Aye dil hai mushkil....

I had to write this. I saw the film "Mumbai meri jaan" today and all I can say that it is THE BEST SATIRE I HAVE EVER SEEN. Period.

I am actually finding it difficult to put it in words. The film is übercool. It is entirely accurate to the facts. The case of the serial bombings that shook Mumbai, esp on the Western Railway line on 11th July, 2006.

What impressed me the most was the way the writer and director have used certain aspects of the incident and created realistic stories out of it all. The message goes across.

Amazing performance by all actors. A special mention is required for Paresh Rawal's performance as an aging police constable. Brilliant.

There is not a single moment in the entire film where you feel your interest level dropping and at the same time it keeps up with the mood of the content. Bravo!

An excellent job by director Nishikant Kamat after his excellent Marathi film "Dombivli Fast"

Nishikant Kamat may soon be the new king of satire.

Check the imdb link here : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1266583/

Bye.

Seeing red?

I was just thinking about how we are caught up between two of the world's foremost ideals. Communism (eg China) and Capitalism (eg USA). For that matter, India is neither of the two.

Well my thoughts wandered into the symbols of both these ideals. I thought of some interesting similarities.

1. Communism is depicted by the colour red. The most popular symbol for capitalism (Coca Cola) is also red.

2. A commoner will have to wait in line for food in a communist nation. You do the same at McDonald's (except that you have a choice here).

So, it should not be a surprise that one of the world's most famous communists is also a profit making symbol for capitalists (Che Guevara).


Rise of Consumerism

Now, keeping the communists and capitalists aside and start my complaining again. (I have been doing a lot of that lately :P)
I have been thinking more about the rise of consumerism in India. The people of this country have now embraced the mall explosion. They shop more, eat out more and pay more for watching seemingly bad films. This is the new culture of urban and suburban India. I am worried.

So, the capitalists will be happy because they are earning more. The communists will be happy (although I have never seen them smile) because new jobs are being created (despite closing of the mills - well that's another story). Everyone wins. Well, almost everyone.

What lose out in this masquerade are the values. We have started spending more on things that we dont need. But the greed for materials is growing. We are becoming far more materialistic than we were and we aren't stopping.

So, I ask, do we need this pseudo-happiness given by materials?


What do we really need?

Everyone knows this answer: Air (which is free), Food, Water and Shelter.
Everything else is a luxury. No arguments.

People tell me stuff like: "I need my cellphone, I cant live without it" or "Having a car is a necessity now"
I don't know whether to laugh or cry. We are not only becoming heavy consumers but now the materials own us.

When you need your cell phone, one thing is clear. The cell phone owns you and not the other way round. That is because YOUR CELL PHONE DOES NOT NEED YOU. You are its slave. You are so dependent on it that you fear life without it. Side effects of consumerism.


Mini(malistic) Me

So, now you might have understood that I am a sort-of minimalist. I am not totally detached from materials but I feel less materials is better. I like to live an uncluttered life.

Oh alright, I do like to indulge sometime but I try to keep myself from being a slave to my possessions. I like to be me without some material extensions of myself. 100% Apurv.

This should also explain the new minimalistic design to my blog. :D

You may read a related post on consumerism: Consumerism

Ciao!!

What an idea! Surgy?

OK! So I haven't updated my blog for about a month now. Not that I have a lot happening in life but I am plain bored. Also, I think there has been a surge in my fat consumption and my brain has gotten slower now. I might say something and then suddenly start saying something else. That is why people should walk to work. Huh? Um... see?

I just had a "D'oh" moment there! What was I talking about?

This time I saw this advertisement on the idiot box about a mobile phone service that provides education to all. Well, there is this Christian priest (Abhishek Bachchan, of course) who gets an idea from the divine to provide distant education to village schools through a single teacher using an array of cell phones. A good deed, indeed.

Allright, for now I am ready to forget the complications that the teacher will face. I mean, it is already too hard for a teacher to handle a single classroom at a time. Here, (s)he has to manage 5 or 6 without being there. Utopia?

My problem with this TVC is not the highly idealistic view but is the essential concept of education. The problem with this country is the belief that a person is educated only if that person speaks in English. It is true that officially English is spoken in most private institutes and is a highly respected medium but does that mean we should stop speaking in vernacular?

Should we be ashamed of the language that we learn from our parents that we totally give away with it to speak an essentially foreign language (although it isn't a foreign language in India)?
Or should we be educated in order to advance ourselves including our language?
That is where the problem remains. We still haven't overcome the hangover of the British rule that we feel that being educated means speaking in English only.

I believe that if you are at home, speak in your mother tongue. It will help you protect your ethnicity. Speaking in English is not wrong (heck! I am writing in English here!) but totally doing away with your mother tongue is an insult to your ethnicity. Learn new languages, understand different cultures but never throw out the vernacular, because that is your identity. Your Culture.

Check the ad here. For free though! Grrr... they aren't paying me. There are other short ads in this series.





Dhanyavaad!

Jaane Tu... ya Genre New?

Last week I saw a new release by Aamir Khan Productions, i.e. Jaane Tu... ya jaane na. By now everyone knows what the film is and it is still running to packed houses. I was lucky enough to get the ticket for the first day prime time. It is definitely a hit as I do not recall any other film having sold out all its tickets for a Tuesday morning show. Amazing!

We also know that after a big film releases it is punched left, right and centre by all sorts of critics. Different critics have real contrasting views. Some said: "the characters were believable. For the first time we saw college kids that looked their part. We could relate to them." while others said: "The characters were fake. We could not relate to them at all."
Though the second review falls flat once you have seen the film, the critic still defends his whim.

So... what worked? If we just analyse the film, we get the following points:

• The story is entirely predictable
• The characters are as simple as they could be
• There is nothing remarkable about the film.
• Abbas Tyrewala gives us the gist of the story in the first few scenes itself. So, no surprises!
  

I ask again - what worked?
I'll answer my own question now. (Sad?)

JTYJN belongs to a new genre of films. These films do not rely on a strong, original storyline but are basically meant for grabbing eyeballs for 2-3 hrs. This belongs to a genre which I would like to call "Remix". Such films aim solely at entertaining you for the time that you are in the cinema hall. You need not analyze it. Rather, you shouldn't.

This new genre may also have the two films by Farah Khan: Main Hoon Na and Om Shanti Om. (Abbas Tyrewala who wrote and directed JTYJN has also written the dialogues and co-written the screenplay for Main Hoon Na)
What we see common in these films is that the storyline is simple and predictable. Nothing new there. Yet, we seem to enjoy watching these films. Why? Well, because these films provide a fresh and unique experience. The bits and pieces of these films is what makes them a good watch and hence super hits. These films take a simple story, add salt, sugar and spice and make the story more presentable. We find that it is not the story that matters, it is how it is executed that determines the success of a film. This is done by screenplay, dialogues and performances. JTYJN was brilliant in all these departments. Hence, it worked. Hence, Main Hoon Na worked and Om Shanti Om worked (It is the largest grossing Bollywood film).

So, what do we need for such a big hit? The formula for a Remix film is here:

1. Get a smart but simple story
2. Build interesting characters about this story
3. Build a strong screenplay
4. Give the characters smart dialogues
5. Add good music (just in case)
6. Get good actors (need not be experienced, just have to be good)

That's it. You have a hit film on your hands. Now, isn't it simple? Well, it isn't. That is because most people flaw at points 3,4 and 6. These form the base for any good film. However, over-analysis kills them. So, such films are better left by themselves. The audience will do all the judging.

Reality Check

I have a lot of free time on my hands right now. So what better to do than watch television?
Anything is.

Just surfing through all the channels on the television I could see the poor quality of programmes that are available on the idiot box. Most eyeballs are captured by the K-soaps or "Reality" shows both having over-dramatic music and parallax-creating camera shots. With the end of the Indian Premiere League a month back, and not many late-night football fans existence in India, the focus has shifted back to soaps and reality shows.

These reality shows perform as many tricks out of the book as possible.(The book may have been written by Simon Cowell). From the rudest judges to over-exhibition of emotions and much dramatic music, we are forced to ask the question : "How real are these shows?"

It is however clear that the participants of such shows are under immense pressure to perform. This applies especially to children's competitions. Children are pressurized by both the programme and their parents to perform. It is not enough that these children are under pressure to get good grades at school that they have put in an extra effort for such competitions which are nothing but voyeuristic programmes for the emotional perverts.

That is why some of the participants have succumbed to such pressure by entering depression and having other mental diseases. Such an incident occurred recently during a Kolkata-based dance-related reality show. Shinjini Sengupta, a 16 year old participant was paralyzed and lost her speech when she was criticized by a judge on the show.
You may read the article here : Reality TV show paralyses participant Shinjini Sengupta

We need better programmes, better television with better, original content. This reminds me of a film that I saw recently. It was a German film titled "Free Rainer". It is about a TV producer who produces reality shows. After a turn of events he himself realizes the bad effects of such content and starts a kind-of renaissance to clean the contents of TRP-driven television. The film stars Moritz Bleibtreu and is directed by Hans Weingartner.
Read about the film here: Free Rainer

I hope that we soon realize the downward spiral that such programmes of bad taste bring about and work towards better programmes. Thats all for now. See you later.

Back to blog one.

It has been quite some time since I last made a blog entry at apurvkulkarni.blogspot.com but since then nothing interesting has really happened. The QWERTY phobia had struck again and I was finding it difficult to connect words.

This contrasts to what so many bloggers on the Internet are facing. Blog stress.

These are chronic bloggers who will skip meals, wake nights and give up on everything they do just to update their blogs. It is quite scary as these people face health problems. A few of them have died just because of blogging.

You can read the article here: Bloggers Stress

What is disturbing is that these bloggers are so addicted to blogging that they have nothing else on their minds. Au contraire, I haven't updated my blog for months now. But I like it that way. Why kill oneself blogging? Life is beautiful. Lets experience it.

I might update soon. (But not too soon ;-) )