Blog Day is here again. On this day, we are supposed to link to 5 blogs from cultures different than ours.
I have to accept—I do not read many non-desi blogs and consequently my list of 5 blogs are all South Asian.
Monthly Archive for August, 2006
For a second I thought she had passed away while kissing.
Mallika Sherawat, India’s export to the world, was having a normal work day. Which means she was doing a kissing scene underwater for her latest movie “Pyar ke Side Effects” (I am not making this one up–even my demented mind shorts out at that level). Stung by the cold water and fatigued by the effort to keep herself submerged against the upward Archimedian force of the floatation devices affixed to her chest by surgical procedure, she had a drink of brandy–an act which combined with the cold made her pass out.
[Picture above of the Mallika mango which according to this website:
The fruit (Mallika mango) must be picked mature green and ripened in camel dung or a cardboard box (whichever is handy).
]
Incidentally what kind of a man is Rahul Bose, the hero? Isn’t he man enough to keep a woman warm with his tongue action even though they may be underwater?
This is exactly why we need Imran Hashmi, the specialist serial kisser, to essay these challenging roles so that Rahul Bose can do stuff he can handle— like the role of a quiet photographer stuck in a riot.
Continue reading ‘Mallika Sherawat Passes Out While Kissing’
‘Snakes on a Plane’ is this year’s campiest C-grade “so-bad-it’s-good” (which the Oxford dictionary now defines as “Mithunian’) movie in which a mafia-lord lets loose a zoofull of assorted poisonous snakes, made horny and aggressive by being sprayed with pheromones, [which is why, according to a character in the movie, they attack females more than males----a fact borne out by a snake biting a lady's exposed nipple and another "pleasing" a sleeping lady in a way I did not think possible ] in order to bump off a witness for the prosecution.
However, if you ask a flight attendant whether he/she prefers to rumble with a cobra in heat or with a desi on a trans-Atlantic flight, I think he/she might go for the snake.
[Warning: Long post]
Taran Adarsh, India’s greatest movie reviewer EVER fires a salvo at those whom he dubs “pseudo journos with zero knowledge of film-making and business”.
Which I think includes me.(blogger=pseudo-journo)
Now KABHI ALVIDA NAA KEHNA faces the flak. So what’s new? Nothing. It’s the same old story. The moment a big film hits the screens, a section of the film industry [also include some pseudo journos with zero knowledge of film-making and business] has a constipated look on their faces. Text messages degrading the film fly left, right and centre. ‘It wouldn’t sustain beyond Friday’, ‘Bakwas hain’, ‘The director has lost it’, ‘Paisa kamaya, par reputation khatam’ Haven’t we heard all this and more [the nastiest of talk] before? Let’s not forget, a tree which bears fruits is always stoned. Jo hain naamwala, wohi to badnaam hain.
Indeed. He exhorts:
Why are we so skeptical when it comes to embracing bold themes? Why should Hindi cinema be confined to those three/four stories that are as old as the hills? Why shouldn’t we welcome changes?
So here’s a pseudo-journo’s challenge to Mr. Adarsh. I am going to review KABHI AAGE KAABHI PEECHE — a movie which only I have seen as of yet and which will be released to the general public during Deewali. I am going to try to review it using a style heavily internalized from the great Mr. Adarsh. (Kindly refer here for the gold standard).
The question is: ” Can there be a “bolder” movie than the one below? Are the Indian audiences mature enough for this?”
Read on. And try to find the answers.
Don’t blame Karan Johar (KJO) for not warning you.
As the credits roll and Karan Johar’s name comes up as the director, the voice-over says, prophetically:
“Waqt ke saath kuch zakhm aur bhi gehra ho jata hain” [Some wounds get deeper, as time goes by]
“Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna” is one such, inflicting increasing doses of pain and grief on the audience and sinking into deeper morasses of banality with every passing scene.
Now here’s the tragedy. It need not have been this way. Unlike Karan Johar’s previous movies which, no matter how he cooked it, would still be aesthetic turkeys since they were devoid of plot and characterization in the first place, “Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna” had the potential to be different. At least on paper.
What could have been an interesting movie about a middle-aged man, morbidly bitter at the fact that he ‘never made it in life’ , engaging in an extramarital affair so that he can feel successful, wanted and young again is reduced to an endless nightmare of contrived situations, convenient resolutions, copious tears, cornucopian cleavages, clichéd climax and corny comedy.
R