Indian Movies

I never thought i would write this. I just came back from watching Slumdog Millionaire and was thoroughly dissappointed.

The movie has NO REDEEMING VALUE!

There is no plot (whatever there is is contrived and implausible), and the movie doesn't make any point apart from showing that a boy from the slums became a millionaire and got the girl. Everything else is a macabre and distorted depiction of poverty and injustice and in India packaged as entertainment.

There are so many things that don't make sense that I don't know where to start. For instance, the fact that the boy just happened to know all the answers is so unbelieveable. And what was that about the quiz show host handing over the boy to the police like that - that doesn't happen, no not even India. And to think that the police would be stupid enough to apply third-degree methods on such a high-profile person - gosh it is all so fake. 

I am surprised that the movie won the best picture Oscar. It is a fact that Indian cinema has produced many movies that are far better than this pedestrian effort. Or perhaps the judges felt entertained by the glum depictions of an exotic and harsh place.

I said before that the movie had no redeeming value. Well I'd like to change that and say that there is one - the movie doesn't shy away from showing the dark underbelly of Indian society and goes where most Indian filmmakers feel out of their comfort zone. It brings out in the open what nobody seems comfortable to talk about and that is a good thing. However the problem is that no message is conveyed and everything is presented as a fait accompli, again just to serve as entertainment. And in that the movie leaves much to be desired.

In the days to come, there will be widespread discussion on Slumdog Millionaire and whether it reflects the true worth of India and is indeed a representation of life in India. There will be many who will suddenly change their stance now that the film has won eight Oscars. While there will be silly marketing managers and their ilk who will try and devise strategies as to how Jamal Malik can now be the brand-endorser for all things which are basic and Indian.

For me personally, the Oscar ceremony on February 22 at the Kodak Theatre was more than just about a film set in Bombay. It was about recognising the true worth of soft power and its role in building a brand: in this case, Brand India and I believe for that and that alone, we need to be grateful to Danny Boyle. The film could easily have been set in Africa. We may have missed A R Rahman’s music in that case but am sure the treatment would have not been so dramatically different.

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Hi Everyone,         

We are happy to announce that it has been over six months since LJ announced its localisation plans for India. 

We have been making great progress and with help from all of you, we have successfully launched a number of India specific communities. Besides India Movies the other active and buzzing India centric communities on LiveJournal are India Politics, India Writing, India Travels, India Sport and Bollywood Club. 

We would also like you take this opportunity to introduce to you LJ India. LJ India is going to be an active hub, almost the ground zero for all Indian users of LiveJournal, as well as all LiveJournal users interested in India.

Suggest ideas & improvements, ask questions, post queries, garner insights from other LJ users or just find friends with similar interests – LJ India is the community that you should join.

Do join the LJ India community. We look forward to meeting you on LJ India.

If you have any thoughts on how the past six months have been, or thoughts on how to take it forward, do leave a word.

Cheers,

40 years from when he started, Amitabh Bachchan still considers himself lucky to live his journey. Even at the age of 65, his potential reaches new heights with every performance. And thus, we call him Amitabh Bachchan- the living legend!

Aamir Khan was so busy plugging Ghajini, that there was not much news of his creating a buzz for Taare Zameen Par in LA, like he did for Lagaan, which made it to the Oscar short-list in the Best Foreign Film Category,  and lost the the far-superior No Man's Land.

Meanwhile the Indian media is jumping with joy over Slumdog Millionaire winning four Golden Globes (though it is not an Indian film), including one for AR Rahman, that there hasn't been much lamenting over TZP not getting into the longlist.

The intention was right—get Hollywood (Warner) clout to back an Indian masala-meets-Chinese-kung fu spectacle and conquer the world. Maybe because they aimed too high, the fall was equally hard.

 A film like Chandni Chowk to China, inspired by the illogical seventies' style commercial cinema (the kind Manmohan Desai patented), needs a sense of childish abandon, total conviction in its silliness and a don't-let-them-think pace, which Nikhil Advani simply cannot accomplish.  As a result of which the Chinese martial arts portions of the film (like a live-action Kung Fu Panda) work much better that the Bollywood melodrama. 

Soumyadip has put together a great list of Indian celebrity bloggers, mostly Bollywood actors, actresses and directors.

The post makes an attempt at listing the Indian celebrities who have taken on to blogging. 

A great resource!

In the credits (and the brochure), the characters have names likes Angelic Anu, Hungree Hussain, Krazee Kripalani, Troubled Talpade, and so on… and the wit in Varun Khanna's Bad Luck Govind ends right there.
 
The thought of watching yet another Mumbai gangster film is not in the least encouraging, but the title suggested a comedy, so hopes were raised a bit… and dashed soon enough. 
 


A skinny and sad-looking, jug-eared Govind (Gaurav Kapur) believes he brings bad luck wherever he goes… a very unlikely series of errors, leads to his leaving Delhi for Mumbai, and having his luggage stolen on the train.
 
At a hospital (where he goes to try make some money as a sperm donor), he meets aspiring actor Vishal (Amit Mistry--earnest), who gives the hapless fellow shelter in his chawl room.
 
The chawl has two sets of warring gangsters – Kapoor (Parmeet Sethi) and gang on one side, and Talpade (Ganesh Yadav) on the other. Mostly they just yell insults across the yard, but there is some complicated betting involving the imprisonment of a don Mahalkar's (Govind Namdeo) nephew, causing ego clashes between the two sides.
 
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Hello, the film adaptation of Chetan Bhagat's One Night@Call Centre,  did not do well at the box-office. There's another film, 3 Idiots, based on his novel Five Point Someone coming up, being directed by Rajkumar (Munnabhai) Hirani, with Aamir Khan and Kareena Kapoor, so that counts for something.

 Contemporary Indian literature being turned into films, however, got a boost with the extraordinary success of Slumdog Millionaire, based on Vikas Swarup's Q & A—one of the few instances, I am told, of the film being better than the book.

A year that started on a high and optimistic note, ends with recession and a bit of gloom.. but 2008 was not such a bad year all thing considered. At least it ended with the bang of Rab Ne Bana Do Jodi and Ghajini.

If anything, 2008 taught filmmakers once again, that audiences cannot be taken for granted.  And just because one film of a genre worked, doesn't mean everything will.  After the success of comedies last year, there was a spate of them this year and most of them Bombay to Bangkok, One Two Three, Mr Black and Mr White, De Taali,  Money Hai To Honey Hai,  Dhoom Dhadakka,  Ugly Aur Pagli, God Tussi Great Ho, Maan Gaye Mughe-e-Azam, Rafoochakkar failed at the box-office.  But Golmaal Returns, Singh is Kingg, Dostana and surprisingly Welcome to Sajjanpur salvaged the genre somewhat.

If a star—who otherwise claims to be a private person—pulls out all the stops to promote a film, including cutting hair in the streets, and releasing his body building video, it smacks of desperation. Only if someone is not totally sure of their film would they go for these begging bowl marketing strategies.

Ok, so Ghajini took a great opening, and money is all, but what about dignity?  Aamir Khan has enough fans, and if everyone saw the film at least once, it would do well anyway.  But after that publicity blitz, people who would normally not see the film are going out of curiosity, and many are coming out revolted by the violence and shocked by mediocrity of the film.  But Aamir wanted big opening figures and he got them, but what's he going to do next for publicity—he has already plumbed the depths.

The film, directed by AR Murugadoss, who had also helmed the Tamil version, is a revenge drama –the kind Mithun Chakraborty has done by the dozen in the past—the only twist is that the hero suffers from short-term memory loss, and this twist as everyone knows, has been picked from Hollywood film Memento. So much for originality… no wonder the hero needs to build up an eight-pack body and flaunt it.

Today's generation may not even be aware of the Rajesh Khanna craze the early seventies. But such was the frenzy that the word 'superstar' was coined for him.

His downfall was equally rapid and then the Amitabh Bachchan frenzy took over. But for the short while that he was at the top, he was in another stratosphere.  Years later, it was nostalgia that brought a small bunch of people to the cinemas to see his new film Wafaa.