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    Reviews

    “A cerebral joyride”
    Karan Johar, filmmaker on REDIFF

    “Among the most charming and creative Indian independent films”
    J Hurtado, TWITCH

    ★★★★✩
    “You don’t really need a big star cast… you don’t even need a big budget to get the techniques of filmmaking bang on…”
    Allen O Brien, TIMES OF INDIA

    ★★★★✩
    “An outstanding experience that doesn’t come by too often out of Indian cinema!”
    Shakti Salgaokar, DNA

    ★★★
    “This film can reach out the young, urban, upwardly mobile, but lonely, disconnected souls living anywhere in the world, not just India.”
    Namrata Joshi, OUTLOOK

    “I was blown away!”
    Aseem Chhabra, MUMBAI MIRROR

    “Good Night Good Morning is brilliant!”
    Rohit Vats, IBN-LIVE

    ★★★✩✩
    “Watch it because it’s a smart film.”
    Shubha Shetty Saha, MIDDAY

    ★★★✩✩
    “A small gem of a movie.”
    Sonia Chopra, SIFY

    ★★★✩✩
    “A charming flirtation to watch.”
    Shalini Langer, INDIAN EXPRESS

    “Interesting, intelligent & innovative”
    Pragya Tiwari, TEHELKA

    “Beyond good. Original, engrossing and entertaining”
    Roshni Mulchandani, BOLLYSPICE

    * * * * *
    Synopsis

    ‘Good Night Good Morning’ is a black and white, split-screen, conversation film about two strangers sharing an all-night phone call on New Year's night.

    Writer-Director Sudhish Kamath attempts to discover good old-fashioned romance in a technology-driven mobile world as the boy Turiya, driving from New York to Philadelphia with buddies, calls the enigmatic girl staying alone in her hotel room, after a brief encounter at the bar earlier in the night.

    The boy has his baggage of an eight-year-old failed relationship and the girl has her own demons to fight. Scarred by unpleasant memories, she prefers to travel on New Year's Eve.

    Anonymity could be comforting and such a situation could lead to an almost romance as two strangers go through the eight stages of a relationship – The Icebreaker, The Honeymoon, The Reality Check, The Break-up, The Patch-up, The Confiding, The Great Friendship, The Killing Confusion - all over one phone conversation.

    As they get closer to each other over the phone, they find themselves miles apart geographically when the film ends and it is time for her to board her flight. Will they just let it be a night they would cherish for the rest of their lives or do they want more?

    Good Night | Good Morning, starring Manu Narayan (Bombay Dreams, The Love Guru, Quarter Life Crisis) and Seema Rahmani (Loins of Punjab, Sins and Missed Call) also features New York based theatre actor Vasanth Santosham (Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain), screenwriter and film critic Raja Sen and adman Abhishek D Shah.

    Shot in black and white as a tribute to the era of talkies of the fifties, the film set to a jazzy score by musicians from UK (Jazz composer Ray Guntrip and singer Tina May collaborated for the song ‘Out of the Blue), the US (Manu Narayan and his creative partner Radovan scored two songs for the film – All That’s Beautiful Must Die and Fire while Gregory Generet provided his versions of two popular jazz standards – Once You’ve Been In Love and Moon Dance) and India (Sudeep and Jerry came up with a new live version of Strangers in the Night) was met with rave reviews from leading film critics.

    The film was released under the PVR Director’s Rare banner on January 20, 2012.

    Festivals & Screenings

    Mumbai Film Festival (MAMI), Mumbai 2010 World Premiere
    South Asian Intl Film Festival, New York, 2010 Intl Premiere
    Goa Film Alliance-IFFI, Goa, 2010 Spl Screening
    Chennai Intl Film Festival, Chennai, 2010 Official Selection
    Habitat Film Festival, New Delhi, 2011 Official Selection
    Transilvania Intl Film Festival, Cluj, 2011 Official Selection, 3.97/5 Audience Barometer
    International Film Festival, Delhi, 2011 Official Selection
    Noordelijk Film Festival, Netherlands, 2011 Official Selection, 7.11/10 Audience Barometer
    Mumbai Film Mart, Mumbai 2011, Market Screening
    Film Bazaar, IFFI-Goa, 2011, Market Screening
    Saarang Film Festival, IIT-Madras, 2012, Official Selection, 7.7/10 Audience Barometer

    Theatrical Release, January 20, 2012 through PVR

    Mumbai
    Delhi
    Gurgaon
    Ahmedabad
    Bangalore
    Chennai
    Hyderabad (January 27)

    * * * * *

    More information: IMDB | Facebook | Youtube | Wikipedia | Website

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Posts By sudhishkamath

What’s Your Rashee? Kiss Your Ass Goodbye

September 26, 2009 · by sudhishkamath

In astronomy, comets are often named after the people behind the discovery.

Can such a convention can be applied for astrology too? Because ‘What’s Your Rashee’ marks the discovery of a new zodiac sign.

We could find water on the moon, so why should it surprise us that Ashutosh Gowariker has discovered a new Rashee?

Hero Harman Baweja’s Yogesh Patel is officially the first-known movie character to be born under this sign. Actually, we suspect that his character in Love Story 2050 took was born under the same one.

Strictly going by the traits displayed by Hurman, people born under the influence of ‘Jackass’ a.k.a. the Gadha Rashee, I have tried to come up with a preliminary analysis of the type, Linda Goodman style.

whats your rashee review poster

Sun Sign: Jackass

Rashee: Gadha

January 1-December 31, 2050 – 2008

How to Recognise Jackasses

Physical appearance: Jackasses are very self-conscious, they do not display their real emotions primarily because of a congenital disability that makes you wonder if they are wooden. They are like those cheap Made in China fakes… Apparently fakes and replicas are quite different. Fakes maybe made of a different material and are easy to tell apart from the originals, replicas are manufactured with the same materials (Mr. Baweja Sr. can only pray and hope that no material from one Rakesh Roshan was used in the production of his Jr. Baweja).

When kissed by the Princess, the right frog can turn into Prince Charming but no amount of kissing ass can make Ashu transform it into a horse.

Jackasses often pretend to be horses and the first sighting of this behaviour happened during a disaster called Love Story 2050. But with the right technicians, Jackasses can be made to look like fine horses from certain angles and this does happen in once in a while in ‘What’s Your Rashee’ too. (To be fair, Hurman has come a long way from 2050 days. He now looks human, not like the bad visual effect he used to look like)

So yes, Jackasses are confused and do not have an identity or mind of their own. They belong to families involved in scams… the kind of family that would even sell their son for money. Jackasses do not have a spine to stand up and do the right thing.

Jackasses get easily influenced overnight because of a book they just read and teary-eyes of their loved ones could make them go shopping for women who’ve been kindly listed on the basis of how much they are worth. (I am seriously curious to see how the Gujarati community reacts to this movie. The last thing Gujarat needs is another riot.)

Here’s how Jackasses behave with assorted sun signs of the opposite sex in Ashutosh’s universe that speaks and breathes Gujarati rather credibly within the stereotypes employed for the sake of comedy.

Jackass and Aries

Ashutosh’s Aries girl is a Behenji-Turned/trying to be-Mod.

Jackasses are observant and clever enough to spot a BTM by a mere glance of the regional newspaper in her handbag or her inability to smoke or speak English. She might look like Priyanka Chopra and would fit the profile of the Before Makeover Romantic Comedy type but that’s not good enough for an American Gujarati Jackass who waits tables/ freelances as a DJ in Chicago.

Outcome: Jackass hurts girl

Jackass and Aquarius

Jackasses have rather simple desires. A hawt Priyanka Chopra who speaks with an American accent and drives a convertible is just the perfect match. Okay, and if the Aquarian hawt chick already has a boyfriend and is only willing to be a friend, what choice would a jackass have but to grab what he gets – even if it’s just a late night drive. Outcome: Girl finds back-up bakra.

Jackass and Gemini

Jackasses know lines from trashy romance movies by heart and can also dance. A Jackass may find an equally romantic girl who is full of life and not hesitate to break her heart on account of a technicality – that he needs to get married in 10 days. A Jackass has the same approach to girls as he would have when he’s shopping for an underwear.

“Ok, I want Amul because… Yeh Toh Bada Toing Hai. But if you can’t give it to me right now, I will buy something else.”

Outcome: Jackass hurts girl

Jackass and Cancer

Jackasses would’ve liked their partner to be a virgin but they are willing to compromise. If the girl is able to guarantee that she will be able to outdo and improve her past performance in terms of quantum of love disbursed, a Jackass might consider her. A mere promise of “I will surely try” is not good enough. He has other women to check out. Outcome: Jackass hurts girl

Jackass and Libra

Jackasses are terrified of confident, bossy women. They get nightmares of being at the receiving end of S&M and all… Never mind the hypocrisy that he’s getting married for money, a Jackass does have a problem with her getting married for professional reasons. Jackasses can be proudly hypocritical.

Outcome: Jackass’s ego’s hurt

Jackass and Pisces

Jackasses are very scientific and rational. They feel claustrophobic when a rich spoilt girl offers unconditional love because she is certain that their bond is eternal and has lasted more than a lifetime.

Outcome: Jackass hurts girl

Jackass and Leo

Jackasses suck when it comes to wooing hawt chicks. Even if all they had to do was suck on a gola to get the rock-star item girl with a thousand fans.

Outcome: Jackass disappoints girl

Jackass and Scorpio

Bring an ordinary girl and introduce her to a Jackass and he would be like, when’s the next girl coming man? But the minute she changes into a short skirt and sports a hawt wig, Jackasses get excited but then again… They cannot deal with girls who want to be a supermodel and walk ramps around the world.

Outcome: Jackass liberates girl to chase her dreams (while actually rejecting her and the dumb girl does not even know)

Jackass and Sagittarius

Jackasses are virgins (nothing to do with Virgos) and fight shy of premarital sex. They find people believing in astrology ridiculous (Yes, you can imagine why they can’t relate to such old-fashioned folk in today’s world especially when he’s the one going around checking out girls on the basis of their Rashees).

Outcome: Jackass leaves girl horny in bed.

(Good thing that Jackass does not have Barney Stinson (HIMYM) for a friend…Imagine Barney’s frustration! “The Bulls Eye comes to your gun and all you had to do was hit that”)

Jackass and Virgo

Now, Jackasses though raised in the most traditional families have never felt at home in their place of origin. To expect a Jackass to work in a developing country is plain unreasonable and unimaginable, even if the girl is the perfect one and has the natural ability to strike a balance between work, relationships and doing what gives her happiness, irrespective of money.

Outcome: Jackass hurts girl

Jackass and Taurus

Give the Jackass the hottest looking, fun-loving, singing-dancing Princess and unlimited money and he will still turn it down if he finds her even a wee bit retarded and never get back to her.

Outcome: Jackass does not realise it was just a test

Jackass and Capricorn

A Jackass is not a paedo and you have to give him that. It’s another thing that he may still fantasise about the 15-year old in a dream song when he’s confused about which of the 12 to choose.

Outcome: Jackass liberates girl (this is also the ugliest girl of the lot but luckily, Jackass has a valid reason to reject her on the basis of age)

Jackass as a hero

Yes, Jackasses are also a little dumb taking after the animal the sign is named after. Moments after the Aquarian girl leaves telling him that she needs to explain and sort out something, he wonders why she left. He believes anything people would tell him (provided they are not women of course).

Jackass protagonists are characters even their creators don’t like.

In the interest of concealing the identity of the girl he would marry from the audience, director Ashutosh decides not to take the boy’s opinion into consideration.

Because the director knows his hero is a Jackass who is not capable of making up his mind. So he further highlights his hero’s smartness by having him look cluelessly at his bride and wonder who the hell she could be (since all of them anyway look like Priyanka Chopra who until this moment has been fantastic in each of her roles, giving each one a nice unique quirk that’s typical of her sun-sign). No prizes for guessing which girl chooses him (Just scan through the Outcomes and you will understand how the director discovered a new sun sign).

Could there BE anyone more stupendously moronical? I was completely intrigued by such a simply basic yet complexly paradoxical, near ill-defined, character type at this stage and it finally hit me that Ashutosh Gowariker had invented a new sun sign.

So I looked hard at Hurman’s face on the screen and wondered: Dude, What’s Your Rashee?

And at the end of the film, he gave that smile that said it all. Jackass, of course.

P.S: Ashutosh would do well to add all his deleted scenes to this three and a half hour fare and then make it a TV series like Mr. Yogi did. Watch it for the spirited Priyanka Chopra. Two stars.

How NOT to make your first film

September 23, 2009 · by sudhishkamath

My presentation during the workshop on Indie Filmmaking at NIT, Trichy recently.

How To: Use teen lingo

September 22, 2009 · by sudhishkamath

1. First, teens don’t spell conventionally. It’s not teens. It’s teenz. The golden rule: If it’s plural, replace the S with the Z. Add how many ever zees you want if its the last alphabet in the word. Like boyzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, folkzzzzzz, galzzzzzzzz etc. Similarly, if it’s a word that begins with C, replace it with K. Kool?

2. Get yourself a crash course in abbreviation. The most important one of them all is LOL. It means Laugh Out Loud. Using LOL during a chat or in a text message indicatez ur kool. You don’t have to worry about Upper case or Lower case because most teen are Case blind. lolzzzzz! If you suspect if you’ve overused it, don’t worry teens don’t care about overdose. But just to demonstrate your vocabulary, you could also use ROFL (rolling on the floor laughing), ROFLTIME (rolling on the floor with tears in my eyes) or even make up your own code and spread it.

3. Boycott vowels and if there’s a double letter in the word, either use just one or replace it with a vowel that sounds more like it. Sample: Look would become luk. Better wud bcum btr. cn u rd dis? r u ok? In fact, OK itself is considered a waste of a whole alphabet since O is understood, rather silent when teenz say the word. So it’s just K. Like this, k?

4. All official or formal sounding words have been purged from teen lingo. So please spelt pl still sounds formal and hence to communicate the kool vibe, please is spelt pliss or plees, love is spelt lou, alright becomes awrite or aite and sorry becomes sowwie. Yes, teens like baby talk… So always start a sentence with Awwwww… and end with kissie wissie or huggie wuggie. You can also end with any number of question or exclamation marks because teens love being dramatic… awwww! so cute!!!!!!!!!!!!! Not all teens use the wrong spelling because they want to save a few alphabets from being used, some of them use it to illustrate or stress the importance of magnitude of the emotion with which the word is said. So the aforementioned example would now read: Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww! Soooooooooooooooooo cuuuuuuute!!!!! Huggie Wuggie. Kissie!

5. Teens don’t understand nouns. They have one word that refers to all material and abstract nouns – Thingie. And one word to be used as adjective – bling. Watz dat thingie u hd 2 do dis wk? Gimme ur thingie 2day. They have two words when they have to talk about someone – Dude or Babe. Hey luk, dat dude frm da dance thingie v wnt 4 las wk cald. he nt wt dat bling babe NE mo. kool noooo?! lolzzzzzz!

(The writer dude, though 32, admits to having many kool teen friends on Facebook. The column originally appeared here.)

Unnaipol Oruvan: Need of the hour

September 17, 2009 · by sudhishkamath

An original film, even with its flaws, is beyond compare with any remake or interpretation of it simply because if it did not exist in the first place, the remakes would’ve never happened.

Hence, any comparisons of A Wednesday and Unnaipol Oruvan are futile and no matter how good Unnaipol Oruvan is, however improved it is, it cannot be “better” than the original.

Phew! Glad to have got that out of my system because when I tell people Unnaipol Oruvan is a certainly improved version of A Wednesday, they assume that I meant it’s better than the original. I am not sure if a remake can ever beat the charm of an original simply because an original did not have the benefit of hindsight and a remake has that advantage of looking back at a film and perfecting what did not work in it.

For those of you who haven’t seen A Wednesday, Unnaipol Oruvan spans a day in the life of a police commissioner (Mohanlal) who gets a phone call from a Common Man (Kamal Haasan) who says he has rigged the city with explosives and demands the release of terrorists.

Chakri Toleti’s Unnaipol Oruvan stays largely faithful to the original narrative and the filmmaker, along with writer Era Murukan, use the opportunity to fine-tune that classy political thriller a little more – politically and also in terms of characterisation to effectively transplant the plot miles away from terror-prone Mumbai where dealing with bomb blasts have almost become a way of life.

Yes, we in the South, have always been isolated from the problems of the rest of the country simply because we have not had to deal with the intense mayhem of communal riots, frequent serial blasts. In fact, the cityscape has been almost untouched by terror.

So there were a few things that seemed fundamentally irrelevant here and that notion of irrelevance is exactly what the makers decide to employ to appeal to the patriot down South.

The other advantage of distance is perspective and Kamal Haasan and Co have had ample time to iron out the minor flaws from the original narrative to make it more politically correct and sensitive. One of the four terrorists in this film is a Hindu weapons supplier, who shamelessly admits that it’s just business unlike the four Islamic militants in the original who echo each other saying ‘Faqr Hai.’

It’s a dream come true for any South Indian to watch Kamal Haasan and Mohanlal face-off and the veterans deliver, making it look effortless. Kamal Haasan speaks a little too much English for a Tamil film but when has language come in the way of an actor of his calibre and the audience. Even if he spoke in Mandarin, we probably would know what he’s saying, given the 50 years of seeing him around. Watch out for him in that emotional outburst following the revelatory twist, he will bring a tear to your eye. Ladies, please keep your hankies ready.

Mohanlal’s brand of restraint is a shade more refined than the emotional Kher (who loses his cool to beat the suspect with his own hands quite early in the film) and he plays the perfect foil to Kamal Haasan, playing the role with authority and a no-nonsense approach. There’s also Lakshmi as the Chief Secretary to the Chief Minister and the power play and equation between her and the Commissioner is again, a nice touch.

The film’s also a showcase for Ganesh Venkatram (who reprises Jimmy Shergill’s angry young cop with a little less bitterness), Anuja (who plays the cigarette-smoking stressed out TV journalist) and the geeky Anand Krishnamoorthi (last seen in Anjali May Maatham Sathi Leelavathi?) who plays the hacker minus the “dude-ness” of the guy in the original. Quite underplayed and effective, these three.

Yes, it’s a lot more detailed than the original (the common man’s paraphernalia is a little more elaborate – great work by the art department) and clearly Chakri’s focus seems to be on making it credibly tech-savvy (be it the SIM routing terms thrown around or the actual locations where they’ve filmed) but it’s also more predictable than A Wednesday since right at the beginning of the film the Commissioner lets in on us that it was the work of a Common Man.

You never even for a moment think that Kamal Haasan could be a terrorist but let’s get real, actors here are burdened with an image they cannot get rid of, even if they tried (btw, Kamal Haasan’s name appears without any Ulaga Nayagan tag in the opening credits) and it would’ve been futile even to attempt to make him look like a terrorist. Yes, here he does leave bags around at a shopping mall and a train compartment but after the revelation, you wonder what was the need for him to leave them there in the first place.

But then, A Wednesday too did something similar by telling us that the Intelligence agencies had got a photograph of a mystery man (we can see it’s Naseer though all we see are his eyes) who is suspected as a mastermind behind terrorist groups but is soon forgotten by the end of the story (This part wisely omitted in this version).

There are some nice additions by way of dialogue (like how he’s just an Invisible Man who can’t find his name in the voter’s list) and the film’s certainly shot much more lavishly than the original. It’s faithful and yet fresh in its own way.

Let’s just hope the market is ready to accept a film without song and dance (Shruti’s score remains in the background and that’s always a good thing) or even a heroine or a comedy track. Films like these are the need of the hour when cinema is getting increasingly infested with hero-worshipping entertainers. Hindi cinema has had hugely benefitted with the likes of UTV Spotboy backing quality scripts.

What Neeraj Pandey did this as a multiplex film, Kamal Haasan hopes to take to a bigger market. What the industry needs to kick open those doors to offbeat films is someone like you, Mr. Haasan. Unnaipol Oruvan.

Rating: 4 stars (3 and a half if you’ve seen the original)

Perfect 10: Thank you all!

September 1, 2009 · by sudhishkamath

Thank you Ma, for cutting out and keeping a record of every single one of the 2000 plus stories I have written in all these ten years.

I am such a lazy bum and I wish I can someday do for my kids at least 10 per cent of all that you’ve done for me. And Appa, for secretly being proud of me enough to tell everyone (when I’m not listening, of course) about even the smallest of my achievements since I passed out of college. I know you’ll never read this blog and that’s the only reason I am able to say this – I love you and thank you for being a pillar of support all these years.

Thank you Prof. A.R. Ramesh. Sir, You will always live in my heart. “We can argue as much as you want as long as we don’t come to blows,” you told your students, encouraging them to disagree with you. How many teachers do that? Thanks to you, I know that truth has many sides to it. I can’t thank you enough for guiding me in the right direction when I was confused about what I should do with my life.

Thank you Rocky Saab Prof. Rakesh Katarey for the continued support and education even a decade after college. You continue to inspire me.

Thank you Mr. N.Murali and Mr. N. Ravi. I am not sure if you would remember me meeting you during my MIC days and later, during my job interview. But for your judgement, I would have left India to pursue Integrated Marketing Communications and ended up hating it. I am grateful that you could accommodate me in this reputed institution. All that I know about life, I learnt on the job.

So, ten years ago this day, I joined a newspaper I grew up with. I walked into a hall of reporters who I knew only through bylines. In complete awe. I didn’t have a beat back then and within three months, just when I was wondering where I would fit into the scheme of things at The Hindu, the newspaper went from Black and White to Colour and introduced a section called Chennai-Life on Page 2. A section that would focus on the positive side of life in Chennai. I found my area of interest.

Thank you Mr. G. Ananthakrishnan for being a terrific boss. You were the silent driving force of the team and were able to extract the best from each of us in Reporting Dept. I cherish all the one-on-one meetings that gave this newcomer the much needed perspective.  I finished my first 1000 stories within three years at The Hindu, only because of the guidance and encouragement from you.

Ms. Malini Parthasarathy, though we never got to interact with you much then, I must tell you that we celebrated by distributing sweets in the department when we got to hear that you liked any of our stories. 🙂 Thank you for letting me make my first film. It was a learning experience and taught me more about cinema than I ever knew.

Thank you Ramya Kannan for taking me with you on assignments and making sure I felt at home as a newcomer to The Hindu. I’m pretty sure Prof. Ramesh would be proud of us both today.

Thank you K Ramachandran for being the epitome of cool. Thank you Suresh Nambath, RK Radhakrishnan, S. Shivakumar,  N. Ravikumar, P. Oppili, Saptarshi Bhattacharya, K. Manikandan, Swahilya, Karthik Subramanian, M Dinesh Varma, Lakshmi, Sujatha and Meera Srinivasan for those endless hours of fun, laughter and debates. I miss those days.

Thanks are also due to Mr. V. Jayanth and Mr. N. Sridharan for all the fond attention and support I’ve received from you over the years.

Thank you Mr. T.Ramakrishnan for pushing my boundaries and introducing me areas that were not in my comfort zone.

Thanks Shonali Muthalaly for co-authoring Campus Jottings and He Says, She Says with me. People still remember us by those columns and that wouldn’t have been possible without you. 🙂

And, thank you Prince, Paitandy, Divya and the rest of you at Metro for all the Saturday TT afternoons and for giving Round and Abouts. Hope you’ve posted tweets for Metro Tweets for the week.

Thank you Kritika Reddy for being so understanding and for putting up with me even when I have been a pain to deal with. I truly respect and admire your work ethic. Thank you all at the Metro Desk. I promise to watch the Word Count.

Thank you Mukund Padmanabhan for being the best boss I could’ve ever asked for. Without the space and freedom you have given me, I may have burnt out at least three years ago. I have learned the importance of restraint from you. I can’t thank you enough for watching my back.

From the bottom of my heart, I would like to thank Mr. N. Ram who has looked after me like his own Godson. I thank you Sir for making me one of the youngest Special Correspondents in the history of the newspaper in 2005 and for giving me the courage to speak my mind. Thank you also for your kind support in my pursuit of developing experimental, independent English cinema. You have been one of the most accessible bosses and I admire your zest for keeping up with the latest in technology and trends. You often make us feel old-fashioned.

My job’s taken me places. Singapore, South Korea, Phillipines, Australia and America. I’ve got to meet people I’ve always admired and have got to ask them everything I’ve always wanted to ask them. I’ve got to watch movies and so many of them that continue to educate and enrich my life, even the bad ones. I’ve got a job that lets me do my bit to bring about the change we have always wanted and promote quality cinema.

Thanks to my reputation of being a journalist, I’ve found new friends and soul mates for life. Shilpa Rathnam, you rock my world. Abhishek Shah, we wouldn’t have met either.

Thank you, everyone from my first fan Sandhya Ramachandran to all of you on my Facebook, Orkut, Twitter list and regular readers of this blog. And those of you who’ve formed Suderman fan clubs on Orkut, one day I hope to truly deserve them.

Finally, I would like to thank two of my peers, two absolutely fantastic film critics – Baradwaj Rangan of Indian Express and Raja Sen or Rediff. Guys, I may not agree with your reviews every time but I enjoy reading them nonetheless. I have a lot of respect for your integrity, courage and attitude – three things a critic cannot live without.

If I have missed out thanking any of you who have stood by me over the last decade, it’s only because it’s over four in the morning. So that’s it for now. See you all soon.

Never thought a bum like me would survive 10 years in a paper like this and be taken so seriously. Never thought I would be famous. Ha ha! Okay, almost famous.

Thank you all once again.

Love,

Me!

Final Moments: Michael Jackson tribute

August 31, 2009 · by sudhishkamath

Just before my battery could die, I shot the last bit of Pravin Mani’s Michael Jackson tribute concert on my N95. Awesome show!

Kanthaswamy: CockMan Chronicles

August 22, 2009 · by sudhishkamath

Dear God,

Muruga, if you exist, Kanthaswamy, please give a remote to every person who watches Kanthaswamy so that they can survive the onslaught of Cockman, the ridiculously slow narrative further slackened with are-you-kidding-me slow mos that had one frontbencher scream: “Yenai Konnudunga” (Kill me now)

Towards the end of the movie, Kanthaswamy asks item girl Mumaith Khan how much the bad guy (caught with his pants down, never bothers putting them back on) paid for her to come and dance in his mobile pad.

“30 Lakhs,” says Mumaith after that song that milked boobage for every penny paid to her.

“This 30 lakhs would’ve helped so many poor families,” CBI officer Kanthaswamy (Vikram) says, reeling out some more statistics to prove economic disparity in the country, a lesson director Susi Ganeshan seems to have picked up from the discarded pages of Shankar’s first draft of Sivaji.

In fact, a whole load of the plot devices including vigilantes with double lives, public grievances interface, encrypted passwords, media manipulation are from Shankar’s old pages from Gentleman, Anniyan and Sivaji.

Now, Susi, Vikram and Co… Considering the 40 crores you guys spent on making this Cock and bull story come alive, you could’ve just given that money to charity directly instead. Why make the already poor people spend another 50-100 bucks to watch something they already know from better-done films?

So what’s gone wrong with this superhero film?

Kanthaswamy or Cockman is not a unique superhero or original by any stretch of imagination or spandex. This self-styled superhero is just Batman wearing a Cocksuit, aided by 11 Robins and operates like Robinhood. Like Phantom, he operates like a ghost, leaving his victims with a mark of his ring. The only original bit in this is that funny cluckety-cluck Cock-dance he does with effeminate grace that had the audience in splits, before he attacks. In fact in another scene, he dresses up as a woman and dances like Aishwarya Rai after arousing a coupla jokers.

A helpful backstory later reveals that Kanthaswamy and his chaddi buddies were used to role-playing in school plays and that little Cockman always got to play Draupadi.

Wait a minute… What’s the significance again?

I am beginning to wonder if there’s any hidden code in each of Vikram’s films that try to find an outlet for repressed sexuality. Let’s think about it. First, Rampwalk Remo, then that Brokeback Mountain-like monologue in Bheema where his pining for the gangster led him to stalk his hero and now this Aishwarya Rai dance further explained with a childhood story about how he always played the girl.

Is he really trying to say something here? I’m just wondering. Not judging. There also seems to be a conscious need to assert his sexuality.

CockMan watches Shriya shake her booty in a video clip. A few scenes later, Shriya is made to kiss him forcibly and much later, in an in-flight restroom, there are random shots of them making out put in just to titillate the audience when the two are just having a conversation there. Or maybe it’s Susi’s Thiruttu Payale tit-for-titillation strategy for box office collections. Need to say here that Shriya’s never looked so hawt EVER! Three on ten just for Shriya’s ‘scene-dance’.

Susi’s obsession with Tits&Ass takes him to new deplorable levels in the name of comedy. He hasn’t even spared Vadivelu who gets to almost moon us (God make me blind!) as the cops drench him in full force of water to the tune of Megham karukuthu (Jo’s dance in Khushi) with Vadivelu’s transparent shorts showing us his butt-cheeks. Eeks!

How is it a superhero film if the hero hardly wears that suit in the second half of the film (his Cockdance would’ve provided so much comic relief but we never get to see it after the first half of the film)? The fact that Vadivelu and Vikram both look hilariously funny and almost identical speaks volumes about this superhero get-up involving a Cock! Really?

Vikram, I feel sorry for you. it’s not really your fault. You’ve done the best you can given this shoddy script. I’m glad you have a Mani Ratnam movie to wash away these sins. In fact your journey from struggling actor to star to super-hero reminds me of Mullholland Drive. (She kills the actor in her to become a narcissistic star)

Now, if Cockman is the alter-ego, who’s the Peter Parker-equivalent? You know, someone like Bruce Wayne or Clark Kent who is a cover to blend into society? Kanthaswamy’s ordinary avatar is CBI officer Kanthaswamy. In other words, one’s a superhero, the other, is well, also a super hero. Now, vigilantes or superheroes create unique identities because of their inability to do something they can’t do in their ordinary avatars.

But this CBI officer has all the power to raid the influential and a boss who is supportive. He also has people support, a support system consisting of his most loyal childhood friends, a very protected office space and he actually leads quite a cushy life –he commutes only in stylish SUVs or his superbike.

Even assuming he moonlights as God, with his elaborate stunts and special effects team, to help the public, there’s no real reason for an honest police officer, a DIG at that, to form a special team to nab him. At best, he’s just an urban legend who hasn’t hurt a fly.

Magic works best when it’s not explained. Here, Susi goes out of his way to explain how each stunt is done like a making-of-the-film built into the action sequences.

Thambi, your film is already 200 minutes long. And you have this alp-aasai of playing cool second hero and making a cameo. Control pannu pa, you are the director. You ought to be more responsible. Your role adds nothing to the film.

That whole Mexico bit was an extended holiday. One minute there are six guns put to Kanthaswamy’s head and instead of killing him there, they change location just to kill him. Both locations being middle of nowhere. And instead of shooting him, they throw away their guns to beat him with their bare hands!

Idhule Slow-motion verae! WTF!

The whole load of cock and bull cannot be least bit digested. In fact, members of the paying public, this movie is a surefire cure for constipation.

Kanthaswamy’s slow motion will guarantee loose-motion.

)

Kaminey: Sons of guns have a blast

August 18, 2009 · by sudhishkamath

Let’s say Guy Ritchie came up with yet another narrative bustling with a motley crew of characters whose paths cross in their quest for MacGuffins (we know how Guy loves multiple MacGuffins).

What if, the Coen Brothers then took over to add a few bizarre touches to this structure, made the oddball characters seem real, and added a touch of philosophy to make this pulp fiction look like a commentary on human nature.

And then, let’s say Quentin Tarantino took that material, rubbed his hands in glee and played around with the linearity of storytelling restricting his “answers first, questions later” approach strictly within individual sequences that play out chronologically, all building up to an end – which all these filmmakers love – That Bloody Mexican Standoff.

Now, imagine what happens when Vishal Bhardwaj exorcises their ghosts, shakes off those multiple personalities, and does to that material what he did to Shakespeare through his earlier films: Reinterpret the characters by rooting them firmly in a credible Indian milieu and make everything about that world come alive.

What you get is a movie where every single character, including the littlest of boys, turns out to be a dirty rotten scoundrel. A film where even the nicest ones stay grey.

Read the rest of the review on the official site
Sons of guns have a blast

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Love Aaj Kal: Jab We Split, Socha Na Tha…

August 6, 2009 · by sudhishkamath

Green Goblin (to Spider-Man): “But the one thing they love more than a hero is to see a hero fail, fall, die trying. In spite of everything you’ve done for them, eventually they will hate you. Why bother?”

Dear Imtiaz Bhai,

When you did Socha Na Tha, you were the underdog. We critics love the underdog, because we like to pride ourselves on discovering a hero. When you did Jab We Met, despite a limited actor like Shahid Kapoor and an over-enthusiastic Kareena, we gave you a thumbs-up because you proved us right. You were the hero we said you were. You could entertain us with your charm and your writing was fresh.

Then as you readied up your third film shot at lavish budget (FYI, critics like myself hate big budget films because we rarely get the money to make the films we want to make), we sharpened our pencils.

And you defy us further by not casting Kareena in a Saif production. Obviously we are going to hit out at you at the slightest excuse.

So Viren can ask Aditi “Yeh kaunsa angle hai,” because it was your first film. But today when you make Jai ask Veer Singh “Aapka angle kya hai” you are trying hard to please the SMS generation with some phrase nobody has ever used. Does not work. Sorry. Only Farah Khan and Karan Johar have the licence to make their heroines come up with cool catch phrases like “A-void” or “Whatever”.

And suddenly, we realise that your conversation films have too much dialogue in them. How dare they, when they are supposed to have Kathakkali.

But then, we are critics, we need to find something to pick on to keep our jobs and reputation in tact.

Even mango people today turn armchair critics thanks to free blogs and a little time. No word limit restrictions, free hai. (That explains this long post)

We understand that ‘song and dance’ is an alienation technique employed by Indian filmmakers to constantly remind us that we are just watching a movie but that does not stop us from finding “logical errors” in the film – like why did a racist attack lead to a guy being beaten up and even going into the specificities of the choreography of this attack. It didn’t matter in Dilwale Dulhaniya that Shah Rukh Khan got beaten to pulp and spat out blood before the patriarch changed his mind but when a racist punk bites a hand in Love Aaj Kal, it’s deliciously funny.

Green Goblin was right, you know. Some of us are desperate to see you fail.

But there are the cynics and there are the romantics. And some of us in the criticism business happen to review with our Dil rather than Dimaag.

So Imtiaz Bhai, seriously, nobody seems to know the confused generation more than you do. If you were a girl, I would’ve said: Tu Hamesha Correct Baat Bolti Hai, Jaaneman.

In Socha Na Tha, a confused dreamer Viren fell in love with a practical Aditi on the verge of proposing to his girlfriend of three years and wrecked havoc on three families – his, his girlfriends and hers. The dreamer turned practical and the practical girl dared to dream.

In Jab We Met, a workoholic Aditya met a full of life Geet when he’s on the brink of suicide and she’s on her way to elope. He finds his life back on track during an unexpected road trip that takes him to the heartland of India and realises there is no right or wrong when you fall in love while she finds her life derailed and turns into a hardcore cynic. Again, all you did was switch the character graph quite predictably but nobody complained because we were having fun.

The heart versus head conflict is back on a more intimate scale in Love Aaj Kal – a modern take on romance in a world that’s finally rid itself of warring families (Again, nobody had a problem with the age old conflict of families that don’t get along in Socha Na Tha) and the old need to manufacture parental consent (DDLJ to Jab We Met).

But this is the I, Me, Myself generation post Dil Chahta Hai and all we care is for ourselves.

What would have happened if Dev D instead of taking to alcohol, mindlessly just kept skipping from one relationship to another to escape his reality? But you are no Anurag Kashyap, you love life and like to find moments of fun even in the most serious situations.

I totally related to that. I remember once how I completely convinced an old girlfriend that it was only practical that we part ways because of the distance and immediately after that, held her tight to say: No, please cancel that. Forget I said it. It was the funniest moment to have happened in the middle of a break-up but it did. It always does because life has those unpredictable moments. And it’s moments like that, that make your film everybody’s story – the story of mango people.

I love how you rather beautifully employ the great confusion of our times (Man versus Himself) to explore how the young and the restless look at romance. We want all the good parts and when it comes to the tricky parts that may potentially cause pain, we want to hit the Escape button.

After the easy going Jai (Saif) and the grounded Meera (Deepika) have decided to part ways, Jai stifles his angst by pumping up the volume on his car stereo. As the dancers break into ‘Twist,’ I love how you turn the film temporarily into a full-fledged musical – Jai’s magic world of escape, freedom and beauty. Now I wonder why some of us who had a problem with a racist punk biting an arm didn’t have a problem with a street-side carnival where firangs danced to a Hindi track. Oh wait, they did. Because this is a realistic biopic type ka docudrama and it surely couldn’t have happened, right?

I am a huge fan of subversion and I loved how you completely subverted the notion of post-relationship-trauma and turned it into a celebration, yet making it a bitter-sweet moment. Yes, because breakups happen quite often and in this age of rising divorce rates, people are less likely to kill themselves over a break up.

So I love the fact that Jai believes he has no heart and keeps running away from pain, turning every occasion to brood into a full-blown celebration. He throws a break up party, becomes best friends with his ex, even gives her tips to get a new boyfriend, gets himself a new girlfriend and does everything that brings him instant happiness.

One such effort to escape his pain brings him to Delhi where he rediscovers what it was like to be with Meera. And the confusion continues.

I also like how you contrast Jai by introducing us to an older Veer (Rishi Kapoor), the eternal romantic who wooed his love Harleen (Giselle is such a beauty, who wouldn’t go to Calcutta chasing her) in the sixties, the good-old fashioned way, literally following his dream miles away and found focus in life just so that he can afford to be with her and the irony of today’s career-chasing rats racing towards depression.

Love Aaj Kal is essentially a conversation between Jai and Veer (the young and the old) and how they look at romance. You sure are aware of the restlessness of modern day audience. The dialogue is snappy and the scenes well snipped as the young continue to lose and find love till they finally find themselves.

I also love that simple beautiful moment when Jai fondly pokes Meera and she pokes him back and scenes after they’ve broken up, Jai stands with his new foreign girlfriend and pokes her hoping to get that familiar experience from his new girlfriend. He takes her to their old haunts, hoping she could substitute Meera.

Saif Ali Khan delivers the performance of his career and even the dollish Deepika Padukone shines with her understatement and naturalism (though Kareena fans may staunchly disagree and I am glad Meera is not an overenthusiastic chatterbox). I mean I just loved these actors delivering two of the finest scenes ever filmed in recent times – one where Jai walks up to the tell Meera on her wedding day that he’s really OK and that she shouldn’t worry for him and then goes on to vocalise the confusion in his head and the immediate one where Meera tells her husband on their honeymoon that she made a mistake.

Love Aaj Kal is an intense rollercoaster of romance drama and luckily for the sappy ones in the hall, you have kept the mood light, never running out of laughs, even in the film’s darkest moments; scenes a Karan Johar would’ve used to milk your tear-ducts dry.

Indian mainstream cinema has not seen a more contemporary love story. It’s a complete film; the dialogues are breezy and refreshingly candid, there’s not a song out of place, the smart choreography adds to the richness of the narrative, the editing keeps it tight, and the visuals are rich with metaphors – if the Purana Qila epitomises old world romance how interesting that Meera is the restoration artist.

I think it’s because we overanalyse our relationships so much that we have ended up dissecting romance even in our movies. We focus on the flaws and miss out on the larger beautiful picture.

So from one romantic to another: Thank you so much Imtiaz, for this beautiful moving picture. Thank you very much.

Luck: This four letter word film makes That four letter word film look good!

July 25, 2009 · by sudhishkamath

Warning: Review contains spoilers… But what can I possibly spoil for you that Soham already hasn’t?

By now, we’ve all heard how Luck is so bad that this four letter word has become synonymous with unprintable profanity.

It’s only fair that we inaugurate this new abuse by showering its creator Soham Shah.

Luck man! Luck you for making this luck-all film. It’s so lucking lame. For luck’s sake, keep the luck away from cinema halls because the poor luckers who paid for it will beat the luck outta you. It truly lucks.

Cheap shots aside, a question.

What do you call a monkey that broke into the Louvre and came out stealing a photograph of Mona Lisa?

Okay, all right, now you don’t want to call yourself names but dude, apologies are in order.

I’m sorry I mistook you for a thief. Now, I know you aren’t smart enough to steal 13 Tzameti. Or from any of the other films you broke into for inspiration – The Condemned, Intacto or Unbreakable.

There’s a theory that stupid people are not capable of evil because planning requires intelligence.

Considering that you’ve taken the central plot of innocent young man in dire need of money finding his way into a human betting racket, the crucial Russian Roulette scene at the middle of the second act and even helped yourself to the number 13 from its Imran Khan-type protagonist Georges Babluani, I see you were excited about something from 13 Tzameti enough to go shop-lifting, but it’s just that you had no clue how to steal it, did you?

Now, I don’t need to tell you what kind of a loser gets caught without even stealing?

13 Tzameti/Luck

There was surely a reason why 13 Tzameti was minimalist by design.

Gela Babluani took a good 40 minutes to set-it up (though the film itself is only 90 odd minutes) before the guy knew what he was getting into. Since we had travelled that journey with him, our hearts pounded with nervous anxiety when we, like him, suddenly realised what the stakes were.

The indoors added to the claustrophobia, the black and white instantly gave it a moody noir feel and it was the sheer atmospherics and the voltage of tension that had us by our balls – not just the Russian Roulette situation by itself but the suddenness of it in his clueless pursuit of an opportunity.

He gets into it unwittingly and realises there’s no exit and we are with him till the end because we care for this poor ill-fated bastard.

13 Tzameti is all about Luck too (Gela finds so many ways to keep playing with the number 13 and its variants – the clock at the train station says 13:00, the car number is 13 13, the hero’s own number in the betting game is 13, the locker number is 103 and so on) but what keeps that film unpredictable is that we do not know how luck will change.

In fact, Luck plays a poetic lead role in Tzameti. Anything could happen in this film. There’s a real imminent danger that this young man could die at any point in the film.

In Luck, we are assured and guaranteed that nothing can happen to those who have been born lucky and lived invincible – Like the hero of Shyamalan’s Unbreakable.

Right there, we stop caring for this bloke because we know that mainstream Hindi cinema constraints dictate that he ends up alive. Poor Imran is the biggest casualty of poor screenwriting. He’s clueless about his character-graph and at no point does he seem to face any sort of hurdle or difficulty in going from round to round. We also know when he saves the girl’s life – not once but thrice – that this girl aint gonna die even if she can’t act to save her life. Or maybe she’s supposed to look that way – emotionless, hiding pain in that nubile body, all goth and tattoo – but the writers forgot to go into the details.

So Shruti goes on to prove that genes have got nothing to do with acting and goes about her lines like a Hindi-speaking robot. The only explanation for this weird acting is that she’s pretending to be someone else.

From the moment she’s introduced without a back-story (the other characters get a sequence each summing up their history – like a shoddy reality show on TV), we know there’s a twist waiting… Oh God, what could it be? An undercover cop?

But then, why is she wasting her time swimming around and killing innocent people helplessly if all she cared for was to kill the man responsible for her twin sister’s death?

Does not matter, we know she won’t die because it would render the hero’s efforts of saving her thrice meaningless.

The high point of this film is a touching scene between Mithun and Chitrashi Rawat – one where she shows us how she can make the silliest lines feel genuine and a super-fine Mithun gets all moist-eyed with so much conviction that makes you think if he’s just wondering looking at Chitrashi: Why can’t saala Mimoh act like this?

Now, we are left hoping at least Mithun and Chitrashi Rawat will die but the minute the four of them hold hands like an underdog hockey team, we are like: WTF! So is there anybody who will die in this supposedly dangerous deadly game?

Even the villain doesn’t seem to die. The grey guys in shades – Sanjay Dutt (who’s contractually bound to walk only in slow mos) and Danny Denzongpa end up too charming, so Soham has no heart to kill them off either.

So does anybody die at all?

Yes, of course, the foreign extras die, round after round, some of them after spouting bad Hindi dialogue. Since when did we care for dying extras?

In fact, nobody from the main cast or their dying relatives die in the course of the film. And as the first frame informs us, even the animals in the film were treated with love and care and were filmed in the presence of veterinarians.

Lucky sons of bitches – they all got paid fat cheques, got to tour Bangkok and South Africa, did parasailing, went deep see diving and even got to run on top of trains… What fun!

But Soham Shah, you are the luckiest bastard – you didn’t even have to hurt your brain cells making this one.

And, yes, you are forgiven for trying to steal 13 Tzameti. Dumb-fuck.

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