At this risk of making this blog a series of movie trailers, I am going to make a mention of "Barfi!". There is an influence of Charlie Chaplin here, and the movie is silent in parts.
I have to wait for couple of months before I watch it.
There's F. Scott Fitzgerald's story, Baz Luhrmann's direction, Craig Armstrong's music, the presence of Amitabh Bachchan and 3D movie-watching experience in offer.
Will Leonardo DiCaprio get his Oscar with this movie?
My
family has watched a few movies more than once, and Chupke Chupke ranks very
high in this list. In the list of repeat watches, I mean. This PG Wodehouse
style situational comedy was directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee, who has a long
list of comedy movies to his credit.
The
principal character is played by Dharmendra. He plays Parimal Tripathi, a
professor of Botany from Allahabad. His best friend and colleague is Sukumar
Sinha, a professor of English literature played by Amitabh Bachchan. Parimal’s girlfriend
(and later wife) Sulekha Chaturvedi is played by the dimpled beauty Sharmila Tagore.
Sukumar Sinha falls in love with Parimal’s friend P K Srivastava’s
sister-in-law Vasudha. P K Srivastava is played by Asrani, and Vasudha is played by Jaya Bachchan.
Enter
the real hero of the movie, Raghavendra played by Om Prakash. Raghavendra is
Sulekha’s brother-in-law. Sulekha holds her dear jijaji in such high esteem
that it gives Parimal an inferiority complex, and he is determined to rise in
his wife’s esteem. Sulekha’s brother Haripat (played by David) helps him by
agreeing to his plan.
The
movie is about how Parimal Tripathi engages with Raghavendra in Mumbai by
pretending to be an Allahabadi driver Pyaare Mohan who speaks chaste Hindi. He
is sent by Haripat on Raghavendra’s insistence on the quality of his driver’s
language.
The
exchanges between Pyaare Mohan and Raghavendra are meant for laughter of the
lol and roflmao kind, and I am unable to recreate their magic here.
Raghavendra:
“Wahaan khade khade kya kar rahe ho?”
Pyaare
Mohan: “Khada khada kuch nahin kar raha hoon saheb. Bas aake aake khada hua
hoon.”
Raghavendra:
“Pyaare Mohan, tum paagal ho paagal!”
Pyaare
Mohan: “Ab to main bilkul pagaal nahin hoon saheb.”
Watch
the movie. If we could resolve our daily fights and lead life with such
humour thrown in, life would acquire a whole new meaning. Also, if we are able to admit to our hero-worships, fears and insecurities the way Parimal and Sulekha do with each other, marriage can be beautiful.
I saw the trailer of "Shanghai" when I had gone to watch "Titanic" in 3D. I had mentioned "Titanic" in this post earlier.
The movie looks promising, and the actors are interesting. Abhay Deol is playing a Tamilian (Mr. Krishnan) in the movie, and has got the accent bang on.
Today, when I was watching the movie “Due Date”, there was this conversation that left me in splits.
Peter Highman: I'm sorry we drank your father.
Ethan Tremblay: That's okay.
Peter Highman: Are you all right? Are you sure?
Ethan Tremblay: Yeah, there's plenty of him still in here. Darryl, he made three cups of coffee, I think there's about eight cups of my dad left in here.
Peter Highman: Great.
Ethan Tremblay: At least he tasted good.
Peter Highman: Not bad. Yeah, strong. It was uh...full flavored, robust blend.
Ethan Tremblay: He really enjoyed coffee and in the end he was enjoyed as coffee. Circle of life.
Peter Highman: Lion King. All that.
Peter Highman: Ethan, there's somethin' I've been wantin' to tell you. I feel pretty awful about, kinda wanna get it off my chest. I uh...I ditched you at the rest stop in Louisiana.
Ethan Tremblay: What?
Peter Highman: I had no intention of comin' back. So wrong.
Ethan Tremblay: Why would you do that?
Peter Highman: Because I'm a pig, I'm an asshole. I don't know, I'm working on it.
Ethan Tremblay: Well, you know what? You came back with donuts, and I think that says more about you than leaving does.
Finally, watch the reference to one of my favourite TV shows.
Post its release in India, this movie had been heavily recommended to me by the sibling and my earlier boss. I have the habit of deliberately delaying watching some movies, and Black Swan was a ready candidate. My reason was that the storyline felt creepy and I was not in the right frame of mind to appreciate it.
Last week, a sanitized version played on one of the TV channels (I have forgotten which channel). When I say sanitized, it means that the sex scenes were abruptly cut and the creepy scenes where Natalie Portman’s character Nina tortures herself had mostly been removed.
The movie had me hooked.
Natalie’s character is a ballerina who seeks perfection in her work , and is unable to let go of herself while she seeks perfection. She gets the prestigious role of playing both the white swan and the black swan in the ballet titled “Swan Lake”. As she trains for the role, the audience gets to see the manner in which she chooses to let go of herself, her complicated relationship with her mother, her responses to fellow ballerinas Lily (Mila Kunis) and Beth (Winona Ryder), and the hallucinations she suffers from.
I cringed when I saw the petite Nina (who looked like she wouldn’t hurt a fly) tear out her own skin – why would she subject herself to such pain? The horror of it all struck me when I saw that she doesn’t remember inflicting pain on herself, for she is in the midst of a hallucination when she does so.
Nina’s performance as the black swan in the play is a class act. The movie doesn’t glamorize the hallucinations – she dies as a result of them.
What struck me was that ballerinas have a professional shelf-life similar to that of sports players – both professions rely heavily on physical dexterity. They have to maintain their weight much like Formula One drivers. The pressure to achieve a lot in a comparatively short span is quite different from that experienced by professions driven by mental dexterity, to put it mildly.
I listen to a lot of Bollywood music, and it has taken me a while to get used to the idea of liking the music and almost discounting the lyrics that sound like gibberish. While I know that all songs cannot sound like those from “Rockstar”, some attention to the lyrics would be nice.
Years ago, the sibling had a habit of singing songs in their English version. For example, “Panchi nadiya pawan ko jhoke” from “Refugee” became “Birds, rivers and gusts of winds” sung to the same tune. She had perfected the technique and many a Bollywood number got translated into English.
In recent times, Bollywood music has seen songs with verses from languages other than Hindi. I sometimes wonder if any thought has gone into the lyrics, or whether the attention is only given to the music and the mood of the song.
The song of 2011 is “Chammak Challo” – it makes use of a combination of Hindi, English and Tamil.
The interesting picturisation of “Dil Dance Maare Re” made me notice this song from “Tashan”. It uses a combination of Hindi, English and Bhojpuri.
Moving South, “Kolaveri di” uses Tamil and English.
Each song had something "different" - be it the singers (Akon, Dhanush) or be it the picturisation. Thus, I will remember them and perhaps stick to humming their tunes.
