they don't write 'em like they used to

That last post also served as a reminder of how lean and lifeless dialogues in Bollywood product have become lately. Profundity is forced and the befuddlingly hyper-unreal flourishes of grandiose utterances seem to have boarded the midnight train to extinction. Here are a few samples from some obscure (or relatively obscure) films in the Bollywood box of odds and ends. Consider this a nostalgic paean to garrulous prolix, if you will. {NOTE: (beat) below is screenwriting lingo for a pause}

kaale dha.ndho.n kii ga.ndii Kushahaalii aur kaanuun ke shika.nje se baar-baar bach nikalane kii kaamayaabii ne tumhe.n madahosh kar diyaa hai
Suresh Oberoi in Awaaz (1984)

pairo.n se masalakar chi.ngaarii bujhaa_ii jaa sakatii hai, jwalaamukhii nahii.n
Mohan Joshi in Bhishma (1996)

ab pyaar ke lafz tumhaarii zubaa.N se nikalate hai.n to aisaa lagataa hai ki apanii be-izzatii sahan na karate hu_e, KudaKushii kar rahe ho.n
Deepti Bhatnagar in Uljhan (2001)

opportunities never strike always
Vinod Khanna in Pehchaan: The Face of Truth (2005)

agar merii beTii ko ek bhii kharoch aayaa[sic] naa to mai.n tumhaare itane Tuka.De Tuka.De kar duu.Ngaa ki dafanaate waqt maa.Ns aur miTTii me.n fark nazar nahii.n aayegaa
Aaiyash: The Desire (2004)

aag mere badan me.n lagii hai niil (the name of Yash Tonk's character) aur biskuT tum khaa rahe ho?
Neha Dhupia in Julie (2004)

aap kii naukarii kele ke chhilake kii tarah hai ... kabhii bhii utar jaatii hai
Chot: Aaj Isko Kal Tereko (2004)

usane mere gusse ke gas station ko maachis dikhaayii hai
Amrish Puri in Dhaal (1997)

mai.nne tumhaarii ba.nduuk se gaddaarii ke kaaratuus nikaal diye the
Mithun Chakraborty in Shapath (1997)

sar par jab chat na hogii tab ise pataa chalegaa ki aasamaan par jalate huye suuraj kii dhup kis tarah zi.ndagii ko registaan banaa detii hai
Suresh Oberoi in Suraj (1997)

meraa naam jaanane ke liye tumhe.n bahut der lagegii aur jab jaanogii tab bahut der ho chukii hogii
Ayesha Jhulka in Suraj (1997)

in puliis afsaro.n kii iimaanadaarii ke speed breaker par road roller chalaane ma.ngal daadaa aa gayaa hai; ma.ngal aur maut ... dono.n kii ek hii raashii hai
Puneet Issar in Suraj (1997)

ye jazabaat nahii.n hai dost; na.nge haalaat kii aawaaz hai jo tumhe.n sunaayii nahii.n detii
Suresh Oberoi in Awaaz (1984)

dharatii kii kok se ab tak wo lohaa paidaa nahii.n huaa jisase aisii golii banaayii jaa sake jis par suuraj kaa naam likhaa ho
Mithun Chakraborty in Suraj (1997)

jise barfo.n me.n ice cream khaane kaa shauq ho use sardii nahii.n lagatii
Jeetendra in Bond 303 (1986)

mai.n chor kii tarah jaauu.Ngaa aur puliis kii tarah aauu.Ngaa
Bullet (1976)

wo baa-adab thii, mai.n baa-mulaahizaa thaa; magar hoshiyaar meraa baawarchii thaa
Sanjeev Kumar in Manoranjan (1974)

paanii jab tak glass me.n rahataa hai tabhii tak use piyaa jaa sakataa hai
Pehchaan: The Face of Truth (2005)

bure kaam me.n achchhii la.Dakiyaa.N hameshaa naakaam rahatii hai.n
Warrant (1975)

tuu to merii ummiido.n kaa junction hai; dil se dil kaa relation hai, connection hai, attraction hai, action hai, reaction hai ... yaanii tuu merii mohabbat kaa main station hai
Rishi Kapoor in Gurudev (1993)

har case ke baad I become more smart (beat) smarter and smartest
Anil Kapoor in Chocolate (2005)

meraa naam govi.ndaa hai, mahaabhaarat karawaane me.n koii kasar nahii.n chho.Duu.Ngaa
Mithun Chakraborty in Gautam Govinda (2002)

us maa.N ne mujhapar shaq kiyaa aur mai.ne usake shaq ko (beat) shamashaan me.n badal diyaa; kyo.n ki kaalii kii adaalat me.n shaq kii daliil nahii.n maut kii sazaa sunaayii jaatii hai
Mithun Chakraborty in Qaidi (2002)

sex (beat), sex (beat), sex ko hamane apane jiivan se aise alag kiyaa hai jaise suuryoday ke saath samay apane daaman ko a.ndhere se alag karataa hai; ham jahaa.N hai.n wahaa.N sa.ndhyaa naa prabhaat hotaa hai; wahaa.N sab samaan rahataa hai; there is no time, no space, only zero
Mithun Chakraborty in Classic Dance Of Love (2005)

dhoom 2: dumb and dumber: a sample extract

Given the exuberant celebration of stupidity, the hubris of incompetence and the decadent display of family-friendly T n' A abundant in the film, it would suffice to say that Dhoom 2 makes Dhoom look like a cerebral work of art. Instead of baking insults topped with cherries of invectives, YT finds it a more useful exercise to serve up tapas from the film.

Today's offering serves as exhibit A in the case of Dus vs Dhoom 2: the makers of Dus insist that the screenwriters of this internationally mounted bowl of fungal falafel copied material from the pivotal scene of exposition in their film; alert viewers will recall this rooftop presentation by Sanjay Dutt explaining the hidden meanings of das (setting conspiracy theory research back by a decade). YT believes that Yash-Vinay (who were responsible for the grand heist named Plan) and director Anubhav Sinha may have some fire for their smoke. The extract is presented below for your perusal. Pay careful attention to the philosophical and numerological prestidigitation and enjoy with relish.

[AB: Abhishek Bachchan; BB: Bipasha Basu; UC: Uday Chopra]

AB:
is chor kii Kaasiyat isakii nishaanii hai ... isakaa signature. chorii kii jagah pe ye apanaa nishaan chho.D hii rahaa hai lekin isakaa ambition kuchh aur hai ye apanaa nishaan saarii duniyaa pe chho.Danaa chaahataa hai. and that's not all. chorii kii agalii date chaudah july two thousand six.

BB:
how can you say that?

AB:
mister A ko sirf antiques kaa hii nahii.n numbers kaa bhii shauq hai. Seoul. 5-4-2004. saare digits ko add karo to 5 plus 4 plus 2 plus 4. 15. agalii chorii 15-7-2004. total, aTThaais.

agalii chorii Australia. 28-9-2005. total 44. jaise hii total tiis se uupar ho jaataa hai sir wo total ko add kar detaa hai. 4 plus 4.

UC:
forty four.

AB:
8. agalii chorii huii 8-1-2006. har chorii kaa clue usakii pichhalii chorii ke date me.n hai. apanii taraf se mister A hame.n challenge kar rahaa hai. problem sirf ye hai ki koii usakaa challenge samajh nahii.n paayaa

BB:
tumhaare alaawaa jay. fantastic.

AB:
aur mahaaraanii kaa crown chorii ho gayaa thaa 1-5-2006. total 14. agalii chorii hogii 14th july.

mumbaii.

BB:
how's that?

AB:
kyo.n ki jo "A" wo duniyaa pe banaanaa chaahataa hai usakii line mumbaii se ho ke hii guzaregii.

The best piece of dialogue (unless memory serves up another nugget later) comes later on in this hagiography of Mister A. It's a line so deviously brilliant that it's hard to imagine which monkey was smoking the magic mix of weed when he typed it out: use Dhuu.NDhaa nahii.n jaa sakataa; sirf paka.Daa jaa sakataa hai. That translates as "he cannot be found; he can only be caught"; or as JR puts it zero search results; use direct link.

elsewhere: miscellaneous notes about the film's contribution to Bollywood's High Concept movement.

deutsche auto intoxication

The rebarbative rabbler known in the Circles of the Ailing Ear as The Nose That Goes (On and On) has added another splotch to the list of meaningless achievements that keeps the desii media happy. He's effected the first appearance of Indian auto-rickshaws on German streets. The scoop: a pre-climactic sequence featuring 6 of the yellow-and-black's ilk in his acting début Aap kaa Surroor: The Moviee (no typo that, mind you). It's his way of acknowledging the importance of these patrons of jha.nkaar beats in his success.

The makers of this film might choose to give themselves a few pats for this creative brainwave. Yet, a legendary cinematic work beat them to the finishing line years ago. Who can forget the pre-climactic sequence in Kanti Shah's cult classic Gunda (famously featured in a Pune quiz) featuring Mukesh Rishi and his Red Rickshaw-Riding Hoods facing off with the one and only Mithun Chakraborty? The hero and villain employ audaciously gassy couplets as weapons, before the infinitely-fuelled bazooka makes its appearance. The sequence is reportedly being considered for inclusion in educational texts to illustrate the benefits of harmonious multi-threaded applications as well as in diploma courses on system administration.

elsewhere: A blog dedicated to collecting all the verse adorning rickshaws. An undeniably cool idea.

Reading, indecision and the struggle against reader's block

Words fail me here. I need to kick-start my reading once again.

Of late, a lot of my reading has come to revolve around film and music: technique, theory, critical appreciation, and the like. I also read a lot of articles about enterprise software development, articles about software engineering and code quality, introductory notes on new tools. I wouldn't mind this limited selection, except that I'm still rather inarticulate and inconsistent when I write about my movie viewing and music listening experiences. The less said about potential technical and professional development the better. I couldn't even get to the halfway point with Eli Goldratt's interesting The Goal.

I've never been good about reading non-fiction, so whatever I know about books like The World Is Flat, Freakonomics and Gödel, Escher, Bach comes from friends who've been reading them. This leaves me with my explorations in fiction and these have slimmed to a trickle; and I seem to be the unwilling cause of it all.

Most of my journeys with new fiction over the last several months have ended up sputtering out like Diwali rockets. Here's an example: Salman Rushdie's Shalimar The Clown started off with a lot of the things I like about his writing (puns, references to pop culture, long passages laced with delectable mixes of words), but I also wasn't hitting the groove with each passing page. The due date at the library was just a convenient way to give up trying. I managed a home run with the hilarious Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch.

Jessa Crispin has a few suggestions for dealing with reader's block.

Item #1 doesn't apply: If I'm sitting before the boob tube, it's because of a movie, not because of a TV show. If I end up watching Shark, or one of the CSI spin-offs, it's because they're flashy packages of fundae (e.g. pyramid schemes are illegal in the state of New York: now you know how to escape the QnA guys) and people who speak only in punchlines with an egregiously maximal sense of cool.

Item #2 worked wonders for a while. I was hooked on The Sandman (all thanks to Sudarshan) and ravenously devoured issues of The Amazing Spider-Man, The Spectacular Spider-Man, Frank Miller's legendary work on Daredevil and Batman (Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Year One), a few compilations of Mike Mignola's Hellboy, the first volume of The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist; I couldn't get enough of Powers or The Invisibles, or the few "alternate history" arcs in the Elseworlds universe. I'm not sure why I stopped, but this looks like a promising way to knock down a few hurdles.

Item #3 only guarantees that I will thumb through my Harlan Ellison collection (Dreams with Sharp Teeth, the 2001 edition of The Essential Ellison), or my brittle copy of Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man or one of the several early paperbacks from Philip K Dick.

Item #4 won't work. It's a little too romantic for me.

Item #5 is perfect: Cell, despite overtones of The Stand, was a welcome return to horror; And I still have to attack Lisey's Story, The Colorado Kid, and (I am ashamed to say) the entire Dark Tower series.

Item #6 is why this long post was born.

stark bathing Red

aka: aao snaan kare.n

what if you indulged your every desire
what if your desires unlocked hidden secrets
paradise found
innocence lost
how much would you risk
to protect what you love
{from the trailer}

He unlawfully entered our viewing lives with Fareb. He ran railway track races like a raging bull on the waterfront with Ghulam. He dulled the jagged edge with Kasoor. He exposed the Raaz of what lay beneath (something that even Sir Paul McCartney was supposed to have enjoyed). He produced the acronymicomical AMALL. He went the whole nine yards with Awara Paagal Deewana. He transplanted a Mahesh Bhatt rip-off in a state of grace with Footpath into a film set that should have been named PepsiTown. He implemented yet another Mahesh Bhatt design featuring the pet themes of multi-offspring yielding bigamy (known, in some really uncomplimentary circles, as RSS, the Ravi Shankar Syndrome) with Inteha. He fearlessly notched up another filmographic entry for the Big B operating in "I will work with anyone now" mode with Aetbaar. He shattered your senses and revealed himself to be a closet Puru Raj Kumar fan when he scripted Girish Dhamija's directorial début Yakeen. The man who gave us one of Pritam's best soundtrack efforts with Ankahee now returns an incarnadine cure for insomniac B-movie watchers called Red: The Dark Side (I wonder if the sequel's going to be called Blue: The Backside). Aftab Shivdasani, the pallbearer of Bhatt's cinematic alter ego, decided that an attempt at a tonsure was the best way to convey the passionate intensity of his character. Since Bhatt's films are marked with a sense of ennui strong enough for them to qualify as novocaine commercials, he's employed lassies with boulderados to entice audiences. That he's employed not one but two sets of flopdoodles here must be a warning about how much the script competes with the Leaning Tower of Pisa. One of them is Celina Jaitley, who, since her début in Khel, is known best for her Vanessa Mae impersonation in Janasheen and the lifeless #me kiss-fest Jawani Diwani. The other is Amrita Arora, who, despite having a good thing going by trying to combat the cold of Delhi in Zameen, ventured into a lesbian laugh-a-thon called Girlfriend.

While Bhatt insists (yet again) that the film comes from within him, the premise seems like a misguided revisionist take on elements in Clint Eastwood's Blood Work. There's also a TV movie called Donor Unknown that looks promising. Only time will tell.

at the crossroads of fear and passion lie seduction and betrayal
what lies beneath friendship could be mystery and deception
{from the CD sleeve}

The Capitulating Critic is markedly eloquent in his review of the cardinal catarrh for the film. The predictably catchy aafariin (whose video, he insists was picturised imaginatively in a volatile manner) features a downtempo ambient house rhythm and represents the strongest contribution to the album's 77.78% snot factor.

A motif ailing the film even before its release is one of colour. Consider the title itself. Red: The Dark Side, with its English-English scheme represents the new wave in Bollywood's experiments in titulation ^[1]. The last improvisation had moved on from the saprophytic allegiance to the Hindi-English scheme to a marginal improvement represented by a reversal of roles. The CD art (click on the second image here) indulges in a red and grey exercise confirming Amrita Arora's assertion about going grey for the film. The magnificent pontoons of love will be on display once again for those interested in the true merits of the film.

In a stunning sop for trivamongers, the filmmakers roped in former wimpy-weepy-faced Bollywood B-star Sumeet Saigal[2] to direct a promotional video for the film. The sensuous undertone of the song dil ne na jaanaa and the emotional element that The Nose had given it inspired Saigal to shoot a bathtub sequence featuring the three principals. One look at the video will confirm that it's all smoke and no fire; the usual family-friendly sniffing abounds; however, one must note that Aftab's efforts in the gym to tone his body have empowered him to offer some competition to Jaitley's jahoobies and Arora's amortisseurs. It would be facetious to say that a million petals were harmed during the making of this video. Lovers of Bollywood film physics will also relish the shots from the car/truck collision where the creative mind wins over trivial matter.

Any note on this erythraean would be incomplete without recognising the arid genius behind the movie's tagline:

somewhere a fear of love ...
somewhere a love of fear ...

Be afraid. Be very afraid. I love it. Give me red. I'm waiting.

---

[1] it must be noted that the word is merely a punny product of a film-viewing salacious mind

[2] perhaps best known for Bahaar Aane Tak, where he flirted with Rupa Ganguly in kaalii terii choTii hai, slipped her a mickey and made family-rated love to her in a car

announcing: RMIM puraskaar 2006

With the FilmUnfair nominations having inspired the usual rounds of bile and some inspired creativity, Vinay, creator/moderator of the Pancham group, owner of Panchamonline.com, father of giitaayan, long-time ISB contributor and initiator of the THGHT series, whose last offering was man-bol, dedicated to mondegreens in Hindi songs, returns with RMIM Puraskaar 2006. You can proceed to the awards home to cast your vote. Voting closes tentatively on March 03, 2007.

The announcement's also posted on the giitaayan blog.

Indibloggies 2006: vote for this blog (please)

Zounds! This portal of Bollywooden bile, this altar of "no mush just slush," this podium for the adoration of all things celluloid has been nominated for "Best Entertainment Indiblog" at the Indibloggies 2006. I am more shocked than Salman Khan was when he won the Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actor (kuchh bhii hotaa hai!). (Click here to vote)

This oryzivorous cinephage is thrilled and truly honoured to share space with some very fine bloggers. (Click here to vote)



(Click here to vote)
If you cast your valuable vote for this space, I promise to contribute generously to the Lawrence D'Souza Creativity Trust, and say nice things about specious NRI-friendly movies, and walk about unshaven with an unwashed baseball cap wearing clippers on my nose ... No!!! I would do anything for votes, but I won't do that.

You can't do anything about your dysphagia about the nominations for (and eventual winners of) the Filmfare Awards, but you can make a difference with your vote.

eii! Please vote. (Click here to vote)

kaanuun sirf sazaa degaa; sazaa kaa mazaa nahii.n legaa. tum mujhe voT do; mai.n tumhe.n mazaa duu.Ngaa. (Click here to vote)

Thanking you sincerely,
100% aayuravedik ja.DiibuuTiyo.n se banaa sampuurN swadeshii

(Click here to vote)


update: [February 23, 2007]: Voting closed on February 20, 2007, and the electronic ink has dried on the results. This space has failed to achieve popular glory, despite the "you voting for me?" spiel. The dead rabbits be damned, it's time to be faithful and depart and return to the old mean streets of movie malarkey; as far back as I can remember I always wanted to be a blogger ... (we should feel lucky we even get to make cheap acerbic swipes anymore).

sudhir mishra goes live on PFC

Oz strikes gold on Passion for Cinema as Sudhir Mishra comes on board with his own diary. The first post is a transcript of an interview where he talks about the influences on his work.

elsewhere on PFC: an extended post on his directorial début Yeh Woh Manzil To Nahin, a film that portended the finest film of 2005, Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi.

elsewhere hereabouts: A pointer to a bilious rant about the state of filmmaking in Bollywood.

The songs of I See You

You find love in the strangest places is the tagline for I See You, a copy of Hollywood chick flick Just Like Heaven that Arjun Rampal decided to produce along with his wife and star in to boot. It's worth paraphrasing to describe my reaction to the Vishal-Shekhar soundtrack accompanying the film: you find goodies in the saddest places. The duo dig deep into their box of genres and dish out a wonderful aural mix.

There's the trance, dancefloor-friendly beat-heavy pop acorn kahanaa hai jo from Shekhar Ravjiani. The arrangements toss in enough echo and reverb for his voice to feed a nation as his voice bounces off into decay across each earpiece.

The other shake-it track haalo haalo^[1] opens with frenzied quotes from latin and beach rhythms before a trance riff and a swirling male echo take over; a buoyant cry (dhumakaa?) later, the quotes continue with some funk guitar riffs before the rhythm and percussion return. Sunidhi Chauhan and Sukhwinder Singh lend their throaty best as they trade vocal histrionics with the rhythm, percussion and a cheeky bass line. Vishal Dadlani adds another texture with some vocalizing in the lower register. All this gets mixed without either the vocals or the music yielding to the other.

A host of electronic samples and percussion drenched in romantic echo embellish Sunidhi Chauhan's multi-tracked deliciously nuanced vocal on sach huii. This is the kind of song Sunidhi's done before for the duo^[2]. There's a lot of mix-and-match on this track: a riff that mixes an electronic bass cascade and some acoustic guitar; a travelling male vocal accompanied by sympathetic strings in unison and complement. There's more than Tangerine Dream in the box that all this came from.

My pick, however, is the opening track of the album, subah subah, which has a lot of all this and more going for it. There's the balance between instruments and voice; there's the mix of genres (Jamaican music will find some strong fans in this duo -- they've done dancehall several times before^[3]). The song opens with a 2-chord sequence strummed out vigorously on an acoustic guitar, before the composer duo pitch in a vocal onomatopoeaic refrain straight out of those old doo wop songs; the dancehall rhythm sets in and a light falsetto voice belting out lines before the immensely talented Zubeen Garg wraps his voice around the melodic alleys of the song. The electronic samples are at a minimum: a bouncing bass riff, the doo wop refrain and the dancehall rhythm dominate the backing sound mix. The tricks of echo and reverb splash his voice about the earphones. Garg indulges in vocal histrionics similar to those on yaa alii from Gangster, before the next musical layer pops in: a melody carried out on a whistle and backed by a nice chord progression on the acoustic guitar. The last third of the song sees the chord progression cross over to accompany the refrain and the rhythm. Fragments bounce back and forth until the song draws to a close on an electronic fade. It's a nice tight little nugget that begs replay.

In true Bollywood tradition, the song gets smashed on screen. Not just to smithereens but to sub-atomic grist. It adorns the opening credits^[4], which would lead you to think that the filmmakers would've exploited as a good opportunity to let their imagination run wild and think of something interesting. You'd lose your house betting on that. The first nail comes from the fact that they've sped up the song. It's not chipmunk-fast, but it might as well get there instead of hanging in this limbo like the middle class. The camera tracks in to a figure standing against one of the pillars of the building that our hero is about to emerge from. If you've followed the gossip, you know who this figure is. But if you didn't there are several clues for you: the figure's too well-dressed to be in character; the figure's playing the wrong chords. Given that the camera's giving him so much attention, you can deduce that this is a star making a cameo. The camera tracks past to the glass door without rising up to catch his face. In a rather inspired little take, the camera turns about, as Rampal comes out and follows him as he passes the guitarist. We now see that it's our favourite Narcissus SRK himself. Now all this would've been a nice set-up (you have to excuse the bad chords; it's part of the Bollywood tradition^[5]), if SRK hadn't decided to give you that silly aggravating smirk of his right near the end of this bit. The other nail comes when the filmmakers, in their joy at having achieved some glee with the cameo, decide to make sure that you don't forget whom you saw and keep returning to SRK. The cameo now becomes as rich as skimmed milk. As if to make up for the absence of narcissism once the cameo is done, Rampal seems to have issued a directive that subsequent footage focus on his presence. This turns out to be a really devastating experience, not in the least because the song gets promoted from its comfortable faux-diegetic role to the irritating suspension-of-disbelief avataar that has plagued our senses for years. Now every frigging foreigner on location is lip-synching to the damn song. To add to our misery, they decide to use variable film speeds and rhythm-assisted editing to augment our discombobulation. We also get more evidence that our filmmakers were trying to get drunk at a dry well when we see the common device of using shots to match lyrics: check out how the crowd gathers to follow Rampal's walk in the set of shots that ends with jahaan ke saath mai.n chal rahaa huu.N (translation: I'm walking with the world). Which brings us to star cameo #2. This one's a lot better: The camera switches its attention from Arjun Rampal to Hrithik Roshan, who walks by. He's whistling along with the song, of course. And he sets up to break into what might've been an interesting set of dance moves, but instead walks away after a teensy-weensy step. You wring your hands in grief at wasted opportunity. The song ends with the Crown of Narcissus passing from Rampal to the writer (read: filcher) and director Vivek Agarwal as his credit appears on the plasma TV screen at Rampal's home. This is when you throw in the towel and pray that you never ever have to watch this sorry-derriered flick.

Incidentally, eye candy in the film (the raison d'être for most Bollywood films) is provided by debutante Vipasha Agarwal.

[1] was the Filipino dessert a muse for this?

[2] consider wo kaun hai in Shaadi ka Laddoo

[3] the title track for Golmaal: Fun Unlimited, right here right now from BluffMaster!

[4] The video on YouTube

[5] Vishal Bhardwaj broke this tradition recently when Vivek Oberoi took the time to get the chords right for a sequence in Omkara; Bhardwaj paid for his transgression: the film was declared a flop and turned out to be more of a hit with the critics than with the masses.

memories from the making of Black Friday

As the real black friday draws close and Anurag Kashyap is all set to make his marquee, posts have begun on PFC dedicated to the making of the film. The latest edition offers a wealth of sound clips comprising an interview with Anurag Kashyap about the film and its various aspects. Hear all about the long Dostoevskyian baadashaah khaan sequence and the importance of the music, the points of view chosen and abandoned, the chase sequence that links this film to the never-begun Allwyn Kalicharan (and connections to Takeshi Kitano and Andrei Tarkovsky), the importance of the choice of language, the impact of economics (probably the most expensive non-star-cast film made in India) and a tad more detail on why Naseeruddin Shah and Ir(r)fan Khan backing out. There's also a very interesting bit from the trial: after the film was actually screened at the hearing, the accused party wanted to change their stance!

A lot of what unfolds in the interview might make more sense for those lucky enough to have caught a bootleg or a film festival screening, but the interview with its very engrossing questions and answers is highly recommended. The PFC post also has links to the other items in the Black Friday series.

Come February 09, 2007, you can watch the film and then judge the film. YT sincerely hopes that you rule in AK's favour.

Some interesting asides: Super 35 (which is the choice for AK's No Smoking) was not available in this country until Sarkar; the first film on Panavision is being shot by N Chandra (the film's called Breaking News).

It would be amiss of me not to mention that the interview also touches on some interesting aspects of the still-unfinished Gulaal.

There's also a very important thought that AK labels as his "theory of relativity of cinema" -- he uses my favourite example (Citizen Kane) when he notes "the importance of [the film] ... why it is the greatest film can be best defined by people who saw it in '46/'50 [1941]"; it also anticipates the reaction of people to Paanch (when it's eventually released, grossly out of sequence in his ouevre).

The bellyaching moment arrives in the form of an answer to the question about problems with the censors this time around. It echoes some of the charming reasons dished out by the censors for banning Paanch):

is baar censors ne kuchh nahii.n kaaTaa ... chaar gaaliyaa.N kaaTii.n; do m**darch*d kaaTe ek b*hench*d kaaTaa; ek aur gaalii kaaTii; aur jab usake liye hamane argument kiyaa ki sir ye aap kyo.n kaaT rahe ho Black Friday me.n se ... aise hii ye log baat karate the ... wo actually jab Tiger Memom kaa ghar jalataa hai puuraa maahiim jalaa duu.Ngaa m**darch*d kar ke ... wahaa.N beep aataa hai ... to chaar jagah beep aataa hai ... wo chaar gaaliyaa.N kaaTii hai.n ... aur jab hamane unako puuchhaa ki aapane ye kyo.n kaaTaa ... censor-waalo.n ne ... unakaa argument ye thaa ... counter-argument ... ki aap ko aThaarah ch**tye diye the na is baar?

And some peeks into Vishal Bhardwaj's soundtrack of No Smoking: two qawwaaliis, one by Daler Mehndi and Sukhwinder; a Sufi song by Kailash Kher and Swanand Kirkire.

And there's an appreciation of Mani Ratnam, and especially RGV (only an outsider can make Satya), who manage to objectively deal with their own work.

And now, thanks to Anurag Kashyap, I have something interesting to feast my ears on -- the Brooks Qawwali Party.

notes on the songs of Game

(buried in a lot of information about Bapi-Tutul and Sandeep Nath)

Lyricist Sandeep Nath and the brothers Bhattacharya Bapi-Tutul started off together with din hai na ye raat in Bhoot, Paisa Vasool (for which Nath reportedly signed on before Bhoot) and then Ek Hasina Thi, where Bapi-Tutul managed a coup with Pt. Jasraj lending his voice for the cue in puuryaa dhaanashrii over the opening credits. The RGV camp that marked Bapi-Tutul's foray into Bollywood also boasted other collaborations on Sarkar and si.nduurii aasmaan in James.

Sandeep Nath also managed to collaborate with Shameer Tandon, Madhur Bhandarkar's music director of choice, on Page 3 and Corporate. He even collaborated with Robbing Hood Pritam on Agnipankh (where Pritam converted Abrar Ul Haq's bhiigaa-bhiigaa-sa into a patriotic chant a year before he filched it more brazenly in Chocolate).

The composer duo scored with Khosla ka Ghosla last year and reunited with their songwriting partner on a couple of films that would probably interest B-mongers: Hot Money (whose distinction, despite delivering the goods, was of being directed by Rakesh Sawant, and sporting an item song featuring his sister Rakhi "Item" Sawant) and Game (featuring Mona Chopra, who figures in the eagerly-awaited-and-still-unseen Naughty Boy that would mark the return of Rahul Roy).

All this now brings us to Game, which earns some witless cribs from the Capitulating Critic:

With absolutely nil hopes from the album due to the genre of the film and other credentials, one plays on the album with much apprehension. In the end it turns out that it was good to be apprehensive in the first place itself since Game indeed doesn't have much to offer.

We must remind you that the extract above came from a music review.

All this seems to be unfairly building up to the song of the post, chhuaa mere dil ko, which owes a big debt to Mark Knopfler. When Vishal-Shekhar reinvented themselves with the lounge/club shower of Musafir, they gave us tez dhaar, which blended elements from Knopfler and other famous axemen. But Bapi-Tutul's effort leaves us without doubt. When you first hear that short turnaround lick from Sultans of Swing, you're inclined to credit the guitarist with a quote. But at the 3 minute mark, a prominent riff inundates the song; it's a riff that marginally differs from the riff that swells up in On Every Street. This doesn't take away the merits of good arrangements and rendition from the song, although one wonders if a now older Shaan is positioning himself as the new Kumar Sanu. I could have sworn I was hearing Sanu with a clear nose when the voice broke in.

bhiige nainaa gives KK another nice melody to swing his voice about; I haven't come to terms with Deepshikha Sharma's voice on the female version of the song. Shreya Ghoshal ruins the duet version of chhuaa mere dil ko by deciding to phone in her patent-pending screeching girl child impression. Sunidhi Chauhan faithfully renders yet another song in her item kitty, maregaa maregaa bewafaa maregaa. Listen carefully and you'll hear part of the sample that figured prominently in A R Rahman's hammaa from Bombay.

Time to dig out Hot Money and listen to daulat hai nashaa and dhakkam dhakaa.

coming soon: black friday

This has definitely got to be a first. Imagine saying this for an Anurag Kashyap film. It's about time, I say. February 09, 2007's the day. Those who've seen the bootleg can take heart that a longer cut's on the way. Prayers rise and fingers cross. Meanwhile, here's a PFC post featuring a video of AK unveiling the film's poster and a wonderful shot of the poster itself.

previous item in thread: Anurag Kashyap begins blogging on PFC.

update:[jan 12, 2007]: Adlabs has acquired the worldwide distribution rights for the film. One prays that they don't sully the print with their watermark -- it destroyed Mixed Doubles for me.

whither chhatrii

It's cloudy outside and there have been short spells of rain, but, as JR woefully tells me, there's no sign of The Blue Umbrella (contrary to expectations). However, there's a two-part interview with Pankaj Kapur over at Rediff [Part I, Part II ]. My favourite nugget:

You do commercial cinema very rarely. But then after a film like Maqbool you go ahead and do a Dus. Now how does a role like that compare to your repertoire? Or do you merely look at is as a fun assignment?

As far as Dus is concerned, I think it was a fairly etched character. Excepting the end development of the character, about which I had a series of discussions with the director [Anubhav Sinha] about where he is taking the character eventually. At the end of the day, it's the director's call. As an actor I can only suggest, discuss and leave it to him.

To me, whether I am playing a part in commercial cinema or, if you'd like to call it, middle-stream cinema, my attempt is the same. It depends on how the circumstances of the director permit him to understand what one is pointing out to him and incorporate the same into the script or not.

And sometimes even the best efforts of the director and actor may not sketch out the way you would imagine them to be for various constraints, but then you have to live with the kind of world you are in. And you tell yourself, 'Okay, there would be a Maqbool, a Blue Umbrella, but there would be a couple of commercial films as well.' And the idea of doing those films is to reach a certain audience that maybe does not, in the immediacy of time, watch a Blue Umbrella. For them, it is to make them aware that I exist in that cinema as well, so that maybe at some point in life they sit up and say 'oh, the same actor is there in this film, lets go and have a look at it.' So it is to maybe, partially increase the number of people who watch your work in the other kind of cinema.

In rather unrelated news, Sakshi Juneja unveils the first part of a 5-month old interview with Anurag Kashyap, just about a year after a nice interview with Kay Kay Menon. Aside from some more insight into the genesis of Paanch, the chief trivia tidbit would be "I left Mission Kashmir half way because I was not happy with the way things were shaping up..."

addendum: JR's gentle nudge (a comment on Sakshi's page) and an old blog post that leads from Socha Na Tha to Star Bestsellers offer more information about the short film that Kashyap did with Kay Kay. Now if only I can get my hands on the series ...

And here's a much-delayed pointer to a clip from "Four Step Plan," Chaitanya Tamhane's documentary critiquing the plagiarism in Bollywood.

RGV's Sholay: some narrative strands

Oz points to the plot preview hosted on indiafm.com; the familiar elements are there and you also get a glimpse of some of the upgrades in RGV's overhaul. We all know how many that have been screaming about how this remake/adaptation is sacrilege (an argument most likely fuelled by nostalgia, having little to do with understanding the creative motivation). Perhaps we can expect some of them to come forward and complain that Baldev Singh has been renamed to Ranveer. For them one envisions a billboard reading "Look Ma, no hands."

another GRINDHOUSE preview hits the block

Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez are baiting enough curiosity to give ailurophobes a breather. Their double-feature Grind House is laced with homage in every department: the casting, the frames, the music, the cinematic devices. Even those fake previews that are promised are enough to make you drool if you always secretly dug exploitation cinema (or, like YT, have occasionally been gauche enough to admit to it). The old teaser packs in a lot of stuff for the eager one, although most of it seemed to come from Rodriguez's segment Planet Terror in addition to packing one of the fake previews (They Call Him Machete). The new one that's hit the e-sphere is a tad more organised, has some bits in common with the first, and truly, madly and deeply kicks gluteus to a maximal pulp. Love the sounds of crackling film and the cranking projector, but I don't think I want a gun for a leg:)

very odd, what happens in a world without children's voices: notes on Children of Men

[Cross-posted on the Passion For Cinema blog]

Alfonso Cuarón achieves a rare and deeply satisfying balance between form and content with Children of Men, a tale set in a dystopian future (2027, we are told) plagued by infertility and hurtling to doom as people and lands are devastated by war, civil and political breakdown and terrorism. We are in the London of the future. The urban landscape is bleak, polluted, filthy and shrouded by depression and gloom. Despite this being years into the future, the vehicles don't look futuristic at all, but merely aged versions of their current selves -- double-decker buses look just as dusty and mundane; only advertising seems to have made big strides: billboards and bus signs are now animated. One of the advertising spots running even informs us that The world has collapsed; only Britain strives on. A nationalist government is aided by a brutal police force and all foreigners are regarded as illegal immigrants and refugees are subjected to shame and torture in camps across the country. The government also disburses anti-depressants, perhaps in response to the widespread apathy and depression; yet, ganja is still illegal. Somehow media spectacle doesn't seem to have ceased: in the opening moments of the film we see people reacting to the death of Diego Ricardo, the youngest person on the planet, who was 18 years, 4 months, 20 days, 16 hours, and 8 minutes old.

All this is part of the texture of the film itself as is the soundtrack that features Deep Purple, King Crimson, Radiohead and John Lennon as well as an evocative use of Franco Battiato's cover of Ruby Tuesday. The content and narrative derive a lot from the P. D. James novel the film is based on, but there are significant differences that necessitate the evaluation of the film on its own terms. Emmanuel Lubezki's camerawork merits recognition and accolades of all kinds for the consistent palette of greys that make London look just as war-beleaguered as it did during the second World War. The Orwellian echoes from 1984 resonate in the trash-laden streets and dark alleys, the woods and fields on the outskirts of the city, the grime and grief of the internment camps for the refugees, and the police officers patrolling the roads with dogs.

Set design plays a crucial role in the film, because a lot of exposition comes not from dialogue, but from the spaces that we see our characters in: the salvaged art represented by Michaelangelo's David (that's missing a leg) and Picasso's Guernica (not to mention the flying pig that shows up, perhaps as a nod to Pink Floyd's Animals), the television ad for a suicide drug called Quietus, the graffiti on the walls.

The cinematographic choices are what seal the deal as far as balancing form and content is concerned. Cuarón eschews quick cuts and dramatic close-ups of any kind, preferring instead to use a lot of extended shots with handheld cameras, thus giving scenes a sense of verisimilitude, honesty and earnestness. Consequently, the film boasts two spectacular sequences. The first one is a 12-minute uninterrupted sequence of dialogue and action filmed from within a car carrying passengers. This employed a modified vehicle as well as a special camera rig and the results are simply astounding. The second sequence, a more explicit example of the cinéma vérité sensibility that Cuarón's approach lends the film, has us following characters through the streets, ducking under and into buildings and eventually making their way into a building, and then back out, all amidst continuous gunfire and explosions. In a spectacularly real stroke of luck, the camera lens is spattered with some (fake) blood and dirt at one point, thus shattering the fourth wall; the spatters vanish subsequently during a transition across a dark space, thus conveying the possibility that a silent cut happened. Not since the continuous opening shot from Orson Welles in Touch Of Evil has the extended take augmented the emotional core of the narrative so much, Scorsese's memorable excursion in Goodfellas notwithstanding.

The performances are all first rate; all the actors seem to have been picked for their ability to inhabit characters instead of being recognisable faces and personalities on screen: from Clive Owen's warm wry Theo Faron, whom both humans and animals seem to trust, to Michael Caine's hippie and former political cartoonist Jasper, to Julianne Moore as Theo's ex-wife Julian Taylor, who is now an underground revolutionary, to Danny Huston as Theo's cousin Nigel, to Claire-Hope Ashitey as Kee, Chiwetel Ejiofor as Luke, Pam Ferris as Miriam, Peter Mullan as Syd, and Oana Pellea as Marichka.

There is a reluctance to reveal more about the elements of the narrative and the plot. I went in to watch the film with just the premise of it being a tale of fading hope in a dystopian future. The rewards of not being forewarned about the details were immense. To find a film that's both intellectually and emotionally rewarding, a film that is compelling both in its content and the stimulating technique employed to present it is rare enough to want to go in blind. I was glad I stayed away from plot synopses (although I wish I had been prepared for the technical wizardry I was about to be treated to). Without revealing too much, I'd have to say that it also became the perfect Christmas Day movie for me.

mr kashyap pops up in the most interesting places

Baradwaj Rangan's interview with Gautham Menon (Kaakka Kaakka, Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu) sports an interesting detail about Menon's next film Pachaikili Muthucharam:

...Gautham is now busy with the release work for Pachaikili Muthucharam, which is expected around Christmas. He calls this an adaptation of "Derailed – the book, not the film. I've totally worked from the book and I've given it a very Tamil, very Indian feel." We got around to talking about this because he mentioned that he was reading a lot of books of late, wanting to adapt them, trying to pick up rights, "which is how it works in Hollywood." It was Anurag Kashyap who gave the book to Gautham, suggesting a possible film version, "and I said let's buy the rights. We contacted the publishers, but they said Hollywood has already picked up the rights. I still thought I could make this with Kamal sir and release it before Derailed gets released. I'd give credit to the writer." But, of course, Kamal sir said no. And meanwhile Derailed, the film, came out. "I sent my assistants to watch it, and they said it was quite different." Gautham makes a point of this because "I have a problem if people say I took off from the movie. I generally don't do that at all. [..]"

vishals scores at CIFF; and an interesting brochure

Screened on November 30, 2006, Omkara got Vishal an award at the 30th Cairo International Film Festival. The Prize for the Best Artistic Contribution, according to the awards page was presented for Music, Cinematography and Art Direction to Vishal for [his] inspired use of a sweeping epic score, extraordinary photography and art direction, which come together in perfect harmony.

In other news, the brochure for The Blue Umbrella (slated for a January 05, 2007 release) has been designed to mimic a children's story book. The question remains: how does one get hold of it? The Omkara coffee table book is all set to become a dream.

sholay me.n tum gaan me.n tum

RGV's Sholay is ending up as a project more interesting in its making than the final outcome. One hopes that it doesn't turn out to be the filmic brother of Duke Nukem Forever.

With the casting boat having rocked a few times, Sushant Singh came on board as saambaa; reportedly, RGV and Bajpai met up after years of a cold war, Bajpai wanted to play jay, RGV wanted him for saambaa, and soon it was yet another edition of The Long Goodbye. Kaif was out and Sushmita Sen seems in for playing the widow raadhaa (rechristened devii). Nisha Kothari still holds the fort as devii ghu.Ngharuu (aka basa.ntii 2007). RGV's blue-eyed Mohit Ahlawat was the next one to leave the project (again, RGV's comments are funny, and Mohit's indicate that more is afoot). Enter model Prashant Raj Sachdev ("just call me Raj").

And then there's the soundtrack. After roping in NeighSel Grossenschade to lend a contemporary nasal spin on RDB's impassioned mahabuuba, The Nose was no longer part of the project; out went Asha Bhosle as well. Enter choreographer-turned-musician Ganesh Hegde (have you heard "G" lately?), and we now have Sukhwinder Singh and Sunidhi Chauhan; junior B seems all set to reprise Jalal Agha's cameo (and this would mark another musical item featuring the two Bs, although Gabbar Bachchan ain't likely to shake no leg).

Ye want more laddies and lassies? Well, the one and only Original, Bappi Lahiri's reportedly recorded two songs for the film (he says RGV's roped him in to do three).

The article referenced by that last link also provides us with the juicy tidbit that Bappi's beTaa Bappa is all set to plant his stake as a film music director with Dus Kahaniyaan, Sanjay "Original" Gupta's several-shorts-make-one-film venture. One awaits the soundtrack of another Gupta production Shootout at Lokhandwala directed by yet another Bollywood Original, Apoorva Lakhia (MSAMD, Ek Ajnabee/Man On Fire). The soundtrack features the likes of Indian Ocean, Euphoria, Strings and Shibani Kashyap (the last two were also on the Zinda soundtrack). Although the film is supposed to be based on a real-life police encounter, there are rumours that the real source is ... SURPRISE! SURPRISE! ... a foreign film. This time it's Johnny To's Breaking News.

elsewhere hereabouts: RGV's reaction to the scent of a suing Sippy

update [dec 19, 2006]: Here's more about Bappi's efforts as well as a little something about Prashant Raj Sachdev

thirsting for pyaasa

what we make today is not cinema but superficial, downright dumb drivel is the byline for some impassioned vitriol from Sudhir Mishra in an opinion column for Outlook India. The article notes the ignorance fuelling Bollywood's auto-fellating spirit, the stronghold exercised by the stars and a ray of hope represented by a new breed of filmmakers who're more interested in telling stories instead of churning pages of captions accompanying polaroids of stars. My favourite nugget is a bit devoted to the industry reaction to Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi:

The continuing tragedy of Hindi cinema is that it is in the grip of the hegemony of a few stars, who patronise a select few filmmakers, often resulting in the tripe that is offered to the public. I was told by two of these megastars that Hazaaron Khwahishein was one of the worst scripts they had ever read. What these stars did with their next films is a part of history that I don't wish to dwell on.

related reading: An article that offers a comparative analysis (see page 2) of financial success in Bollywood and in the south indian film industry.

elsewhere hereabouts: notes on Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi, easily the best Hindi film of 2005 and one of the best Indian films of the year | a review of Bhansali's Black that includes a pointer to Sudhir Mishra's caustic take on the film and the fawning industry reaction to the film.

and if this ever-changing world in which we're living makes you give in and cry JUNG

Revisiting a classic dud

First, some disambiguation is in order. This is not the 2000 film directed by Sanjay Gupta that filched from Face/Off and Desperate Measures. This is the truly original 1996 vehicle bearing the likes of Ajay Devgan, Aditya Pancholi and Mithun Chakraborty. Yes, this is the Jung that filched Rahman's tilaanaa tilaanaa (from Muthu) and made it diiwaanaa diiwaanaa (persons responsible: Nadeem and Shravan and lyricist Anand Bakshi). This is that T Rama Rao film we talked about a few years ago. Since enough venom has gone under the bridge, one may be tempted to ask why. Now this is a question that has plagued viewers (like YT) of Bollywood's folderol for eons. However, in the context of this Rambha rompfest, an answer is available: we failed to address the greatness of the film; we merely scraped some flakes off the tip of the smallest ice cube floating at the surface of this cesspool.

It's a portent of slippery times ahead when the movie is presented by someone called Dinky. Then you have a villain (good old Sadashiv (H)amrapurkar) called chakradhaarii chaudharii, who spouts the following delicate ego-fondling nugget:

is sa.nsaar me.n do hii to chakradhaarii hai.n
uupar sudarshan-chakrawaalaa
aur niche mai.n usakii Takkarawaalaa

Everyone's favourite pillar of superhuman honesty and integrity, Mithun Chakraborty, plays eii!-CP arjun (translation: bright, shining, radiant), an honest, sincere, A-grade cop. Ajay Devgan plays his younger brother ajay (translation: he who cannot be defeated; also: we were too bored to think of a name for his character, so he kept his own), who, pursuant to the Bollywood Cliché Act, is an honest lawyer (which, is a contradiction in terms, and hence makes this stock character unique). Aditya Pancholi rocks the joint in a double role: we have the innocent fair-complexioned raam (translation: dark/black [according to wikipedia]; pleasing/charming according to another page), wrongfully accused, tried with the secular docket number 786/25, and rotting in the oft-worn outfit of prisoner #117 in a prison on some backlot; and we have billaa (from the genus of Bollywood villains that inundated movies like Gardish and continue to haunt us even today with Musafir), the villain who decided to rob a train and then frame train-driver raam (aah the trains of coincidence) for his misdeeds. In keeping with tradition, billaa and Co. also tie raam's pregnant wife siitaa (meaning: furrow; straight out of the epic to the railway tracks. The framed siitaa dumps her baby at the doorstep of lakshmii (translation: wealth, fortune), the wife of ACP arjun and manages to flee prison.

In order to get a tax exemption from the CoincidenceMeter by providing a stellar implementation of the StronglyConnectedCharacterGraph, screenplay writer Santosh Saroj (translation: lotus of happiness ... or is it the kiLukkam-e-kamal?) whips out his Kevin Bacon strips and links our characters up.

Like free cable, ajay, convinced of raam's innocence, begins to represent a ray of hope for him (that is, to say, on a professional level). He takes up his case and thus aligns himself in conflict with arjun, who's busy filing his nomination for the Guinness Book of World Records for arresting raam over and over again. Meanwhile, wifey dear (who insists on conjugating English verbs to the continuous form ostensibly as an attempt to provide some humour) hires a nanny for the baby -- if you haven't already figured it out, sitaa's the lucky nanny. Also in the mix is a jallaad (translation: executioner) played by Tinnu Anand, who also has his own axe to grind with billaa (the man responsible for his son's death). On the artistic front, Rambha plays madhuu, over-fed romantic foil for ajay; madhuu also happens to be the daughter of chakradhaarii. This sets up a rich interlocking set-up of Kekule closures and things begin to boil slowly with a rising conflict of truth, justice and melodrama.

Those looking for a simple dramatic narrative will find solace in the number of twists and coincidences that the film sports. Santosh Saroj also scores a coup with lines like kisane mere pyaar ke tave pe paanii chi.Dakaa diyaa? ye ##papa## nahii.n paapii hai, and mai.n har hi.ndustaanii kaa bhaaii huu.N magar tujh jaise gaddaaro.n ke liye kasaaii huu.N. The scenarists do well with their limited supply of spiked lassies by writing a historical voyeuristically satisfying scene featuring madhu bathing against the aural background of Hotel California (appropriated without due credit, but you already figured that out). As if this wasn't enough, Rambha shows up again later dressed up as a Sikh pilot. The giddily swinging cake gets its cherry with Ajay Devgan's drag act.

This belongs to the equivalence class of Mithun films where everyone else seems to get more screen time than the Bengal Tiger himself. Such movies work best when they sport enough villains to fill up a lunch thaalii, but we have a shortage here. The combination of the doppelgänger, the benzene bonds among the characters, the faux physics of the collisions and the visually overwhelming Rambha-nctiousness augment the value of this ham sandwich just enough to make it memorable as events draw to a close with a crackerjack emotional ending where a mother donates her biological baby to its surrogate mother. It's time to catch the 8:55 goods train to Pune.

vishal bhardwaj's next

[a generous tip to JR for remembering a fragment and prompting a frantic search for the newsitem]

After Omkara, Vishal's been producing Anurag Kashyap's No Smoking (besides doing the honours on the song front with Gulzar) as well as the song for RGV's Nishabd. Although a third edition in the Shakespeare canon (Julius Caesar) was hinted at, his next directorial project seems to be "a period drama set in the days of World War II on the Burma-Japan border." Here's where you can read all that and more from lyricist Gulzar who's doing the lyrics for this venture as well.

what the ba.njar!

Raghav Sachar does a fine job with his songs for Kabul Express. kah rahaa meraa dil (with its clear prominent acoustic guitar and suspended chords) and haa.N ye mai.n aayaa kahaa.N huu.N (with some nice harmonies, accidental chords and an a cappella coda) are personal favourites. It's a bit annoying to hear the fake accent and inflections that Sachar infuses the opening track (kaabul fizaa) with. The instrumental theme stirs memories of Morricone (Once Upon A Time In The West perhaps, but I'm not sure).

The pièce de résistance, however, is the song called ba.njar (meaning: barren). The song features in three versions: one sung by Shubha Mudgal, another by Sunidhi Chauhan (which, for sheer verve, wins top spot for me) and the third by KK (coming a close second). The title of the song becomes a motif so blatant that the other words in the mukha.Daa feel like window dressing:

ba.njar ret hai zamii.n ba.njar hai
ba.njar aasamaa.N ye ghar ba.njar hai
ba.njar dil ye nain ba.njar
ba.njar nain ke aa.Nsuu ba.njar hai.n

refrain: is ba.njar shahar ke dil me.n Dhuu.NDhuu.N mai.n giilii miTTii kaa ma.nzar

ba.njar lamhaa hai waqt ba.njar hai
ba.njar waqt-sii ye raat ba.njar hai
ba.njar raat Kwaab ba.njar
chaa.Nd-taaro.n kaa saath ba.njar hai

refrain: is ba.njar shahar ke dil me.n Dhuu.NDhuu.N mai.n giilii miTTii kaa ma.nzar

bridge:
ba.njar ret ba.njar zamiino.n ke is daur me.n
ba.njar man ba.njar dha.Dako.n ke is shor me.n
ba.njar ehasaas me.n ba.njar saa.Nso.n me.n
ik safar zaruurii banataa hai jo dilo.n ke dam pe chalataa hai

refrain: is ba.njar shahar ke dil me.n Dhuu.NDhuu.N mai.n giilii miTTii kaa manzar

With so many ba.njars, how the hell does a song remain ba.njar?

(That extract above has been shorn of repeated lines, in case you were interested in counting the total number of ba.njars).

Very ba.njarous.

please welcome the new wave of bollywood high concept

The resounding success of a piece of trash like Krrish and the incumbent success of Dhoom 2 [rejected title: Dhoom and Dhoomer] are enough indicators that Bollywood's laying claim to yet another Hollywood bastion: the high concept flick. Preliminary optimistic analysis predicts a return of Rs. 90 crore. Baradwaj Rangan's review notes the Gandhian aspect (walking, puTTan, walking) of the characters. Oz, on the other hand, notes venomously: But there is a difference between "Not using brains" to "View" a movie AND "Not using brains" to "MAKE" a movie..

The paying masses meanwhile are glad to have their fill of starry eye candy and Ms Rai's smooching coup. Expect Uday Chopra to indulge in method acting in a forthcoming sequel.

While on the roof, please allow me to recommend the book High Concept: Don Simpson and the Hollywood Culture of Excess. I also recommend the opening scene of Robert Altman's The Player. And if you're looking for a breakdown of the requirements for pitching a project in this vein (since, presumably, you're an aspiring writer who has the perfect script for the Dhoom franchise), kindly refer to Steve Kaire's article on the subject. Now if you will excuse me, I have to work on the climax of the sequel to Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (it's The Sound of Music meets Cliffhanger meets Classic Dance of Love).

the making of SATYA

Kindly head over to the PassionForCinema blog where Anurag Kashyap has just begun to describe the experience of making Satya, one of the best and definitive Indian films ever. It's just the first part, so if you can't stand the suspense, stay away till the last post is in. Hopefully, we also get more on the creative enigma that is RGV.

addendum: Part II is up.

RIP Altman

The master of the ensemble is no more. Elsewhere in the archives of this blog, you will find notes on M*A*S*H and Gosford Park.

yellow midday

Oz's Passion For Cinema portal's been getting some press thanks to Anurag Kashyap's No Smoking Diary. Oz has also managed to get two other filmmakers on board: Pavan Kaul and Suparn Verma. But some of the press hasn't been good. A recent Midday article (ePaper URL) fails to do its research and merrily concludes that Pavan Kaul's merely copying Anurag's move to blogging. Oz's impassioned post has more details. Feel free to voice your opinion in the comments; suggestions on a course of action (accounting for things like the Indian judicial system that seem to offer no solace) are also welcome. Outrage might just make up for the hurdles in mounting a legal attack.

RGVishal

The Big B seems all set to sing a song titled rozaanaa for RGV's forthcoming is-this-based-on-Lolita-or-not Nishabd. Vishal Bhardwaj returns for an RGV-fronted venture for the first time since Satya (he did the songs for LKLKBK, but RGV only produced that venture). This will also mark the first collaboration between Vishal and lyricist Munna Dhiman since Ramji Londonwaley and the hard-to-find album Aasma.

On a related note, Vishal's returning with Gulzar for Anurag Kashyap's No Smoking. If you haven't already heard about it, allow me to direct you to The No Smoking Diary for more.

While on the subject of Vishal, one must also note with hope that The Blue Umbrella is slated to be the inaugural release in January 05, 2007 for a new sub-division of UTV Motion Pictures created to "promote experimental and unconventional cinema, making it accessible to a broad audience." The sub-division's strangely called "UTV Classics." Presumptuous perhaps; however, one welcomes any opportunity for more interesting celluloid fare. There's more about the film elsewhere hereabouts as far as the national awards and the Pusan International Film Festival are concerned.

a racemiferous return

[aka I have a few links for you]

Manish trashes aspects of Umrao Jaan that don't seem to have been part of J P Dutta's game plan.

JR has a growing series of posts on the music of Mani Ratnam's Iruvar. So far we have the introduction, the players and notes on narumugaiye. As of November 16, 2006, we have a post dedicated to Poo KoDiyin Punnagai.

Coincidentally, Baradwaj Rangan has resurrected an old article of his on the same film.

With his notes on Vivah, Baradwaj Rangan gives me food for thought and an incentive (where there was none) to watch the flick (I'll still wait to build up my resistance though).

Gaurav gets his first taste of the business venture menace ... or should I say the menace gets a taste of Gaurav? [my personal saga ended here]

In other news, as G P Sippy's grandson Sascha Sippy is hell-bent on tossing legal hurdles in the way of RGV's take on Sholay, RGV notches up a winning retort: With his fertile imagination, aggressive attitude and way with words, he'd be ideal to write dialogues for movies. And I'd be happy to let him do the needful in my next film, provided he can look beyond his uncle's 'Sholay'

RGV continues to make more interesting news and less successful movies. He's got a PNC production coming up called Sex Haazir Ho (aka "Sex Present Yourself"). That English title alone merits an award.

yawn-thony kaun hai

[september 03, 2006]

{notes about who is cletis tout? and its Bollywood bastard^[0] Anthony kaun hai?}

Raj Kaushal hits an all-time low with this Sanjay Dutt-Arshad Warsi vehicle that continues the growing tendency of current Bollywood filmmakers to reference and quote from film history to elicit some support on the grounds of nostalgia. The narrative references Yash Chopra films^[1], the guy caught on video killing a girl^[2] is called Lucky Sharma^[3], Gulshan Grover's character hums old Hindi films songs^[4], albeit grossly out of tune, the dead guy is named Anthony Gonsalves^[5], Sanjay Dutt's hitman is named Master Madan^[6] (and he watches Bollywood movies^[7]). Warsi's character's name (Champak "Champ" Chaudhary) raises a laugh once and then proceeds to become just as irritating as a persistent itch.

Spotting Ravi Baswani convincingly impersonate a piece of prime ham will induce more grief and anguish than watching European art cinema without subtitles. VJ Anusha Dandekar, who shows up as Rosa, the former object of Champ's attentions, merely serves as the object of ogle-aasans by a drooling male audience. Minissha Lamba, who, by deductive logic, is the "heroine" of the piece, replaces Rosa as Jiya and offers some pelvic^[8] perspective in compensation for oomph.

There are bad lines but these rarely transcend the sporadic genius of "the kiss of conjugal bliss." If you think that's enough reason to watch this enthusiastically excerebrose jejune jaunt, I have to say no way, no way^[9].

This has been a floccinaucinihilipilification of farraginous film.

[0]: more about Daddy-O

[1]: Dutt's character gets Warsi's character to revisit his flashback in the style of the Chopra style of films; it's an inspired touch and marks one of the few specks of originality that the film can sport (even though the joke doesn't fly higher than an ill-fated chicken fleeing about at a poultry farm)

[2]: When we see Lucky kill the girl, we also see our friend Anthony filming the whole deal. All this is done through a series of edited shots. In a spectacular exploitation of stochastic serendipity, the video that Anthony films also contains the same set of edited shots. This not only gets POV wrong, but also makes the evidence inadmissable (because it was doctored); you would think that something as simple as a video clip would not be subjected to the machinations of the gangrenous minds of Bollywood filmmakers, but ... whom am I trying to kid here??!! (October 27, 2006: JR gently notes that everyone's favourite black comedy Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro also featured a similar abuse of POV and montage when the bridge havaladaar recounts his encounter with Vinod and Sudhir on TV: I could now eat humble pie or claim that this was a creative exercise mixing surrealism (um, who was on the bridge filming this anyway?), parody and expressionism (yeah! right!); I choose the latter.

[3]: The clean-shaven twin who woos the rich gardener's lass in Gol Maal

[4]: Songs include and ham hai.n raahii pyaar ke and suhaanaa safar

[5]: The Christian third of the most popular ternary secular offering from Bollywood, who gatecrashed an Easter party in a tux with gibberish to boot

[6]: This is culturally the most egregious nod, but one must not err on the side of purism by condemning the perverted reference to the child prodigy

[7]: very few really, given that such an embellishment would distract our furacious friends from their mission of furnishing us with specious flummery

[8]: She, who is obsessed with her growing hips

[9]: The opening credits are accompanied by an impassioned attempt at cool that sports these words as lyrics. The Nose^[10] strikes gold with this film, and people who ignore the warning during the opening credits are served a reminder at the end of the film in the form of an incongruous (does that surprise you puTTan?) music video featuring Dutt and Warsi and a sea of thongs; As if this wasn't bad enough to jar your sense of time and space, another music video hits you: this one features The Nose with cap and coat rendering another cover of "The Rhyme Of Runny Nose"^[11]

[10]: 'nuff said

[11]: The song's ishq kiyaa kiyaa, or, to be precise, i.Nshq ki.nyaa.N ki.nyaa.N; and you've really had enough with the footnotes, haven't you?

anurag kashyap's diary goes online

Oz's baby Passion for Cinema serves as the host for Kashyap's diary accompanying the making of his next film No Smoking with John Abraham (produced by Vishal Bhardwaj and Kumar Mangat). His first PFC post may be found here. Here's to more interesting reading from the man who seems to "walk cinema, talk cinema." And needless to say, one hopes that his trilogy of unseens (Paanch, Black Friday and that love story set in a dystopian future called Gulaal. And what of Allwyn Kalicharan? Here's hoping there are no more additions to this list -- even Orson Welles had a few (and so few they were) completed films under his belt.

elsewhere: pointers to and notes from oz's Kashyap interview | a pointer to an intimate look into the turbulent life of Mr Kashyap

update: [october 18, 2006] And this merits an article in the Mid-Day. Wow! [link courtesy: oz]

did your script get selected for the oscar library? get in line

The stench began with the "selection" of Parineeta's screenplay. The live-in labour of languor called Salaam Namaste (music review) and the boring Taxi No 9211 were next. This time we got even more misleading hints:

So far, only rare Bollywood films like Lagaan, Kal Ho Na Ho, Parineeta and Salaam Namaste have been able to find a place in the Oscar library.

The inclusion of 'Taxi Number 9211' in the library is an honour for its director Milan Luthria, writer Rajat Arora and producer Ramesh Sippy's Entertainment One.

Note the interesting use of the word rare. Note also the implications of honour.

Then we had another ^[1] disastrous rip-off of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels called Phir Hera Pheri (produced by the man with the most consistent remake run in Indian film history) that, when abbreviated, unfortunately shared the same name as a cool piece of technology with a left-recursive name. More honour was experienced.

And finally what might well be Bollywood's most hated profitable movie of all time, KANK (aka Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna aka pyaar na mujhase karatii ho / don't stay, go!), found more reason to coo from the rooftops:

Karan Johar who is currently in New York was extremely elated and overjoyed and considers this as a great acknowledgement of his work. Karan Johar has received mixed feedback towards his movie but feels that the script of KANK being acquired by Oscars Library is a victory for him as people are relating to the characters of the film.

It was a feat that Kal Ho Naa Ho had also pulled off, giving Karan Johar the incentive to do the Quick Gun Murugan strut.

What we're talking about, johns and janes, is how producers have begun to capitalise on the inclusion of scripts in the Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

That it wasn't a question of merit should have come as no surprise to people familiar with Bollywood. Have you forgotten the countless jokes about movies predicated on scripts that lay solely in the eyes of the beholder? Of films that merely served as agglomerations of visual reenactments of sequences from foreign movies? Of "original" compositions that originally came from elsewhere?

The library holds more than 32,000 books; 1,800 periodical titles; 60,000 screenplays; 200,000 clipping files; 30,000 posters; lobby cards, pressbooks and other advertising ephemera; over 8 million photographs; over 300 manuscript and other special collections relating to prominent industry individuals, studios and organizations; sheet music, music scores and sound recordings; production and costume sketches; artifacts; and oral histories.
...
Don't you find it strange that unoriginal screenplays including those of Ek Ajnabee (Man on Fire) and Taxi No. 9211 (Changing Lanes) are included in the library?

Old faithful Anurag Kashyap (last related post) provides the best note on the subject along with a slice of cynical lime:

There are no criteria. Any random script is selected for the library and it is sad. Somebody who has never gotten any attention gets excited when somebody looks at them. Even the biggies get so excited. Look at Karan Johar who was thrilled when KANK got selected in Hamburg. 10,000 films go to Hamburg every year. I think it is this excitement that is our own failing. They are all like frogs in a well and don't know what is happening outside.
...
The people at the library keep track of films that have a good opening and select them. Sometimes producers too put their script forward and take pride in their work no matter how bad it is.
...
Getting your script into the Oscar library is not a big deal the world over. It is only when a film gets selected for the Oscar library in India that it makes news.

On a slightly related note, flash back to the Mansoor Khan yawn-o-rama called Akele Hum Akele Tum. This was a film that merrily filched from Kramer vs. Kramer (primarily) with material for the milieu from A Star Is Born. The Hoffman/Streep starrer swept away Oscars for Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Director, Best Film and Best Adapted Screenplay. Back home, Khan's filch fry continued its plagiaristic pursuit by roping in Anu Malik for the musical numbers. Mr. Malik lived up to his reputation as an "inspired" music director. The crowning moment was the song sequence where we saw Rohit (Aamir Khan) forced to sell his composition dil meraa churaayaa kyo.n (note the strangely apt use of the word churaayaa) to an inferior yet successful music composer duo Amar (Harish Patel)-Kaushik (Shafi Inamdar). You had to be really daft not to notice the sly dig at Nadeem-Shravan. Well, as the song continues, we see the duo winning a Filmfare Award for this song while Aamir mopes away in poses of isolation photographed to make the audience go "aw!" (Triviamongers may note that Ayesha Jhulka makes a cameo as the presenter). Well, guess what, this friggin' song was a rip-off too -- of George Michael's Last Christmas. I challenge the Bollywood machine of the 21st century to come up with something to top this. In the meantime, I'll grab another slice of irony.

[1] The previous rip-off was the first half of a double dose of ennui called Plan that came from the Sanjay Gupta camp; the second half merrily "adapted" another flick called The Suicide Kings.

the dark side of anurag kashyap

A Tehelka interview [courtesy: oz] reveals the harrowing past and strife in the life of the talented unfortunate Anurag Kashyap. There are quite a few interesting nuggets about Black Friday:

I wanted Irfaan Khan to play Badshah Khan and Naseeruddin Shah to play Tiger Memon. They both turned us down. We were making the film during the Gujarat riots and both actors were uncomfortable playing Muslim terrorists.

There's a note about the ill-fated Allwyn Kalicharan (which had, for some weird reason, given me the impression of being some kind of desii Training Day) [and that really should be Allwyn]:

in 2003, I tried to do Alvin Kalicharan, a black, mad amalgamation of everything that comprises a Hindi heartland childhood: Bal Bharati, Champak, Manohar Kahaniyan, Satya Katha. Six days before the film, insecure, confused, Anil Kapoor pulled out.

One must note here that Anil Kapoor's look in Musafir owed a lot to this Kashyap project.

There's also a nice note about some of the important films of 2006:

I see things changing. Films like Omkara, Rang De Basanti, Khosla Ka Ghosla, and Lage Raho Munnabhai are proof of that. A film like Lage Raho makes me insanely jealous, but it also sets me thinking. There are other lighter ways of doing the same things. Perhaps I am too intense, black. Too ridden by demons. Javed Akhtar says anger gives way to cynicism, then to humour. For me, that last transition still remains. We think we can change the world — we can’t. But with humour, people understand more.

There's also a lot about a history of abuse and depression. Not pleasant reading, but it makes you wish circumstances would give this guy a break.

pointers elsewhere hereabouts: rohit karn batra interviews kashyap for naachgaana.com | oz interviews kashyap

the darkness lifts

Perhaps it's time to throw away your copy of that poor-quality low-res pirated edition of Kashyap's honest unflinching film based on the 1993 blasts. The Supreme Court has ordered the release of Anurag Kashyap's Black Friday once the pronouncement of the judgement is done.

elsewhere: notes on the music | a collection of links to (among other things) a Kashyap interview, notes on a screening of Paanch, reasons for the ban on the film, the Maqbool connection and an interesting list of Kashyap's guilty viewing pleasures.

GIF Is Free

Isn't it?