Overdoze on dope

I intentionally tried to refrain myself from posting anything so as to complete the killing of Ravi Nair from my previous post. I am also reading the white tiger by Arvind Adiga for some inspiration; but that’s going to take time and I just could not resist the temptation of posting something about weird random adventures I’ve had in wonderland and the internet. A lot of it is pieces of stories and theories that I’ve heard and read from various sources while creatively wasting my time at work in times when the economy is giving it to us.

Assuming that life’s a combination of innumerable variables coming together with varying intensities and quantities, the probability of having a positive outcome eventually can be a very small number. So animals with brains as we are; we hope (pray for that matter) to get a positive outcome and rely on a supernatural unsubstantiated incomprehensible force; God.

Here’s for some overdose on dope; imagine the existence of life on a parallel universe which has taken the sole responsibility of transferring best practices everywhere that life exists; came to earth thousands of years ago to reduce the inherent barbarism that was so common before the Aliens gave birth to civilization by dazzling earthlings with possibilities way ahead of our time; and just so to have a lasting effect when they were not here said they were the incarnation of the supernatural. May be they had a periodic inspection to make every few thousand years for continuous improvement and came back to earth (once in every “yug”).

Not that I am atheist or something but the presence and existence of God; some would call it magical realism.

Yes I am completely obsessed with James Cameron’s “The Avatar”. Not the movie really although I am sure it would be a visual feast. What intrigues me are the parallels it draws with stories from the Hindu mythology which I am pretty confident; is the oldest account of the existence of the supernatural among earthlings.

The Soloist is by far the best movie to come out of Hollywood this year. It has a sort of a poetic flow to it and intriguing essence; none of which I have witnessed in a really long time. Whether it’s the slur that Nathaniel has to his speech or the silences for Steve Lopez; the movie has managed to capture every emotion to that character at that moment of its life. The miles that the characters travel especially Robert Downey; with just a little expression is in the same league as Al Pacino in the scent of a woman. I am paranoid fan of Al Pacino drama and I did not believe that an actor would be born with the same level of sensibilities; but make way for Robert “Steve Lopez” Downey Jr. The movie goes on and proves the myth severely incorrect that all good movies need to have a conclusion. The movie leaves a question mark. The movie may not have a conclusion for face value but presents several metaphors for life.

Speaking of metaphors, I recently laid my hands on an Anurag Kashyap interview where he elaborates on how he made a fool of an entire system with his film “No Smoking”. He was facilitated by the health ministry for promoting the idea; part of the same group of people who banned his “Black Friday” (Was stopped by the government from releasing). The movie is not anti smoking; it’s pro smoking. What he really wanted to convey is how freedom of expression; the sole privilege of being the citizen of a democratic nation, is suppressed in the country. Smoking was a metaphor for expression as it uses the same two fingers as we all do for writing; and how as a community we isolate smokers and free thinkers. Baba Bengali; the crazy rehab man was a metaphor for the powers that be who derive their power from the underprivileged (the dwarfs in the movie), minority (the women in burkhas) and brute force.

If that’s not crazy enough, I also read somewhere that Looney toones was America’s answer to propaganda by the Russians.

To finish off, I also watched “Wanted”, “Do knot disturb”, “Aagey se right”. Let’s not get started on that.

Pathetic.

And yes; GO WATCH KAMINEY if you haven’t.

THE GENESIS OF A DUMB ADVENTURE-CHAPTER ONE

I arrived there about half an hour earlier than what I was expected to. That has been a life long habit; always reaching early; traits of the successful if I wasn’t marred by several other crippling attributes. As I slowly walked towards the designated meeting place I felt like a young prostitute being fucked for the first time. It was my first day at a new job; I should have had some kind of a positive spin to my nervousnes but maybe it wasn’t the job I really imagined myself getting into. Like everytime else I wanted to escape getting into the nitty gritty of my uneventfull life; I reached into the pocket of my denim jacket for the plastic bag. That reminded me; the old hag had been improving the quality of packaging lately. Gone are the days when she used old newspapers to wrap the bud you were buying; she used plastic bags; the ones you could seal and were fantastic for repeated use. For an old woman; that bitch really knew how to do business and anyways the stuff she sold was fantastic. Took some rizzla, rolled the joint and lit it; it wasn’t burning right. As I licked the joint even, I saw a car scream past me and park under the broken street light. The fat bastard had the legendary three step exit from the car. Open the door and step the first foot, move your ass on the car seat and put the second foot out then use both your hands on the frame to lift you out. Pathetic; pity the women they fuck. As a man it’s disgusting to have a three step exit from the car until your wife reaches menopause; but that’s my opinion and nobody cares what I think , so fuck it. Rakesh Solanki owned a gas agency and had a bunch of thugs working for him. That was a reward for his life long service to Akbar Ali Dostum; he was a coordinator now; like a project manager or something. Akbar Ali dostum was a Afghani convict who moved to India during partition, after years of carefully rationalizing the underworld; had plummetted himself to the sort of CEO of the company. CEO, project manager what am I thinking.
As Solanki walked towards me I saw another figure walk right behind him. My head started whizzing with thoughts about who this was; damn this stuff was good. Before I could reach to a conclusion both of em’ were standing right in front of me. “This is Sajit”, said Solanki as he introduced me to the stranger. We shook hands as Solanki continued speaking; “Gaandu, apna naam nahi batayega, hain!! abe sorry sorry tu toh goonga (goonga=hindi for mute) hai" and he cracked into a hideous laughter. Bully, big fat bully. "Monty beta, depress mat ho, yeh ch***** behera( hindi for deaf) hai" and roars in laughter. Deaf and dumb, either it was destiny or done on purpose either ways it was a bloody good joke. Solanki continued, “ Well, you guys wanted to prove yourselves, this is your job. Go to this address and shoot Ravi Nair right between his eyes. Don’t worry about a picture of him as he is at home and he’s the only one who lives there”. And he drove off a few minutes later; I saw his car dissappear in the dark and I was left thinking about the adventure I had on my hands.

To be continued.........

ALOHA MORA

Well most of you hadn’t seen the movie I wrote about last time and not surprisingly I had hardly any comments to that one. To be frank I did go a little overboard with the whole thing; I started taking myself too seriously and assumed myself to be the philosopher types. But the girlfriend did an “Aloha Mora” on me and it opened a whole new door (By the way she thinks it’s the door to the bathroom which I am supposed to clean every weekend).

After a few drinks at a house party couple of months back when i started imagining myself to be Kishore Kumar reincarnated (and it wasn’t the first time) and started singing, a friend of mine asked me to sing something new. Just then I realised I had absolutely nothing new to sing and all I had been singing all along was at the latest ten years old. What really happened in the last ten years? Why do I not remember any songs to sing? One of the reasons might be that I wasn’t a teenager for most part of it and had to carry the baggage that comes with adult life; work. Well I haven’t really worked for more that two years in my current job and some odd jobs for a couple of years before that but there was that pressure to get one some day and that too a good one. So I have spent most of my time slogging like a donkey (I know you fell off your chair laughing; but let’s assume it for argument sake); and had absolutely no time to remember lyrics or my choices have changed. Well if my choices have changed; then I can assure you that I didn’t do it myself.

Gone are the movies and the script situations which could make it possible for any composer to churn out umpteen songs for a movie. You get like say eight if it’s a musical and few of them are like theme music. Moreover; so called pop singers are getting into playback singing with the increasing demand of unconventional music. For composers to make the same amount of revenue with 8 songs compared to what they used to make with 16; there is this pressure to offer something new and also matching international standards as the customer has internet and the reach is longer than the “Kanoon”. With the range of singers come the different accents (a lot of em’ Anglo sized) and top it all come those fuckin lyrics in English in the background. You my baby but u driving me crazy crazy boy, you my baby but you driving driving driving driving. With the funny accent that I’ve got, (imagine Kishore Kumar singing a song in English) I can’t imagine myself singing those.

I had all that in mind when I went back to the motherland for three weeks. It was so fuckin hot; I spent a lot of time watching soaps on TV. I was expecting a lot of western influence or change in those as well. Well; to my surprise the plots in those soaps have gone backwards. Seven out of ten soaps were all set in the rural and semi urban India. That wasn’t the case 10-12 years ago; all of em’ had very urban settings and reflected quite modern sensibilities. I was stunned and just couldn’t stop thinking about it for days. What the fuck happened when I wasn’t watching?

After days of pondering and pulling my already thin crop of hair; I came to the conclusion that the audience has changed for this as well. Back when I used to spend time with my mum watching Tara, Campus, Saans and Banegi Apni Baat to name a few; the audience that those were reaching out to; were all urban middle class. These were the people who could afford paying 300 rupees a month for cable television. The majority of the mass watched Doordarshan and watched movies in a single screen theatre over the weekend. Over the years with all that money flowing into the Indian economy, rise in the level of literacy and a lot of the industries being deregulated; the urban community are an extremely busy group of people. They are going abroad, working long hours at organizations that’ve got gyms within campus to virtually make them live at work; they hardly have the time to go watch soaps on TV. So where do they go?

I am sure this was the question all the multiplex owners were creating an answer for. Nice quality movie watching experience. And when the target customers for movies in India are more global, have money and are more educated; automatically the scripts, the plots and the music are changing. But on the other hand the rural areas can now afford paying 500 odd rupees to have cable television and want to watch something they can relate to. Consequently tele-soaps are about caste problems, child marriage and basic rural issues more or less.

Well; I am 26, not old by any respect but right now if I was in India either you make way for the next generation and accept the emergence of a generation gap or Aloha Mora; India is changing.

U O K ?

Why do you like the feeling of victory?

What do you feel accomplishing something?

Biologically; it’s out of ordinary hormonal activity which the brain defines as happiness or in a very literary form; “The sense of accomplishment”.

But hormonal activity is not confined to just victory. Sex, depression, crying, laughter, thought gripping moments, love, violence; all help stir up your hormones. (May be different ones from the ones associated to victory). Keeping this in mind I come to think that emotional sensitivity is an extremely misunderstood concept. It’s widely used to describe people who have the tendency to cry or react to situations or in other words have a very low threshold to unwelcome situations. I believe that is incorrect. Being emotionally sensitive means that you have more than one reason that would stir up your hormones; and as I described earlier there are a lot of other things that would help you do that.

I don’t feel bad when I cry, get angry or violent and am absolutely in love with the feeling of victory and sex. I love it when Rocky Balboa runs up the steps; Gladiator takes off his mask, when Sachin hits the winning run and Ben Kingsley in full flow.

The House of Sand and Fog; it might be a little bit too dramatic for some people’s taste but it just absolutely made my day. It manages to amalgamate so many aspects of life that the very thought of the characters going through them breaks you down. Ben Kingsley (playing a soldier from Iran) and Jennifer Connelly (playing a person who has the tendency to screw up everything) together create a masterpiece. It humbles you to the importance of owning a house, and things that a family does to you unknowingly; and most importantly it does not allow you to judge any character.
Jennifer Connelly is evicted from her house by mistake which she inherited from her father which she definitely cannot afford on her own as she is a house cleaner and has been dumped by her husband because she’s an addict.
Ben used to be a high ranking soldier in Iran but has fled the country and staying in America as people were trying to kill his Family. He is used to live in an aristocratic fashion; lives in a high rise building in the city and is seen only in the best suits in and out of the building. He works as a labourer by the day and at a convenience store at night. Nobody knows about this except for his wife.
Ben buys the house from the county in an auction and fixes the whole place up in a span of a few weeks before the county finds out that they auctioned it by mistake. Now Ben wants 4 times the price he paid as that’s the asking rate. The county won’t pay it, Jennifer wants the house back and amongst all this the police man who evicted her is in love with her and has left his wife of ten years for her. This is how the director sets the stage for a gruelling emotional drama and if you’re wondering why the fuck did I go on and on about hormonal bullshit then dear reader; it’s a fucking hormonal feast.

Go treat yourself.

Reader Contribution:

At first glance, your overall description of the film seems to encompass all of what the film is about in a nutshell. I like that myself, as it gives me an insight as to what Im about to go and watch, but sometimes too much detail may uncover some aspects of the film best kept secret. Some people may call you a "Homer Simpson" as he ruins endings of movies by always saying He dies in the end, before people see the movie !
You've done a good job at setting the scene but you have also raised the bar for this flick very high with your opening comments up to the first paragraphs. I can see you enjoyed this film extremely but the way you explain the emotional rollercoaster this film is, makes me think Im gonna cum in my pants just watching it.
Was it really that good ? Did you enjoy it because you can relate to it ? Can you pick any holes in the plot to tone down your enthusiasm about it ?

Mauro Lipo

LUCIDITY IN CONTEMPLATION- AN AGE OLD MALADY

Yeah you can have a chuckle; I did use the synonym tab for the title. But the piece is about two products that had everything going for them but as the title goes; had no clarity in thought. Making movies for the intelligent audience is acceptable but not at the cost of bad screen writing. The intelligent audience are good at peeling layers of the story but; they are also the first to notice a half cooked meal.

Movies deliver a message when told efficiently, and Dilli 6 and Dev D were not managed efficiently. If you fuck up after having scored great music, decent actors, media attention and a good plot , you not even worth any pity. Competing with all the fuckwits that the Indian film industry has, if you have all that going for you and you still can’t deliver is like losing a race where you are the only one competing.

I don’t care what anybody says; but Dilli 6 was a wasted opportunity.

The genre was similar to Swades but the execution was incompetent. Swades used the dam as the pivot to capture the intensity and the agony of the nonsensical involvement of the misunderstood Indian tradition. Dilli 6 lacked that pivot. There wasn’t anything that connects the bits and pieces. Using the Ram Lila as an apologue was interesting but not effective. The love story could have been that pivot. The story should have revolved around the protagonists. The director probably thought that he had to get away from the cliché love angles of Indian movie making but I can’t think of anything else that would have conveyed the same result. Like Raj Kapoor once said; “let them come to see Zeenat Aman’s tits but they will go back remembering the film”. Well; it works.

Dev D was not just a contemporary version of Devdas, it was meant to be alternate take on it. Anurag Kashyap’s Dev was supposed to be the biggest chutiya you will see rather than the eternal lover previously shown. But regrettably it felt like all he did was used the synonym tab to make it look 2009. The end definitely elevates the story to new heights, but it’s just a sudden jump from a story that had almost fallen flat with inappropriately used background score, lifeless acting, and insignificant characters.

Same problem again, lack of execution. The only hope is that unconventional story lines are being backed by financers but the multiplex audience might fade out in a few years as a result of the taken for granted attitude and we would be stuck with Karan Johar.

GOD HELP US

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

One summer night at the door of a carriage on a train, going back home from a gruelling semester at college when the count of women who had dumped me had gone upto 2, I found an ugly stinking man walking up to me and asking for a cigarette.
It wasn’t that necessary for me to entertain him as he did not look like an addict nor was it a chilly night where smokers cant live without the cancer stick, but something about that guy was really intriguing. I still didn’t know the reason for my weird attraction ( it’s not sexual you fuckwits) to that guy, but just then; he opened his mouth and showed me his yellow teeth and started of with a story of him and the riots in Ahmedabad. To my surprise; that bastard was a fantastic storyteller, and him being the ugliest thing since the elephant man; made the whole experience fascinating in a weird way.
For some reason unknown to me i have similar feelings to the one i had that night; talking about the movie. I never heard about Slumdog Millionaire before I saw it. I had absolutely no expectations with the movie and the moment I saw Saurabh “Bhosdike TALK” Shukla and Irfan “My wife is giving me HAIL” Khan on screen, I had a strong feeling that it would be one of those stupid cross-over films about the dilemma of being an Indian in a English Film. But as most of you would be repeating in you head “Sucker, you were wrong”.
If you have read about the movie and are aware about the media hype it’s generating, it’s evident that it definitely is a cinematic masterpiece; people want to read more about it.

But no cinematic masterpiece is devoid of cinematic liberties. Movie history would vouch for the cinematic liberties that numerous good movies have taken in the past. (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button being one of the recent ones, Jurassic Park, Independence Day, most of Steven Spielberg Movies and the list is endless). They are all a work of fiction and the liberties are taken to weave a story which connects A to B; when it doesn’t, (eg: The Day the Earth Stood Still) it hurts and people like me abuse the shit out of it.

Slumdog works for three main reasons; screenplay, editing and background score. The story is very simple at soul, it’s the presentation with the gripping screenplay, sleek editing and fascinating background score that makes the product as good as it is. The casting is mediocre, I thought the child actors did a mind blowing job, as the characters grew older they were passable. The point in the movie where Anil Kapoor tries to trick him was the only reason he would have accepted that film, it gave backbone to his role and made it more real than being just part of furniture. The cop chasing the kids is a winner all the way, it sets the tone of what’s about to come. There is nothing in the movie that is left unfinished. Everything that starts gets a ending, one of the main reasons why you don’t want to miss anything that anybody says in the movie coz you know they are going to use that little bit of information somewhere in the story. Salim’s character (Jamal’s older bro) loses relevance as it gets older and the casting of the oldest one is not right. For some reason he doesn’t convince me as the character. The youngest one was awesome when he is parading all those kid beggars to the streets. The part where the kids are in Agra was not necessary and I believe that is Danny Boyle’s way of adding humour to the script which I think slows the pace down than anything else.

Bottom line is; the product is exceptional and the only thing I gotta say to people who have the time to fuck around with the producers, being worried about the way India is portrayed and have a problem with “SLUMDOG”, get a life you ARSEHOLE”.

READER CONTRIBUTION

Pseudo-patriots grappling with the producers for the way India was potrayed. Slum-dwellers suing Rahman and Kapoor for acting in a movie that calls slum-dwellers, "dogs". Kid actors underpaid, still dwelling in slums. 10 Academy Award nominations and 4 Golden-Globes bagged. Slumdog Millionaire, based on Q&A, has made it as the first Indian movie to generate as much interest among Indians as and since "Gandhi" (Richard Attenborough, Ben Kingsley). Why? "Editing (reminds you of Trainspotting), Background Score, Script" - Sanket Das. Revisiting "Why?": Imagery, Hope, Kalaeidoscopic POV and a reflection of the insanely cruel Indian attitude.Technically, a marriage of Indian Cinema with Hollywood/British Style, a wedding that will soon be forgotten by the masses and be etched in the memories of movie-makers of mettle forever.- Partha Biswal

SONGS FOR YOUR CAR

O re ,,,,,,,,Saaya ( Slumdog Millionaire)
Dilli 6 ( title track)
Mahi,,,,Rock version ( Raazzzz)
O Jaana,,,techno version ( Raazzzz)
Emosanal Attyachar,,,Rock version ( Dev D)

BIG "FUCKIN" DEAL

If you have followed the mind retarding media hype (yes; I am one of those low life who reads and watches everything the media says about movies) about the three supposedly big BOLLYWOOD movies that came out in the past three months, you would understand what follows.

The 3 movies in discussion are Rab Ne Bana di Jodi (RNBDJ), Ghajini (G) and Chandni Chowk to China (CCTC). All the three movies are clear examples of the biggest problem with Bollywood movies, same fuckin story since the past three decades. All 3 movies had stories which were so common in the 90’s. Thank God, they didn’t have parallel comic streams (the Johnny Lever story streams running parallel to the movies in the 90’s) to the story; that would have made the already painful experience even worse.

Ghajini, is my pet hate these days. It disappoints me more than the hate it generates.
What was the fuckin so called “thinking actor” on? I am sure it was the spiked weed that makes your brain goes moronic. For once can somebody tell me which arsehole was assigned the job of dressing up the actor? I would shoot him/her so this never happens. Saying that the clothes were obnoxious is an understatement. Which business tycoon in the world wears muscle shirt with a tie to work . Agreed; you worked on your body and got all that muscle bulging out of your arms. So fuckin what? Aamir Khan looks disinterested in the part where he has to behave like a normal person. I am sure he was thinking about how he is goin to moan in the part where he has to tear off his shirt and see his tattoos, which for me was the only well thought idea in the whole movie which eventually just added on to the numerous things that the screenplay could not follow through. For a business tycoon; I am sure there would have been million other ways to achieve personal Vendetta. The whole point of the character being rich in the movie was the character of the actress to meet the actor and create a love story which did not eventuate into a good love story anyways. Bollywood being the “love story” factory, I am sure they could find a different and more believable way to connect the two characters. Apart from this I could not find any reason for the character to be stinking rich, which I must say negates the whole path taken by the character to eliminate the Villain.

CCTC was supposed to be a kung fu comedy. It was the first movie in months that I was finding it hard to sit through. To set things straight, the movie is not funny and the kung fu is disappointing, it’s just the visualisation that makes it watch able in parts. The story is absolutely baseless. Akshay Kumar has to stop taking himself this seriously. His comedy was really good in Hera Pheri and above average in some other movies, but the recent lot that he has completed, are just irritating. I don’t think this movie deserves any time to be spent even analysing. All I can say that if this movie makes money, TASHAN should get an OSCAR.

RNBDJ was not at all path breaking. It had a run of the mill story, the actress was not good enough and Shahrukh Khan hammed his way all through out the movie. But, the movie was one of the better ones that came out in the past few months. The movie was able to create moments between several characters which made the movie emotionally gripping. A major credit goes to the background music of the movie which translated the sentiment the story wanted to convey at that moment in a very contemporary way. My favourite parts were the scenes between SK and Vinay Pathak, who proves his calibre as a method actor once again. Although most of the basic concepts in the movie were old school, it connected well with what the story wanted to convey.

READER CONTRIBUTION

Memento rip-off Ghajini has now started giving me the creeps. I feel so lost every evening when I wake up and all I do is look for tattoos all over my body to find none. He he.Great B S (Background Score, morons!), oscillatory cinematography, a hot lady-love and a hotter bimbo, "Aamir's Perfect" look of a psychotic avenger and the South Indian action make it a paisa-wasool product.Especially after CCTC, which made me want to burn effigees of myself in public (for watching the movie, you see - "What the hell was I thinking"?). "Rab Ne..." was another disappoiting SRK-starrer and I wonder if it was made to give Anushka Sharma a jump-start in Bollywood. Could have been "Nishabdh Continued..." IF ONLY, King Khan (Grrr!) had not spent a fortune on getting that hawk-beak of a nose and a potato-peels facial skin that makes him look 50, if not, 63 (makes you want to appreciate AB for playing his age, though he too stuck to being a lover for quite sometime when he should have been playing Daddy). Sorry dude, but I am done watching glycerine-d eyes and sappy romantic faces, and after CCTC (which is a no-genre, on-screen, fiasco), I would rather stick to looking for tattoos every evening on my body. Ha ha ha ... plunk (fell off my chair laughing)!

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