Not Idle anymore

Indian Idol has divided our two member family. I wasn't into the contest much earlier and neither was P, except when we happened to catch it ocassionally. We only started noticing it towards the end, all thanks to Prajakta Shukre and her pretty looks. P, like Sanjay Bhansali and Anu Malik, found the little girl a complete 'star.' Ahem...

Poor Prajakta didn't make it (though I'm quite certain we'll see her in playback singing and music videos soon enough) but Abhijeet Sawant and Amit Sana did.

And our household had instant division. P (like most of my friends, grrrrr...) wants Abhijeet to win. He thinks the boy is the complete package. I want Amit Sana.

And here's the reason.

Abhijeet has his smile. And pleasing looks. And Shilpa Shetty's compliment. And the entire Mumbai city. And one lakh plus employees of BMC, where his father works. Amit has nothing but his voice. And throat infection. And the people of Bhilai. And I suspect teenage Bhilai girls might just go for his opponent's smile.

All these makes Amit Sana the underdog. Why should looks count in playback singing?

No doubts about who I'm smsing for!

Thinking of:

watching Finding Neverland/Aviator/Raising Helen back to back
going berserk in a book fair
dashing off to Bombay for Mark Knopfler
getting a rich aunt
saying bye bye to the mag
shopping till my head hurts
reading more of Ruth Reichl
watching Love Actually on the DVD
cutting my hair
making chocolate strawberries and coconut paste sambhar

Valentine Boys

We spent Valentine’s Day peacefully. We don’t celebrate it, never have. The day doesn’t matter to us of course (we're too cool kya!) but we went out for dinner as I was too tired to cook and had gotten home late. We went to the food court where I turned up my nose at the sight of two scrawny youth in oiled hair walking up and down with red roses. Considering it was 9.30 pm and the roses looked pretty much wilted, it was obvious the girls around were smart enough and their efforts hadn’t paid off. I sniggered quite loudly when we passed the boys on our way out (half an hour later). My dear husband thought I was being unnecessarily mean. Apparently all boys do such soppy things (yikes) at some point or the other. I'd say it's meanos like us who show them the light.

Reading Vogue In a DTC Bus...

...is inviting unwanted attention, of course. However a 45-minute long traffic jam ridden ride in a somewhat soiled vehicle requires distraction, which is why I dug into my bag, discovered Vogue and proceeded to read about Donald Trump's third wife. I was immersed in the engrossing details of her shopping trip to Paris when some stray comments of the not-so-polite-Hindi kind made me look up. Two men standing next to me were having a good time. The back cover had a model sprawled out in a perfume ad. Fully clothed (by fashion mag standards) but with enough peeking out for the guys to lose their equilibrium. Being the easily-embarassed type, I primly rolled up the offending mag, remembered a friend's tryst with the Financial Times in Germany, though for entirely different reasons, stared out of the window at the endless traffic and tried to ignore the dust. The men didn't give up. They were now looking at my bag.
How I miss the ladies compartment of Bombay locals!

I've been thinking whether we really need movie reviews. Isn't the reviewer (and all of us are guilty of this at some time or the other) creating a bias in people's minds and in some cases, affecting the movie's chances at the box office?
We react to any creative effort, including cinema, in our unique, individual way. Which means it's quite impossible for everyone to arrive at the same conclusion about a film. I loved 'Black' and most people loved it as well but there are some for whom the movie did nothing.
I found 'Shabd' disappointing. Sid liked it. So did Anita. Most of us loved 'Bend It Like Beckham'. But there are people who quite hated it. Ditto for 'Hyderabad Blues' (Part one of course. The lesser said about part 2 the better. See there I go!).
When 'Page 3' released, the Indian Express reviewer trashed it. I'd already bought the tickets so we went ahead with the film and ended up liking it.
So do we need reviews at all? I asked a friend and she said, so that we know what to expect. Isn't a synopsis enough for that?

Still wondering about...

* JNU students: They've thrown out a Nestle coffee vending machine from the campus as it is elitist (nestle achine is definitely gourmet coffee), expensive (Rs 5 only. ouch. we'd rather go to barista) and corporate (which their phones and shoes and watches aren't of course). What'll they throw out next? Themselves?
Anyway, just in case you want to read JNU arguments against this criminal coffee, I came across studentsolidarity.blogspot.com. This time, I'd rather side with the horrid Mcmedia.

* The Battle For Pitampura: It was hysterical to see Delhi divided into two over this stinging issue. There were the Absolute Snobs who couldn't imagine going to Pitampura and driving with the metro over their heads. There were Pitampura Loyalists who looked down upon the snobs looking down upon them and said it was a great place. There were the Music Lovers who said they'd go anywhere for music, even if it's Pitampura. And now, after the concert, there are Pitampura Converts who it seems will only go there for concerts now and nowhere else. Between quotes from Rina Dhaka, Subir Malik, Palash Sen, Rohit Bal, DNA head, south delhi studs and Pitampura teenieboppers, it was hugely entertaining. Thank you guys!

1994 (As far as I remember): Bryan Adams is performing in Mumbai. Five girls an three boys at Fergusson College, Pune, are over the moon. A rock concert! In India! Wow! The last time Sting and Bruce Springsteen came to India we were kids. Now we can actually make it. So what that we have exams going on? By a stroke of luck the concert is on the last day of our exams. One of the boy's brother buys us tickets, some of us pay him. Some of us promise to next month after mummy daddy send the cheque. Boy's brother organises Maruti Van. We shall rush to Mumbai as soon as the paper's over. We buy t-shirts with Bryan Adams' mug on it and barely stay quiet in the examination hall. We are soooooo excited. A rock concert!!! We barely finish paper, get into the van and dash off. Van bangs into tractor type vehcle. Two of us are hurt. It's off to a dispensary in Satara instead.

1996: Led Zeppelin and Bryan Adams perform on stage for the Channel [v] Awards. Me (and countless other journos) get to meet the rockstars but hey, where's the excitement? Caught in the whirl of too much work and too many celebrities, I've become a snob journo. Only notice that Robert Plant looks HOT. Rockstar Hot! Bryan Adams? Yeah, there's a tiny man moving around somewhere...

Sometime around that: Michael Jackson makes it to Mumbai. Horrid RE of course send his favourite (who's friend of mine so won't bitch). Tickets almost equal my salary. I don't want to go anyway. Who wants to see a monkey on stage. That too blessed by Bal Thackeray.

2002/3: Pink Floyd plays in Bangalore. I'm all ready to go. Eventually can't because it's a new job for me and don't have leave! Brother makes it, comes back raving and says he's disappointed in me, someone who saved up pocket money and bought their albums.

2005: Sting performs in Pitampura. Don't go again. First coz nobody I know wants to go including the formerly bohemian husband who is now too busy making presentations. Even the brother is working. The rest want free tickets.

2005: Mark Knopfler is coming to India. Now this is someone I'd give arm, leg and other body parts to see. Only, he's performing in Bombay and Bangalore. Not Delhi. Will I make it to Bombay? Unlikely. We bought a house last year. We are doing it up now. We are as Washington Post says, cashtrated.

My rock star karma surely is bad.

PS: I know the post has no point. But bad karma and old age lethargy needs to be documented.

Black

It isn't just the performances, the photography and the direction that deserves praise. It's the fact that a mainstream filmmaker has the guts to show the box office the finger and make a film that is far removed from conventional Bollywood standards. For those of us who've always watched and liked Hindi movies, even when it was uncool to do so, films like Black make you confident that the film industry is coming of age. At last!
Great film. Go watch if you haven't already. And not on DVD. This is for the big screen.
On the other hand Shabd was a disappointment. Great story but weak and overstylised direction. It could have been a fantastic study of a writer's complex, distraught mind, fanatic about proving his genius to the world. All it ends up being is a confused Hindi film with bad songs.