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Archive For March, 2010
Hands Up: My new talk show now on my blog
As most of you already know, I just got started with TV with a show of my own. Hands Up hopes to be a fun interview at gunpoint. We’ve started off soft. I promise to get nastier once I find myself at home in front of the camera.
You will find Part 2 and 3 of that episode here.
And yes, you can catch up with the latest episode every week on My Talk Show link at the top of this page.
Vinnaithaandi Varuvaaya: Not a review
I don’t want to really review this film because Gautham Menon just came for my talk show Hands Up (the episode will air on March 12, 9.30 p.m. NDTV HINDU) and anything I say will be seen as saying good things about him in return. Haha!
So as much as I liked the film personally (Gave it 7.5/10) I am going to skip to the parts that didn’t work for me. And if you haven’t yet seen the film, you may want to come back to this post once you’ve watched it so that I don’t ruin the ending for you.
Stop reading because the spoilers begins here:
This isn’t the regular love story, this is a ‘Why did I fall in love ‘ story and the related angst soulfully voiced by Alphonse (Aromale) is what’s making the film strike a chord with the audiences.
And my problem is that this angst is stifled by an ending that’s neither here nor there.
Gautham now wants us to believe they can be friends. Really? Do we want to be friends with people responsible for that very angst, let alone invite them for a premiere of the film all about that?
The last 10-12 minutes of the film (Specifically, the moment from where he sees on Brooklyn Bridge) including the ‘Happily everafter’ song (Gautham says it’s only two and a half minutes long) I thought were the weakest portions of the film despite the fact that it had one of the best scenes in the film – the scene at Central Park on the park bench.
Instantly, I connected it to a similar scene at the end of 500 Days of Summer and I realised how the situation the couple was in was almost similar (Gautham hasn’t seen 500 Days nor is the screenplay even remotely similar and to be honest, the similarities I am talking about are limited to the ‘Boy Loves Girl, Girl Leaves Boy’ knot and the related angst. )
Here’s the now-married girl sitting with the guy who still loves her and… just as you think here comes the part where she gives him closure (like in 500 Days of Summer), she stumps him (and us the audience) by saying she never married and that she loves him very much and the Happily Everafter song sequence begins…
As the song begins, we know for a fact that there’s a twist waiting at the end of it, one that’s a fairly easy guess – that he’s only imagining it (the audience at this point really does not care for parental opposition because the lovers are together).
So for two and a half minutes during the song, we wonder why is the director trying to make us believe that All is well….
And then, predictably, the hero makes it a part of his film within the film and that film ends with Trisha sitting next to him… Not as his girlfriend as we’ve been led to believe until now but as a married woman who wants to be friends with him.
I find it hard to believe that a girl who didn’t walk eight feet towards him at the bridge to say Hi would travel over eight thousand miles to watch a film he made about her, especially when she hates cinema. Yes, maybe she was just in town conveniently or maybe she wanted to end things on a good note and stick to her promise of watching his film…
But my problem, honestly, is that Gautham wants them to be friends at the end of it. Because apparently, that’s how it is in life. Gautham believes that this redeems the girl’s character and makes us feel that she isn’t a total bitch.
First, I don’t think the girl becomes a bitch by not showing up or even saying Hi to the boy because she obviously has her reasons and we see the angst and helplessness in her eyes now that she is married even when she walks away from him.
Second, her presence at the premiere does not in any way change our impression of her – she was confused and consistently so. And her confusion led to the boy’s angst.
Yes, it is a very mature ending no doubt about that. It’s very mature to think that the boy and the girl can be friends. But one look at the guy in that last scene and we know he’s a broken man. He still feels the same way about her and she’s moved on. He hasn’t got his closure.
Which is why that scene in 500 Days of Summer comes to mind. Summer is nice enough to provide him with that closure but here, Gautham does not let Jesse give the boy his closure.
The boy could have got his closure by never seeing the girl again – his last memories of her being walking away from him at the bridge. Yes, Trisha could’ve still continued being part of his desired reality (his movie ending) and watched the film with him as literally the girl of his dreams and given him the closure after it. All she had to say was: “Jesse chapter over, what next? And yes, whatever happened, happened for the best.” and given him a parting hug. The completion of the film could’ve been that cathartic release of the angst that will enable his closure with that parting hug from the girl who wasn’t there.
Her absence at the premiere would have drilled home the point that she didn’t love him enough. And that would have been tragic that the last image he had of her was – her walking away from him on the bridge, a classic larger than life moment of chance, of films, of unrequited love.
But her presence just brings us to the real world awkwardness of being friends with your ex. Who wants that shit? This is why many of my friends who watched the film said they couldn’t feel the tragedy. Nor did they feel happy that he made the film. They just had mixed reactions, felt it was awkward.
Maybe Gautham wanted us to feel awkward about it. Maybe that’s his take on tragedy – being friends with the girl you love (not once loved, but still love).
I, for one, wouldn’t wish it upon my enemy. 🙂
Which is why the ending didn’t quite work for me.
Moulin Rouge: This Weekend, Come What May
What goes around comes around. The idea of the singing dancing tragic-comic Bollywood musical imported by Baz Luhrmann comes a full circle back to India as an ambitious young theatre company Nicholas Productions, founded by choreographer Denver Anthony Nicholas, attempts to recreate the magic of Moulin Rouge on stage this weekend at the Chinmaya Heritage Centre (March 6, 7 p.m and March 7, 2.30 p.m. and 7 p.m.)
The last few days have been an emotional rollercoaster for the team behind the show. The producer of the show Roshni Menon died twenty days before the opening night leaving them completely shocked and shattered. Until they realised that the best tribute they could give their friend was make her dream come true.
“We had the first audition on the first weekend of November, and had a callback in the second weekend and started rehearsals by the third week. But before the rehearsals, I spoke to Shaun Roberts to get the music ready and Mike (Michael Muthu) about the set design,” recalls Denver.
Though ‘Moulin Rouge’ is his first production as a director, Denver has quite a few shows to his credit as the choreographer ‘ Grease, Little Mermaid, Romeo and Juliet, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, Night at the Musical, Chicago.
“Working with different theatre companies, I picked up the nuances of how to direct and what goes into a musical production. After Chicago, I realised I had to move on from being a choreographer to director” Roshni and me were very close friends, she had been asking me to do something on my own and had told me that the day I had decided, she would jump in and help me with my production, he adds.
“Roshni was coming back to theatre after five years.” They had earlier partnered to recreate Grease on stage for Stagefright Productions, a company Roshni founded with Freddy Koikaran.
It was Michael Muthu who had suggested Moulin Rouge to Denver. “That night, I took the DVD from him and ten minutes into the movie, I had decided to do it. I messaged Roshni and told her I wanted to do it. Unlike most of the other musicals, the songs here were already popular cult classics songs from Elton John to Police to Lady Marmalade to something like Chamma Chamma and I loved what Baz Luhrmann did with the colour and the costumes but the main thing that attracted me was the music.”
Shaun Roberts and his band Midnight Groove (Meynard Grant on Drums, Balaji on Rhythm and Percussion, Timothy George and Nelson Samuel on Keyboards, Vikram Vivekanand ( guitar and Shaun himself on bass and guitar synth) will perform live with the eight-member choir and Moulin Rouge will be one of those rare shows performed entirely live.
Shireen, student of NIFT, did the costumes of the period (Moulin Rouge is set in 1899). “The spectacle of the film was captivating and challenging. Initially, it was intriguing to us but everything started falling into place. I gave the actors a lot of space and freedom to make changes to the production and they have helped me a lot.”
“I hadn’t done theatre since college,“ says Cary Edwards, former VJ, stand up comedian and actor. “Seven years ago, Roshni and me were talking about what it would be to do a play together because she had just got into theatre production. And then we kind of lost touch and then, one day I got a call out of the blue. The minute she said ‘How you doing’ and I knew why she had called. I asked her ‘Moulin Rouge’? She said ‘Yes’. ‘You want me to play Christian’? She said ‘Yeah.’ And we had a laugh.”
Cary admits that Christian is everything he is not. “The only thing Christian and me share is that we are both creative, musically inclined and we are both straight. That’s where the similarities end. During rehearsals, Roshni would often walk up and tell me: “More Christian, less rockstar,” he laughs.
Renu Anne Abraham who plays Satine, as Denver describes, is “one of the few around who can sing and dance really, really well.” Like everyone else in the cast, Renu cracked the audition.
“I had to do the most embarrassing scene for the audition,” Renu reveals. “The one with me on the floor going Yes, Yes, Yes,” she giggles.
“I am a dancer, when Chicago happened, I jumped in. I didn’t know to sing,” she adds as Denver clarifies: “She didn’t know she could sing.”
Gibran Osman plays the villainous Duke and has sprouted a moustache for the role. “I think it gives a little quirk to the character and it’s also something to keep my hands on. Ever since I watched Grease, I wanted to work with Roshni. So when she called me to audition, I did a very horrible version of ‘Please Forgive Me’ and I am so glad they had a character that didn’t have to sing much.”
Everyone had a Roshni story to narrate. “On a personal level, it affected me a lot because she is a very good friend but on the production side, her death affected us a whole lot because she was handling the finances,” says Denver. “I never knew who she was speaking to. When this happened, we had no idea of what to do and friends got together and pooled in to make the show happen.”
“This was her dream, this is what she wanted and we will just make sure she gets it now that she has the best seat in the house. She wanted us to be Spectacular, Spectacular and I hope we live up to that,” says Cary.
As they say, the show will go on. Come what may.
For tickets, go to http://nicholasproductions.blogspot.com or call 9940195883.
MADRAS INK. 