pilferaaj pigeon snips again

Sanjay Gupta looks across the seas, but as long as the Malayalam film industry continues to thrive, the patriotic furacious filmophagous purloining P continues to be faithful to God's own country; if he had to remake a foreign flick he'd try and find a Malayalam remake of that flick (either his own doing or someone else's) and thus continue to remain faithful to the frond. Malamaal Weekly proved to be an exception only because the responsibility of remaking it in Malayalam seemed to have fallen on his trusty shoulders and our Arabian sea-facing Atlas shrugged and decided to do the Hindi remake first.

He makes no mistake this time. He chooses last year's hit Kadha Parayumbol, ropes in Irrfan to replace Sreenivasan (who also wrote the original) and HamStar Khan himself to substitute for Mammootty. The name's Billo Barber and it promises lots of laughter. kisii ke waade pe kyo.n aitabaar ham ne kiyaa, wrote Sahir. I agree. I hope he ropes in Pritam for the music. The highest-paid (in all likelihood) user of torrents in South Asia has been churning out unexciting homogeneous product of late. Being associated with a lift won't hurt in any way -- Anu Malik did that with Akele Hum Akele Tum (with some of the most rewarding stratified stealing on display), Sanjeev-Darshan did it with Mann ... heck! Pritam been doing this with the big P for a while now (Bhool Bhulaiya, Dhol, Bhaagam Bhaag, Garam Masala). One hopes that Priyadarshan will learn from the turmoil surrounding Bhool Bhulaiya and include credit for Sreenivasan.

The Rediff article includes a nice little note (my emphasis): Since the film is made in Bollywood, Shah Rukh Khan will romance three girls -- Kareena Kapoor, Deepika Padukone and Priyanka Chopra. Juhi Chawla will play Billo's wife. And one thought that having multiple heroines was something right down the alley of the likes of Pawan Kalyan, who, in his last release Jalsa managed to spend screen time with Ileana D'Cruz (born to a Muslim mother and a Christian father), Parvati Melton (born to a German father and a Punjabi mother) and Kamalinee Mukherji (from Calcutta; last seen by YT as Kamal Haasan's wife in Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu).

One cannot end without noting another Priyadarshan/Pritam collaboration that packs so much belly-aching irony that it deserves to be made (or remade, if you will). It's a film about a music band fighting piracy. And the film's called Pirate. ##black pearl## ke baare me.n kyaa jaanate ho?. And apparently Pritam's been roped in for the music to Golmaal Unlimited, Rohit Shetty's sequel to his comedy Golmaal [notes on the music], a film that echoes, only in the title, the wonderful middle-class classic of identity creation and theft directed by the late Hrishikesh Mukherjee, which included a reference to Pele and it all comes back to Jack's ship and the mind is now buzzing with references and connections. Oh Möbius!

update [April 17, 2008]: The clouds have sprung a leak. There's another offering in the pipeline from the Raja of Refurbished Reels. It's called Mere Baap Pehle Aap (kindly ignore the grammatical liberties here -- one can always blame Guru Dutt for convincing Majrooh to go with sun sun sun sun zaalimaa pyaar hamako tumase ho gayaa and starting it all). He raids the cellar of Sibi Malayil this time (having done it before with Gardish) and comes up with Ishtam.