On-screen chemistry – what’s that? Part 1

He looks into her eyes and says “Here’s looking at you kid” and then walks away. No sizzling sex scenes, no drenched in the rain romance, but on-screen chemistry? Hell yes! That was the one and only Humphrey Bogart bidding goodbye to Ingrid Bergman. Off screen they barely spoke to each other and yet on screen they made one of the most romantic couples ever. Bogie was twice married once divorced what Casablanca was being made; his marriage at the time was working. But then came Lauren Bacall, 25 years his junior and the couple sizzled both on-screen in films like To have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, and off-screen. A third marriage for Bogie was the result! The repartee between Bogie and Bacall and the crackling sense of made for each other is hard to forget. One can also remember fondly the real slow burning chemistry between Bogie and Katherine Hepburn in African Queen as the boated down a river in Belgian Congo.

Spencer Tracy was married to Katherine Hepburn in every which way but for real. Was this edge of not really being a legally married couple what kept their on-screen romances so real? Tracy and Hepburn burnt up the screen with their pull and tug interactions on screen, like a fencing bout then sparred and parried and yet we never doubted for a minute that they belonged together in the somewhat misogynist Adam’s Rib and Pat & Mike! Tracy’s macho male was well matched with Hepburn’s smart mouthed female who didn’t give an inch.

Another couple with a long run at romantic on screen pairings were that ‘on and off with marriage’ couple Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Elizabeth Taylor was a siren no doubt, the “star” of National Velvet was meant to break men’s hearts. How else can one explain 8 marriages, twice to the same man? They burnt up the screen in Cleopatra and Taming of the Shrew. But their best was in an edgy sort of attraction-repulsion that nothing did better on screen. In The Comedians the illicit chemistry was between a couple watching a country unravel, while in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf the couple played out a rather public unraveling of a marriage. One could not help wonder if reel life was paralleling reel life in the case of this most famous couple of cinema.

Also ran a really good run in one or two films the following:
Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet had the ultimate doomed romance aboard a ship with a name that took the mystery out of the outcome. Richard Gere befriended and then eventually fell in love with and “rescued” the hooker Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. But my favorite contender for the fourth place in romantic on-screen couple has to be Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in Sleepless in Seattle. The atmosphere in the film is infused with a sense of inevitable romance; the chemistry exists even without the couple being seen together for the longest time!

This post first appeared here

Oye Rabba! review of Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi…..

The general public was expecting a DDLJ, SRK fans were just praying really really hard that they not get another Mohabbatein (the others can fill in the blanks for what they were hoping for). So after an 8-year hiatus what exactly did SRK and Aditya Chopra deliver? As the film began with shots of streets and surrounds in Amritsar I saw Akki Narula’s name flash by as costume designer and I began to get anxious. What on earth would Akki be designing in a supposedly down-to-earth film? But then a train chugged into a station and we saw a pair of sneakers on trousered legs and I relaxed a bit. The opening scene instantly set the stage for a not quite right marriage – and also a deconstruction of DDLJ where Raj holds out his hand and Simran runs and grabs it as he pulls her onto a train. Here a gauche and awkward man holds out his hand and she ignores it as she steps off the train! (and a child asks – papa yeh kaun hai, Papa replies – Shahrukh, and kid says nahin Papa!)

Surinder Suri is a painfully ordinary man – so ordinary no one would look at him twice on a street. Add to that his lonely state and his introverted geeky nature and you have a truly common man who blends in and no one sees him – least of all his wife, Taani, who is immersed in her own sorrows of having lost a love and a parent, and being married to a man she just does not see, cohabit with, or interact with at all. She ignores Suri and he carries on with his job at Punjab Power, lighting up people’s lives! He is ecstatic at the tiffin she packs for him, this is closest he has come to any woman caring for him. But when she vows to change for him he is forced to take the help of Bobby Khalsa (Vinay Pathak in a fluorescent clothed, spiky haired hairdresser avatar), and endless movies he has watched, to keep her just the way he fell in love with her. Thus is born the Raj alter ego, a small town hick trying to be chic with an outrageous “Jaat” accent. His clothes are loud, his hair spiked, his uncool coolness calling out for attention. I read elsewhere that to make Taani not recognizing her husband in Raj believable, Adi should have given Suri a sardar getup or some other cover-up. But to do that would take away completely from the way Suri was portrayed, as an almost non-existent person, with his introversion apparent in his held in body language, making it almost difficult to look at him. In contrast Raj screams out for attention and draws all eyes instantly. He is the uncool or small town version of every Raj or Rahul SRK has played and indeed the actor can be recognized in this persona instantly. I could sense the comfort level grow in the audience in the presence of the familiar. But nowhere was this seen in Suri and this is what makes the twin personalities believable. SRK mentioned in an interview that as Suri no one would recognize him on the sets of RNBDJ! In fact that persona is the biggest cloak for hiding the star – somehow even the trademark dimples were subdued. So I had no issues with the twin personalities and why Taani never saw them as one – they were like chalk and cheese. Taani was too wrapped up in herself to even notice who this mousy man was – no one noticed him, in fact it was a bit painful to look at him. Giving Suri a beard and turban would actually take away from the pitch perfect way in which the role was essayed. Anyone can hide behind a beard and turban – try doing it without that!

And all this happens in the streets of Aamritsar, inside an old and somewhat derelict haveli, a barber shop, and an auto body shop! Not a single scantily clad woman was in view including the Dancers from Mumbai. Nary a chiffon saree or a sarson ka khet was seen. The clothing was gauche or down market loud for the guys, and ordinary for the girl. The hero washed his own plates and heroine washed her own clothes and even mopped floors. What a distance for Yash Raj Films to have traveled!

What was the point of the movie? I guess it was three fold the way I see it. One was to show that in a hastily arranged marriage achieving some comfort level may need a lot of room. The second was to show that such a woman could and should have freedom to come and go and do what she wants in her day-to-day affairs. The third was to show that the ordinary man with a golden heart, a complete underdog, can and once in a while should, triumph. Was Suri testing Taani by playing Raj and was this duping her regressive? I see a shy man trying to firstly amuse and entertain his wife, and secondly to figure out if his wife, who claims she never can love anyone any more, can have any feelings for him or anyone else. In fact when he thinks she can but not for him, he is willing to step aside so she can move beyond that marriage to be happy. I saw a distinct forward movement from past regressiveness in films and a new direction. So why does Taani then end up with Suri, and what is the whole Rab business? I think the point is that or if you believe in God (or any such entity) it is not because of some physical aspect but something intangible – not unlike the inner self (good heart/soul, what have you) of a person, and way beyond their physical manifestation. That is moving love to a kind of sublime level. So much for trying to get inside Adi’s head! And yes, I do think that this went beyond where DDLJ was in what it was trying to attempt. This film had a soul and if there were any faults they were in the execution.

So how well did it all work? The dialogs got corny, and I wish the dance competition was not the device to set things in motion – although Dance pe Chance rocked on screen. Yes Adi could and should have used a scriptwriter and maybe even a dialog writer – although IMO he did not do too badly with the latter – even with all the ji’s and Rab’s thrown about. The other songs were very well picturized and worked well, including Phir Milenge Chalte Chalte. This one was the tribute song and it had Kajol in a divine Nargis avatar (she drew the most oohs and aahs in the theater), Bipasha as Hema, Preity as Mumtaz (and with a overfluffed soufflé hairdo she was most awkward looking), Lara was luscious as Helen, and Rani rocking as Neetu Singh. Tujh mein rab dikhta was quite beautiful and moving in both versions. The earthy and normal settings and the camerawork were superb.

It would be unfair to say that SRK totally owned the film, performance wise. Anushka Sharma – ooof! She did not have a shielded star debut like Deepika Padukone did in OSO – she had to deliver the goods, without any baring of the goods, and she did an excellent job. I think we are seeing a future star. And she has the most infectious smile and an innocence and a maturity that somehow co-exist. Vinay Pathak was funny as Bobby Khalsa and had an important role in the film that he did in his usual excellent way. SRK played Surinder Suri in a way that will be remembered for years. It was his most endearing performance and he got the body language and expressions pitch perfect. Raj was played as a funny combination of unsure hick/brat/goofball generated out of imagination and that character worked too – although it had none of the uniqueness and vulnerability of Suri. In fact here Adi/SRK do derive a lot from Hrishi Da’s Golmaal where a cool guy is forced to become a geek and goes endearingly over the top with his shudh Hindi, kurta pajamas and oily hair.

The film was full of memorable scenes that stayed with me with long past the three hours in the theater. Suri putting a rose on his note, the putting it back in the vase, eating golgappas to bursting point and then eating a full plate of chicken Biryani cooked by Taani (A1 hai ji!), Raj talking to the Suri mannequin, Taani in Dhoom 3 mode, the USB drive stuck in the laptop, the end credits! I give this film a solid 8/10 for heart and a brave effort to try something different and about common people in a real town.

This review first appeared here.

Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi pe chance maar le!

One year after the first promo of Rab ne Bana Di Jodi was released, and on Shah Rukh Khan’s birthday, I have the good fortune to present an exclusive piece written by a fellow blogger and friend, VirtuallyReel! Enjoy!
“Creating the polar opposites in Suri and Raj”

by VirtuallyReel

We all are aware of how Yash Raj, and for that matter Karan Johar and many other filmmakers, approach their romantic stories in films. They have a set pattern, in which the first half goes about introducing characters that joke around to successfully generate a light atmosphere. The second half, on the other hand, gets serious where we mostly see that the lead actors have fallen in love with each other and they try to resolve matters like family problems, a love triangle, a villainous rival and other such things, so that they can live happily ever after. And this is where most of the films lose their charm. Tarun Mansukhani’s Dharma produced Dostana is one such example.

Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, however, unlike these usual romantic films, starts on a very serious note. We don’t see split screen and freeze frames and slow motion or any song introducing the two main characters in the film. What we see to our surprise is Shah Rukh Khan and Anushka Sharma as a newly married couple, get off a train and go to their home. Both seem not very excited with their marriage. In the back story quickly narrated by our leading actor, we are introduced to the names of the actors Surinder Sahni (Suri) and Taaniji (Anushka Sharma), and told their marriage was a matter of coincidence that was planned by Rab (God). That clearly indicates that coincidences are bound to happen in the film as God is writing the love story of these two people. So with this different start, the film already looked extraordinary to me.

Though Suri loves Taaniji, Taaniji still hasn’t accepted Suri as her husband and therefore to win the love of Taaniji, Suri goes through a makeover and circumstances force him to give birth to a new identity ‘Raj’ who is the dance partner of Taaniji and Suri as Raj tries to make Taaniji enjoy her life and give her all the love he can.

Many people have problem with the fact that in the film this Raj is a very jungli kind of character and didn’t suit the story at all. But I don’t think that was a problem at all. Because Suri saw Taaniji enjoy seeing those kinds of jungli characters in movies. So the entire point of Raj was to make Taaniji enjoy her life. And hence Suri modeled himself to look like those filmy characters and Bobby. He used filmy dialogs too.

But Suri, while making that character to entertain Taaniji, never knew he was creating the villain or a love triangle in the film, very much like other romantic films. But with Raj we have entered that territory, haven’t we? After all Raj is a filmy character introduced into the ordinary life of Suri and Taaniji.

Thus we follow a story, which is guided by Suri himself, but Taaniji soon becomes entangled in it. On one side she finds Raj, who is very charming and loves her so much, and on other side she is bound by that marriage. Things doesn’t simplify as Suri himself complicates it by playing a game to know whether Taaniji loves Raj or Suri. Taaniji, on the other hand starts enjoying herself with Raj, who does everything to cheer her up.
The film had fairly long takes which also is unlike many Bollywood films. The long takes allowed the movie to move softly and sweetly. HAULE HAULE. It isn’t a very commercial film which is loaded with editing effects and all. It isn’t a film with overloaded characters. There are only three of them so it needed a slow progress. And Aditya Chopra deserves applause for handling it so well. The presence of Shah Rukh Khan and the character Raj makes people think that the film had over the top characters. But the film demanded that character of Raj. Also watch the movement of camera in this film. The camera moves most of the time in the film, rather than being a still. Maybe Aditya Chopra did it to show the movement of ideology of the characters in the film.

One of the remarkable things which I noticed in the film is the transformation of Suri to Raj. How did Suri actually feel and act like Raj? I think it was because of the colored goggles he put on, he saw the world differently and entered an imagined film with the glasses on. These following images trace the Suri to Raj transition in the film. See the change of expressions on his face with and without goggles.

So Suri created an imaginary, filmy kind of world for himself with those shades and hence was acted so differently and over the top.

In the scene where Taaniji gives Suri a glass of Haldi milk, he tries to behave like Raj, but can’t. Watch the scene to understand it better.

However, there are two scenes in the movie where Suri did behave like Raj even without goggles on. But there were many more which show this transformation of expression of Suri to Raj just by putting on goggles. So, I think it was done very much knowingly by Aditya Chopra.

I used to think the scene where Taaniji sees Rab in Suri is actually a flaw in the film as just a second before Suri was standing near Taaniji and a second later he was coming towards Taani from some distance. But on watching the film the 13th time, I realized that Taaniji is actually imagining Suri coming but doesn’t happen in reality, just like Suri imagined Taaniji when he sees Rab in Taaniji just after the intermission point. It can be noticed as Taaniji is standing just near the water, so Suri obviously can’t come from the front.

Colors too hold a important significance in the film. Suri being the simple guy always wears white shirts in the film as white defines simplicity. Raj on the other hand being a colorful character wears all possible colors available. Sadly if this was a David Lynch film, this would have been the first thing people would have looked into, but because Aditya Chopra has made it, no one cared for such subtle great things in the film.

Taaniji’s favorite color is yellow as we see her wearing yellow in the scene where she was supposed to be married but Rab had some other plans for her. She wore yellow when she went to the first dance class. She had a yellow suitcase. The bedcover she puts on Suri’s bed is yellow. So all this concludes her favorite color being yellow. And Suri as he loves Taaniji, realizes it and hence we see him buying a yellow colored car for Taaniji which again was his way of showing how much he loved Taaniji. Though Raj mentions his favorite color is yellow in one of the scenes after seeing Tanni wear yellow, Aditya Chopra never says it directly in the film on what’s the significance of yellow in the film.

In the Haule Haule song, we actually see the blend of white and yellow showing the colors of Suri and Taaniji. Very well done again by Aditya Chopra.

Aditya Chopra surely is much more than a commercial director. His films are much more than that. Only thing, we, the audience, need to look more deeply into his work.

The dialogs in the film are superbly written. Lines like “Bas aaj jo aapne mere doston ke samne meri izzat rakh li, mere liye toh wahi pyaar hai. Isse zyada pyaar ki toh nai hi mujhe adaat hai, na hi zaroorat.” are so Gulzar-ish and brillaint. While some are very very powerful, lines like “Mai acchi wife ban kar dikhaungi.” gives me an impression that the dialogs were written by two different persons. While one is so mature, the other looks very childish. Or even this was done knowingly done by Aditya Chopra to say that Suri is a mature person while Taanijiji still has childishness in her.

The music was very good in my opinion. I loved Haule Haule, Tujhme Rab Dikhta Hai (both versions) and Phir Milenge Chalte Chalte. They are all catchy numbers.

“Haule Haule” is actually very much relevant in film and beautiful in itself. Suri is trying to convince himself in the song “Haule Haule” that Taaniji will fall in love with him slowly slowly, he just needs to keep patience. Not all songs are pointless in films. The camerawork during the song is outstanding. Long shots with lots of movement actually give an impression it will take time for Suri to make Taaniji love him and he needs to be patient. Very well done. Suri tries every possible thing to make Taaniji feel comfortable in life. He takes her to movies. He buys a car because Taaniji feels a bit awkward traveling on a scooter.

“Tujhme Rab Dikhta Hai” by Shreya Ghoshal is a very short song i.e. hardly 90 seconds, but conveys the message so well. And it is the most beautiful song I have heard in a while.

“Phir Milenge Chalte Chalte” slightly misplaced in the film, is a brilliant mix of songs and dialogs from the yesteryears of Bollywood. The song references Raj Kapoor, Dev Anand, Shammi Kapoor, Rajesh Khanna and Rishi Kapoor. Sonu Nigam sung it brilliantly and yet again proved his versatility.

The performance of Shah Rukh Khan was superb as a common man in Surinder Sahni and he did well enough to showcase the junglee, irritating and yet lovable Raj. Very few actors can give life to a statue the way he does in the finest scene in the movie where Raj talks to Suri just before the intermission. Quite easily the best scene of the film. I really felt for Suri when he said “Kahin Suri yehi na kehta reh jaaye – Hum hai rahi pyaar ke, Phir Milenge Chalte Chalte”.

Vinay Pathak too did his role quite magnificently. Anushka Sharma though new to films, never looked like one. In fact in one of the scenes she gave a Kajol like performance. The scene I am referring to is the trial room where Raj and Taaniji converse with each other.

I watched the film 13 times to come to such conclusions, I wrote in this article. And I wouldn’t mind watching it another 13 times if I keep finding something new in it and the film keeps entertaining me. However it isn’t a perfect film but still it’s a very smartly made sweet and cute love story. Aditya Chopra surely belongs to one of the better directors of Bollywood. But had he given a bit more effort in making this film, it would been a classic for me.

This isn’t a REVIEW of the film but it asks you people to RE-VIEW the film. I hope you understand me.

Aladin and his magical djinn!

The childhood tale from 1001 Nights of a boy with a magic lamp, a genie, wishes, a beautiful woman, a powerful sorcerer and a fight between good and evil, is reworked for today and Bollywood, and a magical concoction results.
Sujoy Ghosh last satisfied immensely with Jhankaar Beats, and returns to direct Aladin. This fantasy tale is set in Khwaish, a town somewhere in the north of India, or maybe in your imagination! There are towering minars and domes and Arabian Nights like cobbled alleyways and in these streets we find Aladin Chatterjee, who had the “misfortune” of being thus named by his now dead parents. He grows up with the taunts of his classmates, enough lamps thrown at him for rubbing, and a drubbing that inevitably follows. Aladin’s misfortunes start taking an abrupt different turn when the beautiful Jasmine shows up as an exchange student and he is smitten at first sight. However, far away in a fantasy bleak landscape, the Ringmaster is busy planning Aladin’s downfall and he is blissfully unaware of all this. Then Jasmine gifts Aladin a lamp, the one that has been waiting for its rightful owner for aeons!

Sangam, the meeting of three strands!

The poor boy, the rich best friend, and the beautiful girl next door, friends that grow up together and ultimately form a love triangle. The poor boy goes off to war to prove his worth, and eventually comes back to marry the girl.
Then he discovers something that shatters his belief in life itself! Who but Mukesh could sing with so much pain the words by Shailendra set to music by Shankar Jaikishen?

Nashe ki raat dhal gayi
Ab Khumar na raha
Zindagi humein tera
Aitbaar na raha

A ton of talent ON one rooftop!

The film – Bazaar; director – Sagar Sarhadi (his only directorial venture though he wrote films like Kabhi Kabhie, Silsila, Chandni, Anubhav); cast – Naseer Shah, Smita Patil, Farooq Shaikh, Supriya Pathak, Sulabha Deshpande; the setting – an engagement “celebration” on a rooftop. The music by Khayyam and ghazal by the great Mir Taqi Mir, given life and soul by the voice of Lata Mangeshkar!

Happy or sad? The song starts out happy and slowly descends into melancholy as the heartrending tragedy of the film is set up in these moments! The sheer amount of talent assembled on this roof-top is mind-boggling. The Ghazal is a classic by Mir and gives me goosebumps every time I hear it.

dikhaai diye yun ki bekhud kiya -2
One look at you and I lost control
hamein aap se bhi juda kar chale
This one look separated me from myself (however in the context of the film aap could well mean from him – in this instance Farooq)
dikhaai diye yun

jabeen sajda karte hi karte gayi
I bowed my forehead over and over again
haq-e-bandagi yu adaa kar chale
Thus I paid the debt of praying to you
dikhaai diye yu

parastish ki yaan tak ki aai but tujhe -2
See the limit of my servitude, I took a statue
nazar mein sabhon ki khuda kar chale
And turned it into god in the eyes of all
dikhaai diye yu

bahut aarzu thi gali ki teri -2
I was so desperate to reach your street
so yaas-e-lahu mein naha kar chale
I bathed in my life-blood to get there

Madhuri Madhuri Madhuri! Diva, actress, dancer

With all the B-grade films that were being churned out at the time, it is no surprise that Madhuri, or Madz as she is affectionately called, was named the Dhak Dhak girl. For me she was the MOST natural, the most beautiful, the best dancer, the superstar who could go head to head with the guys. She may not have been conventionally the best looking, but something about her eyes and her smile mesmerized you. I want to focus this post on her dancing skills, and maybe talk about acting later.

One has to start with the Khalnayak song that raised a firestorm of protest and yet many years later inspired AR Rahman to compose a homage for Slumdog Millionaire!

The overt seduction and jhatkas of the waist combine with drop dead gorgeous looks to make an explosive mix.

A rainy day in Berlin – museum time!

Day 2 – Berlin, forecast – rains and wind, agenda – stay warm and dry, plan – visit some monuments and museums! The day started out with trying to find a shop and purchase a raincoat! Next up was the Berlin Dom. An imposing edifice that sits at one end of the Museum island, the structure is relatively modern in history and antique in look!

The ornate interior boasts of a soaring ceiling with tiled art, a heavily carved pulpit and a magnificent organ.

Snip, Cut, Jump – Man with the Movie Camera (1929)

Born Denis Arkadevich Kaufman, he later took the name of Dziga Vertov (to emulate the sound of the spinning movie camera or top), and was part of the KINOKS movement. These filmmakers believed that non-documentary cinema was the “opiate of the masses” and should be abolished. Vertov teamed up with his brother Mikhail Kaufman (the real man behind the movie camera, while another brother, Boris Kaufman, came to HW and won a cinematography Oscar for On the Waterfront) and his wife Yelizaveta Svilova supervising the editing. Almost an hour of footage (that took 4 years to film and led to an irreconcilable estrangement between the brothers!) traced one day in the life of a Russian city — here a conglomeration of Moscow, Kiev and Odessa.

parallel

Dharma Productions comes of age – Wake up Sid!

A spoilt brat comes of age and wakes up to his responsibilities. Such stories have been done to death in films like Lakshya, parts of Dil Chahta hai, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge, Jaane Tu Ya Jaane na, Kabhi Haan Kabhi naa. There are the usual cliches in all such films – the boy has other loser type friends who still manage to do better than him, there is parental conflict, and a girl is usually involved in the waking up process! These films target the youthful audience by showing the young lead and friends clubbing or generally having fun singing and dancing, and of course the outcome is usually very predictable. The brat wakes up and becomes an upright citizen so he can win the love of his lady.

Why then should one watch Wake up Sid? Does it break any new ground, thematically or cinematically? Is it more of the same from Dharma Productions, the usual sanitized pretty locales, lots of glamor and glitz and much choreographed dancing? I caught Wake Up Sid in the second weekend after hearing some of the buzz around the film. The leading man is 27 years and three films old, and I happen to like him quite a bit. What is shocking is that the director is a 25 year old debutant. A search reveals that Ayan Mukherjee was one of the screenplay writers for Swades, a favorite of mine, and has written the story and screenplay of WUS, in addition to directing it. There is the wondrous Konkona Sen Sharma in a lead role and some of the music (particularly Iktara) is divine. So what exactly did Sid serve up?

Cult? Oh yeah! Shaun of the Dead

Ever been annoyed by those people who are sneaking a peek at your laptop as you watch a video or work on a plane? I thought this was something I would never ever do until the man sitting next to me on a plane pulled out his laptop and began playing a weird film that I vaguely recalled hearing about. Zombie horror? Cult comedy classic? It was both, based on my surreptitious viewing without any sound. I kept thinking I would watch a bit of this film just to figure what it was about, and almost 100 minutes later, I had seen all of it!!

A strange looking man playing video games with an unkempt chubby buddy, arguments between the strange man and his girlfriend (presumed) and an eventual argument with a roommate over said unkempt buddy leads to people going out and all is normal except someone is chewing the head off a squirrel. Later the roommate is bitten by an aggressive strange person – wait these are zombies! BINGO! The thrust of the story is that zombies want to feed on humans, and a bite slowly turns humans into zombies.

Want to get drunk again and again? The Hangover!

Does it matter who directed it or acted in the film? I could not tell you – I recognized no name or face except that of Heather Graham and she had a 10 minute role. After resisting for weeks thinking this would be the usual frat-boy level comedy with crude and rude humor, finally I was a captive audience on a flight and thought, what the heck. And guess what? It is all that and more and it is a hilarious barrel of laughs that goes beyond the likes of Harold and Kumar and soon you do not cringe at the crudity at all, but simply enjoy the ride.

“Ich bin ein Berliner” – I wish!

Is Germany on your list of places to visit? Then you must be male and either a beer or a soccer fanatic! But this belief of mine was shattered when I visited Berlin last month. After spending 3 glorious days in the city, I too wanted to be a Berliner. There are some peculiarities to getting into Berlin, the Tiegel airport is a strange one with security check points at individual isolated gates and not much by way of food or shopping. But at the this airport you can buy a ticket to ride, your pass to all that is Berlin. The Berlin pass allows free access to all forms of public transportation and is also good for reduced entry prices at most of the major museums in the city. The buses and subways (U-Bahn) and trains (S-Bahn) are very user friendly, clean, and generally on time. We stayed very close to the Alexander Platz and the Berlin Dom. The Alexander Platz houses a unique TV tower and a sublime Neptune fountain with the old Marion Church in the background.

This same plaza is also home to the statues of two of the greatest thinkers from the region, Marx and Engels!

Of course THE structure that means Berlin for many, is the now almost gone wall! A visit to the border between former East and West Berlin is still very interesting with Checkpoint Charlie. Some guys are no doubt paid to pose in uniform and give tourists some photo ops.

The FAB FOUR – remastering and repackaging The Beatles!

What could 3 men (plus one., Ringo Starr joined the band in 1962), not quite 20 years old, do in 9 years of coming together and being together? You know it ain’t easy, you know how hard it can be – but that only holds true for mere mortals!

The Fab four were barely together for 9 years and created love and magic and mystery, and then parted just like that, never to come together again. By 1970 the Beatles were history and at that time Lennon was nearing 30, while McCartney and Harrison were still 28 and 29 years old. At an age when life begins for most young people, this group had already been there, done that, and influenced an entire generation all over the world, while leaving a legacy for many future generations.

Beginning in Liverpool and performing in many clubs across Hamburg, the group began recording in 1962 with many a popular pop tune like Love me Do, Please Please Me, and eventually hit the big time when Love me Do reached the top of the charts in both the UK and US. This was the phase of love songs that released as singles, and were hugely popular due to their charm, innocence and melody. By 1963 screaming fans would mob the band wherever it went in the UK. Success in the US was seen in the chart toppers but no one in their wildest dreams imagined the crowds that would greet the band as it arrived at Kennedy Airport in early 1964. Screaming fans swooned in the crush and every appearance was sold out. The live performance at the Ed Sullivan show was watched by numbers that could be close to half the US population at the time!
Here is a live recording at the Ed Sullivan show, the clean cut youthful looks, the love song, no wonder the hysterical screams are audible in the background!

A surreal Coward – Brief Encounter

Sir Noel Coward, eminent playwright, actor, singer, songwriter and entertainer, was known for his chic and suave style. His one act play “Still Life” was made into a classic film Brief Encounter, by the master of mood David Lean. A shared Palm D’Or at Cannes and a Criterion Collection release testifies to the enduring value of that film.

On the face of it, Brief Encounter is not a complicated tale – it tells of a chance encounter at a train station between two married people, their falling in love, an unconsummated affair, and the eventual resolution of the situation. In the trailer of the Criterion version of the Lean film, the simplicity comes out foremost, aided by the music of Rachmaninoff: