BladE's edge

Soo, yesterday I went to watch No Smoking, a seemingly intelligent movie from Anurag "Black Friday" Kashyap. Featuring John Abraham and Ayesha Takia, this movie was supposed to be Anurag's take on his ultra-black mind. Well, to be charitable, it is a brilliant take on Anurag's mind, but a poor excuse for well-meant intelligent cinema. Infact, the only movie I can begin comparing it to is Robert De Niro's Angel Heart, a equally vapid, vacuous, self-sassy supernatural (did I just say that !! - Yess !) flick, but with a lot more intelligence and consternation for the audience.

No Smoking starts off quite well with a superbly-paced and taut first half with glitzy cuts of Siberia and labyrinths of Mumbai (amazing photography, la !) and at the 1-hr interval, you are really hooked - this is good cinema. But, then comes the punch when Anurag lets his dark psyche take over and the movie spirals downward into a mish-mash of neo-realism and genre horror, with delinked scenes and multiple unexplained sequences which makes you feel really wishy-washy. Kashyap could surely join that cult of 1st-half brilliantoes (remember Cheeni Kam) who simply lose the plot in the end (a la' India's cricket most of the time :-)).

So, please stay away from it and let Mr. Kashyap know how badly he has tarnished Vishal Omkara Bharadwaj's name (Music director and producer, he might have directed it as well, you wish !!!) - and what was that Abraham statement about Bipasha's Phoonk De being an integral part of the movie - crap and loads of crap - its just a titillating number when the credits roll in the end-as if to make it up for the crap it has served to the front-benchers.

This one ain't smoking - ain't at all (did you see, I could not even talk about the story - this movie aggrieved me so much !) - Pathetic is the word.

Ta !
Ranjan

Heyloz :), currently I am in a car-buying mode so it only made "bizness sense" to put a post on it, what else is me w/o a blog-post afterall :P. So, as it is, I currently have my Dad's Indica as I have told you previously, but there is a need for a 2nd car in my home at Patna - so this time I decided to put my foot down and buy a car for myself and send the trucky Indica back to PAT.

Soo, as it happens, I have an ossum belief in my driving skills and more-so in my parking skills (current statistics indicate I usually decide to not park my Indica in places where the parking area is smaller than 3 Indica-lengths :P, trust me its not about my ability at allz, its my vanity :P). Hence, my choice was automatically limited to the small-car segment, and at best, hatchbacks. So, I did my customary car-buyer SWOT analysis -- Alto was cheap for my vanity, Santro's spares are too costly, Wagon-R was too boxy, Zen Estillo was gayish and then there was this remodelled kid on the block - GM Spark - the remodelled Matiz. So, me being enthu and all went for the test-drive with Dad for the moral support - and it was shocking !! Apart from the overall plasticky feeling (and the steering wheel feeling like a videogame car joystick after the royal Indica experience) - spellbound was the last word on my mind - and then there was the small matter of the speedometer and other dials being bang in the middle of the frontboard - as if Spark was supposed to be driven by a driver while the owner keeps looking at the speed for controlling purposes - I had this vision of my head getting permanantly craned in its socket by trying to follow the speedometer. And, then I had the temerity to ask this question to the salesman - Why kill the beautifully efficient Matiz by doing this hogshit (something like consultants adding useless value just for value-sakes :P) - please follow the conversation diligently, it borders on inanity :

Mez : Sir, so why are all the dials bang in the middle of the car frontboard ?
Salesman : Sir, aajkal toh log shirt bhi ulti pehente hain !
Mez (changing tack) : So, why haven't you introduced this uber-cool feature in your higher models ?
Salesman (ignoring my stupidly tacky question) : From research, it has been found that 70% of the car accidents happen on the right-hand side of the car, which can be attributed to the driver focussing on the dials more than the road (I was almost feeling like my clients :P), and hence the speedometer has been shifted to the middle.

[Needless to say, spellbound by these pearls of wisdom, I zipped my trap shut killing the obvious question in my gut - What about the driver now focussing on the center of the frontboard ?- and exercised the only choice I had in the matter - not spend my money :D].

So, now yours' truly's attentions shifted to the hatchback segment - namely Hyundai Getz Prime, Chevy (again !) Aveo U-VA, Maruti Swift and an outside choice of Fiat Palio Stile. Now eliminating Stile was easy - Fiat has changed the model 3 times in the past year - there is no guarantee, you would not feel obsolete even within 1 day of your buying it ! Next up was Swift - now its a wonderful machine, but almost everybody in Gurgaon has it - so my vanity dismissed it with a shrug, sorry but that's me :-). Now, UV-A is a great car - I test-drove it but it had stiff competition from Getz - a very good-looking car - but here was the downer, its steering wheel is too low and I had to almost drive it like looking down, so now the final winner was UV-A incredibly :-) and the final nail was my dad's approval - you see he is a pakka Bihari - one who buys the best value for his money. So, that having been said, I would soon be the proud owner of a UV-A on the eve of GM's 100 years in the automotive industry.

But, the crux of this post is not my proud ownership - but, the fact that GM has announced a Rs. 50 k discount on Spark (putting it in the same bracket as Alto) supposedly, as a part of its 100 year celebrations - my only contention is how much will they pay for their uber-cool technical stupidity :) ?

Enjoy the 6th ODI :).
Ranjan

Sooo, how has life been :-), I will push for good :D. Well, I went to watch Johnny Gaddar today, starring Neil Nitin Mukesh (yesh, grandson of The Mukesh) which also stars Dharmendra and Vinay Pathak in key roles (wow, that sounded like one of the rediff reviews :P). Directed by Sriram Raghavan (of the Ek Hasina Thi ilk), this movie is a barnstomer, a thriller par noire, a must-watch.

I was infact appalled by the emptiness of the theatre I was in, and I am only hoping it was an 11 AM syndrome. This is an amazing country, brainless arse-waves like Partner gets rave reviews while thinking cinema like JG goes for a toss. Please put your pennyful and do watch this one, its a trend to be encouraged, not let go waste.

Storywise, its a story of a gang of criminals and how greeds impairs human psyche beyond repair, the metamorphosis of a smoothie into a killer, you have to watch to believe the stylishness of the movie, it could be any other movie from Hollywood, its so damn stylised. Neil, the debutante is good, but his delivery is wooden, and its a shame that the director did not catch such obvious pronunciation glitches (on the other hand, you could say, the movie is so gripping, I can only pick holes with semantics :-)). And, do notice the subtle tributes that Raghavan pays to everyone, from Tarantino in the opening credits right down to Johnny Mera Naam. The only turndown is the music, one only hopes Raghavan had put down some of his diligence to the music itself, would have been a delight, I tell you.

Taz !
Ranjan

Heylo everyone :-),

I can't say sorry enough to have been AWOL with no clue watsoever :), but suffice it to say I have been on a very tight case and when I had free time, I had to choose between pre-loading work, sleep, do masti or write blog and more often than not, doing masti hit the right note, you know.

But, after having watched two of the most ossum movies [Chak De and Transformers], it was about time I repented my bad ways :-).

Being a devout Indian :P, I would start with Chak De and Transformers will be allowed to follow suit here. Well, Chak De is essentially the real-life story of Mir Negi who was wrongly reviled as a traitor after India lost the 1982 Asian Games hockey final to Pakistan 7-1 [Negi, the goalkeeper was touted to have taken 1 lac per goal], and then how redemption comes in the form of Negi first coaching Indian men to Asian games gold and then Indian women's team to Afro-asian games' gold medal. In the movie, Negi gets replaced by Shahrukh's Kabir Khan, an intense persona, who should have been a broken man by the time the movie clocks quarter of an hour, but instead is somebody ready to take on the world in its own backyard. SRK puts in another peach of a brooding performance not quite unlike his Swades turn, he simply takes away cheese, cake and the turnpike. Also, some of the girls in the team are actual hockey players and that's a compliment to Shimit Amin's direction [his debut being Ab tak Chappan], this guy really knows how to get his muses working, and then quite some. Ably aided by some nice songs and background score, Chak De makes no pretenses to where it is headed, yet a la Miracle, makes you feel good like nothing else. Don't miss it :-).

Now, now lets take upon Transformers. Now, this is a cross between the sci-fi and comic genres, and the world is a better place for it, trust me :-). Transformers started off as Hasbro toys [I want some though :(], became comics, and then cartoons and now Spielberg under the able direction of Michael Bay has brought to life an amazing spectacle, a worthy addition to Spielberg's legend. Again, in its true elements, its just a Good vs. Evil story, where two sets of NBEs [Non-biological Extraterrestrials] from the planet Cybertron descend on earth to fight their ultimate battle and an awesome Shia and the ravishing Megan [grow up fast, lassy :-)] find themselves at the center of the battle. Inspite of the awe-inspiring CGI [this movie is not worth watching at home, trust me, its worth the money], Michael Bay's success lies in keeping the movie humane, you could take the robots out and could still thoda-sa connect to it types :). And with a rousing background score, its a roller-coaster ride and by the time you sense the credits are about to roll, you wonder is it not too early to finish this saga ? I can assure you Transformers 2 is not far behind :-).

Cya then, and hope you had an ossum weekend as well !!

Ta !
Ranjan

Hehe :P,

Again no brownie points for looking at the title and saying, OMG, this is about Tara Rum Pum :D. Sooo, as it happened, on Maharastra day cum labor day and a BCG Holiday :P, I went watching Tara Rum Pum wid my grrlfrnd :-)), or so I would wish. After a long train ride from Churchgate to Lower Parel (where for a split second I cursed the ticket guy who gave me a ticket to Elphinstone road, which later turned out to be the maxx distance I could go to with the fare I paid *which means the ticket guy was wonderful*, but you know, with geographically challenged peepz like me, you need to reawwwllly keep things mighty simple !) and then from LP to Andheri, I went to Fame Adlabs to watch TRP (ohh god, even the title reeks of publicity !) and now under immense pressure to blog about it (some people, u knww !!), letz the go.

TRP is Sid Anand's second outing post Salaam Namaste, and his style is all ovehh the place, lush styling, lusher cinemascapes, great cast, okay story, kool performances but thin chemistry and thinner soul, that's what SN lacked and now the same fate has been handed down to its successor. TRP is essentially a family drama portraying RV's, a NASCAR prodigy, journey from nidar to peak, then to hell and back. Saif looks riveting (no :P ?) in his turn as a fast-tracker while Rani is her usual, bouncy beautiful self, but what the movie lacks, is a soul. You never feel like connected and gripped, its like looking at a beautiful proscenium three lenses removed. Yeah, agreed there is good Adrenalin rush in the racing sequences and you feel-good after you-know-who-takes-the-cherry, but that's about it. It doesn't lift you like a Remember the Titans or Miracle, you have better things to talk about as soon as you leave the theatre types. Also, there are subtle messages for spendthrifts like me :P, but as it happens, we are incorrigible and wouldn't be worthy of the spendthrift genre if we would get the messages (Ghost of legs not hears to talks :P). And yesshh, Sid Anand repeats Javed Jaffrey in an osshum Gujju avtar, which is hilarious to the core !

So, in a nut-bolt :P, TRP is plain Timepass, watch it if you are a Bolly-lover, but if you missh it, donn worry, none is gonna do a PSPO on you for this one :-).

And you, yesh you, watch out !
Ranjan