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)