What is not to like?

Finally managed to watch Dilwale this afternoon. It was as high on my watch list as the Star Wars movie. There was really only one reason I wanted to watch this movie. It was a  Shah Ruck Khan movie.

One needs to have a certain mindset to watch an SRK movie.. don't expect much of a plot for starters. Expect very predictable twists and turns. Great visuals and a background score that goes with the visuals, SRK hamming his way through the movie with the few scenes where he is actually doing more comic timing than anything else. 

The hopeless romantic in me always comes home humming the background tune from the movie and this one is no different. 

SRK movies for me have become the equivalent of Nat King Cole songs for baby boomers or so I am guessing. Somewhere some neurons fire in your brain and make connections between the past and present and you get all emotional for reasons that you cannot quite put a finger on. 

Don't understand why people were working hard to set my expectations really low for this movie. Yes, SRK and Kajol do look a little ridiculous in some scenes trying to pass for folks a good 20 years less than their age, and in this day of special effects they could have spent some more effort to make those scenes look natural but it was just another SRK movie. 

The locations in Iceland for the song "Gerua", where Kajol is running on a black beach in a yellow nine yards saree (it has to be at least nine yards), were just breathtaking! See for yourself..

Need to add every place on the backdrop to our travel list. The gold threaded designer sari that Kajol was wearing will be the next big hit for Dilwali.

As for me, I am happy as Yoda, still humming.. 

You dare call me a Servant?!

A cop abuses a witness trying to help identify a perpetrator.

An American of Indian descent who is new to India tells the cop "You are a public servant. How can you do this?"

The cop replies, "You called me a servant? Do I look like a servant to you?" and slaps the guy.

Guy slaps the cop back and ends up in jail.

When his uncle bails him out the cop tells the uncle "inform this kid that this is how things work in India"

This is just one of the scenes that caught my attention early on in "Delhi -6", a really well made movie that shows India for what it is, a place that is defined by a really large mass of people, a tangled web of interactions from every perspective, a potpourri of emotions, something so complex yet simple, something so simple yet complex, an everlasting absurdity of sorts that can be explained one way or another, a place where at times everything goes and at times nothing moves!

The greatness of this movie is the attention to detail. Every little piece of the jigsaw puzzle comes together so smoothly and you come out shaking your head, not because you saw something fantastic, but you saw something that happens for real, something that you know is true, because you have experienced most of these bits and pieces firsthand!

The only surprise is that a kid born and raised in America is even accepted as India's own in the earlier parts of the movie while his religious identity is questioned later because his dad is Hindu and mom is a Muslim. If there is one thing consistant about Bigotry, it is that bigotry is absolute. A real crowd would have equally questioned his "Indian-ness" or "his right to ask questions about things Indian or about India" because he is an American Citizen, but somehow they miss that part and it seemed weird.

But for that small deviation from reality, the movie does a fantastic job of painting the masses in everything from gory red, dove white, purple hues, monkey black, holy green to religious saffron!

The human mind is an amazing thing. The ability to live and let live is a quality of the mind that is not universal. Considering ,my recent frame of mind Delhi-6 offers a rare glimpse into the collective human psyche that makes or breaks a society. It also tells you in the nicest of ways to look for answers within!

Nicely done. Strongly recommended!

ps. Hope this movie wins international recognition for Cinematography. Simply fantastic. The music was great, but the visuals were simply breathtaking!

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By chance, if you are lucky *

You get to watch Luck by chance on DVD.

Maybe my expectations were too high after watching "Rock On"?

Konkona was great, even Isha was tolerable. Farhan was barely making the cut, and the music did not carry the movie.

Somehow my taste in movies has one lowest common denominator. No matter what the genre, the movie should keep moving forward! It should hold my attention. Any movie where I doze off or pull out my phone and have a temptation to check email, has disappointed me.

The first half of this movie was very well made. It was witty, funny, very natural and had everything going for it.

The second half was so predictable and at one point was just suspended .. it was like a feather hovering just before it takes another drop.. except it just hovered there, a little too long!

The last movie we (MIL and me) watched was Spellbound (the Hitchcock 1945 B/W movie) and watching this after that was not a good idea. We both came out saying "hmm.. that guy made a movie for almost 2 hours with 4 main characters and kept us engrossed and here we are dozing off in a 2009 movie".

We are now hoping for Delhi 6 in the coming weeks. We know the music is awesome..hope it moves us as well!

* Ps. I should add that in the second half the senior artists who were playing supporting roles were really showing off their acting talent and by comparison Farhan pales.

Moral of the story, dont have seasoned veterans play your supporting casts when you are making a movie about moviemaking with young leads!

pps. Note to self : going forward, lower expecations a tad before walking into a movie... dont expect much and be surprised!

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Simply in awe

Went and bought the "Delhi 6" CD today.

The music is enthralling!

Dil Gira Dafatan, Rehna Tu and Hey Kaala Kaala Kaala Bandar will now play on infinite loop in the van till they find a worthy replacement and that is going to be a tall order! After Rab Ne played 1000+ songs successfully since its release in the Van we were waiting to see which album will take its place.

The goosebumpology continues..

It is also interesting to note that the last five CD's purchased have all been hindi movie CD's.. (Jaane Tu, Bachnaa aye Haseeno, Rock On, Rab Ne, and now Delhi 6)

Hindi film music is kicking it up a notch, and we are not complaining!

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Rocking on with life

Yeah, the title is a giveaway!

Saw the Hindi movie "Rock On" last night with the cousins. A movie with a difference about four guys from a college rock band, going their separate ways, then reuniting after a decade for a concert. There seem to be more and more of these beat movies coming out from Bollywood recently. Kudos to these guys!

This movie will probably strike a "chord" with guys/gals in the mid thirties, who went to colleges 10-15 years ago, with college cultural festivals, where there would be a rock concert competition of sorts!

This post is not a review of the movie. It is more about the nuances of the film and a possible "genre" and its appeal.

If you are not a rock music fan and the subtle or open references to Metallica, Enter Sandman, Beatles, Lennon, McCartney, Ono, Green day, Deep purple etc., do not ring any bells, do not be alarmed. You will experience the movie, as a window to a "world" that is mesmerizing! Music, at the end of the day is a really, really powerful medium, that cuts across boundaries, rather large boundaries.

If you grew up listenting to rock music, this movie provides more than a refreshing look at music, rock, concerts, group dynamics, the experience of attending a rock concert! To top things off, if you happened to dedicate your Ph.D. thesis to Bob Dylan, the way "Rock On" has songs that fit hindi words into hard rock, at places, with a folk ballad style, will just bring tears to your eyes.

The nostalgia alone, will be worth this movie. You have to hand it to the director, music directors and the actors. They are able to hit long dormant neurons, and revive them, just by touching your subconsious in one too many places. Take for example the focus on the tattoo in the back of one of the groups lead singer's neck, or the Bille Joe Armstrong look alike, who strums his guitar in similar fashion from one of the competing groups in the final contest!

Farhan Aktar was fantastic. Arjun Rampal was even better. Have never seen such a controlled acting performance from him. They even mimic Freddie and May in some shots where they both share the microphone on stage. You can hear "smoke on the water", slowed down to a barely recognizable tempo in the background! They have condensed, and fed rock music to the masses, within the space of a movie. Very nicely done!

The thing I liked most was how they picturized the audience in a rock concert. At the end of the day, the question from a non rock fan would be "why go to a concert and hear the same thing that you heard over and over again in the music CD?". The answer lies, in the audience. To this day, I cannot forget the tens of thousands of people, with lighters and candles moving their hands across, in a Pink Floyd concert in Philadelphia, in 1994. To sum up that experience:

I was there!!!

After watching the movie, we came home and are now revisiting my 200 strong CD collection from my college days, which have been moved from one apartment to another, one home to the next for the last 15 years! We have not really played anything from that collection, at least after our first daughter was born. Finally feel vindicated for refusing to sell that collection over all these years.

Every one of those CD's has a history and it makes me remember places, people, crowds, songs, and more importantly myself!

Rock on, woke up a dormant part of me, much like it did for the protogonist in the movie.

ps. Spent an hour searching for the Pink Floyd concert ticket stub in my old shoebox. Could not find it! Way too many memorabilia in that box....dangerous memorabilia! The location of the shoe box within the house, was classified information in itself, now it is out in the open. Much fun will be had, over the coming days with the contents of the shoe box.

pps. San's rock music education has begun!

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