Ooi maa! Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani.

When making my Filmi year 2009 post I knew I had missed out on Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani, a romantic comedy (with emphasis on comedy) by Rajkumar Santoshi. The man directed by favourite Hindi comedy of all time, Andaz Apna Apna (discussed here), and based on what I'd heard of APKGK, this new film was also in the same vein of loud, hilarious comedy, but with a definite emotional center, too.

I was not wrong, glad to say. The story of Prem (Ranbir Kapoor) who falls for Jenny (Katrina Kaif) and the friendship/love that develops between them is a wonderful, twisty ride that doesn't let up speed and builds to the goofiest, loveliest of finales.

For a comedy that relies on loud comedy which may come off as gimmicky or simplistic, I think Ajab Prem.. has a pretty fantastically considered script. The pace is not that of many a loud Hindi comedy (think Priyadarshan's half-assed Hindi ventures), fast one moment and completely stuck the other; it flows nicely throughout and it's punctuated with a super-catchy, wonderful soundtrack (Tu Jaane Na sung by Atif Aslam is my favourite track). Unlike AAA, it doesn't parody Hindi films as loudly, though there's the occasional self-referential quip, including some hilarious references to AAA itself.

This is the first time I've really loved Ranbir in a performance, which is not to say I've loathed him before, but like a lot of stars, I think it takes a while for one to "get" why others like him so much. And in this movie, I simply understood. Prem may be a simple character archetype; the nice guy who sacrifices and does anything and everything for love, but Ranbir makes Prem seem real somehow, even in the fantastic setting of Ajab. Katrina Kaif is also in good form, though her acting still has plenty of room for improvement.

The only flaw of Ajab is the fact that it won't work for everybody; just like AAA is too loud, too extreme to be funny to some people. But I think those who it will work for, it'll be a tremendous watch. The kind of Hindi film that should be a more common experience than it actually is; a film that makes you laugh and cry, and then laugh through the tears.

Poliisi on ystävämme - Saamy.

Harva elokuva alkaa niin loistavalla esimerkillä kuin tamilinkielinen perusmasala Saamy (2003), jossa pätkän päähenkilö (Vikram) raahautuu aamulla kaljakioskiin, josta hän ostaa yhden ison pullon ohrapirtelöä ja pesee sillä naamansa ja hampaansa. Sitten hän haukkaa aamupalaa sekoittamalla kaljaa idleihinsä (eteläintialaisia riisikakkujuttuja) ja uhoaa erinäisille ihmisille. [Very few movies begin with such a great example as the Tamil basic masala Saamy, where the main character (Vikram) drags himself in the morning to a beer-seller, where he buys a big bottle of beer and washes his face and teeth with it. Then he grabs breakfast by mixing beer with his idlis and telling some people off.]

Hei suomalaiset, rappioalkoholismi toimii Tamil Nadussakin. Biisin jälkeen sankarimme uhittelee poliisille ja vetää paria kyttää aika reilustikin turpaan. Voin hyväksyä tämmöisen meiningin, kun tietää intialaisen poliisin kyseenalaisen maineen korruption petikumppanina. [Hey Finns, destructive alcoholism works in Tamil Nadu, too. After a song our hero defies the police and kicks a couple of cops' asses quite heavily. I'm fine with this sort of behavior, when one considers the questionable reputation of the Indian police as the bedmate of corruption.¹ ]

Valitettavasti alkukohtaukset ovat ovelaa harhautusta, eikä Saamy olekaan leffa katujentallaajasta, joka oikoo poliisin rivejä omankädenoikeudella. Saamy on sen sijaan uusi poliisipäällikkö tai vastaava, joka esitti tavista saadakseen ensikäden tietoa poliisin tekemisistä. Pian hän paljastaa oman identiteettinsä ja asettaa tiukat säännöt Tirunevelin kaupungille. Ja yllätys, homma toimii ihan loistavasti, kun kunnon mies vastaa asioista. [Unfortunately the beginning are a cleverly misleading, and Saamy is not a movie about an ordinary man of the street who corrects the police force with self-delivered justice. Instead Saamy is the new chief of police or something to that effect, who pretended to be an ordinary guy to get first-hand information about what the police were doing. Soon he reveals his identity and lays down the strict rules for the town of Tirunevel. And surprise, everything works perfectly, when a proper man is in charge.]

Paikallisen gangsterin/poliitikon/jonkun naaman kanssa sujuu alussa myös loistavasti, kun Saamy antaa hänelle liikkumatilaa laittomien baarien pitämisen suhteen; kunhan anniskelualueet eivät ole temppelin tai koulun vieressä, kaikki on ihan jees. Jossain vaiheessa suhde mutkistuu ja gangsterista muodostuu pahis, tietty, mitä sitä ennen on luvassa biisejä, romanttisia kuvioita ja tietysti pakollinen komediaraita. [Business with the local gangster/politician/whatever goes smoothly in the beginning, when Saamy gives him space with regards to running illegal booze joints; as long as the alcohol is kept away from temples and schools, everything is fine. At some point the relationship gets more complex and the gangster turns out to be a villain, of course, but before that there are songs, romantic happenings² and of course the obligatory comedy track.]

Komediasta vastaa harvinaisen loistava Vivek. Hän esittää pappia, joka näkee kaikenlaisia yhteiskunnallisia vääryyksiä ympärillään, eikä pelkää protestoida, oli kyse sitten kastisyrjinnästä, virkamieskorruptiosta tai taikauskosta. Hauskaa, ovelaa ja saarnaavaa yht'aikaa! [The truly great Vivek is in charge of the comedy. He plays a pandit who sees all kinds of societal wrongs around him, and is not afraid to protest, whether it concerns caste discrimination, civil servant corruption or superstition. Funny, clever and sermonizing at the same time!]

Romanttisissa kommervenkeissä tapaamme Trishan, joka on eteläintialaisista sankarittarista tähän mennessä näkemäni perusteella ehdottomasti kuivin. Vaikka Trisha on ihan mukava joissain rooleissa, yleensä hän ei yksinkertaisesti liikuta puoleen eikä toiseen, ja siten aina toivoisi, että hän olisi vain leffoissa, joita en edes halua katsoa. Ihan söpöähän tämä juonikuvio elokuvassa oli, mutta aina välillä sitä vain pyöritteli peukaloitaan ja mietti, milloin Vivek tulisi taas saarnaamaan jostain jutusta. [In the romantic side of the plot we meet Trisha, who is out of the South-Indian heroines that I've seen so far the least interesting³. Even though she's quite nice is in some roles, usually she simply doesn't move me either way, and therefore I findm yself wishing she'd only be in movies I wouldn't want to watch. The plot here is quite cute, but at times I'd just twidle my thumbs and wonder when Vivek would come onto the screen again.]

Jos nyt vähän saan omaa sukupuoltani vähätellä, niin biisienhän takia muijat näissä leffoissa joskus on. Saamyn musiikkianti on aika menevää, vaikka lyriikat tuppaavatkin olemaan vain listoja erinäisistä asioista. Tamil on varmasti runollisempi kieli kun nämä sanoitukset onnistuvat kuvaamaan. [If I could undermine my own gender for a moment, then it has to be said that it's mostly for the songs that girls in these movies sometimes are. Saamy's musical offering is quite good, though the lyrics seem to only be lists of different things. I'm sure Tamil is a more poetic language than these lyrics manage to convey.]

Kaikin puolin mukiinmenevä toimintapätkähän Saamy on, ei käy kieltäminen. Vikram antaa tasaisen roolisuorituksen, Vivek loistaa, ja juoni antaa juuri sopivasti paatosta. Silti aina välillä mietin, minkälainen leffasta olisi tullut, jos Vikramin esittämä Saamy ei olisikaan ollut roistojen keinoja käyttävä, poliisivoimia puhdistava kyttä, vaan ankaramman puolen, alkoholiin sortuva kadunmies. Erilainen elokuva, ja ehkä, surullista kyllä, parempi elokuva. [Saamy is quite an adequate action flick, can't be denied. Vikram gives a steady performance, Vivek shines and the plot delivers just enough of pathos. At the same time I sometimes wonder, what the movie would've been like if Saamy hadn't been the rowdy-methods-using cop but the violent, alcoholist man of the street. A different movie, for sure, and maybe, as sad as it is to say, a better movie.]

---

Second bilingual review. Just as shoddy as the first one. My style in Finnish is so weird, ugh. Hate.

Notes:

- "Poliisi on ystävämme" - the police is our friend. Finnish readers may connect this to a song from the 90s..

- ¹ This is what I mean about my shoddy Finnish. I just develop these overly complex sentence structures that end up sounding ridiculous in both English & Finnish. Bedmate of corruption? But I kind of like how it sounds in Finnish, heh.
² Direct translation would be "romantic patterns".
³ Literally translates "dryest".

^{Once again, English translation is shoddy because I am laaazy.}

Golden Kela Awards... smell the prestige.

I don't follow Razzies because I barely watch the good Hollywood movies, so I don't really keep up with the bad ones. But with Bollywood? Bring it!

Golden Kela Awards celebrates the worstness in Hindi cinema. But I think the whole awards are fabulously tongue-in-cheek and I laughed my ass off reading through the winners. It's snark in Awards form! A lot of Indian award ceremonies are not to be taken seriously but this one especially.

Consider for example the "black Award for Emotional Blackmail" that went to Amitabh Bachchan in Paa. I loved Paa but this is so spot-on!

And Critics Award to Taran Adarsh, easily the worst Bollywood critic around (because predicting box office numbers and spoiling endings to films great reviewer not make!). Brilliant.

And Bas Kijiye Bahut Ho Gaya (Stop it that's enough) Award to Madhur Bhandarkar. Yes, yes, yes.

And big big props to Abhishek Bachchan for accepting his Worst Accent award for Delhi-6 so graciously with the following tweet:

Another milestone in my carrer. I won the golden kela award 4 worst accent in Delhi 6. Chalo at least delhi 6 won something. I'm overjoyed!!

As are we, Abhishek!

And last but not least, the ace Cyrus Broacha was awarded the very special, prestigious Cyrus Broacha Memorial Award. His response?

‘It’s great. I’m thrilled. I hope to win this award every year,’ Cyrus said in his cheeky fashion. [source]

Beautiful. Also check out FG's take on these for a bit of alternative perspective.

Quickie review: Dhoondte Reh Jaoge

This 2009 comedy caper is a Bollywood spin on The Producers, filled with inside-industry gags and some loud, some subtler comedy. Raj Chopra (Paresh Rawal) is producer of steady flops, desperate to get Aryan Kapoor (Sonu Sood) in his next film. He meets a stuttering chartered accountant Anand (er, whatever that is!) played by Kunal Khemu, whose girlfriend Neha (Soha Ali Khan) is a budding actress. They clash initially but eventually come together for a nefarious plot to make money off a guaranteed flop film, and so they go out of their way to make the worst film possible..

The film manages to get a lot of very funny lines here and there, especially when it comes to industry references. Sonu Sood's opening scene has references to Southie masala clichés, which utterly killed me - the actor himself was also really good in the role.

Some of the comedy falls utterly flat, though, and I personally hated the cheesy song picturizations - I feel like the film should've been more self-conscious about them. They were mostly cringe-inducing.

The film they end up making is a shameless cut-and-paste film with plot elements from Sholay, DDLJ, Lagaan.. But of course, it's hilarious, and some of the best, silliest moments come from seeing the end product. A total joy for me was Soha Ali Khan's Neha having to do her best Basanti impression - golden scene.

I wish the film had been tighter and the song sequences better thought-out with regards to the rest of the film. They really jar and worst of all, offer little entertainment (I thought the first song with Kunal was particularly off-putting). But the performances in general are good. It's worth a watch if you like some of the cast - I'm particular to Soha and Kunal Khemu personally - but otherwise I wouldn't recommend it strongly.

Now here's a gossipy question - are Soha and Kunal really dating?

Fruits of procrastination: 90's Saif fanvideo.

The mullet, the dance moves.. so many good reasons not to watch a Saif film from the 90's. And yet, so many of us have despite our human rationality.

Clips used from Dil Tera Deewana, Main Khiladi Tu Anari, Hamesha & Suraksha. I haven't seen DTD or Suraksha but I have a song DVD with songs from them. The Dil Tera Deewana song is so godawful I may upload it in full.

Aaja Naachle - fluff at its most glorious.

In my understanding Aaja Naachle (2007) did not do great in the box office. People found the story cliché and shoddy in execution. Just as well. While it doesn't bring much to the table in terms of substance, I can't begrudge the movie, it just delivers entertainment of the glossy, vibrant and fluffy variety.

The fact is, the film only really begins around 30 minutes in. The preamble of Diya (Madhuri Dixit) dancing at a New York studio, moving like it's Dil To Pagal Hai, then finding out her guru is dead, then the backstory of her meeting an American guy (clearly from the male model school of non-acting) and moving to his country to the shame of her family.. All of this is pretty much boring and clichéd to the absolute max. Diya's kid is annoying and she clearly hasn't taught two things about her past to her own child (wtf?!) and the fact her divorce to Mr Americano was almost as soon as her plane landed in the US is bizarrely simplistic (apart from you know, white guy, foreigner, bad, bad, grr!).

Enter this guy, who is the villain in the loosest possible meaning of the word. And I assure you, this isn't just my blatant Akshaye fangirlism speaking, because the fact is, without dramatic tension there is no movie, and his character is the one who brings some to this incredibly fluffy piece. He wants to tear down the unused theater and Diya isn't keen of the fact, and so they make a deal - if she can put on a show full of locals to revive the culture scene of her village, he won't tear down the amphitheater. (More about this guy during Khanna Week in May - for now this paragraph will suffice.)

And here's where Aaja Naachle finally kickstarts, as Diya begins seeking out local talent, which is why we get a cavalcade of awesome side characters, all with their fluffy little existences, coming together for some musical magic.

Ranvir Shorey is Diya's left-behind former fiancee, still tragically in love with her.

Vinay Pathak as a civil servant wanting to impress his theater-loving wife.

Divya Dutta as Diya's former best friend and Irffan Khan as her businessminded husband (and "villain" number two).

Konkona Sen Sharma as the adorable tomboy fiercely crushing Kunal Kapoor's boy-next-door/goonda (but goonda only in the fluffiest manner).

And it's really just so entertaining and fluffy and glossy and fun, that the flaws of the beginning mysteriously begin to melt away.

What with all the colours and the fun and the dancing..

Oh the glorious dancing!

Could they have made a better movie out of this? Sure. There's a lot of untapped potential here for substance, perhaps kind of sadly so. The way Akshaye's character questions Diya's status as a current NRI coming to "save" a bit of India and damaging what he sees as progress while doing it is countered by her questioning his own foreign education (she was educated in India) being used to also "fix" India as he sees fit. But this angle of the story isn't explored beyond the initial touch.

The way Konkona's tomboy transforms into a beautiful young woman could've emphasized how changing how she dresses doesn't change who she is, and who he, in the end, is falling in love with.

But you know, minor quips. Focus on the fun, and there's plenty of it here.

Fun times, gorgeous Madhuri.

It's like, why bother hating?

You want colour, fun and warm fuzzies? Watch Aaja Naachle. You want something heavy and thought-provoking? Read a book.

Just telling it like it is..

Wake Up Sid - the audio review!

For the lazy, the hearing impaired and whatnot: I liked the movie, but wasn't as in love with it as some people.

If you want to hear me stumble over words, reveal something about my past, embarrassingly call Rahul Khanna "dreamy" and other things...

CLICK HERE! (Mild spoilers.)

..and either DOWNLOAD the mp3 with the review or PLAY it in a pop up window. The review is 5 mins 35 seconds long, so not too long I hope. :)

The subtle background score is "Memon House" by Indian Ocean, from the soundtrack to Black Friday.

Twitterati, twitterwasis, twitdoesntmatter...

I don't consider myself any authority on anything but if I may make some bold claims about Bollywood twitterati, I'll say this:

All hail R_Khanna.

"Back-to-back evenings full of glamour, dancing, sex, violence & raw, pulsing drama. Who needs Bollywood when it's wedding season in India?"
Weddings in India are masala films that also contain sex? If so, can I go to the ones Rahul Khanna attends? Please?

No wonder I rarely see this guy in mainstream films. He's way too busy. Way too busy being awesome.

He's so normal and flawed like the rest of us, but not in a cringe-inducing way!

"Walk briskly past Duty Free, Rahul. Do not make eye-contact with the Chunky Kit-Kat display. I repeat, do NOT make... Arrgh - too late!"
Kit-Kat addiction! Could this man be more adorable? I doubt it.

"Perhaps I can use my recovery time to write books under the nom de plume Ian Phlegming. Should I start with A View to a Chill or Coldfinger?"
Let's marry. Or at the very least, Twittermarry. Matwimony?

But as always, in Twitterverse, with the good comes the bad.

It is with a heavy heart that I return to my mortal twenemy, Uday Chopra.

"I can see the future...and i can see that tomorrow...I will wake up with a smile...good night my lovely twitteronians...a new word for y'all"
We didn't ask for a new word. Don't you remember what I told you about mid-chlorians? Why don't you just call us people? We're people, like you! Only better at tweeting. And acting.

"Ive discovered a truth about myself tday..I cant type with my eyes closed..ufrrk juhr u tu erute dubvet guvfso..guess its best 2 say gdnight"
I could've told you as much. And I'm typing this with my eyes closed, too.


And now we also have a new kid on the block, who doesn't ask "main aisa kyun hoon?" but instead makes us question everything we know. Like the meaning of life (inspirational poster by Ajnabi). And such. And ...time for the gym!

iHrithik, comes free with most Macbooks.

"Goodnite my beautiful tweeple,I'm humbled by ur love! GOd bless you ALL! N thank u from d bottom of my heart!may tom b beeautiful 4 u n me!!"
Everythings just real speciall!! In his world!!! Overusing exclamation marks!!! Is a sure-fire way to show you're new on the internet!!!

"WHAT IS THE MEANING OF LIFE ?....... Whatever U WANT it TO BE !!! ;) goodnite tweeple! Good luck 4 Exams, work, and evrything else!!!"
Truly inspirational stuff.

But of course, even a great man such as the mythical iHrithik has to run into some questionable, fail-type waters. Such as not realizing that even if a Pakistani kid is being called "paki" and bullied, it doesn't really do much to stand up and be "proud" of your Pakistani heritage. I mean, in the UK it's a racial slur, not an insult against being Pakistani.

Anyway...

"My fav supplements- vit C, multivitamin, antioxident, L-glutamine, omega 3(never 6), creatine(only to bulk 4 short periods),.."
Write what you know, Hrithik. Write what you know.

Oh oh oh remember that Shahrukh guy who twitterized poetry last time I covered his tweets? Well, he's still tweeting, apparently. I guess he has a new movie out and he's trying to promote it. Sweet kid, I hope some people go see it.

"love u all my knightwriters. celebrating dark...silence...quiet...dreams...and shutting down of the day. will reopen tomorrow...goodknight."
What the what now? Dude, you gotta stop rewatching The Dark Knight. You are not Batman. I mean if Mumbai needed a dark knight, you have enough moolah to go all Bruce Wayne on it but you're not Batman. Or are you? Is this your way of telling us..?

"batman/trackpants/dont like visits...i am homebody/dont like to swim but have to for my shoulder/sundays at home/want to do a comedy now"
...Holy item number, Batman, it's ...Bombay ka Batman!!!

And with this revelation, I shall go away. But Bollycelebrities on Twitter, remember, I am watching you. I may not be following you because I like to keep my brain clean, but I am watching you.

PS. Rahul, '@' me anytime! I promise you I'm not the weird foreign chick who pervs on most males in your family. No, no. That's Beth, you see. I'm totally regular and well-adjusted.

PPS. Beth, sorry for throwing you under the bus there. All's fair in love and war and Khanna, hai na? ;)

Bloggish announcements.

I organized my Indian film DVD's last Friday, which was somewhat eye-opening. From this mess I organized them into some piles - separating South-Indian films, Hindi oldies (pre-1980) and unwatched films.

Southie pile, oldie pile and unwatched pile pictured here. Then, beginning with the oldies, I began placing them onto my awesome IKEA DVD shelf.

The elephant decoration was something I got from Christmas one year. I figured it was perfect fit for my filmi collection. The number of watched oldies came up 25 films.

Newer Hindi films added four rows in length, as there were 54 of them (plus one DVD my friend Mog has borrowed for the time-being).

Then 24 Southie films to fill the shelf entirely and 15 unwatched films of all varieties separated from the shelf to guilt me into watching them soon. And of course, the DVD's I deemed as waste of space, and want to get rid of - currently that number stands at five.

So overall? 124 movies!

Actor stats:
Vinod Khanna films: 13
Saif Ali Khan films: 13
Dharmendra films: 11
Hema Malini films: 10
Siddharth films: 8
Vikram films: 6

And then I went downstairs to my mailbox and found...

A belated but awesome Christmas present from Ramsu of 24 fps. The first is a Telugu film about Bharatanatyam dancing, Shankarabharanam and the second one is Pushpak(a Vimana), a "Kannada" film as I understand it that was released in multiple languages very easily because it's a modern silent film. Ha! Finally a film in which watchers of all ethnicities are on equal linguistic footing. Very exciting.

Oh, right so, announcements!

I suppose there's really only one. I have to really get some stuff done in March. But I don't want to let my blog go un-updated, so instead I've just scheduled a bunch of posts to release while I'm busy doing stuff. Therefore So they dance will run on autopilot throughout March and possibly some of April. I'll check/reply to comment, continue watching Twitter etc, but as far as posts go, most of what you'll be seeing has been written in February.

But there's some pretty good stuff to come if I can say so myself. On Friday there's the next Twitterverse post, then on Sunday an audio review.

Catch you later.

Abhay party update: I admit it, drunk already.

I am crossing the border between sane, clinical interest and into the wild realms of crazy-enough-to-get-all-completist when it comes to Abhay Deol filmography. But you can't possibly blame me, because just like Siddharth, my only other object of filmography completism, this man does not make bad films.

He really doesn't.

So of course I'll keep watching. Insert narcotics addiction reference of choice.

Oh well. At least his films don't come with a 30 dollar shipping charge from BhavaniDVD (yes I am looking at you, Siddharth). Plus it's always great to know that I'm not alone. If I was truly crazy I'd get completist about somebody who boasts a 200+ credit filmography and has been known to appear in some stinkers, right? These guys with their barely 10-film long filmographies are peanuts.

But really delicious peanuts.

Ek Chalis Ki Last Local (2007), directed by Sanjay Khanduri, is a bit of a weird one. It's a black comedy about two people who miss the last train (that leaves at 1:40 AM) and try to kill a few hours to catch the morning one. In the beginning of the movie, Nilesh (Abhay Deol), our narrator, has walked away with 2 crore in a suitcase, but how? A movie-long flashback scene begins. First he crosses paths with Madhu (Neha Dhupia), who is also heading towards the same part of Mumbai as he. It's a bit of a Kaminey Lite - we see various characters in different situations and towards the end, most of them part of the underworld, things get messier, and we see the individuals coming together. It's all just a little Tarantino, for better or for worse.

I had some small irks, like how boring the characters besides Nilesh and Madhu are, and how I didn't really care about what happened to them, or the romantic arc, which is definitely one of the strangest I've seen in a while. It starts out as frank sexual desire on Nilesh's part, as well as a bit of a saving-the-girl complex, then dissolves into something undescribable, then Madhu does something one could only do to somebody they truly cared for, and by the end.. Well, see it for yourself. Throughout the film there was a bit of an uneven feel to it. I liked it but at the same time I felt like I shouldn't like it.

But overall, I definitely liked it. Like Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!, it had me constantly chuckling to myself, even if the humor here is broader in some ways. Abhay is great and Neha Dhupia totally reminded me of why I like her; the role is not the most typical but she gives it great edge. And she's of course amazingly gorgeous. The kiss between them (yes! there is one!) happens under bizarre circumstances storywise, but visually it's great, not awkward in the least.

Ahista Ahista (2006) is quite honestly the Abhay Deol film I've liked least so far. The plot tells of the aimless, ambitionless Ankush (Abhay Deol) meeting Megha (Soha Ali Khan) who has eloped to Delhi but her boyfriend never shows up. Ankush takes care of her, makes sure she has a roof over her head and as she gets settled back into a regular life, he slowly falls in love with her and also manages to make progress with his own life as well. The story is fairly unbalanced towards Ankush's side of things; we see very little of what Megha thinks or feels. Soha does a great job portraying some of it with her eyes rather than dialogue, but it still feels like we're missing one half of the story.

Normally I'm not one to chuckle at lame "hey this word means another thing in some other language" but whenever I type "ahista" I am reminded of the Finnish colloqualism, "ahistaa", roughly meaning "I'm feeling distressed/anguished." The verb ("ahdistaa") used can also mean "pressure" so I guess the idea is that you're feeling pressured from all sides, feeling trapped somehow.

It certainly in some ways describes my feelings towards this movie, even though I know the Hindi meaning is quite different. I never get a sense of whether the film is trying to be a love story or a coming-of-age story or both or neither, and the ending really kills most of the fondness I had for the movie. I hate to say this because I know Imtiaz Ali normally writes good stuff (he scripted this): the ending is just bad writing. I disliked the second half so much I began skipping and what I did see of it was not good. I suppose the ending in some ways may seem logical. But I just wasn't into it.


And now I have to recommend everybody out there watch CNBC TV18's Beautiful People interview with Abhay Deol. Part 1 of 3 is here. Seriously, seriously good stuff, including what makes an independent film in the Hindi film industry (vs non-Indian ones), art vs craft etc. Some people may disagree with me on the interviewer but I rather like her. She puts actors on the spot, and doesn't necessarily make them feel comfortable by patting them on the head and showering them with compliments all the damn time. Her interview about Salman Khan is also worth a look; Salman looks positively pissed off at her, but he reveals a lot of stuff and in the end I think he's just frustrated at certain things fame has brought into his life, which he'd rather keep quite simple. Beautiful People, based on what I've seen, is ALWAYS a good watch.

PS. I want to coin the term Hindie for Hindi 'independent' films. Of course, it makes no difference when spoken out loud but I just kind of dig it.