unstructured & prosaic

I respect the works of Dibakar Banerjee and Anurag Kashyap. Because their movies respect my intelligence as a viewer. Oye Lucky... for instance was brilliant. I am one of the few who liked No Smoking and wouldn't mind saying it when among friends.
No, this is not a reflection on how discerning a critic I am, or how I am the only one to 'recognize the diamond for what it is' yada yada!...
We have enough people who can sit and "analyze" a movie for ages, insistent on finding korean philosophy in a ghati bhojpuri flick, unsatisfied if a documentary lacks subtitles and pleasure themselves over Bolivian noir cinema (Gupta, I am looking at you!)

This post is to acknowledge the intensely relieving fact, that there are writers out there, film-makers who make the movies that I like to spend an afternoon watching. And my afternoons are very precious to me. Where are the discussions on Firaaq, Gulal and Barah Aana? I didn't find Khosla funny, bittersweet more likely...and I felt vindicated when I read an interview of DB saying that he never intended to make that movie a comedy... Anurag Kashyap wrote Satya, boss! These people take a concept, break it down, deconstruct it to its very elements. The screenplay takes you by your balls and twists it around... grabs all your expectations and jumps on them. They discard the bloody predictability and make the final product, a part of their very essence...unafraid, unmoved.

Would love to chat with DB and AK one day...

Rock On

Ok am watching Rock On at the moment. Thoughts..
first 5 minuts were painful...Farhan akhtar's voice well...it took getting some used to. And the dialogues!!
But what remains with me after nearly 45 minutes of the movie is the direction...it is surprisingly good. Cut to the scene where Farhan's character Aditya looks at Luke Kenny for a long time after a poignant dialogue...what that one look said, the bitterness, the why-rake-the-past ness, guilt...very very good. I also liked the non-linear narrative style, flashbacks merging well and coming at the right moments.
Arjun Rampal pulls off the retiring guitarist, nagged by his fiesty wife, haunted by his past, the what-could-have-beens decently well...the fact that he has those cheekbones does help ;) !
... Hmmm, Farhan doesnt have a varied repertoire of facial expressions, but i think his earnestness as the young aditya was quite endearing. The dandiya scene was killer!
His character chose to walk away from a life, accepted another with all the grace of a wolf turning vegetarian, but as an audience I got what he felt...the conflict, that's what made the movie!
Aditya's conflict with who he is, Joe's demons..all of that.
I loved Luke Kenny! such controlled acting, the peacebroker of an explosive band, a guy at peace with himself... dude I never knew he was that good! possibly my favourite character in the whole movie..
that desai woman, aditya's wife...God! why is she so screechy...does she not get that man doesnt want to talk...no! keeps coming back again and again...gets snubbed...bt she is the wife...all that training in the K-serials has to be of some use right!?