India Masala

Rockstar: Ranbir, Rahman are the stars

If you want to watch the rockstars in action in Imtiaz Ali’s “Rockstar“, look out for the “Kun Faya Kun” number in the first half — both A. R. Rahman and Ranbir Kapoor are at their best here — the lilting melody of the song and Ranbir’s range of expressions remind you of how good the two are at what they do.

They are the stars of “Rockstar” — the reason why you leave the movie with a somewhat positive feeling. Everything else, including the script, the direction and other performances are found wanting, much to your disappointment.

Director Ali attempts to chart the tumult that tears apart an aspiring musician, Janardan Jakhar, aka Jordan played by Ranbir Kapoor. Janardan belongs to a regular middle-class family and, as he himself says, has lived a remarkably ordinary life, except for his love for music and his desire to make it big. On the advice of his college canteen manager, who tells him that all great art comes out of pain, Janardan decides to propose to the beautiful Heer, the most popular girl on campus, and then feigns heartbreak when she rejects him.

When that plan backfires, the two become friends, and Heer, who is soon to be married, makes a list of “crazy things” she wants to do before she “settles down”. Of course, as in most Imtiaz Ali films, both characters realise they have fallen in love with each other — after one of them is married. Janardan becomes Jordan, gets thrown out of his house, develops angst and grows a beard.

There really is no story after this point and it becomes a chronicle of Heer and Jordan’s doomed love story. There are some lovely moments and the songs are shot beautifully, but there are two major problems with this movie. And I do mean major. One is that Ali cannot seem to decide whether he wants to make a love story or a story about a rockstar. As a result, it becomes neither — both aspects get diluted and do not help the film.

Also, the reasons for Jordan’s angst aren’t built up well enough, so his dishevelled, bitter, angry avatar is a bit unbelievable. The incidents that lead to Ranbir’s anger and bitterness are hardly valid and most of them seem blown out of proportion, and a little too forced.

Ali tries to go a level up and likens love and music to a spiritual experience and the montage at the end is evidence of that, but the pace of the film and its many loopholes in the plot don’t.

Is ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ A.R.Rahman’s best score?

Waking up on a Monday morning is so much nicer when you wake up to good news, isn’t it?

A.R.Rahman winning two Grammys for “Slumdog Millionaire” certainly made my day, but as television channels played its theme song “Jai Ho” over and over again, I found myself wanting to hear some of his other compositions.

“Dil Hai Chota Sa” from “Roja” perhaps or “Naina Milaike” from “Saathiya”, “Ay Hairathe” from “Guru” and my favourite — “Arziyan” from “Delhi 6″.

While “Slumdog” and “Jai Ho” have captured the world’s imagination, I wonder if it is his best work.

When Rahman won the Oscar last year, I remember lyricist Gulzar telling me he thought Rahman’s music for Mani Ratnam’s upcoming film “Ravana” was his best.

And while I love the beats of “Jai Ho” and the haunting music of “Latika’s Theme” from the “Slumdog” album, they are not in my top five list of Rahman songs.

But then, how often is it that an artiste wins awards for his or her best work. Director Martin Scorsese won his first Oscar for “The Departed” which is not considered his best work. And just last year, Kate Winslet took home the best actress trophy for “The Reader” but many critics say she deserved it more for “Revolutionary Road”.

‘Slumdog’ magic rubs off on India abroad

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Bollywood and Indian culture is getting plenty of attention worldwide — thanks to the “Slumdog Millionaire” effect.

Danny Boyle’s rags-to-riches romance about a poor Indian boy competing in a TV game show scooped eight Academy Awards earlier this year.

The film’s global box-office success brought its relatively unknown young stars on the global stage (with lead actress Freida Pinto slated to star in Woody Allen’s next project).

In the U.S., Bollywood’s arc of influence is creating thriving ancillary industries and garnering buzz for the likes of celebrity stylist Shalini Vadhera.

The Los Angeles entrepreneur, with her Global Goddess beauty products, sits atop a business that brings in a million dollars annually.

“I always feel like Obama winning for the African Americans is ‘Slumdog’ winning for us as Indian Americans and South Asians was fantastic,” she says.

Every ‘Slumdog’ has its day

Dilshad Qureshi, Rubina’s aunt, is a happy woman. She got up at five this morning, finished her household chores and dressed up in her nicest clothes.

For this woman from a Mumbai slum, the Oscars were coming home.

I was there at Rubina’s (the youngest Latika in the film) cramped quarters, located in a slum by the Bandra train tracks, since six in the morning.

As I sat there, watching the Oscars on their 38-inch LCD TV, I wondered if it all seemed a little incongruous.

An eight-year-old girl, who doesn’t have running water in her house but has a LCD TV, who didn’t go to school some time back but got the chance to act in a film being made by an unknown foreigner, and who hasn’t travelled much of her country but got to go to the biggest movie event of the year.

Is an Oscar next, Mr Rahman?

His voice is soft over the phone, almost inaudible. He has just done a lot of interviews, and the tiredness in his voice is clear.

There are no niceties, no formal hello; instead he plunges straight into the agenda of the day — that’s a typical A. R. Rahman interview for you. The 43-year-old music composer is as humble as he is talented, as unaffected by success as he is successful.

“Unbelievable,” he said as he stood on the podium with a Golden Globe statuette in his hand. And it was. That an Indian composer could win such a coveted international honour for what is essentially such an Indian soundtrack — and do it all with a minimum of fuss, is a matter of pride for all Indians.

“If I win it, it will be a surprise,” he told the media the day he was leaving for Los Angeles. “But if I do win, I want to win for India.”

He didn’t forget to mention his country in his acceptance speech on Sunday, thanking the “one billion” people of India for the praise.

Those one billion will now be egging him on for even greater heights — don’t forget, the Oscars are just a little over a month away, and to see an Indian composer hold that coveted trophy in hand is something we could only have dreamed of — until now.

Join us in congratulating Rahman and wishing him all the best for the Oscars. Jai Ho!

Yuvvraaj: A brilliant score let down by a lacklustre script

Setting out to create a Bollywood blockbuster? Just make sure you have all the right ingredients — big budget, famous actors, foreign locales, fabulous music.

Wait, something’s missing — yes, the script.

Unfortunately for Subhash Ghai, the era of formula films has long gone and even the most ambitious project can’t afford to take it easy in the writing department.

And that’s where “Yuvvraaj”, the 18th film by a director known as Bollywood’s ‘Showman’, fails despite liberal doses of Ghai’s trademark opulence and grandeur.

Essentially the story of three brothers, “Yuvvraaj” revolves around the free-for-all that ensues when a London-based billionaire dies, leaving behind his fortune to autistic son Gyanesh Yuvvraaj (Anil Kapoor).

It’s a bitter blow for estranged sibling Deven (Salman Khan), who has been struggling to make  ends meet as a chorus singer in a Prague orchestra. He also needs the moolah to impress sweetheart Anushka’s (Katrina Kaif) wealthy father who is not too happy about their relationship.

And so Deven trudges back to the Yuvvraaj family’s London mansion, from where he had been kicked out twelve years earlier. He finds it infested with his dead mother’s relatives, all eyeing a share in the family property.