Swadeshe

Ok, this one is for the visual critics…

All lower-case text, in a helvetica like font, with blueblackgrey colour interplay makes for a lasting typographical impact.

And…

Any other you can remember –  right away?

There are a few that I used to remember from Hollywood.

If this post reeks of staleness, please clench you noses to read on!

I had to spend these 10 cents on Om Shanti Om having already spent 500 bucks on the tickets.

Spare me the faux tributes to the 70s please!
That public memory is short, is an oft repeated cliché. But in India we manifest collective amnesia in epidemic proportions. This is best exemplified in the film promoters’ ‘tribute to 70s’ in pre-release interviews, previews, and post-release reviews. And our gullibility in accepting that at face-value and according it a premium by using the same in our respective private discussions.

What’s my problem with that?

That exactly the same set of descriptors were used for Main Hoon Na by the same set of people — film’s producers, media and us!

Don’t believe me?

Check out these motley excerpts from Main Hoon Na reviews in 2004!

Main Hoon Na is a fun film. It doesn’t preach. It doesn’t go by logic. It isn’t realistic. But it’s shamelessly entertaining. So if you are looking for 1970s-style entertainment, Main Hoon Na is what I recommend. Enjoy! [Rediff.com review]

****

Main Hoon Na is by no means a thought provoking film. And the best part is it doesn’t pretend to be either. It is Farah Khan’s tribute to the 70’s style of filmmaking, comprising of a silly but fun comedy track, lost and found siblings, dutiful sons, hammy villains, adult and teenage romances and racy music. [BBC review]

****

Main Hoon Naa is a beautiful homage to Bollywood masala and Manmohan Desai must be smiling from the skies. Farah Khan’s love for the movies is evident in every frame [...] Farah Khan has definitely borrowed bits and pieces of a dozen other soucres as inspiration – Panchamda, John Woo, Matrix, Manmohan Desai, Chopras, Johars to name a few. But they have definitely not been imitated or added for “extra effect” and in no way do they reflect a lack of creativity. It is her affection and adoration of these and other facets and genres of cinema as a medium of impacting the human condition that come through in Main Hoon Naa. [User review on IMDB.com]

****

Debutante director Farah Khan has paid a handsome tribute to everyone and everything related to movies like Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Nasir Hussain, RD Burman, Yash Chopra, Karan Johar, Sholay, Matrix , and the entire success formula of the 70s and 80s. She also spoofs the ma-ke-haath-ke-aloo parathe bit, dream sequences, Yash Chopra kinda romance (yeah, she pays a tribute to it and yet spoofs it) so on and so forth. Everything that was super successful twenty years ago finds its way in here. The result is full blast entertainment – the kind you expected from Manmohan Desai and Nasir Hussain . [User review on Mouthshut.com]

****

If Main Hoon Na reminds you of the commercial hit cinema of the 70s…well, that’s exactly what Farah Khan set out to achieve. It doesn’t preach. It doesn’t go by logic. But it’s an entertainer all the way, much like the Nasir Husain and Manmohan Desai’s masala potboilers of yore. [IndiaToday.com.au review]

Got it folks?

Just replace “Main Hoon Na” in the above snippets with”Om Shanti Om” and you could very well be reading stuff written in 2007!

Also I didn’t know that Punjabis in the 70s spoke with a Gujju accent! Why else would an Om Prakash Makhija insist on saying “Thenks” instead of “Thanks”.

Also, spare me this collective ‘awakening’ to spoofs please!
Messers Farah and Shah Rukh Khan have neither invented nor revived spoofs as an entertainment form. Not in Om Shanti Om at least**!

In Hollywood, spoofs on popular movies and characters is a genre by itself. Movies like Hotshots, Naked Gun, Austin Powers, and Scary Movie were so successful that their producers established a complete franchise with their sequels! Closer home, the late I.S. Johar would spoof popular actors of the times by producing movies with their lookalikes. Then there were B-grade movies like Ramgarh Ke Sholay (not to be confused with Ramgopal Varma’s :-p) Nagesh Kukoonoor’s Bollywood Calling was a more intelligently made spoof on the Bombay film industry.

However, in India the best spoofs on cinema have been made in its sibling medium — television. I have seen some of the craziest and irreverently fantastic spoofs on Fully Faltu on MTV, Ek Do Teen on Doordarshan (directed by Sachin), and The Great Indian Comedy Show on Star One. Look at this example below.

** For me the closest Shah Rukh Khan ever came to spoofing was when he played Devdas :-p

Shah Rukh finally gets an item number right!
After delivering cold turkeys in Kaal (title song) and Shakti (Ishq Kameena), Shah Rukh Khan finally delivers a winner with Dard-e-disco. Every bit the dude superstar. But any guesses why a miner’s helmet? A small step in the AB-been-there-SRK-done-that series — and it’s Kala Paththar this time? :-p

Look at the irony — poet lyricist Javed Akhtar writes ‘Dard-e-disco‘ , while music director Vishal wrote the lyrics for ‘Aankhon mein teri, ajab si adaayen hain‘.

The cutest ghost since Casper!
This is perhaps the toughest part for me. For the last so many years I have carried on a single-minded crusade against plastic-haters — the unthinking, uninformed, uneducated critics of the world’s most beautiful woman. How I have always maintained that Aishwarya Rai is so unbelievably beautiful that she borders on the abnormal! How I have debated that with such perfect looks it is criminal to expect her to act.

But after seeing Deepika in Om Shanti Om, especially the final scene where the ghost Shanti flashes a dimpled smile while a tear drop trickles down her cheek, all I can say is: bye bye Ms. Aishwarya Rai, may you find bliss in matrimony! There’s more to the world than your green eyes!

Anybody tell me which is Deepika Padukone’s next film?

Anything new in Chakde India? Nothing.

Would I still recommend watching it. Yes.

The movie starts with the customary disclaimer that it is a work of fiction and any resemblance to real people or events is purely co-incidental.

Now, if you consider the following as facts…

• People who run sports bodies in India are boring sarkari-types.
• Zafar Iqbal was the captain of the Indian hockey team that lost 1-7 to Pakistan in the finals of the 1982 Asian Games in New Delhi.
• Yuvraj Singh was dating Kim Sharma and was the vice-captain of the Indian cricket team.
• The walls of Mohammed Kaif’s house were blackened with graffiti by vandals after India lost a cricket match.
• Women married into many middle-class families are expected to be nothing beyond good housewives.
• Many people from North-East of India do not associate themselves with India.
• Women from the North-East are subject to lewd remarks in many places in India.
• Rustic Haryanvi lines in Hindi films (remember the wrestler-goon in Khosla Ka Ghosla) and television (remember Udham Singh on Channel [V] ) are funny.
• A regular Indian team is composed of players chosen from different states.

… then Shimit Amin (Ab Tak 56) does craft a whole movie out of co-incidences alone!

The fundamental premise here, like in all sports-based films, is that audience sympathy is always with the underdogs and therefore the protagonists have to be the underdogs. Remember Lagaan, Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar, Iqbal and recently, Ta Ra Rum Pum? (I won’t ask you, but if you also remember Awwal Number, All-rounder, Kabhi Ajnabi Thhey, you rock!) And if the underdogs happen to be women with their own respective odds, then you have a completely-on-the-side-of-political-correctness double-whammy lined up! Now top that up with Shah Rukh Khan being their mentor — and you have a triple-treat-sundae ready!

Shah Rukh as a mentor of people is a film-genre in its own right. Whether it was mentoring a gurukul of plastic love-birds in Mohabbatein, or mentoring villagers wanting their own electric turbine in Swades, or as Major Ram studying alongside students who called him uncle in Main Hoon Naa, and of course my favourite SRK-as-mentor scene from DDLJ (which I mentioned here). (Please note: any assumptions about SRK’s acting abilities are your own!)

I deliberately won’t venture into how all and what all does Chakde India not deliver. Because in our land of abundant contradictions I still believe if something can make a small difference, it is a movie dripping with clichés and stereotypes!

If people believe that a Veer Zaara can contribute more to building relations between Indo-Pak aam janta than official actions — then I won’t play party-pooper to the hope that after Chakde India the integrity of the ordinary Indian Muslim won’t be ever questioned again; that people of North-East India would start seeing themselves as citizens of India; that the girl-child in Haryana (which has one of the lowest female:male ratios in India) gets her due; that middle-class families start giving their daughters-in-law some space to fulfill their aspirations; that people from Jharkhand are no longer seen as backward tribals but recognized for what they can contribute to the country; that boy-friends become less patronizing towards their girls; that we rise above our regional-linguistic chauvinism and start thinking of ourselves as Indians first!

Go watch it.

p.s.
On the other hand, the official Yashraj Films.com website (click here at your own peril) is perhaps the epitome of traumatic navigation websites. Every module, every link you click takes 10 times longer to load (with a Flash pre-loader) than the amount of time you finally end up spending on the resultant page! Have you ever been exasperated using phone IVR call-in menus – press 1 for Hindi and press 2 for English. Now press 1 for blah and 2 for blah-blah and 3 for blah-blah-blah. Now press 1 for dang, 2 for dangg, and 3 for danggg? Grrrr. That was child’s play! On this official website I was actually scared of clicking on any link — afraid of the next loading-section countdown screen that would be unleashed on me!

Just watched Spiderman-3 in a ‘paid preview’ show at the Sahara Mall PVR in Gurgaon. There is something fundamentally ‘deflating’ about a ‘paid preview’. Now contrast this with Spiderman (1) which I had seen in a ‘real’ Thursday premiere show in Mumbai! (And where I got my 15 seconds of prime time presence on Star News — my sound bites being sandwiched between celebrity-speak and vox populi.)

A quick round up.
Plus points?
Extraordinary action and thrills — living up to the Spiderman 1 & 2 standards.

Minus points?
I had like a 100 deja vu moments. Read on… (Spoiler alert!)

Spiderman gets a split-personality. Dr. Jekyl (with the famous red and blue Spiderman vardi) and Mr. Spyde (who in black spandex is un-vardi. Oops I mean unworthy!)

The villain — actually one of the villains — a special-effects marvel, is of triple parentage. Wait that’s not part of the plot. What I mean is that he has the looks of The Hulk, physical composition of The Mummy and the size of Godzilla!

A bit of Abhimaan thrown in. Professional jealousy leading to (pre)marital discord. She resents his popularity.

She even resents him publicly kissing the ‘other girl’. She says, “How could you? That was OUR kiss.” That “OUR kiss” of course referring to the famous scene from the first movie where Spiderman hangs upside down while she pulls his mask down to do the needful. So it is not only in India that a public kiss (peck, whatever) between Richard Gere and Shilpa Shetty causes so much unrest! But notice that in America the emphasis is on getting the priorities right. Pull the mask sufficiently — to only expose the lips. Why bother with frivolities like look into the eyes and all that jazz(baat).

The American onlookers reaction to anyone who’s perched on some high-up spot (which happens a lot in Spiderman) reminded me of the “arrey bhai yeh suicide kya hota hai?” “jab angrez log martey hain toh usko suicide kehte hain” from Sholay when Dharmendra climbs onto the water tank!

A bit of Raj Kapoor’s Sangam — friends in love with the same girl. A bit of Qurbani (and 20,000 other movies) — one of the friends interrupting with his own torso, the trajectory of a projectile (bullet, knife, blades, poles etc.) aimed at the other friend! And as a befitting finale, dying in the lap of his friends after a refusing-to-let-go-off-footage-crunching dying speech!

A Ramu kaka benevolent equivalent who knows some khaandaan ka raaz that sorts out some misunderstanding. Ramu kaka, if only you had opened your mouth earlier — Spiderman-2 needn’t have been made!

One of the characters loses his memory and then regains it later — both transactions (losing and regaining) contributing to the plot! Vintage Hindi cinema, right?

A perennially angry man’s anger management routine being the cause for some comic moments. Munabhai MBBS anyone? A little bit of Lage Raho Munnabhai — with villains saying “apun ko tereko sorry bolne ka hai“! (I am not quoting, just capturing the sentiment!)

There’s a scene completely lifted from Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (DDLJ). Remember the song ‘Ruk ja…‘? Here Shah Rukh is played by Spider Khan, oops, Spiderman. There we had a Simran — Kajol. Here we have a simmerin’ Kirsten Dunst. (Simmerin’, Simran sounds similar, right?) The song and dance begins with the hero unexpectedly displaying his nimble finger work on the piano keys. And the rest of the dance is to annoy/rile the heroine. I won’t be surprised if Farah Khan has actually ghost-choreographed this song! Actually I would be surprised. Else either Farah’s PR, or the Indian media (not much separating the two, right?) would have left no stone unturned in shoving this news down our throats! Remember how they went berserk after her Shakira tryst?

Again DDLJ — remember SRK talking to Simran’s mom in a simranizing tone, oops, sermonizing tone? “Meri maa ne mujhe sikhaaya thha. Zindagi mein do raste chun sakte ho. Ek aasaan. Ek mushkil. Blah. Blah” That is the gyaan from this movie too — we are what we choose to be!

I left the movie with a heavy sense of DDLJ vu!

In the last two weeks when The Hanging of Saddam Hussain posts (here & here) were attracting all kinds of search engines, many of which (as I mentioned earlier) I didn’t even know existed, there was one search service which I did identify — Sify Search. However, what astounded me was the ‘Sify Exclusive’ label next to each search result.

Obviously there was nothing (Sify) exclusve about these results, since in any case Sify Search is “enhanced by Google”! This is reminiscent of a trend in mainstream media where every news house claimed ‘exclusivity’ even for interviews and stories being simulcast all over, perhaps only with different camera angles!

Other reasons** aside, I will be seeing Mani Ratnam’s Guru (that hits theatres in India on January 12, 2007) for the quirky reason that I have seen both the previous films called Guru, and would like to keep my guru-trysts in tact!

The first Guru I saw was the Mithun Chakraborty – Sridevi (double-role) starrer released sometime in the late 80s. (Okay it was 1989, I just checked on IMDB!) That was a regular 80s film; with Bappi Lahiri’s 80s style music; which I, as an 80s fan, enjoyed! I believe, notable 80s fans like Greatbong and Meghalomania, may also remember this movie for ‘the-kissing-controversy-of the-times’. The gossip-press suggested that Mithun and Sridevi were seeing each other around the time the film was being made. They later broke off around the time the film was being screened. So Sridevi tried to use all her influence to get the ‘offending scene’ removed from the film — a split-second peck! Boy! We have changed as a society in the last two decades!

The second Guru (2002, a.k.a The Guru of Sex) was a comedy starring the ethereal Heather Graham, along with Jimmy Mistry and Marisa Tomei. Incidentally, Shekhar Kapur was the executive producer of that English film, which — surprise surprise — had one of the Hindi chart-toppers of the year, ‘Chori chori, hum gori se pyaar karenge‘. I so actively recommended the film to friends including gifting VCDs to some of them!

So now Mani Ratnam’s Guru is about be released. The songs have been airing on TV for some time now. And my 3-yr old nephew has his own rendition “Dosa hai, Dosa hai, baarish ka dosa hai“. I obviously lack the heart as well as the wherewithal to correct him and tell him it is ‘Kosa hai kosa hai, baarish ka bosa hai‘ — as that would mean introducing him to bosa (kiss)! I shudder at the mere thought of doing that! More so because the same 3-yr old believes he will get married to Aishwarya Rai when he grows up!!

Have a mind & body uplifting 2007 :-)

——————————————————————–

**Other reasons being:

Aishwarya Rai
Aishwarya Rai
Aishwayra Rai…
Right, so now you get the idea how my nephew started believing who he would marry? ;-)