Aarakshan - A Review

This is a post by the guest blogger Hardik Mootneja

A personal indignant casual review from an audience member.

I liked the movie. It certainly is a bad movie. But its a good bad movie.

Why bad movie? By standards of movie making, of which I understand very little, it clearly seemed to be poorly made. But since I do not understand anything about film making and I comment purely on the basis of other films that I have seen and have been astounded by, I am not the best judge of that. Quite frankly I can let that go and forgive a movie because I am lay viewer who does not understand or care much about film art or technique.

Why a good bad movie? This is because I agreed with, what I found to be, one of the central messages of the movie. It was a propaganda movie and part of the message was to my liking. This is because it was pro-reservation/pro-

affirmative action, as I am. So it was a propaganda movie that agreed with my socio-political view point. I also thought it made very few apologies for it. At least I did not see them if they were.

They made some (and only some) cogent arguments for reservations and against the typical anti-reservation rhetoric. I liked them, because they coincided with arguments made by few of the most articulate and bright dalit writers and intellectuals (eg. Anoop Kumar)

I did not see why dalit activists were offended by it. But honestly, I don't think I have any right or moral standing to wonder, ask or question dalit activists why and when to be offended. They surely have a good reason that I can't see. I would however like to know why the NCSC thought it was Anti-Dalit.

But all that of course is the first half. As with most Bollywood movies the two halves of the movies were, perhaps deliberately, disjoint (w.r.t central theme).

The next half - post intermission - is mostly laughable nonsense with a silly condescending theme revolving around the cult of Amitabh Bachhan (or his character, you can never tell the difference) - who Elizabeth thinks is "the only person who can act", to which I added, "if he chooses to"

Come to think of it - What you see in the trailer is mostly the good part of the movie. If you agree with what they show in the trailer, you need not watch the movie. If you do not agree with it, you should not watch the movie.

There is much more to say about it - like how almost the entire cast is full of brilliant actors severely under-utilized, as is always the case in our movies (and in Hollywood).

There are some naked product placements - for ex. "The wood for your Tabela School was donated entirely by Century Plywood" Amitabh bachhan thanks the (probably real owners) Century Ply guys who say "Yeh toh humara farz tha". Apropos out of nothing. This was hilarious. There is a lot of such stuff.

Seems like someone from the UPA government got Jha to make a movie for them. Much like Swades and Akbar seemed to be. That explains why BSP banned it, besides the part where they showed how electoral representatives of Dalits are corrupt and untrustworthy - which is Standard Operating Principle in Indian media/films.

Hema Malini's character is also unjustifiably and hilariously apropos of nothing. She just turns up in the last scene.

There is this one character called Pandit, predictably Brahmin, who speaks in ludicrously chaste Hindi - 'like all Brahmins do'. Something that would get you beaten up in school and teach you a good enough reason never to speak in. No one, irrespective of caste, creed, race, gender or history of mental disability in family, speaks like that. No body. Of course - Pandit is a truly talented boy who misses out because of reservations 'like all Brahmins do'. The Yadav character is a cowherd 'like all Yadavs are' and speaks in Bhojpuri 'like all Yadavs do'. Amitabh Bachhan's character ....ah forget it....

All in all, no need to watch the movie.

This is a post by the guest blogger Hardik Mootneja. Thank you for your contribution

Ladies Vs. Ricky Bahl - A (P)review [4]

This is a post by our guest bloggers Baby Vaijayanti and Puppy Manohar.

Girl meets boy. Boy falls in love with her mother. Girl cries. Boy agrees to marry her with an ulterior motive that the overprotective father of the bride knows but does not mind since he knows it is the best way he can keep his beloved daughter close to him even if it means he has to bear the ass (punintended) We have all seen this story again and again in Hindi films [1] and yet once in a while a movie uses the same tale but spins it and presents it with such a fresh twist that the audience relishes it like it would a finely aged European wine or South Indian yogurt, if only it were discerning enough [7]

The documentary, 'Ladies Vs Ricky Bahl' is not that type of a fictional tale. 'Ladies Vs Ricky Bahl' is a social critique. It showcases the insecurities, fears and - what model, film-star and eminent sociologist Gul Panag calls "the indignities that women face in the North"[2] Although, abundant with dramatization of real life events, in some cases while covering the event live, "Ladies Vs Ricky Bahl" is an epoch making documentary which certainly hastriggered a new era in Indian Neo-Realistic Documentary Film-making. For all the detractors of Bollywood who have criticized Indian documentaries like "Didi Tera Devar Diwana" (or whatever the name of that movie was where the conspicuously Maharashtrian looking actress dies and Mohnish Bahl her on-screen and real life husband - Ricky Bahl's uncle - has to marry his sister lest he should be forced to die on his ex-wife's funeral pyre owing to the horrendous Indian practice of Nar-Sati widely practiced in the 90s but now abolished by law) or "Dildo Pagal Hai" (the abuse of sexual paraphernalia prevalent in the NRI community i.e its use for extra-sexual activities like beating eggs - pun unintended - for omlettes) for being unrealistic, "Ladies Vs. Ricky Bahl" will silence their annoyingly holier-than-thou tone.

Anushka Singh plays Rinki, the unusually light skinned Punjabi girl who seeks an upper- caste North Indian man from a business family with a modern outlook yet who is deeply rooted in Traditional Indian Values (c) (or what the cool kids are now calling - TIV!), meets the disappointingly middle-class looking but characteristically' US-Return' Ricky Bahl (played by Ricky Bahl) at the US Embassy at Mumbai. "[Ricky] has the looks and he's got the charm and is tall and has a beard. He could have the pick of the ladies. But love isn't Ricky's priority - money is!" [8]He orders the Rs 150 latte and Rs 300 Chicken Sandwich which Anushka Singh sees and rolls her eyes. The embassy is mostly populated by ugly people (by standards of young people of age less than thirty) and hence the two good looking youngsters, who have no patience to read a book - "even if the arrogant ghati security guards would let them take one in the waiting room" [5][6], have nothing better to do but to engage in a gratuitous game of sexual tension. Soon they start talking about shopping, designer labels, latest technology, cool apps and all the other things that you people like these days. This is when Anushka Singh introduces herself as Anushka Singh to Ricky. This makes Ricky very suspicious because the name of her character is Rinki. From this point onwards the movie stops being a regular boy-meets-girl tale with shameless product placement and starts engaging the audience in to a two hour riveting crime thriller with shameless product placements.

Ricky observes that Anushka Singh has a Louis Vuitton Bag. Ordinarily this bag costs a fortune. Ricky knows Anushka can not afford that kind of money so he decides to take down her number and stalks her in America. He soon finds out that Anushka buys most of her expensive looking apparel and accessories from SoHo (or is it West Village. Where do you get the smuggled and fake products in NYC?) Ricky Bahl decides to follow the tradition of Upton Sinclair and other great muckrakers and dedicates the next two years of his life investigating the trade, the clientele, the statistics, the demographics of this illegal market. He writes a two page editorial for the New York Times and wins a Pulitzer Prize for the role of Best Actor in an Indian Film, incidentally the first Indian and first Non-American to ever win a Pulitzer. After this high profile expose which ends up indicting Women of the World, in general and Indian Women in particular, the Feminist Left criticizes Ricky for being a "corporate whore" and for being, and rightly so, anti-woman. To which Ricky Bahl responds in a front page editorial in the Washington Post with only the following words, "Yap Yap Yap" and a picture of his hand in a formation alluding to the infamous hand gesture meant to represent a garrulous woman. This article also receives great praise and accolades from the liberal establishment.

After this event, the Ladies decide to ex[tr]act revenge. The post-interval hour is about how the Ladies teach Ricky Bahl a lesson.

Editing by Sam "Final Cut" Subramanium is superb and the cinematography by Rkved Parulekar is brilliant. After a long time has a Hindi Film depicted Indian women in such a good light. Most women look as fair, both in complexion and sensibility, with the random blondes that dance around Ricky Bahl in the songs. This is in part due to the good light. The music by A. R Rahman is brilliant as usual. It has the perfect blend of Indian melodies and Western music much like a perfect blend of Chai Tea Latte and Lemon Juice, that is to say that the perfect blend in this context of course entails almost no Indian melody.

Do not the miss the beginning if you are a fan of literary criticism. The duel between Ricky Bahl and literary critic Terry Eagleton has been brilliantly choreographed by Vijayan "Hong Kong" Shetty . Ricky Bahl delivers a Howard Roark [9] style monologue, that has been dubbed the, "Welcome to the Hotline. I am the Sub-Altern, how can I help you today?"[10] speech by Bahlites - as fans of Ricky Bahl around the world call themselves. This lays the foundation of the movie and unless and every word of Ricky's Rant is assimilated, it will be hard to contextualize the rest of the movie.

Ladies Vs. Ricky Bahl doesn't just have the intellectual quotient for the college going audience member but also entertainment quotient for the college going audience member. That is to say, it just does not have Ricky Bahl, it also has them Ladies - if you know-i-sayin'. The eight rocking "Item Numbers" have rocked the charts [3] Item Number - C3456821789 has especially been very popular. This number will surely set the groove at every bar [11] around the world. Contrary to the prevailing trend of presenting an item flanked by European women in skimpy outfits who lip-sync to the chorus lines like "That's the way to Rock the party" or "Loooooove". For example typically when the Indian person center stage says, "Mere dil ka tudka hai tu", the conservatively clad White Women (c) go, "That's the way to rocky my party". Instead, all the eight Item Numbers in this fascinating movie involve the screen completely still with the Item Number presented in a bold large font with the name of the Item, the Vendor Name, the website and other such vital info. The Item Numbers screens will presumably be programmable and have gift card /discount coupon entries on the DVD/Blu-ray release. This is a path breaking innovation.

To sum up, Ladies get set to experience "Ricky Bahl Ka Tashan". The chest-shaven, long haired, sexy phenomenon will rob your hearts and not to mention, rock your party - unless of course its a Feminist Party.

[1] snarkily once called 'Bollywood' by the West, a title now proudly accepted by the shining India
[2] paraphrased from her monologue on 'We The People' where she argues that women feel safe in Mumbai because in general the South of India is less patriarchal.This, of course, she does on a panel discussing the gruesome murders of two young men in Mumbai after they tried to protect their female friends from agroup of men who were sexual harassing them. The reader is advised to evaluate the characterization of Ms. Panag's words which admittedly could be quitemisrepresented due to laziness, lack of intellectual rigor and sheer sensationalism on the part of this writer. If Ms. Panag is reading this, and let's face it, she is not, my apologies.
[3] Does Indian Music Industry actually have charts? This idiom doesn't apply to our movie. Why do we use it?
[4] The views described here are not of the author or of anybody really. The movie was not really and will not really be viewed, though perhaps you should. It might be alright.
[5] Most high-profile enemies of the Indian state charged or suspected of seditious activities have been readers or writers of Books. Therefore Books are considered to be a security risk in India.
[6] Quotes mine. The scornful word "ghati" is a term of derision applied to Marathi speakers in Mumbai. It is a legitimate non-pejorative demonym for people who hail from or reside on the Western Ghats region of Maharashtra. However, it is considered pejorative by the 'Kokanis'/'Konkanis' of the Coastal region of Maharashtra, presumably because they consider it insulting to be associated with their neighbours(?) Hence now it is considered to be pejorative by most Marathi speakers. English Educated Maharashtrians (yes, you fucKars from Bombay Scottish) sanitize the word of its 'vernacular' last vowel and self-describe as "Ghaats". This sounds cooler and very 21st century. Amateur Social Historian and Bigot Rahul Venkatraman refers to them as "Upperclass Ghatis" with a supposed sense of discernment from the working class scum that he hates and wants to exterminate. That might be false, but what is true is what it tells us about Rahul.
[7] - the audience that is, not the yogurt. Yogurt might be a living culture but is not sentient, marketing campaigns not withstanding.
[8]Premise, Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladies_vs_Ricky_Bahl
[9] Influential psychopathic hero of the shit book - Fountain Head, Ayn Rand.
[10] A critical rebuttal to Gayatri Spivak's "Can the sub-altern speak?"
[11] Couldn't get a a good pun going on item number/ bar code. Please comment/contact me if you can construct something. Citation 11 will be yours if you come up with something interesting.

This is a post by our guest bloggers Baby Vaijayanti and Puppy Manohar. Thank you for your contribution. Here is the link to their super awesome blog:- http://puppymanohar.blogspot.com/

Road, Movie

Road, Movie

I have seen many a road trip movie , but none like this one. There is some great story telling characteristics in this one.
It boasts a strong script, flawless acting (the whole cast), cinematography that serves as eye candy, witty humor and just simply feel good at the end of it all.

It follows the story of Vishnu, who is probably in his late 20's, frustrated with helping out with his dad's more than boring hair oil business, and is simply looking to get out in search of something fresh and new. He gets a lucky break when he gets a chance to deliver a client's truck all the way across the desert to the "City by the Sea".

Along the way, he meets an ensemble of eccentric wanderers, including a kid who works at the local Chai ki dukkan and is also looking for a new job, an old man wandering through, looking to eventually make his bed at the "City by the Sea" and also believes that somewhere in the middle of the desert, there is going to be a huge Fair with loads of festivities and finally a beautiful widow desperate in search of water.

They make their journey across the barren desert, shot incredibly well, running into corrupt cops, the water mafia and all the fun and frolic at the Fair in the middle of the desert.
They win their freedom from the cops by showing them a bunch of classic bollywood and hollywood movies, which were surprisingly found in the trunk of the truck. Humorously enough, they win their freedom and a life time supply of water from the water mafia
by selling them Hair oil.

This is one of the finest "Coming Of Age" movies i have seen in recent times. Its a very simple movie, but it spoke pretty loud to me.

Satish Kaushik and Abhay Deol have always done a great job at the roles they have played. A big shout out to the kid actor, Mohammed Faizal Usmani,Tannishtha Chatterjee, who plays the beautiful widow and the rest of the cast.

Sparked with a brilliant cinematography, this is a must watch !

Rating : 4/5

Uttarayan (2005) - A tribute to love for all season and ages

Uttarayan is a unique gem that succeeds in questioning social mores of our times while continuing to keep viewers entertained. Bipin Nadkarni positions himself as a thinking man’s director with his bold choice of unconventional subject and further solidifies his multi-disciplinary excellence with a screenplay that would make Jaywant Dalwi proud (based on play by Jaywant Dalwi)

Although the film primarily tackles the romance between two long lost friends in their 50s (Durgi played by Nina Kulkarni and Raghu played by Shivaji Satam, two performers at the prime of their art), it also wrestles issues of patriarchy, nostalgia, generation gap and unfulfilled aspirations in a subtle manner.

Nostalgia is captured through Raghu’s interactions with his friend (Baburao played by Viju Khote) and his daily routines in the lower middle class surroundings that he has returned to after a gap of several years. The backdrop of housing societies, wooden benches in little parks and quaint temple will fondly remind viewers of several Maharashtrian localities in Dadar or Pune (That India of the past is getting fast dismantled is another matter).

Cinematography is exceptional especially in one moment when camera takes a long, low angle sweep at the vast mansion lost by Durgi and her mother (Uttara Baokar in scintillating performance) as it moves toward the servant’s quarters where the two now reside.

The unforgettable quality of the film lies in its depiction of old age romance as primarily a profoundly simple and simply uncomplicated affection between the two protagonist. Romance in the modern parlance has taken such physical connotations that this disarming, platonic love story begs to be called something else. Whatever we brand it, the daily exchanges accompanying their burgeoning relationship are essentially beautiful and that alone is a reason enough to warrant a look at this soulful film.

Rating – 7.5 out of 10
Nitin Sonawane

Rat vs. Cat

Up until last night, Ratatouille was the unbeatably the best animation movie in my mind.

But last night that changed. While I anxiously awaited for the movie to begin, excitedly chomping on my popcorn and trying to hold on the ever uncomfortable and big 3D glasses, it struck me I had absolutely no idea what I was expecting from Puss-In-Boots.

Animated movies is not my favorite genre. I hadn't even watched the trailer but I vividly remembered the cool, Spanish cat from Shrek made alive by the sexy voice of Antonio Banderas and there was no way I was missing a movie where he is the protagonist.


What a movie it was! I really don't remember the last time a movie with an animal protagonist that made me laugh, bite my nails in tense situations and made me want to give the hero a hug.

There were a couple of reasons why I thoroughly enjoyed this tale of a cat, all fancily dressed up and swaggering about.

1. Animals talking is one more leap of faith we take when we go to watch such movies. However, the movie has preserved some very essential traits of the cat. The Casanova, the outlaw, debonair cat, enters into a bar and calls for a drink of milk, leaps around like an ordinary cat when he sees a patch of light trying to catch it, knows how to be cute when needed to get work done from a human and many more moments like these which preserves his innocence and identity of being a cat.

2. The whole story is built around characters who we all know. I don't want to reveal who they are but the references and insinuations to incidents in the life of those characters, adds a whole new layer to the story. It is like going to watch a biographical movie of Amitabh Bachan and then seeing Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Manmohan Desai,Jaya Bahaduri and Rekha as characters!!

3. The dance sequences are incredible, making the audience at least tap their feet.

4. The story is fast paced, giving the audience no time to get bored. Plot is simple. The 3 main characters have a back story, which is introduced as the movie progresses. The part of the movie which leads to the climax has revelations which (at least to me) were not predictable and seemed to leave no loop holes.

5. There are nuances in the movie which stay with you forever. The widening of Puss' eyes whenever he wants to look cute, another random cat whose reaction to everything is "Ooohh", the internal struggle of one of the main characters between vendetta and being a good person, the bonding between the 2 main characters, are the ones that I recollect even now.


The only part of the movie that I probably did not like was the fast wrap up of the climax with not much depth to it. Also, it was very unclear what happens to the side characters involved.

But the rest of the movie had already won me over including the credits to come. Hence, it was easy for me to overlook the only bit that I did not like.

Age no bar, sex no bar, mood no bar - when one watches this movie, one would have been entertained and will leave with a smile!