Ok...So, the hunger pangs are back. I feel ravenous after two months, and I can't hold myself any longer. After several half hearted attempts at home, after desperately trying to steal time during the weekday at office(that too a light week with mid week off), here I am, desperate for a release. Anything would do. Even gibberish will do. It is mine after all, I can do whatever I want. This craving for writing reminds me of my earlier blogging days, where I couldn't wait to get in front of a computer and pour all my thoughts as they formed liberating my frenetic brain at the end of it. There have been times since, the burden of liberation is borne by one poor soul who doesn't have the faintest idea what hits him each time.
Have been seeing lots of movies of late(what can a girl alone in this horrid city do?), and pretty decent movies I might add. Its been a refreshing change after a series of crappy movies(both hollywood and bollywood)that got released recently. It seems the money makers have come up with a new mantra to make money- Spend a tidy amount of money to publicize it, and earn as much as they can BEFORE the movie gets released. i.e. before anybody realizes that there were last minute budget cuts, and the screenwriter was fired half through the story.
But I digress, coming back to the half decent movies I saw: Slumdog Millionaire(needs no introductions, I guess), Khuda Ke Liye(a Pakistani movie surprisingly well made) and Luck By Chance. I will refrain from giving my "expert comments" on Slumdog Millionaire, I think everybody in the blogdom have done a pretty good job thrashing it apart. I just want to say one thing: 'There is no place on earth like Mumbai'. I know it is dirty, it is downright filthy, there is no end to the red tape, there is no infrastructure whatsoever, BUT I will always love the spirit that keeps it alive. You can have the best infrastructure in the world, but if you don't have the spirit, you don't have much to keep it alive. Danny Boyle has done a marvellous job of bringing out that unapologetic 'Can do, Will survive' attitude Mumbai has.
Khuda Ke Liye was the only movie among the three that had it all. It is a masterpiece of direction, has an indisputably strong storyline, remarkable actors and mindblowing music. Kudos to Pakistani cinema.
I think Zoya Akhtar din't want to leave her luck to chance in Luck By Chance and so she got so many actors to play in it by a lucky chance. It was the same old tired line about how shallow Bollywood really is. We have seen it before. Om Shanti Om anyone?? Ok, so it was a bad example, but Zoya shows how you can STILL make a masala movie, with the latkas and the jhatkas, sans the hamming. Yes, she DOES have SRK, but she does the smart thing by keeping his onscreen presence to a bare minimum. She does have a gazillion celebrities, but none of them overpower you all at once. And she keeps it realistic. The odds of a dusky lady getting a lead role in a major production over a fair damsel will be 0.0001 out of 10 even in the 21st century, the 'stud' who becomes a 'star' overnight will leave the average looking intelligent girl for a saccharine pastry. Such is life dearies...
