tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16687314548576548212024-03-14T20:49:10.672+02:00..so they dance!Reviews and ramblings on Indian cinema.veracioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14437521137603205617noreply@blogger.comBlogger425125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1668731454857654821.post-12150575072598637342016-01-04T11:57:00.000+02:002016-01-04T11:57:05.294+02:00Filmi year 2015.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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This year was one in a long while where I actually failed to get a true sense of the film industry and its trends. Usually even as I miss out on most films and only catch the major releases there is an understanding of where things might be headed in the coming year. This time I struggle to take the pulse.</div>
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But who cares, right? I watched some films, now let's talk about them!</div>
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<b>Favourite Film of The Year: </b>Piku</div>
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This is a tough one, because I fear it may still be lurking among the films I've yet to see from 2015. There is so much I just have not yet gotten to, from the bizarre Shankar flick <b>I</b> to the Randeep Hooda (still! fave!) starrer <b>Main aur Charles</b>. </div>
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But as it stands now I think my favourite is <b><a href="http://sotheydance.blogspot.in/2015/10/mini-reviews-films-i-actually-liked.html">Piku</a></b>, the lively little road trip drama about a fantastic woman and her eccentric father. All performances simply impressed and while not a film I will endlessly rewatch it was nothing if not enjoyable.</div>
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<b>Meh of the Year: </b>Shamitabh</div>
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There were a lot of disappointments this year, as it seemed like the more hyped up I was for an upcoming the less it delivered the goods. But I think I was most apathetic towards the R. Balki directed <b>Shamitabh</b>, which was (very) partially shot in my beautiful home city of Helsinki. The film started off with promise but seemed to continue as an unbearable slog towards an unknown and quite uninteresting ending. It's a story of stardom, rise and fall, friendship, love, and all of these themes that just don't quite come together. The gimmick surrounding the plot was probably based completely in modern science but I didn't really fully buy into it anyway. Dhanush and Amitabh both do fine, but it just doesn't become as moving a film as it desperately wants to be.</div>
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The only bright spot of the film is the new heroine, Akshara Haasan, who was an absolute delight. Which brings us to...</div>
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<b>Favourite Maybe Sort of Trend: </b>The Year of The Heroine</div>
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Bollywood presses will always highlight supposed arguments and bitchiness between successful women, and this year was no exception, but what I also kept noticing in the press were news items about top actresses refusing roles because they weren't substantial enough, despite them being opposite a very successful male lead. It seemed to be pointing towards a trend, where heroines themselves are such guaranteed box office draws that it matters to them what their own role is, and they get a pick of the best, so they also know their worth and demand more, knowing their own box office power. Actresses like Deepika Padukone and Kangana Raut are leveraging their success for more substantial roles and this is fantastic for everybody.</div>
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I may be accused of over-optimism here, and I'm sure things will be slow to change, but it is a very positive change, and I look forward to seeing how the industry develops in this regard.</div>
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<b>Best Cathartic Revenge Tale:</b> NH10</div>
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Another favourite from this year that I'm unlikely to rewatch, but I still have to give a shoutout to this film for an excellent mood, great leading performances and sense of milieu.</div>
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<b>What a Year, If Not For the Movies: </b>Varun Dhawan</div>
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On paper, Varun Dhawan was set to blow me away in 2015, what with the ABCD sequel and Sriram Raghavan's Badlapur. Sadly both films ended up being on the films I enjoyed the least, Badlapur for its pointless, sickening violence that rendered a character arc uninteresting to me, and ABCD2 for the sheer hackiness of the script, which was more stupid that it had earned the right to be with the lovely dance numbers. Varun was not bad at all in either film but the fact I disliked both lead to this being a rather underwhelming year for a guy who I still like a lot and hope to see in films I like better next year. </div>
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<b>The Embarrassingly Long List of Films I Will Probably Watch</b>: Shaandaar, I, Main aur Charles, Tanu Weds Manu Returns, Dum Laga ke Haisha, Bajirao Mastani (maybe?).</div>
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You can keep your old man Khan movies, from Phantom to PRDP to Dilwale, I'm sorry to say. </div>
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<b>Questions I Have for 2016</b></div>
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Will any of the newer heroes step up to the plate and become a must-see favourite of mine? Do I need to continue to tamper expectations so as to not be as disappointed as I was in many films this year? Is Shahrukh Khan headed for an interesting turn with his two new movies or will it be same old same old? Will somebody bloody put out Tamil movies with English subtitles? And finally, looking at the 2016 line-up, are biopics going to become as omnipresent in Bollywood as superhero/comic book films are in Hollywood these days?</div>
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<b>And One Little Promise</b></div>
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Gosh, I love Indian films so much and I have such an annoying habit of abandoning them and this blog every now and then. I should be able to manage one post a month and at least one film a month (new, old, Hindi, Tamil, whatever it may be), even if it's a shorter review. I may never get to the days of 100 posts per year but 12 should be manageable. </div>
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veracioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14437521137603205617noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1668731454857654821.post-75289259879092328292016-01-02T09:36:00.001+02:002016-01-02T09:36:44.998+02:00Baahubali: The Beginning.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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At times a worthwhile talking point precedes the reputation of a film so much that while it doesn't quite color my viewing, it does hamper me with preconceptions. This was the case with <b>Baahubali</b>, the first part of the big budget Tamil/Telugu two-parter fantasy action film, and its alleged sexism. Yet, there are a lot of other facets that deserve discussing, too. In a year where I barely watched Indian films (and also neglected this poor blog of mine) it makes sense to begin the new year by breaking down the biggest blockbuster of the previous year.</div>
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Shiva (Prabhas) grows up below a magnificent waterfall, above which he knows there is a land he must get to, even as his mother forbids him not to climb it. But climb he does, to discover the warrior Ananthika (Tamannah) who he has been besotted with ever since he found her mask on the bottom of the waterfall. Ananthika's mission in life is to free the queen Devaseva (Anushka Shetty) from the clutches of the evil king Ballavadeva (Rana Daggubati), and Shiva joins her in this mission, unaware it is all his destiny.</div>
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In terms of the good, the look of the film is spectacular. The bombastic Southie masala style has always fit the fantasy-history stories, and it does here as well. The story never stops moving, and is so vast it can't be contained in this single film. I absolutely loved Rana Daggubati's horrendous villain and thought all female leads did fantastic. Prabhas is an actor I've never quite become a fan of, but he continues to be just fine in my books. </div>
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I liked how well incorporated the visual effects were, though not flawless, particularly in the massive crowd sequences. These scenes owe a lot both in terms of technology and inspiration to the scenes in Jackson's Return of The King, and while the inspiration is cringeworthy, it feels okay to place such a scene in a new, Indian fantasy concept. The racism in depicting the enemy as human but distinctly dark-skinned savages who seem to speak a language aping an African language is so offputting it turns comical.</div>
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Then there is the sexism, which has inspired criticism better written than mine, as well as counter-criticisms. It is gross and objectionable but it is also just so tired. The reduction of Tamannah's Ananthika from a woman with a mission, a skillset and if not a fully fleshed out characterisation then at the very least potential for one, into just a pretty young thing would be annoying in and of itself but it goes further. This change is brought on by the hero, sneakily, because his infatuation with her looks renders all other facets of her unimportant. </div>
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I suppose there are more forgiving interpretations of this that one could conjure up, but the film is pretty content in this laziness. It's strange how I've never been that annoyed with the overblown masculinity of Southie heroes, or even the casual sidelining of the heroines that comes with it. It is only these extreme cases that truly get under my skin.</div>
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The next installment in the Bahubali series promises more backstory on Anushka Shetty's character, which I am cautiously optimistic about because she is among my favorites in the Southern industries. Naturally the sequel could be as bad as the first film in the exact same ways, but I'm hopeful. As it stands, Bahubali: The Beginning is a decent spectacle elevated by its visuals and success, but not the story or its characters. </div>
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veracioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14437521137603205617noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1668731454857654821.post-4568556593791477712015-10-04T10:32:00.000+03:002015-10-04T10:32:00.432+03:00Mini reviews: the Films I Actually Liked Edition.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b>NH10 </b>- I went in not knowing much about this one beyond the initial premise of an urban couple getting mixed up in rural violent disputes along the highway. I also probably won't ever go back to this one, such a brutal watch it was, but this one really nailed so many things I didn't expect it to. Anushka Sharma delivered a career-great (or career upper echelon but hopefully not the best we get to see out of her yet) performance. The mood was fantastic throughout, capturing the terror and the panic and the constant threat of violence looming over. The soundtrack underscores the mood, and the milieu is perfect for it, too. Enjoyable, but tough, precisely because of how real it feels.<br />
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<b>Piku</b> - This tale of bowel movement and road trip and family bonding and tentative romance feels like precisely the worst kind of "quirky" film you could imagine, and yet it's one I'll probably find myself recommending the most. The strength of the script, that immediately allows you to feel at home with these characters, added to the strength of the performances (Deepika has probably been this good before, and even so this feels special) simply makes Piku a delight. I just sat there, watching it, being awed and delighted by its world and its humour. Amitabh and Irffan are fantastic here, as well, but their value has been demonstrated before, whereas Deepika Padukone is making great strides as of late. I love that this was a hit.<br />
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<b>Sunrise</b> (2014) - A French-Indian co-production was one that I felt safe taking my Bollywood-hating friend to, as the whole thing clocked in around 90 minutes of running time and did not seem like your standard crime fare. Adil Hussain leads in this noir indie where rain is a constant and the narrative dips in and out of reality as we follow the cop Joshi chase shadows on the streets of Mumbai as multiple children are turning up dead. A sort of b-plot follows a group of dance girls in a heart-breaking portrayal of the underworld. I don't particularly want to get too deep into everything that happens, as the film (directed by Partho Sen-Gupta) is so small in scale and its objectives that it's best viewed without knowing too much. I saw it at a festival, so I don't know how widely it's been released yet, but worth looking out for.<br />
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<b>Detective Byomkesh Bakshy </b>- Sushant Singh Rajput had impressed me so little in his previous films that the poor man did not even have a tag on this here blog, following his debut in <b><a href="http://sotheydance.blogspot.in/2013/08/kai-po-che.html">Kai Po Che</a> </b>and his second film <b><a href="http://sotheydance.blogspot.com/2013/10/disappointments-small-large-nautanki.html">Desi Shuddh Romance</a></b> (which I hated). But with this Hindi adaptation of the famous Bengali detective novels, he's arrived in a big way, both to my graces and in the industry in general. I loved this Dibakar Banerjee film, in its 1940's Kolkatta milieu and noir style cinematography, the story in all its twists and turns and fantastic supporting cast. And that rocking soundtrack, by god. This might not end up being my favourite of 2015 but it'll probably at the very least crack top five, and I look forward to any possible sequels,</div>
veracioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14437521137603205617noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1668731454857654821.post-31630816114634183092015-10-02T09:54:00.001+03:002015-10-02T09:54:56.335+03:00Mini reviews: playing catch up.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b>Bajrangi Bhaijaan</b> - When you haven't been watching any Hindi films for months and months on end, it feels rather lovely to be swept up in the melodrama again, and this Salman Khan starrer certainly fit the bill, what with Pakistan-India unity themes and the missing mute child of it all. I can't say I hated it, but towards the end it was just a tiny bit too much. Loved seeing Nawazuddin Siddiqui pick up that mainstream paycheck, even if I wasn't huge on his role in this.<br />
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Oh, and Kareena Kapoor Khan was in this film, too, a fact I barely remembered until just now. I don't want to say she should pick better films, since maybe none are coming her way any more (lamentable fact of life for married actresses) but I do miss her putting in better work than this.<br />
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<b>Dil Dhadakne Do </b>- Speaking of Kareena, would have loved to see the original cast for this, which was Ranbir-Kareena as the siblings who were eventually played by Priyanka Chopra and Ranveer Singh, and Madhuri as the mother (a role that went to Shefali Shetty, who is great here). Still, had that happened, what would have ended up on the screen probably would have been the same, middle-of-the-road family drama with some emotional moments, comedy and dance numbers. I really enjoyed this one, but with the caveat that from the intermission I knew it would be a hopelessly forgettable film. The characters are just a little too bland and stereotypical, the drama predictable and even the twists rather unexciting. It's pretty and it's fun, and then you never think about it again as the credits roll. Indeed, my biggest take aways from the film were the following three things:<br />
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<li>It is exciting to see Priyanka Chopra still in this familiar environment now that she's set to lead a major US network drama series. I've never been a huge fan, but I've also been the first to admit her talent. <b><a href="http://sotheydance.blogspot.com/2011/09/to-have-and-to-hold-in-sickness-and-in.html">7 Khoon Maaf</a></b> is still her finest work, but if her mainstream US success leads to more people discovering that Bhardwaj gem, I am all for it. </li>
<li>Farhan Akhtar looks really good in a t-shirt. </li>
<li>...but Farhan Akhtar annoyingly wrote the character he himself played the Righteous Male Feminist dialogue. Okay, buddy. Okay.</li>
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<b>Any Body Can Dance 2</b> - This one blew my hair back. Is this a movie? Is this just things happening on celluloid in a somewhat sequential manner? Was ABCD the first this bad and <a href="http://sotheydance.blogspot.fi/2013/06/abcd-any-body-can-dance-delight-of-year.html">I just didn't notice</a>, too swept up in the glorious dance sequences? ABCD2 sure feels like a non-movie, with things happening to characters one barely knows, with every frequent conflict solved two lines of dialogue later by multiple deux ex machina, with cardboard cut-outs having emotions like stickers attached and removed easily for plot convenience. The dance sequences are okay, but with absolutely no emotional connection to anything else that is happening, they feel strangely hollow. I enjoyed seeing the familiar faces from the first film, including Lauren Gottlieb, but holy moly. Don't suffer through this one like I did, even for shirtless Varun Dhawan and some okay naach-gaana.</div>
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<b>Badlapur </b>- Am I going to hate Badlapur, I asked my Twitter timeline multiple times, seeing the review summaries pop up here and there, and for the most part people either let their silence on the matter speak for itself, or just told me a flat-out "most likely". But what with director favourite Sriram Raghavan (yes, I know <b><a href="http://sotheydance.blogspot.com/2012/04/agent-vinod-hollow-spectacle.html">Agent Vinod</a></b> happened, but I blame that one on Saif), established favourite Nawazuddin and emerging favourite Varun Dhawan, how was I to ignore this film? It was the bane of my existence until I would finally see it. So I did. </div>
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In another mood, another time, this might have become one of my flawed favourites, one that I could re-watch and re-examine for themes and nuances in performances, but at this time, during the mood I was in, I checked out about 40 minutes into the film and never quite checked back in.The tale of revenge turning one man (Dhawan) into a monster as the culprit (Siddiqui) withers in jail is certainly an intriguing one, especially held up against the empowerment through revenge narrative that was Raghavan's first film <b><a href="http://sotheydance.blogspot.com/2009/12/ifac-9-ek-hasina-thi-oh-my.html">Ek Hasina Thi</a> </b>(11 years old this year, wow). And yet, when it was all said and done, I wondered if I should have just rewatched his debut.</div>
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Raghavan remains a capable director, allowing his leads to shine and for audiences to gain new appreciation for their range, but the "women problem" remains. Huma Qureshi, Yami Gautam, Divya Dutta and Radhika Apte all feature and do great with what little they're given, but the way the other characters or the camera and narrative choices treat them doesn't sit right with me. Sexual coercion can be played up in a way that empathises with the victim and recognises the perpetrator as vile, but instead such scenes are merely used for titillation for the camera and as a demonstration of the male lead's sickening power over his victims. It is disturbing to me when the narrative doesn't condemn a morally ambiguous character's misogyny but instead throws it up on the screen unquestioningly as a fact of life. It's all about choices in portrayal, and Raghavan seems to make the least considered ones each and every time. </div>
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Some years back I talked about how <a href="http://sotheydance.blogspot.fi/2012/09/kuchhe-dhaage-conventional-film-that.html"><b>Kucche Dhaage</b></a>, a 70's drama thriller, deconstructed the revenge tale so often found in Indian films. It portrays the horrible things people do for revenge, and also how this desire to avenge wrecks the people involved psychologically. In some ways, it lets these human monsters off the hook a little too much, giving them a redemption arc on the second half, whilst also showing that since they've devoted themselves to the violence of revenge, they can't ever lead normal lives after it. Badlapur, in many ways, is an even more brutal, and unrelenting deconstruction of revenge narratives, but as Indian films often are, it's still too concerned with its murky lead, not his victims.</div>
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As much as I hated this film, I'm not ready to give up on Raghavan yet, such is my deep affection for his first two films. But would I recommend this one? No chance in hell.</div>
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veracioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14437521137603205617noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1668731454857654821.post-33780070948653477382015-10-02T08:36:00.001+03:002015-10-02T08:36:32.339+03:00Blogging hiatus maybe kind of sort over. Pakka promise.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Here is what has happened in 2015 so far<br />
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<li>I haven't written here much at all, because truth be told I have not really been watching much Indian cinema. </li>
<li>I had a very boring first half of the year and then a very chaotic, strange late 20's crisis-filled second half of the year that seems to have settled down a bit now.</li>
<li>A Bollywood film that was partially filmed in Finland came out (Shamitabh) and I still haven't seen it. </li>
<li>I noticed even from the periphery of Indian film conversations that women have become the main talking point, whether it's about who's ruling the industry (Deepika vs Kangana, not Ranbir vs Ranveer or whoever else) or whether it's about their depiction in films, in both positive and negative. Times change but at a snail's pace, but that change is definitely welcome.</li>
<li>NH10, Bajrangi Bhaijaan and the French-Indian co-production indie Sunrise all were shown at Helsinki International Film Festival 2015. Expect reviews (well, mini reviews) soon.</li>
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And that's really about it. I'm trying to play catch up with recent Hindi films and it's been going swimmingly, and I'm enjoying it a lot. What kind of bugs me, though, is the recent trend of a lot of Southie films, particularly Tamil, seeing absolutely horrid DVD releases with no subtitles. I guess the way things are headed, DVD is dead and streaming is king, but I'm still the loser who values physical objects (my Indian film collection is proudly on display in my apartment), and should I want to dive back into DVD hoarding, I would hope I could find some of those newer Tamil films, too. In the meantime, though, I should probably investigate these new streaming platforms more.</div>
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What's been up with you?</div>
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veracioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14437521137603205617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1668731454857654821.post-14537854434183743872015-01-21T10:08:00.001+02:002015-01-21T10:16:10.607+02:00Filmi year 2014.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Considering I began the year enjoying the delights and heights of a fancy Chennai hotel at a New Year's Eve party, you'd think I'd have spent the rest of it all caught up in the glam of the various film industries. Instead, this was another one of those years I assume I will continue having, where my Indian film interest comes and goes in spurts. One week it's six movies, the next four weeks it's absolutely none. Stop and start, stop and start. Such is the nature of my fandom, it seems.<br />
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Still, even as oddly paced as my film watching is these days, I did manage to catch most of the big releases, or at least the films I wanted to see, or felt like I ought to see. This post is a quick round up, certainly not inclusive of all the 2014 films I've yet to catch up to, working on that DVD release delay as I usually do.<br />
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<strong>Favourite of The Year</strong>: Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania<br />
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I want to make a really horrible, hamfisted food metaphor about how HSKD is all about using leftovers from other films and somehow spinning the most gorgeous meal out of them, but you know what? I'm not sure gives the movie enough credit. It's made of fresh ingredients, despite being a formulaic romcom that we've seen a million times, to the point where everything feels like a throwback, but so good and well-written that it feels completely fresh. In an incredible year for Alia Bhatt, she completely shone in this and Varun Dhawan also proved why he's among the most promising of the new debuts in the past few years. I should rewatch this, because it's probably the only film I saw all year that I actually really want to rewatch.<br />
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<b>The Best Film-Induced Trip Disguised As A Viewing Experience:</b> <a href="http://sotheydance.blogspot.com/2014/10/a-treatise-on-masala-and-kick.html">Kick</a><br />
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I don't even know if I watched Kick or if Kick just happened at me. It washed over me in many waves, each more inane than the previous one. I guess I liked it, but I also hated it because it was just so stupid, but it was so stupid it was kind of beautiful. It was the kind of film where I want to want more out of it, because films this inane should not be considered the height of film making, but at the same time, it was so much fun as it happened that it's hard to hate on it too much. I can only pretend to be so pretentious.<br />
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<b>The Greatest Cinema Experience:</b> <a href="http://sotheydance.blogspot.com/2014/01/a-month-in-india-part-7-sholay-3d.html">Sholay 3D in Juhu, Mumbai</a><br />
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Yeah, I'm only posting about this to gloat. It was fantastic and I can't believe I got so lucky as to be in India when it happened.<br />
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<b>Most Unexpected Rise:</b> Alia Bhatt<br />
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2014 kicked off with everybody laughing at this young woman for giving an uneducated answer on a chat show, and I couldn't really blame them. She was not great in her debut, and even though she had intriguing movies in the pipeline, I was not anticipating any of them all that much. Then <b><a href="http://sotheydance.blogspot.com/2014/05/highway-and-journey-home.html">Highway</a></b> came along and I loved it, and then Humpty cemented her year. I have not seen 2 States yet because after actually reading Chetan Bhagat I've soured on film adaptations of his book but just those two films alone make her one of the most interesting names to look out for in 2015.<br />
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<b>I Guess I'm not Weird for Liking This Guy</b>: Randeep Hooda<br />
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I developed <a href="http://sotheydance.blogspot.com/2013/01/this-is-story-of-how-i-got-completely.html">a very sudden affection for this guy</a> after seeing him in Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai in late 2012/early 2013 and have been following his career ever since. I feel like last year was the year where he began being more of a topic of conversation and I'm really happy for it, though I suspect we will still see him in Bhatt-y thrillers and playing second fiddle to whoever Khan but whatever, I'm just happy more people are into him now that they've seen him in Highway and Kick. He's so good and delicious, and always puts in maximum effort on screen. I just really like him.<br />
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<b>My Queens Remain Queens: </b>Bobby Jasoos & Mardaani<br />
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Vidya Balan had a pretty uneven year, as I hear Shaadi Ke Side Effects is just not very good, but I did enjoy Bobby Jasoos a lot. Rani just had Mardaani but Mardaani is very much better than nothing, because Mardaani was quite a showing.<br />
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<b>Favourite Older Film I Watched This Year:</b> <a href="http://sotheydance.blogspot.com/2014/05/soodhu-kavvum-just-watch-it-watch-it-now.html">Soodhu Kavvum</a><br />
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I'm incredibly happy I bought this Tamil black comedy from India, because it turned out to be one of the laugh-out-loud funniest comedies I've seen from India in a long while and its satiric edge on Indian society was razor sharp. Plus it introduced me to Vijay Sethupathi, pictured here. I've not seen enough him to know if he's a favourite yet but so far so good, in all honesty.<br />
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<b>Films I Missed Out On But Will Check Out: </b>Haider, PK, Finding Fanny, Ugly, Gulaab Gang, Deddh Ishqiya.<br />
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If you have any recommendations outside that list of 2014 films I need to check out, I am all ears!<br />
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<b>Questions I Have For 2015</b><br />
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Will Saif Ali Khan or Abhishek Bachchan, two guys who absolutely defined my Bollywood fandom around 2005-2007, ever make another film I'll actually want to see? Will Shamitabh by R. Balki make me weep senselessly like his previous Paa, considering that Shamitabh will also be the first Bollywood film shot in my country? After a year so fantastic for better roles for women, what will come of wonderful ladies like Kangana Raut and Deepika Padukone, whose stars are on the rise? Will I salivate over the immense promise of Badlapur cast & director only to be disappointed? Is my favourite of 2015 already Shankar's I/Ai, even without having seen it? (Yes on that last one. Very much yes.)</div>
veracioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14437521137603205617noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1668731454857654821.post-57544597829845594932014-12-27T19:37:00.000+02:002014-12-27T19:37:04.216+02:00The year end romantic film bloat: Khoobsurat, Daawat-e-Ishq & Kill Dil.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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So it finally happened: Shaad Ali has has a misfire that I actually agree with the haters on. <strong><a href="http://sotheydance.blogspot.com/2008/07/god-made-man-tailor-made-gentleman.html">Jhoom Barabar Jhoom</a></strong> was a film not everybody was on board with (critics and audiences loathed it, but it gained a cult following that cannot stop rewatching Ticket To Hollywood), and <strong><a href="http://sotheydance.blogspot.com/2010/04/bunty-aur-babli-steal-your-heart.html">Bunty aur Babli</a> </strong>is not a universal dil squish, either, but I legitimately found myself telling a friend earlier this year, "He hasn't made a bad film yet." Well, he has now.<br />
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<strong>Kill Dil </strong>arrives limply clichéd from the get-go, but never catches fire in terms of story, visuals or emotions. The tale of two rascals (Ranveer Singh & Ali Zafar) separated by one of them wanting to turn good as love conquers all (Parineeti Chopra) while a father figure disapproves (a spry Govinda performance) just never really goes anywhere interesting, and it's a shame. <br />
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I get the sense it's trying to occupy some clever mid-ground between being an unapologetic tribute and/or parody to 90's cheeseball actioners and a more modern take on an age-old story, but it never reaches the point of just being a story you buy into. Instead, everybody in the film falters when the story provides such a shaky surface for them. Ali Zafar is good but doesn't frankly get to do much, Govinda has some great moments but his character is unlikable, and the main pair simply doesn't exude much of anything, despite trying very hard. I wish I had an explanation for why this doesn't work besides the obvious two: don't center your movie around cold-blooded murder, and aspire to be more than a tribute to older films.<br />
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<strong>Khoobsurat </strong>at least partly succeeds in being a part of the genre it aspires to be: a Disney princess romance in the 21st century. Sonam Kapoor's Milli is a your standard young adult novel heroine, sub-sect Mary Sue batallion. She's clutzy! She's good at her job! She cares about other people but has zero social skills! She says the wrong thing, it's awkward! A cute guy (newcomer, way-too-good-for-all-of-this Fawad Afzal Khan) is annoyed by her at first but really likes her, though, because she's just so lovable.<br />
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I liked this film for the fluffpiece that it was, and then I got increasingly impatient with it. I realised quickly I was no longer a young girl, but a young woman; I no longer want to be a princess. I can't believe in these inane fantasies anymore unless they have some sort of characterisation and fantastic acting behind them, and Sonam doesn't quite get there. It feels uncomfortable to watch her try; the best of acting is so effortless, you aren't forced to think about it as you watch somebody emote their way through a fairly simple scene. About an hour in the movie had lost me, and I wasn't going to be swept away by it. Ah well.<br />
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What a strange year for Parineeti, to start out as <a href="http://sotheydance.blogspot.fi/2012/12/filmi-year-2012.html">one of my absolute favourite newcomers of the past years</a> and then end up with a confusingly mixed resumé towards the end, completely outdone by a woman whose first film was <a href="http://sotheydance.blogspot.fi/2013/01/diving-into-aggravatingly-shallow-world.html">my worst film of 2012 by a long, long shot</a> (Alia has come a long way, hasn't she?). I wasn't particularly into <strong><a href="http://sotheydance.blogspot.com/2014/05/hasee-toh-phasee-overcomplicating-good.html">Hasee Toh Phasee</a></strong>, Kill Dil was disappointing, but hey, at least she had this one. <strong>Daawat-e-Ishq</strong>, a feast of love, was a vaguely food-themed movie that touches on the issue of dowry, and ends up being a modestly lovely little romcom. At the same time, however, it's all just so unmemorable I almost struggle to come up with other adjectives to describe it. There's some cuteness, delicious food scenes, and some solid acting by both of the young leads (Aditya Roy Kapoor).<br />
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The big conversation of the past few years has been the continued success or lack of success of the new generation of actors. Looking over at Parineeti Chopra's filmography, she seems destined to pick films that aren't quite amazing, and therefore never display her skills in a way that her fans, such as myself, would quite hope. It's quite easy to say "pick better movies" but who knows what kind of offers she's even getting. I still continue to hope for good things for her; she's got a spark that I think is missing from many of the other newcomers, so I hope that her presence is here to stay.<br />
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As the filmi year 2014 draws to a close, I'll be writing up my year's end post, and once again must apologise for not maintaining the blog as diligently as I probably should've. Still, I did a lot of travel this year, as well as a lot of work, and I even crossed some things off my bucket list. I've also got some movies I've yet to write about - including my favourite film of the year.<br />
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Talk to you soon.<br />
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veracioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14437521137603205617noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1668731454857654821.post-48025292281750164912014-10-22T22:50:00.002+03:002014-10-22T22:50:50.321+03:00Mumbai Police: a lesson in story mechanics.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I'm a real admirer of breaking up chronological order in story-telling. At times it may feel like a cheap gimmick to employ when one's story is not that intriguing to begin with, but sometimes it really draws the best out of a simple story, and when it comes to movies, it's a very interesting way to allow the audience to play a detective, piecing together the story as it slowly gets revealed to us, and to give your actors something to work with. They can play with what to show and what not to show the audience, and all the interesting facets of a character, being revealed slowly over time, all of this can not only help a story but make a story stand out.<br />
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Modern Malayalam films seem to love to do this. You set up a story where the subject of the mystery gets peeled back like an onion, layer by layer, in form of flashbacks and flashbacks within flashbacks. Luckily, Malayalam cinema seems to also have plenty of capable film makers able to hold these narratives together in a coherent manner.<br />
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<strong>Mumbai Police</strong> (2013) got such rave reviews that even I, who barely knows what's happening in Kerala in terms of cinema, heard about it. Prithviraj plays Antony Moses, a detective who gets into a car accident and loses much of his recent memory. More's the pity, as he had just figured out who killed fellow officer Aaryan (Jayasurya), and must now keep his memory loss a secret from everybody apart from brother-in-law and senior officer Farhan (Rahman), while piecing together the case from scratch, to reach his previous conclusion about the killer. <br />
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The real triumph of the film is simply the steady, gripping pace with which it lays out the mystery, and all its components. We don't quite know Antony, because he doesn't quite know himself - he's alien even to himself due to the memory loss, and so every reaction to him is new to us as much as it is to him. Rahman's performance simultaneously reflects everything and nothing all at once, and Jayasurya's performance as the affable Aaryan completes the trio of stellar performances. The only real problem with the film - apart from some slightly spoilerous niggles I might have about it - is the fact that I don't know if such an intense story that relies heavily on the slow reveal would stand up many a rewatch. With that said, I absolutely must see it a second time. </div>
veracioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14437521137603205617noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1668731454857654821.post-69271890564171777932014-10-12T18:00:00.000+03:002014-10-22T22:55:11.997+03:00Main Tera Hero. It's a film. It exists. It's not very good.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Every now and then I wonder why I watch movies, besides the fact my life is boring and ultimately empty, and circle back to thinking that in some ways I watch each film with the sincere wish that it's so good I would want to rewatch it, and make it a repeat pleasure, as opposed to just a memory of a couple of hours spent (or wasted). Not every movie has to reach this lofty goal, and indeed, if only one in ten films I watch, that's still pretty good for me.<br />
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That's probably why I hadn't seen a David Dhawan film until now. Some directors just have a style that you don't really have to watch to know; watching a few songs, a scene here or there, and reading other people's writings, you kind of pick up on what makes a director distinct from others. And much as I love comedy, every comedy I consider fantastic is not described by adjectives like "brainless" or "ear-ringingly loud". So I just figured out his oeuvre wouldn't be my thing, so I smartly avoided it, until the point came when his latest film actually interested me a little, and I thought, "How bad could it be?"<br />
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And oh boy, was this terrible, and I laughed a lot, mostly at my stupid self. At least it didn't damage my view of anybody: I have some fondness for Varun Dhawan, and I think at one point I even had fondness for Ileana (see also: <a href="http://sotheydance.blogspot.com/2007/12/once-more-with-feeling-aata-again.html"><b>Aata</b> obsession</a>), and I think I still have the same fondness for both of them. But yeah, this was not great.<br />
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<b>Main Tera Hero</b> stars Varun Dhawan as Seenu, an unlikable human being who seems to be on some magical stimulant perhaps called life, who fails upwards into a Bangalore college and proceeds to torment the existence of beautiful Sunaina (Ileana). Woefully, Sunaine already <i>has</i> a stalker who only likes her because of her looks, the menacing Angad (Arunoday Singh), and therefore a game of groan-inducing one-upmanship ensues, and Sunaina looks beautiful during it. On the second half, this riveting tale is complicated by the appearance of Ayesha (Nargis Fahkri), who's in love with Seenu, only not really, because she's just kind of dim. Comedy!<br />
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For a comedy to be so loud and clichéd and still have a chance of working, everybody has to commit and go all in on it, and for the most part, the cast does so. Arunoday Singh as Angad actually does extra work, and something about his ludicrously massive body makes for surprisingly good physical comedy. Varun commits, too, but Seenu is such a loathable character to begin with, it's hard to truly enjoy it. Amidst the ridiculousness, you do see those glimpses of that 'it' factor that may be the thing that made Varun stand out in the <a href="http://sotheydance.blogspot.com/2013/01/diving-into-aggravatingly-shallow-world.html"><b>Student of the Year</b></a> trio, in my eyes, but those glimpses are rather fleeting. The actresses do fine with the pitiful little they're given to work with, the songs are grating, but the movie doesn't thankfully drag.<br />
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Still, I don't know, unless you're the type with the taste for this breed of comedy, it's not particularly worth your two hours. Unless, I don't know, Varun shirtless appeals to you on some kind of primal level, in which case, hey, have at it. </div>
veracioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14437521137603205617noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1668731454857654821.post-35110100266978850622014-10-10T12:28:00.000+03:002014-10-10T12:28:00.632+03:00What makes Indian cinema so easy to ignore?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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For over a decade, or at least as long as I can remember, the Helsinki International Film Festival has had at least one Indian film in their programme, every single year. Last year, we were treated to four different films, ranging from the indie gem <b>Monsoon Shootout</b> to the big budget extravaganza of <b>Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani</b>. A few years back, we even got the megalomaniac<b> Enthiran</b>, sending every Tamizhan Finland-dweller to the theater to whistle at Rajnikanth's entrance. Overall, HIFF has consistently served up something delightful for us few Bollywood fans habiting this northern land, and a rare treat for those people who love the occasional Indian film, but don't necessarily seek them out all year round.<br />
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Then this year, nothing. Zilch.<i> Kuch nahin</i>.<br />
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When asked for a reason, HIFF responded on Facebook that another film festival would have a few Bollywood aces up their sleeve later in the spring. No offence to Season Film Festival, which I like but tend to miss due to it springing up (no pun intended) on me and my schedules every spring, but I found this response even more infuriating than not having a single Indian film on the schedule. So there's not enough room for two festivals to <i>both</i> have a few films from a country that produces hundreds of films every year?<br />
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Without getting deeper into the flawed booking models of domestic film festivals, I've always wondered why it is that Indian cinema is so universally easy to ignore, by film festivals and well-known international critics alike. The same people who appreciate varied genres, various types of films from all kinds of corners of the world, commercial, non-commercial, small budget, big budget, success or flop, all have no-India blinders on, apart from the occasional dip into the Irrfan Khan fare or a Satyajit Ray retrospective. In this post, I'm going to explore a few potential reasons and ways to argue against them, or think outside of them.<br />
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1. <b>Indian cinema is seen as one genre. </b><br />
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Not every Indian film is a romantic comedy musical with young people running through fields and dancing around ceaselessly, yet this is such a dominant stereotype that the whole concept of "different" cinema has become a weird cliché. The confusion arises from the two vastly different forms of genre distinction. In Hollywood, certain genres that we know now today as comedy, horror, romance, action etc, formed to serve a certain purpose. In commercial Indian cinema, a particular format of incorporating song sequences into narrative sequences without fully adopting the genre trappings of what Hollywood calls 'musicals' became largely the norm, influenced by not just foreign cinema, but local theater traditions as well. Slowly, the concept of <i>masala</i>, having varied proportions of different genres fluidly co-existing in one film, became the ideal in commercial cinema. Potboilers would entertain all kinds of audiences at once.<br />
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In modern Hindi cinema, and in other Indian film industries as well, the masala tends to be both a format and a genre. You can have masala format for a genre film - the song and dance sequences in a gangster film, the melodrama in a sports film - as well as have a full-on masala film, with a romantic track, a comedy track, and action, drama (to paraphrase the drunken paramour Veeru from<b> Sholay</b>, "emotion, drrrrrama, trrrragedy"), villains and mothers and heroines and songs, all thrown into the pot and stirred to perfection. There is a tendency to regard all of this as one and the same, even though they're two very different, and both valid, ways of making a movie work for the local audiences.<br />
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The logic of this dismissal works in two ways: <i>one</i>, lump different types of films with little in common to a "masala" genre that people outside India rarely understand to begin with, and then<i> two</i>, to highlight everything that isn't masala (either formatted as masala, or in the 'genre' of masala) as being different and alternative and completely out of the ordinary, even when 'out of the ordinary' in this case could easily be the vast majority of movies produced in India. Indian film fans find themselves recommending films by telling non-fans, "This is different," because the prejudice towards what is "the norm" in Indian cinema is so prevalent among international moviegoers. Indian films, for all their variety, are at best lumped into a fun colourful ball of frothy masala, and at worst regarded as a universally understood joke.<br />
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2. <b>Indian cinema does a poor job marketing itself (and so does everybody else). </b><br />
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The saddest thing about this "all the same" misconception is that at times Indian industry people perpetuate it themselves. If you take a drink every time an actor or a director promotes a movie by calling it different, you'll drink yourself to death before you finish a copy of Filmfare (I exaggerate but still). The failure to promote a different idea of Indian films doesn't stop there, though. In most countries of the world, Indian films are scarcely available, subtitled or dubbed to local languages, or even to a lingua franca, such as English. In the places where they are available, they're barely marketed to local audiences outside the Indian diaspora. When they are marketed, they are usually marketed as "different" (to what the stereotype of Bollywood films is), even though the local non-Indian audiences might have no clue whatsoever what the actual Indian films that fit the norm look like (and when they see such films, they may actually very much enjoy them).<br />
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I'm not pointing the finger at Bollywood or Tollywood or anybody else, because I'm as guilty of this as anybody else. When somebody asks me for recomendations, my mind jumps to the Band Baaja Baarats and Amar Akbar Anthonys of the masala world, then back-pedals to something "different" from those, as if masala is a shameful thing, as opposed to a wonderful, unique, amazing form of making films. It's a hard cycle to get out of, so I've tried to take a step back and instead ask the person, what types of films they like. Indian films have all kinds. Take your pick.<br />
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But it is tragic, because there is so much cinema that even I, a voracious and mostly fearless explorer of Indian cinema, am missing out on, due to lack of availability or subtitles. Whether it's Malayalam films, or older Tamil films, it can be a struggle to find information, recommendations, subtitled DVDs, you name it, there's a lack of it. This is very unfortunate, and sadly there isn't really an easy fix for it.<br />
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3.<b> Quantity doesn't signify quality.</b><br />
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The above is very much true, but I don't think quantity of films produced is the only reason why Indian films should demand more from film authorities and the world-wide film industry. It's like this: I'm not saying you have to like Indian films, or even respect Indian films, because I recognise there's tons of cinema out there I don't know about, understand or care for (with that said, I do keep an open mind). What I am saying is that there should be more<i> recognition</i>, in whatever form, of the true merits of Indian cinema. Looking aside the silly misconceptions, the big production numbers, the musical numbers, and the Thriller parodies, here is what Indian cinema <i>really</i> is:<br />
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It's an absolutely one-of-a-kind film country, with a distinctly unique history when it comes to genre and presentations of it, with multiple, interesting and thriving local, regional film industries (both commercial and more arthouse-minded) that serve important functions to local cultures and languages. For better and for worse, it's influenced Indian politics and society, and continues to do so today. It connects a huge diaspora back to their place of origin. It's at once localized and regional, and national, and international and global.<br />
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It's just too damn interesting to stay ignorant about, and too vast to dismiss entirely.<br />
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veracioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14437521137603205617noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1668731454857654821.post-5606305734223917732014-10-08T10:17:00.000+03:002014-10-08T10:17:00.036+03:00Bobby Jasoos, a mystery of modest charms.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1sbugLqmTIX95lgwRyQKPoF3tC9XpC4Fvyh0y7V2s4erUXrmWJln0LW-Btuwfc-kj74ZoVSeOMG5qCy-zLW1mO5W_Ku0sHzxgfdnl-Hb49scUW5C18HvV5ZTDHWG5dBeUu7UNhr65vVYc/s1600/bobby+jasoos.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1sbugLqmTIX95lgwRyQKPoF3tC9XpC4Fvyh0y7V2s4erUXrmWJln0LW-Btuwfc-kj74ZoVSeOMG5qCy-zLW1mO5W_Ku0sHzxgfdnl-Hb49scUW5C18HvV5ZTDHWG5dBeUu7UNhr65vVYc/s1600/bobby+jasoos.jpg" height="400" width="276" /> </a></div>
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Ideally, a film about a private detective would marvel with its tightly plotted and well-scripted twists and turns. <b>Bobby Jasoos</b> is more focused on the detective herself, enthusiastic and smart and also a little foolish and inconsiderate, basically a nicely fleshed out female protagonist that not many actresses in Hindi cinema get to play in most of their films, but Vidya Balan seems to, in nearly every film of hers.</div>
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Bilkis Ahmed, the titular Bobby, is determined to become a private eye despite opposition from her father and derision from a more experienced detective, who laughs her out his office, time and time again. Unfazed by this, Bobby sets up her own shop, and not long after, a mysterious Aneez Khan (Kiran Kumar) hires her with a big paycheck to track down a girl with very few clues to identify her by.</div>
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The central case of the film unfolds at a nice pace, but perhaps more satisfying is just to watch Bobby in action, and all the side characters that help her or deter her. She's a fantastic, career-driven woman over 30, and that's just really refreshing, in many ways. You could argue the film should've aimed higher, delivered a more devastating twist, filled in those plot holes deftly, but I'm content with what it is; a Vidya-flavoured treat that surprises positively in some aspects, and is a bit of a letdown in others. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGBhdNS5ekpWmk60jSftWVv7hZET0YdpdWvXypCZhtbYTaPlwKL6P5pMA2L8_Zj1WCtDL1SFdT_joty77p5i_JJcs9I3HrK_pP5Pnb2DxItwQOOBlnlvxIwh587CUhcQSjDR2sqfVV_lY-/s1600/bobby+jasso+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGBhdNS5ekpWmk60jSftWVv7hZET0YdpdWvXypCZhtbYTaPlwKL6P5pMA2L8_Zj1WCtDL1SFdT_joty77p5i_JJcs9I3HrK_pP5Pnb2DxItwQOOBlnlvxIwh587CUhcQSjDR2sqfVV_lY-/s1600/bobby+jasso+2.jpg" height="320" width="294" /></a></div>
Bobby's love interest is the newcomer Ali Faizal's Tassavur, a popular TV journalist who is one of Bobby's initial clients, as he hires her to look into the backgrounds of girls his father wants him to marry, so that the match can be derailed and he can continue being a bachelor. From their initial scenes, you can tell Bobby is both annoyed and exhausted by this guy, but their continued chemistry is undeniable, whether they're bickering with one another or becoming partners in crime. Ali Faizal is a real find.<br />
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As delightful as the romance was, I didn't find myself in need of the other masala features, such as the many (unmemorable) songs the films has. Equally unimpressive is the bit of broad comedy the film takes a swing at by having Bobby in various disguises; a gimmick that doesn't quite work as well as the genuine situational comedy. It's really hard to criticise, though, that's how much of a treat the film really is. There are a number of other little things I could discuss as mildly disappointing facets, but again, they're so minor, I feel like I'm quibbling, or spoiling things about the film others should probably see for themselves. <br />
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So I'd without a doubt recommend it. In a year full of fun, interesting female roles, this is one of the most fun, and if you like the lead, you'll easily enjoy this one. </div>
veracioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14437521137603205617noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1668731454857654821.post-5048798142537566422014-10-06T08:10:00.000+03:002014-10-06T08:10:00.085+03:00Mardaani: heroism for today.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Films react on a delay, and so it is only now that we're getting to see films that draw from the impact of the Delhi bus gang rape in late 2012, and the resulting larger discussion about violence and harassment of women in India. It's not like discussion or backlash has ever quieted since the Delhi case and the ensuing protests. Violence against women makes headlines in India every single day, and should remain the topic of discussion, much as it should worldwide, in every country, including the one I'm writing from right now.</div>
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Prakash Sarkar's<b> Mardaani</b> (Fighter) enters this discussion as a grounded cop drama, centered on Shivani Shivaji Roy (Rani Mukherjee), a no-nonsense cop working in Mumbai's crime branch. When an orphaned girl Pyaari Shivani has a personal connection to goes missing, she's on the hunt for the kidnapper. As the crime syndicate head Karan (Tahir Raj Bhasin) contacts her to taunt her, a game of high stakes cat and mouse develops between them.</div>
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The story is simple as it doesn't need to be much more. Pyaari's kidnapping and disappearance reveals a brutal, disturbing business in which young girls are traded as any other illegal commodity on the market, like drugs or guns. If there are any filmi flourishes added to this side of the story, there need not be, because just the reality of it is shocking enough. Thankfully at least in the world of film, we get catharsis - Shivani is precisely the right person for the job, following up clue after clue, putting the pieces of the puzzle together, alongside her team.</div>
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Rani Mukherjee plays the role cool as a cucumber. You could accuse the character of the same exaggerated flawlessness as many a film cop, but what I'd argue is that men get these roles dime a dozen, whereas seeing this kind of badassery from a woman is pretty rare. Let us have it, for once, in all its exaggeration. Let's allow Shivani to be awesome without undercutting it one bit. </div>
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Another thing I really enjoyed is that while they allow Karan's character to get some decidedly cool villain dialogues where he gains the upper hand, and even a moment of distinct humanity and emotion, there is never a moment in which you truly feel sorry for this garbage human being. Poor child trafficker is not a trope anybody needs to see, and while newcomer Tahir Raj Bhasin puts in a good performance, there's not an ounce of me that likes the character. </div>
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The final couple of scenes pack such a punch we might as well unpack them, but to do so, I must discuss some <b>spoilers</b>. Feel free to take this as a full-fledged recommendation, with the caveat that if you are a sensitive viewer who cannot stomach violence or the heavy subject matter, you naturally should skip out on the movie, no matter how good or (in my view) important it is. It's fine, not all films are for everybody. </div>
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Before I get to Shivani's monologue, there is another key scene earlier on the film, in which a Delhi police boss tells her to essentially back off, and uses the red flag phrase for women in any work place, "you're getting overly emotional". It's an important scene because it demonstrates a point Shivani later demonstrates by somewhat advocating for 'encounters', Indian slang for a tactical murder of crime suspects or criminals commited by the police. The police higher up is not malicious, but his attitude speaks about a lack of interest when it comes to these cases. "What's one girl, why get so invested?" he is essentially asking, but it's the same question thousands of police officers in India ask themselves, while they fail to solve the cases of disappearance, kidnapping, rape, murder etc. Female lives barely matter in the greater scheme of things.<br />
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Shivani's veiled acceptance of encounters sits uneasily with me, but her monologue brings up an important point that beyond the questionable behaviour by the police, the next step in the judicial system - the courts - are just as disinterested in the importance of women. They may be bribed, or influenced, or simply misogynist so as to not rate the life of a woman as important as that of a man. We see this, worldwide, where rape victims are questioned on their attire and sexual history, and criminals with power and influence in society can brush aside serious crime accusations with a flick of a judicial wand.<br />
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In Mardaani, it is the victims who finally get to enact revenge on the criminal, because this is a film, after all. It's a difficult thing, because as a viewer it felt right and wrong simultaneously, because in the context of the story, I needed this ending, but in the big picture of things, one dead garbage human doesn't change the system of wrong that allowed him to successfully thrive and commit horrible acts. But that's my heavy-hearted <i>Weltschmerz</i>-suffering overly pensive side, perhaps. The good guys won here. And I'm really thankful for that.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibeCIh1oaJu-VR-hnmkB-0BQg2FQhH03qfGDPFyt50OPCf6wKUJNptYBNKszyfk59ZiRY8d_CE5fOI1Ja_w2SuEBOH1p7tFfRGu75J2l_bbmRgRDrOQnKH6j5Q8KeSpzi9S0L013ritAwr/s1600/Miss-Lovely-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibeCIh1oaJu-VR-hnmkB-0BQg2FQhH03qfGDPFyt50OPCf6wKUJNptYBNKszyfk59ZiRY8d_CE5fOI1Ja_w2SuEBOH1p7tFfRGu75J2l_bbmRgRDrOQnKH6j5Q8KeSpzi9S0L013ritAwr/s1600/Miss-Lovely-2.jpg" height="232" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b>Miss Lovely </b>(2012 originally/2014 wider release) - I know, I know, this doesn't belong here, but I had to be honest about this. I love a lot of things about this movie; Nawazuddin Siddiqui is number two, while number one is the excellent cinematography. This camera knows where it wants to be, and creates a very interesting visual world for the film, complemented by fantastic period setting and accompanying art direction. Superb. Everything else, though? Plot, characters? I could take them or leave them. The depiction of the sleazy-yet-honest world of the A rating was fantastic, but I was never sucked in, fascinated by what was happening. Was it good? Yes, definitely. But I didn't love it.<br />
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<b>Special Chabbis</b> (2014) - I've tried to finish the last hour of this movie for about five to six times now, and I've failed each time. I can't figure it out. This got good reviews, I dig the cast a lot, there's things happening and yet I'm just like, "wow, this is .. something .. I'm going to go do dishes". For a heist movie, that's really bad. But I may be completely alone in this, admittedly. If something amazing happens during the final third of this movie, harass me about this, otherwise, I'm sorry but I tried.<br />
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<b>Ishkq in Paris </b>(2013) - This wasn't such a bad movie if it weren't for the fact that it managed to remind me why the film industry is such a rotten business, and it did all of this in a merciful 90 or so minutes. It's a simple enough romcom about two strangers meeting serendipitiously, spending a magical night talking and getting to know each other, only to depart with the intention of never seeing each other again. And yet.. The sound mix is writing cheques (emotional cues and comical effects) the writing of the film can't cash, which makes the film seem like a bad parody of a romantic film. Then there's the absolute tragedy of Preity Zinta, a tragedy too great to cover in such a small amount of space. This movie broke my heart, and I'm still recovering.<br />
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<b>Chitrangada</b> (2012) - I bought this Rituparno Gosh film from Kolkata, as the plot description sounded deliciously ambitious - exploring themes of gender identity, the Chitrangada myth, love and dance all at once. Instead, when I finally sat down to watch this, I found it a slog to get even half-way through. A story about a choreographer (played by the director himself) falling for a drug addicted musician, the film plods along but I didn't connect to the characters, nor did I feel like it was saying anything very substantive. The musician character Partha is just plain unlikable and an obvious mess from the get-go, making the love story difficult to understand or root for. I get the sense that this was an intensely personal film for the late director, but I just felt very detached from it. <br />
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<b>Ivan Veramathiri</b> (2013) - I must stress that none of the films I'm covering here are awful, not even Ishqkqkqkq. It's just that thing where a movie fails to hook you in and keep you there for its duration. I saw ads for this Tamil flick while in Chennai and it looked okay enough, and the fact is, it is okay enough - the romance track is a little inane perhaps but Vikram Prabhu is alright and everything else works, yet I just didn't care? Now, a few months separated from the experience, I struggle to remember anything that happened in it, apart from the main points of the plot, and the heroine holding a gold fish in a plastic bag for the hero. I suppose that's something.</div>
veracioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14437521137603205617noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1668731454857654821.post-39482225282091408832014-10-04T21:55:00.000+03:002014-10-04T21:55:12.016+03:00A treatise on masala, and Kick.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Masala films are like being sucked into a dream taking place in somebody else's head. To say they contain no logic is misinterpreting their own, magical logic, one that relies less on representing things as grounded and flawed, and more on representing them as perfect, idealised to the point of absurdity. Character types instead of characters, formula instead of story.<br />
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Devi (Salman Khan) in <b>Kick</b> is a masala hero, working solely as an avatar for dialogue, an empty cup the fantastical mind of the filmi imagination to pour some character traits into, while the audience forgets the character even has a name. He inspires awe from entrance to the closing shot. "Are wah!" we are to exclaim at his <i>herogiri</i> - the dancing, the fighting, the punchy dialogues, the comedy and the romance. A hero is never wrong. It is the flaw of the heroine to think ill of him, even as well-intentioned as her worries are. It is the flaw of the pseudo-antagonist, the Other Guy, or second male lead, to mistake the hero for his villainous actions as actually a bad guy. The Heroine and the Other Guy will eventually understand their mistakes. The Hero stays unquestioned.</div>
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Entertainment is the measure: the mirth I felt when that first overly clever, painfully over-thought and constructed piece of dialogue was spoken. It is a meter shooting up and down as the film progresses. The rating goes from fun to none, but the pace is so quick it's hard to concentrate on one irksome miscoming when the film is serving up ten different things in the next scene. The ride is great, but certain masala measures are questionable, such as the romance. Devi elbows his way into our disgruntled heroine's life without much care about how she feels about it all. Jacqueline Fernandes is quite good at disgruntled, confused and possibly a third expression I can't quite place. Happy, maybe? Is she, does the movie give her any reason to be? She just is. Women, eh?</div>
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Randeep Hooda (ah, the bias) as the Other Guy musters up enough life to the screen when the heroine seems too lost to be present or when the hero seems too tired to try too hard. His eyes light up with laughter or turn a steely stern gaze, and he's always the bridesmaid never the bride, and yet he seems to have better chemistry with the hero than the heroine. Women, eh? Why write them with personalities when you can just put all that effort into the second male lead, you know?<br />
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As a dessert to this hearty meal, we get the actual villain, Nawazuddin Siddiqui's glorious entrance into the hallowed halls of big budget. Given typical masala hay of semi-sadistic horrid rich guy, he spins gold out of it like a veritable Rumpelstiltzkin, and the results are captivating. This is concentrated, unadulterated villainy - potent, slightly nonsensical and all the better for it. I will probably rewatch the whole film just for these scenes. And the songs, and Randeep Hooda, and the dialogues, and pretty much everything. For all the easily detectable snark in this here review, I really did enjoy this.<br />
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Modern masala has many an ailment. It's too calculated and superficial to be anything but fun, cool and sexy. Most often it's an attempt at all three, since the concept of 'cool' dies anew with every <b>Race</b> film. It doesn't move to tears, it doesn't reach the great masses, it's just there. But while it's here, why not enjoy it, and remember it, like one remembers a great night that resulted in a hangover. And if you can't stomach it, go watch some other Nawazuddin Siddiqui films. Everybody wins.<br />
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I haven't done an installment in my "Let's talk about" series in ..gosh, quite a while. I figured it might be good time to bring it back up, as I'm trying to give my blog a bit of a revival, and what better way to do it, then discuss a star who's only still at the beginning of her career, and somebody I like, but don't consider myself a fan of. Yet? Maybe?</div>
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Deepika Padukone started out as another model pushed out into the world of cinema, forced to learn on the job, and who some people probably didn't think we'd be seeing much of, seven years from her debut. And yet, here we are - she's undeniably gorgeous, but people seek her out as an actress because she's a star, and she can have great, evocative performances. When it comes to on-the-job training, she hasn't floundered all that much - her early films aren't great, but show me a star whose first films are all great picks, great performances and considered classics to this day. That almost never happens.</div>
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I think I went with the majority view on Deepika throughout her career. I wasn't in love with her in <strong>Om Shanti Om</strong> - good dancer, breath-takingly gorgeous, yes, but an amazing actress? I didn't really think so, even though I also thought the role(s) were flimsy as hell. Farah Khan, for all her other virtues, has never written great female characters.</div>
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I haven't watched most of Deepika's body of work so far, but based on the films I did see, her steady improvement as an actress sort of snuck up on me. One day she was an actress I didn't really mind one way or the other, and the next I'm watching <strong>Break Ke Baad</strong> on the plane and thinking, "Damn, this lady is the best thing about this film!". (She was also in another film I watched on a plane journey:<strong> Chandi Chowk to China</strong>. Uhh. The less said, the better, probably.)</div>
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I've missed some key films where the progress probably happened - <strong>Love Aaj Kaal </strong>has been on my "I'll get to it, whatever, it can wait" list for nearly five years now, and I'm still like, whatever, it can wait. Was she good in <strong>Aarakshan</strong>? Sadly, would have to watch Aarakshan to find out, which is just not a very appealing prospect. I did see <strong>Housefull</strong>, but then, that was Housefull, which was not exactly the film for powerhouse performances.</div>
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But luckily for me, and for my enjoyment of Miss Padukone's work, I did finally get to <strong>Cocktail</strong>, where she breathed life into Veronica, a character who was probably much less on the page. And then came 2013 and you couldn't throw a rock without hitting a Deepika Padukone blockbuster. I've still yet to see <strong>Ram Leela</strong> or <strong>Chennai Express</strong>, but <strong>Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani</strong> was a gem, and will be remember long after some of those other films will have been forgotten, or at least I hope so. The future looks extraordinairily bright for Deepika, and I honestly couldn't be happier - unlike some people who rely on the value of their looks or their famous last name and rest on their laurels when they arrive onto the silver screen, it seems like she's put in the work, and it's shown up as fast improvement in her performances.<br />
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I didn't watch many Koffee with Karan episodes from this latest season, partly because ugh and mostly because argh, but I did see the wonderful episode with Deepika and Priyanka, where they had a great, genuine rapport with one another, and they both seemed like precisely the sort of smart, cool-headed women that gossip rags never want to portray actresses as, because all women are catty divas, right? Priyanka's had her gifts appraised by the industry already, but I think Deepika's best work is just around the corner, hopefully. The more capable, interesting film makers see her as an actress and less as eye candy to put in <strong>Race 2</strong> or something, I'm sure we'll see new achievements from this lady.<br />
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So, I throw to ball to the audience. What do you think of Deepika? (And please tell me if I'm an idiot for missing out on some of her performances not mentioned here. I will gladly correct such mistakes.)</div>
veracioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14437521137603205617noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1668731454857654821.post-74754641938476554772014-05-18T16:31:00.000+03:002014-05-18T16:31:00.205+03:00Maha Badmaash. Is. Awesome.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<strong>Maha Badmaash</strong> is a 1977 masala extravaganza that's kind of bad, but also kind of amazing. When a film begins with some rather unfunny, yet simultaneously ludicrous anti-black racism (with the "African" in question being an Indian actor in blackface) I was ready to hate-watch the damn thing, but then the film proceeds to become a Vinod Khanna & Neetu Singh swimwear catalogue photo shoot, tops that up with the most ridiculous villainous plot I've seen in a while, and gives me Neetu Singh's version of <strong>Seeta aur Geeta</strong>. First I'm conflicted, then I'm completely charmed.<br />
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There's so much goodness in such a dumb wrapping, yet I can't pretend I didn't enjoy all of it.<br />
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So - big bad Mogambo, a villain who prefers to remain unseen, comes to Hindustan, and blackmails the local crook Ratan (Vinod Khanna) into his nefarious plans, with the help of Pinky (Neetu Singh), who's also being forced into a life of crime because her dad is being held hostage by Mogambo. Unbeknownst to Ratan, however, there is another plot happening - Pinky gets replaced by her twin Seema in contact lenses, all to take down Mogambo once and for all.<br />
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Like Gaddaar, this was initially recommended to me by Beth, and based on some other things I read about online I thought this movie would be a pretty dumb masala flick, which it certainly is, but hot damn how it makes up for the lack of wit and complexity with gallons upon gallons of pure fun. Admittedly, you may have to be biased towards the two leads to be able to relish in the fun. Vinod is a blast here, but Neetu particularly, from the flirty and brash Pinky to the (literally) blue-eyed Seema. It's not a very subtle performance, but it's also not as over-the-top as I expected. </div>
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Plus her chemistry with Vinod, as either character, is so precious.</div>
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And with gun-wielding hijinks, too? What more could you hope for? Gratuitous swimwear?</div>
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Got you covered right there, as well.</div>
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Of course, there is that all-important context for everything - a cheeseball plot in which they train for the big mission by having Ratan stay underwater for ridiculous amounts of time, and then for him to stay in ice-cold temperatures for another long stretch of time. Because mission. The ice training in particular was special. The choice to just cut between the trainers' shocked faces as various meters are going up or down or whatever, meters, who cares, made for a truly memorable scene.</div>
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Meters! Oh my god!</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikg8l8JrJFLQqpCQeeBRi7EpmZONyN8e1aB_JIvbfJ4QJCBKDlp6OaXIbOMbzi28oYBQGwyLNwKLUEKb2Ixlk_iyLhfewaxbcq-8zp8FxUiQYw_lI8C7EVgc5o2vjuOYpvUjhyFlHTbGvN/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-05-13-15h19m55s133.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigVCGuGfU8wJeZzeOaYmW5h-uDQmBYhnT20mgSWSY-RCNZa7gFJPCjkXv9eREJb2-MHCOkepeAWJUxmZCibukdMLAqI9uh5c6OHZ6nUSdamMRf8QeYCh2Mv2TtEJU2VJFoXbnBp5pZdDY7/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-05-13-15h20m07s1.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /></a><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikg8l8JrJFLQqpCQeeBRi7EpmZONyN8e1aB_JIvbfJ4QJCBKDlp6OaXIbOMbzi28oYBQGwyLNwKLUEKb2Ixlk_iyLhfewaxbcq-8zp8FxUiQYw_lI8C7EVgc5o2vjuOYpvUjhyFlHTbGvN/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-05-13-15h19m55s133.png" height="300" width="400" /><br />
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And then there's Mogambo's lair, which is a truly futuristic piece of set design. Doktor Kaligari called, you know, just to say hi.</div>
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There are a number of other awesome things, such as: </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNQ2rJqplcAh_EHZuWR8uRMAgUeas7MyyQ0ZqIxVWhp47V95MxmudFZO8_1C7X_rE5gcXkwyfFivPWEXBxpf2CHJlCwtk-Waj5vX4Lxh7Kl8izS8C_Uxfc-tVra0DsK6l17VKFLazBF5iU/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-05-13-15h27m23s10.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNQ2rJqplcAh_EHZuWR8uRMAgUeas7MyyQ0ZqIxVWhp47V95MxmudFZO8_1C7X_rE5gcXkwyfFivPWEXBxpf2CHJlCwtk-Waj5vX4Lxh7Kl8izS8C_Uxfc-tVra0DsK6l17VKFLazBF5iU/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-05-13-15h27m23s10.png" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
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1. Neetu's cuteness.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLfYfryZOlfznE7q-SIYLNwD5kVrK9IbXXrUL2M9mDwkXvLLcDsZstnC97_Kz2W6lLA3LLC3ThOIf2dlOU8xvUAQhYfivvQHEID9pJaYUDFraK1FPmvtqL02l36fIU9mY8gQJ-hmWlsz4A/s1600/damn+son.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLfYfryZOlfznE7q-SIYLNwD5kVrK9IbXXrUL2M9mDwkXvLLcDsZstnC97_Kz2W6lLA3LLC3ThOIf2dlOU8xvUAQhYfivvQHEID9pJaYUDFraK1FPmvtqL02l36fIU9mY8gQJ-hmWlsz4A/s1600/damn+son.gif" /></a></div>
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2. The fight choreographer pulling out all the damn stops in the final fight sequence. Head-scissors take-down!</div>
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3. Vinod dealing with it.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuEF-obL3seBo5agLt1VNpfy0nMWl1MF53ruEbBmWIaS0L_QJr4sqWLbFNPbU-beK3gG1pB3-1xPE2u5Kj0yAFSLVy01JjjTfupxu1IsS9kJVI3vwNUBwYx0TQpRMU-YOc7EaTPBPs_NRl/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-05-13-15h22m17s21.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuEF-obL3seBo5agLt1VNpfy0nMWl1MF53ruEbBmWIaS0L_QJr4sqWLbFNPbU-beK3gG1pB3-1xPE2u5Kj0yAFSLVy01JjjTfupxu1IsS9kJVI3vwNUBwYx0TQpRMU-YOc7EaTPBPs_NRl/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-05-13-15h22m17s21.png" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
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4. Seriously, though, the swimwear...</div>
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5. Everything about this screenshot.</div>
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6. Twin goodness. Better yet, twin goodness with Neetu Singh! </div>
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Also, as sillydumb as this movie is, the female characters are kind of on fire here. Besides Neetu, there is a sort of airheaded, yet kind of perceptive Reena (Bindu), whose dad owns the hotel they're cooped up in throughout most of the movie. She is the only person who figures out the twin confusion before anybody else. Then there's this lady:</div>
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..whose actress name or character name I can't find or remember. She works for the good guys and is constantly aiding Seema in their plans to take down Mogambo. It's a delight.<br />
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There isn't really all that much to say about Maha Badmaash in terms of plot or characters, because it's all pretty flimsy. Yet there's a certain sort of B-movie style charm to all the proceedings, the funky 70's sets and music and style, the undenial chemistry between the leads, the typical tropes (family lost and found for the twin sisters), the gross baddies and all the rest of it. Or maybe I'm just really deeply biased towards Vinod & Neetu cuteness.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmDVVfIBiM3l0o1QUjcn4i-w53tzC5zykIm1ll1NYV53A0t1513g2AIfmZcYRUwIJzSnsFQhoTX1D9ZJcRVg4lyPwoUOfKFRhJjDZmBr92ItZMbupm70aAZmK2_hlnCAhe0EV_TM1P1awP/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-05-13-15h20m57s245.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmDVVfIBiM3l0o1QUjcn4i-w53tzC5zykIm1ll1NYV53A0t1513g2AIfmZcYRUwIJzSnsFQhoTX1D9ZJcRVg4lyPwoUOfKFRhJjDZmBr92ItZMbupm70aAZmK2_hlnCAhe0EV_TM1P1awP/s1600/vlcsnap-2014-05-13-15h20m57s245.png" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
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It could very well be just that.</div>
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Around two years ago, me and <a href="http://bethlovesbollywood.blogspot.fi/">Beth</a> compared our Vinod Khanna notes, and she recommended some films I hadn't yet seen while I recommended some films of his that she hadn't got to yet. In that conversation, Beth recommended the film <b>Gaddaar </b>from 1973 (<a href="http://bethlovesbollywood.blogspot.fi/2013/05/gaddaar.html">here</a> is her write-up of it), and has been on my "to see" list ever since. However, in typical Vinod Khanna bad luck, one of his better 70's films seemed to be universally, perpetually unavailable, and underappreciated. I did my regular searches on the online stores and youtubes of the world wide web, and always, always came up empty. In India, I scrutinized every G-section of a DVD shop. Nothing. Ever.<br />
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It's not like being a Vinod Khanna fan is easy without the hunt for underappreciated gem films of his being this arduous. The man only had about a decade of solid stardom before he regrettably retrieved from the material world, only to return when Hindi cinema was at its creatively crappiest. If you have nostalgia for the action flicks of the late 80's and early 90's, and dig that particular Vinod Khanna, more power to you, but I personally can't pretend that those performances have even a quarter of the charm his 70's filmography does. It's tired plots and tired performances, and thus my first question when hearing about a Vinod Khanna film isn't "is it good?" but rather, "when was it released?". So hearing about Gaddaar, an early 70's film, and seeing the screen caps and the high recommendations, I had to have it, and it killed me that it was nowhere to be found, despite my best efforts.<br />
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Eventually, though, I found Gaddaar (with a little, okay, a lot of help from <a href="http://www.filmigeek.com/2014/03/gaddaar-1973.html">Carla</a>), or it found me - and I honestly couldn't be happier about the fact.<br />
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The film begins with BK (Pran) assembling his team of crooks for a grand heist (including Iftekhar, Ranjeet, Manmohan and Madan Puri). The heist goes well with only the minor hitch of BK being shot, leading him to give the loot of Kanhaya (Madan Puri), and agreeing to meet him later, along with the rest of the gang. As luck would have it, however, Kanhaya betrays the group and is nowhere to be found. Enter a small-time crook Raja (Vinod Khanna), who blackmails his way into the group, and they set off to search for Kanhaya.<br />
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The real triumph of the story is that as the search winds down, Gaddaar becomes less of a crime film and more a drama thriller between the the thieves, and the bystanders who are forced to get involved. It gives these character actors more to do than they otherwise get to in your average masala flick, where the focus is so much on the hero, and crooks are usually merely just that. Here, their relations with one another form the backbone of the film, and make for a gripping watch, particularly as the latter half of the film is spent in one particular setting.<br />
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It's just good fun, aided by solid writing and fantastic acting. The frustration that builds up between our central antagonists in the isolated Himachal Pradesh cabin flares up every now and then, and it is these moments that allow the drama to escalate further and further. It's cabin fever, further exaggerated by the desperate circumstances.<br />
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And then there's Vinod.<br />
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Raja is the type of character Vinod Khanna seemed to play a lot of in the 1970's. He's a rogue, sure, but he's charming, and even when he has his particularly cruel moments, he seems to have a beating heart and a humane side, too. Sometimes there's a twist in store, sometimes there isn't. Yet the character works, particularly in this setting, because he's surrounded by other crooks of varying shades - some noble, some horrible, some cruel, some cowardly.<br />
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Also: he's got swag up to his shiny, perfect hair-do. Pure swag.<br />
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It always bugs me to recommend a film I know you'll probably have at least half the trouble finding as I did, but regardless, that I must do. It's a great film to check out if you're not quite with the over-the-top traits of a typical 1970's masala, but still would like to see the style and some of the actors (because let's face it, 70's Pran, 70's Iftekhar and Ranjeet in general are all joys to witness). It's a nice change of pace in many ways, and without a doubt one of the most underrated Hindi films of the 1970's.<br />
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I wonder if Sriram Raghavan was inspired by this film to formulate his <b>Johnny Gaddaar</b> (2007) around a similar (if very differently actualised) plot devise. It's a more available film that is also relatively underrated, in part because Neil Nitin Mukesh's career never took off. There are some good performances in it - Dharmendra, Zakir Hussain and Vinay Pathak all stood out to me - and while I should probably give it a rewatch before singing its praises so loudly, I would be willing to bet it references this film in one way or another. It's another film where you know who betrayed who, but the dramatic tension in Johnny Gaddaar comes from the rest of the gang slowly putting the pieces of the puzzle together.</div>
veracioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14437521137603205617noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1668731454857654821.post-55780129801683376922014-05-15T12:02:00.002+03:002014-05-15T12:02:47.898+03:00Queen.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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If there's a fast-emerging genre of films of Indian women re-gaining their self-esteem by embracing life and themselves while traveling abroad, it's a development I can't really dislike. <strong>English Vinglish</strong> was charming, and its vibrant little sister in spirit, <strong>Queen</strong> is another fantastically enjoyable film. In essence there is nothing new about travel films with empowerment messages of this kind, but sometimes a formula works not due to its presence, but its grounded, passionate application. This is a film where you love a character so much, you're entirely with her on this ride, busy making discoveries alongside her.<br />
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Rani (Kangna Raut), a sweet Delhi girl, gets dumped by her fiance Vijay (Rajkummar Rao) a day before her wedding. After wallowing in the situation, Rani decides to go on their honeymoon alone despite everything - to take a trip to Paris and Amsterdam alone. At first, she's understandably alienated in the foreign city, but soon befriends Vijaylaxmi (Lisa Haydon), a vivacious, party-hard somewhat-single mother. Encouraged by the new friendship, Rani continues her journey in Amsterdam. (And as I loved this film so much, the review will contain<strong><em> spoilers</em></strong>. Watch it, come back to this review. I wouldn't want to ruin anything for you.)<br />
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Kangna Raut, who's previously done good work in not-so-great films, really shines as Rani. The character is quite odd, but in a perfectly every-day manner. Her "very good" sense of humor finds a new audience in her foreign friends, even though they don't quite seem to understand it, either. They still like Rani, however, just as I as the viewer like her. From the first scene, when we hear her excited but fretting inner monologue during the beginning of the wedding celebrations, she becomes somebody to truly root for.<br />
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The portrayal of Rani's new-found international friends is very perceptive, as it captures the way that lack of a full fluency in a common language doesn't necessarily stop two human beings from fully bonding with one another. You can make real friends while traveling, even if they will be different from the ones you have back at home, but the film captures this, too. You get a sense that these people will meet again, after years, and catch up and get along just the same as they did when travelling together - much like I've done with friends I've met during travel.<br />
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I feel like I could possibly have some quibbles about this film, but there's a part of me that knows the world it inhabits so well, the freedom of travel and the enjoyment of embracing new parts of yourself while abroad, that it becomes difficult to really argue for those minor criticisms. Lisa Haydon's character, for example, certainly contains archetypes, but because the archetypes are multiple - the booze-drinking, smoking, sexually active Western woman, the mixed ethnicity bombshell, yes, but also working mother, caring friend, cheesy joke maker - the combination becomes refreshing. <br />
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The success in writing and casting Rani's other new friends is also worth noting. They're not characters with incredible depth, but as they play second-fiddle to Rani's self-discovery, we also learn about their own journeys and struggles and inner worlds. You get a sense that they don't just exist in the world or in this particular story for her benefit. This allows the friendships to feel real, not just between them and Rani, but between the group of the three guys on their own. It's also a sigh of relief - maybe, just maybe, the days of cringe-worthy international casting in Indian films are beginning to end.<br />
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As so often happens with these "Indian abroad" films, the homeland is never too far away. Vijay, the asshole former fiance, suddenly decides he likes this Rani abroad and pursues her, just as the audience decides we really don't like him. The flashback scenes are great in demonstrating how we are sometimes held back by those claiming to do it for our own benefit, and because they care for us, love us even. Rani insults an Italian chef by requesting more spice into her dish, and there is the obligatory "Indian cooking wins over white people" scene. Even the sex worker Roxette turns out to be just a hard-working Indian girl, providing for her large family.<br />
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The film is particularly of interest to me, because I'm about to visit Amsterdam, mostly to hang out and enjoy the great city, but also to meet up with friends who I haven't seen in a long while. Besides those personal reasons, there are a number of other things I should probably mention. The soundtrack fits the film like a glove, and adds to it, particularly in the first scenes where Rani crashes out of her element by drinking and partying with Vijaylaxmi. The direction is tight, and even though the cinematography revels in the beauty of Paris and Amsterdam as cities, the focus never stops being about Rani, and the people she meets during her travels. A city, after all, is just a city. The memories you make in it, the people you travel with, those will stick with you. Queen is an undeniable gem, and particularly great for Kangna Raut, who I think has always landed in films where her effort has risen above the actual script. This will hopefully not only inspire more film makers to write roles as meaty as Rani's here, but also consider Kangna in various, great projects.</div>
veracioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14437521137603205617noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1668731454857654821.post-73226409594131476342014-05-14T13:08:00.000+03:002014-05-14T13:08:00.158+03:00Naduvula Konjam Pakkatha Kaanom - wait, what happened?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Bugs, Saras and Bhaji have a problem - their friend, Prem, fell over while playing cricket the day before his wedding, and as result of a concussion, now fails to recall events that happened up to a year ago. Since Prem shows no signs of having a miraculous recovery, the three friends are forced to keep up the charade throughout his wedding day, making sure the marriage goes through, even when Prem fails to recall his bride, much less what happened six minutes ago.<br />
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I have to confess I was more charmed by <b>Naduvula Konjam Pakkatha Kaanom</b> (A few pages missing in between, 2012) than I actually enjoyed the experience of watching it. The low-fi aesthetic demonstrates the smaller budget, and in some ways it's very clear that this is the first directorial venture of Balaji Tharaneetharan, who found his story from actual events that happened to his friend (the film's cinematographer, C. Prem Kumar). This is, in many ways, the little film that could, and I really like that about it - a small budget venture that became a cult classic.<br />
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With that said, I'm not sure most of the comedy carried over through the translation process. The conceit of the film is to be repetitive - Prem repeats certain things as he instantly forgets what he said, or what has been told to him, and it can be hard to make the same lines gain meaning or comedy through repetition. At times, there's a scene where they succeed in this, and the situational comedy is fantastic because of it - mostly on the latter half of the film. But for the most part, the repetitiveness of both the dialogue and the reaction shots can get a bit dull, and I wonder whether this is where being a native Tamil speaker would've helped. The only subtitles I could find, in a perfect demonstration of how unavailable Tamil films can be to outsiders, were fan-made, but as such, they weren't exactly flawless.<br />
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I'm forced to give this a very lukewarm recommendation. I didn't dislike it, but I fear the praise I'd read for it online was so high, it failed to meet it. Still, I'm very happy that alongside bombastic big budget films, Tamil cinema can also produce these smaller, indie gems. </div>
veracioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14437521137603205617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1668731454857654821.post-10596161261427342582014-05-13T12:31:00.000+03:002014-05-13T12:43:35.272+03:00Soodhu Kavvum - just watch it. Watch it now.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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We can only make farcical cinema, as far as politics is considered because politics is farce in our country. Either we can make farce or we can make (it) very dark because there is no middle road. - <i><a href="http://thebigindianpicture.com/2014/03/vishal-bhardwaj-tbip-tete-a-tete/">Vishal Bhardwaj</a>, TBIP interview</i></blockquote>
Dark comedies as a genre rely on the audience's ability to laugh at the very things in society that shouldn't make us laugh in the first place, be it death or the immorality of man, or the failure of societal institutions to do what they're supposed to. At times, the label seems to get applied to films that aren't quite as funny as they're perhaps meant to be, but where they fail in comedy, they succeed in some semblance of social commentary, and so the label "dark comedy" gets stamped on them, almost as a cop-out. At its best, though, the genre is genuinely funny, and the comedy emerges from the commentary itself.<br />
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<b>Soodhu Kavvum</b> ("Evil engulfs", though according to my DVD, "deceit is addictive") is such a film, a 2013 Tamil comedy that is as side-splittingly funny as it is perceptive about society and morals in society. The film came with high recommendations, but I luckily hadn't heard much about the plot itself, so I could discover every aspect of the movie at its own pace. And it is so good.<br />
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The story follows three young losers (Ashok Selvan, Bobby Simha and Ramesh Thilak, pictured above) who live and fail to work in Chennai, until the day they accidentally come upon Das (Vijay Sethupathi), a middle-aged guy with a flourishing career in mid-level kidnapping and extortion and an imaginary girlfriend named Shalu (Sanchita Shetty), who only he himself can see or hear. Two and eventually all three of the guys join this budding entrepreneurial venture, and things are going well, until they decide to chase a bigger payday by kidnapping the wastrel son (Karunakaran) of a morally upright minister.<br />
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The script is amazingly funny, and the type of comedy that magically carries over to the decent English subtitle translations in a way that made me laugh out loud constantly. There is an interesting central idea to the film that makes everything fall together in a splendid way - everybody in this film is a crook, apart from the villain, and it is weirdly liberating to laugh at the weird ways in which the world favours the morally loose, corrupt or just plain lazy. The first scene in which we meet Arumai, the minister's son, is one such scene. This guy is an absolute waste of space, so naturally, in this world, he triumphs.<br />
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I mean, just look at him. Ugh, go away. (Seriously, though, great performance by Karunakaran.)<br />
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Shalu, the sole female character, is of course imaginary, in an (I hope) intentional bit of meta-commentary for Tamil films, where women tend to be eye candy, rather than important characters. Das doesn't treat her particularly well, and while I could find this disturbing in a misogynist manner (you imagined yourself a girlfriend you don't even like? what?), I mostly just find it incredibly hilarious. And the chemistry between them is about what you could hope for, between a weird, semi-drunkard man and his imaginary girlfriend.<br />
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"Can we keep him?" she asks, about the child they've just kidnapped. I'm weak with laughter, I love it.<br />
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The kidnapping scenes each have so much potential to be genuinely dark and unfunny, and yet they all turn out so comical that they're a delight. Das' rules for humanitarian kidnappings, not extorting big sums but just enough that the one being extorted can afford to pay rent next month, lends the whole thing such an oddball comedic vibe, that it's hard to find them off-putting.<br />
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The film was also a constant source of discoveries when it came to the cast, as well. Bobby Simha, who I may have seen before, was incredibly effective, particularly in a scene where he is being appraised as a future film hero by a rowdy who's turned to movie making.<br />
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Witness, the next Suriya.<br />
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Then there's Vijay Sethupathi, who plays Das.<br />
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Guh.<br />
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I mean, uhh, he's okay I guess.<br />
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That aside, it's just really great to see a Tamil movie that gets it right in every way. It's been a while since that has happened, and as I don't get to see all that many Tamil films, due to scarce availability and lack of subtitles on a lot of DVDs, it's always a joy to find a great film I immediately fall in love with, that introduces me to a whole bunch of new talent, that has a joyous soundtrack, and a fantastic script that is definitely rooted in Indian/Tamil society but also translates to a foreigner such as myself in an effortless manner. Props to the subtitle staff at AP/Ayngaran Anak, who produced the DVD.<br />
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And if this sounded at all like your thing, the dark comedy, the farce and the morally ambiguous protagonists, the imaginary heroine and all the rest of it, do give it a go. I mean the film, not kidnapping.<br />
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Sorry, "kednaping", of course. </div>
veracioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14437521137603205617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1668731454857654821.post-55029076666141937152014-05-12T10:37:00.000+03:002014-05-12T10:37:00.763+03:00Hasee Toh Phasee: overcomplicating a good thing.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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My first reaction to Parineeti Chopra's character in <b>Hasee Toh Phasee</b> was enthusiastic - to use the cliche, it was something new, something different, and something that would allow her to further stretch her already great acting abilities. But then, the more I thought about, and considered the movie itself, the more this enthusiasm turned into a pensive frown. Here's the thing: what would this film be, if we placed a moratorium, a blanket ban on quirky mentally ill characters, quirky mentally ill super-genius characters, and most of all, slightly gimmicky performances surrounding them?<br />
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A lot of films, both Hollywood, Bollywood and elsewhere in the world, would be robbed of their central conceit. Hell, gimmicks are a significant part of Indian films, and you wouldn't get me to agree to this ban if it meant no Dhoom 3, or no Anniyan, or no Paa in the world, I just wouldn't allow it. And yet, when it comes to Hasee Toh Phasee, a movie that attempts at a frothy but heartfelt romantic comedy, I wonder if such a ban might be wise in the first place.<br />
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The story is simple: Nikhil (Sidharth Malhotra) is about to marry Karishma, despite all signs pointing to this being a bad idea. He discovers that a girl he met and bonded with shortly before meeting Karishma, Meeta (Parineeti Chopra), is in fact Karishma's sister, disowned by the family for various reasons. Now Meeta is back for the wedding, and Karishma asks Nikhil to make sure she's not seen by her side of the family, and thus wacky hijinks and an eventual budding romance ensue.<br />
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There's a lot to unpack when it comes to Meeta's character, her mysterious past, her strange mannerisms, her super-genius rattling off of factoids in fast English and her pill-popping antics. At first I was merely intrigued, but the further along the film went, the more I wondered whether less would be more when it came to this character. I'm sure, as ever, everything to do with her was properly and meticulously researched (isn't it always?), but something about this hodgepodge of symptoms and quirks, no matter how medically accurate, was kind of a mess.<br />
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It doesn't particularly help that the movie relies on this character to really work, so when Parineeti Chopra's natural charm doesn't quite manage to come through in this performance, I wasn't quite as engaged with the movie as I was hoping to be. The second lead, Sidharth Malhotra, does okay, but he's no acting or charisma powerhouse at this point in his career, and so the resulting romance doesn't quite feel as touching as it might with a better cast or a less messy script.<br />
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However, if it works for you, it works, and this becomes a passable cutesy romcom with heart at the core of it. Some of the songs are great, while others are cringeworthy. I still wish, being a fan of Parineeti's, that they would've scaled back on the character a bit: while I appreciate the something new in the character, especially as female protagonists can be occasionally bland in terms of characterisation, there may have been some pieces missing, both in the scripting of the character and the performance. </div>
veracioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14437521137603205617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1668731454857654821.post-73318643811830321782014-05-11T02:22:00.001+03:002014-05-11T02:24:06.089+03:00Filmi year 2013 - better late than never, I guess?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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2013 was kind of a very strange year for me, in terms of following Indian cinema. I started the year in a frenzy, watching and enjoying a lot of films, then the interest fizzling, but keeping up with films somewhat, and managing to catch a fair few films at a festival in early autumn. Most of the year was spent planning for the eventual epic India trip, that would commence in December and go through to mid-January, when I would finally return home, happy and sated, with tons of movies with me. </div>
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There are notable exceptions to the 2013 films I saw - I couldn't find the time, effort or interest to catch <b>Chennai Express</b>, the big SRK blockbuster. I saw bits of it on TV in India, but Indian TV drove me up the walls with the commercial breaks, so I just couldn't focus on it. I think I saw most films, though, most films that I intended to see, anyway. </div>
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So, here's my takeaway from last year.</div>
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<b>Why The Hell Did I Do This To Myself Film of the Year: </b><a href="http://sotheydance.blogspot.fi/2013/04/trashy-sequels-2013-race-2-and-murder-3.html">Race 2</a></div>
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We all have regrets, and I'm surprised watching Race 2 wasn't followed by a year-long chronic hangover in which everything and anything would be a plot twist and nothing would make any goddamn sense. But thankfully, the end result of watching Race 2 is merely that you've wasted your time watching Race 2. If your life is irrevocably ruined afterwards, that's on you. </div>
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<b>Disappointment of the Year</b>: Go Goa Gone</div>
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Gosh, oh gosh. I so wanted to like you, movie. <a href="http://sotheydance.blogspot.fi/2013/08/its-really-difficult-to-discuss-go.html">Why didn't you let me</a>. </div>
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<b>I'm A Special Snowflake For Getting to See This Gem of the Year:</b> <a href="http://sotheydance.blogspot.fi/2013/09/monsoon-shootout-exploring-what-if.html">Monsoon Shootout</a></div>
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It's an interesting little indie flavored flick, it's got Nawazuddin Siddiqui (ie perfection), it's just a really intriguing watch and I want everybody to see and I hate festival slow-burn releases, except when I don't, because I got to see this ahead of most other people. But when it hits theaters, do check it out, I implore you. </div>
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<b>Best Used Formula of the Year:</b> AnyBody Can Dance</div>
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All the delightful underdog team tropes are in use here, and it just works so well. This was my delight of the year, and I can't wait to rewatch it once more.</div>
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<b>The Most Puzzling Film of the Year:</b> Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola </div>
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I loved it. It was weird. It was gorgeous. It was ..<a href="http://sotheydance.blogspot.com/2013/03/matru-ki-bijlee-ka-mandola-pink-buffalo.html">pink water buffaloes</a>? I don't know what to make of this movie, but I do know I own the damn thing on DVD, so I suppose I'll have to give it another look. There was so much good, and such good satire amidst all the strangeness, but I don't know if Matru is, at the end of the day, just an okay oddball movie, or a splendid underappreciated masterpiece.<br />
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<b>The Biggest Causes of Worry: </b>the various struggles of the young generation<br />
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I'm talking questionable movie picks (I know they can't all be winners but I'd want to see Parineeti Chopra in something good, and <b><a href="http://sotheydance.blogspot.fi/2013/10/disappointments-small-large-nautanki.html">Shuddh Desi Romance</a></b> was not it), weird appearance changes (Anushka Sharma's face) and careers generally headed towards the toilet (Abhay Deol, Imran Khan). I like some of these people. I may not love all of them, but I do wish them all the best, and it saddens me to see these young stars take significant missteps. Don't Saif Ali Khan your career, guys, let's pull it together.<br />
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<b>A Thing That Happened That I Didn't Think I Could Type In 2014</b>: Karan Johar directed a kiss scene between two men<br />
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No, seriously, I did not think that would happen. As for the short film itself, well, I like Karan Johar sometimes, flaws and all. And believe me, there were flaws. (I also need to rewatch <b>Bombay Talkies</b>, I don't believe I ever reviewed it in full.)<br />
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<b>The Top Five Most Epic Film Experiences I Had in India</b> (because I must gloat)<br />
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<li>DDLJ at Maratha Mandir. Enough said.</li>
<li>Sholay 3D in Juhu, amongst people who loved it and who could quote it by heart. I am the luckiest son of a gun.</li>
<li>Dhoom 3. Because Dhoom 3. And also, Dhoom 3, which stars Aamir Khan and Aamir Khan, and I am happy that was a thing that was. </li>
<li>The Tamil film Kumki, viewed at night, in a village setting. Magical.</li>
<li>Dancing so enthusiastically to Badtameez Dil from Yeh Jawaani Hai Dewaani at a Chennai New Year's Eve event that some random folks came to tell me I rock out harder to Bollywood music than most Indians. I was flattered, but it was only because I never get to dance to Bollywood music outside my bedroom that I was so into it. That, and...</li>
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<b>My Film of the Year:</b> Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani<br />
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Because as much as I appreciated other films last year, <a href="http://sotheydance.blogspot.fi/2013/09/yeh-jawaani-hai-deewani-precisely-that.html">YJHD was the only one that hit home on all fronts</a> - it was funny, charming, had a cute romance, a rocking soundtrack, a beautiful depiction of female friendship and inspired me to think about some of my choices in life. For a guy I am not a fan of, Ranbir Kapoor keeps performing in a manner that is hard not to like, and Deepika Padukone continues to impress. It's a movie I saw, and then went back to, and have gone back to twice or three times after first seeing it. I love it. I just love it. </div>
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Sometimes being out of the loop, not following every promo and trailer, can be so beneficial for a film aficionado. I didn't expect Imtiaz Ali's <strong>Highway </strong>to be much more than maybe a strange, Stockholm syndrome inspired kidnapper-kidnappee romance. The pairing of Alia Bhatt and Randeep Hooda seemed strange, and considering her last performance that I saw was the wooden, unbearable turn in <a href="http://sotheydance.blogspot.com/2013/01/diving-into-aggravatingly-shallow-world.html"><strong>Student of the Year</strong></a>, I wasn't precisely hopeful that she actually had considerable acting chops. While every shitty Bhatt movie in Randeep Hooda's oeuvre is <a href="http://sotheydance.blogspot.com/2013/01/this-is-story-of-how-i-got-completely.html">warmly embraced by such fans as myself</a>, it's safe to say he's not universally appreciated. Imtiaz Ali is not infallible, either, and it's been in the past few years that his films and scripts have been particularly critisised for the way they portray female protagonists.</div>
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Yet, Highway manages to be a very human picture that gives its downtrodden heroine a lot of agency in a difficult situation, and thus allows Alia Bhatt to show what she can do, when acting outside Karan Johar's vapid female stereotypes. Aided by Ali's best script in a long while, this ends up being less of a kidnapping romance and more a film about two damaged people, trying to re-discover what their home in the world might be. It is, in a world, beautiful.</div>
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The story reveals all this in a very gradual way, and is all the better for it. Due to that, however, I'm forced to discuss some spoilers, so before the jump, I'll just say this: I loved this movie. It's <em>maybe</em> my favourite Imtiaz Ali picture right after <strong>Jab We Met</strong>, even if the two deal in two very different genres, obviously. I'll probably have to rewatch it to see how I properly rate it among my favourites, but thus far, it's stayed with me, it certainly impressed me, and I can't think of too many bad things to say about. I'd certainly recommend it.<br />
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The central conceit of Highway is that its two main protagonists are not as different as it may first seem - the rich Veera (Alia Bhatt) and the poor criminal Mahabir (Randeep Hooda). Slowly it is revealed that both are haunted by significant events in their childhood, abuse and neglect. As such, I didn't even see theirs as a very romantic or sexual connection - it's more shaped by their need to relate to each other, and the more they understand the similarities between their pasts, the deeper that connection becomes. It's this relationship that really grounds the film, and makes it intriguing, and I was surprised by the ease with which both actors portrayed this. There's just the right amount of forwardness in Veera, who's suddenly freed by the social bounds and norms of her oppressive family, and there's enough hesitation in Mahabir, who has never previously talked about any of this to a veritable stranger.<br />
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There is a significant feminist discussion to be had about "rape as character development", where the female character's suffering becomes the source of her strength, but the trope naturally means she has to suffer before she can gain that strength. This isn't necessarily the case here. As much as one might desire another rape revenge trope, especially as the scene where Veera reveals being raped multiple times by her uncle is so emotionally brutal, that's not where the film goes. Instead, this abuse informs her view on her family - caring so much about being proper that they look away from the abuse, thus making her home the least safe and comfortable place for Veera. I can understand female viewers who are wary and weary of seeing rape portrayed at all in films, in any shape, but it's noteworthy here, simply because of the way the focus is always on Veera, her experiences, and also because the abuse happened inside a home, by close relatives, as it so often does. In my<strong> </strong><a href="http://sotheydance.blogspot.com/2013/02/22-female-kottayam-conversation-starter.html"><strong>22 Female Kottayam</strong> review</a>, I talked about rape myths, and this film doesn't really perpetuate any of them that I noticed. Yes, there are scary, rapey strangers in the world - the character of Gaurav being one of them - but sexual abuse can happen inside the home as well.<br />
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It's also interesting that the damage suffered by Mahabir is related to the less-than-human status of women in the family, as well. Never let it be said that abuse and oppression of women doesn't hurt men - indeed, it hurts society as a whole.<br />
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I wouldn't so far as saying Ali's portrayal is the most sensitive I've ever seen, but it avoids some of the usual problems of male writers writing raped and sexually abused female protagonists. It's not just a trope used to later lazily make the female protagonist appear strong - you can see Veera is irrevocably altered by the experience, and there's no bouncing back from it to act out a revenge or an empowerment fantasy, but she's also not damaged in a way that wouldn't allow her to never truly be happy. You could call it a stretch that alone with a dangerous stranger is where she feels safer than her cushy upper class home, but considering the circumstances, Highway begins to carve out an interesting argument about what 'home' really is. It's not putting up appearances, or pretending to be happy or comfortable. It's a place where you truly do feel happy, safe and comfortable. And most importantly, perhaps, it's a place you can form on your own, on your own terms.<br />
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The soundtrack comfortably accompanies the film, and the cinematography is incredibly lush, highlighting the strange beauty of dusty Indian country roads, and the mountainous beauty of northern India. Smartly the film sheds extraneous characters, the further the two main protagonists continue their journey and become closer. I'm not sure I loved the ending, but I do appreciate how it further highlighted this being Veera's story, first and foremost. I do feel like I may be over-rating this film a bit, as it surprised me so positively, especially Alia Bhatt's occasionally gut-wrenchingly good performance (seriously, who knew?) and Randeep doing his usual, reliably solid thing, and being particularly effective in some scenes, and the chemistry between them. I'll have to rewatch this, for sure, but for now, I'm just in love with it. </div>
veracioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14437521137603205617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1668731454857654821.post-82014873376482763632014-05-10T00:13:00.000+03:002014-05-10T00:13:07.536+03:00The Lunchbox and the argument for self-reflection.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The pointlessness of consumption starts to hit home when the DVDs you've hauled from half-way across the globe gather dust as you're so preoccupied with life and other interests that you've got. Believe you me, I don't mean to abandon Indian movies without much warning every 18 months or so - it just happens. And then I rush back in, flushed with new-found excitement. The love is always there, in a way, even when the blog is dead and the DVD player abandoned. I just get so tired, tired with the mediocrity, tired with the dullness of the Bengali art picture I'm forcing myself to sit through just because, tired of waiting for DVDs to come out, tired of the vapid jokes made on Koffee with Karan. So I leave, and then I come back.<br />
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I should have, of course, returned much earlier, as the brilliant Dabba (or<strong> The Lunchbox</strong>, as it's so widely known internationally now) arrived in Finnish cinemas a little over a month ago. I always wanted to see it, and I don't even feel like the film suffered from praise overload. It is a darling film, full of little flavors and notes to pick up on, well-directed and written, and with captivating performances and gentle comedic touches. It's got Irrfan Khan, ambassador of Indian acting to the western world, and Nawazuddin Siddiqui, the new can-do-no-wrong actor, and Nimrat Kaur, a shockingly fantastic newer find.<br />
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It's hard to disagree that this should've been India's Oscar hopeful, as even if you find the film bland and overrated, its gentle love story, culture-specific setting (the dabbawallahs' uncharacteristic mistake setting the scene for the exchange of letters), its feel-good vibes and lack of songs included, would have made it the perfect film for that particular audience. Even a month after its initial release, the screening on an early evening was weirdly full - this film is catching considerable word of mouth even in my northern corner of the globe, and I have no doubt Oscar buzz would've helped this along further. But just as well, and I'm happy it's getting such wide international recognition, even without being pitched to the Academy.<br />
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So it's a good film, and a joy to sit through, but what I found most important about the film was that it really made me reflect on life. As most good love stories, the one in Dabba is ultimately about something greater than the connection between two people. Saajan (Irrfan) and Ila (Nimrat Kaur) are tiptoeing into a connection with their exchanged messages, and as with any two unhappy people who connect over their unhappiness, their exchanges soon become about their lives itself - what they want, what they don't want, and what they can expect from the future. It's only natural that the viewer also finds themselves asking similar questions - especially if they're relatively young, or with their life in flux, or going through a rough time, or even if they're older, like Saajan, and looking back on their past experiences.<br />
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I found myself wondering all of these things, and then arguing with myself - maybe these questions aren't really as tough as one might, in their bourgeois angst, think. After all, endless pondering about life and ourselves, our direction or our happiness, can put a person in a state of utter confusion, that can be only medicated by being marketed self-help in form of books and life style magazines and co-opted philosophies. The Lunchbox seems to also posit that this self-reflection can be rather middle class. Do the dabbawallahs themselves ponder these things? Maybe, but maybe they move on quicker than some of us. There is, in essence, much common sense in the character of Shaikh (Siddiqui), whose description of an ordinary day, full of work but also of little joys, really hit home for me. In a complicated world, simplicity can be the greatest treasure of all, even as I roll my eyes at what a cliché that sounds like. Pessimism remains my affliction.<br />
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Such is the beauty of cinema, and of all stories, really. They inspire us to see beyond what is just on the page, and consider ourselves in reflection to the characters. It's not that a film has to be deep to inspire such thoughts, it merely has to be compelling and believable as a story. And while I can't say The Lunchbox became an instant all-time favourite, I appreciate it because it certainly inspired me in many ways, and that's so much more than most films manage to do.</div>
veracioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14437521137603205617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1668731454857654821.post-75137891233377161072014-01-31T10:17:00.000+02:002014-01-31T10:17:11.546+02:00Arundhati - a woman and her dagger.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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It is so rare to see an actress at the centre of a Telugu masala film, that when I spotted the Malayalam dubbed DVD of <strong>Arundhati</strong>, a 2009 Telugu supernatural thriller, I knew instantly that I had to buy it. The cast also intrigued me - Anushka Shetty, who is typically a solid performer, was at the helm and Sonu Sood, my favourite scumbag in both North and South Indian cinemas, played the horrifying villain she has to conquer. The plot tells of a woman being reborn in modern day to conquer the evil that once plagued her court.</div>
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I didn't have subtitles for this movie, so all of its subtleties, or lack thereof, escaped my understanding. What I could gather was the gist of the plot and the performances, which are all solid. The CGI was probably never amazing to begin with, so it looks a bit dated now, but serves its purpose, as this tale of black magic and all kinds of sorcery wouldn't really be told without the help of computer-generated special effects.</div>
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I wish I had had subtitles, though, because I feel like regardless of quality, this film would've been more interesting. What I gather is that it's an okay film, not a spectacularly good one - it has all the tropes of this type of film, from the revenge angle to the ludicrous horrifying lengths Sonu Sood's villain reaches. It's not quite <strong>Magadheera</strong> levels of fun, partly because it's so serious and has almost nothing in it to truly lighten the mood (even the songs never really make it fun). Some scenes are almost too dark, lending it a bit of a horror film feel, which may be entirely intentional. There is also one film shamelessly copied from a well-known Chinese film from the early 2000s.<br />
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It is so rare to see a female-lead film in this manner, though. There is no hero here - Anushka's two characters are the focus, and even though she gets some help from men, there isn't a single moment where it looks like the focus might shift towards somebody else. It's refreshing, but at the same time it's not as revolutionary as one might hope. There is no part in which the traditional gender roles are necessarily questioned - the heroine is given agency but she's kind of portrayed as the exception, not the rule. A devil's advocate might ask whether that's so different from how heroes are portrayed, too, though, and I suppose that's true.<br />
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Perhaps more telling is the fact that even if this was a pretty decent hit in the box office, I've not really seen it mentioned much. I suppose that could just be a sign of its reputation, because like I said, even without subtitles, I didn't get the sense I was missing out on nuanced storytelling, or even intriguing supernatural world-building. As it stands, I might recommend it to those who like the leads and don't mind dated-looking CGI combined with stern supernatural stories. </div>
veracioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14437521137603205617noreply@blogger.com0