Chronicles of an Eclectic Life: bollywood

Showing posts with label bollywood. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Nil Battey Sannata: an eyes-closed loosely-a-review

So it goes, that I was mentally choked at an incident that led to missing out 20 minutes of the movie, which had me shut my eyes but experience the movie through ears. Watching the images was getting boring - I do that all day - and since cinema provides an escape, thought I might escape that which greatly manages to antagonize i.e. the experiencing-as-sight part.

To comment on the movie, aurally,
Audio: It was organic for most part.
Foley: Done well.
Soundtrack: I did not like the background score in some sequences.

Since the movie is simple to understand, even without seeing/focusing on the events on the screen, a larger review is also possible.
Story: It was interesting, but stagnated in development by the end. The DM interaction bit felt unreal. The negative development of the young girl was erratic, to show a complete reversal in the last frame.
I didn't get to see the last part, but it got my girlfriend teary-eyed by the end, so I figure I missed something there.
Acting: The lead ladies' dialog felt overdone in some parts.
Casting: Swara Bhaskar, the promising upcoming, was good for the lead role.
Direction: The scenes were directed with a nice attention to eye. Even the side characters are done well. A great debut for Ashwini Iyer Tiwari. The editing has been exhaustive and methodical. The post-processing could've been better.

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Friday, May 13, 2016

Ranjit v Katrina

I had to appear
I had to disappear

I had to be powerful
I had to be powerless

I had to gain
I had to lose

I had to suspend
I had to choose

I had to make
I had to break

I had to command
I had to beg

I had to rise
I had to fall

I had to consolidate
I had to dissolve

I had to tell one
I had to tell all

I had to feign goodness
I had to feign badness

I had to lie to reach the truth
I had to scream the truth aloud

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Friday, November 29, 2013

Jeet ka Mantra: PK Mishra

Mr. PK Mishra is both, a hypocrite and clever. Clever hypocrites are never realized in our society, which is made mostly of people who are one of the either, but not both.

He's a hypocrite, because the man advocating the take it easy policy is no junior in the industry. He has a profile that is both big and highly eclectic. Such prolific writing is no easy affair, but he did insinuate the policy. Maybe he's a part of the Russian espionage.

He is clever, because he ran way ahead in the sphere of thought and meshed neural connections. How he did that was by leaving the world in a stupor with some absurd considerations without any advocacy of any sort of policy.
"Agar ladki ko andhere me
aankh maari to hoga kya"
"Agar azaadi na ho to
swarg milne se hoga kya?"

It worked like a flashbang grenade. This allowed him to eat most of the lunch among the others in his class - fellow lyricists. He worked on a connected contemporary world, and then expressed that through his lyrics, while others were busy writing mere pretty rhyming stuff.

PKM is the man to know. Trust me, it has worked. I could do an ad on telebrands on the pitch of a PKM DVD Set promised to cure "most of social, parental, intimate, and ultimate problems".
It was proven no better way than being heralded the man of the hour by some very vocal princesses. Yes, in my dreamworld. I was hiking through a meadow and was surrounded by these bowls of fruit and wine, and stayed back to find myself amidst this curious cult. They were like the Hobbits in one sense, deeply intent on merry-making. I could only join them, but not escape. So I did, and believe it or not, what won them over was -what else but - a PKM creation.

"mere alaava kisi aurat ko na paas bulaana
tum na kabhi bhi mother teresa ko chhod ke naam na lena"

Cult.

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Thursday, April 18, 2013

Jab Tak Hai Jaan

Well, so I went through all of it. All of what? Jab Tak Hai Jaan... starring some memorable names in Bollywood who won't be in memory for this.

From a trailer to an entire reel length, yes it converted me. That sure says something about the trailer, esp when the rest of it was so obnoxious that I'd had a bath when it ended to wash off the obnoxious yrf spunk all over me. The trailer scammed me, flat, though I did start to sense shortcomings right then after repeated play. Maybe it was because I've started to miss the road again, and reminiscing old days.

Oh, damn, so Rahman is enough to influence my decision to never watch any big-studio Bollywood production. I've been so consistently disappointed, but that disappointment never included Shahrukh since real long, in fact I'd been safely avoiding Shahrukh Khan movies until now, until Rahman convinced me to dedicate it some time. The music of Rahman from JTHJ is something that grew on me. More so, since I don't even listen to much of the Bollywood stuff either. But JTHJ is a name I first picked while on a bike trip to Auli... I was smitten enough to ask Atul about the track playing on his list (and he seemed not to like it at all, clueless of the track title, and barely certain of its parent movie). That track was Ishq Dance... and after that came this music from the trailer, that I picked on Sony TV [the movie airs this Sunday, the best part of which is that you only need to see it for the first 5 minutes till the opening shot]. That music trailer, it has come to my mind as well, feels very much inspired by Santaolalla's Apertura on The Motorcycle Diaries soundtrack.

In a quick review of a movie composed of several threads tied clumsily... oops I just said it all. It grows on you - increasingly obnoxiously, that is. You won't know how Shahrukh managed to become a bomb expert soon as he gets dumped, but you will come to know that he's so awesome that he walks into his work - in the bomb squad - sans protection (to tote his medals which he apparently, again, got right after being dumped), and walks out of it victorious each time, and rides away to camp at Pangong tso between those bomb calls (yeah, so you mean he fucken needs to ride a Royal Enfield 5 hours to urgently attend to a bomb in the marketplace each time?). Oh, and don't even ask how he got into the Indian Army after 30 - and living in London for n years. You just don't ask these things when in such movies.
Katrina Kaif looks hot for the first five seconds, then grows increasingly annoying, to match the increasingly-annoying Mr. Khan.
That other girl, Anushka, stays consistently annoying throughout. She seems to be taken in the movie just to finish some contract. The script barely makes some intelligent effort to incorporate her. Her acting goes with her figure - flat (as Katrina's goes against her figure, i.e. flat, again).

The worst scene in the movie has gotta be the one where the first friction between Shahrukh Khan and Anushka develops, as he's trying to defuse a bomb while she's standing right under it (and oblivious of that fact) listening to iPod, deaf to the outside world, and looking the exact opposite way, filming some captivating hill scenery - at the scene of a bomb defusal site... then a loud explosion (apparently not even the car parking sign in the background was damaged, despite the intensity) and some phony action follows. Then there is a compilation of scenes of Katrina Kaif being made to run towards Shahrukh Khan from all corners of London wearing skimpy dresses; and then one scene where she actually gets to act for more than, like, a minute, as Shahrukh has, for once, shut up, after coming under a car. Pathetic and hilarious, come together.

And no you don't sit forlorn by the shores of Pangong Tso, Mr. Shahrukh - you become a part of it.

Fantastic movie. To feel good about not being so cloyingly obnoxious. Jab Tak Hai Jaan - ये पिक्चर न देखना. Ha, they knew this pun was coming.

Jab Tak Hai Jaan probably better describes my this day, 6 years back.

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Thursday, September 06, 2012

Dil Aisa...

लल्ले [nutjobs] - why couldn't they rather be snorkeling, or flying RC planes, or trying to locate the Susu? I dont get this song - he's on a boat, amidst beautiful scenery, with the Katrina Kaif equivalent of those days (Sharmila Tagore), and still wasting his time singing that. Unless Ms. Tagore is playing a robot in that movie, he should be jumping on her on that boat.

Self-loathing is annoying. Its also, however, addictive - I could sing that song about the pathetic programming paradigm Javascript has exposed me to, for somebody coming from a world of C++.

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Friday, July 06, 2012

Aishwarya Rai's leaked... what?

Living proof that this world has people worse than pedophiles. Leaked pictures of a 6-month old baby!?

Oh Lord, may they burn in hell. Oh wait, Jesus is himself is endorsing the link right above... talk about Him being omnipresent.

PS: These ads served by Google, on IMDB

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Saturday, April 28, 2012

Last Song

मुझे पीने का शौक नहीं
पीता हूँ ग़म भुलाने को

At the time of the accident, this was the song playing on my iPod, that was connected to the car stereo - a minor detail, that will remain in memory. It was almost like my last words, gaadi ke marte dam par... a defense against the volumes of spirits I'd consumed on this night in Jamshedpur(esp that infamous Singapore Sunset).
Under heavy influence of Pearl Jam's Last Kiss ca. 2007, I had kept that reserved for the background track to a high speed crash. But laughably, crashes don't come with a calendar entry in Outlook. And luckily, I wasn't weeding out body parts by the end of the day.

Right before this song, was the chichora track from Raja Babu - "आ आ ई उ उ ओ मेरा दिल ना तोड़ो" - on the playlist. Damn, wouldn't that have been an embarrassment.
I should start maintaining a list of songs that STRICTLY shouldn't be played on wrong occasions, like when handing the steering to a lunatic under the influence of alcohol. Something tells me this was coming.

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Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Eunuchs and Baba

Writing just to fight off sleep, which always grips me somewhere between these hours and hampers productivity. I’m not very productive anyways, at least not towards the role I’m supposed to be playing in the office, but being a pseudo-manager of this place, and expecting eunuchs* to raid the office anytime for a Diwali ‘chanda’ and aim for my ball-sac if I’m seen snoring, I’d rather be on alert.

Yes, eunuchs drive my days this week. They were here last Saturday, when I was partway-sleepy partway-high (on Bhang), and we had a really incoherent communication, with me trying to explain there is no ‘Boss’ in the office, and offering them Rs. 10 to make peace, which they mocked, and left with threats to visit the coming week. They expect at least a few hundred, I assume (I was off-mark in my assumption, as explained below).

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Indian schoolgirls in skirts

Morning jog. Army-veteran geriatrics (people with raving frilly white mustaches), schoolgirls in skirts, and cocker spaniels out there, too. Indian schoolgirls steer me to thinking of their japanese counterparts, loligirl images popping everywhere; but that thought originates in fond remembrance of missing all Comicons in Mumbai while I was around.

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Banda-e-Amir

Odd finding me watching Feroz Khan serenading Hema Malini among a flock of sheep, and the general prancing about on some barren hill slopes. I did not get why he came looking for her in such arid inhabitable region, or why she was hiding there in the first place with no cosmetic or medical relief nearby, or how a jeep could drive over such terrain, or why she would be prancing along dust storms and crevasses, or why she was barefoot and yet had no calluses on feet, or who was really herding that huge flock of sheep if not her.

However, leaving aside these puzzling coital rituals, my fingers immediately got googling over something else.

It wasn't the hyper hero or the whitewashed heroine I was after, but the flattering backdrop, of what seemed like a chain of lakes, which was as blue as I'd never seen in an old Indian movie.
Turns out, this song (from Dharmatma, Indian remake of Godfather) was shot around the ethereal Banda-e-Aamir lakes in Afghanistan in 1970s. This movie, in fact, was the first Indian movie to be shot in Afghanistan. Feroz Khan (being the Producer-Director here) had a bug inside him that saw him filming in places like Afghanistan and even Uzbekistan, and raise the style quotient of Indian cinema by manifold. And it were unspoilt features out there, like these Banda-e-Amir lakes, to complement his bug.

Banda-e-Amir (often spelled Band-e-Amir) is a chain of 5 lakes in central Afghanistan, in the Hindu-Kush mountain range (these lie 75km N-W of Bamiyan). Water rich in carbon dioxide left huge calcium deposits that formed the walls that today separate and encircle the lakes. They now hold the credit of being Afghanistan's first national park (in 2009), as well as being on UNESCO's World Heritage List. Read more technical stuff on wikipedia.

Another coordinate on the globe to mark my attendance now. But don't even think having this on itinerary for your winter vacations as temperature falls upto -20C.

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Thursday, April 01, 2010

Old horses

Knowledge refresher
Sridevi: 1963
Hema Malini: 1948
Rekha: 1951

It is startling to find that Sridevi is, in fact, not far from our modern-day bollywood badshahs. What's also startling is Hema Malini looking fab beyond 60. And Zeenat Aman, at 59, still conveys relics of her amazing appeal. It must be hard to keep looking awesome for two generations or more!

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Sunday, January 17, 2010

TZP fanpost

Taare Zameen Par, imho, has been the most amazing thing the commercial Bollywood cinema has given us in the past 3 years, or maybe more; rest of it all has been an 'abortion' as Ignatius Reilly would call it. Generally, one starts losing interest, or going theoretical about a movie after watching it several times; but this one just digs deeper, sits there, evokes an even greater response and digs further into your emotions every time you see it again. Don't understand why, but seeing it the first time was an excessively happy affair, second one a bit less of it, but the Nth time today - switching my gaze between the tele and the laptop - has still managed to bring out a greater emotion than those earlier times. Seeing more, am I?

Right now, I'm going gaga over the accompanying background score. And I know why it works for me - its too Thomas Newman...a subtle running ambiance, simple, bold individual piano keystrokes (often in the minor), often jarring; and the perfect aural accompaniment to the onscreen happenings. So, there, another thing to discover about the movie. Suggest me something to SEE the next time.

FYI, it was recorded by the genius trio of Shanker, Ehsaan, Loy at some house (Aamir's?) in Panchgani (not a studio) in a short time, using something called 'Live' recording where they play out alongside the running movie, rather than working on cues and feeding into a computer as in a studio.

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Saturday, December 26, 2009

3 IDIOTS review

Here's a chronology of reactions/emotions through a show of 3 IDIOTS. I seemed to be in minority at the theatre, but suggestion to NOT see this film is one I can give with great certainty.

--------

What fuck, it shouldnt start this way.

Haha, his penis gets electrocuted.

lol, Boman Irani looks like Einstein.
Eeh, Boman Irani rides a bicycle. That does it for my image.
"नहीं भाईसाहब, अभी ज्यादा film नहीं छूटी" [to a couple arriving 10 minutes late]
Oh no, That US/Russia space Pen/Pencil hoax again?

Oh, wasn't expecting this song this early.
OMG, bathroom orgy in the boys' hostel. Sheild me!

Hah! I know Aamir would fix this flying thing.
ROFL, and now he hanged himself...
...pwnt, his own invention (that wasnt working earlier) conveyed his death.
Oo, Aamir is so against the system. Down with it.

Yech, there's Kareena. May she get crushed under the wedding pandal.

ROFL, funny speech. He replaced the words 'magician' with 'rapist' and 'support' with 'breast' using the Office 2007 "Replace All" feature. genius.

Yech, there's Kareena again. Where are those ancient Indian daggers Saurabh clicked pictures of - ones whose blades bloom like a flower inside the body?

Boring phase. Aamir just ranting about a failed education system and other things in a very loose manner. Chetan Bhagat, you fucktard and your fucktard novel.

Boring phase

Kareena again. Die.

INTERVAL

Boring phase

Boring phase

The is the stretch beyond Rohtang, towards Koksar. "Hey Atul, this is right after Rohtang. I've been here on a bicycle."

Boring phase

Boring phase

This is Darcha. I'm sure of it. "Hey Atul, this location is about 6 hours from Manali"
[dialog] R Madhavan/Farhan: "Lets go back, Manali is only 6 hours from here"
Yesss! Nailed it.

LOL, could it be any more melodramatic?
YES it can
OMG Aamir Khan would deliver Kareena's sister's child on the Table Tennis table.
OMG Aamir Khan is inside his Vagina trying to suck out the baby child.
OMG the dead baby child was brought to life by "all ij well" song
Atul: "film थोड़ी जल्दी ख़तम होती लग रही है" [after the grotesque delivery sequence got over]
Me: "अब और क्या देखना बाकी है?"
Some guy sitting besides us, to his wife: "Haha, उसने पूछा 'अब और क्या देखना बाकी है?'"

Ah, at least Boman Irani did rectify on that space pen myth.

Boring phase

Haha, his penis gets electrocuted

Pangong Tso! Please don't let it end here, at such a beautiful place.
And now they're onto the same piece of land that extends into the lake where me and Deepak lounged out (a wider view). Perfect. I wish I had a stone in hand.
SCHIZER. This is just sacrilege.

ZE END OF ZE MOVIE
---------

I'm happy to be spending only 80 for the balcony seats for this one at Pratibha. But I could've spent 60 had we gone to Novelty.

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Monday, May 11, 2009

Test-tube baby incubated in cow dung environment

(It happens only in India)
A woman wails in guilt. Her womb remains barren after years of marriage, and after persistent cursing by the society she has come to blame her own self. She feels herself to be a blotch in the name of womanhood.
A sadhu (sage) walks by, holding a holy-man stick, a mendicant's bowl, and all that. His bulk and biceps make him seem more like a wrestler, though. The woman rushes outside and falls on her feet, weeping. The sage exclaims "You are troubled by something, aren't you?", as if it was something beyond perception. The woman goes la-la over this observation and her faith in the sage is affirmed. The sage hands over some white paste on a green leaf, and asks the woman to consume it for a fertile womb.
The sage leaves and the woman rushes back inside, dreaming about finally having a baby. She is about to lick off the gooey white thing, when a hand grasps that leaf and throws it out through the window onto a pile of cow dung. It was mr. husband, who assumed her wife was bent on committing suicide, and was about to consume poison in her depression. Losers.

12 years later: the woman still weeps in her depression. A buddy tells her about this awesome sage outside the village premises. She rushes away again, to find that its the same sage. She falls on her feet again, weeping even more. The sage quizzes her over that white stuff, and she explains that her husband threw it out. The sage is furious and asks her to point out the spot where it landed. She takes him back home and points out that pile of cow dung. The sage does magic and the entire pile of shit is lifted into the air, and out comes a young boy, of exactly 12 years of age. He is a clone of that sage, and the sage proclaims him to be his son, naming him Gorakhnath. But the woman insists that she's still barren, and that since Gorakhnath has been incubated in her own courtyard, she deserves to be his mother and keep him. After more intense weeping, the sage hands over the boy to that woman and leaves. The woman suddenly has a sun and all the villagers come rushing in and look at her with great respect.

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Chronicles of an Eclectic Life

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Nil Battey Sannata: an eyes-closed loosely-a-review

Friday, May 13, 2016

Ranjit v Katrina

Friday, November 29, 2013

Jeet ka Mantra: PK Mishra

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Jab Tak Hai Jaan

Thursday, September 06, 2012

Dil Aisa...

Friday, July 06, 2012

Aishwarya Rai's leaked... what?

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Last Song

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Eunuchs and Baba

Monday, September 12, 2011

Indian schoolgirls in skirts

Friday, April 22, 2011

Bhabhi-talk

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Banda-e-Amir

Thursday, April 01, 2010

Old horses

Sunday, January 17, 2010

TZP fanpost

Saturday, December 26, 2009

3 IDIOTS review

Monday, May 11, 2009

Test-tube baby incubated in cow dung environment

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Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Friday, May 13, 2016

Friday, November 29, 2013

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Thursday, September 06, 2012

Friday, July 06, 2012

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Monday, September 12, 2011

Friday, April 22, 2011

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Thursday, April 01, 2010

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Monday, May 11, 2009

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