India Masala

Department: Mr Varma, please spare us the trauma

In my head, I always imagine Ram Gopal Varma, sitting in his office, legs up on the table, going through a checklist on the last day of a film shoot. Hyperactive camera angle – check. Lots of fake blood – check. Added some element of “Satya”, “Company” or “Sarkar” to the film – check. Leading ladies showing off cleavage – check.

How else do you explain a film like “Department”? That someone (Varma) thought they could make a film with such tacky production values, a convoluted and weak script, and some scenes that could be straight out of a soft-porn flick, and still convince a major studio to fund it and market it as a A-grade movie, is baffling.

The film is about two police officers (Sanjay Dutt and Rana Daggubati), who are asked to to set up a hit squad in order to “finish” the Mumbai underworld. Their target is the eccentric Savatiya (Vijay Raaz) and his gang.

Savatiya is also under attack from two of his own gang members — DK (Abhimanyu Singh) and his girlfriend (played by Madhu Shalini) — both of whom want Savatiya to retaliate against the police.

When powerful local politician Sarjerao Gaekwad (Amitabh Bachchan) enters the equation, both Shivnarayan (Daggubati) and Mahadev (Dutt) realise that things aren’t what they seem.

Varma uses liberal doses of plot lines from earlier films like “Sarkar” and “Satya”, but re-hashes them to such an extent that you might be forgiven for thinking “Department” is a spoof. He uses his trademark camera angles and ear-splitting background noise to create drama, but ends up making it caricaturish. There are times when you can see the film from the point of view of a tea pot, a newspaper and even the striker on the carrom board.

Given the look and feel of the film, you’d think the director had sleepwalked through the schedule. Characters, especially those of DK and his girlfriend are so over-the-top that they are more funny than scary, and except for Amitabh Bachchan, who seems to know what he’s doing, the rest of the cast resemble a deer caught in the headlights. At some point during the second half, you lose all sense of the plot, the characters’s motives and where the film is headed.

Agneepath: 20 years later?

More than 20 years after he first mesmerised an entire generation with his baritone and signature dialogue, Vijay Dinanath Chauhan is going to be back on celluloid, but this time in a different avatar.

Producer Karan Johar said the original film which was produced by his father didn’t “meet commercial expectations” and he thought this one would hit bull’s eye. Directed by debutant Karan Malhotra, the film stars Hrithik Roshan as Chauhan while Sanjay Dutt plays dreaded villain Kancha.

“This isn’t a remake, it is more like a tribute to the original film, which has now achieved cult status,” Johar said. At the launch of the teaser trailer on Monday, the entire cast was at pains to explain that the new “Agneepath” wasn’t a “remake” of the 1990 film, saying there were a lot of structural changes in the story.

One of those changes is that Mithun Chakraborty’s much loved Krishnan Iyer M.A. character won’t be seen afresh. Also Priyanka Chopra doesn’t play a nurse in the film and according to director Malhotra, “the only similarity is that the film begins and ends in Mandwa” (a port town near Mumbai).

After Chandra Barot’s “Don” (1978), which was re-made by Farhan Akhtar and “Umrao Jaan”, which was re-made by J P Dutta, this is the third major Bollywood film which is being looked at anew. While the first two weren’t big hits (“Umrao Jaan” wasn’t even a hit), Akhtar’s sequel to the new “Don” is one of the big releases this year, scheduled for a Christmas release.

“Agneepath” releases in January 2012, but Johar is already keen on building a buzz around the film, and says he is feeling his way around it, because he isn’t used to violence in his films.

Bbuddah Hoga Terra Baap: Sometimes old is not gold

Anyone who has grown up watching Amitabh Bachchan during the 70s and 80s will either go all nostalgic on watching Puri Jagannadh’s “Bbuddhah Hoga Terra Baap”, or will cringe at the way your memories have been distorted with this new, technicolour version of the angry young man. In my case, it was the latter.

During one of the funnier scenes in the film, Bachchan tells a character that he’s the ‘original”, and that kids today are doing nothing but imitating him. He then proceeds to sing a medley of most of his hit songs, including “pag ghungroo” and “mere angane mein”, except this new modern version has English rap songs, skimpily clad foreign extras dancing around him and Bachchan himself dressed flamboyantly (some would say garishly), gyrating to the song. At that point, you wonder, should you really mess with a classic, even if it’s your own?

Bachchan evidently wants to — and he mouths plenty of his old dialogues, (hum jaahaan se khade hote hain, line wahi se shuru hoti hai) and projects himself as a angry old man, a retired hit man who comes to India for one last assignment.

The story in this case, is merely incidental — this film is meant as a showcase for Bachchan — he might well be a star son making his Bollywood debut. There are item songs, fight sequences, romance and outlandish costumes.

Sonu Sood plays a younger version of Amitabh, and looks the part. The ladies in the film, like the story, are entirely incidental. Raveena Tandon acts all fluttery for no reason, Hema Malini barely makes it to two scenes, and Sonal Chauhan (who plays Sood’s love interest) and Charme Kaur are slightly more interesting to watch than watching paint dry.

For better or for worse, Bachchan is the best thing about this movie. If you don’t mind this distorted version of his ‘angry young man’ persona, then you might have fun watching this film. Call me old-fashioned, but I think some things are best left untouched.

Teen Patti: The game is over

If you’ve played cards or for that matter, any kind of game, you will know a good start is only half the battle won.

It is how you end it that determines the result and if director Leena Yadav had only kept this cardinal rule in mind before starting out to make “Teen Patti”, perhaps this would have been a very different film.

For a film that starts off quite intriguingly, especially in the first half-hour, “Teen Patti” is a textbook study in how most films slip uncontrollably in the second half and any element of thrill or suspense you may have felt disappears in the chaos of a badly written and executed script.

Amitabh Bachchan plays Venkat Subramaniam, a mathematics professor who feels underappreciated by his peers because they don’t seem to understand his research. While playing an online poker game one night, he realises he can predict the cards in each participant’s hand, and hence the result of the game.

Eager to try out this experiment in the real world, he enlists the help of fellow professor Shantanu (R Madhavan) and three students. They infiltrate night clubs and gambling dens and test his experiment, thus winning a lot of money in the process.

It is when greed gets the better of them and personal equations between the five start to change that the game takes on a whole new meaning.

The director doesn’t know where to go once the basic plotline is established, letting the characters and the script go helter-skelter. The ending is totally out of line with the script, a lot of questions are left unanswered and at the end of it the stacks of cash start to look repetitive. Some of the dialogues are laughable.

Paa: Flawed but gives us a whole new Bachchan

First things first. “Paa” belongs to Amitabh Bachchan. And Vidya Balan. Or actually it belongs to Auro and his mother. Because that’s who you really see on screen and that is the hallmark of a great performance.

For this reason alone, R Balkrishnan’s “Paa” is worth watching. There are some hiccups (or hickis as referred to in the film) but on the whole, this film should leave you with a lump in your throat and nothing but admiration for Amitabh Bachchan.

Bachchan plays Auro, a 13-year-old boy who has progeria, a rare genetic disorder that causes the body to age much faster than is normal. As a result, this teenager has the body of an 80-year-old, with bulging veins, no hair and decaying skin.

He lives with his ‘maa’, Vidya (Vidya Balan), a gynaecologist. At a function in school, Auro meets Amol Arte (Abhishek Bachchan), India’s “youngest, coolest MP” who immediately takes a liking to Auro.

What both don’t know is that Amol is Auro’s father, and Vidya’s former boyfriend, who asked her to get an abortion because he doesn’t have time for marriage and kids. She walks out of his life, but chooses to keep the child.

Director Balkrishnan chooses to focus on the relationships in “Paa” and those are the high points. Whether it is the interactions between Vidya and her mother, or Amol and his father (played by Paresh Rawal), Auro and his friends, these are the moments that will grip you with their inherent humour.

It is when the director chooses to make statements about issues like poverty and corruption that the film tends to drag a little.

Who will be Bigg Boss?

Last night, between 9 pm and 11 30 pm, my phone was working over time. Calls were going back and forth, messages were being exchanged and opinions voiced – all of them discussing only one thing – the inmates of Bigg Boss, Tritiya (as host Amitabh Bachchan calls it.)

Why is Rakhi Sawant’s mother in? Why does Kamaal Khan call himself KRK? Sherlyn Chopra as a bai in the house? Not just me, but a lot of  bloggers and netizens were updating Twitter and Facebook with every little detail of yesterday’s launch episode.

Shows like this, as Colors CEO, Rajesh Kamat told me last week, may not be in the league of a Balika Vadhu in terms of ratings, but they get talked about much more than the regular daily soaps, which builds the buzz around the channel.

Getting Amitabh Bachchan as host, he said, was enough to create all the buzz they needed, and Bachchan proved last night that he had lost none of his KBC charm, drawing in the audience as easily as he had done four years ago.

Like I have said before, I love watching Bigg Boss, voyeuristic though it may seem, and inmates like Rahul Mahajan, Rakhi Sawant and even Carol Gracias made the show even more interesting for me.

This time around though, I didn’t see anyone that would stir things up a little bit, but I do find myself rooting for Mrs Jaya Sawant – just by virtue of the fact that she is the most unusual choice for a Bigg Boss inmate; the rest seem like the usual suspects.

What about you? Who are you rooting for?

Jana Gana Mana ‘Rann’: new-age anthem?

Nearly 60 years after Rabindranath Tagore’s composition was adopted as India’s national anthem, filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma’s interpretation of it is raising conservative eyebrows.

Varma uses the tune of ‘Jana Gana Mana’ and adds to the lyrics, making it a full-fledged song for his film about India’s media industry — “Rann”.

The 47-year-old filmmaker has maintained he meant no disrespect but only wanted to use the anthem as a vehicle to “draw attention” to the country’s problems.

“For any right-thinking person, I do not believe that he can take offence to the way it’s been done and in what context it’s been shown,” Varma said at a news conference during the unveiling of “Rann” in New Delhi.

Unfortunately for Varma, his adaptation of “Jana Gana Mana” has proved to be more controversial than the film itself. The Censor Board refused certification to the song promo on grounds of it violating the National Emblems and Names (Prevention of Improper Use) Act 1950. And the song is no longer being aired on television.

But that hasn’t stopped curious netizens from checking it out on video-sharing web site YouTube.

“The National anthem is not meant to be Remixed. End of Discussion,” YouTube user ‘orionrage’ wrote in response.

“Mere paas dialogue hai…”

The last thing I expected A.R. Rahman to do during his Oscar speech is invoke Salim-Javed. After all, you don’t expect to hear one of Bollywood’s most famous dialogues on Hollywood’s biggest night. But in hindsight, I am so glad he said “mere paas maa hain.”

Not only did he demonstrate his love and respect for his mother, he also pretty much made that particular one-liner from Hindi cinema world famous. Melodramatic and over-the-top though it may have been, Shashi Kapoor saying those four words to his brother (Amitabh Bachchan) in “Deewar” remains one of my favourite moments in Indian cinema.

Following close behind is another Bachchan moment, when he ambles up to Basanti in “Sholay” and drawls “tumhara naam kya hai, Basanti”, after actress Hema Malini has finished regaling him and Veeru with her life story. That scene never fails to crack me up.

I did a quick poll in office and it turns out “Sholay” features on most people’s lists, but so do Yash Raj films. And although I never quite warmed up to the fact that “bade bade deshon mein, aisi choti choti baatein hoti rehti hai,” a lot of people are huge fans of that line.

So, what is your favourite Bollywood one-liner?

Tracking the Big B through thick and thin

A perfect Saturday afternoon beckoned me. An early lunch was had, the house was quiet and the prospect of dropping off into an uninterrupted sleep was enough to make me smile.

One phone call changed all that. Amitabh Bachchan is on his way to the hospital, a source said and he is sick. The first thing that registered in my mind was “I hope he is ok” and then the journalistic instinct kicked in.

Frantic calls to his office, the hospital and his doctor followed. Details became clearer, the situation calmed down a bit and everyone heaved a collective sigh of relief. Many of us couldn’t help but go back in time to 2005 when Bachchan was recuperating in the same hospital. The focus on him then was immense.

There were hourly updates on news channels, reporters stationed outside the hospital 24×7 and thousands thronged to Lilavati Hospital, as if their presence might have made a difference. Prayer meetings were held and the entire film industry held its breath.

I’ve been told it was the same when Bachchan met with an accident on the sets of his film “Coolie” in 1982. I was three years old then and don’t remember the incident so I only have the 2005 illness to go by.

It hasn’t been as bad this time around but I do know of fellow reporters who have kept vigil outside Lilavati Hospital since Saturday. Television channels and newspapers have been full of news, filmographies, reactions from fan clubs and detailed discussions with doctors on intestinal diseases.

Over the weekend, we have been subjected to all kinds of details about the sickness — how Jaya Bachchan kept vigil by her husband’s bed all night, TV channels replaying the shot from “Coolie” where Bachchan got injured and discussions with astrologers on the actor‘s future.

The Last Lear: Not Bachchan’s best but watch it for the performances

There has been so much controversy about the release of “The Last Lear” that it’s easy to overlook this is a film that has been well received in the international festival circuit, has some of India’s best known actors and has even been touted as Amitabh Bachchan’s finest work yet.

Honestly, I don’t agree with that last statement — but then people are entitled to their own opinion.

Undoubtedly, Bachchan plays the role of Harish Mishra, an ageing but passionate Shakespearean actor to the T, with dexterity and skill.

But this is not his best. In fact, I would even say his is not the best performance in the film.

But I am getting ahead of myself. “The Last Lear” is a film in a film and it starts off the way most movies do. With a premiere. It’s Diwali night and also the premiere of Siddharth’s (Arjun Rampal) first film.

The mood though is anything but celebratory. The film’s lead actor is seriously ill and actress Shabnam (Preity Zinta) decides to visit him rather than attend the premiere. Even Siddharth is not as happy as a director making his debut should be.

Film maker Rituparno Ghosh tells the whole story in flashback, interspersed with the events of the night. We learn that Siddharth, a young, enthusiastic director convinces ageing theatre actor Mishra to play a role in his film about an out of work circus clown. Mishra agrees and the entire film unit moves to a hill station for the shoot.