Review : Ishqiya

Ishqiya begins with a blank screen and the melodious Rekha Bhardwaj crooning "Ab Mujhe Koi" and the first visual we get to see is that of Krishna Verma (Vidya Balan) in bed with her lover. While we were expecting to see a set piece involving the two main con-men of the movie director Abhishek Chaubey instead shows us a voluptuous woman (And thank god we do not have yet another heroine who seems digitally produced to be size zero) much in love with her husband. In fact over the whole movie the director does this skillfully, just when we think that we have a grip on the proceedings on screen the director yet again pulls the rug from under our feet. In fact it is almost like an Agatha Christie novel in so far as that the clues are all there in the scenes building up to that point but one almost feels stupid for not seeing them for what they are. Such a movie runs the risk of coming across as contrived (Think Race) but until maybe the last 15 mins of this movie full credit has to go to the writers that they don't fall into this trap.

Depicting the story of a con duo Khalujan (Naseeruddin Shah) and Babban (Arshad Warsi)on the run from their sadistic boss Mushtaq (Salman Shahid). Their different attitudes to life are captured during the song Badi Dheere Jali (our personal favorite and yet again Rekha Bharadwaj) sung by Krishna during Sunrise , while Khalujan rushes to find the source of the vocals, Babban is none to impressed and wants to get back to sleep. So while Khalujan and Krishna have debates about whether a music piece is SD Burman or Hemant Kumar, that of Krishna and Babban is sheer smoldering physical love with a post-coital swinging to Mika's "Dil Main Baji Guitar". All this set amidst a visually tantalizing confusing back drop of Eastern UP where kidnapping seems as much of an everyday occurrence as traffic jams in Bangalore, Millionaires indulging in S&M in what is ostensibly a beauty parlor, well armed caste based armies in a state of conflict, which in one of the most mischievous dialogue Nandu educates a wide eyed Babban by saying "Kids here learn about guns before toilet training". (One needs to listen to it in Hindi to appreciate it).



But the real hero and the central figure in this movie is Krishna. Playing a femme fatale who is the defining feature of any film noir she manages to pull off the twin role of the smooth seductress with her old world charms to keep Khalujaan hooked, while using her body with Babban all the while manipulating them like chess pieces in her master plan. Though Vidya Balan has done an admirable job much to my surprise by not screwing up the movie totally for me, this is where I think the movie suffers, she would have cut more ice as a Tier II town femme fatale rather than a village belle. The rusticity is short of the mark even though I believe she has done her best. (Think Konkona Sen Sharma in Omkara). But that is a minor point to nitpick over in what is otherwise an excellent movie.

The cinematography is consistently excellent throughout the movie and one can detect the influences of some other directors whose movies we are big fans of.

And what better tribute to pay the movie than that after watching Babban we are seriously thinking of growing a mustache!!!

Review : 3 Idiots

*** Extremely high spoiler alert, please watch the movie before proceeding ***


Early on in the movie when Farhan Qureshi walks into his hostel at the Imeperial College of Engineering on his first day with a character called Millimeter (where else but in a Rajkumar Hirani movie can one encounter such a marvelous name) towing his bags, he pauses and starts taking photos of a few pups. And you know all too well what his choice of profession is going to materialize in this movie which is built on the premise that we all have a passion for something, something which we are good at and that our education system ought to allow us to find that passion rather than just make us bricks-in-the-wall to quote Floyd. Do not expect any surprises in how the other characters lives turn out in the movie though it does have its moments.

As is Hirani's forte his execution of some of the set pieces mainly involving the lighter moments in the movie is impeccable. The by now popular chamatkaar-balaatkar speech followed by the drunken stupor scene following it, where the Type-A Chatur taken for a ride challenges Rancho (yet another stereotype played by Aamir Khan of the guy who tinkers with machines and tops the class without apparently studying) to a Henry-esque 10 year later meeting or the dissolve into black-and-white whenever Raju's (Sharmaan Joshi) poverty ridden family is shown. What really impressed me though was the song "All eez well", which almost like a spinners flighted delivery lulls you into this happy feeling only to end abruptly with a student hanging himself. At times though the movie seemed a pastiche of Dil Chahta Hai (the by now bride ditching the groom at the wedding all too conveniently), Munnabhai and even Scent of a Woman in the scene where Raju is told that in order to save his backside he needs to kick Rancho's.

As much as the first half sets up things deliciously on how life will turn out for all the four protagonists in the first half, the post-interview flatters to deceive. What we really didn't need was Chatur being reduced to a caricature even in his post college life. We have known a lot of such people in my college and they tend to end up being extremely successful by their own definitions of what constitutes success. We also know of a lot of people who take up photography and other non-mainstream engineering professions and cannot make it big like Farhan (publishing > 5 books) and Rancho (more than 400 patents). It maybe speaks of a lack of conviction on the director's part himself that we end up seeing such an obvious affirmation of his message at the ending leaving no room for uncertainty of any kind. Another sore point for us was that for the vast majority of the people in the real world there is really no passion or at least nothing tangible that they can readily and/or easily identify which the movie does not portray.*

Much as we believe that the Hollywood movie It's a wonderful life had a lot of shortcomings, there is a sequence where some of George Bailey's friends come from the city in their fancy cars. When they leave one can sense the frustration of Bailey that everyone else has gone ahead while he has stayed at the same place where he was 10 years back and kicks his car. Though George Bailey's feelings are temporary one can sense that it is not easy to be always convinced of the choices one makes, such things are sadly sandpapered over in 3 Idiots which would have otherwise made an excellent movie instead of just a decent watch.

And finally a word about the performances, for the lead actress of the movie :

1. Do not kiss on screen
2. Do not cry on screen
3. Do not do scenes where you are drunk.

Happy New 2010 to all you folks who still follow this blog, hopefully we will be more regular this decade around.

* -- But a counter point can be that the movie was not even intended for that purpose, which we personally think limits its enjoyment factor for us.

Waking up Sid but not quite smelling the coffee

Imagine if an alien landed on earth in India. He is then told that to gain an understanding of India he should a. Watch Cricket b. Watch Bollywood movies. Now apart from figuring out leg before wickets and the subtle differences between fine legs and long legs, the alien can be excused for assuming that everyone in India is rich, work in some kind of creative field or manage their father's business.

We guess by now one would have guessed we are not big fans of "Wake Up Sid". And against this backdrop we present our review. Watching the trailers one can easily make out that "Wake Up Sid" does not claim to have even an ounce of realism in it. So by the time the movie starts you can predict that Sid will fails his exams, meet Konkona, decide that he wants to do something in his life, his coming-of-age moment, that Konkona will be working in some kind of creative/yuppie field like writing/music composing/acting, that her workplace will look uber-bohemian, the mandatory marine drive scene, have someone with long hair at the workplace, that there will be some kind of props referencing cult movies(Annie Hall), authors (Murakami) and watching Sid snapping away at his camera that he will end up becoming a photographer.



Image Courtesy : wallpapers.oneindia.in

We so wished against our better judgment that there would be at least one place where the director could surprise us, like maybe Konkona would refuse to let Sid stay at her place and he instead finds refuge at Kashmira Shah's place and gets a better understanding of life. For once it would have been good if we had Konkona working at a place where has to work with say MS Excel or Cadence or something equally banal since that is what most of our work involves. On the other hand the scene which we thought could have sparked a modicum of interest in the movie, the part where Sid and Konkona talk well past midnight by the sea is such an ordinary, trite, inane piece of conversation that we would prefer "Beta maine tumhaare liye gaajar ka halwa aur mooli ke paratha banaaye hain" any day.

And why this fetishism with Bombay/Mumbai. We had high hopes after "Jab We Met" that maybe someone would actually make movies about Ratlam or countless such towns which we guess have much more unique and interesting stories to say. One only has to watch Dor or Manorama Six Feet Under to realize that life exists beyond what is easily the most cosmopolitan city of this country. By the way the Bombay depicted in Wake Up Sid and which Konkona goes ga ga about in the whole movie, almost going so far as to becoming a character in the movie, all we can say is that the titles of Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na was infinitely more preferable.

Overheard a friend saying "Wake Up Sid a good sing song movie, a bit like Lakshya much better and far lesser senti ness in it". So it seems like this is what the "Multiplex Movies" are all about, make movies which do not tug at our emotional strings. To answer another friend who contends that today's Bollywood movies are better than the 80's, well what can we say that it is still the same escapist fare. Just that the Bollywood movie watcher these days is the kind of person who so wishes he becomes a rock star rather than a I-banker. Leads us to wonder whether having a wide choice of movies to choose from is leading us to choose the kind of interpretations of the world around us that make us happy and maintain status quo rather than ones that would actually provoke one to think, to debate. We have a sneaky suspicion that our previous generation forced to watch movies on DD every Sunday afternoon might have watched a wider range of movies dealing with more varied subjects and settings.

There is a big positive in this movie and that is the casting. Everyone seems to be tailor made for their roles. Ranbir Kapoor is fast evolving into the new Saif Ali Khan, playing roles of overgrown confused boys effortlessly. Konkona is bang on as the girl with big eyes in the big city, Sid's mother is endearingly played by Supriya Pathak. Anupam Kher as the father is refreshingly different from what he was in yer another cult DDLJ. The song "Dil Bole Iktara" has a very high hummability quotient about it.

"Wake Up Sid" reminds us of a great mannequin at a high fashion store. It is exquisitely clothed, the curves are gorgeous, the clothes oh so elegant and the lighting exactly right. But all said and done it is still a mannequin, give us a real lady any day with less than perfect clothes.

A Kamina Review of Kaminey

***Minor Spoiler Alerts***

Imagine going to a small shack run by a great cook. The food there is simply awesome, an Indian dal-roti kind of place. Now our owner moves onto a slightly bigger place with chairs and tables. The food is still great, the ambiance slightly better, one could take one's non-existent girl friend there. And finally after making yet more money the owner decided to take the next logical step up the restaurant chain. So now it is the talk of the town, it is going to be the next "multi-cuisine" restaurant in town. So we walk into the new place, the ambiance is simply great, the waiters are dressed very smartly, the menu now is way beyond the dal-roti. But wonder of wonders the food now is passable like most other multi-cuisine restaurants. Such is the experience I had when I watched Kaminey.

Vishal Bharadwaj's more memorable parts of his previous movies have been in the way a shot not pertaining to the plot captures the essence of a character. So we have a genuinely scary Langda Tyagi doing a mad dance with a cummerbund and applying nail polish to himself in Omkara. The one scene where Abbaji becomes angry in Maqbool that lets you in no doubts that this is a man whom you are better off being in the good books of. Kaminey on the other hand is an effort to make a movie of another genre where instead of having a small group of very powerful people whose ambitions and the means (and the consequences as well) they chose to carry out their ends are portrayed; we have a whole range of mad cap characters all trigger happy and all of whose paths intertwine over the course of a couple of days.

And so one has a McGuffin involving a guitar case which has a lot of Cocaine in it (to all those reviewers who thought that Vishal Bharadwaj was not condescending with Indian audiences and that this is Bollywood's answer to Pulp Fiction, well think of the McGuffin there),corrupt anti narcotic bureau officials , sons-of-the-soil politicians, Bangla book makers and the chalk and cheese twins Charlie and Guddu.



Tt the center of it all is Sweetie played endearingly by Priyanka Chopra. Her nuanced almost effortless transformation from a madly-in-love girl to one who brandishes a burnt log of wood against her brother's henchmen and in the end going about firing a shot gun makes hers the standout performance of the movie.

With the plot being of such an explosive nature and offering immense opportunities for dark humor as well as an incredibly engaging soundtrack, on both fronts the movie flatters to deceive. What can one say when Bhau tells his name as "Bhau!!! Bhau!! Baw-Bow-Wow-Wow" goes for dark humor, or a dialog about how the non-Maharashtrian Mumbaikars are like sugar in milk to which the riposte is "Bhai ko to diabetes hai" or the genuinely cringe inducing "You two" in the suburban train. Come on Mr Bharadwaj you can do much much better than that at dark humor.

About the sound track, playing a couple of RD Burman "Is zindagi ke din katne kam hain" while bashing someone up or "Duniya main logon ko" when the guitar falls into the wrong hands makes for an extremely dis-satisfying experience. One need not look further than DevD I suppose. And here we are not talking about the full blown songs in the movie which are extremely well written by Gulzar and set to some genuinely good music.

What is admirable though is the cinematography which is extremely slick. Right from the start of the movie involving a chase over railway tracks till the climax sequences this is probably a redeeming feature of the movie. Though quite why the outlandish dream sequences of Charlie were interspersed seemingly at random is probably beyond my comprehension and maybe more educated cinema goers could shine some light on that, but to me it seemed jarring at times.

VB is in great control when shooting ambitious and powerful albeit manipulable personalities meeting disappointments. In his earlier movies one of the best things would be the way a character in the movie was peeled layer by layer like an onion slowly unmasking his insecurities, his internal demons. The "haan ki naa" sequence from Omkara where there is this extremely almost claustrophobic close up on Omi. In Kaminey there is just one such charming vignette that Guddu narrates in a petrol pump about his childhood just before the interval which had me engaged, disappointingly the same cannot be said of the rest of the movie.

The kind of movie that Kaminey attempts to be, needs a larger-than-life-sinister presence in the movie. Think of Samuel L Jackson in Pulp Fiction or Brick Top in Snatch. We were just left guessing till the end who is going to be the imposing guy in this movie. We thought Tashi bhai would be the man considering his introductory sequence, but the moment he says "I like bitches", I turned off, is this the best that Tashi can do!!!! Sadly enough even though Priyanka Chopra does does deliver a power packed performance, this kind of movie needs a bad ass boy who will put the fear of god into everyone else.

If the non existent readers of this blog sense an extreme Maqbool and Omkara fixation with this review, then they would be true. Kaminey made by anyone else would have been a fairly good movie, but coming as it does after Maqbool and Omkara it is a disappointing movie. And it falls far short of either Tarantino or Guy Ritchie, to me the two masters of this genre. To sum up my feelings I quotePauline Kael:

“It really is a wonderfully exciting field to write about when the movies are good. When they’re not so good, it’s to despair. The really bad movies you can write about with some passion and anger. It’s the mediocre ones that wear you down.”

Bas Ek Kahaani Badle Zamaana -- The Love Aaj Kal Review

(Spoiler Alert, if there do exist spoilers in a romantic movie)

Watching an Imtiaz Ali movie is a bit like driving through a city where there is a lot of Metro construction that is going on. You know where you are starting, you know where you will end up but the journey that encompasses these two points with all the road blocks in between is what the two to three hours you spend watching the movie will be about.(As the lyrics in one of the songs go "Bas ek kahaani, badle zamaana") Such is the case with Love Aaj Kal as well, but the journey this time is decidedly less vibrant than the one we went on during Jab We Met, less darker than Aahista Aahista and definitely much less interesting than Socha Na Tha.


Love Aaj Kal inspired by the Taiwanese movie Three Times depicts two different love stories, one set in sepia tinted times of the past is the story of Veer and Harleen (it is hard to say whether it is the 60's or pre-independence India) and one set in contemporary times, that of Jai and Meera. The movie begins with Jai and Meera breaking up as their work is taking them on diverging paths. At the end of a "breakup party" thrown to celebrate this event Jai meets Veer and so unfolds the rest of the movie flitting between the past and the present.



The essence of the difference between the two stories can be summed up in one dialogue between Jai and Veer about choices. How we as a generation we have infinitely more choices than Veer ever did. As Veer says "Humaare zamaane main to choice nahin tha, sirf majboori thi". And as the rest of the movie unfolds one realizes how what Veer says is a timeless truth when it comes to love.

What made the movie really endearing to me was the set design and the cinematography showing the sepia tinted love story. The shot that cuts from the Golden Gate of San Franscisco to the Howrah Bridge in Calcutta made it for me. But while one could say of the other Imtiaz Ali movies that this was a master in control of his craft all through the movie, such is not the case with Love Aaj Kal. Take, for example the scene shot after Meera marries Vikram and is about to irredeemably break his heart. I am not so sure Imtiaz Ali meant this scene to elicit the kind of sniggering and amusement that it triggered amongst large portions of the audience. Hark back to the last few shots of Aahista Aahista or in Socha Na Tha when Viren and Karen break up.

The minimal characterization of anyone other than Jai, Meera and Veer (played as a youngster by Saif and Rishi Kapoor in the present) also means that this is a movie that has to be carried on Saif's and Deepika's shoulders. While Saif has made the role of a confused metrosexual male (Dil Chahta Hai, Hum Tum) as much a personal trademark as the high backlift cover drive of Brian Lara, as a young Sardar there was something unconvincing, something missing that I just cannot put my finger on. Deepika on the other hand seems only to revel in scenes where she just has to smile or talk about Saif's red shoes, she makes us wish for an Ayesha Takia or a Mahi Gill whenever she has to emote.

All in all one feels that the bigger budget did not necessarily lead to a better movie in the case of Imtiaz Ali. Be warned though that unless you are in love with the idea of being in love the movie will just not work for you.

Co-incidence

Eerie, extremely eerie.

Two of my friends both get married in the same year.

And their life style pattern is as identical as that of Seeta and Geeta was not. Now they are in different countries but sometime back even that was common though the folks who invented golf might beg to differ. They both do the same activities over the weekend with their better/worse halves, both are regular gymmers, both are presently home makers, both will be joining a masters course soon in the same country (though thank god different specialisations) and both will be on a visit to the home country soon.

Well as one of our favourite characters Monsieur Morse (or was it Father Brown, damn it we are growing old) says "Life is full of co-incidences"

New Yolk

Review: New York

Once upon a time in history, there was this perfect, ellipsoidal-shaped egg. Paraphrasing the Great Reporter himself, it had bumps and dents where it was entitled to have bumps and dents. On seeing such perfection in form and goodness of purpose, the French presented the egg a statue of the lady with a lump lamp. Naturally, the next thing you know, the egg and the eggcup have an "immigrant problem", but that is neither here nor there, since we are not concerned with the egg, but rather with a movie made about the egg.

The movie starts off with NeNiMu, an aspiring Telecom company, who makes his first trip to the land of the egg to do his "further studies" in, apparently, taking on a first-generation unconfused Johnny Baba in various sports, in a failed attempt to win the beautiful Maya. As an aside, Sab maya hai seems an appropriate description for this part of the movie, which is a picturesque, one-sided depiction of that most trite and holy Bollywood cliche, the love triangle. Or in this case, a directed graph with one extra node.

One mugging and a stabbing later, the graph gets pruned, but before the stars could have done their bit in converting what is ostensibly a thriller of a movie into a drama, History with the capital H intervenes in the form of that invention of '01, the manned Jet-A1 missile.

Since I have no qualms whatsoever of spoiling this movie for the readers (both of whom have better things to do than to watch this movie), I will proceed with a straightforward commentary on the plot: in essence, the Baba is arrested on suspicion (or whatever it is called nowadays), tortured, jailed, and so on in scenes that are filmed in such an over-the-top, grand-mal inducing manner that one feels pity for the poor strobe light used for filming. Once this interlude is complete, the Baba goes on a bread-buying spree that finally gets him a slot as the entree in a four-course terrorist cell wherein, by some mysterious process of Bollywoodical natural selection, he becomes its leader, with contacts with the Raashan mafia who supply weapons and bangers⁽²⁾ in exchange for getting shot.

Meanwhile, the misnamed telecom giant has, in typical inscrutable fashion, managed to become a taxi magnate (or magnet) of sorts, running his own fleet. When a failed smuggling attempt manages to get him the undivided attention of the FBI (about which, by the way, the viewer needs to exercise his sore and aching Suspension-of-Disbelief.) Naturally, what he is asked to do now is to reestablish contact with his old friends (who have, by this time, done their bit in adding to the population problem.) His case officer is Irrfan Khan, who does such a good job of acting that it is actually painful to watch the others on-screen -- even Miss Eyecandy is almost not sufficient incentive to actually watch the screen.

In an interesting aside, you will be pleased to know that Terrorists-R-Us, CEO'd in some mysterious process by J.Babu, is an equal-opportunity employer. All South Asian nations that owe significant bits of their history to terrorism are represented. If what happens to one of them (well, two, actually, with one at the end of the movie) is an unintended reflection of history, it serves in its own fashion to advance the plot.

Speaking of plot advancements, la Eyecandy, after completing an unmentioned course of study and doing her bit for the world's population, also is apparently working in an NGO for, you've guessed it, the rights of prisoners wrongfully taken in The War Against Terror. As a demonstration of "police brutality", it also serves as one of her patients (maybe she was a psychiatrist?) commits suicide, and in the process, la EC gets her chance to see an anticompetitive deal being made between Irrfan and the telecom giant. This naturally leads to the grand denouement, and the inevitable shootout wherein the telecom giant gets to take care of a budding young waste of space baseball star. The END.

For a movie that seems to have gotten a lot of praise about presenting multi-faceted viewpoints, most of the time is spent in attempting justifications for the acts of terrorism attempted in the movie, while only a cursory glance is spared for the alternate viewpoint, and these dialogues are actually the weakest part of Irrfan's repertoire. Perhaps given the current backlash against the less than humane acts depicted and the praise that the movie gives to the Economic Superhero, this is a good thing. Time will tell, even if the Box Office has returned a clear and unambiguous opinion of the movie. Oh, and Maya really ought to stick to ads. Or Item Numbers. Mmm.

(As an aside, an IMDB review calls "Mission: Kashmir" a Bollywood epic. Did I even see the same movie?)

[2] - No, that wasn't a footnote.
[e] - Johnny Baba makes one wonder about strange pecularities of uncivil engineers that is the sort of discussion best taken offline as providing great opportunities going forward.