My take on Guzarish

Posted on November 23, 2010November 23, 2010 by bach

Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s movies are like epic poems. “Khamoshi” was a poem, “Hum dil de chuke sanam” was a masterpiece, “Devdas” was an epic and “Black” was all of them. Then, he got tired of presenting poems. Now he presents only drafts – unfinished ones. Guzarish is one among them; it seems that he dint put too many thoughts into it to make it perfect. Started well though!

Quick question, does “major milestone” translate to “bada meel ka paththar” in Hindi? I dint keep myself updated with Hindi, then! Anyways, back to review.

Guzarish falls short of telling a convincing story, tries to give a wrong message in between, then turns weird and finally ends like a Karan Johar movie – making everyone in the hall cry. Fortunately there are several clues in the movie shows it had a great idea behind it before while it was written and Bhansali lost it later point.

Plot is very simple. Flashback is picked from (Oh, sorry… inspired by) a Hollywood flick – “The Prestige”. A jealous illusionist (in Bollywood a magician) gets the apparatuses bugged and boom! Mr. Ethan Mascarenhas (Hrithik Roshan) is crippled for rest of his life. Ethan takes this as a challenge and starts a radio show from his bedroom, and he becomes popular once again. After a decade of doing this, he decides give up his life and files a petition against Union of India for an approval on mercy killing, which gets rejected as it is unconstitutional.

This is how Goan maids look like., any questions ?

Guzarish

The movie ends with an indication that his maid (Aishwarya Rai) will assist him to do when court rejected. Now, this story went wrong for two major reasons

Movie does not attend the reason why Ethan wants a mercy killing. Nowhere in three hours Bhansali shows Ethan is suffering or it is getting worse. Finally it looks like Ethan is asking for mercy killing Euthanasia (Referred as Ethanasia) because he got bored!!
Court does not attend the argument “Why grant Euthanasia only to him?”. They start to discuss it, but later they forget! I really don’t think “Because he chooses for himself” is a justifiable reason. This shakes the foundation of the movie.

All other areas (direction, acting etc) were comparatively good; they are in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s standards. I acknowledge that he is one of very few directors who don’t believe in overacting to bring drama, nor Masala. While I am thankful for that, it is frustrating to see some of the details are missed out.

Hrithik was good; BTW, did I mention that I brought him out of my “No watch list” after Kites? This movie could look good in his resume. Sofia (Aishwarya Rai) simply exists in this movie which any actor could have filled in. If you read the plot again, you see Sofia the maid (Aishwarya) does not have anything significant to contribute to the story. In-fact, she is one of the week points of the movie. If I were Bhansali I would have filled someone not so famous, like he did for that doctor or lawyer.

Now, list of flaws:

Why the movie gives old feeling? I initially thought the story itself is picturised in old age, at least 40 years. But no, they talk about SMS etc. Confusing! Is there a place in Goa where people live just like they did in colonial era?
The maid seems to be a financially poor girl with drunken husband, but appearance makes her look like a princess – couple of centuries of old. She has an heir style of German village girl and wears veils like a secret cult. Total confusion.
You can observe the difference between how Hollywood and Bollywood takes on exact same things differently. In Prestige he is an illusionist and here Ethan is Magician! In 90 minutes movie Hollywood does not forget to show a glimpse of magic apparatuses – they ensure whatever audience see is a result of smart equipment and quick movement. But Bollywood does not care – It just happens like any paranormal activity! They had 180 minute, just to remind you.
Konkani was dubious. In Hum dil de chuke sanam, there was some Guajarati and in Devdas, Bengali. In Guzarish Bhansali forgot about Konkani. There were couple of words here and there; they sounded more like Marathi than Konkani.
Songs weren’t great! There was one dance – A Goan would have been nice. Instead it was a Spanish..ish dance! Aishwarya treats it as metal rock! My point is Sofia does not look like a person who does mock rock in a pub, she is a serious character – If you observe she talks less than Man Mohan Singh.
Ash wears longest skirts in the world (already in Guinness records!) and she rides bicycle back home! It’s long since I’ve been to Goa, but it is hard to believe skirts keep getting longer there as days go. Nothing wrong with the concept, just that it is funny to imagine a 15^th century European skirt driving early 20^th century Hero bicycle.
What’s about Karan Johar ending please? For 15 minutes Ethan says thank you note. “Last but not least” and “Thank you one and all”.

Looks like Bollywood is rearranging its resources. Best chocolate hero Vivek Oberoy (remember Sathiya?) does action super hero roles (Remember Prince?), Martial art specialist Akshay Kumar does henpecked roles and now Best dancer in Bollywood plays handicapped! Salman and Shah Rukh..err what are they good at again ?

Beware of Hisss

Posted on October 25, 2010October 26, 2010 by bach

Hisss was presented as revolutionary horror and (in quotes)”bold”. Well it’s not! It’s a B-grade soft-core (in quotes) “pornographic” disaster. If you need more explanation; it is pathetic, pointless, terrible and crappy in every department including that much celebrated Khan dude. It did not look like the movie had a director or a script. Every damned person was (over)acting on his own, no wonder its official director Jennifer lynch disowned herself from Hisss.

I don’t rate B-grade movies. This post is not a review but a warning to my friends: Please don’t be misguided by the promo.

If you ignore my words and watch it, I will remove you from my facebook connections and unfollow you from twitter 🙂

Woman, equal pay and Dagenham

Posted on October 10, 2010July 19, 2020 by bach

My family profession is Farming! We grew (still do) rice, cashew, coconut, banana, etc., in a village and had cattle too. That’s right! Some of my friends were astonished when I told them I milked cows and chased wild bores out of rice farms. Back in those days we had daily labours for doing various jobs in farm. There were million different jobs in farm as compared to my current profession (developer, tester and manager). Out of them only few men specific jobs, rest were common. Anyway, in any of those jobs women were paid 25% less than men, even if they did same job. When I asked my grandfather about this discrimination, he told “otherwise men will refuse to work! They need this discrimination to work”. Also, he told it is only in some phirangi countries you can expect equality. Now I am in a phirangi country and he was right, there is equality.

Right, now in the context: I went to this British movie “Made in Dagenham”, while whole town queued up for some Zac Efron flick. There was hardly anyone in this screen while I could hear Enthiran beats across the walls. Anyways, this movie was about a small number of women machinists of Ford factory in Dagenham, making history!. This is where the ignition for “equal pay movement” happened, which swept across industrial world and government realised women deserved same pay as men for same job. Movie review: It’s awesome; I hope it will get some more recognition and awards.

image via filmofila

I was aware that a revolution like this happened in Europe, but I was totally unaware that it happened as early as 70s. That gave me a shock. Just 40 years back in United Kingdom, women were paid less than men, just for one reason – they were women! I was under impression that equality existed since centuries!

I am gonna phone my friends in village sometime and find out if things have changed.

Update

Infographics on “History of women in workspace“

Enthiran – the robot

Posted on October 9, 2010October 9, 2010 by bach

It wasn’t horrible. Not bad for an attempt from Indian cinema trying to match Hollywood standards. I enjoyed it, well done. At the same time I wish the movie could have been better if director did not worry about audience “understandability factor”. Some compromises were silly.

It looks like Indian cinema waited too long, with jealousy, to make a movie Hollywood always bragged about. Enthiran the robot try to attempt all of them in single shot. If you club all of the action scenes of this movie together and observe you can see Terminator, Mummy, Mask, Anaconda, iRobot etc etc. You can even name specific scenes which are picked, and where they are picked from. Good news is there is nothing taken from The Matrix, unlike all Bollywood action movies from last one decade did.

On the whole, while watching the movie, you could read through director’s mind. Let’s make biggest budget movie in India, then let’s add biggest star in India. Let him be present in almost all frames of the movie. To make it easy, let’s put him in double role, or hundred more. The aggregate of five minutes where he is not present on the screen, let’s put the most popular actress in India even if her presence does not matter. Hire some expensive graphic designer from west and ask them to repeat the designs. Find locations for songs, where no other Indian movies are shot, a great wonder may be! etc etc. Watch it yourself (yes, I recommend), if all these taken out of the movie – it’s an average average plot.

Few good things about the movie…

Graphics: never been tried in Indian cinema in such a detail with so much clarity. Stills falls way below perfection. For example, there is a scene one day old Enthiran tosses an infant to play with him, looked like old jungle book cartoon.
Technicality: Very good progress as compared to same industry which produced movies about hacking systems with “Windows media player”. Nothing much silly. Just fine except few.
Rajanikanth: he was good. He looked natural and not much “style factor”. I have few things to criticise, but that would be Blasphemy. Overall, no complaints.
Aishwarya Rai, she was good. No overacting and no under acting. Looks like she found some weight(see image below).

Few bad things:

Music, Not even half of Rahman’s level. Songs are crappy, plain simple stupid. Kilimanjaro, for the record, is my third most irritating song. (The other two being “Kajrare” and “Aa ante amalapura”). These songs make itching sensation at back of my brain.
They sing and dance Kilimanjaro on the top of Machu-pitchu Mountains! These two are half globe away from each other! Makes me wonder where is costume from – Papua New Guinea?
Robot should be designed to take optimal path. But this one acts plain stupid path. I mean Anaconda – Really? Can a robot fly? If yes, then why does it walk on rest of the scenes?
Costume: Robot costume could have been improved a lot. In some scenes (a song) it looks like Flintstones costume(see image below ). Back to Kilimanjaro song, Rajani was wearing a doormat!
Is cycling shorts in fashion again? Must be for conservative crowd! Miniskirts are beyond our cultural limits, but it is acceptable if it is accompanied by cycling shorts.
“DOT”?!? Is a “dot” after a strong statement same as PERIOD? Probably because “period” already has some other meaning in Indian English.

image via a forum

As I said earlier, it’s worth watching movie. I would watch it again, but not same crowd please. The cinema I watched was filled with some absolute crazy dudes. They had no idea what’s going on in the movie. For example, maximum applause (and whistles) winning scene in the movie is Robot Rajani harassing Ash! I don’t think movie fails to deliver the message it was originally intended to… but for some whatever Rajani does is fun. DOT.

Movie review : Lafangey Parindey

Posted on August 24, 2010 by bach

This movie revolves around four characters Deepika, her dupe, Neil and his dupe! All four of them got equal share of screen time a typical multi-starrer. They skate, they dance and they fight all over the screen, but none of them managed to do it well, so verdict is 1/10.

Lafangey Parindey is the first I watched in which Neil Nitin Mukesh present (acted would be wrong use of language). In the past I have attempted to watch one of his previous movies – Aa Dekhen Zara , which looked like a C grade remake of B grade Hollywood movie. Based on that misadventure it’s hard not to get prejudiced and Neil confirmed that I was right.

Deepika looked OK as a model, but as an actress naah! Probably she wasn’t made for this role. It’s not very rare that a character is blind in Bollywood movie; every other actor has tried this and put it in his/her resume. Deepika’s performance here stands bottom of that group.

The movie plot is a mixture of “Rab Ne Banadi Jodi” and an (any) old Van Damme movie. Van damme movies typically revolve around him travelling to deep east, learning Kung Fu blind folded and learning to enhance other strengths. Karate kid was last one to try it; it’s the same cliché all over again. Bells and atta balls to bring India flavour in it.

Neil is a kind of Rambo in here, the best blindfolded kick-boxer in Mumbai, apparently it’s legal in India! He teaches Deepika to see through her other senses just in two weeks and aha! she skate-dances! And wins!!

Juhi Chawla does a brief entry in the movie, as a judge. All she had to do is sit there and judge few performances (apparently only two). But no! she chooses her way to overact the two minutes given, in 80’s style.

Looks like “Slumdog millionaire” has created a new genre in Bollywood, “rags to riches”!. Now these clueless directors are flooding the industry with this genre. There are too many “winning India got talent” “dance competition” etc now a days. I predict they are going to leave us irritated with these now, with a little puking sensation!

Only good thing in this movie is the use of local language, nice touch. Performance wise, a kid and an inspector knew how to act. That’s all!