Uncommon movies about common people.............

Last few months witnessed 3 movies which dwelled upon the same theme. Raj Kumar Gupta's 'Aamir', Nishikant Kamat's 'Mumbai Meri Jaan' and Neeraj Pandey's 'A Wednesday'. Though these movies are different from each other, they effectively form a trilogy of sorts.

If you have not seen them, then don't read further as there are quite a few spoilers ahead.

The first one , Aamir which had a quite unusual script of a common man being forced to place a bomb in a bus. Though there might be similarities with 'Cavite', I feel the movie is firmly set in Indian milieu. As a thriller it did a very good job. The seedy underbelly of Mumbai is laid exposed by the camera and the story line is so plausible that it makes you wonder.Though it did not preach , it did leave a subtle message of doing the right thing no matter what the circumstances are.

Mumbai Meri Jaan on the other hand deals with the after math of such bomb attacks. It depicts the trauma the, the victims and their relatives undergo and also their reactions to such a tragedy. Through multiple story lines it analyses the psych of the people who were affected by the blasts.

May it be a corporate executive, who develops a fear of travelling in local trains and also makes him rethink about not wanting to leave India and head for USA.Or may it be the story of a tea vendor who uses the panic and hysteria to get back on those who humiliated him, which leads to a near fatal incident and making him repent. Or the story of a right wing fanatic hell bent on proving a particular person guilty and realising how wrong he had been to stereotype. The story of a hotheaded rookie constable trying to come to grips with the vast chasm that lies between idealism and reality. The world weary senior constable at the twilight of his career trying to teach the rookie with the ways of the world. Last but not least the story of a TV news reporter, who becomes the subject of a 'sensational news' after she loses her loved one in the blasts. The irony of the situation doesn't escape her as she is bombarded with the same kind of questions that she used to ask - with out any thought- victims of other tragedies in the name of journalism.

All these stories either ask questions or leave messages, some subtle and some not so subtle. At the end its a very effective motion picture.

The last one and in my opinion probably the most powerful of the lot is 'A Wednesday'. One cannot describe the movie without giving away the plot. A call to the police commissioner about bombs being placed in various parts of the city and the demand to release few terrorists seems like a leaf out of the standard book of hackneyed movie scripts.But the twist(some might guess it early), when it comes knocks you out with a sucker punch and leaves you gasping .

As the 'stupid common man' vents his anger over the system,police, politicians and himself, you realise its exactly what you always fantasised to do.One might question the plausibility of the story and the message its trying to leave (just like 'Rang de Basanti' did), there is no denying of the fact that its a story which you cannot ignore. As one of the character at the end of the movie states, I too felt that it was right and good.

The common thread in these movies, apart from that they deal with terrorism, they are also stories of common men and women who you see everyday. And it is this fact that makes it easier for us to identify and relate with the protagonists.

The other common factor among all these movies is that they were small movies with no star power whatsoever.The directors were making their Hindi debut (though Nishikant Kamat had earlier helmed the Marathi gem

'Dombivli Fast' and its Tamil remake 'Evano Oruvan') .Also credit must go to UTV motion pictures which backed all three movies.They came without any fanfare and surprised us.

When the time comes to pick movies to be sent to Oscars, I sincerely hope that these movies are given due consideration and one of them gets picked (my pick is 'A Wednesday') instead of succumbing to various lobbies and send out a 'blockbuster'.There might be movies from other Indian languages which I might not have heard and equally worth of a nomination. Even if they do not win, we can be proud of the fact that we sent a good movie and at least tell the west that Indian movies are not just about songs in Switzerland, dons in Australia.

With only 3 months remaining, I don't see any other movies which can be as captivating as these. But it has been a year of surprises and if someone else decides to spring something wonderful on me in the coming months, then bring it on....

Image Courtesy: Wikipedia

पच्चीस साल के बाद भी इसे नहीं जाने दे सकते हैं .......

Its been 25 years since Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro released. But till now, it stands as the one and only black comedy of Indian film industry. It has stood the test of time and continues to add legions of fans to its cult.

Part satire and part slapstick , its a perfect blend of subtle and in your face humour. But the story it tells is not that of mirth. Its a story of corrupt contractors, politicians, press who have nothing but individual gains as their foremost priority. Its also a story of two idealistic but naive (interesting thing to note is all idealistic individuals are naive and often inhabit a world which is far from reality) photographers, who think that their actions can make a difference and ultimately fall prey to the forces that they tried to take on. Its also a story of a dead body, which has to undergo such travails that probably the soul which departed from the body would have been more comfortable in fires of hell than what its body experienced in the mortal world.

Based entirely on the current and true situations , I often wondered how this movie got released without anybody (read politicians and other sleazy individuals on whose actions the script was based on) raising an objection to ban it. One more surprise to me was how NFDC produced it?. Being a central run agency how could it agree to produce a script, which was taking on the society and its rulers. Either the then administrators of NFDC did truly believe in good cinema or did not even bother to check the script.

A lot has been said about about the various scenes and the moments in the movie which evoke laugh, anger at the system, cynicism and whole lot of other feelings. But the last scene where in the protagonists walk on the streets of Mumbai in jail garb with "Hum Honge Kaamyaab" playing in the background sums up the entire movie for me and also highlights how relevant it is even after all these years.

Almost all everyone associated with the movie have went on and made a name for themselves. Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri, Pankaj Kapur,Satish Shah,Ravi Baswani,Sathish Kaushik, Vidhu Vinod Chopra,Sudhir Mishra, Binod Pradhan, Renu Saluja, Neena Gupta and many others made it big in one or many fields of television and movies. Its ironical though that the director Kundan Shah could not repeat the same creative brilliance in any of his later offerings.

But as Naseer says in this excellent piece of reminiscence, lets just thank Kundan that this film happened

Image Courtesy: Wikipedia

Its raining Oscars

Its been busy days and haven't had much time to think about crazy things to write about But yours truly is always on the look out for news which really matters, news which will create sensation. In short, news that will make you tear your hair apart in desperation and frustration. So here's the latest...

Just few days back I shed a bucketful of tears lamenting the fact that one of my favourite movies is being cannibalised by bollywood. Looks like its not just Samanta and son have the DVD of Oscar , but even a certain Shekar Suman too has a copy of it (I dunno if he borrowed the DVD from Samanta and ripped a copy for himself or bought a original one). The end result is, 'One Fine Monday' will be foisted on the unsuspecting public.

The burning question is 'which of these bastardised versions will out do the other in tanking spectacularly?' (if you were thinking that any one of them will do good business, then you must be reading this from the computer of the doctor, whom you just biffed on the head in the asylum. That also goes to show that my blog is a hit among certain section of people and they go to any lengths to read it).

Sorry I digress...I suspect that Samanta's version will do better than flaunter-of-male-cleavage (remember his music video) Suman's just because of Mithun prabhuji's presence in the former.

Don't be surprised if another vesrion is being produced elsewhere. Bollywood is capable of being 'inspired' and churn out anywhere between 1 to 4 versions of the same original (remember the 'Sleeping with the enemy' versions). And its also perfectly capable of botching it up everytime (the same example holds good).

Nevertheless woe is on me, because I'll never be able to see Oscar again and not think of whats being done to it ....

Image courtesy: bollywoodhungama.com

Another one bites the dust !!

Long back when good old Doordarshan was airing english movies late night, I remember waiting for a movie which starred Sly Stallone. Even though I could not understand the dialogues, the fact that Sly was starring was enough for me to sit late in to night, expecting non stop action (was a big fan of Rambo you see). But this movie was different. 30 minutes in to the movie and there were no explosions still and the only action I saw was Stallone's character slapping another character. All they did was tal, talk and more talk.I switched off the TV and went to bed disapponted.

Later, after many years, there came a time when I could understand English movies, I chanced upon the same movie again playing on Star Movies. I was hooked on to it. It turned out to be a great movie with a funny script, razor sharp dialogues and good old slapstick situations. The performances too were top notch. The movie was Oscar.

It was based on a 1969 french movie of the same name. It tells the story of a gangster trying to go legitimate and the situations he has to face in doing so. All the action takes place in the span of a single day. Though the movie was not a commercial success, still remains my favourite Stallone movie and one of the best comedies.

Since then I have been trying to locate the DVD of the movie and was unable as none of the stores in Bangalore had it. Even the online stores did not have the DVD. So when I landed in London, one of my first job was to buy the DVD from Amazon.

Looks like our directors in bollywood too were unaware of this gem till now. Its script is tailor made for someone to copy in to a Hindi movie. But that's gonna change now. Apparently director Ashim Samanta and producer Shakti Samanta have procured the DVD and Oscar is all set to become Don Muthuswami in Hindi.

Heading the cast is none other than the God of acting Mithun prabhuji. Now it remains to be seen how it turns out to be. But considering the the eventual quality and fate of all those 'inspired' movies which the directors churn out after watching the original DVDs, I have little hope.

But being the eternal optimistic that I am , wish that parbhuji's chamatkar will make this as good as the original because the original is too good a film to be bastardised in to a bad movie. After all Oscar made me look for more (read dialogues, script) than just action in English movies.



Note: Image courtesy wikipedia and IndiaFM

पुनरजन्म -----The Reincarnation !!!

After seeing OSO, had this thought. Why when we depict re-incarnation, we show that the person reincarnated is of the same gender as that of his/her previous incarnation?.

Why cannot a man be re-incarnated as a woman?. Why not of a different species altogether ?

That would open a plethora of opportunities for bollywood to explore (I too have script by the way with wonderful possibilities....Shahrukh interested??). Of course we would need different actors to play the pre and post incarnated role.

But I know method acting is the latest rage in hindi film industry and actors are keen do realistic portrayals of their onscreen characters. Here is the ultimate challenge for their commitment to art. Six packs in the first half and er.. certain other attributes post -interval if you know what I am talking about....he he he.

Anyone out there who will stand up and say I am ready to be Hari and Harini on screen and in real life too?

As for our cousins in Hollywood, what could be a better money spinner than a 'Revenge of re-incarnated cockroach'?. It has summer blockbuster written all over it.

A cockroach which was squashed by a boot reincarnates to grow up in to a muscled hunk (Arnold, Sylvester, Bruce, Rock ....are you people listening?). He then recalls his past life and goes in search for his past family, finds them and lives happily ever after with them in some body's kitchen....

No of course not...The re-incarnated cockroach searches for his killer, who is also a major threat to world peace (yes --the killer lives in White House or in the caves of Pakistan depending on the political leanings of the director), hunts him down ,thus avenging his death in previous life and also saves mankind from doom.Then he lives happily with his past family in some body's kitchen scaring the daylights out of family's girls.

There is a lot of scope for action, explosions, suspense, emotions,drama (imagine the re-incarnated cockroach's first tryst with his past family...if there is a real tear jerker of a scene, then this is the one)...in short everything which will make it the movie of the year.

I am sure it will garner Oscars for the cockroaches for best supporting roles.

Of course in India it will be dubbed in Hindi (Khatarnaak Cockroach), Tamil (Oru Cockroachiyin Diary...no wait Tamil govenment doesn't give any subsidy to tamil movies with english titles so it has to be Irratapiriya kakkalattu), Telugu (Boddinka Pratikaaramu) and in bhojpuri (Cockroachwa ka badla).

Once the DVD of the original is released, Sanjay Gupta will be inspired to adapt it and creates a masterpiece with a housefly as the protagonist lest people accuse him of making a makki ka makki copy ;-)

Well folks, how is that for originality? and who says there is a dearth of good stories for making movies. So movie makers here I am, with a half-demented brain brimming with ideas which will die with me if not immortalised on the celluloid. If that happens, producers all over the world beware !!...you will find a spider or a lizard or an ant following you all the time until I get my revenge.....ha ha ha...be afraid....be very afraid.....