Filmiholic : Meri duniya - bilkul filmi
India & Ireland, film & more
After sliding the Welcome DVD into the player the other night, before the movie started rolling, this video appeared.
It’s a spot against human trafficking, and after a few fragments of vignettes pass by, we hear John Abraham, then Preity Zinta, and finally Amitabh Bachchan, all speaking out against it.
What I found rather jarring, given the gravity of the subject matter, was Ms. Zinta’s choice of eyewear:
Look at that lush cover. Playing, indeed.
Today was the official release date of Melanie Abrams’ first novel.
When you read about it in coming days and weeks (my review too, soon), you will likely hear a lot about the S&M in the relationship between Josie, the American grad student, and Devesh, the older Indian doctor. And yes, those parts of the book do often crackle, but there’s also a lot of heavy psychological issues going on too, and, most important, a well spun tale.
The filmi connection comes in two places: first, in the novel itself. As the relationship between Devesh and Josie begins to grow, he introduces her to Hindi movies, even driving her miles away (the story is set mainly in North Carolina) to catch a movie at a cinema. Another night, they watch RGV’s Company at home.
The other filmi filament between the author and the Maharashtra-based (ahem) movie biz is her hubby, Bombay raconteur Vikram Chandra. The couple now both teach at University of California, Berkeley, when not writing or spending time back in India, in that salty, cinematic city by the sea, where Melanie and SRK have a hair stylist in common.
Some of her favorite Hindi movies: Satya, Lagaan and Parineeta.
While she’s not crisscrossing the country right now to promote Playing, you folks living in or near San Francisco and Berkeley will have a few chances to see her during April.
In the months after the first Abrams-Chandra co-production arrives (the baby’s due date is in May), Melanie will be out and about to meet her readers in the US and India.
The first glimpse I caught of Anees Bazmi’s marrying-into-the-mafia caper Welcome was an ad on a small TV screen by a bank of elevators in an office park in Bombay, just before the film opened. I normally wouldn’t rush to a movie like this, with all the promise of madcap slapstick, but there on that little screen I spied Nana Patekar frolicking in a musical number with Mallika Sherawat. Nana dancing? Nana in a comedy? Must see for me!
Nana’s been a baddie on screen for so long that I always get a little thrill seeing him step out and do comedy roles, like Taxi Number 9211. In Welcome, he plays Uday Shetty, mafia don and wanna-be actor, as well as brother to Majnu (Anil Kapoor) and Sanjana (Katrina Kaif). All Uday and Majnu want to do, when they’re not doing mafia business, is to get Sanjana married off to a respectable family. Enter Rajiv (Akshay Kumar), the loveable and goofy nephew of Dr. Ghungroo, who also wants to marry off his young charge to a respectable family. The rest of the movie is about how Sanjana and Rajiv fall in love and want to marry, with their families and super-don RDX (Feroz Khan) getting the way.
The movie was filmed in UAE and South Africa, but in spite of the jet-setting patina, the two big scenes at the end are sloppy in their denouement and both go on way too long. Surely I can’t be the only one who gets restless and twitchy during these kind of unending chases? Ugh.
There’s a slight diversion as Uday is conned into thinking he’s replacing Suniel Shetty in a movie directed by Vijay Raaz, but aside from a few smirk-inducing moments, the concept just lays there.
The saving grace – for me – was the music, and its song picturizations. There are a few Roger Rabbit-ish touches in the closing credits song, but the real fun is watching Nana shake a leg, first in the item number Hoth Rasiley with the amazingly luscious Malaika Arora in jeweled bra-top and billowing orange harem pants/skirt, and then in the Kiya Kiya number with Mallika Sherawat. Nana appears in the first song in a wine-colored velvet jacket and a long pirate headscarf, in the latter, in a Bluffmaster-y red and white floral shirt over jeans, sporting a yellow gerbera daisy over his right ear as he charms Mallika, and later in a tight green t-shirt, knit cap and ripped jeans. Perhaps not ‘age appropriate’ clothes for your average 57-year-old, but then again, hamara Vishwanath is not average by a long shot, and anyway, isn’t 57 the new 37?
See it or skip it?
Unless you’re a big fan of one of the leads, you could miss this one and not regret it. Nana’s great fun, but even he can’t carry Welcome alone.
Rajni, Kamala and Maddy have all joined forces on a one-day hunger strike. They’re doing it to protest the attacks in Bangalore on cinemas showing Tamil films by people angered over the Hogenakkal water scuffle. More here.
