Archive for ăbzee

Tashan made me go back to the single screen. The Yash Raj vs. Multiplexes standoff meant that I had to have my Friday dose at a suburban single screen, a world away from comfy cushioned seats, PYTs and combo packs. That Tashan, of all films, had to go unreleased at the multiplexes for a whole week is a curious coincidence indeed. Not because this film is poor, which it undoubtedly is…but because no film to my mind has presented such a strong case-study for the shift in Bollywood films and its audience from the days of single screens to the age of multiplexes.

Tashan begins with a red Mercedes convertible heading down a highway as AC/DC’s Highway To Hell plays over the car stereo. The song abruptly cuts and, as the car swerves off-road, we listen to Mukesh’s Kabhi Kabhie. We are later revealed that Saif’s ‘Jimmy Cliff’ and Akshay’s ‘Bachchan Pande’ fight over radio stations, alternating back and forth between AC/DC and Mukesh…between Jimmy and Bachchan. That is the primary conceit of Tashan- a narrative that seeks less to tell anything per se, but yet does.  So when Anil Kapoor’s Bhaiyyaji, a desi Don desperately wanting to learn English, reenacts Amitabh’s iconic “Aaj Khush Toh Bahut Hoge Tum” scene from Deewar in broken English…we laugh. But what this scene proves more than anything else is the utter failure of masala Bollywood in an upward garb, in this case- English.

Bhaiyyaji is your traditional 70s villain who loves to chew tobacco and subject his enemies to electric shocks. 70s are no longer considered cool, as we are informed by remakes and spoofs. Bhaiyyaji naturally has to reinvent himself to cater to the new audience- and the ability to speak English is the first requisite towards that end. How apt then that he enlists the services of a call-centre yuppie to train him in the Queen’s language- which incidentally falls short when it comes to expressing love as Bachchan Pande realizes.

It is interesting to note that in Bachchan and Bhaiyyaji, Tashan has two characters rooted firmly in the 70s- both hail from the Hindi heartland; one quotes Bachchan, the other is ‘named’ Bachchan!  Jimmy is the aberration, and Kareena’s Pooja…we’ll get to that later. While Bhaiyyaji wants to cleanse himself of his Kanpur roots, Bachchan meanwhile is the proud heir to the Ganga Kinaare Wala. This is why Bhaiyyaji’s updated rendition of the aforementioned Amitabh scene falls flat while Bachchan succeeds at invoking Gabbar Singh and Mogambo playing a Ravana in a Ram Leela. The one that embodies Bachchan lives on, and the one that tries to reinvent himself as the ‘new’ Bachchan for the ‘new’ age fails.

AAMIR, dirtected by Anurag Kashyap’s protege Rajkumar Gupta, is one of the smaller but more interesting films to arrive on our screens this year. Starring Rajeev Khandelwal in the titular role, this UTV produced film, is already being talked about in industry circles for its look. Shot in the Muslim ‘ghettos’ of Mumbai, AAMIR takes the viewer from Crawford Market to Bhendi Bazaar and from Dharavi to Behrampada.

Here’s a synopsis, courtesy indiafm-

‘Progressive’ Discovery of Ignorance 

Khuda Kay Liye

Written & Directed by- Shoaib Mansoor

Cast- Shan, Iman Ali, Fawad Khan, Austin Marie Sayre, Rasheed Naz, Humayun Kazmi and Naseeruddin Shah

The following piece was sent to me by one of my friends whose friend, a financial & energy analyst wrote it. The views expressed in the article aren’t endorsed by NaachGaana and/or its members. The article is posted only for purposes of achieving different views and encouraging healthy debate. - Abzee

The Reliance Power company claims that it will be developing power generation projects of 28200 MW over the next decade.According to the IPO RHP, some of the projects that it will be developing are:

Rosa-I (to be commissioned in March 2010) - 600 MW - Coal based.
Butibori (to be commissioned in June 2010) - 300 MW - Coal based.
Rosa-II (to be commissioned in September 2010) - 600 MW - Coal based.
Shahpur Gas (to be commissioned in March 2011) - 2800 MW - Gas based.
Shahpur Coal (to be commissioned in December 2011) - 1200 MW - Coal based.
Dadri (to be commissioned in March 2013) - 7480 MW - Gas based.
Krishnapatnam (to be commissioned in September 2013) - 4000 MW - Coal based.
Urthing Sobla (to be commissioned in March 2014) - 400 MW - Hydropower based.
Tato II (to be commissioned in March 2014) - 700 MW - Hydropower based.
MP Power (to be commissioned in July 2014) - 3960 MW - Coal based.
Siyom (to be commissioned in March 2015) - 1000 MW - Hydropower based.
Kalai II (to be commissioned in March 2016) - 1200 MW - Hydropower based.
Sasan (to be commissioned in April 2016) - 3960 MW - Coal based.

If

The following is a famous George Carlin routine that I felt deserved to be put up, given some of the discussions we’ve had at this post and the general reservation at NG regarding the usage of cuss words.

“I love words. I thank you for hearing my words. I want to tell you something about words that I uh, I think is important. I love..as I say, they’re my work, they’re my play, they’re my passion. Words are all we have really.

We have thoughts, but thoughts are fluid. You know. And, then we assign a word to a thought. And we’re stuck with that word for that thought. So be careful with words. I like to think, yeah, the same words that hurt can heal. It’s a matter of how you pick them.

There are some people that aren’t into all the words. There are some people who would have you not use certain words. Yeah, there are 400,000 words in the English language, and there are seven of them that you can’t say on television. What a ratio that is. 399,993 to seven. They must really be bad. They’d have to be outrageous, to be separated from a group that large. All of you over here, you seven. Bad words. That’s what they told us they were, remember? ‘That’s a bad word.’ ‘Awwww.’ There are no bad words. Bad thoughts. Bad Intentions.

http://www.behindwoods.com/tamil-movie-articles/movies-07/evano-oruvan-review.html 

After being in the news for a year and facing myriad hurdles, Nishikant Kamat’s Tamil version of the Marathi thriller Dombivili Fast is finally set to grace the screens on Friday. Usually when a movie faces many stumbling blocks and the release dates are changed so frequently, the film’s prospects at the box-office and people’s expectations turn bleak and only a few ones stand firm and face the box-office chest first. Evano Oruvan is one such rare breed of films.

The movie revolves around a righteous middle class man, Sridhar Vasudevan. Idealistic individual, he leads a perfunctory but normal life with his wife Vatsala (Sangeetha) and two kids Varun and Varsha. Frustrated with corruption, lawlessness and lack of moral values among people around him, he embarks on a journey to cleanse the society only to be found on the wrong side of the law. With Police on his trail, will Sridhar succeed in his cause, is something to be experienced at the theatres.

Themes with one-man crusade against the system are no strange to Tamil audiences, as we have seen many dimensions of it. From Gentleman to Katradhu Tamil, the vigilante story has taken many shapes, but Evano Oruvan not just gets added to that list but ranks one among the top, as the movie treats the issues rather pragmatically and does away with all cinematic liberties.

I don’t generally use NG to vent my political and social angst, but I’m making an exception today. Forgive me for imposing myself upon you.

As a responsible Indian, come election time, I’m always faced with choosing between the lesser of two evils. That is hardly a conducive atmosphere to exrecise democracy and make oneself matter. But so it is, and so sulking, I vote. And the last time around, the lesser of the two evils I chose was the Congress. It was either between them conniving capitalists(in the robe of secular socialists) or blood-sucking communalists. And, naive that I was, I thought it safer to have a thief for a ruler than a murderer.

 But over the period of this current Congress term in my state(which I was looking forward to after I’d celebrated their all-India triumph), I’ve been let down like never before. I may be insensitive to suggest this, but this term has been worse than when Mumbai was hit with the riots in 93. For back then, my city and its people showed what they were ultimately made of(what is now commonly and irritatingly called the ‘Mumbai spirit’) in face of communal pogroms. But this time around, my poor poor city(and state) has been mercilessly fucked, over and over, by a government that spreads its legs more eagerly than a Venetian prostitute and a CM who gives me compelling evidence every passing day to suspect that his earlier profession was pimping whores.

 Over this present Congress ‘regime’, my city has been cosmetically enhanced with over 50 malls(100 more on their way). If you thought that was bad enough, mill lands were freed for builders to rampantly construct more concrete monsters. Property rates skyrocketed without any monitoring authority and an imbalance in purchasing power meant that the rich(and the newly rich- TV stars, BPO staffers, etc.) got richer and the poor…not poorer, but eliminated. गरिबों को हटाओ, anyone?