A movie by Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK, 99 is a comedy that keeps sufficient distance from the kinds we have been subjected to in the recent past. For once, a Hindi comedy does not have Paresh Rawal being forced into slapstick humor running around a fancy set. We also don’t have Akshay Kumar donning the role of a simpleton much to Katrina’s fancy. Hindi comedy watchers need something more, something different.

99 provides us that, with the entire star cast doing a fabulous job of executing their roles to make 99 seem more than a 100 at almost every frame. Kunal Khemu, who I had seen briefly in Traffic Signal, comes across fitting perfectly in the role of ‘Sachin’, a quintessential Indian entrepreneur trying to somehow make it big. His role is enhanced by his long-time friend portrayed by an obese Cyrus Broacha, who perhaps at times forgets to disengage from his VJ mode.

Kunal and Cyrus are petty criminals, but of the technology kind. They know how to create duplicate SIM cards with ease, but where they falter is in keeping themselves covered. This lands them in the net of the local don played by Mahesh Manjrekar, a role which he had earlier essayed in Slumdog Millionaire. The only difference is that while in SM he came across as a serious evil ruffian, over here you can’t help but smile at his antics.

A decent yardstick to measure the quality of a movie early on (and to brace yourself for something good or bad) is to see how comfortable you are with the creativity displayed in the way the titles are shown. I have found that if the titles are shown very artistically and in an appealing manner, more often than not the movie turns out to be good. Of course, this is just a sort of thumb rule that I tend to follow sometimes.

99 opens in a very nice way, the names of the actors blending in with the Mumbai landscape. Add to this an enthralling background music score and you are all set for a couple of hours of cinematic artistry, the likes of which were perhaps last seen in Bheja Fry.

Boman Irani and Simone Singh are a Delhi based couple whose marriage is now under threat of falling apart, thanks to Boman’s incessant obsession with gambling. Boman reads ‘signals’ from above that tell him about his gambling outcomes. A pen falling off the table, a bottle of water spilling out – vital signs during any corporate meeting are read by Boman as signs that he should bet. Bet on India in the on going cricket series, or bet on his card trio. One thing leads to another and Boman ends up in a huge debt to many lenders, one of them being Mahesh Manjrekar.

The fun begins hence and an actor to really watch out for is Amit Mistry, who plays the role of a local money lender, aptly called ‘Kuber’ in the movie. Throw in some spoof on Bhojpuri actors and the Delhi way of living and you have a healthy set of moments in this movie that you make you sit up and laugh, realizing all the while that comedy can still be different and funny.

Soha Ali Khan is graceful with a short role and one big actor of yesteryears to watch out for is Vinod Khanna. Being a superstar of his era and then returning to do a sensible film with mostly ‘fringe’ actors (who in this outing are far better than their mainstream peers) is commendable. The eye for detailing in this movie is worth a mention and this is shown to you even in the film credits which roll by telling you that the “Chick checking out art” was a girl named Priya Desai, someone who has just a fleeting moment in the background on the streets of Mumbai and whose face was never shown to the camera. Yet, the movie team lists it in the film credits. That detailing, that precision adds up across many threads of this movie and makes it a wonderful treat.

Finally, a Hindi film has had the courage to move away from a story telling mode and has ventured in to an idea of expression that was earlier confined to art houses and the dispersed theatre fountains of our country.

Delhi 6 is not your run-of-the-mill movie about a hero, heroine and a villain. Sure, there have been many movies in the recent past that were not about these three erstwhile pillars of Indian cinema. However, what distinguishes Delhi 6 from any of its contemporary peers is that it does not have much of a “story” to tell. There is no mission to go from point A to point B. In stead, it is a fabulous and delicate journey which the director agrees to make you a part of and leaves you before the destination is reached. Abhishek Bachchan is not a modern-angry-young-man or a lover of the finest order. He is a passive observer of the life and its travails in the labyrinthine passages of the locality addressed as Delhi 6. Waheeda Rehman is a blast from the past, letting the new generation know exactly why she was a super star in her days. And the same holds for Rishi Kapoor, who has done a phenomenal job of playing the perfect host to the son of his ex-love.

Most of the people I watched this movie with did not like it. They felt it was going no where and the ending was a drag. But the point they missed is that the movie did not want to “go” any where in the first place. It does not warrant you to wait for the next turn of the road, in stead it asks you to just look on either sides of the road and immerse yourself in the scenery. Understandably, this is difficult for us to do in these trying times of fast life and faster entertainment. We want stories to be fed to us so that we can move on to the next tast, content that we had taken our due break of entertainment.

Delhi 6 starts with Abhishek arriving from the United States to India with his grandmother. He meets the locality’s neighbors, shopkeepers and other people who make up the fabric of life in and around his grandmother’s ancestral home. In the backdrop, there is a Ram-Leela going on which has been very creatively infused into the movie. Then there is the case of the Monkey Man which had made headlines some years ago, and perhaps is still a mystery. Abhishek Bachchan is the mute spectator who sees a lot of wrongs happening around him, and your heart and mind urge him to go do the usual dishum-dishum and save the good people and, selfishly, make your day too. However, that does not happen here and you feel frustrated.  But by keeping Abhishek’s role as passive as he is, the movie forces you to look inwards and address the demons yourself.

The movie has some brilliant and memorable scenes, especially the song which brings India to the streets of the United States (you’ve got to watch the movie to understand what I am talking about). The music by Rahman is top-notch and, I daresay, perhaps better than what he composed for Slumdog Millionaire.

I wouldn’t dwell further on the story of this movie, since the story is not really its selling point. If you like watching some beautiful images which are at the core of India and its way of life, if you like to watch how relationships  unravel between complete strangers, if you like to see the usual in a more creative manner, then Delhi 6 is for you.

However, if all you want is a story (and not a cinematic experience) that you can feel satisfied about, then you could give this movie a miss.

Dreams are dreams and reality is, well, reality – in the sense we perceive it. We live in this world and we live to the extent that life permits us to live. To the extent that our responsibilities permit us to live. Sometimes though, just sometimes, we do dream. We dream to the extent that our lives permit us to dream. Dreams are where we wade through comforting waves of emotions, of abilities we never knew existed. And when life returns, those dreams start fading away to the deep annals of our minds, where they wait patiently to surface back when everything else around us switches off.

Mario Ruoppolo is an ordinary man in a non-descript village in Italy. Owing to being sea sick, he is unable to carry on with the fishing profession of his fellow villagers. Being out of a job leads Mario to the village post office where he sees a ‘Help Wanted’ sign. Mario becomes the village postman but his job has a slight quirk to it. He has to deliver mail only to one customer who lives on the outskirts of the village. This customer is Pablo Neruda, the famous Chilean poet who has been exiled from his country due to his communist views.

Filminute is, as their site says, “the international one-minute film festival that challenges filmmakers, writers, animators, artists, designers, and creative producers to develop and submit the world’s best one-minute films.”

I found some very interesting one movie clips there.
The entry from India is titled “The Staircase” and is in the top 25 finalists. These top 25 films have been chosen from over 1500 entries across 16 countries.

I really liked “The Staircase” and you can click here to view this film. I liked the simplicity in which the entire scene has been conveyed and all that in just one minute! The Staircase has been directed by George Mangalath Thomas.

Another movie which I liked is “Support” from Iceland.

Check out all the 25 one-minute (or filminute) movies here.

My tryst with Dr. Seuss happened when I performed for The Script’s production – The Lorax.

Lorax is an interesting poem written by Dr. Seuss, who predominantly wrote for children. However, all his works had more than a clear relevance to adults as well. Lorax was a poem which depicted man’s devastating impact on the environment and urged people to develop a sense of responsibility towards mother nature.

In the poem, the character Lorax is the representative of all things green. And when Once-ler, owing to his ever increasing greed, starts chopping off truffula trees and depriving the Brown Bar-ba-loots their habitat, the Lorax appears in front of the Once-ler and appraises him of the disaster that he is causing by doing all this.

As is evident, Dr. Seuss was famous for coining terms and words that had no meaning but brought out the underlying concept beautifully. You can read The Lorax here. It is a beautiful poem and I thoroughly enjoyed performing this work on stage.

The Lorax, was one of Dr. Seuss’ most controversial works and many claimed that it was unfair to the logging industry.

Recently, I saw a movie adaption of Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who! This is a story about an elephant (Horton) who, by accident, gets in possession of a speck. The speck rests on a clover which the elephant carries around with him as an ornament. One fine day, he begins to hear voices coming from the speck. It is then revealed to us, the viewers, that the speck is a world in itself, with people there living ordinary lives very similar to ours. What happens next and how the elephant manages to save this speck from all external influences is a part of the story.

What I found more relevant is the metaphorical usage of the speck. As we all know by now, our planet too is a speck in the cosmic dimensions and although we might be fretting a lot about our daily lives, it could be that everything is based on chance and depends on an elephant living in another world who is carrying this speck around. It brings in some perspective of our place in this universe. Simplistic in its story line, Horton hears a Who! is a great movie with a universal appeal, if I may use that word.

You can read more about Dr. Seuss’ life in this Wikipedia article.

Caramel. Sweet, brown and very very sticky. Nadine Labaki’s Lebanese film, “Caramel” does justice to these parameters of that word. Shot in various hues of brown, the movie is definitely sweet to the point of being sticky since the time you have tasted it and walked out of the cinema hall.

On the Friday gone by, Mrs. DhiOnlyOne and I found ourselves rushing into a cinema hall which was almost empty. The title roll had started and swirls of thick caramel rolled across the screen in various forms. Pretty soon, we found ourselves in a beauty salon run by 3 girls. Nadine Labaki herself acts as one of the central characters, Layale. Layale runs the beauty salon along with two of her friends, Nisrin and Rima. Three young ladies, living a free life and having their share of dreams and hopes. Then there is Jamale, a struggling actress who is also fighting a losing battle with age.

Layale is shown as a strong contemporary woman, who has dared to confront traditionalism in the face. She is obsessively in love with a married man. Grappling between her unconventional love and the aspirations of her parents, her life questions the foundations of modern day society’s stand on love and relationships. Nisrin is on her way to get married and has her own problem to deal with; that being that she is not a virgin and is getting married to a Muslim. What are the consequences of being found out, what are the consequences of being abandoned, and what are the consequences of losing someone you strongly love? Again, Caramel focuses on sexuality and the moral paraphernalia that it comes closely bound with. Rima, another character who is played out wonderfully well by Joanna Moukarzel, is a shy girl, preferring to not indulging in the usual feminine activities of making oneself up. Rima, on the other hand, has a liking towards women. Questioning sexuality is the central theme of this beauty salon.

Close to the salon is a tailoring shop run by an old lady, Rose, who is struggling to make ends meet by stitching people’s clothes. She has taken on the additional responsibility of looking after her mentally challenged sister, Lili. Caramel brings out the aspect of unconditional love in various snippets. Layale’s love for her married man is a standout picture. But what is more appreciative is how Rose looks after Lili, a person who cannot reciprocate nor appreciate Rose’s gestures. Yet, Rose goes on. Smile after smile. In a particular scene where Rose goes to deliver the clothes of one of the girls at the Salon, the girls ask her to sit down and chat over coffee. But Rose politely refuses citing that Lili would be alone at home. A woman who does not succumb to her personal freedom solely to ensure that her sister gets her freedom to do things in her own different world.

How do the lives of these women unfurl is what Caramel is all about. Does Layale break the barriers of society, does Rose finally give in to life’s finer pleasures and do Rimi and Nisrin get what they want out of life?

Set in Beirut, Lebanon, Caramel is not just a collection of stories of these people. It is more of a blend of life and its vagaries. Sweet, brown and very very sticky.

Image courtesy: www.caramelmovie.com

It has been quite hectic over the past few days, with work taking center-stage. This post is more about what else has managed to squeeze-in the recent past.

I managed to start and stop midway V.S. Naipaul’s India – A Million Mutinies Now. The reason why I stopped it was because it was getting a bit too condescending about everything related to India. I am not suggesting that everything is great here; but it is definitely not the way Naipaul makes it seem. To contrast it, I plan to start reading Nehru’s Discovery of India. I have watched the television series and fell in love with its title track. (Listen to it, its just ethereal).

We managed to watch Sarkar Raj, which I absolutely loved and many others didn’t quite like it. For me, Big B rocked. He is far beyond any of his peers and steals the show in this movie. A highly recommended watch, at least for Amitabh Bachhan’s performance.

A play we caught a week ago was White Lilies. Quite boring and a very dull ensemble on stage. The play comprised of three short stories, all three involving two characters who discover more about each other’s past lives and thoughts. In case it tours your city, try and avoid.

Time to get back to work. Have a great day, ladies and gentlemen. And oh yes, do remember to fill some feedback for us. Please

A couple of days ago I watched Steven Spielberg’s Munich. Interesting movie and I suppose I am late in the day in talking about it.

The Mrs. and I had gone on a shopping task of buying foreign films which have won some global acclaim (predominantly Academy Award winners in the foreign film category).

Till now, we have watched two movies:
1. The Shop on the Main Street (known as Obchod na korze in Czech).

Set during the World War II era, this movie is about Antonio Brtko, an Aryan, who is asked to take over the operations of a small-time button and garments store owned by an old Jewish widow, Mrs. Rozália Lautmannová.

The film does not require to indulge in sympathy-invoking-acts of displaying concentration camps and pictures of Hitler in order to show the impact that the entire campaign had on innocent, peace loving common folk like Rozália . It is a movie that is soaked with cinematic brilliance.

Rozália is a victim of the “Aryanization” that the Third Reich had initiated. But for me, the important part that the movie brought was the impact that this had on other Germans and non-Jews. Very little work has been done in the past on showcasing what the common Germans and non-Jews felt about the victimization of Jews. The Shop on the Main Street brings out this aspect through brilliant acting by Jozef Kroner who plays the role of Antonio.

Scene to watch out for: The ending. Exquisite, deep and hard-hitting. It is a masterful example of directorial genius. I had the same revering feeling that I had first experienced on watching Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali.

My recommendation: Watch it right now.

2. Divorce – Italian Style

Well, I don’t have much to write about this movie since I didn’t quite like it. However, it has won an Academy Award (in 1961, if I remember correctly)

The movie is about Marcello who is in an unhappy marriage. He dislikes his wife and has fallen in love with his cousin. The entire movie is about Marcello hatching plots to get rid of his wife so that the way is clear for him and his cousin to walk the aisle.

Divorce does have its share of laughs, but on the whole, it is dull and dreary. The wife’s character is especially irritating and does little to make the movie watchable once.

My recommendation: Do not waste time on it.

Highly recommended movie – The Odd Couple, starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau.

Owing to time pressures, I shall spare the review writing bit for now. However, do go ahead and grab a copy of this movie.

Rest assured, you will laugh your way through the 2 hours and beyond. Immensely funny and brilliant.

Poster courtesy: www.allposters.com