Saturday, January 8, 2011

Tees Maar Khan – What went wrong?

For the hindi movie aficionado in search of a good laugh riot, there are a few directors who oblige and deliver … sometimes. Farah Khan is out of that cabal. Erstwhile chic and queen of Bollywood masala, Farah seems like a fish out of water. Whatever could have prompted a veteran director of sorts to venture on a pitiful debacle of Tees Maar Khan, remains a mystery. The plot hangs around a modern day Frank Abagnale (Tees Maar Khan), who also doubles up as a Houdini when it comes to giving the cops the slip. Khan accompanied by his sidekicks lands up in a village while being on the run. His desire is to do an ultimate caper of robbing a train, which would require a mini army of sorts. The brainwave of pretending to embark upon a Bollywood nationalist movie requiring every denizen to play a small role in the great train robbery is a new chapter in the art of conniving cons which is laudable, but fails to deliver with mediocre directing and editing. The audacity of the movie which expects the public to lap up the drivel that is offered is seen to be believed. There are a few positives in the movie – a few funny punches, a decent music score, a decent performance from both Akshay’s. Tees Maar Khan is reminiscent of a movie which could have been made a box-office winner if more thought was put into it. The veteran director David Dhawan, who has a penchant for such drivel could possibly have a pulled it off and gone laughing all the way to the bank. But in its current state, we can just say – ‘Tees lakh Maar khao’ for Tees Maar Khan.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

The science of thought

Its 9:30 AM on a Monday morning in Fremont, a sleepy suburb of San Francisco where I am hurrying up to reach work and tackle the upcoming week. I reach the first major intersection on the way and come up with the first big decision of the week. A green light to go straight and yet I needed to take the right turn to reach my destination. I stop to look for any oncoming traffic and quickly take the right. The next thing I know is that there is a squad car with lights on flagging me to make a pit stop. Err, not a great start to a week. My crime of passion? Making a right turn without stopping for upcoming pedestrians! My grounds for appeal – The pedestrians were on the other side of the road and at no point at risk of being run down by my car. This incident left me in a philosophical mindset, wondering about the purpose of human life. The jobs that we do as humans, is it different from the jobs of our co-habitants on planet Earth?
If we were to take any species of fauna on this planet, what primeval task would we characterize them with? What would be the thing best suited for a tiger? Hunting? What would be the innate thing for a dog? Probably being a follower and being devoted? Now if I were to extrapolate the question around the human species, what would the answer be? The obvious answer would be to be able to surmise and logically deduce. Stephen Hawking is the perfect example of a member of the bipeds who although being severely quadriplegic uses the most important organ given to us all-the brain. Sherlock Holmes, the sleuth from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictitious famous detective series said one time to his comrade Dr. Watson explaining the lack of sleep, food and drink when in hot pursuit, “My body is merely an organ to carry my mind from one place to other. I don’t need anything else. The brain is the most essential part of my body and that is what I use the most”. Isn’t that the absolute truth? Yet if I were to look into the variegated professions that humans from across the globe have chosen, what is the percentage of people whose jobs involve thinking? Of the total number of people whose jobs involve cranial activity, how many people actually do justice to that one solitary organ which puts food on their table. In my limited experience of being a human being, I have found that thinking is the single thing that people abstain from. There are rules and regulations around civic society, diktats, commandments which govern our existence. We as humans don’t trust our own ability towards taking decisions. We seem to be more at ease with having someone else do our thinking for us. There are few amongst us who have the aplomb to think and take pride in that fact. The great philosophers of civilization – aka Leonardo Da Vinci, Aristotle, Plato, Machiavelli, Freud to name a few have done this with arguably varying degrees of success. History has always been the precursor for future. When anarchy is rampant, there rises a few good men who has the audacity to envision beyond the evident and the banal. While we complete the first decade of the twenty first century, the world is looking towards one such charismatic leader who can guide us through the labyrinth of phantasmagoria towards the true end.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Band Baaja Baaraat - a looksee

When was the last time you saw a movie that left a smile on your face?
Band Baaja baaraat is one such movie. The story revolves around a simple romance involving a boy and a girl (better to specify). Shruti has dreams of starting her own wedding planning firm - a girl with ideas and certain amount of experience to her credit. Along comes Bittu, a smart alec business savvy dude without realization of his goal or his latent. After trying in vain to impress the damsel, Bittu comes face to face to with reality when post college, he is expected to go back to his pastoral core and carry on with his family profession of farming. Unwilling to go back to the village, he starts off in a partnership with his new friend (Shruti) and strikes gold after some initial teething problems. The chemistry between Shruti (Anuska) and newcomer Ranveer (Bittu) is believable and refreshing. Relations head south when the friendship turns into physical intimacy and cupid rules supreme. The paradisiacal partnership breaks down and claims the thriving enterprise as its first victim. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Bittu and Shruti start up individual establishments and try to out do the other. A string of failures brings down both cartels to the mercy of debt collectors and failure looms large.
Fate intervenes in the form of a wealthy industrialist (aka prize catch) who insists on giving the gig of the marriage of his daughter to the erstwhile older crew.    Shruti and Bittu temporarily bury the hatchet to concentrate on the gig which could potentially be the harbinger of good tidings. One thing leads to another and the movie ends up with a fairy tale ending. ( Go see the movie to know the details).
All in all a whiff of fresh air from the dank murky depths of cliched cinema which seem to be doing the rounds these days. The old adage of a good script thrown in with good music makes up for the lack of big stars and delivers a feel-good flick.
Anushka is decent and Ranveer comes up a surprise package and delivers.
Whether he goes on to be a household name or not, remains to be seen.