives and about
what this meant, for a few brief moments I was in awe... at the audacity
of this act. At the brilliance of it." It's a shocking statement, and
it holds a promise of a film that will pull no punches. But
unfortunately, this is the only moment of its kind. The rest of his inner struggle seems to happen behind closed doors and we never get more insight into his changes of heart. Yes, we witness him being a victim of racial profiling, yes, we see him question his line of work in front of a situation that is too close to home for comfort and yes, we see how his skin colour becomes visible to those close to him, but I for one was in the dark about how this strong, determined, ambitious man ended up doing a complete u-turn. Maybe I wouldn't need an explanation if I was an NRI myself, and maybe this movie is made for NRIs, but as someone who wasn't even on the continent when 9/11 happened, I couldn't relate to him without some guidance and there was none.<br />
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But that said, maybe it was just me. Maybe others will watch and totally get it.<br />
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And I do highly recommend watching it, if not for Riz Ahmed (in case you missed all my gushing so far, he's fabulous!), then for Mira Nair's flawless direction (what else is new?) and for the excellent music. Given that this soundtrack has been impossible to find, I wasn't even aware that I would be treated to two Atif Aslam songs, so imagine my giddiness when all of a sudden I recognized his voice. Not only that, but one of the songs is a <a href="http://www.brecorder.com/arts-a-leisure/50-movies/74522-peter-gabriel-atif-aslam-sings-for-the-reluctant-fundamentalist.html" target="_blank">collaboration with Peter Gabriel</a>, who wrote the music for the Urdu poem sung by Atif. I wish I could find even a snippet of it on youtube, I know it would sell the movie single-handedly.<br />
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Speaking of Pakistani artists, another little moment of unexpected joy was provided by Mira's nod to a film I absolutely loved last year: Shoaib Mansoor's <a href="http://dolcenamak.blogspot.ca/2011/09/bol-khuda-kay-liye-shoaib-mansoors-yin.html" target="_blank">Bol</a>. In one of the scenes setting up the stage in Lahore, a couple (can't remember if it was Shabana and Om or just a random couple) comes out from a screening of Bol and comments on the virtues of the film. You can't imagine how that made my day!<br />
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Last but not least, for a film about racial tensions post 9/11, The Reluctant Fundamentalist also packs a surprising amount of humour, and some of the extra-dry one-liners had the entire audience (and this screened to a full house at TIFF) in stitches. A special mention here to Nelsan Ellis who gets some of the most hilarious wisecracks as an American of (I assume) Jamaican origins. <br />
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So with that in mind, I take your leave now to go and hunt down the book which I am hoping will give me more of those one-liners along with a better insight into the fascinating Changez Khan. I may need to keep a picture of Riz Ahmed open while reading it though...<br />
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<br />Dolce and Namakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13403089235872528987noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3503508735843316282.post-10571128652733006272012-09-15T08:48:00.001-07:002012-09-15T08:48:24.225-07:00English Vinglish ReviewLately I've been wondering if Bollywood is losing its appeal for me, I've been getting into other things, haven't loved too many flicks, and even when watching Indian films I was mostly interested in the artsy stuff than the big films. For a while I thought it was Bollywood going through a slump. Then I thought maybe it's me, maybe this hobby had just run its course. But English Vinglish, the story of a woman whose confidence suffers because she can't speak English like the rest of her family can, reminded me why I fell in love with Bollywood back in the day. It reminded me of the feeling of watching a movie and not caring if it's simple or complex, or if it has a certain star, or if it's perfectly edited, or even if I agree with the philosophy of it. It reminded me of those times when I used to watch Bollywood movies just for the magic of seeing a different world materialize in front of my eyes.<br />
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Strange how that is because English Vinglish is not a particularly novel story, nor does it have the kind of strong heroine that I usually like to see. In fact I was heard to whisper-scream at poor Shashi (Sridevi's character): "Get a sense of humour already!!". But something about the way the story unfolded made me happy to just be in this movie. Maybe it was the ladoos that made everything sweeter because man oh man are they everywhere in this film! The trailer alone mentions them about 50 times! (And thank God the lovely people at TIFF gave us some after because otherwise I'd probably be in Little India right now, at 3 am, looking for them.)<br />
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Having never seen a full Sridevi movie before I didn't really know what to expect from her. But the moment she did a series of Michael Jackson moves in the beginning of the movie she had me eating out of her hand. And even though her wimpy character infuriated me in the beginning I was still happy to cheer for her to become a stronger woman as the movie progressed. Being a big believer in the idea that respect is earned, not implied, I did have a bone to pick with Shashi in the first half of the movie which plays like a less dramatic version of the Seeta story in Seeta aur Geeta. The type of story that irritates me by default. But unlike with Seeta and Geeta I can sincerely appreciate a character who finds the strength to change their condition within themselves, without waiting for a Geeta to come flying down from heaven, so when Shashi decided to go take English lessons and picked up the phone, I was fully on board with this character. <br />
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Also, how badass is Shashi's sister? She only had one important line in the
whole movie but how fabulous was it that at the core of the story it's not some teenage crush that motivates Shashi to change, but the respect she has for her sister! I, for one, really appreciated this detail, fleeting as it was. Yay for sister power!<br />
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Apart from Sridevi, who was simply lovely, Adil Hussain also puts in a wonderful performance as the distant husband. I must commend him for the way he played Satish because it would have been very easy for that character to come across as the villain, but he retains enough warmth in his interactions with Shashi that I kept finding excuses for his behaviour even when, maybe, he didn't deserve it. And I know most people will disagree with this because I've seen this character get labelled as a class A jerk more than once so far. I may be a jerk myself but I found some of his jokes quite funny and harmless, certainly not as offensive as they were made out to be by Shashi's dramatic reactions. Really girl, if you're offended, speak up, slap him, do something about it, don't just sit there and suffer in silence. But I've already addressed this earlier so I won't bore you again with it.<br />
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English Vinglish, by the way, is one of those rare Hindi films where you end up caring about all those secondary characters too because they feel like real people. I've seen those people in my own Business English classes, so it was nice to meet them again in a movie. Ironically enough (and a first for me), the non-desi characters felt more fleshed out than some of the desi ones. At least in the English class. And I don't just mean Mehdi Nebbou, who got a heart flutter even out of me when he started speaking in French in one of the scenes towards the end (you'll *know* which one it is but hint: it's over the phone, and yes, it's so much dreamier if you understand French). Hell, you could have swept me onto a dustpan and carried me out of the theatre after that scene, that's how perfect he was. And I don't even like that language. Though, to be fair he did get some glorious lines throughout, and his oh-so-snob attitude towards fries had me smiling from ear to ear, which let's think about it for a second: how often is a non-desi character so well written in a Hindi film that you like them right away? Sadly, not often at all. (Oh but yes, it helps that he's so handsome too.)<br />
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Speaking of non-desi characters, I was ready to cringe about the gay English teacher. I mean I was ready to just close my eyes and go lalalalala every time he spoke to avoid throwing shoes at the screen because, well, Indian movies are not exactly known for sensitive portrayals of such minorities. And again, what a surprise. Yes, he was over the top at times (as are, in fact, most of my real life gay friends), but for the most part Cory Hibbs hit all the right notes! Not only did he stay away from those done-to-death mannerisms such as the limp hand, the lisp and addressing everyone with "honey", but the film treats him as normal person, not as a curiosity or as an alien (ok, his clothes were kind of crazy but hey I know straight men who dress worse than that!). And I know the entire audience was with me on this one because there was unanimous clapping when the point was made in one of the scenes in the film. I love Toronto!<br />
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Of course Sridevi got the biggest cheers throughout the film, it goes without saying, and well deserved, but from me the biggest cheer goes to the writer-director, Gauri Shinde, who manages to create a story that, as the kids say these days, keeps it real from beginning to end. So real in fact that I was reminded of my first trip to North America and how daunting and complicated everything seemed: from the push-bars on the buses to the streets in downtown (and Toronto is also a grid-city, just like New York, you'd think it's the easiest thing in the world), to the drinks menus in restaurants and the neverending streets in the suburbias. All these little details, all these little fears, all these little victories, Gauri Shinde captures them in the movie and plays them for laughs without shoving them in your face.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image courtesy of Filmicafe.com</td></tr>
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And we did laugh a lot throughout the movie. And we smiled a lot. We even clapped a few times. Because there are goofy scenes, yes, but then there are also moments that are funny in a quiet, homely kind of way. My favourite bits were Meera (the bride to be) translating some random ridiculousness to her American husband-to-be when he couldn't understand Hindi. Their relationship wasn't talked about much, but these little moments made them look like a real couple who teases each other and pokes each other. Of course, pyaar se. By the way, not sure if the role reversal was intentional but I like to think this is what Shashi and her husband would have been like at the beginning of their marriage. So just keep that in mind when you're laughing at Meera making fun of her fiance's difficulties with Hindi: if Satish is a jerk, then she is one too. Perspective is everything, no?<br />
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English Vinglish is not a story with fireworks and emotional outbursts. It doesn't need to be. It's just a simple little story about how people, words and events can change your attitude towards life in the blink of an eye.
And about finding the right balance. It's the kind of movie that I know I could find flaws in (and I probably will on subsequent viewings) but its message is so endearing and so in line with my own life philosophy that I'd rather sit and munch on my ladoo with a smile on my face than nit-pick at it. While I do that, you go watch, I dare you to be a curmudgeon when you come out of it! And if you are, just watch the fabulous songs again!<br />
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PS: One more picture of Mehdi Nebbou at the premiere (courtesy of Filmicafe) because I could never resist a man dressed in black.<br />
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Dolce and Namakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13403089235872528987noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3503508735843316282.post-36479455454713051042012-08-29T11:00:00.000-07:002012-08-29T11:00:12.111-07:00The Ship of TheseusA third into Ship of Theseus I had decided that I will not be blogging about it. Two thirds in, I was almost regretting trading my trip to the gym for a trip to see it. And then the last scene happened. And it all came together. And I thought: "Ha! Ok, now that's cool!". But I was still not going to write about it. And then something weird happened: I kept thinking about it the entire way home and well into the evening. Then I started talking about it at home. And, well, here I am... Hi blog friends!!!<br />
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I saw Ship of Theseus at an advance screening before its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival next week. And you all know how much I love TIFF, the festival that never fails to bring something to talk about on this blog. Even more so this year when there is an entire section dedicated to Mumbai filmmakers: <a href="http://tiff.net/thefestival/filmprogramming/programmes/citytocity" target="_blank">City to City</a>! That link, by the way, was just to make you all jealous, I won't be able to see every one of those movies, though I will try for as many as possible. Keep your fingers crossed for me to also get tickets for Midnight's Children and English Vinglish! I will need all the good karma you can send me. But back to our Ship!<br />
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Since I got one in my press kit (by the way, this is so exciting, I never got a press kit before!), here's the official synopsis:<br />
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<i>An unusual photographer grapples with the loss of her intuitive brilliance as an aftermath of a clinical procedure. An erudite monk, confronting an ethical dilemma with a long held ideology, has to choose between principle and death. And a young stock broker, following the trail of a stolen kidney, learns how intricate morality can be. Following the separate strands of their philosophical journeys, and their eventual convergence, Ship of Theseus explores questions of identity, justice, beauty, meaning and death.</i><br />
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So why did I not want to write about it, you will ask. It's not that it's badly made. On the contrary, it's fabulously scripted, very well acted, and brilliantly shot. But it commits one unpardonable sin: it draaaaaags! It's almost as if the director forgot to say "cut" after every scene. So you find yourself "getting it" and then having to sit through another minute of imagery just to wrap it up. It gets tiring. I also think the film would have benefited from running the stories in parallel instead of one after the other. Even if the ideas didn't overlap (though they could have), at least we would have had a sense of cohesion throughout the film rather than feeling like we're watching three 45-minute films. But hey, we were told that there is editing still to be done, so maybe those of you watching this at TIFF will wonder what the hell I was talking about... I sincerely hope you will!<br />
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So forget all that. The content more than makes up for the lack of editing. If Ship of Theseus were a mockumentary it would begin like this: "You think you know about [insert theme]... But you have no idea!". Just kidding. But there's some truth to that. What the three stories do is take one theme (and I won't mention it because I want you all to suffer like I did until you figure it out mwahahaha!) and look at it, not from 2 antithetic points of view, but from six. Actually, seven.<br />
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Each story has two characters that are at opposite ends of the debate, each presenting an excellent string of arguments, with a seventh one thrown in at the end of the third story, adding the economic dimension (read: money). As their ideologies battle each other, the viewer gets to ponder on more than just who's right and who's wrong, a trivial question anyway. We're left analysing our own ideologies and the compromises we make.<br />
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Most of these characters are idealists: Maitreya (Neeraj Kabi), the monk, is so obstinate in his pledge for non-violence that he is willing to sacrifice his own life rather than support the pharmaceutical industry. But if you believe that you can make a difference in the positive through your fight, how much of a difference will you make in the negative by giving it up? Are your principles more important than yourself or do they end with the self? And while we're at it, what is the self anyway? A question that will keep coming back throughout the film, as expected from the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus" target="_blank">title</a>.<br />
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If Ship of Theseus were a book, this section would be the most highlighted because each line of dialogue carries some philosophical weight. Very little happens in this story, but much is talked about and every line is worth thinking about. The conversation goes from the importance of all living matter in the world to the effect that micro-organisms have on our actions and the debate is fascinating to say the least. Not many movies make me wish I could take notes, but this section sure did. <br />
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Aaliya (Aida El-Kashef), the photographer, is so passionate about her art that she follows it against every obstacle fate throws at her. She manages to create a laboratory of tools that make up for her eye-sight to the point where it seems that they also replace her craft. But when her eye-sight is restored and she doesn't need those crutches anymore she starts to doubt her own talent: how much did the tools facilitate and how much did they create? My favourite scene of the film is Aaliya in the middle of a busy intersection trying to take pictures and being assaulted by the noise, the commotion, the colours, the movement, the "subjects". The images go by at different speeds and we can really feel her confusion, her frustration, her helplessness because we're made to experience it ourselves. An excellent sample of the filmmaker's talent this scene (and the cinematographer's, for sure). <br />
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Aaliya's story reminded me of Luciano de Crescenzo's thoughts on the philosphy of Marsilio Ficino. To summarize it, de Crescenzo concludes that the human soul was built to fight against the hardships of life much like the propeller of a motorboat was built to work against the resistance of the water. Taking away the hardships is like taking away the water: it will break the engine.<br />
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Finally, the most eventful story, sees Navin (Sohum Shah), investigating the value of honesty. His preoccupation (obsession even?) with making things right leads him all the way across the world in what many would call a wild goose chase. Between lovely shots of Stockholm and heavy conversations, more questions arise: How much does ignorance excuse? Is there a best way to make amends for injustice? And last but not least: how much do principles weigh in money?<br />
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Of course the best part of the film is the last scene that reunites the three tracks and adds yet another layer to the story. But I won't spoil that for you.<br />
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I wanted to end this review with a word on the actors and a word on the cinematography, but I realize that other than finding fifty synonyms for brilliant, I can't do much else. There's a scene in the beginning of the movie where the camera closes in on a caterpillar crossing a busy corridor and we see dozens of shoes stepping around it, most of them a few centimeters shy of squashing it, though none does. That was the moment when I sank into my chair and thought: oooh, at least it's gonna be a pretty one! Luckily, it was more than just a pretty one!<br />
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To keep this in Ancient Greece territory, Ship of Theseus is like reading Plato's Dialogues: you're not there for what happens necessarily, you're there because of the questions it raises and because it makes you think about things you thought you knew in different ways. From this point of view Ship of Theseus is a fabulous experiment, one not to be missed, so here's hoping all the editing issues get resolved for its big debut at TIFF! <br />
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<u><b>Ship of Theseus (2012, English, Hindi, Arabic, Swedish)</b></u><br />
<i>Director: Anand Gandhi</i><br />
<i>Starring: Sohum Shah, Aida El-Kashef, Neeraj Kabi</i><br />
<i>Director of Photography: Pankaj Kumar </i>Dolce and Namakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13403089235872528987noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3503508735843316282.post-49143373874421963212012-07-19T10:03:00.001-07:002012-07-19T10:03:47.573-07:00In Defense of Veronica and ImtiazClearly I get too passionate about Imtiaz Ali's movies for my own good, but it's because for some reason I really, really get them (or I think I do anyway). And it bugs me when they get misinterpreted and judged by, well, people who don't get them. <br />
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I liked Cocktail. Didn't love it, and the second half was as messy as they say it is, with too many predictable situations and resolutions, but whatever, no rom-com is perfect, so overall I liked it. And as I've said before I'm all about the characters, so if the first half gives me a bunch of good solid characters and the second half doesn't mess it up <i>too</i> much, then I'm on board. Sure Imtiaz Ali could have been more progressive with Cocktail and written a completely different ending, like the girls ending up together or something (which quite a few people were rooting for) but... considering how many people ripped on Rockstar for the dumbest reasons, I can't really blame the guy. By the way, if you haven't seen the movie and you mind spoilers, stop reading right now. This is not a review, this is a spoilerific rant about what happens in the movie and how it all makes perfect sense to me. You've been warned.<br />
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I've been reading a few articles (not many, otherwise there would be a lot of four letter words in this blog post because they tend to get me angrier than I should allow) that talk about how stereotypical Cocktail is because Veronica is a slut, Meera is a virgin and "of course the virgin gets the guy".<br />
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Well, first of all, in what universe does the party girl who is clearly shown to be sleeping around get the guy? No, I don't just mean the Indian universe, I mean the WHOLE universe. I'll even take examples from real life, because I for one can't think of a single movie, other than Pretty Woman, where that happens. Let's make one thing clear, oh Indian reviewers who complain that Cocktail is not modern enough: party girls are not considered marriage material. Not here, not anywhere. Especially if they sleep around. It's not fair, it's sexist and it's bullshit, but unfortunately, that's how the world turns. I know because I've spent the last decade being enraged by the stupidity of this real life stereotype where guys who sleep around are studs, while girls who do it are sluts. And I've yelled at guy-friends more than once for calling girls cheap just because they had one-night stands. But you know... unfortunately, that's just how it is. And none of those girls that I was defending are married now (not that they want to be, but I'll get to that too, in a minute), and if they are in a steady relationship it's because enough time has passed since their party days that no one cares anymore. By the way, people still refer to them as the town bike behind their back. Yea, life sucks.<br />
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Having said that, those very people who "defend" Veronica's right to a love story and deplore that she didn't get the guy because she's a slut strike me as the most sexist of the lot. Because if they had actually understood the character, they wouldn't be calling her a slut to begin with. Oh, and they'd also have figured out that there was no point in her "getting the guy" because getting the guy is simply not the be all and end all of life. It's easy to get lost in stereotypes and yes, Cocktail does employ some stock characters to build the story on, but, in writing, a cliche is a problem only if it's used simplistically. If enough is built around it to justify it, then it's not a cliche anymore. Or as someone smarter than me once put it: has the cliche been earned? If so, it's cool. And this is the catch with Veronica: that cliche has definitely been earned by her character's backstory.<br />
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Veronica is fucked up. There's no way around this, she just is. She was abandoned by her parents who don't give two shits about her, she's been leeched off of probably her whole life because she has money, in fact it's been happening for so long that this has become her way of keeping people around, and she's incapable of building real, committed relationships. She loses herself in alcohol and drugs every night because she just wants to feel something. In a brilliant little scene after Veronica takes Meera home, she is shown talking to the videocamera and asking herself "How do I feel?", then unconvincingly concluding she feels "happy". That little scene sums up Veronica's needs in a nutshell. But to me Veronica gets the happiest ending of all three characters: she learns how to create and maintain a relationship that can give her the emotional stability she craves. That's what she thinks she wants from Gautam, and because society told her so, she thinks she can only obtain it by getting married and being a good wife. But the awesomeness of Cocktail is that she realizes she can have all this without giving up her personality. <br />
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How is that not modern enough? How can people be so narrow-minded as to root for her to "get the guy" and get married when that's EXACTLY what would obliterate her personality completely? Her personality, by the way, is not that she drinks and parties, but that she's free-spirited and independent. And not yet ready to settle down and play wife. Nothing wrong with that from where I'm sitting.<br />
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Which brings me to: Cocktail is not a movie about getting the guy, who marries him, who doesn't. The guy is completely irrelevant to the plot, or if you will, much like the girls are in Southie masala, he's just a catalyst for the plot. The real relationship, the real story happens between the girls. So even without going into bisexual territory, Imtiaz Ali and Sajid Ali create a romance between the two girls where they go through everything that two people in a romantic relationship would go through (or really, any kind of close relationship): they bond, they share, they make each other happy, they give each other emotional support, they balance each other out, they break up, they sacrifice things for each other and in the end realize that they still love each other. Voila. The story of every rom-com out there. Oh, but yeah, the guy is only a small part of it. Ooops, damn it, Cocktail writers, how dare you be so un-modern!<br />
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I guess this is the biggest point I wanted to make with this rant: if one looks at Cocktail from the traditional angle of the guy having to choose between two girls, then yes, it's cliched and it ends the way every other movie of its kind ends. But Cocktail changes the point of view and completely sidelines the male lead in order to give us the relationship between two strong, stubborn yet fragile, independent women (though each in a different way), whose friendship gets challenged by the events in the film. By the end we're almost not even invested in whether or not Meera and Gautam end up together but in how will Veronica and Meera make up because that's the relationship we don't want to see destroyed. For me it's a completely different movie when looked at from this point of view, and that's what I was hoping more people would take away from it.<br />
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Obviously this is Veronica's movie all the way, but I do have a few thoughts on the other two characters as well. First up: Gautam.<br />
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Gautam is described as a flirt and a social butterfly, but the movie shows us that it's only he who has that image of himself. He tries to flirt with girls all the time but I don't remember any scenes where that got him anywhere. Except for the scene at the office with the Asian client. And here I have to remind myself that this is a Hindi film and they have no clue how to even write Asian characters, so that was going to come out wrong anyway. But it's worth noting that the Asian lady merely forgives him for being late after he delivers his cheesy line, she doesn't go to bed with him or anything. She does show up at the club later on, but then so does everyone else in the office, so I read that as the company taking the client out, not as Gautam scoring with her. Of course, I could be wrong. If I am, then that's the only scene where his flirting gets him a date. And yes, I remember the waitress at the bar in the first scene, but I'm pretty sure she was really after a fat tip.<br />
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Then what happens with Gautam? He falls in love. Let's remind ourselves, by the way, that his summary of the relationship with Veronica is perfectly accurate: casual sex, companionship, no commitment offered or wanted from either side. No one ever mentions love. So why would he be at fault for falling in love with someone else? There's no betrayal from his point of view, he's free to do whatever he pleases. And that brings me to another thorny point: "he falls for Meera because she's the proper desi bride". Um... again... I disagree. He falls for Meera for the same reasons why Veronica loves her: she grounds him, she keeps him real, she doesn't take any of his bullshit and she is, unlike Veronica, emotionally available. By the by, the moment when Gautam starts noticing Meera is not in her demure interactions with his mother but rather when she lets herself go and channels her inner Veronica, showing that there's more fun to her than what Gautam initially thought.<br />
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So technically speaking, it's not the virgin that gets the guy, it's the wild side of the virgin that gets him to notice her. But that's once again going into details. The point here is: any guy would fall for Meera. And any guy looking to settle down would choose her, not because she's a virgin but because she exudes stability. It really is that simple. Or to put it more plainly: why <i>wouldn't</i> he choose her?<br />
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Meera on the other hand is the hardest one to read. I think the key to her character is in a little scene when she is looking at Gautam and Veronica being lovey-dovey. She wants that, but because she's so insecure she doesn't really know how to get it. So when it comes to her in the form of a reformed Gautam, she falls for it against her better judgement. She almost falls for it because she doesn't know any better and, just like Veronica, she craves that kind of affection without knowing where or how to get it. As Gautam so brilliantly puts it: "You're lonely and I'm characterless." Of course when the butterflies kick in all reason goes out the window, which reminds me that my favourite kind of criticism has been stuff like "She's so dumb that she falls for him". Uh... yeah... because you've never fallen for the wrong person despite knowing better. Because love has EVERYTHING to do with reason. Everything.<br />
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Sarcasm aside, did you ever notice that despite being such a "good girl"
Meera never once judges Veronica for her loose ways? She has a couple of
moments where she appeals to Veronica's non-existent sense of decency
(such as asking where her pants are), but she never attempts to change
her. Same can be said for Gautam: she judges him initially and is proved
wrong (in a scene that is played for laughs, but I think it's pretty
important), after which she concedes to get to know him and accepts him as Veronica's boyfriend.<br />
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Generally speaking people's capacity to accept each other for who they are, warts and everything, is what makes Cocktail stand out from the likes of Mujhse Dosti Karoge and other gems from the early 2000s. And what separates Gautam's mother's generation from this modern one. Yup, I said modern. Now sue me for defending such a "regressive", "cliched" and "trite" movie. <br />
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Oh dear, I've done it again. I've written a long blog post just to say to Imtiaz Ali: it's ok, I still love you, I still get you. Let those square-headed journos blabber, you just keep doing your thing and being awesome.<br />
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Ahem... Sorry, where was I? Oh yeah. Cocktail. It's not a perfect movie, it's not free of plot holes and flaws. But there's more to it than the cliched love triangle that some reviewers are seeing it as. Way more to it. <br />
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<u><b>Cocktail (2012, Hindi)</b></u><br />
<i>Director: Homi Adajania</i><br />
<i>Writers: Imtiaz Ali, Sajid Ali</i><br />
<i>Starring: Deepika Padukone, Saif Ali Khan, Diana Penty</i><br />
<br />Dolce and Namakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13403089235872528987noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3503508735843316282.post-80744577017549504442012-07-16T22:23:00.001-07:002012-07-16T22:36:31.916-07:00Vedam ReviewVedam for me was one of those filmi film experiences that one never forgets. I had pestered the Toronto distributor for this film so much that the moment it arrived in a theatre here (two weeks after the release), he called me to let me know. Funny thing is, I had never met him but he knew who I was (probably from the Varudu screening where my friend and I were the only two goris, which attracted a ton of attention). When I got to the theatre for a Sunday morning screening, several people escorted me to my seat. I felt like such a rockstar.<br />
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But as always with Telugu movies, there were no subtitles, so at the time I decided to wait with my review until I had seen it with subs because I've learned over the years that the most awesome looking films can have the dumbest dialogues, so the saying about judging a book by its cover really applies most of the times.<br />
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The film follows the inter-weaved stories of: <br />
- Cable Raju (Allu Arjun), a slum cable provider whose goal is to marry a rich girl<br />
- Vivek (Manchu Manoj), a rock band singer looking to make it big in Hyderabad with his band<br />
- Saroja (Anushka Shetty), a prostitute trying to move on to bigger business<br />
- Ramulu (Nagayya), a weaver who owes money to the local gangster<br />
- Khureshi (Manoj Bajpay, always a joy to watch), a Muslim man whose wife's unborn twins get killed in a religious incident.<br />
All five stories come together in the end during a terrorist attack. <br />
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Namak: Boy, am I glad we had no subs for the first song in the theatre. We really should have turned them off on the DVD too.</div>
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Dolce: I'm sure they're not that bad in the original form.</div>
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Namak: But it's not just the lyrics, the picturization is atrocious as well.</div>
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Dolce: Heh, not every movie is a Rockstar, you know. Besides, what do we know about metal bands in Bangalore, maybe they all practice in huge empty warehouses and pose for imaginary photoshoots while singing and being all badass, smoking on the "sets" and other such acts of rebellion.</div>
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Namak: Ha! Or maybe the only reason why this song even exists is to make sure everyone got a song.</div>
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Dolce: Speaking of songs---</div>
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Namak: Yeah... I know. I know. How sexy and awesome is Prapancham?</div>
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Dolce: Possibly my favourite moves from Arjun, despite really loving a lot of his other songs. There's something uber-sexy in this one, and it's not just the fact that he wears his jeans "street-dancing style".</div>
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Namak: To show how gangsta' he is, yo!</div>
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Dolce: Shut up, you know you watched this song on repeat before writing this review.</div>
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Jokes aside, it is rather neat that almost every character intro is done through a song. Even the old man Ramulu is introduced to the rhythmic beats of the silk machine and the poem recited by his grandson. It's not an easy story to tell, with 5 different tracks eventually merging together in the end, but because of how different their environments are and because of how unique each character is, I was never confused. The ample intros really helped with that. <br />
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In the beginning of the film the theme connecting everyone is escape: everyone is looking to get out of their current situation and build a better future for themselves (through money, fame or just respect). Krish seems to like ragging on that stereotype, it was a running theme in his first film as well, Gamyam. Which is fine, it's a good message to pass on, and it's cleverly used in this film because as the money or gold travels from one character to the next we get to really evaluate how deserving they are of it, and also how important it is for us as the viewer to see their problem resolved. I liked that just like the film's characters, I was also forced to choose who should end up with it.<br />
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Namak: Quite a few layers of the pyramid of needs here, no? Everything from wanting a rich wife, to wanting an education for your children, to starting a new business.</div>
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Dolce: Needs <i>and</i> wants. Old Ramulu's plight was really the only valid need. </div>
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Namak: Why just his? When you think about it, his is also more of a want than a need: they're trying to get the money so his grandson can go to school and get an education which will provide a better life. Just because his sacrifice is bigger doesn't make his situation more tragic, emotions aside, of course.</div>
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Dolce: Well, if you look at it like that, anything other than the need for food is a "nice-to-have". How is Raju's situation then different from Ramulu's? He just wants a better life. And the persecuted Khureshi? He doesn't <i>need</i> to leave, he <i>wants</i> to.</div>
<span style="color: blue;">Namak: That's just it, it's hard to draw the line. Who has the bigger need and who is more deserving. Which is probably what the movie was trying to say too, in giving us all these different scenarios. In the end, everyone earns their right to happiness, whatever that happy may be.</span><br />
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But there's more than one theme in Vedam, and another one that comes up in every story is religion. As much as I disliked the rock-band's entire story (including the obnoxiousness of Vivek's character, though there is a point to it in the end), they had a couple of good dialogues about humanity, thinking bigger than themselves and also, about how religion only divides because people don't "speak the same language". I found that track to be the most rushed and poorly established, but if more time had been spent on it, it could have been the best one. I'm always happy to see young people who successfully blend universal values such as compassion and tolerance with unorthodox lifestyles and I thought Lasya, Vivek's love-interest, really nailed that combo despite having only a few small scenes. It's too bad so much screentime had to be spent on Manoj Manchu's singing, but such is the filmi world we live in... it's all about the heroes.<br />
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But ultimately Vedam is a movie about sacrifice and humanity. It's a movie about how heroes are made in a world that is neither selfless, nor fair. And it's about those very rare moments when one realizes that being self-absorbed is an even bigger sin than stealing or lying. Sure, Vedam puts it in a very idealistic set-up, but hey, what's life without a little hyperbole?<br />
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Krish always seems to do well with visuals in his films, though song picturizations are not his forte. But he has an eye for atmospheric moments and snapshots that tell their own stories. The colony in which Raju conducts his illicit cable business got some of the coolest shots, though Saroja's brothel is a close second. Krish is almost as good with brothels as Sanjay Leela Bhansali. Uh... no pun intended, of course.<br />
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And because Allu Arjun was the main reason for me to even see this movie, can't leave without a word about him. The first time I watched Vedam I was convinced my favourite Arjun moments were his emotional scenes in the hospital. They're still my favourites. But I've added one more: in one of their very few interactions Saroja asks Raju if it's true love between him and the rich girl. His hesitant expression: part guilt, part conviction, part self-doubt... as if it was the first time he had to ask himself that question... Brilliant.<br />
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It's not that Vedam is a perfect film, it's not. It tries too hard in many places and stretches plausibility. And it has less than mediocre music. But it's also full of perfect little moments and imperfect little characters that win your heart. It may have taken the DVD a long time to come out, but it's one that was well worth the wait. Now excuse me while I go watch that wicked song again. Another 50 times.<br />
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<b><u>Vedam (2011, Telugu) </u></b><br />
<i>Director: Krish</i><br />
<i>Starring: Allu Arjun, Manchu Manoj, Anushka Shetty, Nagayya, Manoj Bajpai </i><br />
<i>Music: MM Keeravani</i><br />
<br />Dolce and Namakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13403089235872528987noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3503508735843316282.post-13589644277018678332012-06-23T12:24:00.000-07:002012-06-23T12:24:45.262-07:00Patang (The Kite)How do you review a movie like Patang, a film about a business-man from Delhi visiting his family in Ahmedabad during the Kites festival? A movie that's so lyrical, so heartfelt and so intimate that it feels like you're reading someone's diary rather than watching a movie. Like going through their childhood photo albums. Every frame of this film feels like a snapshot of a very private moment between the director and the city of Ahmedabad, with its kites in the sky, its busy streets, its cascading rooftops and its fascinating people. <br />
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Don't let the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8dH2BEj5Os&feature=player_embedded" target="_blank">trailer</a> fool you: Patang is not a fast-paced documentary of city life set to bouncy music. Though there is excellent music in it. Patang is an elegantly choreographed medley of moments, all strung together by an invisible thread, like the lantern kite that Jayesh flies at the end of the Festival day. The glimpses we get of each character's life flicker and dance in front of us just long enough to get us hooked but never bright enough to allow a full examination of their situation. Which is just as well because this is not the type of movie to hint at what will happen to the characters after the last frame, in fact, this is not a "happening" movie at all. This is the type of movie where you're enjoying every minute you spend with them, wishing it would never end. It's a movie where you're just happy to be there.<br />
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We've seen a lot of movies lately trying to juxtapose the big city life of well-off entrepreneurs with the simple life of small-towners, but I have yet to come across a film that does it more sensitively than Patang. There's no good versus evil, no poor versus rich, no right and wrong. More importantly no one is judging from behind the camera, and when there is resentment in front of the camera, such as Chakku's bitterness towards his uncle, it's presented as such, not as some philosophical reproach towards the soul-less business people. Most of the times we don't even realize we're seeing a clash between the two worlds, though the battle of the kites is a clear indication that this is what the film is after.<br />
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Jayesh has been successful in business in Delhi, but he now spends less time with his daughter, Priya, and probably no time at all with his wife who chose a wine tasting over this weekend of family time. His mother on the other hand complains constantly about the discomfort of her life, but refuses to be moved to a modern home. Priya on her side is constantly documenting the feel of Ahmedabad with her camera, but she rejects the feelings of a local boy considering them unimportant. Bobby, the local boy, dreams of going away from Ahmedabad and his father's electronics shop, but he whole-heartedly praises the city's unique charm to Priya in an attempt to make her stay. This happens with everyone in the film: more than the battle between the two worlds, we see a little battle within each character, each desperately trying to reconcile their big dreams with the little joys of simple life.<br />
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In a film so rich in subtext there's always the danger of creating an artificial distance with the viewer who is not given enough surface to land on in order to dig deeper. But the director finds a way to retain the intimacy of our relationship with the characters by physically shortening that distance with close-ups and detail-focused compositions, giving the film that home-video feel. If home-videos could ever look so gorgeous, that is.<br />
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Of course a lot of the credit also goes to the actors, 90% of them actually non-actors, as the director pointed out to us at the Toronto screening, who bring such a natural, unrehearsed feel to the film.<br />
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The one line that stayed with me from the whole film is said by Soudha to her brother-in-law towards the end of the film. She says, and I quote from memory: "I don't like it when the kites battle in the skies and they cut each other. I like it when they soar high, as high as they can." And so it is that after the numerous micro-clashes that take place during the film, what soars above it all through the wisdom of these words is the ability to accept everyone for who they are. At the end of the film we leave the characters almost the same way we found them, but maybe, hopefully, just a tiny step closer to each other.<br />
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How do you review a movie like Patang? Not surprisingly the answer is you don't. You just try to pour enough love on the page to ensure others will go see it too. That's really all you can do.<br />
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<b><u>Patang (2011, Hindi)</u></b><br />
<i>Director: Prashant Bhargava</i><br />
<i>Starring: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Seema Biswas, Sugandha Garg</i>Dolce and Namakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13403089235872528987noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3503508735843316282.post-81450417567079927932012-06-21T11:12:00.000-07:002012-06-21T11:12:02.454-07:00New and Old Love for Salaam-e-IshqI really loved Salaam-e-Ishq when I first saw it some 4 years ago. And I kept meaning to rewatch it but... life got in the way. Especially when you have to make time for 3.5 hours. So I just kept rewatching the songs (yes, I will rave again about Saiyaan Re! You didn't think I'd skip that step, did you?) and postponing the movie for another time.<br />
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Well, that time has come. I rewatched it. And my biggest conclusion from this experience is that the deeper you get into a hobby, the more quirks and pet peeves you develop. As much as I try to stay as open minded as I was when I watched my first Indian film, it seems that learning about the industries and about the culture over the years has altered my perception of certain tropes, plots and situations. And so it was that Salaam-e-Ishq won me over this time more with its technical prowess than with its stories. The best part about this rewatch was following how the tracks flow into each other, how one person picking up the phone in one story leads to another hanging up the phone in a completely different story. Truly masterful and engaging, I didn't want to miss a single frame. And that's a huge compliment for a movie that's 3.5 hours long and has so many characters to follow. <br />
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The first time I saw Salaam-e-Ishq, a movie that deftly juggles five love stories (I refuse to consider Sohail Khan trying to bang Isha Koppikkar as even a part of the story) I was in love with three of its tracks:<br />
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1) Tehzeeb and Ashu, the sweet Muslim-Hindu couple who fight to cope with Tehzeeb's memory loss after a train accident. I found Ashu's love for Tehzeeb and his hopeless battle to restore his wife's memories so touching that I didn't even mind the windblowing machine gently caressing Ashu's hair every time he was in the frame.<br />
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2) Raju and Stephanie, the Indian cab driver who falls for the white memsaab in search of her two-timing Indian boyfriend. This was the first time I found Govinda cute with his undeclared love for Stephanie and their tender chemistry made this one of my favourite couples ever.<br />
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3) Kkamini and Raoool, the filmi couple: Kkamini an item queen looking to land a part in a Karan Johar movie (why, Kkamini, whyyyyy???) and Raool a man posing as her fiance for PR purposes. I found them deliciously over the top and they gave the movie that glitz and glitter that I love so much in Bollywood.<br />
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The fourth story, Gia and Shiven, a couple about to get married solving the groom-to-be's cold feet issues, was cute and I really enjoyed Akshaye Khanna in it, but at the time I didn't find it memorable. Except for Shiven's bachelor party song. Hehe! You knew it was coming!<br />
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Last but not least, the fifth couple: Vinay, a man going through a mid-life crisis and Seema, his dutiful wife, annoyed the heck out of me, mostly because I found Vinay's punishment for cheating on his wife too light. Yes, I am cruel like that.<br />
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This time around, the only constant from the previous viewing was my disdain for the Sohail and Isha story. Nothing changed there. But let me tell you how all the other stories changed for me.<br />
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<u>Tehzeeb and Ashu</u><br />
I think Jhoota Hi Sahi ruined John Abraham for me forever. Now that I know he can act... I simply cannot tolerate sub-par acting from him anymore. It's sad really, because he does a decent job most of the time here, but poor man seemed so fake after being tear-gassed for most of the movie that I could not get into it anymore.<br />
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That said, I still found their story to have a lot of potential and I still appreciated the ending for its realism. Everything from the moment when they land in Shiven's apartment defied Bollywood conventions and that makes this couple rock even now. If only that fabulous writing could have been matched by John's acting... If only! <br />
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<u>Raju and Stephanie</u><br />
This was the biggest disappointment for me because I never would have imagined seeing this story in a different way, but many love at first sight plots and too many goris in Bollywood later, I seem to have become very touchy to everything that uses either of the above. I know Raju was supposed to be so sweet with his dream of falling in love with a white tourist, but I simply failed to see the difference between his desire for Stephanie, and Stephanie's NRI fiance's decision to marry an Indian girl. Both were more preoccupied with the colour of the girl's skin than with who she really was. Don't get me wrong, I don't doubt that Raju's feelings were sincere in the end, as opposed to the NRIs, but a love story stemming out of camaraderie would have worked a lot better. As it was, Raju's obsession with meeting a gori memsaab made him seem shallow and yes, slightly creepy, despite Govinda's cuteness.<br />
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Also, after so many movies where the white girl just falls for the Indian guy because... uh... because he's Indian and people enjoy seeing such plots for whatever reason, I've come to be annoyed whenever this happens in a movie. Not to mention that it's really just a twist on the old stalking plot device: if you love her long enough and selflessly enough, she'll fall in love with you. No, Stephanie honey, no. You don't love him back after three days just because he's Indian and because he loves you more than your d00che-bag boyfriend. You might like him, you might be friends with him forever, and over time it may even grow into love, but you don't "unse pyaar karti ho". Or if you do, requesting permission to roll my eyes.<br />
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<u>Kkamini and Rahoul</u><br />
I still totally enjoyed these two characters. Though something about Salman Khan's facial expressions irritates the crap out of me. He reminds me of Cher whose high cheek bones and puckered lips are somehow mistaken for expression by whoever is still giving her acting roles. I've warmed up to Salman in his action roles only because they require minimal histrionics, but the serious scenes in a film like Salaam-e-Ishq really bring out his inability to project emotion. But all good, most of his role was calling for over the top antics, so it almost worked out for him. Besides, how cool is it to see a dude coming to propose riding a white horse? In London. Wearing aviator sunglasses. Classic!<br />
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I was once again bugged by the fact that Kkamini has to give up either love or her career, but this time around, because I feel that the industry has progressed somewhat since the times when this film was made, I can still hope that even if Karan Johar doesn't make her his heroine, other directors will. So this time around I didn't see her choice as a career-ending move anymore which made me happy. Amazing what 5 years can do to my perception of the industry, no?<br />
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<u>Gia and Shiven</u><br />
I don't think I used to like Akshaye Khanna as much as I like him now, so he really was a treat this time around. Despite the fact that his character was an idiot, he managed to make Shiven relatable, if not understandable. Yes, he's immature, shallow and disrespectful, but when he does get it, his change of heart is genuine and he does it while remaining the person that Gia fell in love with the first time around. I really enjoyed his scene at the wedding because everything he said and did was very much consistent with his goofball character. He continues to be immature and shallow, but he's now realized he wants to spend the rest of his days with Gia. Too many movies confuse falling in love (or realizing that one is in love) with a complete change of character and it's refreshing to see one that doesn't. Ullu da patha he started and ullu da patha he remains.<br />
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That said I was still confused about Gia's motivations, she really seemed keen on getting married, and I wasn't exactly sure why. Presumably the parents? Not sure... But I probably would have been freaked out about it too had I been in Shiven's shoes. Just sayin...<br />
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<u>Vinay and Seema (and Anjali)</u><br />
It's perhaps a good time to admit that I skipped through most of the scenes involving Vinay's younger love interest, including her song. That whole bit seemed heavy handed to me the first time around and I didn't think time would have made it better. But what caught my attention this time was the colour palette used with this couple. Or rather the non-colour palette, as everything is some shade or other of grey. Vinay's house, his office, his wardrobe, Seema's wardrobe, everything is blatantly lifeless, which is a stark contrast with Anjali's image: the highlights in her hair, the glitter on her diary, the excitement of her life as a dancer. Now I realize that this contrast could have been handled in a more subtle way, but I actually kind of liked the way it worked out visually and well... Salaam-e-Ishq is not a movie to take home any awards for finesse.<br />
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Also I found myself in a more forgiving mood this time. I wasn't as outraged by Seema's final decision because it did feel that Vinay had learned his lesson. And I suppose over the years I have come to appreciate that about people more than I used to. Funny how that is...<br />
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Overall Salaam-e-Ishq is still a winner in my book and I am still in awe at how effortlessly it sucked me in all over again, but I think some of that wide-eyed innocence I used to have when watching glittery Indian movies is gone for good now. Classic case of "it's not you, it's MEEEE!!", huh? <br />
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<u><b>Salaam-e-Ishq (Hindi, 2007) </b></u><br />
<i>Starring: Salman Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Anil Kapoor, Juhi Chawla, Akshaye Khanna, Ayesha Takia, John Abraham, Vidya Balan, Govinda, Shannon Esra, Sohail Khan, Isha Koppikar </i><br />
<i>Directed by: Nikhil Advani </i><br />
<i>Choreography: Bosco Caesar
</i>Dolce and Namakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13403089235872528987noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3503508735843316282.post-75904702781124002512012-06-10T18:51:00.000-07:002012-06-10T20:10:27.244-07:00Shanghai - A Highriser but not quite a SkyscraperHey guys, it's me. Oh, wait a minute, let me clean up the spiderwebs off the screen for you. Ah... there. Can you see me now? Remember me? It's a little dusty in here, and weeds have started growing in the corners of the floor of this space, but I brought a broom and a review to try and make this blog seem alive again.<br />
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And contrary to my usual format, I'll give you <span style="color: purple;">Dolce and Namak</span> only for the first half while reserving the second half to a long rant about what didn't sit right for me in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-AE6F_5v5A" target="_blank">Shanghai</a> (link to trailer).<br />
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Dolce: Emraan Hashmi is totally adorable! Where has he been until now? And more importantly: how did he manage to be the only character in this movie that my heart went out to despite his horrible looks? </div>
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Namak: He's been around, but either he was great in movies where others stole the show, or he was strictly ok in movies that weren't much to write about. I'm pretty sure this is the first role where I can say he was absolutely brilliant. </div>
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If someone had told me I would ever watch an Abhay Deol movie and fall in love with Emraan Hashmi I would have laughed for hours. Not because I haven't appreciated him before, I have, but he never blew me away. In Shanghai he most certainly did. From behind his Quasimodo-like appearance this videographer turned pr0nographer displays more warmth and wit than any other character in this story (sorry about the hacker spelling, by the way, just trying to avoid popping up in dirty searches). </div>
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Dolce: And how s3xy was that angular moustache on Abhay Deol? </div>
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<span style="color: blue;">Namak: I'm not sure about s3xy, but it did certainly add a je ne sais quoi to his persona.</span> </div>
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Dolce: Perfect casting? </div>
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Namak: Perfect from where we're sitting. Though some critics have taken issue with the fact that his Tamil accent is not up to par, this is one of those times when not being native Hindi speakers really works in our favour. </div>
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Dolce: Indeed. Besides, I can't think of anyone who would have pulled off his last scene so smoothly and with so much panache. Proof that you don't need to wield a machete or to shout your lines at the top of your lungs to be a badass. You can deliver a deadly blow even in a soft spoken, almost blank tone. A masterpiece of direction and histrionics that scene. </div>
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Namak: Agreed. Though when it comes to Abhay Deol I expect excellence anyway.</div>
<span style="color: purple;">Dolce: Sheesh! I would not want to be your kid. </span><br />
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Dolce: And Kalki? </div>
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Namak: Kalki is a tricky one. She's certainly competent but just like I'm getting tired of seeing Anushka Sharma playing the cheerful Punjabi kudi, I am also getting a little bit fed up with Kalki being typecast into the feisty outsider roles. For once I'd like to see her be happy in a few scenes. She has such a radiant smile, she comes across as such a fun person in her live appearances, if only someone could bring that on the screen too.</div>
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Dolce: Well, it's hard to avoid playing the outsider, she's white. </div>
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Namak: True, but even outsiders can be happy and normal in India, no? </div>
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Really all the actors in Shanghai did a fabulous job. Not a single character felt out of place, and it's a tribute to the fantastic craftsmanship of Dibakar Banerjee that we never once got lost in trying to keep track of the politicians and play-makers. In a film where so much space is given to the main characters and so little to the myriad of secondary characters surrounding them, I was truly impressed with how easy it was to identify not only who each of them were, but also what title they held and whose side they were on.<br />
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Dolce: Let's not forget the wonderful music! </div>
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Namak: Though I'd rather forget that they didn't use our <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FMz_KT1mC4" target="_blank">favourite song</a> from the soundtrack. </div>
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Dolce: I'm willing to forgive them for this because Imported Kamariya was such a delight! Not only was the song gorgeous (and tongue in cheek) but its deft editing around the scene that jumpstarts the movie was top-notch. </div>
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Namak: That it was. And you know what else was top-notch? The background music. I can't remember the last time a film's background music made such an impression on us.</div>
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From the background music to the editing, to the sets, to the little things, such as a little slip on the freshly washed pavement, or the enthusiasm of the chai-wallahs buzzing around the politicians, or the subtle (and not so subtle) displays of power of the various police officers that come and go, Shanghai certainly gets all the details right. <br />
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One thing can not be denied about Shanghai: it's a well-crafted movie. Which makes my next comments even more painful because I really wanted it to be perfect. I wanted to leave the theatre and tap my feet on the subway anxious to get home and blog about it. And in a way I did, but not because it was a fabulous movie, rather because it wasn't fabulous enough.<br />
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Corruption is a big topic. In fact it's so big, so prevalent and so powerful that it becomes background noise for most of us, like pollution. We're aware of it, we know our way around it, we live in it, so we don't really notice it anymore. In order to make a powerful film about such a big topic, you would have to zero in on a situation, a set of characters, a moment in history that people can truly relate to. I felt that this was Shanghai's biggest flaw: it didn't make me care. Not only did it not give me enough background on the situation overall (though I can fill in the blanks thinking about similar situations in my own home country), but it also didn't manage to focus enough on the one situation it chose to describe.<br />
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Let me make a parallel. In the excellent The Ides of March there is a character (a woman) whose death sets in motion the entire plot of the movie. Her death is used and abused by everyone involved, in whatever way better serves their own purposes, without any regard whatsoever paid to the fact that she was a human being. THAT was irony. And it hurt, it made me shake my head, it made me think, it made me angry. In Shanghai, dr. Ahmedi's death is used much in the same way, but nothing about it made me give a crap or lament his cruel fate. I thought about the differences and it basically comes down to: the woman in Ides of March was a real person, we got to know her in a few short scenes, we knew her aspirations, knew her motivations, we knew she wasn't an angel, but that made her even more human. In Shanghai we know almost nothing about the doctor. He comes to deliver his speech and he exits the frame as empty as the street that he's left lying on. I can't bring myself to care for his death or for his cause because I'm not told at any point why he is fighting it, what he hopes to gain from it, or even who he is. It doesn't help that throughout the movie details about his womanizing ways keep popping up, but again, with more character development these details would have only made him human.
This backstory minimalism ends up rippling through the entire movie: we can only guess that Shalini's motivations have something to do with her feelings for the doctor and with her own sense of justice, but neither feels terribly compelling. We can guess that Krishnan's actions are driven by disgust and disenchantment, but none of it is showcased in a significant way. Shanghai's characters just float above their own actions without any kind of engagement. And maybe that's the whole point, maybe this movie is supposed to be exactly about Gen Y and its detachment from its own future, its abandonment to a present that it feels it can't change, but in this particular case the economy of emotion ended up alienating me from the very topic that I'm supposed to invest in.<br />
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Another example that may resonate more with Indian movie-goers is Vidya Balan's Kahaani. Leaving aside the sloppiness that allowed me to guess the twist (and effectively ruined the movie for me), her character keeps the viewer engaged because we feel in every frame how passionate and driven she is. In Shanghai my eyes and my ears never told me why I should care, even though my mind could easily piece it together. But that simply wasn't enough.<br />
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Last but not least since we talked about Imported Kamariya, another pet peeve of mine: when, oh when, will they stop putting the equal sign between progress and corruption. When, oh when, will they stop confusing moving forward with killing India's soul? Is everything that's imported bad? Capitalism is not the devil, people! It's a system like any other. One that can be abused, or that can be used for good. Capitalism and progress don't bring corruption if corruption is not already there. You don't think capitalism would work in India? Fine, come up with an alternative. But enough of this habit of blaming everything that's wrong in that country on progress. A system doesn't abuse itself, you need <i>people</i> to abuse it. Ponder a bit on that, scriptwriters!<br />
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Maybe I went in with the wrong expectations, most of them caused by the film being described as a satire (which I didn't think it was, I thought it was merely social commentary). Maybe the wit and the irony got lost in translation. Maybe too much praise on Twitter did the film a disservice. Either way, I felt that Shanghai fell short of greatness. A good movie, a movie that should be watched, but not the brilliant satire that it claimed it would be. At least not for me.<br />
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<b><u>Shanghai (2012)</u></b><br />
<i>Director: Dibakar Banerjee</i><br />
<i>Starring: Abhay Deol, Emraan Hashmi, Kalki Koechlin, Pito Bash, Prosenjit Chatterjee</i><br />
<i>Music: Vishal-Shekhar </i>Dolce and Namakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13403089235872528987noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3503508735843316282.post-63597852585319020162012-04-14T18:12:00.002-07:002012-04-15T06:47:32.670-07:002 Degrees of Separation: The Hockey EditionIf you follow me on Twitter (and I take this opportunity to apologize for my hockey tweets if they have become obnoxious), you probably know I'm a big hockey fan. If I were Canadian by birth this wouldn't even be surprising considering hockey is Canada's most practiced religion. But I was born and raised in a country where football is king (not the SuperBowl kind of football, the FIFA World Cup kind), and might I add, in a time when the national football team was at the peak of its glory. I find football boring and unattractive, though I admit I still watch the Euro Cup finals and the anthem of the 1990 World Cup still puts a lump in my throat (and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTbMwJMqilI">what a great anthem that was</a>!). Still, football never grew on me. Hockey on the other hand grew faster than a cancer. Come to think of it I didn't grow up with Bollywood either and it turned out to be love at first sight.<br />
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I realized this last year but never thought anyone would care about how similar my love for Indian movies and my love for hockey are. And then someone said they'd be interested in reading about it. So there we go: you get a 2 degrees post, and just in case you were interested, you also get to know a bit more about what the heck it is I keep ranting about on Twitter. <br />
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<u><b>Elegance, flow, grace </b></u><br />
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The first reaction I got when I announced I wanted to write a post liking Bolly to hockey was: "but there's no dancing in hockey". It was said jokingly, sure, but I'd like to respectfully disagree nonetheless. Actually I suspect the main reason why I got into hockey in the first place is it had a grace and a flow that no other team sport has. Obviously that has a lot to do with the surface on which the game is played which allows for a completely different style of movement than other sports, but I was hooked on how sexy it looked and sometimes, certain teams, how much like a dance it looked. Sure it's not always a waltz, sometimes it's more reminiscent of krumping, but the visual appeal is always there for me and it has only increased with my knowledge of hockey.<br />
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Speaking of ishtyle, sometimes I'm so hooked on a player's skating style that I forget there's a game happening. And just like I can pinpoint Allu Arjun in a sea of backup dancers by the distinctive way in which his body moves, so I found out (and this freaked me out a bit) I can recognize my favourite Leafs player just by the way he skates. Or the way he adjusts his helmet. Ok, I'd better not start talking about this one or someone will put me in a loony bin.<br />
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<b><u>Colourful, shiny and full of sprinkles</u></b><br />
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Games are a lot like my favourite Indian movies: the good ones have so much going on and they are so satisfying that I need a rewatch immediately after to make sure everything sinks in. But leaving aside my favourite ones, because not all movies can be Hadippas and not all games can end with a 5-0 for the Toronto Maple Leafs, other categories of movies can be compared to some game or other. In a single season you'll have a) the ones where it's clear that a ton of work goes in and yet the outcome is disappointing (let's call those the Raavans of hockey); b) the ones where nobody shows up to play and everyone seems to be sleeping through it (we'll refer to those as the Aishas); c) games where you wonder "what the hell were they thinking??" (Ra.One seems to be a good name for this variety); d) games that don't count on the flashy stuff to succeed (the Dhobi Ghats); e) games that do count on the flashy stuff and so on. Sure the goals are always the best part (just like the songs are in movies), but it takes all kinds of games and all kinds of teams to make a full season.<br />
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If you think about the fact that a game is usually 2.5 hours and there are about 2-5 goals per game (as you would have 2-5 songs per movie), and all kinds of action and madness in between, you can see why I don't miss Bollywood as much as I should during the hockey season.<br />
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<u><b>All performers on a different stage</b></u><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-f-0TWeM-8_I/T4oTkcRVN7I/AAAAAAAABDM/asrsuQQ1m9E/s1600/NYR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-f-0TWeM-8_I/T4oTkcRVN7I/AAAAAAAABDM/asrsuQQ1m9E/s320/NYR.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
It started out as a sport, sure, but in this day and age, hockey is just as much an entertainment industry as Bollywood is. And its players are paid the big millions to show up every other night and perform for the fans. Some would even go as far as saying they are paid the big millions to get hurt and satisfy the fans' thirst for blood, and there is some truth to that, unfortunately. But the fact of the matter is just like actors, hockey players are no longer just players. They have to also be PR machines, social-media wizards, charity drivers, cause fighters, in other words being a damn good hockey player is just the beginning of a day's work.<br />
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Living in Toronto, also known as "the centre of the hockey universe", you get so much hockey coverage that it really feels like you know these guys personally. It's hard to not care for them like they're part of your family. Of course, everyone is, to a certain extent, only offering up a persona, not a person. But much like with actors, this persona can truly change how you feel about a player regardless of how good or bad they are on the ice.<br />
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In Bollywood I see Abhishek Bachchan as one of the coolest off-screen personalities, but God knows he's not the greatest actor alive. Similarly, the uncrowned king of the hockey twitterverse Paul Bissonnette has become a brand without being a particularly good player (still wishing the Coyotes best of luck in the playoffs just because he's part of that team!).<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MkERKf6QFeQ/T4oS8ErHlyI/AAAAAAAABDE/REP8_Orj5Wc/s1600/Biz.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="216" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MkERKf6QFeQ/T4oS8ErHlyI/AAAAAAAABDE/REP8_Orj5Wc/s320/Biz.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The bench is usually where you see Biz during a game. He's still awesome though!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>If in Bollywood Aamir Khan is the man with the Midas touch, Sid Crosby is his correspondent in the NHL. Whenever he's on the ice, he delivers in spades. Not only that, but because he is (in)arguably the best player in the world, everything he does is put under the microscope. I'm sure Aamir Khan can relate to that. And yet with all the negativity surrounding both of them, because with great talent comes great hate and great nit-picking, they always come out on top. (Ok, if you're a Penguins fan, let's just forget about the last two games against the Flyers, it's not Sid's fault.). Unfortunately Sid the Kid has resembled Aamir Khan in more ways than one this year when he was about as stingy with his appearances as Aamir's movies. Here's hoping he stays healthy from now on.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pcyCJV9pqLo/T4oLcH3tcLI/AAAAAAAABCk/HyxOg5VtQUg/s1600/Sid.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pcyCJV9pqLo/T4oLcH3tcLI/AAAAAAAABCk/HyxOg5VtQUg/s320/Sid.jpg" width="254" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ok, so I could have picked a more decent picture. Sue me!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>And with the superstars you also have the divas. It's no secret that I adore Kareena Kapoor despite her many shortcomings and if I had to think of an equivalent for her in hockey it would be Ryan Kesler. A powerhouse of talent, and yet no one understands why he makes the strangest decisions sometimes on the ice. His histrionics have made haters and even fans dub him the Olympic medalist in <a href="http://thehockeywriters.com/ryan-keslers-diving-school/" target="_blank">diving</a> and as much as I love him for being one of the best players out there, even I can't help but shake my head when he pulls some of his stunts to draw a penalty. As we always say about Kareena: if only... if only that talent was put to good use <b>every</b> time...<br />
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Last but not least there's that category of stars who appear to be so boring and inane that you can't imagine them shining in anything. And then they go in front of the camera or on the ice and... it's magic. Shahid Kapoor is one such personality, and in hockey the awkward Phil Kessel is a lot like him. I can't help but be the most intrigued by these guys because come on, they can't possibly be THAT boring in real life, can they??<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LuBoRMxxxQw/T4oSG0nDlLI/AAAAAAAABC8/xNN7iFU-pms/s1600/Kess.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="254" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LuBoRMxxxQw/T4oSG0nDlLI/AAAAAAAABC8/xNN7iFU-pms/s320/Kess.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">You'll NEVER see him this excited in an interview. Heck, you usually wonder if he has a pulse!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>The list of parallels is endless: has-beens who act like they're still it (I don't think I need to name any names from Bolly, but for hockey the most prominent one this year is Alex Ovechkin); hard working grinders who never quite get their due (Pawel Datsyuk comes to mind in hockey, though there are many others for sure, just like Konkona Sen Sharma is the first name I think of for this label in Bollywood); whatever category of actors you can think of, I can find the hockey players that suit that pattern. <br />
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<u><b>Emotional roller coasters</b></u><br />
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Just like a Bolly movie can make you smile from one ear to the other and then 2 minutes later have you sniffling with a heart-wrenching moment, hockey does exactly the same for me. No other sport takes me through so many emotions in the span of 2-3 hours, from wanting to throw my shoes at the TV, to yelling at the protagonists as if they could hear me, to wanting to jump in there and kiss someone (more often than not that's Lupul, but we'll skip over my blind adoration for this man), to more pedestrian emotions such as happiness or disappointment. Most people go through the same range of emotions as me, as Twitter reveals, so it seems to be something that the sport itself provokes. I certainly don't get it from any other sport. Not surprisingly, I don't get it from most Hollywood movies either.<br />
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Speaking of emotions, just like in movies, what I often remember the most is the chemistry between players. It's not as easy as it sounds, they don't just go out and pass the puck from left to right, the really good lines are special because of the chemistry that develops on ice between those particular players. As a viewer it's palpable and exciting and you remember these "jodis" even if the game itself sucked (or the team is on your blacklist). A beautiful pass, or series of passes, beats even a goal sometimes.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MwfUDiojNuE/T4oRnNTj-XI/AAAAAAAABC0/pfZRNUJ4_K0/s1600/Sedins2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MwfUDiojNuE/T4oRnNTj-XI/AAAAAAAABC0/pfZRNUJ4_K0/s1600/Sedins2.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">No, you're not seeing double, they ARE twins!</td></tr>
</tbody></table><b><u>The crazy fans</u></b><br />
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It goes without saying that Indian movie fans are a breed of their own. Stories about SRK shrines and Rajinikanth worship rituals are well known, but hockey fans are not far behind. Sure it can be argued that most hardcore sports fans go the crazy route but in Canada there's no competition for hockey. It's not just about wearing the jersey or flying the flag on your car, I've seen everything from body-covering tattoos to dog apparel, to baby clothes, to months of following the team across the entire continent, if you can think about it, at least one hockey fan is guaranteed to have done it.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IFugP-koIEk/T4n0Vqo1buI/AAAAAAAABCM/ufvMucg_3Xg/s1600/tat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IFugP-koIEk/T4n0Vqo1buI/AAAAAAAABCM/ufvMucg_3Xg/s320/tat.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://ca.sports.yahoo.com/nhl/blog/puck_daddy/post/Puck-Headlines-Worst-tattoos-in-hockey-Brunnst?urn=nhl-277313" target="_blank">Puck Daddy Blog</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
For sure it's always fun to find out what new playoff rituals the fans come up with. So far the flavour of the year for 2012 seems to be catfish and salmon thrown on the ice. For good luck, we assume.<br />
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And if you think people throwing paper and dancing in the aisles when Chiranjeevi makes his entrance in a movie is cool, try watching this compilation of Canada's reaction to the gold winning goal in the 2010 Olympics. Toronto went completely berserk, all of downtown was blocked, people were high-fiving everyone walking in the opposite direction, I didn't have a voice the next day. Great memories!<br />
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<object style="height: 390px; width: 640px;"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/PuJH2WXJGHI?version=3&feature=player_detailpage"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/PuJH2WXJGHI?version=3&feature=player_detailpage" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="640" height="360"></object><br />
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Ah, fans are a great community, but just like the Indian movie fans, the hockey crowd only wants mass entertainers, flashy plays and instant gratification. In other words they want their good-old brainless masala. And because the industry is fuelled by the fans, there is no hope of hockey getting smarter or classier any time soon. I count myself in the rarefied ranks of people who stop to think about what they demand of a team, which is why I tend to be in the minority with my opinions on hockey. Much like I am when it comes to movies. You see now how they're so similar?<br />
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<u><b>So much of OTT...</b></u><br />
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It's not just Tollywood that excels at over the top fights, the NHL and its Russian counterpart, the KHL, are pretty high up there on that. And while I usually fast forward through the fights in a movie, there's no denying that the truly ridiculous ones are a ton of fun. I don't like fighting in hockey either, and I certainly disagree with the opinion that "it's a part of the game", but when you have one of those <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F22-VvqEFw" target="_blank">bench-clearing fights</a> where everyone is on the ice for it, well, even I can't help but laugh. If you're gonna do something stupid, at least make it over the top, is what I always say.<br />
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<u><b>Living in the moment</b></u><br />
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In both movies and hockey I always prefer the young generation over dynasties. I know the Khans are still well loved and I know Detroit is a great team, but... meh. Give me Ranveer Singh over Salman Khan any day. That's probably why I'd rather cheer for the Edmonton Oilers, a basement team this year, and for their young super-talented players than watch established teams who never missed the playoffs since the dawn of time. Call it my tendency to cheer for the underdog. I call it young talent spotting. <br />
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And what can I say, I've never been good with history. I can't bring myself to watch old Bollywood classics any more than I can be bothered to look up Leafs history from their glory days. Who cares? There's so much good stuff to be watched now, and so much better in my opinion (in terms of quality of the game), that those historical plays, much like those black and white celluloid gems, have no chance of ever getting my attention.<br />
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<u><b>So much eye candy</b></u><br />
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Last but not least... Did you think I was a sucker for a pretty face only in the film industry? Nah... I'll take it from all possible sources! Like this one:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jm6a8j3cUX4/T4oUoJZeVhI/AAAAAAAABDU/3sstkx2VNdg/s1600/Henrik.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jm6a8j3cUX4/T4oUoJZeVhI/AAAAAAAABDU/3sstkx2VNdg/s320/Henrik.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Don't ask me how in lust I am with Henrik Lundqvist. Just don't.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>So there you have it. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. When I started the 2 degrees series I based it on the idea that most of my hobbies will have things in common because you know, that's why I got into them. But to be perfectly honest, this one surprised even me. So if you read all the way here (did you really???), now you know why I'm so into this hockey thing despite it being one of the least lady-friendly sports out there. Because for a sport that's not very lady-friendly, it sure has its charm...<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yTC4rSVbZu0/T4od3sOy-8I/AAAAAAAABDc/81pYef5MMKc/s1600/Loops.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yTC4rSVbZu0/T4od3sOy-8I/AAAAAAAABDc/81pYef5MMKc/s320/Loops.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">No rhyme or reason for this one. Just felt like posting it because it's cute.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Dolce and Namakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13403089235872528987noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3503508735843316282.post-40682989311091734852012-03-18T20:56:00.000-07:002012-03-18T20:56:53.487-07:00Pranayam ReviewI'm sure everyone around here knows this by now: I've been starved for movies with grown-ups. Puppy love is all good and fine, but enough is enough already. So when I put Pranayam in the DVD player the other day I was ready for a good story with adults.<br />
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My excitement was toned down however when, before the movie even started playing, a collection of quotes about love got flashed on the screen, culminating with this one:<br />
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Oh man, I thought, what a tease! This will end up being yet another movie where the adult versions of the characters are on screen for something like 10 minutes and the rest of the story is a flashback of their puppy-love days. Cue eyeroll and brace self for the worst. (Not that I didn't thoroughly enjoy Love Aaj Kal, but if you think of the epilogue to Rishi's story you'll know what I mean.)<br />
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Luckily, I was dreadfully wrong! Pranayam ends up being a story about grown-ups and yet, while being that, it still allows plenty of room for the cuteness of puppy love, for the thrill of watching young hearts take on the world, and even for a bit of the classic love triangle. And it does all that without ever putting the older versions of the characters in danger for screen time.<br />
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Not that you would want to underuse such talents as Anupam Kher, Mohanlal and Jaya Prada, but Indian movies have proved in the past that even greater talent can be sacrificed in favour of their younger looking versions. So on that topic I can only say: respect to Blessy for giving us a story about old people in an era when everyone else around him refuses to age. <br />
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<div style="color: purple;"><b>Namak:</b> Mercifully! Because in the younger version Anupam Kher looks like a 12 year old with a mooche!</div><div style="color: magenta;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pCl8skpsBaY/T2ab79v4DGI/AAAAAAAABBM/A-xqe5yTl24/s1600/vlcsnap-00016.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pCl8skpsBaY/T2ab79v4DGI/AAAAAAAABBM/A-xqe5yTl24/s320/vlcsnap-00016.jpg" width="350" /></a></div><br />
<div style="color: purple;"><b>Dolce:</b> Aww, come on, he's all right. And all his filmi dialogues about rain are so cute.</div><div style="color: purple;"><b>Namak:</b> Cute is hardly the word I would use. Cheesy maybe?</div><div style="color: purple;"><b>Dolce:</b> Whatever. They get the job done, don't they? The girl falls for it.</div><div style="color: purple;"><b>Namak:</b> Just another case of girl falling for the first boy whose eyes she looks into. Textbook filmi love-story. Yawn.</div><div style="color: purple;"><b>Dolce:</b> We're over that, remember? We've accepted love at first sight as a legitimate plot device. Besides, luckily for us, this one turns out to <u>not</u> be the one true love as it is in most movies.</div><span style="color: purple;"><b>Namak:</b> True. Brownie points for that. I'm always happy to see the idea that true love doesn't happen only once acknowledged by Indian film makers.</span><br />
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The story, in short, is about Menon (Anupam Kher) who comes to the city to live with his son's family after suffering a heart-attack. Highly independent and unaccustomed to being looked after, he takes to roaming about the city as if he were a young man. But danger is always closer to home than we think, so one day in the elevator he runs into Grace (Jaya Prada), who, as we will soon find out, was his wife 40 years ago. Also she is the mother of his son and had abandoned them when their son was very young. Or had she? The script keeps it a mystery, but what we do know is that Grace is now married to Mathews and quite happily married by the looks of it, even if Mathews (Mohanlal) is now half paralyzed and requires constant attention. Coincidentally, they all live in the same building.<br />
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The script manages a good deal of flashbacks quite elegantly, and events from the past surface one at a time, without losing sight of the relationship that is formed in the present between the three protagonists. Not surprisingly, we don't get the full story until close to the end of the film, and it isn't the most original story either, but by then we are so much more involved with where the characters are <i>right</i> <i>now</i>, that the past remains exactly what it should be: <i>the past</i>.<br />
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I'm all about the relationships in movies, and Pranayam definitely does not disappoint in that respect. Whether it's the relationships between the older generation and their grandchildren, or the husbands and wives, or the father-son dynamics, all the connections between characters come across as genuine and natural. And of course, the interactions between the three main characters are particularly well drawn.<br />
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You understand right away why Grace is married to Mathews because he strikes you as such a wise, mature man. On the other hand you also understand why she had fallen for Menon in their youth and why, apart from the son, there is still a bond there. Menon is full of life and optimism, he's an explorer even when tired or ill, it's a joy to be around him. Needless to say, it's also easy to understand why both men love/loved Grace, whose name describes her perfectly. A strong, good-hearted woman who had to make some tough choices in life but retained her warmth and her spirit. And, might I add with an incipient fangirl sigh: her beauty!<br />
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<div style="color: purple;"><b>Dolce:</b> Interestingly I didn't feel that the movie manipulated me in any way on the topic of the mother living away from her son for 40 years, and I'm not sure if that was just excellent storytelling, or if it was something they glossed over on purpose. </div><div style="color: purple;"><b>Namak:</b> Hard to say, I'd say the latter, but certainly unexpected from an Indian movie. Most of them would be throwing drama at the issue after the first scene.</div><div style="color: purple;"><b>Dolce:</b> And yet Pranayam kept it smoothly in the background without ever asking you to take sides. </div><div style="color: purple;"><b>Namak:</b> I wouldn't go that far, there are definitely sides being "proposed" to you, ready for the taking.</div><span style="color: purple;"><b>Dolce:</b> Yes, but you always know there's more to it than meets the eye, so it doesn't feel like they give you a definitive ruling: she was wrong or she was right.</span><br />
<span style="color: purple;"><b>Namak:</b> Or he was wrong / he was right...</span><br />
<span style="color: purple;"><b>Dolce:</b> Precisely! "Everyone makes mistakes" seems to be their philosophy, but in the end, as Mathews would say "The past is just a bucket full of ashes."</span><br />
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Another aspect of the movie that impressed me on the sociological level was how well the script employs the "village's rumour mill". It doesn't take being Indian to know just how much appearances and "saving face" matter in the Indian society, and yet movies have recently moved away from focusing on this aspect, no doubt in an effort to showcase the younger generation's new-found independence. Which is fine too. Pranayam, however, boldly embraces it and makes it a part of the plot.<br />
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When the trio of grandparents starts forming a friendship, both families (Menon's son and daughter-in-law, as well as Mathews' daughter and son-in-law) get increasingly concerned with the rumours that are flying around about them in the neighbourhood. What a nice and refreshing role reversal from your typical scene with the parents scolding their teenage daughters for giving the family a bad name. Here it's the daughter who raises the problem with her mother.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SFDHI5B1KZg/T2ajVwhx7vI/AAAAAAAABB0/TROPKQR1KD4/s1600/vlcsnap-00022.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SFDHI5B1KZg/T2ajVwhx7vI/AAAAAAAABB0/TROPKQR1KD4/s320/vlcsnap-00022.jpg" width="350" /></a></div><br />
Don't get me wrong, far be it from me to ever be on the side of the rumour mill, and anyone who has been around this space for a while knows my general response is "to hell with it!", but I truly appreciated how this story didn't pretend to exist in a vacuum and not only did we get the angle of the immediate family dealing with their parents' problems (or their grandparents'), but we also got the social commentary associated with it. Of course, what the main characters do and how they deal with it is another matter altogether, but that is a satisfaction I will leave to you to discover.<br />
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<div style="color: purple;"><b>Namak:</b> And this is not the only place where Pranayam uses a filmi trope. If you think about it the grandparents go through practically every act of rebellion we see nowadays in rom-coms about growing up: they sneak out for secret meetings, they take off on a roadtrip without telling anyone, they go drinking, they sing a song in a packed restaurant, they go boating, etc. </div><div style="color: purple;"><b>Dolce:</b> That's may be so, but because here we see these scenes from such a different angle, they seem fresh and endearing. It's only cliche if a certain category of characters does it. You change the premise and all of a sudden all the cliches get a makeover too!</div><div style="color: purple;"><br />
</div><div style="color: black;">Maybe it's true that there are only a few good stories in the world. But every once in a while one storyteller twists one up enough that it seems, if not new, at least intriguing all over again.</div><br />
Last but not least, a quick word on the visuals in Pranayam. Two things stand out: the sea and the rain. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-b93OfbK3AoA/T2adIknMbxI/AAAAAAAABBU/EMA3jsQyqp4/s1600/vlcsnap-00017.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-b93OfbK3AoA/T2adIknMbxI/AAAAAAAABBU/EMA3jsQyqp4/s320/vlcsnap-00017.jpg" width="350" /></a></div><br />
The story uses both symbols heavily but the excellent cinematography makes it look as if it's a different sea and a different rain every time. And perhaps that is the message of the movie too, that despite thinking we know something (or in this case someone) and have experienced it a thousand times, there are always new sides of them to discover. Or to remember.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1spG4OCHi_A/T2aeL9bq97I/AAAAAAAABBc/4q8g2EVG1wY/s1600/vlcsnap-00018.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1spG4OCHi_A/T2aeL9bq97I/AAAAAAAABBc/4q8g2EVG1wY/s320/vlcsnap-00018.jpg" width="350" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"With each new wave the sea looks different", Mathews notes.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<u><b>Pranayam (2011)</b></u><br />
<i>Director: Blessy</i><br />
<i>Starring: Jaya Prada, Anupam Kher, Mohanlal</i><br />
<i>Music: M. Jayachandran</i><br />
<i>Cinematography: Satheesh Kurup</i><br />
<i>Language: Malayalam</i>Dolce and Namakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13403089235872528987noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3503508735843316282.post-42047695363136032442012-03-06T09:09:00.001-08:002012-03-06T09:10:10.948-08:00London Paris New YorkLet's face it: there's no such thing as a realistic romantic comedy. Even the movies that rule the genre and have legions of fans who can recite all the dialogues and dance all the parts (Jab We Met, Hum Tum, Band Baaja Baaraat, etc) don't exactly make you exclaim: "this could happen in real life!". Relationships work differently in real life and most of them don't do a full 180 when someone bursts out saying "I love you" (if anyone does a full 180, it's usually to run away). And that's fine. Because whether we're watching a traditional love story or a modern day rom-com, the whole point is not to think that it <i>could</i> happen to you, but that<i> it would be so dreamy if</i> it happened to you. And yes, there is a distinction there. <br />
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Most romantic comedies take a core idea: opposites attract, long distance relationships, love at first sight, take your pick, and they build around it in a way that should at least ring true. Then the most important part is finding the characters that will fit in this story. Once that's done, the rest of the details are "window-dressing". If you bought the premise and if the protagonists make it come alive for you, you'll overlook a few details here and there that move the plot forward in an artificial way. But as long as the premise makes sense and none of the plot-turning events are too ridiculous, you're likely to enjoy it. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wpbuiDENy7E/T1ZAbCHBCaI/AAAAAAAAA_8/LCUsS60pTOw/s1600/London-Paris-New-York-Poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="256" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wpbuiDENy7E/T1ZAbCHBCaI/AAAAAAAAA_8/LCUsS60pTOw/s320/London-Paris-New-York-Poster.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
Personally I find myself more susceptible to buy core ideas that I know exist in real life. That's why, for example, you'll see me scoff at the "love at first sight" variety, and embrace the "long distance relationship" angle. I'll find "stalk her until she admits she loves you" creepy, but I will go completely gaga for "friendship turning into love" plots. To each their own. The idea that London Paris New York is based on is among the select few that work for me: I believe there are people you meet sometimes who leave such a strong impression that you will make life-altering decisions because of them long after they stopped being a part of your life. And I believe that you can have such amazing chemistry with someone that no matter what point you're at in your life, they can show up and turn your world upside down. Does it happen with someone you've only known for 12 hours? Probably not, but this is where you have to close your eyes a little bit and accept that for cinematic purposes time can be compressed. Then again, motivational speakers claim they can change your whole outlook on life in a an hour, so who be I to doubt it?<br />
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My rom-com logic is perfectly satisfied by London Paris New York: do I buy the premise? Sure, I've seen it happen countless times. Is there enough scorching chemistry between the two leads to make it believable? Hell yes! Is ALI FLIPPIN' ZAFAR!!! (sorry, I promise this is the last time I am being a fangirl in this post, but seriously, how fabulous is this man?) believable as the guy who could turn your life upside down? Oh, I think I already answered that.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bRQ5XLtAPC0/T1ZA5bsgeBI/AAAAAAAABAM/eGQhgpOpvFE/s1600/Ting+Rang.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bRQ5XLtAPC0/T1ZA5bsgeBI/AAAAAAAABAM/eGQhgpOpvFE/s320/Ting+Rang.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
And that's not even all of it! Beyond the lovely performances from both leads, the movie is also worth watching for the way it integrates Bollywoodness in three foreign locations without taking you out of the story (the two versions of Voh Dekhnay Main and Ting Rang are a perfect example of this), and for the cute dialogues that ensure there's never a dull moment despite the movie only having two characters for almost its entire length. And this, folks, should really be the end of my review with only one more thing to add: for full-on Ali Zafar deliciousness... just go see the movie! Words do not do him justice. (Oops, I forgot I promised!)<br />
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But... BUT. We're in the middle of <a href="http://www.totallyfilmi.com/2012/03/adams-rib-kick-off.html">Adam's Rib</a>, so what better opportunity to focus a little bit more on the female character of this film and while we're at it, on its female director/writer. <br />
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<span style="color: purple;">LONDON.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sda1rdFYbeo/T1ZAxWOL6-I/AAAAAAAABAE/g7SL6OgtoIw/s1600/LPNY+London.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sda1rdFYbeo/T1ZAxWOL6-I/AAAAAAAABAE/g7SL6OgtoIw/s320/LPNY+London.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
What I loved the most about London Paris New York (ok, this will be a lie, we all know what I loved the most was Ali Zafar, but pretend you believe me) is that it takes the stock character that we see in every other Hindi film/rom-com, uses it, and dismisses it when it no longer makes sense. In the first phase of the movie, London, Lalitha is somewhere close to 20 years of age, and she does everything we would expect from a teenage-type girl: she refuses to kiss because it would make things complicated, she doesn't want to write letters because it would trivialize the relationship, she goes on and on about how she will change the world, she thinks she's got it all figured out. She's your typical idealistic 20 year old (slightly less bubbly than the stock character, but definitely with that air of innocence about her) who thinks the future is hers to shape and it's all within her control. Her decisions make sense as such.<br />
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<span style="color: purple;">PARIS.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3ViP3qDcMgY/T1ZA9mNnsfI/AAAAAAAABAU/2W92M1ziJUg/s1600/LPNY+Paris.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="256" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3ViP3qDcMgY/T1ZA9mNnsfI/AAAAAAAABAU/2W92M1ziJUg/s320/LPNY+Paris.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
In the second segment Lalitha has grown up a bit. She's still not mature, but she doesn't believe in fairytale endings anymore. She's been through a few disappointments and she knows to take what she wants when it's there rather than relying on a future that is as fickle as the weather in London. And most importantly she's grown up physically. She's not afraid to be touched by a man anymore, she's not afraid of her sexuality anymore. I should mention that my seat-mates objected to her walking around in Paris with a long sweater that barely covered her behind, but I took it as a sign of someone who is comfortable with her own sex-appeal (and more importantly someone who wants to SHOW a man that) and for once I didn't think it was just a gratuitous skin-show - which by the way, doesn't bother me, but I do recognize it when it's inserted there. (Ahem... as in the example below.)<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-270NFR8qsEI/T1ZCD7hqa-I/AAAAAAAABAc/QOVxtrkMKgE/s1600/LPNY+Ali+window.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-270NFR8qsEI/T1ZCD7hqa-I/AAAAAAAABAc/QOVxtrkMKgE/s320/LPNY+Ali+window.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
While talking about this segment of the film, I read an<a href="http://www.koimoi.com/reviews/london-paris-new-york-review/"> infuriating review</a> about the movie today whose author (a male film critic, not that it should matter) faults Lalitha's character for sleeping with Nikhil in Paris. Which ties in perfectly with my rant the other week about virginal girls in Bollywood: it's what people expect and when they don't get it, they protest. Why is it uncharacteristic for her to sleep with him, I ask? Is it so hard to believe that a woman can also give in to her hormones? Or that she would want to know what she missed? Why does the episode that precedes their meeting in Paris cancel out physical desire? Is it because we're assuming that as a well-raised tam-brahm she's still a virgin? Or is it because the Indian audiences are STILL (and yes, I totally meant to shout that) not able to accept that a bona fide heroine would do something as outrageous as giving in to sexual desire? Not sure how many women would NOT do exactly what Lalitha did, and some would do it ESPECIALLY because of the history between them, so based on that, I see Mr. Nahta's objection and I raise it a middle finger. And because I'm a woman and he's not, I win by default. Ha!<br />
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Oh, and while we're at it, how droll is it that in the above mentioned review there's no objection to the fact that Nikhil complains about Lalitha not giving him any satisfaction on the first night in London? By the way I found that scene hilarious and brilliant, so nothing against the scene, but you know, if we're going to ban sexual desire, can we be fair and ban it both ways? No, of course we can't.<br />
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I've never been one to praise women over men in a particular department just because they're women. If anything I have a hard time for example reading female authors for a variety of reasons that I won't touch on right now. But give some credit to the fact that a woman wrote this script. Give her at the very least the benefit of the doubt when it comes to knowing what a woman might or might not do in a certain situation. And in this particular venture I found the female character quite well-written. Yes, there is such a thing as women wanting to sleep with a man they're attracted to regardless of the consequences and yes, there is such a thing as physical attraction trumping all the rules and all the barriers you had set up in your head. And thank you, Anu Menon for acknowledging that!<br />
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<span style="color: purple;">NEW YORK.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1zh5OdIYnpk/T1ZCVvF-CTI/AAAAAAAABAk/dEsoN5RYRGw/s1600/LPNY+NY.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1zh5OdIYnpk/T1ZCVvF-CTI/AAAAAAAABAk/dEsoN5RYRGw/s320/LPNY+NY.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
We now get to the last stage of the journey, when the characters are close to their 30s (if not right at that age). They're done figuring things out, they're done dreaming about changing the world, they're done being unreasonable. And this section pleased me the most because it does something that Rockstar surprised me with as well, and while some may knock it, I think there should be more of it: the film trusts you as an audience to understand why the two characters are where they are right now. It doesn't spoon-feed you back-story, it doesn't show you a montage of how they got there, it doesn't tell you what they've been up to. It simply tells you that another 6-7 years have gone by and it's up to YOU, the audience to understand why both protagonists are now adults and why they behave as such. Were there regrets in these seven years? Was there doubt? Were there times when the two completely forgot about each other? Did they move on with their lives? Were there times when they were one step away from calling each other? Just let your imagination fly, Anu Menon trusts you to figure it out. She trusts you to know that people evolve and grow and learn from their experiences. And if you're not able to figure that out, or if you don't buy it... then I'm very sad for you, but here's the good news: Bollywood is still full of stock bubbly girls who never grow up, tailor made just for you! There we go! Now everyone's happy!<br />
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<span style="color: purple;">THREE LOVE STORIES.</span><br />
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Most rom-coms are hard to take for me, my tolerance being zero for weepy melodrama and almost zero for contrived set-ups. When I fall in love with a movie that has either of those elements I put it down to the main couple just working for me. The idea that two people can click every time they meet each other despite being at various stages in their lives is what I would normally call a contrived set-up. And yes, I admit to being smitten by Ali Zafar and to loving Aditi Rao Hydari, but in this one I give all the credit to Anu Menon: I bought into London Paris New York because her characters are not static, they're different people from one segment of the movie to the next. Hence the way they click every time, the way they interact and relate to each other also changes from the time before. London Paris New York is not about the endurance of one love story (like in the unbearable Mausam), it's about two people falling in love with each other all over again every time. And that makes it a gem of a movie and a rarity in today's Bollywood! <br />
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(Oh, and don't forget: ALI FLIPPIN' ZAFAR!!!!!)<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CXL6ld8b7Ow/T1ZCZsYTUJI/AAAAAAAABAs/hbQPMJTQkX8/s1600/Ali+Zafar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CXL6ld8b7Ow/T1ZCZsYTUJI/AAAAAAAABAs/hbQPMJTQkX8/s320/Ali+Zafar.jpg" width="269" /></a></div>Dolce and Namakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13403089235872528987noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3503508735843316282.post-12626807542988044632012-03-02T07:47:00.000-08:002012-03-02T07:47:43.992-08:00Grow Up, Bollywood Girls!One of the biggest disadvantages of having a group of friends where everyone is 3-5 years younger than you is that you're always waiting for people to grow up. You keep making excuses for them and keep saying: they'll grow up when they get a real job, they'll grow up when they find a steady girlfriend/boyfriend, they'll grow up when they move out, etc. And there is some truth to that because that is usually how people learn responsibility and maturity. In fact, on the opposite end, the most telling sign that someone is refusing to grow up is that they will do anything (and I mean ANYthing) to not get a full-time job, or what we call a "real" job. <br />
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In a way, Bollywood is like these friends of mine: it keeps refusing to let its heroines (and heroes sometimes) grow up. In real life, if someone is responsible enough to keep a real job and live on their own, we also expect them to be emotionally mature. (Of course that expectation can backfire horribly, but that's for a different day to discuss.) But Bollywood, as I have discovered, doesn't like emotionally mature characters. It follows logically that they cannot have jobs (or if they do they're in the artistic realm), live on their own or make reasonable (read: mature) decisions. So... they don't.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YcoHsUQoZt0/T1A9prXPAaI/AAAAAAAAA-0/WaBukrlFv0c/s1600/Om+Shanti+Om+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YcoHsUQoZt0/T1A9prXPAaI/AAAAAAAAA-0/WaBukrlFv0c/s320/Om+Shanti+Om+2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://dolcenamak.blogspot.com/2011/11/of-men-and-man-children.html">We've already discussed</a> that a fair percentage of the male characters have become manchildren (without actually getting to the bottom of why that is, but we might get there in this post), so it's only right to now discuss what type of female characters will suit these boys. Not surprisingly: girls! Not women. Girls. Sometimes (not very often, thankfully!) manic pixie dream girls and other times just girls in the process of growing up along with their hero. But girls nonetheless. <br />
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Look around at Bollywood movies from the past two decades: how many women can we count and how many girls? And of those women, how many are the heroine? Moreover, how many of those heroines end up with the hero? Three questions, each worth exploring in some detail.<br />
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By the way, as I was writing this I realized that this is a very a-typical post for me because I'm never big on women power. To me everyone is equal and no sex should be more equal than the other. But a few recent stinkers from Filmistan have made me a little fed up with all these cutesy bubbly teenage dream girls that Bollywood (and regional cinema) loves so dearly. And I realized that normal grown-up women have been a bit of a rarity lately. Hence my upcoming rant.<br />
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<u><b>How many women and how many girls are there?</b></u><br />
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For a while there it seemed like Bollywood was going in the right direction with its female characters, providing some much needed relief from the whiny, spine-less love interests that populated the last decade of the millennium. And here mad brownie points go to Dil Chahta Hai for giving us not one but three female characters that despite being at different stages in their development shared one quality: they all had a level head on their shoulders. Then Southie remakes started happening. And Hollywood "inspirations". And then it all started going downhill again.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2SjTk3ktMPQ/T1A-7ABQmPI/AAAAAAAAA-8/IyGhgebcIIU/s1600/ghajini-13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2SjTk3ktMPQ/T1A-7ABQmPI/AAAAAAAAA-8/IyGhgebcIIU/s320/ghajini-13.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
While it's understandable that a certain amount of innocence should go with the virginal ideal woman (according to Indian cinema anyway), it's incredible how often that degenerates into ditsiness and childlike behaviour. Even some of my favourite movies manage to slip into this cliche. I adored Dimple in <b>Mere Brother Ki Dulhan</b>, but let's face it, mature is not the first word that comes to mind when trying to describe her. One of my favourite movies ever, <b>Jab We Met</b>, features another good example of innocence and airheaded-ness, despite a few well placed dialogues that manage to give Geet some depth. Her behaviour however is not exactly what we would expect from a grown woman. In another intriguing example <b>Kaminey</b>'s Sweety is a strange mixture of determination and puerility.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ioOBJ2VtoUs/T1A_uG6bGGI/AAAAAAAAA_E/XnBDnSTbaOs/s1600/priyanka-kaminey.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ioOBJ2VtoUs/T1A_uG6bGGI/AAAAAAAAA_E/XnBDnSTbaOs/s320/priyanka-kaminey.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
And mind you these are the films that balanced it well and gave us some truly memorable, three-dimensional characters that I will always love. Most films out there either don't even try to give us a round character, or if they do, it reminds us of how we used to be at 15. This is, by the way, much much worse in regional cinema, which is probably why I'm so fed up with them.<br />
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Whether that innocence comes from having grown up in a warm family that has sheltered the girl from the evil world, or from simply being a carefree type of personality, the fact is it exists in far too many female character out there. And while I do understand the appeal of a sweet, wholesome, happy and (usually) virginal creature, there is something to be said in favour of a lady who has some knowledge of how the world turns. And who has some depth to her even if that means being manipulative or selfish. No? Too much? Ok, then at least a girl who has kissed a boy before and doesn't look like it's the most miraculous moment in her life when she kisses the hero. You see what I'm getting at here.<br />
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But evidently Bollywood does not agree because it keeps serving us these lovely wide-eyed caricatures of women who more often than not seem inspired by high school cheerleaders (or bookworms, depending on the story) rather than by real life women.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BIZxcG0NHUQ/T1BAG7V8ANI/AAAAAAAAA_M/8on6ziiWoxM/s1600/katrina-kaif-ajab-prem-ki-ghazab-kahani.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="210" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BIZxcG0NHUQ/T1BAG7V8ANI/AAAAAAAAA_M/8on6ziiWoxM/s320/katrina-kaif-ajab-prem-ki-ghazab-kahani.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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<u><b>Of these Women, how many are the heroine?</b></u><br />
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This is a startling conclusion that I came to: a lot of times the female characters who seem real and who make mature decisions are not the main characters in Hindi films. Think of Jai's Swiss girlfriend in <b>Love Aaj Kal</b>. Think of Luv's ex in <b>Mere Brother Ki Dulhan</b>. Think of Tanu's best friend in <b>Tanu Weds Manu</b>. Think of Ria in <b>Monsoon Wedding</b>. Or Raina in <b>Ladies Vs Ricky Bahl</b>. All these secondary characters behave like a normal grown-up woman would in front of a tough situation. They don't call mommy, they don't cling to the hero like ivy to an old house, they don't give up on life. They do what any adult does: deal with the problem. (Or in Tanu's case, they deal with their best friend's problem.)<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lnyfIdZtIT4/T1BDT1CMgII/AAAAAAAAA_c/2gvQpxnpG7c/s1600/Payal+TWM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lnyfIdZtIT4/T1BDT1CMgII/AAAAAAAAA_c/2gvQpxnpG7c/s320/Payal+TWM.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><br />
So this is where it gets really confusing now. I used to look around at all the different kinds of fabulous women that I know and wonder: why is it so hard for scriptwriters in Bollywood to create a character that feels real? Normal women walk around us all the time, why is it so hard to transfer them to paper and then to screen? Why the need to go over the top with these unnaturally bubbly characters? Or worse, come up with flat characters whose sole purpose is to look pretty in a sari and possibly fuel the hero's transformation into a real man. Now understandably if we're talking about a movie like Dabangg or Dhoom 2, we won't take offense at the flatness of the female characters, the movie is, after all, not about them. But why can we not have grown-up women in rom-coms? In love stories? In dramas?<br />
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Because it turns out that they <i>can</i> be written. They do exist and they <i>do</i> make it to the screen. Just... not as the heroine.<br />
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And the more I think about it the more if feels like I figured it out. In Bollywood where the love story is such an important element, a character who is already developed doesn't have anywhere to go. The whole fun of watching a story that's been told before (which most of the times is exactly what you're watching) is seeing how the characters change. So unless there's some sort of growth (and the growing up kind seems to be the easiest to handle), there is no satisfaction at the end of the journey. Unless, of course, there's action and sparkles and dancing in which case we really don't care about the character development.<br />
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Then of course there's also the issue of the fountain of youth which Bollywood is still looking for. There's no telling when it will be found, but in the meantime we're getting some practice with the kinds of characters that a forever-young actress or actor will need to play (ie teenagers). Though credit where it's due, Bollywood actresses are doing a whole lot better than the actors in choosing age-appropriate roles. <br />
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<u><b>And finally: how many end up with the hero?</b></u><br />
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A few movies have managed to elevate these independent, strong women from the secondary character status to heroine or at least the "other" heroine. I'm thinking about <b>Dev D.</b>'s Paro, <b>Ishqiya</b>'s Krishna, <b>Chalo Dilli</b>'s Mihika, <b>Delhi Belly</b>'s Menaka, <b>Aaja Nachle</b>'s Dia, <b>Luck by Chance</b>'s Sona and to a certain extent Riana in <b>Ek Main aur Ekk Tu</b>. All women who know what they want and don't rely on men to build their own happiness.<br />
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But strangely, of all these, Delhi Belly is the only one where there is a possibility she will end up with the main hero. In all the other ones they either are never meant to be a couple (as is the case with Chalo Dilli), or they just don't end up doing the "happily ever after" thing for whatever reason.<br />
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Actually, it's not for "whatever" reason. It's for a very obvious reason: the hero is not likely to make such a woman happy. Whether it's because he's too immature, or because he's too self-centered, or simply because... she's just not that into him. Puns aside, could we even picture them together? In most of these cases, not really. And not to say that it's imperative for a woman to be in a couple in order to be happy, but... it doesn't hurt either.<br />
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Strong women, it seems, don't belong with chocolate heroes. Maybe chocolate heroes wouldn't know how to handle them. The nervous boy who is in love for the first time and doesn't even know it would be crushed by a love interest who isn't herself a shivering fragile lily. So the grown-up women get sidelined and in come the girls who will be more than happy to stick around through thick and thin holding a man-child's hand. The one-eyed leading the blind... <br />
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(Of course there are a handful of films where the independent, strong-headed heroine does end up with the hero, but more often than not, their love story is not the main focus. I'm thinking of the adorable <b>Well Done Abba</b>, the intriguing <b>Paa</b>, and the brilliant <b>Swades</b>. Too few... too few.)<br />
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The conclusion here seems to be that in order for us to buy the hero and the heroine being happy ever after, we have to visualize that they will evolve together. If the female character is a <i>woman</i> and the male character is a <i>boy</i>, it doesn't ring true to picture them still together in 20 years, which is really what we should think at the end of a good love-story. On the other hand if neither of them has to wait around for the other to grow up, and they're in it together, it's easier to believe that they will make it.<br />
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<u><b>The bottom line...</b></u><br />
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Bollywood certainly has a firm grasp on this one concept: there is nothing more intense, more romantic and more adorable to watch than two people falling in love for the first time. In fact, because this first-love magic usually happens to us when we're teenagers, Hindi films have gone as far as routinely selling us characters in their mid-twenties who act like teenagers in the turmoils of their first love story (and no, it's not just the female characters, it's both sexes).<br />
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But here's something that Bollywood apparently has yet to discover: grown-ups fall in love too. And it can make for some pretty cool stories.<br />
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It's not that girls are not fun to watch, don't get me wrong, I love my bubbly energy balls just as much as I love my man-children, but I do find that the stereotype has gone a little too far in recent years. I'm ok with being given a girl instead of a woman, but give me a well-rounded one (and I don't mean just physically in case you were getting ready with a pun here), give me one I can picture surviving in real life. I know... I know... Bollywood is not meant to be realistic. But I find that it's doing a great job with the male characters in that department, so why not with the ladies as well?<br />
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Maybe when mainstream Bollywood finally discovers adults we'll be treated to some real women, who act like they're firmly in their twenties or thirties. Or fifties. Who think for themselves and know what they want. Who make the right decision for themselves, not for mommy and daddy, not for the boyfriend or for anyone else. And who don't end up alone.<br />
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Until then we'll have to make do with girls who assert their independence through teenage rebellion acts such as *gasp* smoking, drinking and driving a scooter at high speed. In traffic. Whoa.<br />
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PS: This post was brought to you by <a href="http://www.totallyfilmi.com/2012/03/adams-rib-kick-off.html">Adam's Rib</a>, a <a href="http://www.totallyfilmi.com/">Totally Filmi</a> initiative, made possible by the generous support of Bloggistan. For more women power (and for less cynicism than what I just served you) keep an eye on her blog for links to all the participating posts. I promise after I'm done celebrating the male power of Ali Zafar in London Paris New York, I will sit down and write a nice happy post about the ladies of Indian Cinema.Dolce and Namakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13403089235872528987noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3503508735843316282.post-1800876726828884042012-01-10T20:39:00.000-08:002012-01-10T20:39:31.904-08:00Adaminte Makan Abu and the OscarsI've been having quite a few conversations lately, on and off-line, about how the values in Indian films get perceived by us Westerners, what <i>we</i> notice over what <i>Indian people</i> notice, what gets our blood boiling that they gloss over, what we disagree with, while Indian audiences embrace. And <b>Adaminte Makan Abu</b>, India's entry for the Oscars this year, has provided one of the best examples recently. But I'll get to that discussion later. First allow me to pimp the movie because if you haven't seen it, you're missing out!<br />
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Abu (Salim Kumar) is an old sales-man who travels a great deal in order to sell his perfume essences (and holy books) which are quickly going out of style. At home his wife Aisu (Zarina Wahab) adds to their savings by selling milk and fruit to other villagers. They have a simple home with just one room and their biggest dream is to make it to Mecca for Hajj once in their lifetime. You love these two right away not just because they seem like such nice people, but also because you see them looking after one another in a way that doesn't get explored enough in movies with young couples these days. The other day I saw one of those chain quotes on Twitter, and it fits well here: "Love is not Romeo and Juliet dying together, it's grandma and grandpa growing old together". It's cheesy, but at the same time so true. We see that love between Abu and Aisu right from their first scene together in the film and it makes them so endearing to us.<br />
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This year it seems as if their dream might come true and Abu decides to put everything he has into arranging the trip. His health is deteriorating and his trade is no longer sought after, so money is not easy to come by. But his faith, hope and everyone's blessings push him forward towards his goal.<br />
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Supported by the gorgeous cinematography which subjugates your attention from the first frame and doesn't let your eyes stray even for a precious second, the story of Abu talks about forgiveness, being kind, and living a righteous life regardless of rewards and setbacks. It's a wonderful little message and its delivery is, like Abu, slow and gentle. The smaller or bigger gestures of the villagers when Abu finds himself in financial trouble are a true, and thankfully not preachy, ode to the virtues of leading an honest, selfless life. Truly a heart-warming lesson in humanity brought to us in sweet metaphors and delightful little symbols.<br />
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For an even more detailed review of the film (though I'm warning you, plenty spoilery), I recommend heading over to <a href="http://www.totallyfilmi.com/2012/01/adaminte-makan-abu-dir-salim-ahmed-2011.html">Totally Filmi</a> because from here on I am done with pimping and will proceed to sharing with you my thoughts on how this film would fare at the Oscars if it makes it.<br />
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Two things got a great deal of thought from me after watching this movie, and I expect both would play a heavy part in how Adaminte Makan Abu would be viewed by people here as opposed to people in India.<br />
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First of all, and this may have something to do with me having been raised by an energetic mother who changed her profession twice to stay afloat (the second time in her 50s), I personally find myself unable to sympathize with people's incapacity to adapt. Abu is so lovable that I can't help but feel for him, but at the same time I also can't help but judge and think where he would have been if he had tried to change his trade. The only reason why he is in his current situation is because he hasn't managed to keep up with the times. This is all he knows and this is all he can do with himself.<br />
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Once again, as in quite a few other Indian films, though this time in a very subtle way, progress and the business world are presented as the root of all evil, or at the very least, the antithesis of a righteous life. This is further illustrated by the character and side story of the real estate agent. Granted, he was also greedy, but forgive me if I am starting to really resent this constant association of greed and progress as if they were the same thing. Abu is meant to charm with his simplicity and his selflessness, but for a society that rates ambition among a man's highest qualities, this may not necessarily impress. <br />
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Seeing this movie from the comfort of my couch in Toronto I have to wonder how it would appear to other Westerners who, like me, consider progress through technology a desirable goal to strive towards rather than a destructive force (as much as environmentalists would disagree with that). Also how many of us Westerners would see Abu and his antiquated lifestyle as nothing more than a perfect example of the dead weight that is keeping India from soaring economically?<br />
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It may sound condescending and as if I am applying my Western values without any regard to the culture that this film came from, but consider this: if this mentality was so foreign to India, why would a character who used to have a cookie vending stall and now has 8 bakeries in the city be mentioned? And this time it's without any malice, he's mentioned with admiration and perhaps a teeny bit of envy.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"His car sometimes hastens this way splashing muck"</td></tr>
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Moreover, the contrast between him and the two old men who never knew how to grow (the perfume vendor and the umbrella maker), is made even more poignant by the fact that they seem to be painfully aware of the fact that everyone started off with the same skills and opportunities.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Making money is indeed a talent my friend"</td></tr>
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Would Abu be as endearing in his helplessness to an audience full of people who change their job every 5-6 years? From this society where everyone expects to change their line of work completely at least twice in their lifetime, would we feel bad for Abu's perfumes that don't get sold?<br />
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The other aspect that didn't quite settle with me in the film is Abu's stubbornness to keep everything in line with the letter of the Koran: if the book says you can't accept money from people unless they are blood relatives, then he won't. If the book says he is to seek forgiveness even when he has done no wrong, he will. As an aside, interesting to note that he has no moral issues with giving a bribe. Probably because The Book doesn't have an opinion on it?<br />
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Is leaving everything in the hands of God something that we would be ok with? Is being the type of person who accepts everything as God's decision a palatable idea? Is God the only force to be trusted to show us the way?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Allah will surely show us one among them [a way to raise the money]"</td></tr>
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See, if this movie were about an American, Abu would be instantly labeled as a bigot. And hated on more than likely. Also, the persistence to not accept help would probably be named pride rather than humbleness. But this is not an American movie, so we learn to respect Abu for his resolve. Or... at least we're expected to.<br />
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What I'm really getting at here, and this may sound like I am criticizing the movie (when in fact I absolutely loved it), is that seen through the prism of Western values, this would be a completely different movie. And not necessarily a charming one, as it is meant to be. If it is to make it to the Oscars, this is where there's a chance it will not connect with people.<br />
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Then again, we have learned to respect different cultures and their unique components, so just because the film made me think of these issues, it's not a given it will stop anyone from loving it just like it didn't stop me. And maybe there is always a need for us to be reminded that the possessions we count on the most in life can sometimes turn out to be hollow on the inside.<br />
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Because in the end, and this is the true testament to Salim Kumar's talent and to the director's finesse, they make me root for Abu and Aisu nonetheless. And I <i>do</i> sympathize with Abu's helplessness despite judging it (perhaps harshly, perhaps not). And I <i>am</i> moved by the tenderness of his relationship with his wife. And I <i>will</i> recommend this film to everyone within earshot. But that said, I am very curious about how the Oscar crowd would perceive it. Very curious...<br />
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<u><b>Adaminte Makan Abu (2011)</b></u><br />
<i>Director: Salim Ahamed</i><br />
<i>Starring: Salim Kumar, Zarina Wahab</i><br />
<i>Music: Ramesh Narayan</i><br />
<i>Cinematography: Madhu Ambat</i>Dolce and Namakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13403089235872528987noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3503508735843316282.post-54645383285671113192011-12-24T17:00:00.000-08:002011-12-25T09:30:21.870-08:00And Where Was the Masala in 2011??As I got to the end of <a href="http://dolcenamak.blogspot.com/2011/12/2011-was-damn-good-year.html">my Top 5</a> in 2011 list I realized that all my favourite movies of this year have been un-Bollywood in one way or another, which of course begged the question: was there no good masala fare for me this year? Why yes, yes there was! In fact, in the special category that I like to call "<i>glittery fluff-ball</i>", there were two movies that went neck to neck all the way to the finish line: <b>Mere Brother Ki Dulhan</b> and <b>Ladies Vs Ricky Bahl</b>, both Yash Raj offerings.<br />
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We're talking the traditional Bollywood with song and dance, outrageous plot holes, no brains required, glitter and colour, weddings and glam, sexy locales and gorgeous people. And I do love me some of this Bollywood just as much as I love the off-beat kinds. But I can only have one perfect ball of fluff a year, so let me take you through the excruciating process that led to my final decision.<br />
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They're both very good looking movies, for sure, so points all around for that. I love the MBKD soundtrack more, but LVRB stands tall with a couple of earworms too (or so my iPod says). I love the actors in both movies, even though if you twist my arm I will trade both Ali Zafar and Imran Khan for Ranveer Singh's smile. So we're 2 - 2 now, I guess.<br />
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The ladies are all on par too: Katrina Kaif with a very endearing performance and a hot body like no one else around, Anushka Sharma spreading joy effortlessly and never failing on the dramatic side either. But then... LVRB has three other ladies who rock the screen, and in fact the story belongs to them more than it belongs to the main couple: Parineeti Chopra, Dipannita Sharma and Aditi Sharma. Not only are they fun to watch, but they each bring a different flavour to the mix, just like proper masala spice should. So I guess LVRB is now ahead for character development.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nJ2SfmkySg8/TvZ0sGubXeI/AAAAAAAAA9s/xVCeHzecr-U/s1600/LVRB+Ladies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nJ2SfmkySg8/TvZ0sGubXeI/AAAAAAAAA9s/xVCeHzecr-U/s320/LVRB+Ladies.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
But it doesn't stay in the lead for too long because MBKD makes up for that by giving us the most lovable couple in recent memory, one that will stop at nothing in order to make it to the wedding canopy together.<br />
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Sigh... We're even again. What else? Dancing is always important for me, but sadly one of the films (MBKD) has mostly poor dancers, so while the choreographies are fun, they're not terribly impressive; while the other movie flattens two of the best dancers in Bollywood by giving them boring steps. So I guess that means MBKD takes a point for effort on this one.<br />
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Having said that, LVRB wins that point right back for <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecbZ22Ez5BM">Fatal Attraction</a> because Oooo eMMM Geee, it's a trance song!! In Bollywood!!! And it's the background for a party in Goa!!!! And everything about this picturization is mindblowingly awesome. A song made for Dolce and Namak if there ever was one.<br />
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Ahem... Sorry about that little outburst, but this song honestly blew me away in the movie. It was by far my favourite 5 minutes of the film. I know Madhubala is awesome too, but it's nothing I've never seen before in Bollywood whereas Fatal Attraction is. In fact it's so un-Bollywood that I was convinced it was ripped off from somewhere, that's how odd it is to me. If it IS plagiarized it's from something so obscure I would have heard it once at some party, but despite searching high and low I could not find anything to back up this hunch. So no accusations will be made and LVRB gets the full point for it.<br />
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This process went on and on, getting as detailed as pitting Ranveer's stupendous facial expressions in the scene where Ishika signs the contract (my favourite bit of acting from him) against Imran's puppy eyes every time he tells Dimple to trust him to work things out. The nickname Dimpy in LVRB got a point as well, offset by Katrina's "correctly beautiful and appropriately sexy" description of herself in MBKD. It goes on and on, we're talking days of debate here!<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EAJMsGG-Y_s/TvZ0DxW__1I/AAAAAAAAA9g/7dcTdpv4IuM/s1600/Katrina+MBKD.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="194" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EAJMsGG-Y_s/TvZ0DxW__1I/AAAAAAAAA9g/7dcTdpv4IuM/s320/Katrina+MBKD.gif" width="320" /></a></div><br />
So in the end it came down to this crucial question: which movie would I watch over and over and not get bored? And on this... Mere Brother Ki Dulhan just wins. I thought LVRB would have a good rewatch value, but seeing it the second time in the theatre I was already bored and checking the score of the Blackhawks' hockey game on BBM, so I guess it didn't pass that test. And since the glittery fluff-ball is more about being entertained than it is about smart filmmaking choices... it goes to Mere Brother Ki Dulhan after all.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_Gjvo5UkXuQ/TvZzDPFygXI/AAAAAAAAA9U/ZtQspOfO6kA/s1600/mere-brother-ki-dulhan2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_Gjvo5UkXuQ/TvZzDPFygXI/AAAAAAAAA9U/ZtQspOfO6kA/s320/mere-brother-ki-dulhan2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
And with this we end a week of fiery debates for me, and a year of awesome Bollywood movies for you.<br />
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Looking forward to 2012 and here's hoping it tops the most excellent 2011!Dolce and Namakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13403089235872528987noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3503508735843316282.post-42771952479219497232011-12-24T16:42:00.000-08:002011-12-24T16:42:22.358-08:002011 Was a Damn Good Year!I don't usually do the end of year lists (not because I have anything against them, but mostly because if I like something I will blog about it right there and then), but this year seemed to deserve a special pat on the back for giving us so much good stuff. So even if I have talked at length about most of these movies, this is the end of year wrap-up and my top 5 (or 6?) most awesome movies of the year.<br />
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<b>Dhobi Ghat</b><br />
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This is technically a 2010 movie for me since that's when I saw it, so I debated whether to include it or not, but heck, it's always a good idea to give it another shout-out. It didn't do too well at the box office, and there are a couple of things that upon rewatch bothered me about it (the main one being Monica Dogra's acting skills or lack thereof), but I still consider Dhobi Ghat one of the most touching Indian films I've ever seen (yes, emotion works best for me when it's subtle and tender). Maybe because I was following it so closely pre-release, or maybe because I saw Kiran Rao on stage at TIFF talking about it, but this is one of those rare films where I can feel the love of the director for everything to do with filmmaking in every frame. It's a movie I would not hesitate to recommend to anyone who wants to give Bollywood a shot, because yes, I do consider it Bollywood (the new Bollywood that I am loving more and more) even if right now it seems like it's ahead of its time.<br />
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<b>7 Khoon Maaf</b><br />
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Vishal Bhardwaj's sometimes humorous, sometimes unbearably dark drama about a woman and her 7 husbands who all end up dead. Another movie that didn't do very well with the audiences, and in a way it's easy to see why. Not only does it have a woman as the central character, but it's a very complex, wicked and confounding woman who makes it very hard to read her fragile heart through the layers of the film. Give it to Bhardwaj to attempt something as bold as this film and to almost get away with it. Priyanka Chopra's performance was the highlight of the year for me and that alone makes the movie worth while. But when we add to that the fabulous soundtrack, the Vishal trademarked camera-work and the story itself with its million interpretations, it's more than enough to shoot a movie to the very top of my favourites. Frankly I did not think another one would surpass it this year. And only one did, but more on that later since this list is in chronological order.<br />
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<b>Shor in the City </b><br />
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This was one of the surprises of the year for me because while I was expecting it to be fun (based on how much I loved "99" from the same director duo), I didn't expect it to be so good. It's sometimes tongue-in-cheek and other times dead serious (emphasis on dead), and sometimes you're not even sure which one it is, but it's a damn good watch, that's for certain. Setting up a business in Mumbai, working the traffic lights and a peek into the lives of small time crooks, innocence lost and found again, all these themes get explored through the 3 story-lines of the movie and most come to a very satisfying end, even if not all believable. This is a movie I can't recommend enough.<br />
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<b>Saheb Biwi aur Gangster</b> and <b>Delhi Belly</b><br />
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I cannot for the life of me decide between these two. I went to see Delhi Belly in the theatres 3 times and laughed my head off every single tine, while I only watched SBAG once but that was enough to know I was in love with it. What makes it even harder to choose is that SBAG is not a comedy by any stretch of the imagination, while Delhi Belly will only work if you find it funny, otherwise it will bomb. Delhi Belly is not very heavy on story-line, and yet somehow it kept me engaged every time. SBAG on the other hand has quite the plot and quite the surprising finale, so if story is what you're after, this is definitely the one to see. Delhi Belly then wins on the soundtrack side while SBAG wins on the visuals side.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nra8H74Jycs/TvZVyfSFpDI/AAAAAAAAA88/1chS8VieB6E/s1600/vlcsnap-00003.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="136" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nra8H74Jycs/TvZVyfSFpDI/AAAAAAAAA88/1chS8VieB6E/s320/vlcsnap-00003.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tell me this image alone doesn't steal your heart!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Both films have excellent performances and both have strong characters that make an impact. So you see... I can't choose. I'll have to leave this one to you.<br />
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<b>Rockstar</b><br />
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I'm sure by now everyone knows this was THE movie of the year for me, so I'll keep it nice and short. Not many movies (and only a handful of Bollywood ones) grab me emotionally. I care for the characters, sure, sometimes they piss me off, sometimes I feel bad for them, but I'm never living every second of the film with them. So when a movie manages to remove me from reality and soak me into the story to the point where I forget myself completely, it's shocking. And wonderful at the same time. Rockstar did exactly that to me. Not once, not twice, but all three times when I watched it in the theatres. There is something so powerful about Imtiaz Ali's storytelling mixed with AR Rahman's music, that I simply lose myself in it every time. <br />
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I loved this movie so much that every person who did not feel the way I did about it made me sad. Not for the movie (which did well enough) but sad for them, because I felt like they were missing out on something powerful, magical and out-of-this-world special. But... then again, maybe other movies give them the same feeling, maybe movies that will never even gain my benevolence let alone my love, so I can't weep for them for too long.<br />
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Now let me tell you this was not an easy list to make. I left out the gorgeous <b>Zindagi Na Milego Dobara</b>, the hilarious <b>Bbudda Hoga Tera Baap</b>, the tragic <b>Bol</b> (this one would have been in my top 5 but it's not technically Bollywood, so it got disqualified), the adorable <b>FALTU</b>, and the quirky <b>Dil Toh Baccha Hai Ji</b>, all movies that I really enjoyed this year. And I also left out the two glittery fluff-balls of the year, but that's because they're coming in a separate post. <br />
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So all in all... damn, it's been a great year for the Bollywood lover!Dolce and Namakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13403089235872528987noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3503508735843316282.post-47523551594632171422011-12-08T15:10:00.000-08:002011-12-08T15:18:14.956-08:00"Are you saying Bollywood makes GOOD movies too??"As usual it started with me getting all worked up about someone making a passing comment at the table that Bollywood actors suck... And also as usual, this was coming from a person who has seen a total of... half a Bollywood movie. After trying really hard to not start a lecture about ignorance and speaking without knowing what the hell you're talking about, I eventually landed myself in a discussion on the way home about why it is that Bollywood keeps being judged without being given a right to defend itself. The debate started with "Well, even if they DO make good movies, Bollywood is not exactly doing anything to dispel this bad opinion (as gratuitous as it may be) that people have of it.". While trying to objectively get to the "why" of that, we touched on a few interesting points.<br />
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<b>1) People are far more aware of bad Bollywood movies than they are of good ones.</b><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-a-lHmB5Zq3M/TuE-DD6XxOI/AAAAAAAAA7g/7vgwKOAJXeY/s1600/Endhiran.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="247" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-a-lHmB5Zq3M/TuE-DD6XxOI/AAAAAAAAA7g/7vgwKOAJXeY/s320/Endhiran.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
Why is that? Well, for one because word of mouth seems to work really well with trash: "Hey, I saw this unbelievably bad youtube video with this jeep crashing into a helicopter, it was Bollywood (no, it wasn't, but let's not even go there), here, you watch it too!". Or "Dude, I read that the most expensive Bollywood movie ever made is with this guy who turns into a robot and then turns into a CGI snake. We should get high and watch it, it's gonna be so trippy." Or "OMG check this out: this guy is rapping in English but it's not English and it's really really bad, it got like a million hits. Watch it, it's Hi-larious!". I could go on but you get the idea.<br />
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So naturally, when that's the kind of stuff that goes viral, it's hard to blame people for assuming the worst.<br />
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But that said, you really can't control what goes viral and what doesn't. So then where is the part that you do control? Well, sadly, it doesn't get much better there either. Distribution. Which brings us to...<br />
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<b>2) Banking on only the big heroes is a self-fulfilling prophecy.</b><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7G9FO_o_w-A/TuE-Za0XUsI/AAAAAAAAA7o/pu-hfvp4kcE/s1600/desiboyz.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7G9FO_o_w-A/TuE-Za0XUsI/AAAAAAAAA7o/pu-hfvp4kcE/s1600/desiboyz.jpg" /></a></div><br />
What movies get good distribution overseas? The ones that are guaranteed to bring in the moolah from existing audiences, of course. So regardless of the quality or subject matter of the movie, if it stars SRK, Akshay Kumar or Salman Khan, it'll be in every theatre known to Indians. Now here's the problem with that: none of these heroes make movies that are going to change someone's opinion about Bollywood. They think the acting is crap... well, I doubt Akshay will change their mind on that. They think Bollywood movies are full of nonsense and ridiculous shit. Uh... yeah... I love <b>Dabangg</b> but it IS full of nonsense and ridiculous shit. They think Bollywood movies are there just to justify the song and dance routine and some silly love-story. Hm... something like <b>Ra.One</b> won't exactly make a case for plot over shiny dance sequences with the heroine looking hot, wind blowing in her hair. And at least if the dancing were still top notch, then maybe, just maybe the audience of such films as "Step Up" and "Save the Last Dance" would be tempted to go for it. Sadly, apart from booty-shaking, there's not a whole lot of good dancing coming out of the big productions in Bollywood these days (not you, Munni, you still rock!).<br />
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But I digress. To further complicate matters, these are exactly the type of movies that, because they are built around star-power, come in assuming a body of knowledge that the North American audience doesn't have. It's fun when you're in the know to get all the inside jokes and all the references to other Bollywood movies or other heroes, but it's no fun to sit there hearing the rest of the audience roar with laughter and have absolutely no clue what just made that scene so funny. So the movies that get the widest distribution are also the ones guaranteed to alienate any potential non-desi movie-goers.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-K4egVvkBAr8/TuE-xDEE5XI/AAAAAAAAA7w/PXqRTawFGx0/s1600/Om-Shanti-Om.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="245" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-K4egVvkBAr8/TuE-xDEE5XI/AAAAAAAAA7w/PXqRTawFGx0/s320/Om-Shanti-Om.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
You see how this argument will now start going in circles: good distribution is assured for actors who already appeal to the desi masses because that's who's going to bring in the money. These actors will be watched and enjoyed by the same people every time, which ensures that the next release will also come to town. And so the world turns. And the people who are NOT already on the SRK batmobile or the Salman Khan bandwagon? Oh those guys... well, they can go watch Harry Potter.<br />
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This part of the problem also gets mirrored on the media side of things. What does the radio cover? What movies will get an article in The Star? Whose arrival did you see on TV during IIFA? Guess! Why? Because that's what sells the paper, that's who people want to hear about, that's who they already know and love. How do you break this vicious cycle when none of these mass media outlets have any interest in reaching that part of the audience that *doesn't* already know about Bollywood? God only knows...<br />
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</b><br />
<b>3) On the other side of the distribution coin, movies that <i>could</i> appeal to non-desis never even get marketed to them.</b><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Bqim9a0NgZk/TuE_ZenuVnI/AAAAAAAAA74/606oJu2f7_g/s1600/Shor+City+Sendhil.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="318" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Bqim9a0NgZk/TuE_ZenuVnI/AAAAAAAAA74/606oJu2f7_g/s320/Shor+City+Sendhil.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
I remember being completely dumbfounded that <a href="http://dolcenamak.blogspot.com/2011/07/4-karats-in-silver-shor-in-city.html"><b>Shor in the City</b></a> didn't screen anywhere in Toronto. Here was an opportunity to introduce a movie with an actor that North American non-desi audiences were already familiar with (Sendhil Ramamurthy), banking on the success of the TV series Heroes, and thus potentially gaining yourself a new audience. My friends had no way of knowing if the movie was any good (and nor did I), but they would have gone to see it just for Dr. Suresh. How crazy would it have been if that movie ended up changing people's minds about Bollywood (because it actually is pretty damn good)? We'll never know...<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dIbzsSvgLmY/TuFAFq34XHI/AAAAAAAAA8A/Xu5ZhWrGxqk/s1600/Dhobi+ghat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dIbzsSvgLmY/TuFAFq34XHI/AAAAAAAAA8A/Xu5ZhWrGxqk/s320/Dhobi+ghat.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
Or take another little piece of good cinema, <a href="http://dolcenamak.blogspot.com/2010/09/namak-went-to-see-dhobi-ghat-at-tiff.html"><b>Dhobi Ghat</b></a>. Would people who watch foreign movies from Europe be interested in seeing this and loving it? Most likely. And yet its entire marketing campaign was aimed at convincing existing Aamir Khan fans that this is not your typical Aamir movie. (Which by the way led nowhere because those Aamir fans still went in expecting another <b>3 Idiots</b> and they still bitched about the movie being crap, so a wasted effort if you ask me). Not only that, but despite the very cool website and the dozen of "making of" featurettes, the film only had one trailer, and that trailer didn't really say anything about the plot (not saying it's easy to make a trailer about this movie without giving away the plot, but if I hadn't already been interested in the director, that trailer wouldn't have convinced me to see it). So with this in mind, what potential did Dhobi Ghat have to attract that audience that would have given it its due? Almost none. It was people like me who already love Bollywood that went, loved, wrote and... that's it.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-e09cKoXr0pg/TuFAToQJ6QI/AAAAAAAAA8I/3TfXdKNIjOs/s1600/bol-2011.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-e09cKoXr0pg/TuFAToQJ6QI/AAAAAAAAA8I/3TfXdKNIjOs/s320/bol-2011.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><br />
Not really Bollywood, but I can think of a few people who would have really appreciated the Pakistani movie <a href="http://dolcenamak.blogspot.com/2011/09/bol-khuda-kay-liye-shoaib-mansoors-yin.html"><b>Bol</b></a>... if only they had known about it. But even I discovered it by fluke during the one week when it played in the city. This type of film would have made the film fest circuit, I think... but it never seemed to even try even though it came out right around TIFF. I know I would have gone to it at TIFF instead of Chatrak.<br />
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And fine, forget these off-beat movies, they probably don't get much of an audience even in their home country, it's unfair to ask their producers to spend more on marketing when they're likely to not recover their money even at home (though that argument lacks vision completely, but whatever, let's accept it for argument's sake). Then what about some true blue Bollywood like <a href="http://dolcenamak.blogspot.com/2011/07/zindagi-na-milegi-dobara-review.html"><b>Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara</b></a> or even <a href="http://dolcenamak.blogspot.com/2011/12/ooh-la-la-ooh-la-blah.html"><b>The Dirty Picture</b></a>? Not technically your typical Bollywood blockbuster (although these days it's very hard to say what IS your typical Bolly blockbuster), but in my opinion a good enough combo of Bollywood pizzazz and a good story line. Not too much thinking required, mostly full-on entertainment with a few misty-eyed moments here and there. Certainly neither of them a perfect movie, but enjoyable enough for an evening out. Did either of them get promoted outside the desi-verse? If they did, I never saw it.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YEK1-Q4rIfA/TuFAlaE9XJI/AAAAAAAAA8Q/eKAwmLM-XQM/s1600/mere-brother-ki-dulhan+truck.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="256" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YEK1-Q4rIfA/TuFAlaE9XJI/AAAAAAAAA8Q/eKAwmLM-XQM/s320/mere-brother-ki-dulhan+truck.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
Let's go even further with this: do we really think that those legions of teenagers who flock to the theatres to sigh and swoon their way through Edward and Bella's love story would not be interested in watching something fun like <b>Mere Brother Ki Dulhan</b>? Is there any valid reason why they would not also fall in love with a Bittoo in <a href="http://dolcenamak.blogspot.com/2011/02/band-baaja-baaraat-and-other-fluff.html"><b>Band Baaja Baarat</b></a>? Because other than the fact that they're required to read subtitles, I really can't think of a reason why they wouldn't be a perfect audience for this type of movie coming out of Bollywood. Why, then, is this audience not targeted when clearly they love the genre?<br />
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Now I'm not saying I know how to really reach these audiences with a marketing campaign, because if I did, I'd move to India tomorrow and hit up Aamir Khan Productions for a job. But what I do know is that I saw posters for <b>Cooking with Stella</b> all over downtown Toronto when that movie came out. I know that <b>Videsh (Heaven on Earth)</b> was shown in theatres that had never seen a Bollywood movie before. And I know that <b>Breakaway</b> was allegedly the most watched Canadian English-language movie of the year. Now they could all have something to do with the fact that some of the big names involved in the production are Canadian citizens. Still... maybe worth studying what it is that they are doing right.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-C0xztQ01vHI/TuFA9Cg3TMI/AAAAAAAAA8Y/oA_OJrIVka4/s1600/Breakaway+banner.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="210" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-C0xztQ01vHI/TuFA9Cg3TMI/AAAAAAAAA8Y/oA_OJrIVka4/s320/Breakaway+banner.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
Though I will say, one thing that would really help and it's beyond me why it's not happening, is instead of making movies in English, how about putting some subtitles on those youtube trailers? And hey, while we're at it, if you're releasing the songs as a promo, stick some subs on those as well! It's nice that you want people to appreciate the music and the visuals for themselves, but you know what, a lot of times the beauty of a song lies precisely in the way the lyrics match the music and the moment, and if you don't understand the lyrics, that moment is likely to pass you by. Not to mention that a trailer with subtitles is more likely to be disseminated on Facebook, Twitter and all those magical places where friends of friends would now have a chance to actually understand what you're so excited about as opposed to feeling like an idiot for having to ask so many questions about what you just posted. The internet is the strongest marketing tool right now. USE IT! But I am wasting my breath, I know...<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eT3ehid9dJo/TuFCcSaccwI/AAAAAAAAA8w/-qB-rCGrnEQ/s1600/bollywood-Facebook.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="216" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eT3ehid9dJo/TuFCcSaccwI/AAAAAAAAA8w/-qB-rCGrnEQ/s320/bollywood-Facebook.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This screencap stolen from cinemagupshup.com</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
Without getting into Bollywood's Hollywood complex which I find ridiculous anyway, I really wish Bollywood producers would explore the concept that maybe they don't need to change Bollywood to make it more marketable, it might be enough to just... market it properly!<br />
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Last but not least, and this is the one point where the biggest changes can be made...<br />
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<b>4) Bollywood is such a self-centered industry.</b><br />
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Why not come out of its comfort zone and do some cross-pollination? I'm not just talking about <b>Anil Kapoor</b> being in the last Mission Impossible movie, or <b>Aishwarya Rai</b> being in the Pink Panther, or bringing in the awesome <b>Poorna Jagannathan</b> for Delhi Belly, although that's not a bad start. I'm talking about doing some joint projects, getting some experience elsewhere, bringing in some talent from abroad, just engaging with others. How many Hollywood actors have been in European movies? All the good ones. How many Hollywood directors watch Asian and European movies on a regular basis. Judging by what they list as their favourite movies, I'd say a lot. How much traffic is there back and forth for production staff across the continents? Enough. Sure it took decades to get to that kind of interaction, but Bollywood needs to come out and play already. Building itself a little fort of self-righteousness from which it scoffs at the other film industries while secretly wanting to be them will never be the way to go. National pride is nice and all but when <b>Zoya Akhtar</b> and <b>Kiran Rao</b> are the only two directors (that I can think of) who list non-Indian movies as their all time favourites on a regular basis, you know there's something rotten in the state of Denmark.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0MOcwHAmgTI/TuFBWUiw8OI/AAAAAAAAA8g/iXon_iZLFhQ/s1600/slumdog_millionaire.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0MOcwHAmgTI/TuFBWUiw8OI/AAAAAAAAA8g/iXon_iZLFhQ/s320/slumdog_millionaire.jpg" width="216" /></a></div><br />
If people here were exposed to some Bollywood actors, cinematographers, plot-lines through this cross-pollination, their tolerance and curiosity for the real deal would probably increase substantially. And then it might go beyond <b>Slumdog Millionaire</b> and "that guy who won the Oscar for the soundtrack". Then you'd hear things like "Let's go see this Bollywood movie, it's with that girl from [insert title]. I love her!" and "Check it out, remember that awesome choreography from [insert title]? The same guy did the choreos in this movie". Or better yet "Wow, I LOVE this song. Here it is with subs. Hey wanna go see the movie it's from?". Sigh... Instead, actors from Bollywood would never be caught dead saying they'd like to be part of a foreign movie, the Indian actors who ARE part of international productions, such as Freida Pinto, are scoffed at, and whenever choreographers, singers and actors from North America do get involved in Bollywood projects, the enthusiasm is always one-sided and it's not on this side of the Pacific.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-U6nvdNw126U/TuFBx4MZLbI/AAAAAAAAA8o/3y99K_HygnU/s1600/akshay-kumar_luda.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-U6nvdNw126U/TuFBx4MZLbI/AAAAAAAAA8o/3y99K_HygnU/s320/akshay-kumar_luda.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
Until one or several of the above elements changes drastically, I will keep having to fight with friends to prove that Bollywood does *gasp* make good movies, while Indian films will continue to be this alien entity that holds nothing familiar and hence nothing of interest.<br />
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<br />
To end on an anecdotal note, I'll leave you with the best example that was given me last night during this discussion. Bollywood is like the Blackberry Playbook. It can do all these totally neat things, it's powerful, it's capable, it's reliable. But when it came out, it lost a lot of ground because of unfavourable comparisons to the iPad. Did anyone bother to look at what makes the Playbook different? Nope. All everyone wanted to see was how it fares next to the iPad in all the features that could be compared. And what about the areas that the iPad never even touched? Well, those don't matter and Blackberry certainly never bothered to highlight them. So in its own world, the Playbook is this awesome little product that will never get its due because its marketing campaign let it down. I don't have an iPad so I won't start comparing which one is better (and I don't really care, so please feel free to NOT start a debate over this), but the point is, just like with Bollywood, most people won't even give the Playbook a chance because it allowed itself to be positioned as Number 2 from the get-go. Why would I get the Number 2 product when Number 1 is readily available?<br />
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Ah... but what if Number 2 was not a number at all? What if it was just... say... the letter A?Dolce and Namakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13403089235872528987noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3503508735843316282.post-10330226158029926882011-12-04T18:09:00.000-08:002011-12-04T18:09:16.994-08:00Ooh La La Ooh La... Blah?According to <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0527453/">imdb</a>, I have to date seen 3 Milan Luthria films. Ok, 4 actually, but I really would rather forget I ever wasted 2 hours of my life to watch Hattrick. So those 3 are: <b>Taxi 9 2 11</b>, <b>Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai</b> and <b>The Dirty Picture</b>. And at the end of all three I felt like saying Romeo's line: "Oh wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied??". Luthria is a charming storyteller, but it's a crying shame that he can't make up his mind about what he wants to say with his films. Every time I see one I am left with the lingering question: Why did he make this movie? It's a good movie, sure, but... why?<br />
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After finishing Taxi 9 2 11 yesterday I commented that it's like a parable, it exists in a surreal world where the characters just... are, without having to justify <i>why</i> they are. You are told about them, and you just accept that they have their own internal logic and their own compulsions that well... you may not necessarily understand. But all will be explained when you get to the moral of the story (which is why I quite liked the ending, surreal as it may be).<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-opm4P4yIuB4/Ttwg4tBGAXI/AAAAAAAAA64/256O9lnUxSM/s1600/Taxi+9211.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-opm4P4yIuB4/Ttwg4tBGAXI/AAAAAAAAA64/256O9lnUxSM/s1600/Taxi+9211.jpg" /></a></div><br />
Thinking of these other two movies (OUATIM and TDP), I think they also work well as parables. They talk of rises and falls, of right and wrong, of success and failure, and admittedly, they do so in a rather intelligent way. They're like a smart retelling of those children-stories you used to read years ago, with witty princes and fearsome ogres whose existence or raison d'etre you never questioned. You just went with it because that's what the story told you to. But unlike in fairy-tales, with Luthria there is no moral to the story in the end. There is no good to triumph over evil, there is no ogre to be slaughtered, there is no princess whose hand can be won. It's the same style of storytelling that parables use, but just when you get to the end and you're waiting for the punchline, for those last 2 lines that give you the life lesson to be learned, you get cut off.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rbCRBFg9Ago/TtwhNRHXbLI/AAAAAAAAA7A/r-QKdq0JIa4/s1600/Dirty+picture+non+kiss.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="148" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rbCRBFg9Ago/TtwhNRHXbLI/AAAAAAAAA7A/r-QKdq0JIa4/s320/Dirty+picture+non+kiss.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
The Dirty Picture is, admittedly or not, a biopic of the life and times of the South Indian sex-symbol of the 80s, Silk Smitha. Without knowing too much about her life, or having seen any of her films, I can still completely understand why she was a controversial actress. The Dirty Picture does well with showcasing that, and just in case you're slower on the uptake, they even put it into words for you, one of Naseeruddin Shah's best lines in the film: "You're our late night fantasy... that no one wants to talk about in the morning." This goddess of sex that everyone wants a piece of cannot be accepted as part of a society who thinks of itself as virtuous and wholesome.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-y4PqADR4zsY/Ttwi-L1fq4I/AAAAAAAAA7I/Gg36idSQCes/s1600/TDP+Vidya+pallu.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="303" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-y4PqADR4zsY/Ttwi-L1fq4I/AAAAAAAAA7I/Gg36idSQCes/s320/TDP+Vidya+pallu.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
But after having made this point, The Dirty Picture somehow chickens out when the time comes to hit you with the punchline. If the movie was to be a slap in the face of a public who cannot resolve the cognitive dissonance created by what it really wants and what is proper, then Silk should have triumphed in the end. If on the other hand it wanted to be a commentary on the genesis of a star and its inevitable downfall, then Silk didn't need to be Silk, it could have been any other star, the controversy didn't add anything to the story. As it stands, with its two feet in two different boats, The Dirty Picture leaves you with the truly dirty feeling that, when it's all said and done, this society which gets criticized in the beginning for not owning up to their lechery, is the one and only winner in this film. And as I was saying earlier, that makes me wonder: why tell this story to begin with?<br />
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Sure Vidya Balan is absolutely fabulous and truly the queen of our fantasies, whether those fantasies revolve around her generous cleavage or around the belief that a woman can be considered a sex-symbol even without spending grueling hours in the gym every week (I suspect a lot of women watching this will come out with this particular fantasy, as did I). And yes, Nasseruddin Shah is an absolute delight to watch as he lusts, smoulders, boils over and drools over... well, himself really (as much as Silk would like to think it's over her).<br />
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It also goes without saying that <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XjpV9n25Yk">Ooh La La </a>is a true feast for the eyes on the big screen, even though quite honestly the best version of the song is Tusshar's rendition of it in his bedroom. And I quite enjoy Emraan Hashmi when he's being emo and brooding, even if I will never understand why he just has to sing to at least one song in all of his films whether the film warrants it or not (and whether it's a pretty song or not).<br />
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And there's no denying that it's a very well made movie. But while leaving the theatre one can't help but think that despite the clever one-liners and the million bite-size life teachings that make up its script (sometimes in very entertaining ways), the Dirty Picture was robbed of its punchline. And if there IS a moral to the story, it's sadly the same old and boring one: that no matter how high we rise, our existence is meaningless if we don't have the only thing that matters: love.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Wz2IMRSDm1U/Ttwjwg2qkjI/AAAAAAAAA7Y/4hiItRmyEQI/s1600/TDP+Vidya+Emraan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="158" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Wz2IMRSDm1U/Ttwjwg2qkjI/AAAAAAAAA7Y/4hiItRmyEQI/s320/TDP+Vidya+Emraan.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
You know, sometimes I think Bollywood is still terribly nostalgic of itself. In the past month I have seen 2 movies (Rockstar and The Dirty Picture) with a very similar trajectory: the rise and fall of a star who turns out to be nothing without love. I said that The Dirty Picture was a parable without a moral. But if Bollywood itself were to be seen as a story, its moral would be this line from an old song: Ishq bina kya jeena, yaara? (What's the point in living if there is no love?).<br />
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Which I find somewhat amusing given that Bollywood has been fighting against its old school love stories for almost a decade now. From making movies like <b>I Hate Luv Storys</b>, to reciting and mocking old love story dialogues in pretty much every other movie, to making a <b>Rockstar</b> and a <b>Dirty Picture</b>, it's like Bollywood can't make up its mind between embracing its love for love or letting go of it. Now don't get me wrong, I adore Rockstar with the burning power of a thousand suns, but sometimes I do think Bollywood is like a teenager, who can see nothing beyond that world of love that it has created for himself/herself. And just like human beings do, I wonder if Bollywood will ever grow up from its teens and realize that there are so many other things worth talking about in life other than love? It's not that I don't think it can move mountains, or that it's the most delightful anchor in one's existence, but let's admit it once and for all that it's not the be all and end all of life. And then move on.<br />
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Oh well... The Dirty Picture is still very much worth a watch for Vidya's excellent performance (or for her cleavage, depending on your tastes, of course). <br />
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<u><b>The Dirty Picture (2011)</b></u><br />
<i>Director: Milan Luthria</i><br />
<i>Starring: Vidya Balan, Nasseeruddin Shah, Emraan Hashmi, Tusshar Kapoor </i><br />
<i>Music: Vishal- Shekhar</i><br />
<i>Choreography: Pony Prakashraj</i>Dolce and Namakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13403089235872528987noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3503508735843316282.post-8735201363308073692011-11-22T20:00:00.000-08:002011-11-22T20:00:34.527-08:00Of Men and Man-ChildrenWe've talked about action heroes recently around here, so as the natural progression (or regression?) dictates, the time has come to talk about lovers. Ok, so it's really not the progression, it's more the fact that I've been thinking about this post for over a year now, and well, it's high time. And reading the beginning of <a href="http://sudhishkamath.com/2011/11/18/rockstar-in-search-of-the-free-bird/">this excellent post</a> about the evolution of love stories over the decades reminded me of it.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pKJhPozD6IA/TsxkK-Qy79I/AAAAAAAAA4k/g25AYV7dENM/s1600/Ranbir+Rockstar+hospital.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pKJhPozD6IA/TsxkK-Qy79I/AAAAAAAAA4k/g25AYV7dENM/s320/Ranbir+Rockstar+hospital.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rockstar - my favourite love story lately</td></tr>
</tbody></table>It's hard to ignore the fact that for the past 10 years of Indian cinema a new prototype of hero/lover has evolved, and it's more or less adequately summarized in one word: the man-child, defined as an immature grown man who still has no direction in life, nor much emotional maturity. Without getting into how generation Y is probably the biological father of this character, while globalization is its mother, we'll have to accept the fact that for the past decade it's been the back-bone of most love stories. And some non-love-stories too!<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HUzClDPYceg/TsxksouOvBI/AAAAAAAAA4s/t2HLfv3uj_8/s1600/wake-up-sid.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HUzClDPYceg/TsxksouOvBI/AAAAAAAAA4s/t2HLfv3uj_8/s320/wake-up-sid.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wake Up Sid! - the title says it all</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Gone are the days when fate or a fortuitous chain of events would finally unite the lovers who had agreed to call it quits for the sake of their families. Gone are the days when the crushed lover was willing to let the girl he loved walk away with the other man, and if we still see that man, he is no longer the hero, he has <i>become the other man</i>, pushed somewhere in the background while the main couple holds the sympathy of the audience firmly away from him. Sure we get all kinds of excuses for it: he was abusive (City of God), he was cheating (Kismat Konnection), he was too boring (I Hate Luv Storys), he was not really in love with her (Mere Brother Ki Dulhan), and sometimes no excuse is even needed (Rockstar), but the general rule is that it's the hero's right to get the girl. He certainly seems to think so. And it's this sense of entitlement that is, I feel, the first and most important trait of the man-child.<br />
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Sure, there's something to be said for his immaturity, as well as for his self-centered-ness, or for his fear of commitment. These are admittedly all important for his characterization, but unlike the sense of entitlement, they're nothing new. And this is also something that puzzles me personally, because there are few things I hate more in this world than entitlement. And yet... and yet, I am always on the side of the man-child, no matter how spoiled and obnoxious he is.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-txP1kjZOkbA/TsxlOgcLHCI/AAAAAAAAA40/T7Avf-JSr8Q/s1600/dil-chahta-hai.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-txP1kjZOkbA/TsxlOgcLHCI/AAAAAAAAA40/T7Avf-JSr8Q/s320/dil-chahta-hai.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dil Chahta Hai - the movie that started it all!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Thinking back about the lover prototype of the 90s/early 2000, one thing seemed to consistently annoy me in all the movies that I couldn't avoid from that decade (though for the most part I did well with avoiding them): the hero's helplessness. Devdas and his eternal self-pity, Raj willing to give up his Simran because the parents said so, Sameer's departure for similar reasons, even Ram giving up Sita for the sake of his people and his honour. All examples of the kind of man I would despise. What use do I have, as a woman, for a man who will not fight for me? How is this coward the ideal husband? Maybe that's why despite their extreme OTT-ness, I found Aamir Khan's old movies more palatable: he never did play the hero that just gives up. For all the ridiculousness of the chair-marriage in Dil, the man at least had the balls to stick to his guns. Don't get me wrong, I avoid those as well (sorry Aamirou), but when I do watch them, I appreciate that at least I don't have to yell at my TV screen: GROW A BACKBONE ALREADY!!<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fYp8P9S1xm0/TsxmAyIRtRI/AAAAAAAAA48/Vicaa_k17Mo/s1600/Devdas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="221" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fYp8P9S1xm0/TsxmAyIRtRI/AAAAAAAAA48/Vicaa_k17Mo/s320/Devdas.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Devdas - It doesn't get much more pathetic than this</td></tr>
</tbody></table>I don't know if it's my generation, my upbringing, my star sign or something altogether different, but giving up is not something I would ever have sympathy for. And my real life aversion for weak people seems to translate to my filmi preferences as well. So for all his alleged cuteness (I suppose that's a matter of taste with actors like SRK and Salman), I cannot cheer for a hero who puts his hands up and goes to mope in a corner. Unless of course, she's the one pushing him away, in which case insisting would turn into stalking and we all know how much I hate that.<br />
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So I guess when I think about it this way, I'm not really admiring the new hero's sense of entitlement, but rather his willingness to stay and fight once he finds the one thing he cares about. Whether it's through ridiculous and completely implausible plot twists, a la Break Ke Baad, or through hilariously complicated plans a la Mere Brother Ki Dulhan, or with the wild determination of a jungle predator a la Ghajini, or just by speaking up a la Dil Chahta Hai, I find myself always attracted to this hero who doesn't know what quitting means. Obviously all this goes for the heroine too, though sometimes I can understand her weakness where I would have zero tolerance for his. Still, it's much nicer if she is as determined as him.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XDnNhARZWO4/TsxnSklc3nI/AAAAAAAAA5E/gbMS4TvEsCE/s1600/Mere-Brother-Ki-Dulhan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XDnNhARZWO4/TsxnSklc3nI/AAAAAAAAA5E/gbMS4TvEsCE/s320/Mere-Brother-Ki-Dulhan.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mere Brother Ki Dulhan - a most tenacious pair!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>On the other side of the coin, it occurs to me that this is most likely why I hated Mausam. But let's not digress.<br />
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Yes, he's a man-child, and yes, he needs to do some growing up, and yes, he will probably do at least 2 or 3 offensive things in the course of the movie, but when it's all said and done I am guaranteed to not see him feeling sorry for himself until the girl decides to call it off. And even then, in most cases, that's the catalyst for his growth (whether it's growing up, growing stronger, or growing famous), so you never get that sense of self-inflicted helplessness from him.<br />
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I don't mind spoiled brats. Of course, we'd never work out in real life, but they do rather amuse me on screen. I do however get an irresistible urge to slap them when they turn out to be quitters too, on top of being brats. And this seems to be the difference between me hating Devdas and loving Dev D. Between unabashedly despising Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam and embracing Jab We Met. Between thinking Dil To Pagal Hai's ending is a lame cop-out and finding the ending of Dil Chahta Hai exhilarating. And let's not even try to pit Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge versus Rockstar. Talk about going for it!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-c0cfoBbEZbA/Tsxocgjd3vI/AAAAAAAAA5M/lBDwBNl9wsU/s1600/JWM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="203" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-c0cfoBbEZbA/Tsxocgjd3vI/AAAAAAAAA5M/lBDwBNl9wsU/s320/JWM.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jab We Met - selflessness done right</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Now don't get me wrong, before the desis start explaining to me the importance of family, honour and "doing the right thing", let me preemptively state that I am vigorously of the opinion that no one who loves you should ever stand in the way of your happiness. Also, in terms of parenting, I firmly believe that the young ones should be allowed to make their own mistakes, though feel free to practice your "I told you so" diction in the mirror all you want in anticipation of their failure. So with that in mind, I guess it boils down to: why care about the family honour when the family couldn't care less about your happiness? And if others do and can relate to these heroes, so be it. I just don't think I will ever be persuaded to.<br />
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If I absolutely have to have a Raj, I'll take Saawariya's Raj, despite all the film's faults, because at the end of it all, he's still boxing with unhappiness.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FElgrIodLmQ/Tsxo5yOLeFI/AAAAAAAAA5U/Z8dPWIlvIVs/s1600/Saawariya+boxing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FElgrIodLmQ/Tsxo5yOLeFI/AAAAAAAAA5U/Z8dPWIlvIVs/s1600/Saawariya+boxing.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Saawariya - so many things wrong with this one, but what a memorable Raj!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>If I have to talk about a noble soul who gives up the woman he loves, I'll talk about Jab We Met's Aditya Kashyap who goes on to make something of his life as a result of his heart-break. If I am to love a quitter, I will choose Lakshya's Karan who, despite his completely unrealistic trajectory, makes a strong case for learning from one's failures. And if I am to cheer for a man who chooses the honour of his family over the happiness of the woman he loves, I'll choose Pinjar's Rashid because he more than makes up for it.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-x07XrLykf0M/TsxpxjowSEI/AAAAAAAAA5c/z68uITJXUbk/s1600/Pinjar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-x07XrLykf0M/TsxpxjowSEI/AAAAAAAAA5c/z68uITJXUbk/s320/Pinjar.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pinjar - another favourite love story, and don't think there are that many!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>While they may not all be man-children per se (unless we broaden the definition to encompass all emotional immaturity), they all go against the norm of the mopey, honourable end-of-century lover as made famous by Shah Rukh Khan, though far be it from me to lay the blame solely on him. It was definitely a trend everyone was a part of, he just happened to be the most famous, and therefore his movies are the hardest to avoid. So you know, I tend to rip on him more, but the problem extends to most movies from the 90s and early 2000s. <br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8UPIVY6MWGg/TsxqzbnVy9I/AAAAAAAAA5k/jYK5kjijSRA/s1600/Taal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8UPIVY6MWGg/TsxqzbnVy9I/AAAAAAAAA5k/jYK5kjijSRA/s320/Taal.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Taal - Oh, don't even get me started!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>I find that the past decade has happily solved this problem for me! They may have brought in the slacker to replace the struggler, and the video-games player to replace the hard working college student, but hey, it's the SMS generation, isn't it? There is a short cut for everything, values and ethics have definitely changed.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IHvo2Fvau4A/TsxrtjdsqvI/AAAAAAAAA5s/-mqp8F2mdec/s1600/tere-bin-laden.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IHvo2Fvau4A/TsxrtjdsqvI/AAAAAAAAA5s/-mqp8F2mdec/s320/tere-bin-laden.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tere Bin Laden - how do you not love this slacker? And see, it doesn't even have to be a love story!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>I must say I do love this generation. It's not just that I love the actors and the fact that they refuse, for the most part, to be stuck in the same role, but I also love this spirit of independence, this effervescence and yes, this streak of immaturity about it. On and off screen.<br />
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I love that they want the world and they think there's no reason why they shouldn't get it. Yup, I'll take the immature fighter over the mature, righteous quitter. Any day.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2AEQjvkJzWk/TsxtBhYxMiI/AAAAAAAAA50/OpzYJ0lalkE/s1600/RoadMovie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2AEQjvkJzWk/TsxtBhYxMiI/AAAAAAAAA50/OpzYJ0lalkE/s1600/RoadMovie.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Road, Movie - what a classic!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Dolce and Namakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13403089235872528987noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3503508735843316282.post-41487386118523874302011-11-16T14:45:00.000-08:002011-11-25T13:30:24.428-08:00It's the Little Things about Rockstar...<div class="ii gt" id=":7q"><div id=":7r"><div>I've resolved that even if I can't review <b>Rockstar</b> in something more coherent than a series of sighs, there are still a few things I would like to leave for posterity on this blog. One area in particular about the direction of this film interests me because of my background, and I'd like to share it with you since I don't expect most reviews will touch on it, and that's the "local colour".<br />
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In this day and age, when technology can deliver even snow to your doorstep in Miami, local colour is still something that very few artists manage to capture, be they photographers, painters, film-makers or writers. It's such an elusive concept too: is it the smells or a place, is it the colours, is it the muffled conversations in the background, is it the taste of a local dish, is it the blurred faces of people passing by? Probably all of the above, and then a little extra something, a detail here and there that is so unique and so representative of that place that it will release an avalanche of memories in an instant. Much like in Proust's famous episode of the madeleine.<br />
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Bollywood is not particularly renowned (feel free to read "infamously known for failing in this department") for researching and capturing the elements specific to the foreign set where parts of a movie are shot. Many examples come to mind, but the one that stands out for me right now is Kismat Konnection (because it was set in Toronto), which not only failed to capture anything that is typical for Toronto (really, it could have been any other city and the movie would have been the same), but also managed to sin against my patience by dubbing the "locals" with some sort of alien accent that I can't even place, but it sure as hell was not from this continent. And let's not even talk about Kahin Na and the ridiculous blondes jamming on mandolines with some sort of local rastafarian. Um... wtf??? Anyway, better stop here before I get all angry again.</div><div><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-X28bgDxFz-A/TsQ8esrSMfI/AAAAAAAAA4c/dBDiH4NOiTE/s1600/vlcsnap-00002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-X28bgDxFz-A/TsQ8esrSMfI/AAAAAAAAA4c/dBDiH4NOiTE/s320/vlcsnap-00002.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><br />
And let's not even talk about the many productions that were shot in England, no, let's not even go there, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham.<br />
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Come to think of it, apart from placing the action in certain very pretty places or iconic situations, I don't think Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara did terribly well with giving the film a pronounced Spanish colour, something that you can instantly recognize as typical. Sure the song Senorita is sung by a local flamenco singer, but apart from that everything in it is desi. The same can be said about the rest of the scenes in the film: whenever there are interactions with locals they're written from a desi point of view, none of it looks like it's been written by someone who has lived and interacted with the locals for too long.<br />
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But Rockstar truly impressed me. Not because I think Imtiaz Ali is brilliant (which I do), and not because Prague is one of my favourite places in the world (which it is), and certainly not because I adore the Italians in Italy (not so much the ones here, but that's a different matter), but I was in awe at how much I was feeling the local atmosphere in both Verona and Prague. They say the devil is in the details. And if so, Imtiaz Ali is one delicious devil. <br />
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I did appreciate the Italian police cussing Jordan in Italian (you know, as opposed to say, Hungarian or worse yet, Hindi!), and the marketplace atmosphere in the footage at the beginning of the film before Ranbir even appears on screen. But the one moment that struck me (and made me snort both times I saw it in the theatre) was during Ranbir's intro when he finally manages to escape the cops and gets off the streecar: two girls recognize him and start running after him screaming "E' Giordano! E' Giordano" (It's Jordan, it's Jordan!). I'm not sure how much this will amuse anyone else, but I am always in awe at how Italian people manage to translate everything in Italian, especially names. So to have them translate Jordan's name to Giordano in that brief sequence just tickled me into happiness. It's such a little detail that no one would even think twice about it, and who knows, maybe it all happened by accident, but if it didn't (as I like to hope), it's a wonderful proof of solid, careful film making from Imtiaz Ali. It's little things like this that I always hope to see in a film shot in a foreign location.<br />
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Which brings me to the second minuscule detail that coloured me happy, this time in the Prague scenes. Now this one may be entirely a fabrication of my too optimistic imagination, but there's a scene where JJ and Heer are having shots on a patio overlooking Hradcany and the St. Vitus Cathedral. <br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZEytecrJizA/TsQ4GDd73JI/AAAAAAAAA4E/vNWGUp9HiJA/s1600/hradcany.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZEytecrJizA/TsQ4GDd73JI/AAAAAAAAA4E/vNWGUp9HiJA/s320/hradcany.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><br />
Leaving aside how gorgeous Prague looks throughout the film (though not even close to how charming it is in real life), did anyone notice the colour of the "cheap liquor" they're having? Because unless they were doing shots of the good tequila (and why would they have tequila in Prague?), I am willing to bet that coloured water was standing in for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becherovka">Becherovka</a>, the most famous local bitters. Why would I get so excited about this? Well for one, because there's a bottle of it in my freezer than I can use to cheer to Imtiaz Ali's health when I am done with this post. But really, because, once again, when it's so easy to wing something as trivial as this and just have water standing in for vodka in those glasses, this kind of attention to detail is such a pleasant surprise.</div><div><br />
As an aside, I am also amazed at how they managed to shoot on Charles Bridge, THE most iconic place in Prague, without a soul in sight. Because normally that bridge is packed with people, sketch artists and local musicians. So it looks more like this:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KUl-BUACEhg/TsQ4QBlk-QI/AAAAAAAAA4M/Zw5OAwvVLSQ/s1600/Charles+Bridge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KUl-BUACEhg/TsQ4QBlk-QI/AAAAAAAAA4M/Zw5OAwvVLSQ/s320/Charles+Bridge.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
Speaking of local musicians... how in love am I with Hawa Hawa? No really, ask me how obsessed I am! Ok, fine, don't ask me, but I'll tell you anyway. I am so in love with that song that not even the ridiculous flamenco skirts can ruin it for me. (Granted, I do get it that they needed something colourful and easy to slip into, so I don't mind it, just pointing out that it's not exactly local. Even gypsy skirts would have been more appropriate.) But it makes me so happy that it starts with Jordan jamming with a group of street performers because I can so see that happening in a place like Prague where everyone is always up for a drink and a song.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-s5fYFMRHEnA/TsQ4elmrN_I/AAAAAAAAA4U/6m9AvIRfGQU/s1600/Prague_musicians.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="246" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-s5fYFMRHEnA/TsQ4elmrN_I/AAAAAAAAA4U/6m9AvIRfGQU/s320/Prague_musicians.jpg" width="320" /></a></div></div><div><br />
Apart from sounding so authentically Eastern European that Goran Bregovic would probably blush in envy, the lyrics and story of Hawa Hawa are an adaptation of a fairy tale from the Grimm Brothers:<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twelve_Dancing_Princesses"> The Twelve Dancing Princesses</a>, whose origins are next door in Germany (if there is such a thing as origins for fairytales). But here's my favourite part: the details were changed to fit the story of Jordan and Heer. So the youngest princess turned into a queen, the curse turned into free will, and the king turned into her stiffling husband. Only the poor soldier stayed the same. Oh, how I love poetic licence! And how perfectly woven into the narrative that this is the first song Jordan composes after meeting Heer again in Prague. <br />
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I'm sure upon further rewatches (and there will be MANY of them!) I will giggle at many other little details like these from Rockstar. But for now, back to planning my third trip to the theatre to see Hawa Hawa once again on the big screen! I know everyone is all about Saadda Haq and Kun Faya Kun, and I am definitely with them, but Hawa Hawa gives me a special kind of nostalgic happiness that no other song has given me until now. And all the little paintbrushes of local colour from Rockstar make me wonder why it's been so damn long since I've been to Europe! Sigh... Add this to the pile as emotion number 563 that has not left me since I saw this film. </div></div></div>Dolce and Namakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13403089235872528987noreply@blogger.com12