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A small group of us have started a new blog and are looking for people who would like to participate in the effort. Our aim is to provide a relaxed environment to exchange opinions about movies, BO, and beyond. No star centric or eccentric views!!! So if you came here for information on the new BW blog, it is here. This location will still host my personal blog See you around friends!!!

Yet another boring love story? Phedre pulsates with forbidden passion!

The American Conservatory Theater joins hands with the Stratford Shakespeare Festival of Ontario, Canada to present Jean Racine’s retelling of the Greek tragedy, Phedre. Directed by Carey Perloff, this masterful presentation runs almost two hours with no intermission. The drama unfolds on a minimal yet striking stage with “tree” trunks made of coiled pipes in cages, and a forest floor made of shadows from trees limned in light.

stage design

(Stage design from Words on Plays)
Theseus embarks on a journey leaving his wife Phedre in Troezen under the protection of Hippolytus, his son from a previous marriage. Hippolytus had been banished to Troezen by Phedre after her marriage. He confesses his silent love for Aricia, imprisoned on Troezen by Theseus. At the same time we have a near-death and almost demented Phedre reveal to her maid the real reason she got Hippolytus banished! Theseus is reported dead, Athens needs a new ruler and Phedre then reveals her passion for Hippolytus. With the return of Theseus all plans go awry in the way that Greek Tragedies have!

Near incest, forbidden love, passion, revenge, bravery, tragedy, innocence abound in the play, but the predominant emotion is guilt! It is interesting that a playwright with a near debauched life-style wrote this guilt ridden piece, or maybe that is why he did it! Phedre’s burning passion for Hippolytus, her guilt at this emotion are brilliantly showcased by Seana McKenna! Her regal bearing and striking voice make the character of Phedre come alive. Hippolytus is played ably by Jonathan Goad, Claire Lautier brings the luminous Aricie to life. Tom McCamus is an imposing Theseus and Roberta Maxwell does a commendable job as the scheming Oeneone. When Phedre blames Venus for inflicting the love for Hippolytus in her life, one is forced to contrast the real world with Greek tragedy. Yes, lives were complicated with love and wars and gods and such, but blame for infidelity and incest could be sent the way of Venus and banishing a son to his certain death laid at the door of Neptune! This ACT production is polished and powerfully moving and well worth a watch.

The story of a warrior caught in a time warp – Veer!

A period romance with no history to follow or flout, Veer works in parts at a surprisingly emotional level. The Pindaris, let by Dadda Mithun Chakraborty, are betrayed by the Raja of Madhavgarh (played by Jackie Shroff), who is hand in glove with the British and traps and kills many of them! Eternal enmity is sworn as Mithun manages to hack off the Raja’s hand. Cut to two sons being born to Mithun and growing up to be Salman and Sohail. Why oh why does Sohail have to be the spoiler in every Salman film? He is even less funny than Uday Chopra and should be selling cars, or even worse, car insurance. The boys are rowdies and in a Pindari raid on a train Veer, Salman, meets the princess of Madhavgarh, Zarine Khan, and their eyes meet. Need we say more? A romance is about to brew. The boys are sent to England to become gentlemen and think like the British. There Veer discovers that Yashodhara is the princess of Madhavgarh and yet continues to pursue her despite being ridiculed by her brother. The Yuvraaj dies in an encounter with Veer and the boys return home. Now we have to get Veer and Yashodhara together despite the Montague and Capulet type set up and also to determine exactly how the conflict between the Pindaris and the Raja of Madhavgarh will be sorted out. The more bloodthirsty would no doubt like an epic battle that ends in the supremacy of the Pindaris. But what we get is a surprisingly benign solution from the maker of Gadar. We see the birth of a nationalistic hero as the Rajputs realize that their is a common enemy – the British! To keep the bloodthirsty somewhat satisfied there is a hand to hand combat in front of the assembled armies! Was this the doing of the story-writer Salman or a change in stance from the maker of Gadar, we will never know. But I found this ending quite satisfying and one that lifted up this fictional historical.

Everything says this film should NOT WORK! A period drama relies on costumes and period setting. Here we have a major costume debacle and something for everyone, all the way from leather chaps and plastic breastplates, to loosely wrapped turbans and chunky jewelry on the men. Salman sports orange pants with leather knee patches, to scruffy Tarus Bulba costumes, to suave suits and hats, and just as in Wanted, his hairstyle and hair length changes from scene to scene in a mind-boggling flouting of continuity. The leading lady looks surprisingly decent in Indian dress and an atrocity in western garb and yet she is shown in mostly western garb. This is a poor research effort on the part of the costume designers as I doubt Indian princesses were in Western garb even in England.

In the cast we have Salman, who tries so damn hard after so long, you cannot help but be drawn into the story of Veer. Mithun rocks as the father, and Jackie is decent as suave though evil Raja of Madhavgarh. The mother is played by Neena Gupta who seems to still be in Choli ke Peeche mode! The crown prince reminds me of Raj Kumar with the chiseled nostrils and narrow lips – all we needed was a few “Jaani” dialogs from him. Sohail reminds me of the slow buffoon in a Monty Python film – his attempts at comedy include dialogs like “Yeh England bhi kya kamal Jagah hai, yahaan sabko Angrezi aati hai!!” The new girl Zarine Khan is stately in Indian costume, and passable in effort. The bits with her in British schoolgirl garb in London smack so much of Lucky No Time for Love that it drags the film down. But strangely there are also moments that lift the film up in that same song Meherbaniyan. The entire film is a curious mix of things that work and do not.

The dialogs are quite silly in places and the accents all over the place and inexplicable. Salman quotes George Bernard Shaw when the teacher suddenly starts talking to him in his poorly accented Hindi! When Salman says – “Todna agar jodne se juda ho toh kya use todna kehte hain?” the heroine is as mystified as the rest of us, maybe purpose was to baffle her into dancing with a commoner! And in other places the dialogs are strangely effective – like Mithun saying Zuban se diya hua vachan, aur kaman se nikla teer kabhi wapas nahin aate! How does a son end a letter to his Dad with Ashirwad? Shouldn’t it be pranam?

There is a curious mix of childishness and portly-ness in the lading lady – but she is not entirely without charm though she does not have much to do. And the song Surli Ankhiyon waale is so grossly overused you begin to hate this gem by the time the film ends. The musical brooch is another painfully recurring theme. But despite these detractions Veer is still engaging at some level because of the romance that works, the patriotism that is so nascent and yet effective, unlike the LOUD effort we usually see in films, and Sajid-Wajid songs (penned by Gulzar with outstanding lyrics) are strangely well picturized and well mounted. I think this one has no pretensions about being more than it is, and it works well at being what it wants to be. See it one time for sure.

Is My Name is Khan timely or out of sync with the times?

A specter is haunting the world, the specter of radical Islam! Yes there is centuries of history behind this, and we can do all the ‘they did, we did’ that we want, but don’t you think at some point someone has to stop and say “This is here and now!! I do not care about the Crusades or the Shaka, Hun, Kushan and Moghul invaders. Why? Because we are supposed to learn from history, and not treat it like a vendetta record book.”

Muslims, or followers of Islam, are 1.6 billion strong and live all over the world, with the largest Muslim population in India! In this country Muslims have co-existed with the Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and other religions for almost 9 centuries. In this secular country the birthdays of Buddha, Mohammed, Jesus and Gandhi are all celebrated as national holidays! The partition of India at independence rent the fabric of co-existence and created a situation where there were Muslims on either side of the border in India and in Pakistan. Were there patriots and traitors amongst them? It is hard to imagine that a man’s personal belief and conscience would be completely subjugated to his religious beliefs, but I have no doubt that it happened many a times on both sides. But then we also had Hindus play traitor to the motherland and turn British informers during the Raj. No attempt to strike at the British was successful in achieving its aim, be is Kakori or the Saunders murder, because there were always informers ready to give up the revolutionaries! Patriotism and its opposite, being a traitor, cut across religious divides in history.

Cutting to present times, we are faced with a serious threat to the fabric of society. Radical Islam has reared its head, dusted off the history books and wants vendetta for all historical ills dating even further back than the crusades! And it is not afraid to send emissaries far and wide to disrupt the non-Islamic way of life. That the current threat is from one religion, albeit a radicalized faction or factions of it, is hard to deny. So what do we do to combat this threat? Is the answer to view every Muslim askance? To be afraid to sit next to a bearded Muslim male on an airplane? To be “vigilant” and eye your neighbors of another culture or religious preference with suspicion?

Yes, the courts may decide that there is equal protection under law:
“[W]hile the officers’ discretion in deciding whom to arrest is certainly broad, it cannot be exercised in a racially discriminatory fashion. For example, a police officer can’t investigate and arrest blacks but not whites, or Asians but not Hispanics. Police can’t discriminate on the basis of the victim’s race, either…. [T]here is no right to state protection against madmen or criminals, but “[t]here is a constitutional right … to have police services administered in a nondiscriminatory manner — a right that is violated when a state actor denies such protection to disfavored persons.”

But how does this translate in real terms to the American context? How does “authority” treat people across the racial divide? Here it seems reasonable to use race as a surrogate for religion as in both instances we are dealing with the unfamiliar and a skewed perception of the people within the category. In San Diego a Hispanic looking male dating a white woman, may still be pulled up and his papers examined! In LA a young black university student may still have enough self-preservation instincts to throw down his back-pack and lie on the ground with his arms out when he hears the words “Halt!!” Better to eat some dirt than get shot for resisting arrest! Is this profiling of sorts? Of course it is. Is it justified? Who in their right minds can say so?

How can it be fair to let a majority of innocent people pay for the sins of a few fanatic elements? Is this not what the fanatics want? Do they not want to disrupt the normal fabric of life and make it such that we eye each other with suspicion, curtail collaborations and initiate confrontations, and generally get so bogged down in the minutiae of who is who that we stop functioning? But there is the flip side to this argument too. If you work on limited financial and personnel resources, why not profile? If all terror attacks on US soil have been Islamic, why not focus you attention on Muslims and save the effort of interrogating/searching others who just are not in the type group? Two incidents shed some light on these questions.

Does the system in place work? A Waupaca woman finds herself in the middle of a major security investigation at Cleveland’s airport.
Kimmy Janke had gone through security. In fact, she was in a secure part of the terminal when she stopped to go to the bathroom before making her connecting flight.
That’s when she found a loaded handgun. . . . A Cleveland police report confirms a fully-loaded .40-caliber pistol was left on top of a toilet paper dispenser.
“A little kid could have grabbed that. The wrong person could have grabbed that. You never know,” Janke said.
We’ve since learned the gun was traced to a federal customs agent. Customs officials have denied all requests to explain why a highly-trained agent left her gun in the bathroom, claiming there is an internal investigation.”

And not to be forgotten is the case of Ann Marie Murphy. “In April 1986, she was about to board a plane from London to Tel Aviv, to meet – so she thought – the parents of her Palestinian fiancé, a man called Nizar Hindawi. She was 32 years old, and pregnant.
She was also, unknowingly, carrying a bomb in her suitcase, hidden there by Hindawi, and primed to explode when the El Al plane was somewhere over Europe. The airline security people spotted it, and she never got on the plane. (You can read the official Israeli account of the story here.)
I was reminded of Anne-Marie Murphy amid all the renewed discussion following the attempted Christmas Day plane attack about whether or not airline passengers should be “profiled” – in other words, singled out for more intense screening if they fit someone’s idea of what a terrorist looks like.
Back in 1986, there was no particular reason to single out pregnant Irish women as likely anti-Israel terrorists. But Israeli security have long been suspicious of single women travelling alone, and they have no hesitation in asking the most personal questions about their relationships and private life.
It may be that it makes sense to concentrate anti-terrorism measures at airports on certain categories of passengers. But the Hindawi case reminds us that it’s not always easy to decide what a terrorist looks like.”

Added to all of this is the simple fact that profiling creates two channels, one with high scrutiny, and the other with low scrutiny. As soon as profiling becomes the norm, terrorists will look to recruit people who do not FIT THE PROFILE so that high scrutiny can be evaded. More and more it becomes clear that there is NO PROFILE! MI5 has concluded that:
• Far from being religious zealots, a large number of those involved in terrorism do not practise their faith regularly. Many lack religious literacy and could actually be regarded as religious novices. Very few have been brought up in strongly religious households, and there is a higher than average proportion of converts. Some are involved in drug-taking, drinking alcohol and visiting prostitutes. MI5 says there is evidence that a well-established religious identity actually protects against violent radicalisation.
• British-based terrorists are as ethnically diverse as the UK Muslim population, with individuals from Pakistani, Middle Eastern and Caucasian backgrounds. MI5 says assumptions cannot be made about suspects based on skin colour, ethnic heritage or nationality.

In the wake of the recent undie-bomber, the official line has changed. “The Obama administration has announced that it will subject citizens of 14 countries, including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, to intensive screening when flying to the United States (the rule will also apply to those passing through those countries). This means treating people differently depending on where they come from or what passports they hold.”

So who exactly are we profiling? The blue eyed Caucasian male, or the black eyed bearded Asian male? This is in the official realm at the borders. What exactly goes on within the US borders and among the common populace is guided by our knowledge of who fist the profile. Do we get our ideas of other ethnicities from the Simpsons and Apu becomes a type? Do Muslims wear turbans or are those Sikhs? What about beards? When an entire country can be typed by talk show hosts like Glenn Back to have no quality medical schools (while almost the entire NHS of the UK is staffed by graduates from these non-schools!!), the entire nation to be so backward as to not even have indoor plumbing, and the Ganges River, to sound like a disease the hearing of which would require immediate CIPRO therapy then any kind of religious profiling begins to take on a milder connotation!

So what does My Name is Khan bring to the table? No one has seen the film yet, but the early previews promise that it will force us to re-evaluate how we treat those that do not look, behave or practice their faith, like we do! The IMDb blurb describes the film thus: “Khan ……. a thematic range that focuses less on post-9/11 fears and more on relationships between individuals, between a man and his State, and between a man and his chosen country.” Will the film bring the religious profiling issue back to front and center? Time will tell. But is this an issue that needs to be discussed yet again? I, for one, feel it does!!

A missed chance at superstardom – Chance pe Dance!

Shahid Kapur was on a roll after Kaminey and it seemed like nothing could go wrong, his time to grab at superstardom had finally come. Then came Dil Bole Hadippa – and while Rani was more than satisfactory in a tailor-made role, Shahid was merely there as a bored kind of presence. He should have seen what makes superstars by watching the glorified extra role that Subhash Ghai gave to SRK in Pardes and what SRK made of the role! After Hadippa, Shahid had one other chance in Chance Pe Dance. Ken Ghosh had the right ingredients in the film – a film centered around the rise of a dancing superstar with none other than Mr. Dance himself to play the role, a cute and peppy co-star in Genelia D’Souza, just enough romance, emotions and drama to make the proceedings interesting. It should all have worked really well.

The music of My Name is Khan – the eyes have it!!

After a gap of 3 years Karan Johar is in the director’s chair again and directing his favorite jodi of Shahrukh Khan and Kajol. The claim is that this is not his usual drama, set in the lifestyle of the rich and famous. Though they do exist, as we were told by Ram Gopal Varama when he went to the AbhiAish wedding – he came back saying he now understood Karan’s cinema!! But Karan moves out of his comfort zone, where he had last played out his version of ‘The Dangerous Liaisons’ set in New York City, and now he promises a film that deals with a “challenged” man, Shahrukh with autism of the Asperger’s variety, and his quest to win back the love of his live and in the process show a nation that religion does not determine who the fanatic is. The film is said to have no large song and dance spectacle, and in fact no lip-sync singing at all. A Karan film without the Shava Shava, Mahi Ve, Where’s the Party Tointe numbers would make one wonder what kind of music is in store for us.

Dulha Mil Gaya – fluff stuff that was not half bad!

The film promised exactly nothing, for what can a film with Fardeen Khan in a lead role promise? Yes there was Sushmita, but what has she done since Main Hoon Naa that worked? She has the rare distinction of being an intelligent, talented and exceptional looking woman whose career has gone nowhere. The director, Mudassar Aziz, a debutant, seems like a kid out of high school and Vivek Vasvani, the producer, had earned some negative press for roping in Shahrukh Khan to do a cameo that got more and more extended and hyped by Vasvani (SRK’s best role ever – really?). Then there was an unknown girl, Ishitta Sharma, playing the naive Samarpreet (though I could have sworn I saw a glimpse of her in Dil Dosti etc). But I decided the brave the film nevertheless.

Yeh Duniya Agar vs. Duniya – from Sahir Ludhianvi to Piyush Mishra!

The story goes that Director Anurag Kashyap was depressed over not being able to release his film Paanch and was watching Pyaasa! Let me add that there is no better state than a depressed one for watching Pyaasa, just as there is no better state to get drunk in as one of disappointment in love! Out of this state emerged a film called Gulaal. I am a huge fan of Gulaal, but I particularly the music in the film. For me the music makes the film, and the lyrics make the music of Gulaal! In the film there is a track called Duniya – which of course owes inspiration directly to Yeh Duniya Agar Mil Bhi Jaaye to Kya Hai. One is written by the noted Shayar Sahir Ludhiyanvi and composed by the maestro SD Burman, the derivation is written by fledgling (Comparatively speaking) poets Swaanand Kirkire and Piyush Mishra, and composed and sung by Piyush Mishra – his first stint at composing/singing. So are the two songs directly comparable and is the derivation at all distinguishable from the original? I decided to revisit both and listen to them more carefully:

My Name is Khan – theatrical trailer, Sajda song!

The dust has settled on the MNIK theatrical trailer that was unveiled a couple of weeks ago and another promo “Sajda” has come out recently. So here I am to share my thoughts on both!

First up is the theatrical trailer:

It is 3 minutes long and seems to reveal most of the story. Here is what people have pieced together. An autistic boy, the young Khan played by Tanay Chaddha, (Asperger’s is part of the autism spectrum of disorders) is told by his mother that people are either good or bad based on the deeds they do. Cut to the grown up Khan telling us that he is different, but he is VERY SMART! The way he taps his forehead as he says it makes that scene for me.

Dining like Moghul emperors – Karim’s!

The family served as cooks to the Moghul Emperors. The last in the line was the chef for Bahadur Shah Zafar. Then royalty was never the same again – and the family decided in 1915 to open Karim’s.

Karim's

The main establishment is spread over many buildings in an alley opposite Jama Masjid, and there is a brach in Nizamuddin. And yes there is a “uniformed” guard at the entrance to the alley! There are degchis of cooking Korma and grilling seekh kababs with an aroma that will tempt a converted vegetarian back to being a carnivore!

The 3 Idiots – it is about the message, stupid!

Any review of a film like Three Idiots must needs be undertaken at a few levels. At the most superficial level, the film is a simple comedy about life in an engineering college hostel, full of gags and puerile humor – but films like Singh is Kinngg and Kambakht Ishq have shown us that this kind of humor works! Three guys meet, one is UNIQUE and smart without trying, GENIUS even – Rancho or Ranchoddass. They bond over lots of time spent in the hostel bathroom and drinking on the rooftop. The headmaster is a tartar and in an attempt to foil him they get into trouble, are nearly thrown out except that Rancho miraculously fashions a baby vacuum device to deliver the headmaster’s grandson on the college ping-pong table. Then Rancho mysteriously disappears, and the other two Idiots go on a search for Rancho, find him and ALL IZZ WELL.

AVATAR – a sumptuous feast for the senses!

Caught Avatar on IMAX 3D in a packed auditorium. Sitting next to me was an 8 year old wriggling in his seat with excitement – waiting for the film to begin. Down the row three teenagers were taking pictures of themselves in the 3D glasses, and people had lined up 2 hours before the show started to grab the best seats in the huge theater. By standing in line for an hour I managed to score reasonable seats that were not in the front row side! So what did Cameron and IMAX serve up?

Kishore Kumar and his insanely funny songs

Yes, the man was a genius who died before his time. He was a comic par excellence and if you have not seen films like Chalti Ka Naam Gadi, Padosan, New Delhi then do yourself a favor and watch them immediately. Of course he sang romantic melodies, sad songs, and rod songs and children’s songs and sung them all with unmatched talent. BUT today I need to laugh and will focus on his uproariously funny songs. To start with I want to include songs in which we saw Kishore both on screen and off screen as the voice. But of course many a comic song was done by him in playback mode.

Let us start with the gem of a number from Chalti Ka Naam Gadi:

Kishore is woken up by a rain drenched Madhubala who has car troubles (this one is mildly funny and full on melody – do not worry, the comedy will only ramp up in a bit):

Rocket Singh – cinema as it should be!

Rocket Singh was unique even before its release. For the first time people were talking about the scripting directing team more than the cast. And why not? Jaideep Sahni had written Khosla Ka Ghosla, Bunty Aur Babli and Chak de India, while Shimit had directed Ab Tak Chappan and Chak de India. Of course the fact that star in the making Ranbir Kapoor was playing Rocket Singh only upped the ante. Here are my brief thoughts on this lovely film:

Most film-makers can do lavish and plush and wow are senses, in fact once they taste success, they want to go for the big show and the standard graph for any new director is of progressively bigger and bigger films. In contrast, Shimit is on a downsizing trend. After the blockbuster success of Chak De India, he and Jaideep craft an intimate look at a lower-middle class boy, his aspirations and his failures and successes.

Ya dil ki suno duniya waalon, yaa mujhko abhi chup rehne do….

Music or lyrics? I always ask people this question in today’s age of de-emphasis on lyrics in Hindi music. A friend once told me that playing music from The Doors guaranteed a cleared out room and an end to the party! Hindi film music today is like The Doors of the days gone by – wonderful music that accompanied lyrics like “There’s a killer on the road, his mind is squirming like a toad!” (Riders on the Storm). Today’s Hindi songs lose their luster within a few weeks, and it is not the musical composition but the words that are the culprit! Look at this from Sameer:

Jadoo se Jadoo kiya re
Uski yaadon mein,
Uske khwabon mein
Jhume jiya re! (quite nice IMO)

And then Crazy Kiya re? Followed by Sexy Lady on the Floor?

Sameer is of course an egregious offender with such lyrics:

Once time touch me like this
I like what you want
What you give its a risk
Two time touch me like this
Together wanna fasa d style the way tat a lover (WTF? and I am struggling for words here)
Three time touch me by far
Gets over here comes the crazy with me in my car

On-screen chemistry – what’s that? Part 2 (Hindi cinema in the 50s, and 60s)

The Chaplinesque Raj Kapoor perfected the role of the naïve simpleton and his lady-love was more often than not played by the graceful, ethereally beautiful Nargis. The duo was the number one romantic couple of their time, worked in 16 films, and gave hit after hit in Andaaz, Barsaat, Awaara, Shree 420, Chori Chori. Rumors of a real life liaison between them were rife and alive even after Nargis married Sunil Dutt. Nargis’ often well-grounded, educated and poised character was the perfect foil for Raj’s tramp and simpleton with a big heart.