Long Live the Voice!

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He held the mic for the first time at the age of three, performing Rafi saab's kya hua tera vaada on stage with his father. Sonu Nigam got his first break as a playback singer at 17. He became a household name when he began anchoring one of Zee TV's most popular music shows Sa Re Ga Ma, at 22. Singers like Kumar Sanu and Udit Narayan reigned the 90s. SN (along with Shaan) came into the limelight in the latter half of that decade.

His Yeh Dil Deewana (for Shahrukh) from Subhash Ghai's Pardes (1997) got him in the celluloid spotlight. Some of his hits during that time include: 

Sandese aate hai (Border 1997)

Meri sanson mein basa hai (Aur Pyar Ho Gaya 1997)

Satrangi re (Dil se 1998)

Pehli pehli baar baliye, Mujhe raat din (Sangharsh 1999)

Aisa lagta hai (Refugee 2000)

Having worked with almost every music composer then, SN was (and is!) one of the most sought after singers in the industry. Newbies like KK, Atif Aslam, Mohit Chauhan (of 'masakali' fame) may be the flavor of the season, but SN is a timeless favorite. What I admire most is his versatility. He can carry off classical stuff (soona soona from his album Classically Mild) with the same ease and honesty as a playful number like all izzz well (of 3 idiots) or a romantic song like tumhi dekho naa (KANK) 

He's lent his voice to some of Bollywood's most beautiful romantic numbers.

Suraj hua maddham (Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gam 2001)

Jaage jaage armaan hai (Mere Yaar ki Shadi Hai 2002)

Saathiya (title song 2002)

Kal ho na ho (title song 2003)

Do pal ruka (Veer Zaara 2004)

Kabhi alvida na kehna (Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna 2006)

With every passing year, he's scaled new heights. Today he's come a long way. From stage shows (as a child) to doing playback for Bollywood to having been revered some of the topmost honors in the music industry!


As he completes his 37 years next week, I wish him another successful 37 years ahead. 
Way to go!

Oops - Meri sanson mein basa hai has been sung by Udit Narayan and not Sonu Nigam. I, inadvertantly, added it in this list. Have striked it out now. Thanks Shaivi!

Tere Bin Laden - movie review

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A refreshing change from the regular formula films, TBL is a light-hearted approach to the Amreeka-Iran-Bush-Osama issue. 

The plot is simple. It's about this guy, Ali Hasan (played by Ali Zafar) who desparately wants to go to the United States of America. He's a reporter with a third class TV channel Danka in Pakistan and is enamoured by BBC breed of journalists. Passport authorities have rejected him seven times. But he wants to make it by hook or by crook. While on one of his assignments, he comes across this Osama-look alike and plans to make his fake tape. He puts together a team of six. It's fun to watch the situations and traps they end up in.

The 90-minute stage-play kinda of drama is hilarious in spurts but could have been better. It's silly, its unreal. The advantage is its duration which doesn't give you too much time to think about all that. What got the audience going, I guess, is the Osama factor. Noora, the Bin-Laden look alike certainly steals the show. Effortless acting by Pradhuman Singh. Cheers to him for having pulled it off so smoothly. His dialogue delivery, his expressions and his timings. Subhan-Allah!

Eight on ten for the 30, handsome Pakistani debutante AliZafar, who's also a singer, musician and a model by profession. (Unfortunately, he got married last year ;)

The low-budget film has grossed Rs 500 million in its first week. It would do better if released in Pakistan. Set in Karachi, no one can connect more with the film (for the language; the feel; the place; for Ali Zafar, one of country's most popular singers; and for the man himself, Kook-roo-kooroo ;) 

The Importance Of Being Earnest (2002)

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Between films and theater plays, it is the former that has to compete with reality. A play, from beginning to end, looks artificial, unreal - the set, the lack of a fourth wall, etc. The audience is not seeing it through the eyes of a specific character nor are they focusing on a single actor. Everything is given to the viewers and they choose what to see. Recreating a play originally written for the stage into a film, is like making a huge jump from artificiality to reality. On stage - the artificiality, the fake background, the overemphasized and loud manner of speech cries out "this is not reality" or "you will not see this anywhere else". On screen – the setting is real, the houses are real, the entire city is recreated to almost exactly as it might have looked it 1890s; everyone and everything on the screen is forcing the viewers to believe in their world. This makes the story real.


The Importance of Being Earnest, the film directed by Oliver Parker (who also adapted other works by Wilde for the screen), in my opinion, is a faithful representation of the play written by Oscar Wilde. When you see the film on screen you are transported a century back in time. The play was written in late 19th century and set in the same time period too. The film was made more than a hundred years later. The audience had changed. No one talked like they did in the play anymore. The world of the play no longer existed. Everything was recreated and the result was praiseworthy. The entire cast is exceptional in their roles and the city of London looks beautiful.

Bringing a play from the stage to the screen gives room for a lot of things. On stage it is the words, actions, expressions, and emotions of the actors that make the play. On screen it is all of those things, as well as the locations, that are used to tell the story. In the play there are only three backdrops (something usual for a play) - Algernon’s apartment in Albany, and the other two at Jack’s country house. The film, however, could not be limited to just three locations. The director takes us to several sites; splitting conversations across days and different venues, something done obviously to be faithful to both the lovers of the original play as well as regular film watchers.


There are a few changes or modifications made to the story by the director. By making the male characters older (from late 20's to late 30's), the director aims to highlight Wilde’s concept of immaturity being amongst those unmistakably considered wiser by age. By further increasing the age difference between the men and the women of the story the director is trying to reinforce the fact this story is a satire of romance. Gwendolen’s tattoo of ‘Ernest’ displays her childishness and immaturity, as well as her passion for the name of Ernest. Similarly, Cecily’s diary’s pages coming to life with the appearance of Algernon as her ‘Prince Charming’ gives visual references to the thought processes of young girls of the Victorian age.

Jack’s real name, a twist in the film, made a lot of sense to me. It brought a whole new meaning to Jack’s last line about how vital it is to be Earnest - it indicated how Jack needed to be everything but Earnest to be Ernest. The director's take as a whole makes sense to have that ending, and comparing only the endings is out of question. I am uncertain if the opposing ending makes a difference to me, but I do know it makes the film a twisted adaptation of Wilde’s play.

Aisha-Super excited for this one!!

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The teaser has a fresh, vibrant feel to it… The cast - Abhay Deol, Sonam Kapoor, Cyrus Sahukar looks promising.

Heaps of expectations from this one for there’s ABHAY DEOL. I thoroughly enjoyed his Socha Na Tha which, sadly, came and went pretty much unnoticed); Oye Lucky Lucky Oye and DevD (he’s got that sweep-you-off-your-feet appeal). And yep, I recently found that he is a Piscean (*_*) [the Cancerian-Piscean thing you know ;) - like made-for-each-other]…OK now I’m digressing...

As for the 3-movies old, charming-personified Sonam Kapoor, who’s been lucky to work with crème-de-la-crème production houses (for reasons we very well know), I think she would spell-bind the audience yet again (more for her snazzy ways than for her acting skills).

The music for Aisha (I’ve only heard the title score ‘Aisha’ with Amit Trivedi on vocals, who has also done the music for the film) is contemporary. For those of you who do not know Amit, remember Tauba tera jalwa, Tauba tera pyaaaar, tera emoootional atyachaaar – YES!! He’s the man behind it! I simply louved their band ;) The song created a wave of ‘hatke’ songs in the Hindi film industry.

Here's the really cool website of the film scheduled for August 6.

Johnny Gone Down: So Bollywood!

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A goulash, seasoned with all the Bollywood masala!
No it's not a Bolly flick. It’s a speedball novel from one of India’s young breed of contemporary novelists - Karan Bajaj. Bajaj’s first - Keep off the Grass, too was a dramatical rollercoaster ride. But Johny… is way high on the ‘drama’ quotient! After reading, I could (almost) guess where the ‘Johny’ came from ;)


Here’s a synopsis:


Nikhil Arya has fallen.

Once, he was an Ivy League scholar with a promising future at NASA; now, at forty, he is broke, homeless, and minutes away from blowing his brains out in a diabolical modern-day joust.


It wasn't meant to be this way. An innocent vacation turned into an epic intercontinental journey that saw Nikhil become first a genocide survivor, then a Buddhist monk, a drug lord, a homeless accountant, a software mogul and a deadly gamefighter. Now, twenty years later, Nikhil aka Johnny is tired of running. With the Colombian mafia on his trail and his abandoned wife and son ten thousand miles away, he prepares for his final act, aware that he will have lost even if he wins.


Or will he? Is there any greater victory than living a life that knows no limits, a world that has seen no boundaries?


Can he pick up the pieces one last time or will Nikhil, now Johnny, go down for good?


The incidences, the circumstances, and the outcomes are as colourful and dramatic as our Hindi cinema. The climax, though, didn’t quite live up to the build-up created throughout the book, I felt. It’s a fun read, nevertheless. Bajaj’s fast-paced storytelling and snappy humour keeps it going.


And at Rs 99, a steal, it wouldn’t hurt at all!

Closer (2004)

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Review, Analysis, Comparison.


If I had to summarize Closer, the play by Patrick Marber (who also wrote the screenplay), I would say that it is a simple, sometimes unreal, story about love and companionship and how complicated such things can be if one does not believe in them. In fact, when I read the play, even though I liked it very much, I didn’t think it was anything unusual or special. The story is approached and told different than the others, but it is still just another story about love and relationships - a story about four really complicated people seen at different points in time through a third person approach. But after seeing the film by Mike Nichols, I couldn’t stop thinking about it for days. The dialogues were the same, but the body language of the actors told an entirely new story. The film just had so much more, even though it did everything exactly like the play. And after trying to figure out what the film was all about, I have to say I was moved by the sheer beauty of the film’s approach to the play.

Ever since the first scene of the film, the director is trying to tell us, the viewers, something. “You’re just too good to be true, I just can’t take my eyes off of you”- when I saw the first sequence with Alice (Natalie Portman) and heard this song in the background, I just assumed, like most, Nichols is gesturing to Alice’s physical beauty and attraction. After I had finished the film I started thinking that why did Nichols do everything that the play did, have every single dialogue appear word to word, but have two completely new sequences at the beginning and the end. And then it came to me. Alice IS too good to be true. Closer the play is a story about four people as seen by the audience, but Closer the film is a story about three people being seen and observed by Alice, who is a personification of the audience.In the film, Nichols concentrates on Alice the whole time, starting with the first scene which is not in the play where the song is telling us to keep our eyes on Alice. She is the one character we are told the least about, and after seeing the other characters and their behavior, we end up feeling that we don’t know them at all, and in fact, neither do those people themselves. So by the end we find ourselves feeling for Alice, since she is the only one we can actually see through.
Throughout the film, and the play, we see Larry (Clive Owen), Anna (Julia Roberts), and Dan (Jude Law) making decisions - taking some kind of action that affects the others, including Alice, making her always a part of the consequence of their actions. To Alice these people and this world is as unreal as it is to the viewers - that is evident by the first scene where we see her looking to the left before crossing the street(since people drive on the right side of the road in the United States), not knowing that in London cars come from the opposite side. She comes to London and she meets Dan, she takes a new name and in a way experiments with the people she meets. She observes, asks questions, but is seldom the one who makes any decisions. The only time we hear her opinion about anything is in the art gallery, and even then her response is “Everything is a lie”.

Of all the three characters we meet in London, Larry is, in my opinion, the closest to being normal or real. Alice feels the same and that is probably why she tells him her real name. But Larry fails to pass Alice’s test. She decides to trust Dan in the end by taking him to New York, but seeing that he hasn’t changed she gives up all hope. When he still questions her even though he knows the truth, I gave up looking for any reason to feel bad for Dan’s character. And again Alice does exactly what everyone in the audience would have probably done. The people of London disappoint her. In fact, Alice feels that if she stays here she will become like Anna - who in a way seems like a much older Alice - an American who got lost in London, pretending. Alice decides to go back home where people carry their emotions on their faces, that can be inferred by the last scene where the guys who see her pass by just stare at her, looking back at her in awe. She is content to be home where people don’t have deceptive faces that hide their complicated emotions and personalities.

The one scene, or in fact, the one line that explains and proves my theory is at the end of the film where Alice says to Dan "I would have loved you, forever". This one line is what made me realize what Alice’s role is in the story. We are put into Alice’s shoes from the first scene till the end. Alice is the audience, who throughout the film observes the people, the world which is new to her just like the audience, and in the end, just like how the audience decides what they think about the characters after seeing them throughout the film, she decides that these people are just messed up, and again just like the audience, we see her coming back to the real world, and keep on living her life. Marber’s decision to not kill Alice in the end (of the film, she dies in the play) hints that she signifies a lot more than just a character. Some would say that the red stop sign means she dies, but we can also see the other people walking too, not like the first scene where the other people stop behind her.
This film takes the art of story telling to a whole new level, and it does not even take credit for it. Till now, when we saw a film we were only limited to watch what the characters do - from a seat far away in another dimension. In Closer, we are not only given a more personal approach, but an entire character to transform into. We are taken a lot more ‘closer’ to a film or story than ever before. This film, to me, is a one of a kind so rare I doubt we would be able to see more of; all due to the cinematic genius of Mike Nichols, the absolutely brilliant and perfect cast, and, what I have now come to believe, the enchanting story by Patrick Marber.

I Hate Love Storys - movie review

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Romance, comedy, romance, music, romance, drama, romance!! 

A story of a boy loves girl, girl loves boy, with a few complications thrown in, in the backdrop of a parody of our lovy dovy bollywood flicks. A terribly predictable love triangle where the hero and heroine, after two and a half hours, realise they can't live without each other - a realisation that comes in every hindi film. 

The screenplay is a drag, but traces of our candyfloss celluloid - DDLJ, Dil To Pagal Hai, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Dil Chahta Hai, Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gum, Mohabbatein, Devdas, Sawariya (Am I missing anything?) -- fill up for it. The film is as musical as a DDLJ or a DTPH, with mostly all songs in the second half. But they are nonetheless, a respite, from the sluggish-in-bits-and-parts film. 
For the first sixty minutes, Imran can't get over the fact that love stories are bull*, for the next, he can't get over the fact that he's fallen for the same bull*. 

I never quiet liked Imran but he's a surprise package in this one. An absolute delight! He has superb timings and has done some great comedy along with his fatty sidekick (can't recall his name). He's adorable in every frame. (loved his shirts). He looks hot in the song Sadka, shot in New Zealand. [I particularly noticed him in the song Ihls...., where I thought he was a lil awkward, prolly shy (*_*) holding girls (*_-)] Sonam too looks petite and pretty. Both make a cute pair and have played their bits well (save a few scenes). Chocolate boy Sameer Dattani (the third angle in the love triangle) did his part well, in his fugly ;) shirts. 

It's difficult to rate a film above average (* * 1/2 stars for this one) when everything's great except a strong script ;) 

Bollywood goof-ups

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Here are a few careless but harmless bloopers seen in our very own Bollywood. But we still love them as much :) (This doesn't apply to the last one in the list, though - Don't scroll down already!)
I am putting down the ones that immediately come to mind but there are lot more. Feel free to add to the list. 

Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam When in Italy, Ash is shot in the neck by a firang, but she sits on the hospital bed with a bandage around her arm. It appears as though she was never hurt anywhere, even close, to her neck.


Taal Akshay Khanna, arguing with his uncle, breaks six glasses but says "Maine saat (7) glass tode...."


Biwi No. 1 While Karisma's all set for the pooja on Karva Chauth, their dog leads her to Salman (who's in Bandra with Sushmita Sen). They run from Juhu to Bandra on foot.


DDLJ In Zara Sa Jhoom Lu Main... Kajol pulls Shahrukh from behind (he has his boots on!) into the pool. He falls in, with his boots left outside. Howzzat possible?

Kaho Naa Pyar Hai Raj in the second half singing all of Rohit's (Hrithik in the first half) songs is understandable. How does he know the signature step of the title track Kaho Naa Pyar Hai...., that Amisha and Hrithik did at the beach?

Chak De People wrote "gaddaar (traitor)" outside Kabir Khan's (Shahrukh) house. Years later when he returns, the word is still there and as fine as it looked back then.

Salaam Namaste Towards the end, Saif proposes Preity trying to make up for everything. He finally woos her with the ring in the hospital. Preity is shown wearing the same ring in the previous shot.


My Name is Khan Shahrukh is scared of the color 'yellow' but he's shown carrying "Repair Almost Anything" placard (in the song Noor-e-khuda) that is very much yellow.


Raavan The film was a big goof up! 

Bollywood peek-a-boo: Part II

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Dhobi Ghaat
Inspired by real life social issues, this film revolves around four characters with Amir Khan (a painter) anf Prateik Babbar (son of Raj Babbar) in the lead. The film for most part has been shot in Mumbai. The music will be composed by Oscar winner, Argentine music composer Gustavo Santaoalla. The release date is not announced yet for the film directed and produced by debutant Kiran Rao, Amir's better-half.








Lamhaa
We’ve already seen the trailers for this action thriller starring Sanjay Dutt, Bipasha Basu. The teaser looks average but I’m sure the story has a lot to tell. The music for the title score Madhno (the only song that is out yet, I guess) is pleasing to the ear, to say the least. [ok, now its stuck in my head :) ] Lamhaa will hit the theatres on the 16th this month. (I’ll be home then…so eagerly awaiting this one! :)


Action Replayy Another one expected around Diwali is a retro romcom starring Akshay Kumar and Aishwarya. AR takes you to the 70s era (which reminds me of Om Shanti Om - hopefully AR isn’t as distasteful.) The pair was seen together before in Khakee and I thought they looked good together. Let’s see if the chemistry works this time around!

Delhi Belly

I didn’t know Delhi Belly was a medical term (traveler’s diahhorea), until I learnt about the movie. Well, this one’s a comedy featuring Imran Khan, Vir Das (the cute stand-up comedian we saw in Badmaash Company), Shehnaz (MTV VJ who made her Bollywood debut with Ishq Vishk). It is directed by Amir (his home production along with UTV motion pictures) who will also make a short appearance in the film.


There are lots more coming up. Here's an exhaustive list. Hopefully it will be a great year ahead, unlike a disasppointing 2009!