Rockstar Is Ranbir's Film. All the Way.

Quite less often you come across Fridays that leave you with a mix of emotions when you exit the theater after the film is over. Expectations were a bit low after ‘Love Aaj Kal’ but Imtiaz Ali definitely impressed more than it was expected of him with his new film ‘Rockstar’.

AR Rahman’s music seemed to complete the eye candy cinematography with Mohit Chauhan’s voice filling into your ears at the perfect moment(s). An amazing job at editing that lived up to the demanding screenplay did the wonders for this film which otherwise could have been taken as a plain candyfloss romantic comedy which turns to be a..(err, treat yourself). Ranbir Kapoor’s elastic performance throughout the film complemented with crisp and witty lines in the first half that will have you in splits establishes the fact that Imtiaz Ali is one of the finest writers when it comes to street-smart dialogues and your typical ‘Dilli waali’ humor . Despite all this, you might just end up noticing that the movie has a feel of ‘Jab We Met’ to it which conveniently establishes another fact that Imtiaz Ali is yet to get over its hangover.

A still from the film

Coming to individual performances, Ranbir Kapoor pulls off a very impressive job with his metamorphosis from a nerdy DU student to a larger-than-life music star of his time. Nargis Fakhri who plays the Kashmiri girl Heer Kaul fared well. All this apart, it was breath-taking each of the six times when Shammi Kapoor appeared on the screen.
Now go, get your girl along and watch this movie. Might just help you make up for the not-so-great experience of watching Ra.One together.

All In a Day!

Edit, Check. Sound sync, check. Color correction, check. Mastering, check. I'm happy, check.
Whoa, what a day today was! All that took to make me make a short film within 12 hours time was a mere deadline. From stratch, I shot today morning on Bhanu's Nikon (sans a tripod) as I was awake. Trust me guys, its real fun when your home happens to your shooting set/ location. You have a lot of props, extras, added lighting which means that you can even shoot sunrise scenes from inside a room in the dead of the night. (Hell yea, that is absolutely possible. Try standing with a couple of CFL lights on the other side of the window pane and point it towards the room where you want sunlight. :] )
You know what the best part is? All of this you get for free.
So where was I? Yes. After the morning, I had a nice small lunch and straight rushed off to the edit with the footage I had shot. The edit began with the usual conversions, aligments, cuts, et al. Finally, a music piece that me and Samit had mutually selected was introduced to the timeline and the real pain began here. Syncing music with picture can be a prick in the ass I tell you. It is all upon your intuition to determine the right beat for the right picture/scene. That apart, the syncing was managed and the color correction was also done in a nick of time.
Why I'm writing all this? because I still use a Pentium Four processor. Because, my CPU does not have an extra cooling fan. Because, both of these factors sum up to the fact that the final cut is rendering real slow and I'm waiting for it to finish so that I can see it. But hey, do I sound like I'm complaining?
Come on, it is not everyday that you get to make a movie in 12 hours flat.

93

A still from the Movie 'Bombay'

न यह '93 होता,

न यह चिंगारी होती,

जिस कोक से तू जन्मा है,

उस पेट से गद्दारी न होती |


(Had the riots had never happened, Would the Cry of death be ever heard?
Would you have ever thought of betraying the womb of your Mother? Your Motherland?)

न कुरान है तू,

न पुरान है तू,

इंसानियत का कातिल,

मौत का फरमान है तू ||


(Oh Holy text, Neither are you Shlokas`, nor are you the Testaments. Are you a mere letter that carries in it, the dance of death?)

न तेरा मज़हब बड़ा है,
न मेरा मज़हब छोटा,
लेकिन फिर क्यूँ यह दिल,

खून के आंसू है रोता  ? |||

(We both happen to be on the same boat, then why are we rowing the oars in our opposites?)

न तू खुनी है,

न हूँ मैं दरिंदा,

अभी इस जहां मैं,

अमन की उम्मीद है ज़िंदा ||||

(Why fight for the blood of your brothers when there is still a glimmer o` hope and a half a reason to believe in the school of peace?)

Bedardi Raja

I still remember that day my Nanu (Grandfather) talked about biscuits and the king. The great Bengal famine was at large during the time. The whites used to drive around the choupal near the pond on their Jeep along with the little fat prince for company who would throw bits of Cambridge biscuits on the road and thus the chaos. Skinny yokels from nowhere would come up and have the fight of their lives, just for that bit of the cookie. But soon enough (like it happens in a Manoj Kumar film), things got better and people got to eat. The British left and Nanu was jobless (he was a Jamedar for the King of the land). His Highness, himself had to sell his most loved collection of Mercedes and Bentleys at some non-descript flea market in erstwhile Calcutta in order to get the queen and the fat prince two square meals a day and a roof to live. He was not a king anymore. He stayed in a Undertaker's house on the border of Pir baba's graveyard. The stench of burnt flesh and sound of cracking skulls now became a part of his existence. So much was the despair that he had to sell his Cigar circumciser to pay the fees of the lawyer who was fighting his case against the Hypocrisy. Country liqour and Beedis had replaced his daily fix of Exotic spirits.
Ok, Hyprocrisy is not in the literal sense here. For the record, it is not what it means in the Merriam Webster's. It could be a person, a bunch of them, or a letter with the tiger's emblem, anything, everything. It is a bloody element and it is omnipresent. For a lack of a better example, it is the bunch of people who took away his ancestral palace and his Kingdom when he was busy holidaying at a picturesque county in the land of the queen. They, the Hyprocrisy used to hang out at a big circular Building in the heart of Delhi at the tax-payer's expense. Last I heard, they still do that. Only the stuff they gossip on has become lamer, vague and baseless with each passing day.
Now back to the life of the King, his life was on a one-way to hell. Well technically speaking, hell was pretty close in a way.
One fine day, the little fat prince was bitten by a mad chimpanzee in the left nipple. The lung was punctured and the cute little kid breathed his last at a place where people from the city wearing white coats were royally raping the Hippocrates' oath and were least bothered to attend the ailing kid when he needed them the most. After this mishap happened, the Queen had started talking to herself. Womenfolk of the village claimed that they had allegedly seen her eating human faeces at the fields where they shat at the break of the dawn. The white coats, who were supposedly on the payroll of the Hypocrisy claimed that she had an exotic disease in her brain and called it Schizophrenia
(Wasn't Typhoid already tough enough for the village folks to pronounce?) .

Of Jimmy Choos and Cavallis

Yes, she wears those big goggles that scream 'Roberto' and 'Cavalli' all over. Yes, she flaunts a leather handbag (17000£ btw), big enough to accomodate her younger daughter inside it ( She's happily married you pervs!) and equally audacious to have the Greenpeace stage their typical (I find it Kinky though *winks*) nude-protests at the door of her Swanky Lahore residence the very next day. So, whats the fuss about it?  We, the Indian Media are so much obsessed with the Austere-Shastra that  we train guns on almost anyone we can. I mean, what is the point in contrasting her flamboyance to the perils of her country? She has a rich dad. Deal with it guys. Mind you, she's more than a  pretty face. An economist by training (Courtesy the Americans, who else?), she was the first lady to present the Budget speech in the Parliament of her land. Beat that.

A lot of people complain that Indian men are going bonkers over her and in the whole process are defaming the sacred ladies of our own land. Lets face it, appreciating beauty is no crime and someone has to be prettier than the rest. That ways, our ladies are nowhere close to her. Not even the one who gets her statue erected (read: constructed) in every nook and corner of Uttar Pradesh at the drop of a hat or even the one who makes a nice spoof of Being Human by auctioning her eccentric Canvasses at even more eccentric prices. Offence intended on this one.

If only she didn't have any political baggage on her, things would have been different, I believe. 

PS- The rest can begin whacking the rotten testicles of that section of the Indian media which has been awesomely irresponsible in carrying out its journalistic duties. For example: 

Till then, Good night (pause) and good luck.

Random Memoirs

And Life takes a perfect circle. Now, i very much believe in the fact that What goes around, comes back around. You do good to people, better things happen to you. You do bad with them, shit happens to you in the same way and style you made it happen to them. Either ways, in the end it comes back to you. Its feels good, this big lesson of life has been learnt.