CroreHit Shetty goes to Hollywood

New York Depress starring Brave Willis and Emma Wandson

Crore-Hit Shetty was pacing worriedly in his office. His last 7 movies have been blockbusters, generating revenues of over 100 crores each. Producers were falling over each other to make a movie with him. Top actors were rubbing their nose on his toenails to give them a chance. Recently, Kamsina Kaif had a massive heart attack when she was approached to do a dance number for his movie. She was overwhelmed to death.

Suddenly the phone rang. It was his dear friend, Safe-Run Khan.

“Are you taking me in your next or not?” Safe-Run shouted the moment Crore-Hit picked up the phone.

“Oh! You won’t believe what I am directing next. I have a Hollywood offer!” Crore-Hit blurted out. He could not hold it any longer.

“What!?!? Please take me! Please! I will dance in all the weddings of your family. Tell me you are not joking!”

“No, I am not! I have been approached by Hippo Searchlight to make an international movie for them.”

“So what is the problem? Why do you sound worried?”

“I don’t have a story!” Crore-Hit said exasperatedly.

“Bah! But you never did! Come on! Pick up any older movie of yours. Pick Chennai Depress. Turn it into New York Depress,” Safe-Run suggested.

“Oh my Crores! You are a genius! I will give you a role in it,” Crore-Hit said and kept the receiver back. Safe-Run wanted to tell him that he would be happy to play even a telephone booth in his movie, but he kept that for later. 

Crore-Hit started working on the modifying the script. He took help of his lungi friends like Sajid Crap, Sajid’s sister Farha Crap, and Arbaaz Crap. The first thing they did was to take away all the South Indian characters out of Chennai Depress and fill them with stereotyped Caucasians. Then the locations of all the romantic songs were changed. There was one song atop the New York subway now and another one where the actors hang upside down from the Golden Gate. Just-Teen Burger was roped in to lend his voice to the lead actress while Yo Yo Donkey Singh was finalized to playback for the male lead.

“What about the crappy one liners and stale jokes?” Crore-Hit asked the Crap clan.

As an answer, Farha Crap took out the ‘Stereotype encyclopaedia for Blondes’ from her bag. The elite directors spent the rest of the day digging out jokes from the book and fitting them in various parts in the screenplay. 

“Have they finalized the starcast yet?” Karamchand, the editor-in-chief of Film-unfair asked Crore-Hit Shetty in a page 3 party.

“Yes, they are taking Brave Willis and Emma Wandson.”

“Isn’t Brave a bit old for the role? And Emma is 1/10^th his age,” Karamchand said.

“But the audience loves old men and young girls. It’s aphrodisiacal,” Crore-Hit said flashing his teeth. 

Finalizing the actress for the item number was a monumental task. Crore-hit finally decided to hold a dance competition and invited Brave Willis to judge it with Farha Crap. It was a disaster. Three actresses shot each other with machine guns while one of them had her eyeballs clawed out. One actress was found naked tied to a commode while another one’s hair caught fire mysteriously. Another one died in a landmine blast just outside the venue. It was finally decided that an international celebrity should be taken. Sunny Lube-onee was finally signed because of her varied ‘exposures’ in the field. 

The movie went on floor and the Hollywood production house was pleasantly taken aback by the amazingly grotesque treatment of the subject. Crore-Hit convinced them that this is what the audience want nowadays. He told them that they leave their brains at home (India’s latest contribution to the list of Idioms) and laugh at all jokes from the Stereotype Encyclopaedia. The highlight of the movie was Brave Willis pelvic thrusting a song in the voice of Yo Yo Donkey Singh on top of a subway train as Emma Wandson quivered semi-naked in front of him. She lip synced Just-teen Burger’s rendition of the duet as a group of hundred dancers gyrated with her atop the train. The whole of New York was out on the streets to see this unbelievable spectacle. 

The movie earned billions of dollars. Crore-Hit Shetty was rechristened BullShit Shetty in international circles.

Safe-Run Khan loved his promised cameo in New York Depress. He was the one who helped Emma Wandson get on the train by giving her his hand, followed by Emma doing an ‘Obliviate’ on him. He looked forward to promote the movie in India by appearing with the lead star cast on the best television shows like See.Eye.Duh and ‘Niyati entangled in the whirlpool of relationships’.

Meanwhile BullShit Shetty was offered to direct the next part of Aven-jerks – The rise of Loki, Tinda and Tori. 

Forgotten Heroes – Tuffy and Pigeon

There were times when Tuffy could not believe that he was sleeping on the road, fighting with stray dogs over tiny morsels of food. He lived in a mansion once, where everyone sang and danced, where he was once made an umpire in a game about which he had no idea (all he knew was that one of the wooden boards had a bit of chicken tikka masala rubbed on it and whenever he picked it up, everyone screamed and pointed at the sky). Those were the good old days.

Pigeon sat on a wire, curiously studying the familiar dog that gnawed at a bone near one of the huge dustbins. Even though he was dirty and his shiny white mane was hardly visible, the pigeon could not whisk away the inkling that the face was too familiar. Pigeon did not have any friends. The fact that he was white gave him delusions of grandeur. This really pissed off the usual grey pigeons and they kept him at bay. As he saw the dog, the pigeon remembered the time when he was a pet and sighed. He missed how Suman rubbed his nipples while singing. Those were the good old days.

He flew towards the dog.

“I hope I am not disturbing you Sir but are you Tuffy?” the pigeon asked.

The dog looked up. It was days since anyone has talked to him.

“Yes, I am,” he said.

“It is a privilege to meet you sir! I am aware of your heroic deeds and how you helped Prem and Nisha in Hum Aapke Hain Kaun.”

“Wait! Are you Prem and Suman’s pigeon from Maine Pyar Kiya?”

“Yes, Sir. I am,” the pigeon said puffing his chest.

“You were quite heroic yourself. The way you helped Prem and Suman was commendable.”

“Thank you Sir. So what happened? Why are you here?” the pigeon asked. Tuffy sighed.

“Well! I got bored. It wasn’t as if I didn’t like the family but they were getting irritating,” Tuffy said.

“Tell me about it!” the pigeon said rolling his eyes.

“Their house was so bloody big and then everyone was calling my name all the time. I have had enough of running. And then they would sing like 20 songs in a day and made me dance on my hind legs. It wasn’t funny,” Tuffy said.

“I know what you mean. I loved the way Suman held me in her hands and rubbed my crotch but she would throw me in the air like 50 times in a day to send a message to Prem. They lived in the same bloody house!” Pigeon said.

“There was always a crowd in that house. It was as if a whole country was living there. And people will pull my hair, pick me up, toss me around, make me run. By the time I went to sleep at night, my muscles would be burning,” Tuffy said as a tear slip down his cheek.

“I must confess something. I hated my owner. She had this permanent begging expression on her face. And the way she said Prem almost killed me. I wanted to peck out her eyes. And she was a tube light. The poor guy took her to the balcony to have sex with her and she won’t let him. She made him sing and dance till he collapsed of exhaustion,” Pigeon said.

“Nisha and Prem were idiots too. She prepared food for him, wore here fancy pink dress and when they had all the time in the world, they danced! Can you fuc*ing believe that! And her sister who fell off the stairs was another idiot. Why did she have to dance all over the house to get into a room? No one in that stupid family knew how to walk. They even danced before going to the loo. I wonder how they reproduced,” Tuffy said in disgust.

The dam was broken. Old wounds were opening.

“Are you happy now?” Pigeon asked.

“Hell yeah!” Tuffy answered licking the bone he was holding in his paws, “Of course, I miss Nisha at times.”

“Why is that?” Pigeon asked in surprise.

“Nisha had a habit of touching me at inappropriate places.”

“Really? Suman also had that habit. She would run her hands all over me as if I was a Kashmiri shawl. Since I never had a girlfriend, this was the closest I came to having sex.”

“I don’t know. I was always aroused by Nisha. Once she wore a backless purple blouse and swayed her hips like melons tumbling off a cart. Heaven!”

“Oh! That was classic. Vagaries of the civilized world.”

“Tell me pigeon. Did you actually push that villain off the cliff?”

“I have never talked about this. Well no, I was not trying to kill him. I was trying to kill Prem. When Suman was thrown out of Prem’s house by his father, I had no idea that he would come after her. Oh! How I wanted to put my beak in his nose and pull out his brains when I saw him in the village. Even though I hated Suman’s shrivelled face, the physical pleasures she gave me were too much to sacrifice. I thought that if Prem died, she will be mine. But Alas, that idiot villain could not understand my intention. I was just trying to help him pull Prem down and he thought I was attacking him,” pigeon said with a sad expression.

“I would like to confess something too. When Nisha gave me that letter to give to Prem, I thought that giving it to his elder brother will create a ruckus and he will still marry her and make her life hell. And then she will be mine. She will always turn to me for comfort. But the fool made her marry Prem. I cried buckets that day,” Tuffy said.

As Tuffy and Pigeon were busy being nostalgic, no one noticed a tigress coming from behind. Before Pigeon could spread his wings, she landed her paw on his tail and closed her mouth over his head.

“NOoooo,” Tuffy shouted and jumped at the tigress. He did not see a blurred movement of her paw that slashed against his jaw, flinging him at a wall on his right. Tuffy slid down the wall like a dead fly.

Within seconds, the tigress was licking her claws as a few feathers slid off her mouth.

“Pathetic animals! I can’t believe someone took them as pets. Look at me! Now I am a majestic animal worthy of being a hero. I am elated that Himmatwala took me in. He is kinda sexy too. I love licking his shaved cheek,” the Tigress said fluttering her eyelashes. She then moaned and walked away to find Himmatwala.

The thought of another lick of the shaved cheek was too much to bear.

[Images from – 1,2,3,4, 5]

Best of Bollywood in 2012

2012 was a different year for Bollywood. A handful of movies that come under the category of meaningful cinema were released and Bollywood realised that you can make money out of a sensible movie without being preachy (I am adding  information about collections to make that point). There were strong female leads this year both in front and behind the screen. While English Vinglish and Talaash were directed by Gauri Shinde and Reema Kagti, Sneha Khanwalkar blew me away by her music score in Gangs of Wasseypur. Barring Pan Singh Tomar and Oh My God, every movie listed below had strong female leads. Yes, we can do without item numbers. With élan.

Here is an alphabetical list of my favourites. If you are searching for Ek Tha Tiger, you will find it at the end of the post.

Barfi – The most heart tugging movie which came out last year. The eternal love story of Barfi and Jhilmil had all of us in tears. The movie sent a strong message that love does not know disabilities and gathered more than 106 crores in the process. If you forget the scenes copied from ‘City Lights’, this movie is nothing less than a masterpiece. I have reviewed it in detail here.

Ek Main Aur ekk Tu – A unique concept for Indian audience where the girl was calling the shots, where all the signals which men equate to commitment were rightly put to place. Commitments and relationships do not happen over assumptions. And yes, the girl can be older.  I loved the movie for its theme and the Indian audience were fine with it too. Made on a budget of 36 Crores, the movie made 40 crores and was a moderate success.

English Vinglish – Sridevi’s comeback vehicle and what a comeback! One of the most grounded movies of recent times, it is a story of a woman trying to prove herself and coming out with flying colours. No, she wasn’t just there to make Ladoos and to be abused by her daughter. There was more to her. Made on a budget of 15 crores, the movie earned 85 crores at the box office.

Gangs of Wasseypur 1 & 2 – The rawness of the movie will leave you breathless. The movie was a cinematic brilliance because of the depth of characters and triumph of storytelling. The gore was not everyone’s cup of tea but see beyond that and you will see the stellar performances of Manoj Bajpai, Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Huma Qureshi. Both the parts were made at a budget of 20 crores and raked in around 60 crores at the box office.

Kahani– An engaging thriller after such a long time. The movie broke all the clichés of a Bollywood movie – No songs, No male lead and a pregnant woman as the lead protagonist. There wasn’t a single dull moment in this fast paced suspense thriller. Made on a shoestring budget of 8 crores, the movie earned 104 crores at the box office.

Luv Shuv Tey Chicken Khurana – A simple feel good story of a boy who returns to his village to get his granddad’s famous chicken recipe to pay his debts. There are problems. His granddad does not remember a thing and the boy is falling in love with his brother’s fiancé. Add to it a crazy family and a servant named ‘Dalidri’. Made on a budget of 3 crores, the movie found its audience and earned 10 crores.

Oh my God – The movie showed us a mirror. It rightly portrayed the commercialisation of God and how common people allow themselves to be fooled by the business. The movie was the surprise hit of the year for me. Made on a budget of 20 crores, the movie earned 83 crores at the box office.

Paan Singh Tomar – The movie depicts the real life story of Paan Sigh Tomar who won numerous medals in national level racing events in India. He was an army man who turns into a dacoit because of the inability of the corrupt Indian law and order system to provide him justice. Watch this for Irrfan Khan. Made on a budget of 8 crores, the movie earned 38 crores at the box office.

Talaash – The most anticipated suspense movie of the year. A lot of people were disappointed by it but it does not take away the fact that the movie was beautifully crafted with some good performances. I loved the way the director left hints all over the movie. The movie earned 90 crores at the box office. It was made on a budget of 40 crores.

Vicky Donor – My favourite movie of the year and the only movie that I saw twice in the theatre. This was a unique concept and I believe had a very good chance at the Oscars. Aayushmann is a very lucky guy to get a dream debut like this movie. Made on a budget of 5 crores, the movie earned 46 crores at the box office.

Of course, these movies were not the top grossers of the year. Except for Barfi and Kahani, none of the movies made it to the 100 crores slot. Here is a list of the Hit Shit Nautanki movies of the year that I wish were never made –

Ek Tha Tiger – Story of a RAW agent and an ISI agent falling in love and jumping from one building to another.

Son of Sardar – Ajay Devgan plays a Sikh who cannot dance. And Sonakshi in that Red sari dancing like Mithun was the last straw.

Dabangg 2 – Kareena looks like an idiot wearing a blouse and petticoat in the Fevicol song. Stupid movie = Big money.

Bol Bachchan – DAFAQ did I just see? My eyes! My eyes!

Rowdy Rathore – Don’t angry me. Exactly.

Agneepath – Mutilation of a classic.

Housefull 2 – Sajid Khan tries to do a Manmohan Desai who then becomes the first soul to bawl in heaven.

Jab Tak Hai Jaan – One movie you wish Yash Chopra never made.

Cocktail – A modern Indian girl with a mind of her own is good for fuc*ing. A traditional Indian cow is good for marrying. Period.

Raaz 3 – The next time you see a decapitated body, try copulation to calm yourself.

Student of the Year – Keep a brick wali wall handy.

Next year is exciting with a lot of good movies lined up. Hopefully, we will have less of those heaving bosoms.

Open letter to the Indian film industry

Dear Indian Film Industry (IFI),

I am writing this letter with a heavy heart. There was a time when I loved you like crazy. Now all I feel is apathy. There are times when you still overwhelm me, but such times are like those solar eclipses. Rare.

IFI,

Consider this scenario – The city is taken over by zombies. They are killing humans and terrifying them. The humans are on the run, stuffing themselves in whatever holes they could find. Over time, the humans create barricades making it more and more difficult for the zombies to find a prey. Then one fine day as the zombies are sitting and twiddling their fingers, a human zombie supporter (who thinks zombies are the messengers of God and sent to make humans pay for their sins) opens up a cinema hall for them. The tickets are sold in minutes. The zombies fill the theatre and guess which movie is playing there?

A Zombie movie!

The zombies watch the movie with enthusiasm and go back out with greater vigour to hunt as many humans as possible. The zombie supporter is happy.

Now replace the zombie with an average perverted Indian male who has a brain development of a two year old Neanderthal and who goes into a theatre to watch an Indian movie where women are either objectified to glory or where Indian culture begins at one end of a sari and ends at the other. The already deranged pervert is deranged further. His misplaced cultural values are further misplaced; his firm belief that women need to be tamed like an animal is further strengthened.

IFI,

What do you think about these scenarios and the impact they leave?

• Rahul and Anjali are college chums. Anjali is tomboyish and so Rahul never loves her but finds another seductive girl. Years later when God plunks the seductive girl off the planet, Rahul and Anjali meet again. Anjali has transformed into a Bhartiya Nari (true blue pastel colours sari woman who loves children). In the end, it takes the flurry of a sari by the pagli pawan (crazy winds) and the accidental display of Anjali’s blouse concealing that part of her anatomy of which Rahul was always unaware of, which makes Rahul discover the Indian woman in her, the woman whom he could love and dance with in rain.
• There have always been Item numbers ever since Helen was discovered with extra long feathers on her head and back but nowadays if you leave all the leading ladies of Bollywood in a room and tell them that one of them will get to perform an item number in Salman Khan’s next movie, you will find loads of organs to be donated in 30 minutes and a majority of them will be eyes. Item numbers are the best way to parade women as objects. The filmmaker makes money and perverts get the kick to go out and fondle a woman after seeing an ‘item’ hanging from a rope amongst a horde of men trying to catch her skirt on the screen.
• Veronica is a bitch. She goes to pubs, have sex with random men but she is lonely and has no good friends. Our Hero flirts with her, beds her and they are cool with their fun relationship. Enters Meera, the perfect Indian woman, and our hero falls in love with her. Girls like Veronica are just there to have fun. When Hero’s Mom arrives, he had to display Meera like a trophy because that is what every Indian mother wants – a daughter-in-law dipped in our creamy culture, ready to be devoured. The Hero wants this too because our rich culture is rooted somewhere deep in his ankle.
• Adding more to Veronica – she goes to pubs and leads her life on her terms. And she is shown in a negative light. The director throws her at the audience like we throw a bone towards a dog and we lap her up. She gives us the psychological nutrition to believe that our culture still shuns girls who ape the west. Remember, we live in a country where we justify molestation of a girl who goes to a pub. In 2012. Veronica had to wear a salwaar-kameez finally in the hope that Maa would accept her. And Oh! it’s all right for our hero to ape the west. He can womanize and drink as much as he wants.
• The actress have to flutter her eyes, bite her lower lip, sway her body, bite her index finger between her teeth and pinch the index finger on her left hand with the thumb and index finger on her right hand when our Hero is around. I understand blushing but this induces nothing but the strongest urge to *face palm*.

I am not entirely blaming our film industry for the way women are treated in our society and for our medieval mindset. That will be like blaming Pranab Mukherjee for replacing Pratibha Patil as the brand ambassador of SOTC. But he did play a part, no matter how minuscule. Our society is heavily influenced by movies and the biggest movie industry in the world should try to find ways to change the mindset of the society, not to make profits out of it. Showing women as ‘items’ and portraying any deviation from an ideal Indian woman as black are subtle dangerous projections which helps in strengthening the way women are treated in India.

It will not be correct to say that the Indian film industry hasn’t changed over the years. There has been a radical change in how we portray women in our movies by giving them positively bold roles instead of asking them to scream as the hero beats the villain to a pulp, all thanks to the new breed of responsible directors. But there is a darker end of the spectrum as well. In a bid to make money, the mainstream cinema has severely started objectifying women with an equal ferocity. The number of item numbers served every year is now more than the number of train accidents that happen in India.

IFI,

In a nation which is as tasteless without its sexually oppressing Patriarchal society as Maggi noodles is without its special masala, is it so hard to understand the repercussions of an actress picking up her sari, doing pelvic thrusts and heaving her breasts simultaneously in front of perverts who then go out and look at every woman in the same light? Who then take every girl who goes to a pub as ‘available’ and someone who will enjoy the touch of any Changu Mangu? Who then go out and search for an ideal virgin Indian woman acceptable to his family, no matter that he lost his own virginity years ago? Is it so difficult to understand that an alarmingly huge population of India is not mentally capable of enjoying such a form of cinematic entertainment without obvious consequences?

No, it is not difficult. You just have to look beyond money.

Crestfallenly yours,

Once a fan.

Can you be fair Filmfare?

Katrina – I don’t care which award function this is. I just have to move my hips.

In the last decade, the number of award functions for honoring shoddy Bollywood movies and catering to star fantasies of holding any inane trophy has reached an alarming crescendo. You flip one channel and there is an award function going on where SRK is doing a gig. Flip again and lo! There he is again. So much that we have stopped caring which award function we are watching. Some actress is moving her hips wildly (dancing) with a hundred sweaty half-naked men around her. Someone is getting a weird looking trophy shaped like a sex toy and is misty eyed. If you sum it up, everyone in the industry gets at least one award each year. Everyone is happy. The supply in unfortunately and alarmingly greater than the deservers.

I don’t have a problem with all the needless awards. It gives the actors a relief from the obtuse films they are doing. It’s a mammoth PR activity for all the Toms, Dicks and Harrys who are organizing them. The nation gets to see stars making fun of each other and achieve nirvana in the process. And we all get the proof of how good an actor Amitabh Bachchan is by seeing his expressionless face every time Rekha appears on the stage. Again and again and again.

But I have a problem with a perticular award which regrettably is also the oldest one. Filmfare.

Back in the 90s when I started getting a beard and getting interested in Bollywood at the same time, Filmfare was the only award functioning in all its glory. All the actors would fall over each other every year to get one trophy. It was considered an achievement. No wonder they were called the Indian Oscars. And it was during the 90s, when the problem started. Suddenly mediocrity was in. Sometimes the nominations were baffling.

Sample this:

• 1984 Naseeruddin Shah – Masoom as D. K. Malhotra
  • Kamal Haasan – Sadma as K. Somprakash ‘Somu’
  • Om Puri – Ardh Satya as Sub-inspector Anant Velankar
  • Rajesh Khanna – Avtaar as Avtaar Krishen
  • Sunny Deol – Betaab as Sunny Kapoor

And then this:

• 1996 Shahrukh Khan – Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge as Raj Malhotra
  • Aamir Khan – Rangeela as Munna
  • Ajay Devgn – Naajayaz as Jay Bakshi
  • Govinda – Coolie No. 1 as Raju
  • Salman Khan – Karan Arjun as Karan Singh

• 2012 Ranbir Kapoor – Rockstaras Janardan Jhakhar / Jordan
  • Ajay Devgn – Singham as Bajirao Singham
  • Amitabh Bachchan – Aarakshan as Prabhakar Anand
  • Hrithik Roshan – Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara as Arjun
  • Salman Khan – Bodyguard as Lovely Singh
  • Shahrukh Khan – Don 2 as Don

Vyajanthimala – after she heard that Katrina was nominated for Filmfare award for Best actress.

Do you see the corruption, the decay that has seeped in? I do not have a problem with Ranbir Kapoor winning the award. He deserved it but the nominations were truly WTF! Ajay Devgan, Salman Khan and SRK had no business being in the 2012 list. The movies for which they were nominated were big blockbuster craps and their acting in them was equally garish. Similarly for 1996, I could not understand what Govinda and Salman were doing in the nominations. How could India’s oldest award fall to such apathy? How could Filmfare, which nominated Om Puri for Ardha Satya could possibly nominate Salman Khan for Bodyguard? If this is not playing to the tunes of stardom, then I don’t know what is!

Looking at the nomination list might give you a feeling that most of them are just fillers because nothing better is available. Nothing can be far from the truth. Dhobi Ghat, Yeh Saali Zindagi, Memories in March, Shor in the City, I Am, Shaitan, I Am Kalam, That Girl in Yellow Boots, Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster were the movies which deserved a wider appreciation but were royally mistreated. Some of them were given a few nominations here and there but a majority of them were sidelined.

Being the oldest and the most respected award comes with a responsibility – to promote talent, to promote directors who dare to be different and do not turn into money making machines. Filmfare would have taken up this responsibility. Instead they use “Critics” award category so that the stars could be kept happy. And that is how Dabangg got the best movie award in 2011 instead of Udaan which was given the “Critics” awards. It was like saying – Look! We know Udaan is much superior but sorry we prefer giving awards to movies in which the hero rips off his shirt by expanding his muscles. So, better luck next time! There are numerous examples from the last decade where mediocre and puke-worthy films and performances have been nominated.

Yes, common man votes for these awards. Its 50% people’s choice and 50% Jury’s choice and that is how it has been since the 1950s. But the whole idea of a movie award is to give recognition to the best movies of the year, movies which had some substance in them, movies which were created for the love of the art and not just for churning cash. If the votes coming in each year are not at par and are actually a threat to good cinema, would it not be a good idea to abolish the practice and let only the jury decide?

I stopped watching telecast of Filmfare awards ten years back. I want to see Filmfare Awards honour movies that matter, to recognise performances instead of stars, to recognise art instead of commercial success.

I hope one day I will be able to watch the ceremony without flinching.

[images from 1,2,3]

A Mess called Agent Vinod

The first thing that will come to your mind after this movie ends is  – Thank God it’s over!

It’s completely bland. There is a stupid storyline which I vaguely remember as it is completely forgettable. The chemistry between the lead pair is conspicuous by it’s absence. The songs are stupid. There is even a romantic song in which Agent Vinod is killing the goons with the lady by his side. It was truly a WTF moment. The background score is ridiculous. Editing is shoddy.

The story(!) is about a RAW agent who is after this device called 242 and he has no idea what it is. So he hops from country to country, following trails. The trails include Ram Kumar who is an Indian who speaks to Russians in Russian accented English. Why can’t he bloody speak to them in Russian or in normal English? Then there is Prem Chopra, who kills his pet camel inside his own house in his introduction scene. As agent Vinod follows various leads, the country hopping starts to get on your nerves after a while. The agent hopped at least ten countries which left a lot of people confused after a while. Soon, no one (villains and audience alike) had any idea which country he was in.

The only interesting part of the movie were those two aunties who get into the wrong autorikshaw and were tossed through half of Delhi. Many good actors were wasted in small, inconsequential roles. The villain is completely made of wood.

The female lead is so implausible that it’s not funny. She goes ahead and spends one whole night with a bald, fat stranger believing that he would not even touch her and he doesn’t! He spends the whole night dancing with a bottle of something! She visits her home after 15 years and is all tears and sobs and the next moment she is dancing in a marriage with another dancer, who was incidentally rescued by Vinod from a huge jute bag some days back. She was so casual about being kidnapped and kept in a jute bag as if she was born in one. Well its a Bollywood movie!

The action sequences are mediocre. The camera seems to be out of control and is shaking violently as if all the action happened during a 9.6 magnitude earthquake. Some stunts were downright preposterous, like the one in the beginning where Vinod skids while holding the door of a moving Jeep and kills some terrorists.

I wish the last three hours hadn’t happened. I would give anything to someone who could erase the memory of watching this abomination.

Rating – 1.5/5

Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu & Dinner table discussions

Who could have thought that Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu will spark off dazzling dinner table debates at home? I saw the movie with mom, dad, sis and Geet (yeah! Polly has been rechristened Geet. It was long overdue). Although the movie was above average, it broke many boundaries around how girls are expected to behave in our society. The movie projected the female protagonist as someone who had 6 past relationships, who had a great capacity for beer, who likes her personal space, is not worried that she is 27 and not married and can talk freely of sex and can rate a guy’s and her own butt.

*spoiler ahead*

I loved the fact that even though the guy acted like a typical guy and took she-is-roaming-with-me-and-introducing-me-to-her-family as she-loves-me, the girl stood her ground and did not buckle under the pressure. She wanted him as a friend and that’s that. They still annul their marriage. And she does not care that he is super rich.

*spoiler ends*

We have seen similar movies before – Salaam Namaste, Mere Brother Ki Dulhan, Kya Kehna, Jab We Met and many others where the female leads are strong. Similarly Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu made the female protagonist much powerful than her male counterpart which is very rare in Bollywood movies. It gave her the right to decide in the end.

Now, before I indulge you with our dinner table debates, I must tell you that dad is quite cool with guys and girls befriending each other and going out for movies and parties. He has never stopped me or my sister from enjoying ourselves, although they are more cautious with sis. They are also comfortable with the whole girlfriend-boyfriend-affair-shaffair scenarios. Of course, dad and mom say things like it’s against our culture and stuff but they hardly believe it themselves. They just have to say it to maintain the Indian-culture façade (the same way you mechanically brush your teeth when you wake up) so that we don’t mistake them to be dangerously liberal.

The whole debate was about Dad having a problem with couples staying together without marriage. Okay, I know this doesn’t go with what happened in the movie but he was commenting about Kareena Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan. He could not understand Bipasha and John also who were together since the Big bang and then separated. He might have a point here but then I reminded him that everyone in question were adults and we do not have any right to question what they do in their personal lives. You know where this is going right?

Dad thinks that we live in a society and we have to live by its rules. Why do you have to live with a guy for 5 years and then jump partners after you get bored with him (he meant – after you had sex with him)? There is nothing sacrosanct in the whole affair.

I told him (in less obvious terms) that maintaining your virginity before marriage does not make the whole affair sacrosanct. That is a bit outdated. Secondly, everyone look out for new partners if things do not work out between couples. You don’t have to turn into a nun after your first breakup. Thirdly, our society is the most nosey and hypocrite society in this world. We are fine with girl infanticide, child labor, rapes, corruption, riots, dowry and so many other evils but we find it very objectionable when two consenting adults (who have the right to choose our Prime Minister) live together. It’s actually none of our business. *mom, sis and Geet nodded vigorously*

And this went on and on. It was funny because although dad saw my point in the end, my parents find it very hard to believe that our society has changed so much. I did not tell them that a lot of people have sex with their partners before they get married. I also did not tell them that Geet and I saw a college going couple kissing each other for 1 ½ hours as we watched Source Code in the theatre. It might be too much for them.

I can understand where he is coming from. He was brought up by a disciplinarian who locked up his daughter in the toilet if he found her talking to a boy. My parents were not very liberal with me and my sis initially. They had their apprehensions. Giving their son certain freedom might lead to their daughter asking something similar. But they loosened up and thankfully so. They still raise their eyebrows at sis at times, but she is a maverick. And I am outside their radar ever since I married Geet.

Frankly speaking, I myself would not have been very comfortable about a live-in but that certainly does not mean that I would pass judgment on anyone choosing it. It is also important to understand that movies like Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu explore just one end of the spectrum. India is too diverse in its thoughts and opinions that accepting what happened in the movie as a norm would be foolish. Also, we have to understand that only a small percentage of our generation (especially urban) has moved ahead and understood that the nose is to smell the roses and not to poke in someone’s affairs. The rest of the present generation and a majority of the older one is tied to its belief system. They live in a matrix of society, wired into its complicated circuit.

But yes, whether we like it or not, there is a change and it’s happening right under our nose.

Rockstar Review

After raising my expectations to the tip of Qutab Minar, I finally plunked myself in a smelly multiplex to watch Rockstar. I don’t know if it was the multiplex or someone’s shoe but I desperately wanted the oxygen masks to drop from the ceiling of the hall. Finally, the attendants had to spray the nauseating jasmine room freshener to make everyone breath properly.

“Deja Vu”, I said after the movie finished, remembering something similar which happened when I watched Satya a year after its release. I had such high expectations from Satya that I found it very average and couldn’t understand what the hu-ha was all about.

Rockstar fared a little better. I liked it in parts but had major problems otherwise.

*Few spoilers ahead*

Lets start with the female lead Nargis. She makes Katrina Kaif look like Meryl Streep. Somehow, her expressions never reached her eyes. Even though she was capable of making a total of like 3 expressions, her eyes remained blissfully ignorant of the awful splutter of emotions on her face. Her best scene was when she was in a coma.

I found the screenplay shoddy at a few places. Imtiaz Ali wanted to show the relationship between the lead pair but he did that at the expense of mutilating the rest of the cast. So many threads which could have made the story more rich and the characters more believable were snipped off to show the lead pair taking a thousand bike rides. Jordan’s family was one-dimensional and hardly got 30 seconds of screen time. Shammi Kapoor’s role could have been more. Much more. Jordan’s introduction scene to Heer’s mother was snipped so badly that I thought someone fast forwarded the movie. The relationship between Jordan and the female reporter was terribly castrated and vague. Heer’s husband’s frustration was annoyingly underplayed.

The second half sagged like an old man’s skin for quite a while. Somehow, I was tired of seeing the couple going to dance bars and prostitutes and strip clubs. And why did they have to do it twice? Whatever happened to bungee jumping and paragliding as adventures instead of saying hello to a guy pissing on a wall?

Coming to the positives, I liked the story. I liked the fact that there was a story. Somehow, the boy taking the girl out before her wedding so that she could have some fun before the mundane married life takes over, looked clichéd as we have already seen that in “Mere Brother ki Dulhan”, but the Kashmir backdrop made it a treat to watch. Cinematography was great. Ranbir did really well. He moved from one end of his character’s graph to another with smoothness. It was his movie all the way. The songs were a nice mix. Somehow, I couldn’t understand a few of them but it’s Ok considering the fact that A.R.Rehman gave the music. It will grow on me, I am sure.

Overall not bad at all, considering the horse shit Shahrukh and Salman are throwing at us these days. The movie definitely had its moments. Don’t bother if you liked Bodyguard.

Rating – 3.5/5

Love Aaj Kal – Movie Review

I don’t know if it was because I was Bollywood starved from the last six months or if it was because the movie was really good, the fact remains that I immensely enjoyed the movie.

The Aaj and Kal of it (no spoilers)

Jai(Saif Ali Khan) and Meera(Deepika Padukone) are a modern day couple living in London who believe in the philosophy of take-life-as-it-comes and do not believe in tying each other down just because they are in a relationship. They know that their real preference is their careers and thus end up breaking their relationship with a break-up party when Meera decides to move to India to work.

Veer Singh(Saif Ali Khan) falls for Harleen(Simran) the moment he sets his eyes on her. It was love at first sight. Harleen liked Veer but was too shy to respond. That does not defer Veer from following her on his bicycle while she travels to college on a rikshaw and let Harleen know that he was madly in love with her. One day, Harleen shifts to Calcutta with her family.

The story of Jai and Meera is set in the present time while that of Veer and Harleen is set in 1965. There is a connection between the two stories but you better watch the movie to know that.

The differences or no differences

The underlying theme of the movie is that no matter how much the times must have changed and how differently we might look at love, the feeling is still the same. You will still end up in a whirlpool when it happens. It will still turn your world upside down. The story of Jai and Meera is completely different from Veer and Harleen. Jai and Meera are in love with each other without realizing it. Meera knows that if she asks, Jai won’t say no but then one day he will feel guilty that he let go his dreams and career. Jai is completely confused. Veer on the other hand had made up his mind that he is going to marry Harleen. The only question is how?

As the movie proceeds, the scenes shift from the past to the present and vice versa and you can see the stark differences and the similarities. The switch between the two stories is done brilliantly. You realize that how different and then how similar the two stories are.

The Performances and the Wasted Role

Saif Ali Khan and Deepika are good in their respective roles. Saif has played the confused modern day man in many movies earlier(Dil Chahta hai, Hum Tum, Salaam Namaste), so this was nothing new for him except for the role of Veer Singh. Although his Punjabi was not perfect but he did the role of a madly in love Sikh man, who starts working in a ‘phactory’ so that he can marry Harleen and who travels to Calcutta just to look at her once, quite well. Simran(Harleen) was also good in her role of a meek Punjabi girl. She left an impression even though she hardly had any dialogues in the movie. Rishi Kapoor had a very good role(can’t reveal more about his role right now. :P). Rahul Khanna was wasted. I am not sure why he took the role.

Music and everything else

‘Chor Bazaari’ is already up on the charts. I personally liked ‘Ye dooriyaan’ a lot. The songs are a nice mix of soft romantic and dhinchak dhinchak songs. Thankfully, most of the songs blended well in the movie and were not like a su su break song. Even the ‘Main kya hoon’ which started off as one ended up being quite well done. You will know why when you see the movie.

Dialogues are the plus point of the movie. Some very well written scenes like the one in which Saif asks Rishi Kapoor about how couples did not had sex before marriage in the past and Rishi Kapoor retorts back – ‘Jaanwar nahi the hum!’.

And, yes, thankfully, the movie had a story!

Finally and Eventually

Imtiaz Ali surely does not disappoint. I am in two minds and I know I should not compare, but was the movie was good as Jab We Met? I think yes it was. It had its moments.

Rating – 4/5

Director – Imtiaz Ali

Official Website – http://loveaajkal-illuminatifilms.erosentertainment.com/

Harry Potter and the half blood prince – Movie Review

I was quite adamant to see this movie on IMAX and in 3D and not in some ordinary theatre. What surprised me was that the booking of the movie opened last month on the 15th. Yes, you read it right! That is when the enormity of the mania hit me. And to make things worse, the seats of the first week’s shows were filled within seven days! Yeah! Harry Potter is Britain’s Rajnikant.

*I don’t know why but I just imagined Harry wearing his glasses in Rajni’s style. Uff! That’s dizzying!*

Anyways, back to topic. So, how did I manage to get the tickets, you may ask. Well, none of my flatmates are remotely interested in Harry Potter series. Yeah! I know! Just don’t get me started on this. Its as if they have just been freshly transported from Mars. And, then I decided to go alone. Believe me searching for a single ticket is much simpler because there are always one or two single seats left here and there. And, so, I booked my sole ticket on the 1st of July.

I haven’t read the books. Now wait a second before you raise your eyebrows and widen your eyes. Its always better this way. A movie can rarely compete with a book. So its always good to watch the movie and then read the books. That way the movie won’t disappoint you. And that is why this movie was not at all disappointing.

The first 15-20 minutes of the movie are in 3D. So, if you have a 3D theatre near your house, its worth watching the movie there. Its amazing! Although frankly speaking, I don’t understand why the whole movie was not in 3D? Atleast the climax should have been.

Now, coming to how the movie was.

The trailer of the movie might have given you an impression that its a very fast paced and dark movie. Apparently, its not. Infact, this might be the only movie of the series which was devoid of an over-doze of wizardry and action. It was more like a prelude of the sharp twists and turns which are about to come in the last two movies. I had a feeling that the director deliberately played it down. The climax was subtle, not rising to the chilling crescendo it reached in the previous installments. It was like the lull before the actual storm begins.

There was more romance in the movie. The kids acted well! The sets were beautiful. I loved the scene where Ron is kissed by Lavender Brown, much to Hermione’s distress. She walks away and sits in a stairway and Harry comes and sit with her. She had birds fluttering over her head whom she throw towards Ron as darts. Then, there was this scene where Harry gets a smack on the head for saying – “But I am the chosen one!”. There was definitely a substantial amount of humor, love potions and weird coloured glasses.

No. The movie was not boring. It had its own pace and you start enjoying it after some time. The story dwells into Voldemort’s past when he was a student at Hogwarts, the creation of the Horcruxes, Draco’s secret plans and Ginny’s and Harry’s love story(which started sooner than that in the book, they say) and the death of you-know-who. And yes, the tussle between Ron and Hermione continues with Lavender playing the third angle.

Not the most brilliant of them all, but worth watching none the less. And, oh yes, I missed the animated creatures. There were none except for a huge dead spider!

Rating – 3.5/5

Directed by – David Yates

Official Website – http://harrypotter.warnerbros.com/harrypotterandthehalf-bloodprince/