Desicritics Category: Media: Film - Actors

Movie Review: Dharm - Unfairly Snubbed

Aditi Nadkarni — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 06:39:00 EST

Dharm, a Sanskrit word that for some means duty and for yet others signifies religion. We often hear this word used by religious preachers and at other times by leaders of political parties looking to pander to the majority Hindus in India. This term was heard when a mob needed some sort of a philosophy to bind them as they went about adhering to no scripture, driven by fury alone.

This film tells the story of Pandit Chaturvedi (Pankaj Kapur), a well-respected and stringent Hindu priest who adheres strictly to the writ words of Hindu scriptures. The pandit provides key religious advice to the families residing in the holy city of Benaras, at the banks of river Ganga. The touch of a low caste prompts him to bathe in the holy waters and his wife (Supriya Pathak) has to cleanse herself before she prepares his meals. Then one day an orphan left at their doorstep makes his way into their lives and warms the heart of the otherwise stoic and unyielding priest. Little Kartikeya grows up, his adoptive father's pet, performing religious rites, reciting verses alongside his beloved "babuji". His innocence remains untouched by the mounting communal discontent that occasionally disrupts into religious riots between Hindus and Muslims in the city. Amidst these tensions, Kartikeya's birth mother shows up to claim her son. As she walks into the pandit's door clad in a burkha, neighbors and patrons gather to watch, aghast. The boy is sent away with his Muslim birth mother in a heart wrenching scene, his cries are drowned in the enormity of the religious calamity that has fallen upon the priest's family for having adopted a Muslim child. The pandit's home is promptly cleansed, severe religious penances are performed and yet the priest's inner struggle continues, eating him up inside. He is torn between the love he feels for the child he sent away in a heartbeat and his duty towards the religion he represents. As the self-proclaimed protectors of Hinduism crazed with vendetta unleash violence through the city, this Hindu priest defies all that he has valued and reaches a revelation that changes not only his own life but of those that surround him and revere him.

When watching the film, the sensitivity with which each scene had been conducted immediately suggested the touch of a female director. Bhavana Talwar's handling of the characters is remarkable. She seems to have identified real people rather than characters for her film. Whether it be the staunch Pandit, his obedient wife or the child that tugs at your heartstrings, Talwar takes her time with each persona. Pankaj Kapur's performance is a testimony to the neglected and yet prodigious talent our film industry houses. An actor who has given us films like Ek Doctor Ki Maut and Ek Ruka Hua Faisla continues to loyally work in the shadow of a giant, the all consuming commercial film industry that allows little to no platform for performers like him. Hrishita Bhatt, stands out in the role of a young girl who falls in love with a foreigner seeking spiritual guidance under the tutelage of Pandit Chaturvedi.

This film is excruciatingly moving. It forces one to empathize with characters who in our every day lives we could never relate to. The religious discontent juxtaposed with the innocence of a child offers a stark contrast that leaves one emotionally and spiritually exhausted. The blood shed and the inciters of these harrowing incidents that swallow our cities are all revealed, their intentions, insecurities and motives scrutinized. The upholders of religion are exposed and so is the true character of those whose spiritual awakening finally leads us out of darkness. This film is not about the chaos that hatred leads us into but of the humanity that pulls us out of it, unscathed.

I found this film on Netflix after I searched for films starring Pankaj Kapur, one of my favorite actors who I have not seen since the Blue Umbrella. Having watched this film, I was so overcome with curiosity at never having heard about it before, that I did some quick online searches for it and found out what sounded like a joke, an April Fool's prank. How I was not aware of this blunder committed almost three years ago is beyond me. Apparently, this spectacular film about religious relations in India that is especially relevant in today's times was passed over as India's Oscar submission in favor of, get this, a mediocre film called Eklavya starring Amitabh Bachhan and Saif Ali Khan.

Eklavya had all the makings of a commercial film and a story with as many holes in it as Swiss cheese. It was a glossy entertainer with great cinematic visuals and the beautiful backdrop of Rajasthan and yet was most certainly not a moving film with a global appeal. All it had was an established and commercially viable star cast. Yet it beat out a film like Dharm which won our National Award and the Nargis Dutt Award for a film promoting national integration. It is even more shocking that our media and our audience does not create adequate hue and cry over such blatant unfairness by the subcommittee that decides the film that is submitted for an Oscar. In a film fraternity that goes weak in the knees at the mention of the name Bachhan, local awards are hard to come by for such films as well. In the year that Eklavya was sent in as India's official entry to the Oscars, brilliant films such as Dharm, Vanaja and Black Friday stood as major contenders and were duly ignored. I wonder how these filmmakers must feel when their masterpieces are dismissed in this manner by their peers in the arts and performance industry which should ideally define a haven for nurturing talent and relatively devoid of political corruptness. Who are these people on the committee that send out films on behalf of an entire nation? Year after year they send out stories, that to a foreign audience represents us Indians. I do not know enough about the process that goes into nominating a film for Oscar submission but the selection of films such as Heena, Jeans, Devdas and Eklavya would suggest that these members are not qualified to be making decisions about what kind of a film would be appreciated by a universal audience and that at times their decisions seem to be motivated by inexplicable political derivatives. Have of them watched an Oscar winning foreign film?

An Oscar may not define our successes in cinema, but the submission process and the errors, political gaffes or unscrupulous actions committed during the submission process sheds light on why the largest film industry in the world has still failed to make it's mark as far as world cinema is concerned. In Ek Doctor Ki Maut, Pankaj Kapur plays the role of a doctor who through years of hard work comes upon a major medical breakthrough. His elation at having made this groundbreaking discovery however is short lived when he realizes that his jealous and less talented peers have decided to snub him and are making every effort to ensure that he does not receive credit for his work, much like the committee that decided to ignore Talwar's superb effort.

Movie Review: Nishikanth Kamath's Dombivali Fast

Aditi Nadkarni — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 15:20:37 EST

Nishikanth Kamath rose to fame with Mumbai Meri Jaan, a film that depicted the struggle of the middle class caught in the complex mesh of terrorism. The terror unleashed by a bomb lives on, deep in the most vulnerable sections of society. One by one his characters introduced us to the people in these pockets of our city, the ones who carry both, the fear and the hope that drives Mumbai.

But his debut film, Dombivali Fast, a critically acclaimed Marathi piece of genius escaped notice. The language I am sure was a limiting factor for viewers outside Mumbai but few realize how relevant the subject matter of this film is for every person frustrated with this mysterious, monster like entity that we refer to as the "system", that bulldozes our lives and puts our ethics and morals to test every single day. Madhav Apte (played by Sandeep Kulkarni), the protagonist of Dombivali Fast is a bank official responsible for ensuring that all documents are accounted for in the passing of a loan. He is a father of two, a husband and a citizen of Mumbai, caught in the daily rut that this city spins around one's life. He is a regular good guy, a man who battles and survives the harrowing commute in Mumbai locals and then emerges at the other end willing to put up with water and electricity shortages. But he has a major limitation, a challenge that in India does not bode well for a middle class man. His principles are forever in his way, be it getting his daughter into a good school or a hospital admission for a beggar boy he is trying to help. And one day something in him breaks. His anger finds expression. He moves through the city like wildfire, sending panic waves through law enforcement and starting a debate among the general public about whether he is a Robin Hood, a psychotic, a victim or a criminal who should be put behind bars.

Dombivali Fast is not just an engrossing film, it holds a mirror to the lives most of us have led in India. Nishikanth Kamath, the debutante director speaks through his film, through each of his characters. As Kamath's own anxieties, experiences and revelations about the city and the system come flooding through the screen, you recognize them as your own. Through a simple story of a perfectly ordinary man, this young director forms an extraordinary kinship with his audience. Our commercial film industry seeks relentlessly to form this very bond with us but through a drug like addiction of escapism. Kamath frees us of this addiction in the most versatile of ways. He seems to have decided that when he shows us our own stories, we want to know what happens next. How will we end up in this tale, he makes us wonder. Will we be the survivors, the victims or the fallen, forgotten vigilantes? And that sentiment is what keeps us glued until the very end of Dombivali Fast.

I have been on that very local train. Dombivali Fast was my daily ride to college and back. I have been cramped inside a small, ladies compartment, trinket sellers on one side and the burkha clad women of Mumbra station with their many children on the other. I have hung outside the door, the breeze freeing my nose of the stench of fish and replacing it with a medley of some other unwanted smells. It was less than a twenty minute ride. But right from getting aboard this train to successfully disembarking at my station of choice became an experience, an education in itself. I learned something new every day, about myself and about those who shared that journey with me, until one day I somehow became one with that train, its rhythm matching that of my heartbeat. Watching Dombivali Fast reminded me of both, the melody and the cacophony of that rhythm.

My Name is Khan Mumbai Release - Free Speech or Free Market?

Ruchi — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 08:23:10 EST

The release of Shahrukh Khan's latest movie, My Name is Khan (MNIK) eclipsed all news for about a week. The biggest story in Saturday's newspapers was without doubt its enthusiastic reception. The story was covered on the front page, various back pages and of course, the op-eds. The general tone was celebratory and unanimously supportive of SRK. The act of watching a movie was extrapolated to taking a stand for independence and free speech. And SRK's refusal to apologize deemed heroic, the one act that would serve as a tipping point for restoring democracy in Mumbai against Shiv Sena's regressive xenophobia and hooliganism. A la, Rosa Parks if you will, whose refusal to give up her seat on the public bus sparked the civil rights movement.

The real story though is not about freedom of speech or democracy or Shiv Sena's violent jingoism. At the heart of this episode is good business - and a little demo of the shape of things to come in an increasingly neo-liberal India.

SRK is a consummate businessman expanding his financial interests from film actor to producer to television, panoramic endorsements and now privatized sport. In 2008, Newsweek named as one of the 50 most powerful people in the world, one of the only two from India (Sonia Gandhi being the other). Despite this, time and again when asked of his political opinions his stock response has been that he wants only to "make people smile". For an intelligent, informed individual with significant money and influence and an alleged believer and proponent of democracy to be so consistently and overtly apolitical has to be a calculated economic decision. In this light, his refusal to retract his IPL statement too has to be deemed a personal economic decision. And the consequences would only have been economic - the money lost due to its limited initial release in Mumbai (no one expected Sena's theater vandalism to extend to the movie goers), akin to the losses incurred by traders/shopkeepers when a political party calls for a bandh against some government policy or inaction.

And yet our national news rallied behind SRK with multiple sympathetic interviews, clips and broadcast of his vaguely messianic tweets. Rajdeep Sardesai, editor of CNN-IBN exhorted every Mumbaiker to "go watch MNIK in the theatres, its a small, but important way of taking a stand" and Barkha Dutt (NDTV) earnestly claimed that "im [sic] standing up for a belief". Mumbai government deployed over 21,000 policemen to guard theatres screening MNIK and preemptively arrested over 900 Shiv Sainiks. Nary a squeak from any of our news networks about this shocking display of state repression and targeting based on political affiliation.

For Shiv Sena, this was a calculated political move - the churlish actions of a regional political party with a fragmented support base after Raj Thackeray's defection. Putting this party in its place requires not Mumbaikers flocking to the theatres to watch MNIK but media blackout. A party of this small size can't rely only on its little official mouthpiece, "Saamna" and needs the media platform for survival. However, the lurching illogic of the Thackerays is good drama, which always translates to good TRPs.

Ratings were the primary interest, not freedom of speech or taking a collective stand against divisive/undemocratic intimidation. There have been numerous other instances of clamps on freedom of speech and nowhere near this kind of sustained coverage to drive public behavior. 94-year old Husain is in exile in Dubai. Taslima Nasrin was expelled from India in 2008. Deepa Mehta's movies, Fire and Water both came under Sena and other Hindu right-wingers' ire. While the above have the right to free speech in common with MNIK's release, they lack easy marketability. And easy marketing is at the heart of this campaign: the effortless connection with India's two loves, cricket and Bollywood, a media savvy celebrity, polarizing Pakistan, a comic book goon and the perception of participation by painless retweets and mere consumption. The Save Our Tiger campaign is another example of a high gloss initiative to distract the public. Yes, there are 1411 tigers left in India and urgent measures are required - but the real solution does not lie in citizen involvement as manifested by the campaign's entreaty of "speak up, blog, sms - every little bit counts". Each is completely useless to curb poaching and/or manage sanctuaries. Neither is tiger conservation hampered by lack of funds since even the allocated funds have not been completely utilized by many sanctuaries.

The real fight for freedom of speech and democracy is the fight against our desperate poverty. Yet there is frighteningly little focus and interest in governance, the prioritization and allocation of the country's resources for its people. And there are serious issues at stake. The Food Security Act (FSA) is on the anvil. What does the FSA say about India? There are people in our country who don't even have enough food for basic sustenance. That their numbers are so large that the States and Center have spent months trying to figure out eligibility criteria and a sharing arrangement that they can afford. We also have the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), which entitles each rural household hundred days of unskilled work at minimum wage. This Act is testimony to the fact that we've taken an entire people of our country and thrown them out of the economy. These two legislations go at the heart of democracy and what it means to live in a just and humane society; both are going through serious upheavals. However, what is the percentage of airtime and column space afforded to either? Even worse, why is there no national passion for them?

We need to reevaluate our national priorities. Arts and sports are the underpinnings of the country's culture, and integral to national consciousness. We should rightly be passionate and proud of both. However, mere consumption cannot drive culture. And we cannot claim to be proud Indians, yet ignore Bharat.

Shiv Sena vs An Actor

Priyank Chandra — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 16:34:25 EST

Shah Rukh Khan, a Bollywood actor spoke his mind, and a political party went berserk. A movie, My Name is Khan (MNIK) got a lot of attention and the media decided that unity in India had reached the brink of a complete breakdown at the hands of some goons.

While I certainly do not condone the actions of the Shiv Sainiks, I do believe that this controversy has more sides to it than the media has attempted to stuff down our throats.

When two countries are in conflict but not yet at war, the first step that most countries take is to impose a trade embargo. It is a natural step to take because the countries need to make a stand and hurt the other country in the only peaceful way possible.

In this context, not allowing Pakistani cricketers into our country to play a sports tournament is simply an embargo on the export of human labor. A trade embargo which is meant to prove a point. And this is really what Shiv Sena is demanding albeit in a rather disruptive manner. And it does make sense in a twisted sort of way.

Of course we had not 'not allowed' them. They were just not picked by teams who strategized keeping in mind a lot of factors other than brutal nationalism. A lot of business reasons culminated in an auction where the Pakistanis were not picked. It was basic economics at work, without the need for hyperbole or fervent hatred for a country that is our neighbour and the home of these talented cricketers.

The Pakistanis felt insulted, like the cool kids in school who weren't invited to the most happening party in town. Some people attempted to assuage the hurt because they felt bad that the cool kids felt bad. Now the cool kids came from a family that had a few murderers as distant relatives. So the defenders of morality and identity decided that the nice kid had to be punished, because you should not be nice to people who belong to a family that has criminals in it. And amidst all these analogies, let me remind you that all of this was about the game of cricket.

Sports holds a place in our hearts unlike any other source of entertainment. We place it on a pedestal where we search in it all the attributes we wish to exist in our society. We sometimes treat it as war, the players as gladiators who shall fight until there is conquest and defeat and sometimes as means to a greater end, an agent of hope and change, often over-exaggerated. We have complicated a meaningless form of entertainment by imbuing it with the idealistic notions of war and peace.

But in this controversy we have one other important point. Who are these Pakistani cricketers representing in this lucrative tournament? Certainly not Pakistan, but colorful clubs who are but abstract, and rather fuzzy identities that anyone could identify with. If the Pakistanis were not here as a representation of their glorious nation Pakistan, then who could deny them the moral right to play as long as the laws were not broken. It is like banning bearded men from boarding aircrafts because Osama Bin Laden has a long beard. Or almost like some Indians not allowing Australians into the country because some random Australian attacked an Indian. Oh wait! All of this is already happening.

Let me try to bring about the absurdity of generalization with another example. It is like believing that all Maharashtrians are liberal, intelligent philosophers who bring about social change because B. R. Ambedkar was a Marathi. And this has certainly been disproved by the MNS and Shiv Sena.

And my point is made. Shiv Sena had one good idea - trade embargo but they applied it in the wrong context using the wrong methods. The Bollywood star won this round by default, just muttering meaningless statements about how being nice does not make him unpatriotic, while the political parties screamed itself sore in an act of patriotism.

Indian society is a metaphor for the complexities that surround the concept of identity, and the future holds a lot more battles of this sort for us.

Movie Review: Avatar - A Movie for the Theater Audience

Aditi Nadkarni — Sun, 7 Feb 2010 04:40:11 EST

Finally watched Avatar. Sat in a chilly theater with a pair of terribly ugly 3D glasses awkwardly balanced on my nose. I did not know what to expect from the film so my mind was blank, consumed by the most bourgeois of things. I was worried if the diet Coke would make me want to pee during the film, and if the whole 3D thing would get me motion sick. Then all too suddenly, within minutes of the film having started, I was transported into a world where all these petty concerns of mine, sheepishly shrunk and right before my eyes turned into luminescent little seeds of the Eywa tree.

I was in Pandora and I did not want to leave. One minute it was scary and dangerous, coming at you, teeth bared and the next moment it was lit up, fragile and beautiful, just like Neytiri, the brave and lovely heroine of the film. It is easy to see why Zoe Saldana is the star here. She brings emotion and authenticity to a character which otherwise might have seemed cartoonish. The magical world that James Cameron delivers does not have a Disney or Pixar like unbelievable quality. Not at all. He creates a world that you truly want to believe exists. The creatures and the flora are all wildly colorful but still very much alive. Pandora is the planet of our imaginations, the one where we hope scientists will finally discover life one day.

Lets face it, Cameron films have never been known for their plots and his direction is not subtle. The plot is usually predictable and the story is peppered with romance. Nothing wrong with that. It's just that this tale of a white man transforming into the much awaited hero for a race and saving them from other terrible white people is a bit old and borrowed from the many films about the fate of Native Americans. Anti-imperialism is the political favorite of the masses and of award committees as well. Everyone wants to be that one white guy, the hero who stepped in and saved people from tyranny. Unfortunately, in the context of history it is too late because Native Americans, Indians and Africans all fought their own wars against forced colonialism without a white Toruk Makto.

The tough military guy as the penultimate villain and the bulldozing of the Navi homes in the quest of "unobtanium" are familiar themes which have appeared in other less spectacular films. For a film with such a revolutionary style used in its making, Cameron could have employed a more memorable and unique plot just so that his remarkable effort did not seem like a gimmick or become outdated years from now. But the film left an impression on me. It gave my imagination a wild ride and then some. I will likely dream of Pandora tonight or wake up with a jolt as I fall off my Ikran. And ultimately I think Cameron's film making strategy might just be about delivering a memorable experience for the audience at the movie theater.

As I walked out of the theater, I thought to myself, James Cameron could easily be the crowned king of Bollywood for he excels at the one philosphy that scaffolds our commercial film industry in India: escapism.

Movie Review: Tingya - A Little Boy and his Bullock

Aditi Nadkarni — Mon, 1 Feb 2010 00:33:45 EST

Cold winter weekends have led me into the arms of Netflix. Here I can order films from all over the world and watch stories with universal appeal. Over time, having seen cinema from Israel, France, China and even Iraq, I have begun to appreciate a world outside of Bollywood escapism. This weekend I watched Tingya, a small budget Marathi film, director Mangesh Hadavale's debutant effort. I watched it with an American friend who does not really understand Marathi and yet she was able to empathize with and appreciate every aspect of this remarkable story.

The story is of a little boy, Tingya, who loves his bullock. This bullock, for the rest of the family is a means of survival; for them he is livestock, he ploughs their fields and the little money that they earn from the yearly crop keeps them going. They live a humble, hand-to-mouth existence in rural Maharashtra where poor farmers are known to commit suicide in desperation when the rains refuse to grace them and their fields dry up. One day when the bull falls into a leopard trap and breaks his leg, overnight, he becomes useless to this family of poor farmers. But not to Tingya. To Tingya the bull is a beloved pet. When his parents contemplate selling the injured bull to the butcher, the little boy begins a battle to save his pet's life. In this endeavor he has the sole support of his little friend Rashida. When the film was over, we still had in the room, the characters living with us, their smiles and their tears and their struggles hanging heavy over our shoulders. I have been starved of Indian films that make me feel this way. The performances by the children and the attention to detail in this film are a testimony of the director's intuitive skills. Not very many debutante directors can draw such moving performances from a child who is not a trained actor. In spite of how beautifully this film has been crafted I only found it because I heard about it from a friend and went looking for it. Not because it was promoted with in-my-face advertising like say 3 Idiots or Paa.

Currently, a look at the big releases reveals that most commercial Hindi films are made by rich film families, the big banners, as they are popularly referred to. Every second commercially viable blockbuster has a Kapoor or a Bachhan associated with it. Our Indian populace, used to deity worship, promotes films like these and in their zeal to uphold their existing heroes ignores new talent that does not have the money to market their creativity. In the current scheme of things, films made by a small-time, struggling director get shoved into a corner, neglected because our masses are so taken with the idea of escapism that they do not want to see the depth and meaning in the stories of our reality. If such a film is a Marathi or non-Hindi film, it has even lesser chances of being a big hit back in India.

I tried looking up Tingya online and could not find any major articles about this film in any Indian news dailies. Only bloggers seemed to have covered this film extensively in 2007 when it was released. While the film has a short Wikipedia page, it does not have a website, using instead a blog to promote themselves. It seems that this film has received only local film festival awards and I doubt they were taken to bigger overseas festivals for sheer lack of funds. And yet big budget films like Devdas and Jodha Akbar receive unwarranted attention at international festivals because they have money and big names driving their efforts. This movie lost out to Taare Zameen Par for an Oscar submission. I am certain that if it were chosen it would have definitely been nominated. The western world may have seen a child's struggle with dyslexia but I can guarantee you the story of Tingya would have struck them as unique. But Tingya didn't stand a chance against Aamir Khan's directorial debut.

I want my readers to watch this film and talk about it, spread the word. I know some of you may not be Marathi speaking but this film and its story is driven by powerful scenes and not just dialog. Some of you are animal lovers and I can tell you that this story will move you to the core. Help this little piece of genius along and in some little way encourage such talent instead of fueling the blatant nepotism and cronyism that is plaguing our film industry back home. Mind you I do not mean to put down our commercial film industry. They have earned a place in people's psyche and that industry too supports a million careers. But there is more to India than the glossy, commercially viable, rich lives portrayed by the regular Bollywood fare. In a world plagued by superfluous, fleeting and material content, there are stories have the power to move us and introduce us to the joys that lie beyond what's on the surface. These stories might not highlight our affluence but they tell people of how much happiness there can be without it.

Movie Review : Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes

Anuradha Prasad — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 07:23:57 EST

Guy Ritchie delivers another impressive movie by transforming Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. The movie was nowhere close to Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels or even Snatch but it is an enjoyable movie experience.

Far from the sophisticated, stuffy, and propah detective and doctor duo that Doyle gave us, Ritchie's Holmes (Robert Downing Jr) is eccentric, shoots off one liners wearing a poker face and is a goofy slob. His brilliance was retained as was the pipe. The deerstalker cap and cape were passé.

Watson (Jude Law), on the other hand, far from being mild, is always cross with Holmes and in love with Marie (Kelly Reilly).

The movie starts with a bang. Hooves and shadows and cobbled streets. The sorcerer Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong) is about to claim another victim in a ritual when Holmes intervenes. After handing him over to the police, Holmes takes to holing up in his room inventing worthless inventions and depressed about Watson's impending marriage. Blackwood's resurrection and Irene Adler's (Rachel McAdams) re-appearance in his life gets him back on his feet. Adler looks luscious and is still one step ahead of Holmes.

It is Holmes' logic versus Blackwood's taunts of the supernatural. A potent weapon is about to let Blackwood rein supreme. Holmes' powers of deduction win but not before a few deaths and clashes with fists, axe, and grey cells.

England of centuries ago looks perfect and many scenes are shot on the Tower Bridge still under construction. It is shot in a twilight quality creating a subdued, eerie effect for the supernatural angle in the script.

The dialogue delivery was smooth but at times incoherent. Hans Zimmer's background score was haunting and exciting in turns, and the performances were good enough to score a few fans. The exchanges between Holmes and Watson gave the movie its light moments while Holmes' future with Adler remains a mystery.

Unlike Ritchie's previous movies, this one was structured for the most part, frames going back and forth occasionally giving it that edgy feel. The story, however, led to a hackneyed climax.

If you are a hardcore Sherlock Holmes fan, the revamped version of the sleuths comes across as absurd and will take a little getting used to. If you forget the book and stop exclaiming "But this is nothing like what I imagined them to be", you may even enjoy the movie.

As the movie ends, you get the feeling you've not seen the last of Ritchie's tango with the detective. Why? Elementary, my dear!

Movie Review: 3 Idiots

Lomi — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 05:41:52 EST

I was very lucky to get hold of a movie ticket to this movie for almost the first day first show (actually it was second day). The reasons were obviously Aamir and Hirani. Both of them haven’t delivered a flop or a dud at box office for a very long time. I knew the perfectionist that Aamir and the entertainer that Hirani is, this movie is sure to be engrossing if not fulfilling. I have to say that I was more than happy with the outcome of the movie. It was natural, soft and last but not least touching.

The Movie started in all too familiar way of a search for a person. It is not uncommon in Hindi cinema to search for a person. But the difference here in was not the search component but the person they were searching was quite different from any normal person. Well the name itself was very different Ranchoddas Shaymaldas Chajaad. This guy was not either the typical Hindi romantic hero or even the typical action Hero that we come across in each and every Hindi cinema. He was sensible, charismatic, entertaining and also very joyful character. Well I have to say that Aamir fitted in perfectly into this role and it didn’t seem odd at all that a forty plus person was playing a college student.

The other characters in this movie also contribute equally and make a difference to the overall feel of the movie. The work of Sharman Joshi and Madhavan from RDB fame was expected to be good but what caught everyone the most attention and also the real surprise component in this movie was Chatur character. He was well suited to his character and made everyone in the theater to laugh his heart out. His Balatkar scene and his atypical Hindi accent were all the more good moments of the movie. The scene where Chatur impresses the most is when he reminds Madhavan and Sharman of the oath that he took of revenge and here he is delivering a perfect kickback. It sounded too childish and laughable but to think of it that is how a normal elite student of a premium institutes pit against each other nowadays. It is childish for us but that is the dirty world out there in those premium institutes.

The theme of the movie is very much coherent with Taare Zameen Par and the script of the Movie also had the feel of Munnabhai. The difference was the delivery of the whole package by different character with different story, screenplay and direction. The Movie is sure to be loved at first shot by everyone and may be people will not mind spending some more on the repeat viewing too. It is already breaking Sholay records and looks like becoming the all time favorite of Hindi cinema. Even then this Movie had certain shortcomings which needed to be addressed like for example not everyone will be as successful as Madhavan’s character if he goes away from the prescribed path. One example could be the US where every person has the maximum freedom that one can actually wish to have and you now have US president requesting his people to concentrate on Science and Maths. Well in a country like India it becomes doubly difficult to cross the paths.

Kareena Kappor did not have much to do in this Movie and it seemed more of a small role for her and Boman Irani’s character was again like his Munnabhai role where he was the same strict principal albeit in a engineering school. The NASA pencil scene and Balatkar scene is something we have heard of in our emails and school jokes yet it seemed different when it was put in as a movie scene. Javed Jaffrey’s brief stint was a nice gripping moment before interval but unexpectedly he just withers away after the interval.

The music didn’t seem all that great on TV and CD players but when seen in the context of the story and script, it seemed to make the cut. “Give me some sunshine” song had a nice feelings attached to it and seemed to cut across many people’s college days. Aamir’s courage in dealing with sensitive issues like student suicides, Indian education system, youth power, crossing new bridges are positive moments of the Movie. Overall this Movie felt like a complete package of message, music, masala (pregnant scene), sentiment and some non hand fights (between Aamir and Irani).

Movie Review: Paa - The Self-Absorbedness Of Bachchanalia

IdeaSmith — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 11:05:56 EST

HT Cafe's summary of Paa goes as follows:

Auro (Amitabh Bachchan) is an intelligent, witty 13-year-old boy with an extremely rare genetic defect that causes accelerated ageing. Mentally he is 13, but physically he looks five times older. He lives with his mother Vidya (Vidya Balan), who is a gynaecologist. Amol Arte (Abhishek Bachchan), is a progressive politician. Paa is the story about a father-son.

I should have read that summary thoroughly. Or perhaps, by some inspired stroke of genius, read only the last line. Because the only thing that's been on my mind, this past hour (I walked out of the hall roughly an hour ago), has been,

What was that movie about?

To be fair, I only focussed on the first two sentences of the description, which made me immediately think of another movie, more than a decade older - Robin Williams' Jack. That was a movie about a genetic condition, one that was almost Daliesque in how surreal the patient's life became. Robin Williams essayed the role of a 'regular boy with a body 4 times its age' to perfection.

That was the only thing that intrigued me about Paa. I don't subscribe to the school of thought that 'it's Bollywood so leave your brains behind'. This is the industry that has given us Iqbal , Prem Rog, Taare Zameen Pe, Amar Prem and Khamoshi (the 1969 one as well as the 1996 one). If you're wondering what the above have in common, they are all stories of people in difficult circumstances - social, mental and physical. All of these movies were mainstream cinema, they had commercial actors and they were portrayed realistically,boldly but also sensitively. And they all enjoyed varying degrees of commercial success as well.

I think it is quite fair to expect that the same industry provide good entertainment and if, a 'serious' topic is taken on, it be dealt with sensitivity, intelligence and maturity. Sadly I found none of the above in Paa.

To return to the story itself, was this a story about progeria? The introduction shows a lengthy description of the disease with some statistics thrown in and illustrated with photographs of victims to make the disease come alive, so to speak, for the audience. And then, abruptly there ceases to be any further mention of the problem, other than to provide convenient hiccups in the plot (a holiday on a whim, a 12-yr-old boy falling sick in the middle of the ground suddenly).

Meetu points out the over-simplification of various critical points in the movie:

Like the overall compassion with which people from all ages and backgrounds treat an abnormal child. Also, the social acceptance of an illegitimate child and his mother was a tad too uneasy to digest. It is obvious that these issues were intentionally left out of the equation to help focus on the characters and their relationships. But these issues are conspicuous by their absence.

Similarly, the whole comment on parents' complete disregard to anything creative as a source of living was in bad taste. A wee bit exaggerated it was, in order to get those extra laughs. Also, the maturity that 12-13 year olds show seems a bit beyond their age. The climax too seems a little too melodramatic compared to the tone of the rest of the film.

I agree with WOGMA's analysis as far as this. But it stops right there.

If the story wasn't supposed to be about the disease itself, then why bring it in? It seems contrived and hence insensitive to toss in a word like 'progeria' just to build up the intensity of the plot. Most of the movie revolves around Auro's relationship with Amol.

If then, the movie was supposed to be about the father-son relationship, then why not a regular child actor to play Auro?

I came out of Paa feeling like I had been subjected to the extremely self-absorbed whim of Amitabh Bachchan to play a 'different' role. Just the way I felt forced by Sanjay Leela Bansali to believe that making Black made him a 'sensitive' story-teller. Or for that matter, Madhur Bhandarkar for making Jail.

All of these reek of people trying too hard. My tweet-review elicited an immediate response from Bolly-blogger Sakshi, who asks me,

Why not AB?

The point is because he is not a 12-year-old boy with progeria. And more importantly, he didn't depict Auro to tell a story about the disease. It was an attempt at blatant self-glorification and it came off in bad taste.

Maybe, as Sakshi points out, he is a box-office success. But then so was Lata Mangeshkar. And it is also a fact that no other talent (not even her own sister Asha Bhosale) was permitted to flourish as long as Latatai ruled the roost. The distinction I'm making here is that there is no dearth of talent. But such self-promotional antics come across as crass and materialistic. Really, there's no need to mask all that under the garb of artistic greatness.

At the end of the movie I'm left with a feeling that I wasted 300 bucks and three hours of my time watching an extremely self-centered old man trying to prove that he has talent. Like decades of showcasing it and all the adulation of this country haven't been enough.

Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes - Live Streaming of World Premiere

Aaman Lamba — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 03:32:56 EST

Streaming Video

For the most filmed character in history, it is not a surprise to see that his latest film, the spectacular Guy Ritchie-directed Sherlock Holmes will be streamed live on the Internet from the World Premiere in London. The Master has nothing to fear from pesky pirates, having faced down the Napoleon of Crime and much more.

Indeed, it seems like only yesterday that Dr. Watson, recently returned from that long-ago forgotten war in Afghanistan, made the acquaintance of Sherlock Holmes, a 'fellow working at the chemical laboratory' in St. Barts Hospital, London, a man with 'a passion for definite and exact knowledge.' Their friendship was formed in the strange affair of the Mormons and "Mr. Jefferson Hope, the murderer of Enoch Drebber and of Joseph Stangerson," chronicled by Dr. Watson as A Study in Scarlet. He went on to share 68 adventures with the master detective.

Sherlock Holmes came to epitomize the logical thinker, and his never ending popularity has as much to do with the intricately plotted stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as with his richly detailed character, and the numerous portrayals on stage, screen, and television by an wide array of fine actors, ranging from William Gillette to Basil Rathbone. More recently, pastiches have appeared such as The Seven Percent Solution and Without A Clue.

Guy Ritchie's film, Sherlock Holmes returns to the original source, although the plot is not based on any specific narrative by Conan Doyle. It will have contemporary relevance, as with many previous Sherlock adventures, dealing with Holmes and Watson foiling a plot to destroy Britain. In the past, Sherlock Holmes has quelled Nazis, saved the day for Britain in World War I, and addressed weighty matters for the Lamas of Tibet. The film features Robert Downey, Jr. as Sherlock Holmes, Jude Law as Dr. Watson, and Rachel McAdams as Irene Adler, the 'Woman'.

The decision of the producers to livestream the world premiere is commendable and will doubtless help the film's publicity in the run up to its Christmas Day theatrical release. Stay tuned to this page for live streaming of the Sherlock Holmes Worldwide Premiere from London:

Confirmed:

The live streaming will start on Monday, Dec. 14TH @ 5:45-7:30PM London time, 12:45 PM EST, 11:15 PM IST

It is recommended you switch to full-screen once the stream begins for the best viewing experience.

Updated Live Streaming Video

It appears the live stream did not go quite as well as planned due to technical issues from Warner Bros. The inconvenience is regretted. Please do check back in for a review of the movie soon.