Tag: M

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Film

Bollywood returns

This year, a rash of sequels to popular Hindi franchises and remakes of classics are set to hit the screen. Rejoice! (or not)
by M | M@themetrognome.in

This is going to be another year full of Entertainment, Entertainment, Entertainment and Repeat. Buckle up, the Bollywood Express is set to take you on a joyride of sequels this year. Here is a list of sequels one should anticipate (or avoid):

Race 2: ‘Lat lag gayi’ director ko bakwas bananeki. The songs of Race 2 are enough to make me switch off the TV for good. One would require high levels of sedation to sit through this one, and in particular, watch Saif Ali Khan dance with a Katrina Kaif lookalike…oh wait, that’s Jacqueline Fernandez.

Murder 3: I am still confused between Murder and Raaz. I’ll tell you why, with a pop quiz: Which one starred Sunny Leone? See, even you had to think! Anyway, the new girl in the latest installment of this franchise is Sara Loren. Rumour has it that she is a Pakistani actress previously known as Mona Lizza.

Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster Returns: My first reaction: What for? My second reaction: Seriously, what for? This one doesn’t star Mahie Gill, from the looks of things. It’s still got Jimmy Shergill and Randeep Hooda, though.

Yamla Pagla Deewana 2: Okay, so the first one did well at the box office. Wonder what the father-son trio has got up their sleeves this time. Watch this one solely for Dharam paaji.

Once Upon a Time Again: One point deducted for the lame title, one point bonus for the fresh casting. This one’s got Akshay Kumar and Imran Khan.

Ragini MMS 2: All the Sunny Leone fans –yes, all 10 of you – rejoice!

Krrish 3: First there was Koi Mil Gaya, then came Krrish and now Krrish 3. Where is Krrish 2? Maybe he was abducted by aliens?

Dhoom 3: Back in Action: After watching Talaash, I would avoid betting on this one. Aamir Khan as the villian? Not a very believable idea. And Uday Chopra is in this one too, which somehow makes it worse. And don’t even get me started on Bachchan Jr. Why didn’t the world just end in 2012?

Singham 2: This one retains the hit pair of Ajay Devgn and director Rohit Shetty. Expect a masala comedy with Marathi catch-phrases.

Ghayal Returns: It could be difficult to top the original effort, but Sunny Deol will surely pack a powerhouse performance.

Dedh Ishqiya: Madhuri is back! A sequel to Ishqiya, the filmmakers are unable to find a replacement for Kangna Ranaut, who was part of the cast for this film but who later backed out because of “date issues.” I wonder which other actress would brave up to sharing screen space with Ms Dixit.

Raajneeti 2: There’s no dearth of material for this one. The cast is yet to be decided, but I have high expectations from Prakash Jha.

Aashiqui 2: Mohit Suri, of Kalyug fame, is one of the youngest directors on the block. His version of the cult film will be interesting to watch. This one stars Shakti Kapoor’s daughter Shraddha Kapoor and Aditya Roy Kapoor (of Guzaarish and Action Replay); both are surprisingly pleasant on screen.

Apart from sequels, there are remakes too. Classics like Chashme Buddoor, Himmatwala and Zanjeer will be recreated with the same or adapted storylines. Eid and Diwali releases this year are locked-in as well – with Salman’s Sher Khan and Shah Rukh’s Chennai Express respectively.

Here’s a little trivia on how production houses lock the dates. The head honchos along with the marketing teams sit down with Kalnirnay calendars and mark the auspicious dates. The festive days like Ramazan, Eid, Diwali and Christmas are locked almost two years in advance. The rest of the year is filtered for Ekadashis and Amavasyas. The team then slots the film slate in order of priority. Higher budgets, bigger stars get ultra-auspicious release dates.  The auspicious days are said to bring in more box office moolah, especially from up North. And thus, deciding a release date is no rocket science.

The year looks crowded for Bollywood, I hope it’s auspicious too. If not, we will always have 2014 and a sequel to Krrish 3 called Krrish 5. Maybe the Roshans are superstitious about even numbers. Hmmm.

Sharp as a tack and sitting on more hot scoops than she knows what to do with, M is a media professional with an eye on entertainment.

(Pictures courtesy santabanta.com and koimoi.com)

Categories
Film

Spare us the horror

The way Bollywood decides to make a horror film is a nightmare in itself, for both writers and the audience.
by M | M@themetrognome.in

Before I throw in my two cents’ worth on the subject, do watch this promo of a ‘horror’ movie scheduled to release this Friday.

 

 

 

Can’t stop laughing, right? Wonder what would happen if the makers of this film had decided to make a comedy.

Horror as a genre is very demanding to make. The director has to be very articulate with the finer nuances in creating ‘that scene’ which will get you to the edge of your seat. Some filmmakers in the Hindi film industry have given us masterpieces in horror, while others have just inflicted horror on us.

So how does one decide to experiment with this less sought-after genre?

Let me illustrate the general trend with just one recent example. This is a true story:

This tale begins with a good script and a young passionate director and his partner (a strictly professional relationship). The duo was overzealous in its idea to make a horror movie. Note that in this story, it is not the actual plotline of the film that is important, but rather, what happens to it in time.

So anyway, the duo left no stone unturned to lock in every single detail of the script before the narration.

Enter the producer. This guy claimed to be a Dark Knight fan, and never mind if he didn’t know who Christopher Nolan was. Hence, his feedback post the first narration went something like this, “Great, great. This is very good. I actually got goosebumps just listening to it. But what if we remove the ghost and make a thriller…the hero’s friend can be the murderer. Let’s see how that goes, change it a bit.”

An additional reason for removing the ghost from the horror film, in case the producer hadn’t made himself very clear already, was, “People don’t like horror movie these days, look what happened to Ram Gopal Verma’s Phoonk. It doesn’t work in India.” It is, of course, another matter that anything RGV touches these days turns into poop; the only time he got it right was with Bhoot.

The duo, their enthusiasm deflated, now worked on the script to make it a Whodunit. But if it was so easy to pull a taut thriller out of thin air, we would all be creating our own versions of Sherlock Holmes. Expectedly, Script Narration Round 2 didn’t  go well either, since the story lacked the twist-in-the-tale ending. They toyed around with the story for many days, but in vain.

The producer, by now impatient, decided to address the duo with another gem of an idea, which went something like this: “Maybe we should go back to the ghostwala plot, since you guys are unable to make this a non-ghost story. Also, a climax where you reveal the ghost will not require an explanation… look at Paranormal Activity.” This change of heart was not out of sympathy or love for the struggling writers…Vikram Bhatt had just announced Raaz 3, so now horror films suddenly had the potential to work at the box office.

The producer continued, “You guys should watch The Grudge, The Ring and other English horror movies for the climax. It’s unbelievable.”

The script was accordingly revised multiple times over the next two months and now it was nowhere close to the original draft. The damage was done, and the duo by now just wanted just to get done with this Godforsaken film. The producer, meanwhile, was still wondering about the ending of the film, and was torn between Basic Instinct and Shutter Island – never mind that both are thrillers and not horror films.

Finally, the last scene of the film was decided. Since making a choice was not easy, it shall accommodate both the Hollywood films.

So how does it end, you ask? You shall know next year. *winks *

Sharp as a tack and sitting on more hot scoops than she knows what to do with, M is a media professional with an eye on entertainment.

(Picture courtesy fanpop.com)

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Listen

Turn up the (copied) music

Pritam Chakraborty
Music directors are coming full circle – after copying global tunes for years, they’re now copying from old Hindi films!
by M | M@themetrognome.in

‘Copy cat, copy cat, tell your mother to make you fat.’ This line didn’t make any sense to me till I began to listen to songs from Hindi films. This line is just like the songs in our films these days – they don’t make any sense, but we’ve heard them before.

A song from Dabangg 2, ‘Pandeyjee Seeti Bajaye’ has the refrain from ‘Chalat Musafir’ from the Raj Kapoor starrer Teesri Kasam used all through the song. The original track was composed by Shankar-Jaikishen, but Sajid-Wajid, who say they created the music for Dabangg 2 in just two hours (a claim that’s easy to believe once you’ve heard the songs), argue that the tune in their song is a folk tune, and hence their song is not a copy.

Another recent release, Khiladi 786 has gone global in its copying – ‘Hookah Bar’ is copied from Chris Brown’s ‘Turn up the music’, whereas ‘Balma’s beats are lifted from ‘I’m sexy and I know It’. Himeshbhai, I sincerely hope you get pulled up by your nose for this.

We were finally out of the remixes era, when a dearth of original music forced composers to pick a popular track from yesteryear films and add some upbeat, dhinchak notes to create a song. We now have a new issue at hand – forget remixes, we are now facing a weird homecoming of sorts, with music directors simply copying tunes from earlier Bollywood films.

It is highly unfair that only Pritamda gets singled out as the biggest copycat of the industry. Sure, most of his tracks are good copy-and-paste jobs; his last, most evident copied track was ‘Subha hone na de’ from DesiBoyz, where the opening strains were lifted straight from Pitbull and Ne-Yo’s ‘Give me everything tonight’. But Pritam is not the only one.

The art of copying has been refined to suit individual needs. For example, some don’t believe in copying subtly. A renowned music director works like this: he likes an international track, he chops and dices the tunes, adds a few jhankar beats for Indian sensibilities and serves it straight up. But the way he sells his tunes is interesting: he sets up a bazaar kind of atmosphere in his office, where the buyers (who are two teams comprising producers and directors) sit in different rooms and the music director lets them sample his offerings one at a time – the idea is, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. So if team A doesn’t like the tune, he takes it to the next room to team B. And this goes on till both the teams have something in their shopping cart.

Copying music is not limited only to music directors. A singer, famous for his folksy voice, is known to invite gypsies from North India, who are masters of folk music, to stay with him (sometimes for weeks). He practices singing with them, and has been known to confess that he hates living with them, because they are not used to closed spaces and make a mess out of his home. However, he picks up the nuances of folk singing from them, and doesn’t give them any credit.

This same singer occasionally composes music as well, and the folk tunes imparted to him come in handy there. The singer sits on a big, fat bank balance. The gypsies, naturally, get nothing.

Some musicians go even further and buy tunes from struggling composers at dirt cheap rates. They re-package these tunes under their brand and sell them to film producers at phenomenal costs. The slightly smarter ones have created academies, and are currently playing Dronacharya to several willing Eklavyas – they claim that they nurture budding artists, but they freely use their work in their films. No wonder then, that nobody actually knows who the real composer is.

There are very few musicians, and I can only think of one at the moment, who compose original music today – Mithoon, who composed the soulful ‘Maula mere’ from Anwar. The industry recognises him as a very spiritual and gifted person, but unfortunately for him, he is often slotted as “Arre, who ek hi type ka music banata hai, masala nahin hai usmein”.

Thus, after importing masala from the West, and sometimes South-east Asia, we are now borrowing it from the North of our own country.

Sharp as a tack and sitting on more hot scoops than she knows what to do with, M is a media professional with an eye on entertainment.  

(Picture courtesy india-forums.com)

Categories
Film

Censor ki (bleep) ki (bleep)

How do B-grade films with offensive dialogues and scenes evade the Censor Board’s scanner, if English films are often snipped?
by M | M@themetrognome.in

Bhoop, Goa City and “I didn’t do anything”. Put these random words together and what do you get? A film called Cigarette Ki Tarah starring a guy named Bhoop (I am serious), filmed in ‘Goa City’ (not State, mind it) who offends the Queen with every spoken work in English. Watch the promo of this film only if you’re up for a dare. This torture…err, film  will be released tomorrow.

What baffles me the most is how the Censor Board let a film out that has ‘Cigarette’ in the title, when on the other hand, visuals of a lit cigarette are blurred on television and in our films? It would have been rather funny to see what the makers of this film would have done if the Censor Board had decided to snip the word ‘Cigarette’ from the title.

That’s not all, in one of the scenes in the trailer, the lead actress gives the middle finger to, I’m assuming, Bhoop. With a name like that, and a face to match, he deserves it.

Another character played by Sudesh Berry, (best known for his role in Border. Remember him? No? Never mind), calls Bhoop a ‘Bloody assh**e’. The swear words are not bleeped out. The icing on the cake is the song with lyrics that go, Khadi hogi khaat, zindagi ki lag gayi waat.

Our Censor Board is very stern with English shows on television, but seems to be okay with dialogues and songs as good as crap on the big screen if it’s a Hindi film. Also, English films on the big screen are forced to delete scenes depicting the slightest nudity, despite being certified ‘A’. Apparently the scenes or dialogues in those films are objectionable and unfit even for a grown-up adult.

I was furious when The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was not released in our country because a few of the Censor guys wanted three scenes removed. Those scenes, the filmmakers said, were very crucial to the plot, so they later shunned the cuts altogether and we had to see the film on DVD.

Words like ‘period’, ‘condom’, ‘breast’ et al are beeped out from sitcoms, so much so that sometimes you fail to understand the joke or catch the punch like because of the abrupt acoustics effect that replaces the offending word. English films on television suffer the most. Try watching The Departed on HBO next time it’s on. You will end up cussing more than Mr Wahlberg.

So, to return to my point, how do crappy B-grade Hindi movies, like Cigarette Ki Tarah and Hate Story end up on the big screen will minimal cuts and with all their crappiness intact? It’s actually quite simple. Allow me two examples to illustrate my point.

These are true stories.

Earlier this year, a song from a hit film was about the fun and frolic alcohol can induce at parties. It was expected to be in trouble, because it had words like ‘rum’ and ‘whiskey’ in it. The task to release the song for public viewing was tough, because the party pooping Censor Board would definitely rain on the parade. So the producers sent tapes of the song and a middleman to the Censor Board office, to “work things out”. Two days later, the song was all over TV and radio. Poochho kaise?

Another film was in a similar soup, where it’s famed item song had a desi alcohol name in it; the song was positioned as the highlight of the otherwise grim movie. At first, the Censor Board acted tough, but things miraculously resolved themselves and poor Chameli was allowed to drink and dance to her heart’s content.

It’s such a weird connection between Bollywood and the Censor Board. Your mind boggles at some recent Censor Board decisions, because you’ve tried applying their logic and objections universally, and come up with several inconsistencies. That said, who’s up for some cigarettes tomorrow?

Sharp as a tack and sitting on more hot scoops than she knows what to do with, M is a media professional with an eye on entertainment.

(Picture courtesy koimoi.com)

Categories
Film

Pole wallting

The diary of an event manager whose film promotion show was totally ruined by an Indian action hero’s outrageous demands.
by M| M@themetrognome.in

There is a certain man in Bollywood who loves a good stunt, both on and off screen. And here’s  a page from an event manager’s dairy, a person who was given the onerous task of bringing, let’s call him Desi Lee, to a film promotion gig.

‘Dear Dairy,

Today, I searched for a local arms and ammunition shop on Google Maps. I never thought I’d need a gun so badly in my life. I can shoot the lead actor of the project I am currently working on. No doubt he is the only decent action hero in the industry, but he desperately needs a reality check, and today he crossed every line in the book.

It all started a week ago, when the stupendously irritating marketing head of the film decided to throw a last-minute event to launch the film’s theatrical trailer. Why not upload the trailer on YouTube and move on, you ask? Darling, this is Bollywood. Mr K Jo threw an event for the trailer release of his last film, so now everyone else will do the same.

Coming back to my horrible life. I had only a week to pull this big deal of an event. Scouting the venue, drawing the guest list, arranging for the food and booze were the easiest parts. The lurid portion of the party was deciding the ‘entry’ for Desi Lee.

Lee likes to believe that he is a reincarnated avatar of Bruce Lee. Performing his own stunts in his films is commendable, whereas insisting on doing a stunt at a live event is plain foolish. Sometimes I wonder if he does normal, everyday activities like the rest of us. Like, does he sit on the pot like all of us do, or does he somersault and land on it? His antics began when he said that he would not walk to the podium, his ‘entry’ had to be mind-boggling and should leave the audience shocked. Thus began the journey of an endless pursuit for the right action act.

At first, he wanted to land at the venue in a hot air balloon, and I wanted to be King of the world. The multiple licenses and the limited time frame to import a hot air balloon made the task impossible. So that idea was mercifully scrapped.

Then Lee thought that since going up was not an option, coming down would be more exciting. So the alternate idea was for him to come down a fireman’s pole while performing Indian acrobatic acts. This would have been a great idea in an open maidan. But Leebhai grand event was to be held in the ballroom of a five star hotel.

Of course, the hotel refused to allow a hole to be dug in their floor, and worse, to have a pole fixed in the middle of their lavish 5,000 square feet banquet hall.

Lee was furious by now. With only three days to go for the event, he had no dhaasu entry. He was not ready to lose face. Everyone was summoned for an emergency meeting. After wasting hours on discussing options like skateboarding, parkour, stunt bikes and even riding a horse in a closed hall, Lee finally agreed on making his entry on a Segway, but with a twist (there has to be a twist, this is Desi Lee who lands on his pot after a somersault). Just riding a Segway also requires some practice, but this was not challenging enough for our action hero. So he decided to break a wall through the Segway and come rolling onto the stage. At this point I was looking for a wall…to bang my head against!

The production team starting working on building the wall out of cardboard. If I had my way, I would bring in the masons that worked for Mughal-e-Azam because they would know how to build a wall to bury Lee alive. Then Lee saw the blueprints of the construction and didn’t seem very excited. Next, came the tantrums.

With just two days to go, the preparations were in full swing when he dropped the first bomb – he wanted a change in the event’s timing. Next, he wanted an executive suite at the hotel to rest before he commenced the event. The final demand was to change the venue to a location convenient to him and closer to his house. Change the venue now? How was that going happen? All the other halls were booked and only one available in the desired location was way too expensive. The additional cost for procuring a new venue made the management fall off their chairs.

They gave an ultimatum to the marketing team – retain the venue or cancel the event. There was no way on Earth they were going to incur additional cost to build and later break a wall.

Mr Lee didn’t budge an inch and so the event was called off.

My hard work, all week, round the clock, was flushed away by a star and his demands.

I am still looking for that gun shop.’

Sharp as a tack and sitting on more hot scoops than she knows what to do with, M is a media professional with an eye on entertainment.

Categories
Film

The actor and the Godfather

Our system is lenient towards film stars, not others. What else explains how a star got off easy despite DUI?
by M | M@themetrognome.in

Guess who decided to visit a Bollywood superstar on a recent morning? The law. This superstar was summoned by the court in a hit-and-run case dating back to 2002, in which one man was killed and four other injured when the star’s car ran over the employees of a Bandra-based bakery. The star was arrested, but in the mind of the layman, despite the severity of his crime, the star was not compelled to serve jail time or appear in the court unless absolutely necessary. The star goes to court on December 27 next.

The star was arrested in 2002 and denied bail four times until his release later that year. His family went door-to-door in this period of catastrophe, because (as per their bail petition) the ‘sole bread earner’ of the family was behind bars. They even conducted a religious ceremony at their residence where young kids living in and around Bandra were invited to participate in a mass prayer service for their son/brother’s release. Such prayer ceremonies are seldom conducted for those running over people asleep on footpaths at midnight and killing them – Alistair Pereira’s family didn’t have one, for instance. Finally, the actor was released on bail.

But what had changed in his fifth bail plea? Why was he released this time and not before?

Enter the Godfather.

The Godfather is a very powerful leader of Maharashtra State politics. 10 years ago, he was next-in-command in the ruling party, with a very firm grip over the administrative affairs of the state. In the case of our star, at first, the Godfather was hell-bent on punishing the guilty for the crime; but this changed rather quickly after the star’s family started visiting him at his office and residence.

The family is said to have played every trick in the book to emotionally hook the Godfather, including the one that probably tipped the scales: the star’s mother belongs to a Maratha Hindu family that has always supported the Godfather and his politics. The actor even agreed to pay a heavy compensation to the victims’ families and personally apologised to the deceased’s mother. However, latest news reports reveal that only four families received the compensation amount, whereas the family of the man who died in the accident was denied compensation because they could not provide proof of identity.

With a little arm-twisting, our star was out sooner than he should have been. Ever since, he has travelled across the world without any restrictions, hosted TV shows and acted in several Hindi blockbusters. The police force has been accused of showing leniency towards him, falsifying evidence and delaying the investigation. In return, the star has showed his gratitude by attending police functions with regularity.

Prayers or politics? Maybe both worked in his favour, while others arrested for DUI have not been so fortunate. Nooriya Haveliwala was recently sentenced to five years in prison for killing two people with her SUV. We all know what happened with Alistair Perreira. We will probably have to wait for the courts to decide on what we like to believe is the ‘parity of justice’. Till then, we will see a man responsible for killing another human being under the influence of alcohol, week on week on national television, hosting a show and becoming a bigger star than he already is.

Sharp as a tack and sitting on more hot scoops than she knows what to do with, M is a media professional with an eye on entertainment.

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