Category Archives: Musings

Mindless in the Desert: SATC-2 is actually just a spoof of itself!

15 Tuesday Jun 2010

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How is it possible that Hollywood cannot see how stupid it makes Americans look when it creates movies like Sex and the City-2? I mean you start out with four relatively intelligent, well-read and well-travelled (we hope) women: a writer, a lawyer, a PR person and an art curator. How can these women who’ve spent years in their respective professions behave like such complete imbeciles? Well actually, Miranda and Charlotte do behave themselves, but the queen bees of the foursome, Carrie and Samantha act like absolute idiots.

I get that Samantha is Samantha – deliciously irreverent when it comes to sex and society. But I also get that while she flirts outrageously, and takes home a lot of goody bags, she generally doesn’t act like a moron in her home city. It seems that lack of hormones and hot flashes makes her go a little insane. She flagrantly flaunts social codes (which are a religious and legal issue in the middle east), while being the business guest of the sheikh who has kindly flown her friends and her first class in complete luxury to his home country, so that she can think about representing him in a PR capacity. It appears that Samantha could do with some PR of her own – and some re-training in the way to behave in public; not like a hormonal teenager on heat. And you can argue that that’s just Samantha – but is it? Did she become a top PR executive by showing hordes of conservative men her middle finger, breasts and her latest lay’s boner? I’m not really sure. It just seems that she’s finally becoming senile. Where even her Samantha-ness is no longer acceptable.

Do Americans really know so little of other cultures and behave this silly when they travel? What they do in New York is not really acceptable in Abu Dhabi! And flaunting social norms is not funny, it’s just stupid. Why does Hollywood not understand that when they make movies like this, they are not ridiculing the closed cultures of the world while heralding the joys of the librated ones, they are only proving that Americans can be really socially inept, culturally dumb and truly lacking in common sense, basic decency and courtesy and in any amount of general knowledge? And Americans are not really like this – the ones I’ve met are genuinely interested in other cultures and politely respectful of them. So who are these Americans that Michael Patrick King is idolising on big screen? What happened to the girls who regaled us with their smart repartees, chic appearance and layered conversations? The girls who may have used the metaphor of sex, but were making important observations about society, life, men and people. These are not the women we see now – the women now are haggard, bitchy, unable to learn from their lives’ many lessons and choose to regularly regress to inept teenage-world.

Miranda and Charlotte’s troubles are actually real and funny – they deserved more room to mature and grow, but instead the story got sucked into the vortex of Carrie’s stupidity and Samantha’s ridiculous faux pas. Carrie is just being plain ridiculous – she is tired of the relationship in its current form, she takes time off from their house, but when Big tries to intervene and asks for some time off too, she freaks out and goes and makes out with an ex-boyfriend. I mean really? Do these girls never grow up? What Carrie did when she was 20 and 30 is not really still acceptable at 45+! Does she never learn from her mistakes? Or is the writer so unimaginative that he can’t move or think beyond the usual troubles of the 4 girls? Where is the Carrie who only believed in the love of her life, and went through men trying to find happiness but unable to do so, because she truly loved another? Her affair with Big (when she was dating Aidan) was allowed, because he was the man she loved. Why would she cheat on the man she loves with Aidan? Just because he was too tired to go out to party with her after a long day at work and bought her a plasma TV instead of jewellery? Is she really that shallow?

And the clothes! The styling! What an eyesore! What the show had been known for, renowned for, were the supremely stylish clothes and looks. What have they done here? They’ve taken the brightest, gaudiest fabrics possible, stuck on extremely shiny, often pointy things, added the most garish of accessories that made them look like Christmas trees at best, and called them clothes. I can possibly accept that 4 of the 750 clothes actually looked reasonable, and the only good thing to come out of this is that Miranda got a makeover. The plain Jane of the series and the tubby-mommy of the first movie looked the best of the lot here. Carrie should have thought about mummifying her look from the series and staying cryogenically frozen. She has not aged well, and well, botox doesn’t work for everyone.

The movie would have truly worked as a spoof of the show and the series – outlandish clothes, haggard-looking women, absolutely no story, weak dialogues, stupid characters, social faux pas galore, trivialisation of social rules and a caricature of American intelligence (or the lack of).

I thought the first movie did injustice to the supremely brilliant shows, but in retrospect that movie was Oscar-material compared to this hunk of junk that fans of the show were forced to sit through for 146 minutes! Maybe King needs to think about handing the writing over to Darren Star – who put together 94 episodes of the show that won 8 golden globes. This movie, I’d be happy if it won a Razzie. Two funny lines and four decent outfits do not a movie make. I may just have to burn the box set of the Sex and the City after the incredibly bad taste this movie left in my mind and soul, ruining the iconic characters forever. I hope King gets the message and lets everything and everybody rest in peace, without a third piece of torture barraging our mind and the cities.

Celebrating An Imperfect Life, & It’s Uninhibited Successes

02 Wednesday Jun 2010

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I’m not one for hugely inspirational videos, talks and books; but what is inspiring is when people share their life with you – a life that has been imperfect, and successful despite that, or because of that. One never knows where one’s choices will lead us, but as Steve Jobs (a less cocky, more humble, more human Jobs) points out, we won’t know until we take the plunge. Things we may know from his life, things we may have heard about but are still moving when you hear him talk.

If you can’t view the video below, you can try this link: http://ht.ly/1SwMm

Job’s 3 life lessons:

1. You cannot connect the dots forward, but you can, when you look backwards. So trust in the direction your life is taking.

2. I had been rejected, but I hadn’t stopped being in love (about his work). The only way to do great work is to love what you do…keep looking, don’t settle.

3. Your time is limited, so don’t live someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is someone else’s thinking. Don’t let others’ opinions drown out your inner voice.

nine hundred and ninety-nine: review of Nine

18 Thursday Mar 2010

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Writer’s block. Oh my god, how many times does a creative person look for inspiration, and fail more often than he/she succeeds? But in Nine, Daniel Day-Lewis so beautifully portrays the lost child within, the-boy-that-yearns-to-be-a-child-that-yearns-to-be-a-man, the Freudian (maybe even Oedipal) angst, the emptiness when words fail him, the pain of a missing story, the desperate search for a muse and the haunting of a woman wronged. Well many women were wronged by him – and they loved him in the way women get attracted to a project and they wallow in the misery of being a part of that project. The man that has failed in many ways and looks for redemption – from the one woman who can give it to him.

The layers of the movie are as many as the title of this blog post, okay maybe I exaggerate, but trying to catch the many levels at which it works, the complex characterization of each person…all admirably portrayed through one-song-and-a-few-lines-scene each. Each character, each woman comes alive within that tight frame that she is allowed. And through each of them, Lewis’ failings are unearthed.

Possibly the weakest area of the movie also has some of its strengths – weak or bland dialogue intersperses with some very powerful lines, often spoken so simply that you want to reach and catch them before they float away. Judi Dench gets more than a handful of those and Marion Cotillard suffers from less than her share (which she makes up for with great expressions). Nicole Kidman gets a briefer scene than what one would expect but gets some great lines and moments. Oh and the songs – what should have been the strength of the musical nearly becomes its undoing – lacking rhythm and poise, the lyrics are more often than not uninspiring; but the score survives and the women make it watchable.

Great camera work and cinematographic vision, love the bleary red-darkness of the film and the meshing storylines between fantasy, past and present. The little boy crawling back into the man…surreal at times, existentialist in its soul, but the film redeems itself from its weaknesses, just like the protagonist.

Is Fiction Tastier Than Fact?

09 Tuesday Mar 2010

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In tabloid journalism, respect for the truth and the other person’s dignity never existed, that’s why it is politely termed ‘trash’ or a ‘rag’. All the hoolaa in the media about wronging celebrities got me thinking about something that I have realised for a very long time. In much the manner that terrorism becomes a clinical act of violence, where those who cover the crime beat begin to lose touch with humanity, sensitivity and emotion simply because after a point it is too hard to keep up; in much the same manner (but with no similar justification), the general media treats a celebrity like an object they own – to be used for sensationalism and to sell copies. After all, money taints many things and when money is involved (think buyers, subscribers, advertisers and targets) there is a very clinical attitude towards celebs. They end up being names, that people throw around, that are replaceable by the next available or prominent personality. They are evaluated like objects with features, and their time is up for grabs.

But we forget that just as quickly as we are willing to sully friendships for cheap gossip, we are willing to drag celebrity-strangers through the muck because their pain is irrelevant to us. A conscience is an archaic word that has lost meaning a long time ago. And since when are celebrities people? It appears to be a price we believe they should pay because they enjoy fame: it is a way to level the field. You can’t have the cake and eat it too, you should end up paying for it in some way, and that is by being muck-mired.

Even if a celebrity has chosen the path of the limelight, nowhere have they signed up for public humiliation. If it has become a part-and-parcel of public life, it is because, we as an audience, have made it acceptable. It is because we buy, read and excitedly discuss Aishwarya’s supposed health problems, Hrithik’s spring cleaning, Deepika’s relationships and Imran’s equations with his co-stars. We choose the lower road, and that makes us as bad at the media who print stuff like this.

Whether the rumours and true or false, whether the celebrity is a good person or bad is logically irrelevant to his/her job. Just the way we judged Clinton’s presidency on the basis of his sexual choices or Tiger Wood’s golf game on the basis of his loyalty to his marriage, we are wrongly judging our own actor or a sports-person on his/ her personal life. If they open their life to us, it is their choice; if not, still their choice. But spreading rumours (whether based in fact or fiction) about their personal life should not be our choice. As media and as readers we should be merely interested in relevant facts – or is that too boring for our palate now? Can we digest dull, boring facts after being brought up on a gourmet diet of tasty hearsay, rumour and Chinese whispers?

Is it not our responsibility to respect the people we admire for who they are, who they appear to be, who they may be, and for who they may not be? Isn’t that being human? And shouldn’t we concentrate on good sport and on good cinema, as opposed to trying to be a voyeur into another’s life? Really, let live and let be.

Actually, get a life – your own.

can i watch arthouse in a multiplex?

08 Monday Mar 2010

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first off, labelling a film sux – coz a film works on so many levels that it’s not easy to classify or pigeon hole a work of art. but do that we must (thank you Yoda for doing that to me time and again); simply to be realistic and to understand the finer sensibilities of cinema as a whole and as a marketable venture.

as our sensibilities begin to shift, we are more forgiving towards nuanced performances, simple stories and slice-of-life cinema. We basically stop demanding more for our buck, stop expecting the whole nine yards in the space of 2 hours. That should give directors and writers some breathing room, to create quirky films like Kaminey, Ishqiya and Karthik…. What it also gives people the chance to do is give space to a movie like Road, Movie – which appears to be a film that would not necessarily appeal to all. Now should this movie be forced to fight the BO with films like MNIK? (Thanks Manish A for the run on the idea.) Let’s watch and see what happens to Dibakar’s LSD. Should we put these films in a multiplex or move them to a smaller screen which specialises in arthouse, foreign films, documentaries etc?

Are we categorising these films as ‘not-mainstream’ (perhaps rightly) and would it be better to give them a chance to find space in a dedicated cinema hall, which would be frequented by movie-lovers, film students etc? Or will that not give the movie a chance to recover costs? I’m guessing we just don’t have enough movie afficionados to keep the coffers alive.

Or how about giving a movie like that a release on TV: on a special arthouse channel?

It is really not about a film per se; not about good and bad – it is about giving filmmakers a chance to go on with out-of-the-box cinema, to know that there is an audience out there, waiting. Like an NCPA experimental for cinema. I wonder if they will lose the desire to make off-beat films (just like it happened a few decades ago). I wonder if we are encouraging trashy maintstream and letting independent thought and new ideas die.

will we ever be ‘cool’ enough?

08 Monday Mar 2010

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Watching the Filmfare awards and the Oscars back-to-back just reinforces the fact that we will really never be ‘cool’ enough. I mean sure, we can wear the well-cut tuxes and the flowy gowns, but it is the on-stage humour that really sux. If they are not ridiculing other people, they are trashing each other – literally, with eggs and such. I have no issues with pulling a leg here and there, but must it be done in a crass manner? I guess for the people who want subtlety and wit and sarcasm of a higher level, we would need to turn to the Oscars. After all, the TRPs are derived from the masses, and I guess the masses get crass humour, as we can tell from the overwhelming amount of terrible comedy that emerges from Hindi cinema. Our awards are so predictible, the humour so boring and the performers so obvious and unenthralling that one wonders why we even bother to watch Hindi cinema award shows. Of course, the industry was made happy, by splitting the awards between all the ‘camps’, making sure most went home with something. Possibly the only innovative act and the highlight of the event was Shahid Kapoor’s tribute to Michael Jackson, which actually involved skill, talent and thought. And the fillers? Bring back Ranbir Kapoor and Imran Khan, I say; out with the stale acts. SRK and SAK were good the first time around, now it’s just a bad deja vu. Actually, why should I waste my time on this blog post. I have one word for our awards shows: *Yawn*.

Karthik calling Krishna

05 Friday Mar 2010

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I don’t know if I am old-fashioned about mystery, or a Sherlock-cum-Agatha stalwart, but I prefer clues to be unobtrusive and to keep me guessing. I would rather not know or not expect it to be the person it is, bec of the way the story is told, unfolds and the way the characters are portrayed. Two films that had the potential to be brilliantly mysterious, let me down in that sole respect because we could guess all along that something was rather off with that person: Ishqiya and Karthik Calling Karthik. While each had a trump-card surprise element: a not-so-dead husband; and a phone with unexpected features (which we couldn’t guess through the course of the film, despite the pointers) the two lead characters, Krishna and Karthik respectively, both hinted at something being unnatural about themselves. Karthik was already visiting a shrink and his state of life would logically be bringing his mind to despair; Krishna’s expressions and body language all along suggested that there was something up with her – that she was not all that she seemed to be. So then, if the who was nearly identified, the how and what remained to be discovered. While the latter was executed well, taking the ‘who’ away takes away more than half the fun of a mystery. Understanding what makes people tick is the most interesting quality of a true mystery writer. And giving away the culprit or making the culprit obvious leaves the movie less nuanced and subtle than it should ideally be! Writers Abhishek Chaubey and Vijay Lalwani, in a commendable first effort, have both made the same error in characterization and script-writing. I only hope they keep us guessing a lot more in the future! Sent on my BlackBerry® from Vodafone Essar

Cinema in Transition – Dinosaurs in the Park

27 Saturday Feb 2010

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I told myself that another review would be pointless, especially after I’d seen the movie so late. After all, I’m not surprised that I am disappointed with the film. Inauthenticity (especially to the syndrome), over-the-top performances, over-dramatization, continuity errors and inconsistency are all a part of this so-called “Bollywood cinema” that we make exceptions for. We make those exceptions because they entertain us, because they star the larger-than-life actors and because they work so marvelously with cinematography, locations and dream-scapes, that we succumb to them. All along understanding that nothing can be 100%, nothing can be perfect. Nothing that is real will translate well on screen and will make us feel good about ourselves, or send us back truly entertained. That’s because ‘realistic’ cinema at a point of time was grimy, gritty and dark. Barjatya, Johar and others of their ilk brought a slice-of-life drama from an ordinary life and made it extraordinary with heightened emotions and colourful scapes. And there was a time when this really worked. I’ve seen Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, Dilwale Dulhaniya…, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai etc an umpteen number of times. Barjatya slowly realised that his kind of cinema had become a dinosaur – it was too sweet to digest, and in its inherent unreality (there may be very few families actually like the ones he portrayed), in his inherent moralising and ethical trip, he was alienating an audience that once loved him. That’s because too much of a good thing can be bad, especially if your pulse remains on what you want to say, and not on what your audience wants to hear. Karan Johar brought a younger sensibility to Barjatya’s cinema – a youthful exuberance, the pain of love all candy-flossed into “happy times”. And he succeeded – his movies evolving with his own evolving thoughts and sensibilities, and his courage to be bolder with his themes on screen. But while his themes are generally relevant to the time and often have an important message to deliver, his films are still packaged in unreality.

 

But Johar remained true to what he wanted to say – that one man can be larger than life. And that man, for most part was Shah Rukh Khan. What  makes it difficult, is that Shah Rukh, himself, is larger-than-life as a person and an actor. When he begins to play a character that demands that, he cannot – shouldn’t – act it out – he’s being himself, with some character trait variations. And if he tries to act in these situations, which he often does, he tends to go over-the-top. Both Johar and Khan then fall prey to insulting the intelligence of the audience who have now been trained to understand and accept subtle nuances and acting. Can you identify with Khan? Or do you watch him because after all these years, Shah Rukh remains emminently watchable? Does the character come alive, or does one recall Shah Rukh as Rizwan Khan? The correct role for Shah Rukh is that of underplayed emotions – that in Swades and Chak De: the kind that make you wonder what he’s thinking, that make you stretch your mind to understand him; not one that is blatant and obvious. Om Shanti Om was a travesty (albeit a successful one), and unfortunately Shah Rukh associates himself with the kind of cinema that leaves his potential unexplored.

 

Farhan Akhtar changed everything. I would blame him for the fall of unreality and the rise of realistic candyfloss. The moment Dil Chahta Hai hit the screens – a film still considered seminal in many ways – he changed the notion of what people expected from Hindi cinema. He gave them real life, real dialogues, real people, real emotions, real insecurities, actual incidents picked up from real life and then blended with just enough glamour and colour to become believable and likeable all at the same time. He still admits using everyday dialogues, often arguing with lyricist-father Javed Akhtar over using everyday language in his works. Akhtar just realised that it is important to connect with the film, and the youth that he represented would expect this, having been exposed to international (not just hollywood) cinema that creates easily-identifiable characters. Maybe that’s why he wanted to recreate Don for today, and maybe that’s why that is one of his most melodramatic films to date. In much the same manner, Imtiaz Ali brought a freshness to the characters and dialogues, because he picked them up from real life. Jab We Met was not larger-than-life – it was life-sized. Zoya Akhtar exorcised a ghost with her first film – the desire to spoof this very sort of over-the-top Bollywood and its myriad idiosyncrasies. Dibakar Banerjee, Vishal Bharadwaj, Anurag Kashyap, Abhishek Kapoor, Shimit Amin, Ayan Mukherjee… are all the new breed: they pick up real life and make it real on screen, even if with their own brand of cinematic overtures. Maybe, that’s why an older audience still remains faithful to ‘Bollywood’ cinema, and in the younger audience lies the huge fan-following of this new breed of cinema-makers.

 

After all, if you want to make epics, you do it with epic characters like the way Ashutosh Gowarikar would, or in some ways Sanjay Bhansali would; not making real people epic-sized. Even when Bhansali tried to make real people larger-than-life, it didn’t work. The audience must be given some credit – they don’t need things hammered into their head, they do generally, get it; and they don’t identify with emotions worn on the sleeve at all times. While Johar’s themes work, messages are important and cinema continues to have an audience; if he chooses to have critical acclaim rather than the loyal-popular vote and choose not to go the way of Barjatya, he must reinvent his own cinema, tone down his own emotions and learn the art of underplaying with subtlety, rather than overplaying with blatancy.