Chak This Out!

I read recently that Shah Rukh Khan will be endorsing a fairness cream for men - going from 'lux'uriating in a bath-tub to preening in front of a mirror, playing with his tube of cream? D-uh! What is the world coming to?

Perhaps - as a listener explained this morning on a radio show I was tuned in on, where said topic was, well, the topic of discussion - it has something to do with the fact that his next movie, "Chak De India", has him playing the coach of an all-girls hockey team, and all that competition is getting to him! Someone ought to warn him about the pitfalls of taking the first word of the movie title a little too literally.

Ah, guess all is "fair" in love, war, all that. He-he!

"Summaa Adhirudhu-lle!!"

Hoo-boy! Last evening (night, rather) was one of the most fun experiences ever! I went for the first-day show for the movie 'Sivaji' - starring our own thalaivar Super Star Rajnikanth! I have never been to a first-day-first-show before in my life, certainly not a thalaivar movie. And though this was technically not first-show, it was still certainly something! Rock concerts by internationally acclaimed bands be damned! This is the real thing!

Consider this. You get to the theater one hour before the show. You don't bring your car, coz you know that traffic would be a bitch and parking will be hell. And even though you're an hour early, you see FIVE HUNDRED PEOPLE standing in queue outside the theater. You think they are waiting for tickets, but no - THESE GUYS HAVE TICKETS! They're just waiting to get in!

There are metal barricades all across the entrance of the theater complex, and beefy security guys with a mean look and brandishing meaner lathis patrol the queue of eager fans. The line continues to grow. People are being let in, one at a time through a gap in the barricade - their tickets being checked, and their selves frisked. You spot a moment when all the guards happen to look away, and sneak into the queue right behind a bunch of girls who are just getting in through the gap, thus 'jumping' a few hundred poor souls in line (tip - jump the queue just after a bunch of girls - this way the guards apparently think twice before starting a ruckus), and lo, you're inside the complex. But wait - there is ANOTHER line leading up to the entrance of the movie hall, where you get frisked over and over in sequence six times, and are checked to see if you're carrying any cigarettes or alcohol, both of which are banned. You've not been frisked so many times at one go ever before! You pass through what seems like an endless passage before you reach your hall. Btw, all the screens in the complex are running the same movie.

You decide to take a leak just before the show starts, and hit the restroom only to find people in there - smoking! You finish your business and return to your seat, to find the guys in the row in front of you sipping surreptitiously from a bottle of cola, passing it stealthily from one to another - only, it's no cola, it's a clear golden liquid which seems to burn a lot going in, by the look on their faces! The faint stench of whiskey in the air only confirms your suspicions.

The movie is scheduled to start at 10 PM, but no one is in a hurry. You wait till the hall is filled one person at a time, and eventually the lights dim at 10.45 PM. The screen lights up, and the crowd goes wild! It's only a trailer for some arbit movie, but no one cares! :-)...the party is on, fellers!! With just the one trailer (and no ads), Sivaji kicks in. For the first five minutes, you can hear NOTHING from the screens! This is because the crowd refuses to hush up, going wild with frenzy right through the intro sequence - said intro sequence being a ubiquitous thalaivar hallmark! The camera captures only his feet, his back, his shoulders, as he walks and talks through his first few lines, and at the dramatic moment, he turns to face the camera - and smiles. And that's when all hell breaks loose in the movie hall - the guys in the row ahead, along with pretty much 80% of the crowd, are on their feet cheering...and someone is throwing fucking confetti!!! Well, it's just a bunch of paper that's been shredded to bits, but it's in the air, tons of it! It takes a full ten minutes for some semblance of calm to set in. By this time, you're fully into the spirit of things! (No - no puns about 'spirit' please. The guys in the row ahead were done with their firewater long ago)

You realize that this particular movie-watching experience is highly interactive. When a song is playing on the screen - you see this chap sitting two rows up get up and begin to dance along. It's actually a bit surreal to see his sinuous silhouette swinging hips in time with the heroine on the screen! When the 'comedy track' kicks in, you literally roll along the aisle in laughter. You slaver openly when the heroine goes through the titillating mechanics of the dances (the choreography of which, typically, has very little to do with the lyric or music, and more with blatant suggestive eroticism), clad in the barest essentials that just stop the censors from going 'snip'. You hiss and boo the villains, casting very vocal aspersions on the legitimacy of his birth and threatening to chop off his wee-wee when he gives your hero some lip.

And the punch lines. Ohh, the punch lines!!! You wait for it with bated breath....you know it's coming...and when it hits, you roar as one with the crowd, cheering your thalaivar, savoring the lyrical tang of the punch, quickly memorizing it and hoping you'll remember it - for later. Coz this is the first day, and you heard it first!

All through this, you are dimly aware of the fact that there is some sort of a story being told here, maybe. And then again, maybe not. You don't really care. All that matters, is the fact that you are there first. For the first day of your thalaivar's movie, after a break of two years. Jumping for joy, cheering at full cry, roaring as one with the crowd of admirers - till the pounding from the surround-sound speakers resonates with your own full-throated enjoyment. All that matters, is the vibe. "Summaa adhirudhu-lle?" :-)

What did BMW do wrong?

I'm sure everyone has seen the details of how the "BMW case" is turning out - this news item, for instance.

I quote here the crux of the case, from the same article -

"Nanda is facing trail* for crushing to death six persons while driving his BMW car allegedly at high speed in Delhi on January 18, 1999."

(*spelling mistake! Bad, bad rediff!!)

That's it - that's the ONLY connection BMW has with the whole issue, and yet this is being labeled the "BMW case"!!! And the company's name is being dragged through mud! When Sallu bhai did something similar a few years ago, it was termed the 'Salman Khan case', or the 'pavement murders'. But here it's not the 'Nanda case', but the poor guys who made the damn car!!

WTF???

Interestingly, I haven't heard a peep from the BMW guys in the media about their name being bandied about in this context. I am not entirely sure it's good publicity for them - unless mowing down the plebians is the latest pastime of the rich and famous, or alternately, these guys believe that any publicity is good publicity.

P(r)oof!

I watched this movie called Proof (2005 release) today with some friends. I can't believe IMDB rates this movie at 7 on 10 (though this is a user rating mechanism I believe)! This is a perfect example of a movie that promises at first, only to deceive, unfortunately.

The story is about this math genius (played with effortless brilliance by Anthony Hopkins) who, in the last five years, has been mentally disturbed, and is recently deceased. In his last years he is cared for by his daughter (Gwyneth Paltrow in another very good performance) who chooses to live with him at their home in Chicago. She has to now face the possibility that she might have inherited his streak of insanity. A research student (Jake Gyllenhaal) arrives to search through the papers written up by the professor during these last years. Also entering the scene is the elder daughter (Hope Davis) who arrives from New York to settle matters after her father's death.

The production quality of this movie is excellent - the cinematography is sensitive to the fact that this is a human drama, with a few key characters, and the camera often moves through some great portrait settings and view points. The storytelling technique is very crisp and tight, moving in and out of flashbacks. The technique in the script is also good - the build-ups and punchlines that characterize a story told interestingly.

However there are enough of the weak points, in many crucial scenes, that make the movie slip badly. Just when a scene achieves a dramatic buildup, comes a corny cheesy line from a Mills & Boon novella to spoil the moment entirely. And if this movie is about the math, well, where's the math? The audience ought to have been given SOMETHING to test their intelligence - who can forget the 'blonde entering the bar with her friends' sequence in 'A Beautiful Mind' that then fires off the sequence of thoughts in the mind of John Nash, eventually leading to game theory?

Another place the movie loses out on is the (mis)casting of Jake Gyllenhaal - the other three key players in this drama come up with stellar performances (despite the weak moments in the script), but Jake ends up trying a bit too hard and cannot pull off the 'cool geek' persona.

This movie held my attention for the first twenty minutes or so, with some very clever production and storytelling, but if the attempt is to create a gripping drama, then EVERY line of dialogue counts! A few loose moments here and there can make the audience's interest go poof!


Recommendation: Watchable - but keep your expectations in check.

Steve Jobs - Three Stories

Came across this awesome video today. I have read the text of this speech before, but it is great to hear and see the video itself. Enjoy.

Saccharin Substitute

Music Review - Cheeni Kum

I still have mixed feelings about this album. Were it not for the fact that I have heard and thoroughly lost myself in delight in the 'original' tracks in Tamil years ago (heck, I was brought up on this stuff!), I wonder if my reaction to the Hindi versions would have been much more positive. It is taking me a huge effort to not make the inevitable comparisons - due to which, at first, I literally shied away at these re-made (I don't want to use the term 'remixed' because of the connotation I normally associate with it - one of mild distaste at a pathetic attempt at commercialization and de-intellectualization) tracks. But I've kept going back since. Check out the tracks here.

The reason, for me, is simple - Shreya Ghoshal. In my mind, she is undoubtedly the most talented voice among women in the Indian film industry today. Her voice quality is crystal clear, her diction is excellent, and her control on the smallest microtones is simply phenomenal - all of which technically adds up to a very emotive appeal even when she sings supposedly light songs, as in this soundtrack. Ilaiyaraaja (IR) has her among his favourites (her Tamil pronunciation is engiyo-level!), and she has sung in his films ("Onna Vida" in Virumaandi for instance) and in the odd concert covering some of his earlier compositions.

Baradwaj has done an excellent review of this soundtrack here, and there is little I'd like to add specifically on each track. He recommends "Baatein Hawa" as the pick of the lot (it has the best 'complete' feel about it, interludes et al), and I would agree. "Jaane Do Na" comes a close second - the basic melody itself is out-of-this-world. "Cheeni Kum" works because of the slightly peppier pace than the original (or at least the percussion tracks are laid out to give that impression), and also because of Shreya - check out the way she 'puts feel' in the word "problem"! That's the reason I love this girl's voice - she can go from light, to husky, to melancholic, to whatever, with utmost finesse! I'm a fan!

As for the tracks themselves - I get the feeling IR was simply tooling around with a synthesizer and a computer, and the score sheets of a few of his hundreds of hits, and put this soundtrack together. I doubt he rolled up his sleeves and did what he does best - write and score some amazing music! Clearly the melodies themselves are re-hashed, which, honestly I don't have a problem with. It's a great way for some of his very best tunes to find a larger non-Tamil non-South-Indian and younger audience. Plus, he's 'lift'-ing his own stuff, and I'm sure, with the full knowledge of the producers. But it's the rest of the stuff - the definitive intros, the involved interludes, the myriad little whispered instrumental conversations at the back or the end of the main melody, the sudden change of 'colour' through a cleverly used chord sequence, the mind-bending detours in rhythm and timing - that are such a trademark of his brilliance and which are marked by their absence (or are used with measured restraint), that slightly disappoint a die-hard old-time IR fan like me.

I think IR has gone for 'sound', maybe with the view that today's audience is wired up for stuff like that, and I believe the gamble might pay off with the same audience, but does not quite cut it for someone like me. An A R Rahman or a Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy are 'killers' in the use of 'sound', with some amazing sound engineering, sampling and careful 'layering', but I'm afraid IR does not measure up. The synth 'sounds' synthetic and artificial, the percussion sound quality is quite ordinary, there's just a lot of reverb and echo effects. I mean, even the bass sounds like it was played off a fairly cheap keyboard! Sacrilege! IR's previous attempts at using synth sounds have not been that successful through the nineties, but he backed that up with solid compositional genius (Case in point - the brilliant but unfortunately little-known "Meetaadha Oru Veenai" from Poonthottam). And since he's clearly under-played his song-writing (just the odd m9-th floating around, all that) in this soundtrack, the overall effect lacks a certain something.

As Baradwaj says "...this album is undeniably a lesser work from one of our bona fide musical geniuses". Raaja's music normally makes me totally lose myself in it, and I am absorbed in the tracks to the exclusion of anything around me at the time, but these tracks are merely a very pleasant diversion. Sweet, but like saccharin.


Post Script

For the record, here are the originals mapped to the songs in Cheeni Kum -

• "Baatein Hawa" - "Kuzhaloodhum Kannanukku" from Mella Thirandhadhu Kadhavu
• "Cheeni Kum" / "Sooni Sooni" - "Manram Vandha Thenralukku" from Mouna Raagam
• "Jaane Do Naa" - "Vizhiyile mani Vizhiyile" from Nooravadhu Naal; also "Jotheyali jothe Jotheyali" from the Kannada movie Geetha (the latter is still regarded a Raaja classic and is played by FM stations in Bangalore even today)

...a Few Dollars More!!

This happened a few days back. A very good friend of mine, a buddy from my high school days who currently works and lives in the US, is back in India for a short vacation. His last trip was three and a half years ago. We met up for dinner and stuff.

And he was talking about how things have become expensive in Bangalore. "A coffee for two for Rs. 115, that's almost four dollars!", and "our dinner bill is Rs.1800? That's about 45 dollars"...and so on. What I found surprising was not the fact that my friend found Bangalore expensive, but HOW he was going about explaining his point, i.e., by converting the rupee value back into dollars!

I still remember the days (not too many years ago) when I had friends from the US visiting me, my grandad's favourite pastime was to ask them how much things cost there, and figure out how many rupees that was by doing what we referred to as an 'into 42' (that's a multiplication of 42 - the conversion rate we worked with) - and marvel at how high things cost abroad. Just a few years down, the tables are turning, somewhat.

I'll concede that life in India, and in a place like Bangalore, is getting expensive to get through, to a point where comparisons can be made to the West. But here's the thing - where an American might think a bit to spend $60, we don't seem to think twice for shelling out close to Rs.3000 for something very similar. And we swipe our plastic just like anyone else. I guess one of the reasons we in India are unafraid to spend could be that a lot of the services we get are that much cheaper here than in the West (a haircut in the US is about $12, in India it is about Rs.50 at a really decent place), thereby leaving us with more cash to shell out. But that's just one reason, on one side of the argument. I'll leave it to the readers to do your own thing now. Go.