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Yes, the fortnightly column has been updated at its home on the web.
Catch Shonali play troubled housewife here.
Women always have it easy, says He.
She, of course, comes up with a dramatic rebuttal.
😉
Watching ‘Garam Masala’ is like watching a Neil Simon stage play. It’s hilarious, with zany characters sparkling with wit, banking on comic timing.
I haven’t seen the original ‘Boeing Boeing’ or it’s Malayalam version but judging it purely by the Hindi version, it’s laugh-riot, guaranteed to crack you up.
Having paid Rs.110 for a seat at the new theatre in Sathyam, Six Degrees, I was just hoping that it better be my money’s worth. And yes, it was. The leather seats make you feel like royalty and the plush interiors with LCD screensaver displays used as wallpapers are quite a unique experience.
But all that is quickly forgotten when the movie starts. Right from the beginning, a largely under-rated Akshay Kumar has you rooting for him, inspite of his deeds and ambitions being far from noble. I guess that’s because, at some level, it’s every guy’s fantasy: To date three hawt women, just to get even with your buddy.
As he begins to juggle between three air-hostess chicks he manages to patao, the lines just get better, as the hero tries to match their flight timings, his job and competition from his rival/ buddy John Abraham, and of course, unexpected trouble from a motley crew of characters: Paresh Rawal as Mambo, a cook who can’t take tantrums, Rajpal Yadav, an alcoholic mechanic who would do anything for a bottle apart and Manoj Joshi, his corrupt office manager and Asrani, the Maama of his fiancee.
Priyadarshan’s brand of comedy relies more on lines and situations rather than the slapstick variety churned out by David Dhawan and hence appeals to city-centric as well as the rural audiences. So, this masala might just turn out to be the flavour of the season.
Just one crib: The movie wears a sit-com feel with most portions of the movie taking place indoors. But then, you laugh so much that after a point, you really don’t mind the studio set.
Go for it. Total timepass.
Genre: Comedy (attempted)
Cast: Fardeen Khan, Zayed Khan, Sharman Joshi, Esha Deol, Soha Ali Khan, Ayesha Takia, Sanjay Dutt, Aarti Chhabria, Sophie Chaudhary, Riya Sen Director: David Dhawan
Storyline: Three married guys try to make their extra-marital affairs work.
Bottomline: David Dhawan tries too hard to make this movie work.
The master of laughs needs a vacation.
For starters, David Dhawan is let down by silly writing. So much that even a usually effective Sanjay Dutt playing “Paaji” churning out Punjabi punchlines (like in “Jodi No.1” and “Ek Aur Ek Gyarah”) turns out to be an irritant.
The two dozen limericks he comes up with in the course of the movie make it impossible to sit through.
Half the jokes in the film don’t work. The writers try hard to ensure all three heroes have a funny line in each scene, so much that after a couple of scenes, even the order of dialogue delivery becomes predictable. Some of lines are corny, some of them risqué and all of them try hard to be funny.
The movie starts off well when the director introduces us to the lives and wives of Raj (Fardeen), Veer (Zayed) and Aryan (Sharman). Bhawna (Ayesha), Diya (Esha) and Sonia (Soha) who play the respective wives, do not have time for their hubby, as they get busy with religion (Bhawna) and careers (Diya models and Sonia practices law). So when big boss Satish Shah asks the boys to win-and-break-hearts of his three daughters, Madhuri (Riya), Rekha (Aarti) and Dimple (Sophie), so that the sizzling sisters settle for an arranged marriage, the heroes jump at the opportunity.
The wooing-the-girl gimmicks are good fun, especially Zayed as Spiderman, brings the roof down.
But once Sanjay Dutt as the mysterious Lucky Paaji enters the house, the entire movie comes tumbling down. This is where inane limericks take over and the writers run out of ideas to take the plot ahead. The rest is pretty predictable.
Sharman is the pick of the guys and Soha has electric screen presence. The glam girls Riya, Aarti and Sophie provide enough oomph to keep front-benchers happy.
(Aside: Currently, I’m totally in love with Soha and full of lust for Aarti… Slurp!)
Sanjay Dutt fails to steal scenes and would do well for himself if he could steal the prints and hide them away.
Cast: Salman Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Om Puri, Jackie Shroff, Rimii
Director: Priyadarshan
Genre: Drama/ Tragedy
Storyline: A mentally ill patient finds a compassionate doctor who changes his life, almost.
Bottomline: It’s a comedy.
We always knew that Priyadarshan is brilliant at comedy but trust him to make a tragedy with great potential look like an outrageous spoof.
So much that what should be a poignant end comes across as a whacky parody, as the audience cheers.
The publicist must have had his tongue in cheek to tag ‘Kyon ki…’ with a line like “It’s fate” giving the crowd enough scope for jokes on why they showed up for the movie.
‘Kyon ki’ fails because it’s ridden with cliches.
The stereotyped portrayal of the mentally ill is so old-fashioned and insensitive that whoever thought of it needs rehabilitation.
Salman as Anand tries earnestly to lend the film some of his charm but the characterisation makes him look mentally ill even in the portions when he is not supposed to be. Especially, when he’s stalking the heroine, spray-painting her room with ‘I Love You’ graffiti and vandalising roads with cornball “I like you. You like me.”
And the hip and fashionable girl he chases, Maya (Rimii) turns out to be a nun in the making. A freak tragedy later, Anand finds himself in the asylum with a kind-hearted doctor who doubles up as the local barber and Gillette-model, who gives the already clean-shaven Salman a shave and even rubs her cheek against his to demonstrate what a fine job she has done.
Thanks to such unconventional tactics of cure employed by Dr.Tanvi (Kareena) and Dr.Sunil Bhaiyya (Bhaiyya must be Jackie Shroff’s surname in the movie because everyone calls him that), Anand recovers in record time.
Now, Anand is not your regular mentally ill patient. Before he turned mentally ill, he spent hours painstakingly detailing the flashback with songs, lyrics, tune, mp3 clips, music videos etc. This kind of detailing helps Tanvi and Sunil cure Anand through a radical approach: the making-patient-run-around-woods-somersault-music-therapy.
‘Kyon ki…’ is easily 20 or 25 years late. Guaranteed to have Mohanlal (‘Thalavattom’) cringe and Jack Nicholson (‘One who flew over the cuckoo’s nest’) turn mentally ill.
Ken Kasey, the writer of ‘One who flew..,’ is said to have been upset that filmmakers were “butchering” his book until he caught it on TV one day while flipping channels. Considering he died four years ago, he must be turning in his grave.
‘Kyun Ki..’ It’s fate. Indeed.
(When I read Shonali’s She Says in response to what I had written, I could see it clearly. Shonali going home making dinner, feeding the pets, sorting the laundry, helping kids with homework, clearing the table, washing dishes, organising the larder, stocking out the fridge and ironing her husband’s clothes so the poor man won’t be late for work the next day. And this applies even if she’s not married huh? Read on to see how easily they play the “Women-make-babies-and-hence-deserve-special treatment” card with ease!)
He says:
Men have to work twice as hard. Women always have it easy.
Maybe that’s how they are prone to laziness. A smile and a ‘Please’ get them places. A frown and a ‘Sorry’ gets them away with murder.
They always get lifts. They get noticed. Men find it so hard to say No’ to them.
It’s a rather unfair advantage. The world is turning into an evil uneven playing field where women most often get to call the shots.
Men struggle. They sweat it out, workdays, work nights, work overtime and go unnoticed. When a girl does that once, she makes sure everyone knows she worked. Soon, she’s a star and is amply rewarded with a promotion.
Why?
Because, men work hard. It’s not surprising to find hardworking men. So, they are taken for granted.
Because, women hardly work. And when they do, it becomes an event.
Because, women press the feminist button only when it suits them.
Otherwise, they expect you to carry their luggage, pay for food, open doors, drop them home, stand in and cover up. They make him type a fortnightly column first six out of eight times when it’s rightfully his turn to write the rebuttal.
They so like to have the last word, don’t they? They are lazy to the bone. I’m not kidding when I say they get away with murder. Even been in an accident spot? The woman always has the sympathy of the crowd, even when it’s her fault. A man in her place would’ve been roughed up. Why is that guys return empty-handed from a sponsorship pitch no matter how hard they had worked? Why is it that the girl comes back with a cheque by just flashing her pearly whites? Because, gentlemen, it’s a woman’s world out there. And, they call us male chauvinists for speaking up! Ha!
She says:
It’s shocking really. Women have it so easy, it’s surprising those pitiable, underfed, over worked men don’t revolt.
After all, all a woman has to do when she comes home from the office is to make dinner, feed the pets, sort the laundry, help the kids with homework, clear the table, wash dishes, organise the larder, stock out the fridge and iron her husband’s clothes so the poor man won’t be late for work the next day. And this happens even if they earn the same salaries.
Because, if you think about it, the opposite sex has done a rather sneaky thing.
Women fought untiringly for the right to work and earn their own money, and eventually, they got to work. But that didn’t mean they won.
Because, now women help pay the rent. And they also get stuck with all the traditional ‘woman’s work,’ including exciting things like scrubbing kadais after a day of power talks in high level board rooms. Statistics show that they earn less than men for doing the same jobs. On top of that, many constantly battle the glass ceiling, which prevents them from rising to positions of power in companies.
And then, when a woman has a baby, she either drops out of her professional life or strenuously learns how to juggle her children and career. When a man acquires a child, he opens a bottle of cognac.
As for the new age man? (The one you see in all those ‘complete man’ ads, dimpling over a baby and getting teary-eyed at pretty sunsets.) Well, he’s sniggering into the soap suds everyday, because in exchange for virtuously pressing a couple of buttons on the washing machine to prove he helps out with housework, he’s got his self-sufficient wife/ girlfriend to file the taxes, fix the computer and drive him to work in the morning.
So we get an extra scoop of ice cream in our cold coffees when we smile at Baristas. Or some sweet guy lets us cut a line when we’re in a hurry. Or one of the three and a half chivalrous men left in the world offers to buy us popcorn in a crowded movie theatre so we don’t get pinched black and blue by his ‘friendly’ compatriots.
Those are the few perks left.
Be nice. Let us enjoy them while they last. Please?
Disclaimer: No defamation suit will be entertained by the host, any electronic legal notice served will be promptly and quietly deleted. I do not wish to make news at Desipundit and encourage just another hoax controversy.
🙂
Holy Matrimony
I just had a writer’s blog (mispelled wantedly)…Me not much of a writer, but me getting addicted to blogging.
It is evident from how the page looks…fulla colors…keeps changing its shape and form…including links and what not…all for what? Vetti thanum (Time wasting tactics)…
Me wants to stop…but my vetti brain is working like a devil’s workshop.
So here is one more…In search of new material I chat with the lesser vetti friend of mine – Suderman. (Even in vetti thanum I beat him :))…Suddenly sprawns a great idea of visiting matrimonial sites – from me. I start searching. I am not gonna tell you which website…but within 10 minutes of search I find….the whole thing really funny (and you romantic people thought I am gonna tell you that I found my life partner)…you should just look at the profiles of the people to understand, by people I mean both women and men…What
big lies. Before I go further into the topic let me defend myself here..My profile is titled “Publicity Stunt” so actually its a stunt for the public, to the public and getting adi (hits) by the public. ok that much defending is enough I guess..
One more thing…Naina (dad)…hope you have not posted me in such a website…
I searched (thankfully and hopefully) he has not. Its an interesting fact that matrimony search, from the sections of the newspaper ads, has just jumped online…but I think with Newspapers its proof read at least once before publishing it…but when you go online…its you/your dad publishing it. So people, be careful about spelling mistakes and grammar too…some very funny ones I found there…( I have copy pasted the stuff here without correcting them the blue ones are my comments, red ones are from guys and green from girls)
(this is an effect of using shortened forms for words- with = wit, that= tat and message is shortened to mess totally gives a different meaning)
· believe in the bond called as marriage, so i expect it to happen wit a guy who equally loves me, and a good mutual understanding should exist in between us.i wish tat this mess reaches the right person, who will understand me better, and love me.
· FAILRE GOOD LOOKING, VERY SOFT SPOKEN…
· WOULD LIKE WORKING WOMENSHIP NOT ONLY HOUSEHOLD WIFE. I AM DOING TEACHING & INTRESTED IN TEACHING & MASS COMM.JOBS.
The most funniest was some guy posted his photo and profile as female-unmarried…
and the website still lists him under females, and he comes up when you search for females :))
(an no he is not looking for males 🙂 thats what his/her profile claims
· ….I wanted to marry a girle of north india. Girle of Education of b.tech or MCA will be preferred
Someone please tell him…3 basic points…
he should not post under females
he should have got the idea when his profile turned up in female search…
and he can either say girlie or girl and not mix up the 2….:)
I could not control myself :))…so investigating further
Anyway after copy pasting all this stuff, I also looked at a striking similarity in all of them…
· 90 percent of the women are modern as well as traditional.
· parents don’t care about food habits but do care about chevvai dosham/mangalik
· all are fairly good looking…( I am not denying it)…
· they all have a modern outlook in life but only prefer Rajput, Iyer, Gupta, Gounder, Mudaliyaar, Maurya, Choudhari…
Then there is this word being repeated in all the female profiles “I am a HOMELY”…”My daughter is HOMELY”….Our daughter is HOMELY (Is she always at home??)…
Ok then comes the self-proclaimed guys settled/working in US/abroad (sadly I am to be classified/kalassified with them)..they are always “COOL”..(vayila asingama varthu)…fun loving and broad minded but give importance to sub-sub-sub caste….
and there are also parents who put the profiles for them…(Hope my Naina(Dad) has not done this great injustice to me)..
He has adapted to both western and Indian culture very well. Professionally, he is an Engineer and is currently working for a reputed Fortune 50 company ( you missed a zero wantedly??? to show he is in top 50???)…
All the NRIs are adapted to well suited to western and Indian culture – according to parents…they are all Social Drinkers…(Paiyan will be moda kudiyan)….thats what the people who are searching for them will think… 🙂 …
I had a nice entertainment going thru matrimonial websites and hope that my Naina has not listed me there and does not list me in the future. If he wants to list my profile anyway, please do tell him to list this in the profile…this is the exact opposite of what you will find in a matrimony website so don’t get tensed if you don’t see any grammatical or spelling mistakes…
My profile
———-
It’s Very easy to tell about me. I am mostly vetti (a tamil word to describe idle/ideal according to me) and during that time I do anything possible which is not listed under any criminal offence. In my Spare time (other than my vetti time) I am trying to do my work. All that I do in my vetti time (including this)…falls in the category of hobbies. To name a few…chatting with friends (in yagoo, google and the outside world)..blogging about the
vettiest things. I would like include the fact that I am “HOMELY” like your girl, I am very much attached to home. I like to laze around all day and sit at home…but due to disturbances like work. I cannot claim thatI am totally “HOMELY”. Since I also know what the other meaning of “homely” is = “Not attractive or good-looking “( please check a dictionary)…In being homely I fall in the meaning described by you for your daughter/yourself. I am not at all simple…My mind is too complex for me to understand…:). I don’t think I am always Normal (that’s because I think Normal = boring), that does not mean I am abnormal too.(if I look abnormal to you thats cos you look abnormal to me…I love the relativity theory).I think I have only this much vetti time for now. If you want to get more vetti please do visit my blog.
———-
End of my profile
I wanted to post this Sudhish, but finally decided not too…for the following reasons
So, if you want to post this on your blog…you can…I do not want my greatest vetti work to go for a waste.
Cheers,
Anonymous
He he!
I gave up on moderating in less than 24 hours after I enabled it. It’s such a kill-joy.
Cuz there is no more suspense or excitement about opening your blog and finding some sad ass anonymous son of anonymous fathers leaving a mark of his presence.
A mark that tells you someone in this world cannot stand you. When you affect someone you don’t really know that much, it means you’ve arrived. You are popular. Imagine, these people not only visit you regularly, they do a word verification, and post a comment to take out their pent up frustration and keep checking every one hour to see if I’ve kicked their butt yet.
But then, it is also a mark that reminds you that you have a long way to go. And your goal is not achieved till you kick the last evil rotten butt left in blogosphere.
I was just telling China how it’s so boring when you know you control everything in your blog. And he quoted Godfather: Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.
So there, I’m back to laying the trap. Keeping the comments section open, unmoderated for the bad guys to show up.
I hate to admit it, I love it when I get to kick butt. That’s a superhero’s job.
So thank you, anonymous losers for making me a superhero.
After all, good loses its purpose without evil.
And the sweet is never as sweet without the sour. I have to know the sour.
So come on masochistic buttheads, get your ass/face kicked here.
The music you are listening to now is the title track of That Four Letter Word.
Thanks to Arvind for hosting it.
It’s at very low bitrate so that even dial-up users can listen to it.
This track was done for us by a very talented desi American band called Karmacy.
They happened to be friends of my co-writer and school buddy Murugan who asked them to do this for us. I just happen to dig it out this week from my archives.
It’s something they did for us in 2002 when we first wrote the script. We’ve shot the movie twice ever since. And Karmacy has gone on to become a big phenomenon in the US.
Meanwhile, our music director Asif Bhai has done a fantastic score for us.
More on that later.
For now, let me just let you listen to the title track on this blog. The player, in case you wanna turn it off, is right at the bottom. 😉
Cheers!
My internet is down at home. So not been online much.
Wanted to post reviews of Sivakasi, Maja, Shaadi No.1. But due to time constraints and the fact that my Sivakasi story has to appear on print first, here’s the gist of it till I get a chance to update in detail.
Sivakasi: Super-duper fun. Just a coupla cribs though: Sentiment overdone, just too many sexist lines (We have to blame Superstar for showing the way!). But for that, I think Sivakasi packs more punches and punchlines than Tirupaachi or any Ilaya Thalapathy movie. Ilaya Thalapathy is brilliant in doing a Superstar act, it’s like watching a 90s Thalaivar superhit movie… the build-up song, the comedy, the savaal and the rise to power of the simpleton… all told with plenty of tributes to Superstar. What’s good about Vijay is he doesn’t merely copy, he takes it one step forward with his own charm and interpretation of style, punch-lines and even manifests it in his dance and costumes… More superstar than superstar himself. He’s surely the prince! I only wish Perarasu had made this with Superstar 10 years ago, it wud’ve run 500 days! Now, it will probably run 250!
Watched it again last night. The movie is a blast. Entertainment guaranteed. Almost lost my throat screaming during the first day first show.
Maja: Vikram does a Simbu. I totally hated the finger-gimmicks. He says: “Maja pannu” about 254 times in the movie that after a point of time, you really wanna ask him to shove it up. I know he did a similar finger stunt in Gemini too but here it’s sooo wannabe Little Superstar. I soooo wish Vikram goes back to Dharani and does a coupla films. He seems to be losing it. Nothing wrong with his acting at all just that the movie just doesn’t make sense.
‘Maja’ tries to fuse a ‘Vanathapolae’ sentiment-laden story with a ‘Dhool’ sensibility, and in the process gets confused between the genres. So as a result, we have a very inconsistent, yawn-inducing narrative alternating between Visu-movie ‘thaali’ sentiment scenes and a rustic rowdy stunts. The first half is tolerable thanks to a delightful Pasupathy doing comedy in tandem with Manivannan (his comic timing rocks) and Vadivelu (who totally rocks in that one scene where he walks in slow motion after Vikram challenges the village headman, almost spoofing the movie itself). Staying on during the second half is suicide. I really hope he regains his lost form signing up with Dharani, probably the only director apart from Hari (in Saamy) who has been able to mould him into a macho hero. It’s also Asin’s weakest role till date. She gets totally wasted in this movie and watching Vikram feel her up in ‘Chi chi’ doesn’t really help you feel better either.
Shaadi No.1: I love David Dhawan. Even liked his last movie Maine Pyaar Kyun Kiya. Then imagine how bad the movie would be if I say Shaadi No.1 sucked. It’s Sanjay Dutt silliest role with him getting to mouth the saddest lines to be ever written in the most terrible Punjabi accent heard on screen off late. He comes up with over two dozen (yes! About 24) limericks and most of them barring one or two make you squirm.
Here’s another one about three married men with beautiful wives uninterested in sex trying to find extra-marital entertainment (Yawn!) Inspite of the movie having over half a dozen drool-worthy babes, you really can’t watch this beyond the first 20 minutes. The only time I laughed was watching Zayed Khan dressed as Spiderman rescuing damsel in distress. But like Abhishek Bachchan (Yuva) / Madhavan (Aayitha Ezhuthu) says: Why buy the whole wine shop for want of a bottle?
To be updated…
This post is dedicated to my friend Shonali, the ever-trusting unsuspecting victim of the simplest of pranks.
First, let me tell you guys a lil bit about this absolute sport of a girl.
The fact that she’s a sport makes her the easiest target for any prank. And we’ve all had plenty of laughs, thanks to her. If anyone thought women don’t have a sense of humour, meet Shonali. Probably, the rarest of women who can laugh at herself.
My earliest pranks with her started off when she used to leave her mobile at her desk unattended. I would quietly grab it and send off messages to random people. Messages like: “Ooops! I’m pregnant. Whodunnit?” Or a simple pleasant “Burrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrp!”
And there was this time she left her msn messenger open when I happened to be on night shift. I was delighted. I put on the Status message as “Shonali Impersonator” and hey! Almost all her friends that night decided to talk to me. So I entertained hawt chicks from different corners of the world and some boys too and promptly emailed her the different conversations I had with her friends that night. 😀
Recently, I made her talk to John Abraham.
That’s when her sister Susan told us what a poor lil thing Shonali really is.
Once Shonali dialled Susan’s number from her mobile only to have a rude tone go “Wrong number”.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Shonali apologetically and hung up. Only to check the number again and realise she was fooled by her own sister.
So, with that sort of a history, one would think Shonali would never trust me all her life. But guess what?
She asked ME of all people to create a blog for her cuz she’s new to Blogland. 😀
And I had a blast doing this. (Don’t miss the comments section!)
Do visit it. She will soon update it with her disclaimer.
Sho… er… So… it’s Sho time, folksh!
MADRAS INK. 