With RGV’s latest movie, there was an interesting addition to the multiplexes usually showing the occasional big Hindi release in New Jersey: the AMC Loews Newport Centre 11, in Jersey City.
This cinema is located in a mall this is literally steps away from the PATH train. Tickets cost $10.
At the show I attended Friday night, the auditorium (with a capacity of about 250) was about three quarters full.
The new Sarkar Raj is a love letter from Ramu to the triple-A Bachchan trio.
If triple-X connotes slimy, sleazy and anything-goes nangi antics, then triple-A here is the highest of star heights, fullest of full-on media attention to every Karva Chauth, barefoot temple pilgrimage, phoren fillum festival, product endorsement, movie launch, music launch, etc etc etc that any of three (Amitabh, Abhishek, Aishwarya) attend solo or in any combination of duos, or even better, as the whole threesome (or the three wholesome).
RGV’s paen goes like this: How do I love ye three? Let me count the ways….I love thee through smoky sunlight, pouring into the room and bathing you in a milky, full-body halo. I love thee shot from under a glass-topped coffee table, as my cameraman teases the audience, allowing glimpses of father and son when they’re not obscured by the undersides of various tchochkes laying on said tabletop. I love thee in tight, tight close-ups filmed at tilted angles, or so far in that we can only see part of thine heavenly face and the stray scar left by childhood chicken pox. And I even love thine feet, as my cameraman places the equipment ground-level to record thine beauteous tootsies as they exit the tank-like SUV or the jeep or the white Merc when it pulls up at the home / five-star hotel / hospital / villain’s lair.
Don’t get me wrong. None of this is bad. I mean that sincerely. (Well, ok, the glass-top coffee table shots were frustrating, like when you’re at a dinner and the floral arrangement gets in the way of you making proper eye contact with the person across the table from you.) For any of us who receive much enjoyment from gazing on the oversized celluloid countenances (and hands, and arms, and so on) of the Bachchan père et fils, and even though we prefer the opposite sex are still, regardless, spellbound as we look at the former Miss World and marvel at the color of her eyes, the set of her mouth, the perfect teeth, the flawless makeup (what shade of pink is that lipstick and where can I find it?), there is much in this two-hour film to enjoy.
For everyone else? Well, the story is interesting to begin with, as we observe the shifting dynamic between father and son Shining India dons carrying out their roles. One is aging and one is growing in confidence and influence. Anita (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan) arrives from London with the intent to build a maha power plant in rural Maharashtra, and needs the Nagre men’s blessing, as the project will displace several tens of thousands of villagers.
Initially the men disagree. Dad feels bad for those who would be displaced, the son sees further ahead and reasons that the plant will be for the greater good. The father is won over, but around them, several bad guys (politicians and businessmen) are holding various grudges, grinding various axes and conspiring to do them harm.
This is where I lose a little bit of patience, as the villains are (save my beloved Victor Banerjee who is urbane and ice cold) cartoonish and grotesque. In Sarkar, we had Silver Mani, here it’s the Nagre-appointed CM who’s got some serious Freudian issues (this guy is always eating, drinking or sucking on his thumb), or the slippery Qazi with his throwback-to-the-good-ol-days obligatory pencil-thin moustache,
or the two-Thackereys-rolled-into-one rabble-rousing rural politico with the oversized eyeglasses always sipping bottled water.
Maybe Ramu feels that these are the kind of villains Indian audiences want and expect in their movies, but I personally wouldn’t have minded a little more subtlety.
The action shifts away from Bombay to (supposedly) rural Maharashtra. (If you notice a few of the shop signs in two scenes you will glimpse a wee bit of Telugu script.) We get to see Sarkar’s aged guru and mentor, and we get to watch Shankar (Abhishek Bachchan) and Anita talk - a lot - and get to know each other.
Hats off to RGV for writing such a strong role for Aishwarya as the corporate doyenne, and one that she embodies well. Unlike many other flics where the lady boss is all veneer and the minute one thing goes wrong she returns to type and crumples into a puddle of tears, here Anita is written so that she holds her own when she’s with the menfolk, and the only scene that requires her to cry is because of something going on outside the sphere of bijness. Well done.
One other female surprise was Tanisha Mukerjee, returning from Sarkar, where she again plays Avantika. I had forgotten whatever became of Katrina Kaif’s character in the first movie, but one glimpse of Ms. Chatterjee in her lovely saris and small spot of sindhoor, and it was plain that the chatty girl who was a fixture in the first film, has now managed to get what she had set her sights on, marrying Shankar.
Abhishek here is on equal footing with his father, in terms of his role’s prominence in the film, and in his acting. One complaint I had of Sarkar was that Abhi’s part was paper thin, especially compared to the intensity of the scene-stealing Vishnu (Kay Kay Menon).
But here, he’s strong and imposing (and mighty fine on the eyes in his French cuffs and suits), though a little more soft-and-squishy emotion might not have been bad, especially right before the Interval.
So the Bad Guys inflict pain and mayhem on the Nagre parivar, there’s a move afoot to shift the plant from Maharashtra to Gujurat, there’s some speechifying on the purpose of business (to make money or to do good) until the end, where, in the final scene, Amitabh is saddled with a LONG, expository soliloquy and his real-life daughter-in-law is forced to just sit there and listen, without even an “Ah ha” scripted in to allow her to react.
Although there were some surprises in the film, and I won’t give them away here, I did feel as though the blood really drained from the picture in the 2nd hour. I am normally able to surrender myself to what I’m watching in a cinema hall and lose track of time, but here, in the last 50 minutes of the movie, I actually checked my phone for the time on three occasions. It seemed to me that, except when they were hopping in and out of cars, the lead actors were, for the most part, stationary as the cameras spun about them, and that last hour of Sarkar Raj dragged.
The snake-like flute has returned to herald the arrival of anyone malevolent, as has that bloody GovindaGovindaGovinDAH! chorus. The musical score is so present and so overpowering that it’s an annoyance rather than another tool the director could use to heighten the emotional intensity of a scene. I was amazed to hear that there was recent a launch for the CD of the background score, as I really can’t imagine chilling out at home listening to that flute or driving while that GovindaGovindaGovinDAH! pounds out through my car’s speakers.
For any angrezis who don’t understand Hindi, be forewarned that there are temporary subtitle lapses, usually when you most need them, when Papa Bachchan is doing his heavy-duty speeches. (Can anyone fluent in Hindi who’s seen the movie tell me, was he speaking some very, very shud Hindi, or was it Marathi-laced, or Sanskritized? To my ears, that have admittedly been corrupted by so much Hinglish on TV and in movies, it sounded to me like what Old English or Shakespeare must sound to someone who’s not a native English-speaker.)
See it or skip it
See it, though I have a few reservations saying that to anyone who’s not a big Bachchan or RGV fan.
But, indeed, it is a big summer release, it does star the triumvirate of Hindi movie royalty, and it is made by the man who gave us Company and Satya. Also, as Hindi cinema does try other ways to tell stories, that don’t involve mujras or rap and multiple costume changes, it is interesting to see how directors are doing that.
I like that Ramu’s got his characters thinking out loud about power, and force and pondering their motivations, I just wish that more of the oomph in the film was allowed to come from the actors, rather than the cameras and the soundtrack.
has there been such a desi-Latino mash-up recently….yelo…Jessica Alba in a sari:
The photo’s a still from the soon-to-hit-the-screens The Love Guru.
And on the subject of Mike Myers’ latest release, here’s an interview I did for Khabar magazine with Manu Narayan about his work on the film and his career.
To mark the release of the DVD of his film Vanaja, director Rajnesh Domalpalli will be appearing at an event Friday evening, May 30, at the Borders in the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle.
Domalpalli will discuss four scenes from the film (of his choosing), and audience members will ask about another four (of their choosing).
The event starts at 7pm.
For anyone who doesn’t live in a city where Vanaja was released last year, or who just happened to miss it, the great news is that Emerging Pictures has just released the DVD, with some terrific additional features.
First, there are four short films (each around 10 minutes in length) that the director, Rajnesh Domalpalli, shot in the summers of 2002 and 2003: The Fisherman’s Daughter, Firecrackers, Poison in the Well, and Just for Him. People who have already seen Vanaja will recognize some of the actors, and you can see the director’s first steps towards what his later work would become.
In addition, there are two short introductory pieces, again, each not more than 9 or 10 minutes. The first is of Domalpalli introducing Vanaja, and, after discussing the making of the film, and how he discovered his lead actor, Mamata Bhukya, he proceeds to discuss and lament the passing of many cultural art forms in Andhra Pradesh.
In the second piece, an off-camera voice interviews Mamata Bhukya in January 2008.
If anyone read my comments on the film when I saw it last year, it was plain for all to see that I was smitten with this amazing, talented young woman, who went from being a schoolgirl in 8th Standard to actress and dancer, in one year.
Part of what is so interesting in the interview with Mamata is to see glimpses of her family life, some early clips of her acting - when she still had the short, boyish haircut that almost cost her her big break - and to consider her now, some five years since the whole life-changing adventure began, and see how she’s shapeshifted from a child into an adolescent, who’s now on the brink of adulthood.
Here’s part of an interview I did with Mamata Bhukya last year.
Stay tuned for an interview with Rajnesh Domalpalli next.
Master cinematographer Santosh Sivan has again put on his director’s hat for Before the Rains, opening today in NY and LA.
(Not to be confused with the gorgeous 1994 Macedonian film Before the Rain by Milcho Manchevski.)
Here in Manhattan, we’ve seen a lot of the director and his cast in the past week or so.
First, there was a press day and reception at the Indian consulate. Yesterday, Jennifer Ehle
was a guest on Leonard Lopate’s show on WNYC to talk about her role in the film, and in the evening, film critic Jeffrey Lyons hosted a screening of the film with Q&A afterward with Santosh Sivan and producer Paul Hardart.
Reel Talk will soon have an interview up on their site with one of the film’s lead actors and now local boy (while he’s starring in Law and Order), Linus Roche.
Will post my thoughts on the film soon.
Meanwhile, Mr. Sivan has departed NY today to attend the Silk Screen festival in Pittsburgh, where Before the Rains will be featured.
The film adaptation of Monica Ali’s Booker-winning novel arrives in cinemas on June 20 in NY and LA, the rolls on to release in other cities soon after.
The movie trailer looks promising.
And I’m really curious to see mainstream Hindi movie actor Satish Kaushik in the role of Nazneen’s husband.
A press conference and reception was held at the Indian Consulate in NYC tonight to celebrate Santosh Sivan’s film Before the Rains, which is playing at the Tribeca Film Festival, and will open in New York on May 9th. You can see a trailer here.
The film stars Linus Roche, Nandita Das and Rahul Bose. All three were present tonight.
The movie is set in Sivan’s native Kerala, and takes place during the 1930s
Nandita Das has two films at the Tribeca Film Festival this year; the other is Ramchand Pakistani.
Finally, a 2008 release that had some excitement, fun and good looks.
Tashan opened today and the cinema where I saw it in New York was full.
Though Saif and Kareena have been a couple now - publicly at least - since last October, there is also a gossipy frisson of “So, this is where they spent so much time as a romantic pair, then fell in love, eh?” around this film. Only the couple themselves know when things really began between them (surely not as far back as Omkara?), but you can be sure that some people buying tickets have that curiosity to see them as an onscreen couple.
And you can see from the opening why Saif (even with that awful Village People Biker Guy moustache that he sports here) and Kareena are each cool and hot in equal measures.
Saif Ali Khan is Jimmy Cliff, not the reggae star but a Bombay boy who works at a call centre, teaches English, and dates his cute female students. “India was rocking and so was I” he declares to us. Yes, Jimmy breaks the fourth wall quite often, with brief asides. He also narrates the story via voiceover. He wears mod clothes (including a flashy large red belt) and is effortlessly charming as he plays the typical guy who has commitment issues.
Jimmy is caught unaware by the striking Pooja - a very seedhi saadhi girl decked out in heavy silver ethnic jewelry, a long, high-waisted kurta, churidars and lots of kohl – when she is conveniently caught in an afternoon downpour right outside his classroom. He follows his smaller brain (clearly the one calling the shots) and is totally ensnared by the raven-haired, light-eyed Bebo, who lures him back to the home of Bhaiyyaji (Anil Kapoor), a comical, vain and murderous don who wants to learn English.
With Jimmy firmly under her thumb, Pooja spins a woeful tale about a debt owed to Bhaiyyaji and soon they’re plotting to steal some of the don’s extortion money to use to pay him back. From here on in, we have one twist after another, almost always set in motion by Bebo’s character, who morphs into a hot babe wearing the tiniest of Daisy Dukes and using her charms to get the men around her to obey.
Along the way, Bhaiyyaji reaches out to fellow Kanpur native Bachchan Pande (Akshay Kumar) to help him recover his stolen money. His entrance onscreen is hilarious; he’s acting in a Ram Lila and, aside from arriving late (on his motorbike, up the stairs of the temple, of course), he’s also having trouble with his part of the script. “Who wrote these lines?” he thunders, and a terrified stagehand tremblingly utters “Tulsidas.”
Bachchan may not know his lines, but he considers himself a very religious and pro-Hindustan guy. On the road, he prays at a little temple in his room, and he berates Jimmy for listening to rock music, changing the radio station to old filmi music, saying “You’re in India, listen to Indian music.”
After leaving Bombay, the actors caper all over Ladakh and Rajasthan, as well skirting around Kerala and Haridwar. Kareena, now in full bombshell mode, performs the item number of the film – Chhaliya – in a green bikini and other size 0 wisps of clothing, singing, rather disingenuously, “don’t look at me like that, boy.”
There’s one bit of comic relief when the Jimmy-Pooja-Bachchan trio are trying to get out of Ladakh without being spotted by the police and take over an American film crew who are there to shoot “Happy Widows.” The trio don cheap blonde wigs and join the firangi film crew to perform Dil Dance Maare. See if Poo 2 doesn’t remind you of anyone, perhaps a certain infamous heiress?
And yes, as usual, the poor gringos are a bit slow on the uptake, the bumbling boobs in a phoren land, not even realizing that the Bachchan they’ve encountered is not that Bachchan. Oh well, at least they were better dressed than in most other films.
The music is ok, but I was most disappointed by the Sukhwinder song Dil Haare song. Visually, Kareena looks lovely, even when her beau is surrounded by a bevy of seaweed-wearing girls,
or when she’s coaxed into a rather questionable choice of footwear,
but the song itself is just very meh. Some of the other songs are more memorable, but there’s nothing so, so, so thrilling that you won’t be able to get it out of your head. (Update: I take that back, I was listening to Challiya and Dil Dance Maare this morning on the train, and I kept repeating them. Now they’ve really grown on me.)
This being a YashRaj film, the visuals are, overall, terrific. Costumes, even with quirky twists like Bebo’s wayward braces and diva sunglasses, and Akki’s ever-present cotton head/neck gear, make everyone look good in their roles, especially the over-the-top Bhaiyyaji. Hats off to Aki Narula.
Ladakh and Rajasthan look postcard-perfect. And the action scenes are, if not always actually suspenseful, at least they will keep you wondering what the next step is. BUT, two problems: first, in the big encounter with the cops, Akshay gets a prolonged action sequence, and the latter part was well choreographed, but the way they led him from where he was, to where the guns were, with a lot of leaping and jumping, just seemed too implausible for words (and yes, I know, we are talking about a big Bollywood release here and all that implies).
And here’s where I found the biggest disappointment of the movie – the (sadly) inevitable Big Shootout that Goes On Way Too Long at the end. Why, why, WHY did we have to have it? Here I’d been happily carried along on this spring Friday evening by a fast-paced movie by a first-time director (Vijay Krishna Acharya wrote Dhoom and Dhoom 2) who’d done some interesting, different things, and then he fell back on the same old chestnut that everyone else does. A funny thing happened too. When the scene ended, most of the audience stood up and started to leave, only to realize that there was one more brief scene to go.
Before I close, allow me to return to my old bugbear: the subtitles. Meu Deus! How hard can it be to get them right in a nation of so many English-speakers, and in a film coming from the great Yash Raj studios?
First, we get the bleeding obvious unnecessarily spelled out onscreen:
- “aaagh (shouting with pain)”
- “Bachchannnnnnnn”
Then there’s the curious translations. Majnu becomes Romeo. Bhaiyyaji says he wants “every dime back.” Really? Paise would have been too odd for the firangis to figure out? A threat is changed from “…or I’ll be playing cricket with you” to “…or I’ll be playing cricket with your balls.” Why? Do the Angrez reading the subtitles need the extra testicular oomph?
While I’m at it, let me put a plea out here to filmmakers when they’re sending people forth to do their upcoming release’s website: if you’re going to have a button on the site called “Press Kit”, please make it something that actually contains additional information about the film crew and the making of the movie, and not just a glossy fanzine.
See it or skip it?
See it. It’s a fun road trip with an attractive trio, there are multiple filmi references, and some very pretty song picturizations.
For anyone who missed the first movie, Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay quickly sketches out the differences between the two friends in the opening scene, while setting up the movie’s raison d’etre.
It’s a few hours since the end of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. The boys have had their burgers and Harold shared a special moment in the elevator with his sapno ki rani, Maria, as she’s on her way to Amsterdam.
Impulsively the pair decide to follow her, and their flight is leaving soon.
Shots cut back and forth as they pack. Harold (John Cho) plucks items out of a walk-in closet so perfectly appointed it would make Nate Berkus plotz with joy. Meanwhile Kumar (Kal Penn) sniff-tests the garments in his closet, discovers foul matter in shoes and beer cans, and tucks a copy of, er, let’s call it, Vajayjay magazine into his backpack. As the scene progresses, Roldy irons a few items of clothing while Kumar ducks beneath the covers for some quick pre-flight onanism, the results of which are splayed all to see.
Are you saying “Ewwww” yet?
But this is from the duo Hurwitz and Schlossberg – Randolph, New Jersey’s favorite sons now serving as directors as well as writers - and we would expect nothing less, would we?
At the airport Kumar gets pulled aside by a TSA agent, but manages to talk his way through the situation, with some techniques that would only work in a spoof like this and which the average desi dude might think twice about essaying himself. Next, the duo run into Kumar’s old girlfriend, Vanessa, and her wealthy, too pretty fiancé as they head for Texas to get married. (The fiance’s father was a classmate of Dubya’s.)
But that’s not the only bad news Kumar will have today. A misunderstanding onboard the flight – a smokeless bong mistaken for a bomb – lands the Hoboken roommates in a cell on Guantanamo Bay.
Cue Rob Corddry as the overzealous and underinformed Homeland Security agent Ron Fox. Interestingly, this is the first overt mention of September 11 by name that I remember in a comedy film so far. Six and a half years after the day, I guess we can handle it now.
Despite what you might assume from the title, Gitmo is but a stopover on the H&K itinerary. They quickly make their way back to the US, determined to get to Texas where Vanessa’s father-in-law-to-be can clear their names. Starting out, como tantos cubanos, in Miami, the pair then head west.
Many favorites from the first Harold and Kumar are here again: the intense Christopher Meloni (Oz anyone?), whose physical beauty is once again obscured by make-up and costume, and whose role is briefer than before, Neil Patrick Harris in the role of Neil Patrick Harris, and the female giant bag of pot.
This time around, we get some back story on what the guys were like as undergrads. Just wait ‘til you see them.
The incessant reveling in, then blowing apart of, racial and gender stereotypes that made for such great fun in 2004 is all there again, and no one is safe: blacks, Jews, gay men, gun-toting residents of the deep South, and on and on. Matthew Perry doesn’t fare too well either.
I will confess that by the last third of the film I felt like the foot was off the pedal and we were just coasting toward the end, but the many small details, like Kumar’s t-shirts, one of the extras shouting the Apu-referential “Thank you come again” as he passes Jersey’s most illustrious desi actor in a scene, and that amazing poem that not only refers to Route 3 but also incorporates the word “integer”, sweeten the journey along the way.
And the real message of the film is that you don’t have to love your government because you love your country.
See it or skip it?
If references to drugs, poop, pubic hair, fellatio, to say nothing of male frontal nudity will not offend you, then by all means see it.
You get to watch two smart, funny, good-looking guys make like a tween opening his first condom, taking one racist assumption after another and twisting it inside out.