So finally fall has fallen in bay area….and it’s raining ‘beautifully’, normally it drizzles and drizzles for days but that’s no fun.
Today it is actually ‘Raining’ …raining like good size drops falling with some rhythm and intensity.
It is something which I’m sure always touches everyone not just physically…sometimes it makes one sad and sometimes happy and most of the time ‘in-between’ …. that funny feeling when you know something is amiss but you can’t put finger on that.
For the record, I’m HAPPY.

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Last night saw two back-to-back movies of ‘Supriya Pathak’.

First one was ‘Wake Up Sid’, it was a crazy idea to go for a movie on a Monday evening, oddly one of American multiplex was running the shows of Wake Up Sid which is quite an unusual thing. So we went there, and whole complex was deserted…there were no digital board flashing show timings and all, just 3-4 kids were manning the tickets and snacks booths.

After purchasing the tickets we went to search for audi # 9 which was (obviously) in the farthest corner of the complex, and let me again emphasis on the ‘deserted’ part, all passages/foyer everything was devoid of a single soul, and of course our audi was EMPTY. It was just 4 of us there.
Whole setting was straight out from horror movies; where protagonists stop at some motel at some deserted place and turn on the TV in their rooms only to see themselves on screen.


Movie worked for me, though in promos, character of Ranbir looked like a hybrid of Lakshay’s Hrithik and DCH’s Aamir and music sounded like re-cycled tunes/lyrics of Rock On/Luck By Chance, and ‘iktara’ a left over of Aamir/DevD.

Whole casting worked for me, Ranbir fitted the role to the T, and he didn’t require any special effort to get that dork look, and Konkana was her usual self though I hated her kurtas, I mean the colors. Now it’s tough to imagine anyone else portraying Sid n Aisha’s role.
Movie had all elements of a regular masala movie..like childhood friend se ladai and patch up; father-son confrontations; realization of mother’s ‘taken-for-granted’ love; not realizing that ‘it-is-love-till-the-last-reel’; Emotional quadrangle between ‘Ranbir-New(irritating)Girl-Konkana-Rahul (copying his younger brother)’ but treatment of all these was good…simple straightforward no melodrama!

Here's the pic.
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Late night, I saw ‘Bazaar’ for the first time in one straight sitting and totally blown away with the performances/dialogues/direction and of course music. It’s just plain impossible to write about Smita Patil/Naseeruddin Shah/Faroque Sheikh/Supriya Pathak and other characters. A must watch for everyone.

hmmm.....

'na khuda mila.....na visaal-e-yaar hua'

My playing 'XI' for Saturday's match -

1) Sachin
2) Gambhir
3) Dravid
4) Raina
5) Dhoni
6) Pathan
7) Nayyar
8) Harbhajan
9) Mishra
10) Ishant
11) Nehra

Yeah, no place for RP/Kohli/Praveen/Karthik.

May be this post will give some insight on how I felt when Kim Clijsters won last night; remember I said may be ;-)

Music of ‘What’s your Raashee?” has that distinct tinge of 90’s which doesn’t sound pleasant now, and while listening to those, image of ‘Hrithik’s dummy – Harman Baweja’ creeps in mind’s eye and that makes me change the music.

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Music of ‘Wake Up Sid’ sounds more or less mix of ‘Luck By Chance’ and ‘Rock On’; seems like both Javed Akhtar and Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy generously re-cycled their lyrics and compositions here or discarded songs of ‘Luck By Chance’ and ‘Rock On’ found some takers.

And best song 'Iktara'of album is composed by Amit Trivedi, unfortunately it also carries hangover of Aamir's 'Ek Lau' number.

They do it in spring, in fact do that whole year around, plus in fall they add a new freaking dimension to freak me out! And boy, how they love to do it on weekend mornings (which are like mid-night for people like me)

Well, here I’m talking about ‘bluudy grass mowers’ , to be politically correct, this is nothing against the persons who do it , this rant is strictly against the bluudy contraptions they use to do it.

Every weekend morning, they decide to trim the grass right below my bedroom window and do it till I wake up and tear my hair in frustration.

Geez, can’t they invent (here they being AMERICANS) some better device which doesn’t make noise, or little noise. All they have now is some stupid machine which blurts noise like 100 jets revving up to take off right under my bedroom window.

And come fall, they come back in teams, one guy doing this usual lawn mowing stunt, and supporting cast guy does this leaves gathering act using some equally stupid device- which looks like as if he is scattering the leaves instead of collecting them using that big hose which blows air out of it, in fact more noise then air.

:-)

First Edition – Lost in the finals

Second Edition – Didn’t lose a match, but due to some P2C2E, didn’t qualify for finals

Third Edition – Lost in finals

Fourth Edition – Lost in Semis

Fifth – Kicked out in initial rounds

Sixth Edition – check out the pic below

Kaminey –Aaj Kal

Kaminey - catchy title, tantalizing music, brilliant lyrics, teamed with teasing trailers.

Love Aaj Kal – bad title, remixed music, inaudible singer's voices, indecipherable lyrics.

Kaminey – had Vishal written all over it in a good way, dialogues, background score, screenplay etc etc.

Love Aaj Kal - had Saif smudged on it, of course forcefully, it was like watching Saif –Aaj Kal, and he was everywhere, in every scene, even in voice-over. Typical ‘I’m-the-Producer-I’ll-mouth-the-best-lines’ attitude.

Kaminey – without doubt is best movie of the year so far (or till Ishqiya releases), it was crisp, with zero time-waste, every scene was neatly done, but it all went bad in that ‘Free-for-all’ shooting fiasco towards the end.

And of course, one can’t stop comparing this with his earlier master pieces, Maqbool (I call it ‘complete’ movie), Omkara, Blue Umbrella; Here I guess, he tried to pack too much in too little time, may be that was the whole point of the movie, trying to pack everything, and relating all small details seamlessly, and he succeeded on doing that.

Like as I said earlier, it was all good, but that ‘free-for-all’ shooting scene spoiled it for me, and since everything was happening so fast that one starts to alienate from it instead of getting sucked in. It simple didn’t give time to ‘feel’ for characters, like in Maqbool’s Maqbool, Nimmi - one can feel their angst and helplessness, like in Omkara even after watching it ‘n’ times one prays for a different ending. Like in Blue Umbrella, Biniya’s glee makes one happy, and Nand Kishore’s plight after social boycott was moving.

Here, romance between Guddu n Sweety was unconvincing, I don’t know what those ‘Bengali Brothers’ were doing in this movie, Tashi was unconvincing, he was introduced in a fantastic way in that boat scene, but after that whole character took a nose-dive. Lele-Lobo were good but again can’t help comparing them with brilliant cops duo of Om Puri and Naseeruddin Shah of Maqbool. Bhope was really good, very fluid, very menacing, neatly done by Amol Gupte (earlier I used to think of him some old guy who ghost-directed Taare Zameen Par’)

Another thing, don’t know what’s the hype about Shahid’s work here; he was overshadowed by Priyanka in all their scenes, or by Amol Gupte or Mikhail or White horses or ‘Dhan ta nan’!

In one line, it is a good movie but not a great one by any stretch of imagination.

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Pheww, forgot to write about LAK, hmmm..not now, some other time!!