Leaving Home...

Spending the last night in the old flat, I don’t get sleep. It all comes back to me. There’s so much more to this place than just a house. This is the place where I grew up, literally in height and also whatever I could, mentally and emotionally.
It feels like just yesterday I entered this flat and a certain neighbour from the building got us tea and biscuits.

I remember getting ready for school early every day so that I could spend time on the bus stop with my building friends.

I remember learning car driving from dad and being able to park it correctly for the first time.

I remember playing cards with friends till midnight and my grandmother getting a culture shock for girls were included.

I remember the times when I used to take the cordless phone to the balcony quietly so that no one would hear me talking on the phone.

I remember sitting on the swing on the terrace and singing songs with friends, trying to save ourselves from water while it poured heavily.

I remember my first ever bike accident occuring against my own brother in the parking lot since I was waving to someone while riding.

I remember taking my new walkman and showing off around the building when the power went off.

I remember bunking school to watch Dil Chahta Hai first day first show with cousins.

I remember sticking dirty Big Babol tattoos on a particular aunty’s Maruti 800 because we all hated her so much since she wouldn’t let us play.

I remember the time I asked my brother something so stupid he actually fell on the floor and laughed for good ten minutes.

I remember we purchasing a Samsung flat screen TV and all the relatives coming home to see it because that was the in thing that time.

I remember mom waking me up atleast five times every morning for school and then herself going back to sleep, and then me waking her up to make me breakfast.

Gazing through the flat, there’s some incident or some association with each corner and each window..

As I stand at the door of the empty house, I want to hug each pillar. But life isn’t as dramatic and I’m too conscious to make myself look stupid in front of the new owners of the house.

There are people who bring life into your lives. And then there are places where these memories are shaped up. Now it’s time for a new family to start their memories here. And for me to look for new walls to form memories within...

Rann: The Review

Jarring close-ups, deafening music, powerful statements and a usual good guy bad guy routine… this one statement precisely sums up most of RGV’s movies. Why must Rann be left behind?

Rann revolves around the heavyweights in the media industry and their vested interests that take away the watchdog-of-democracy role of media and turn it into a commercial business. The film takes you behind the camera into the newsrooms and reporting desks, editors and owners, politicians and industrialists, and needless to say, the good journalist bad journalist practice. Since the director is your majesty RGV, there has to be some murders, threats, espionage, bribes and betrayals.

From the start of the movie, the unnecessarily shaky camera moves and shrill sound effects try to build up some excitement, in complete vain. Pointless beats on simple dialogues like ‘Hi dad!’ take away the effect of other powerful lines. And that is where the audience tends to lose interest in the film because even the simplest scene is created in such a terrorizing manner that it looks like the climax shot which will change everything. Also, enough recognition should be given to the writer who wrote those strange tickers for all the made-up news channels.

As far as acting is considered, most of the actors did a good job, except for Sudeep(Jai Malik) whose accent is seldom unclear and Rajpal Yadav who is supposedly funny for those two guys sitting in the last row. Amitabh Bachchan (Vijay Harshwardhan Malik) who is normally a subdued actor in the film gives a brilliant flawless speech towards the end, which ultimately summarizes the whole movie’s message. Ritesh Deshmukh (Purab) does a good job as an amateur Mr. Ethical journalist. Paresh Rawal (Mohan Pandey) is just perfect as a subtle yet wicked politician, with black sunglasses on even at night. Others like Mohnish Bahl and Rajat Kapoor stick to their parts suitably. The girls (Gul Panag and Neetu Chandra) have petty roles, but fortunately and surprisingly, they are not portrayed as hot-bod-item girls, so they suffice.

What makes the movie monotonous is the fact that most of the first half goes in establishing the situation and characters, and there are hardly any twists and turns. There are loopholes in the movie, like the most common one being not keeping your phone on silent while spying on someone! The music keeps terrorizing anyway. The second half is considerably good and keeps the viewer on the edge of the seat.

RGV must be given his due credit for a good screenplay and some fantastic dialogues, but apart from that, there is nothing exciting visually. The entire look and feel of the film is very similar to Sarkar and Sarkar Raj. Rann can be categorized as a typical RGV production, except that the concept of exposing the media industry is new to India, and thus, somehow insightful.

Even though parts of the movie are a bit exaggerated, the film is thought provoking and gives a sensible message at the end. Meant strictly for the serious audience, Rann portrays the compromises a media house makes on a daily basis, a choice between the truth and the TRPs, a battle between being fair vs. being commercial.
Will we ever know the truth, when democracy is remote controlled… is the question movie opens with and ends with. The rest is left for the audience to decide.

P.S.: Don’t take a front row seat, if you don’t want to watch Ritesh Deshmukh’s nostrils. I’m still wondering what the cinematographer was high on…

MAMI-Mia!

To watch films regularly as a movie buff is one thing. But to watch four movies a day and ‘judge’ them is a totally different feeling and unfamiliar to most of the people.

The Mumbai Academy of Moving Images (MAMI) who organise the Mumbai International Film Festival, decided to go youthful this time, by introducing a new set of student jury known as the Mumbai Young Critics (MYC). After the screening and elimination rounds, twenty students were selected from colleges all across Bombay to be on this jury. Thanks to my luck, or the love for films, I was one of them.

All of us had one thing in common – passion for movies, which only grew stronger when we interacted with one another. Some were the masters of world cinema history, while some had tremendous knowledge about Indian regional films. To make us familiar with the concept of a jury panel and discussions, a three-day workshop was organised, which was taken by Daniel Kothenschulte, the noted German film critic.

During the course of the week-long festival, we had various interactive sessions and press conferences with several eminent personalities like Anurag Kashyap, Rituparno Ghosh, Amol Gupte, Amol Palekar, Saurabh Shukla, Riya Sen and Renuka Shahane. They were a great source of constant guidance throughout the festival.

Acquiring a jury card, we had access to every single movie and press conference. Not just that, the directors of most of these films were also present at the venue, so meeting them and talking about their films and their perspective was another unforgettable experience.

What followed after watching so many movies was the test of debating and convincing skills – the jury decision. The twenty of us had to nominate one film to be given the Mumbai Young Critics Jury Award. And that’s when the real jury experience came in. It wasn’t an easy task to debate and argue with the people you’ve been so friendly with for the past ten days. We argued, fought, convinced, listened, understood, misunderstood, and finally came down to a common conclusion.

At the awards night, we walked the red carpet, which was graced by the presence of Amitabh Bachchan, Preity Zinta, Kunal Kohli, Imtiaz Ali and the likes. We were given a special mention at the function and we also presented the award to the winning director.

I don’t think one page article or a few pictures can put down the whole scene as it was, it had to be lived to feel it. We saw some films which one would never get to see, met some people we never imagined we could even get an autograph of, made some like-minded friends who will always be remembered, and most importantly, got so much to learn that no lecture or internship can teach. Who said BMM was all about college projects?

(Wrote for college BMM magazine. Uncertain if they publish it.)

Wake Up Sid: Movie Review

There are some people who have everything planned in their life – what they want to become, where they want to study, when they want to buy a house or a car, and even when they need a new toothbrush . And then there are those, who don’t have even know what they’re gonna do after five minutes (not quite literally). Most aimless youngsters like me, if not completely, partially do fall into the latter category. And Sid is just one of those sobo brats the movie deals with.

So when I saw the trailers of WUS and read about it, I knew that it’d be something I’ll look forward to. The curiosity began. And here I was, exactly two days before my final year University exams (having failed a subject in prelims), not only going for the movie, but also writing about it (understand what kind of people I was talking about initially?).

Wake Up Sid is the journey of a South Bombay college goer Siddharth Mehra (Ranbir Kapoor), who is going through the worst possible transition of his life, the one from college to work, from freedom to responsibility, from a boy to a man. The best part is that today’s (and almost every) generation goes through this phase in their lives, so they can relate to it.

The story is a bit cliché in the beginning, with a new girl in the city Aisha (Konkona Sen Sharma) exploring Bombay in pursuit of seeking independence, an extremely rich dad (Anupam Kher) who is willing to buy a Porsche SUV if his son comes to work for a month, and an extra-glamorized and vivid magazine office. But if you’ve lived the life of a college goer in Bombay (yes, BOMBAY!), you can immediately connect with the film, just for the clichés that exist- driving around Colaba with friends at midnight, eating bun maska and anda bhurji outside Churchgate station, walking around Fort area, peaceful conversations at Marine Drive, hanging out at Zenzi and getting screwed on the day of the exam results.

The screenplay. Well, the issue is that there’s no such concrete thing like a screenplay. If you ask me to reveal the plot, I can just say that it’s about a boy learning his responsibilities and a mature girl learning to enjoy small little things in life. Some people have criticised the screenplay, claiming it as the weakest point. But that’s the whole beauty of the film! You watch it, come out and feel happy about it, but you cannot describe what all actually happened. It's the little moments and the entire feel of the film that make up for the story.

Imagining Ranbir Kapoor as a 20-year old was tricky, but with his clean shaven look, the part-spikes-part-flicks hairstyle (that every second guy is flaunting these days in college) and animated superhero t-shirts, he carries it off quite casually. Koko was as usual effortless and mature in her new-to-BOMBAY-looking-for-work role, but I would prefer her in her earlier films than commercial ones. Rahul Khanna does another short but suave role as her high-class boss.

There are two things that really establish the mood – cinematography and music. Camera angles are so smooth and subtle they give you the real feel of fantasy world that cinema is all about. You want to be right in there, in the middle of all of it. Not too jazzy, but just plain simple. Music again is very basic but used at the right place at the right time. Though there are some excerpts of certain songs that you will not find in the music album (atleast songs.pk doesn’t provide it). Also the start and stop thing with the music spoils great songs like Iktara.

Ayan Mukherjee knew what he was doing quite well. Things just fall in place smoothly. But being Dharma Production, you can’t not expect a little bit exaggeration and lack of reality. I wouldn’t say stuff like he has a long way to go or something, because you cannot judge him on a single film. But as Karan Johar mentioned in an interview, it’s a film made with conviction, and that comes out evidently.

Having said all of this, I’m still quite sure that many will not like the movie. Some will even find it quite boring. If you can make a connect with the lifestyle that is talks about, if you’ve lived or seen that kind of a teen’s life, or even been through that confusing phase, you will get the director’s drift. And that’s where the main problem of the film also lies. Establishing that connection is not always easy for everyone. And people who fail to get into this, find the movie extremely boring because for them, there’s no story nor fun in the movie. The theme is universal, but the way it’s been put out is quite not.

I wouldn’t say it’s a path-breaking film or something that will change the phase of cinema, but I saw it, I felt happy, I don’t regret it and I will not mind watching it again. It’s a simple movie that won’t alter your life in any way whatsoever, but will leave you pleased. It leaves a simple message, in a way that the Sids of the world would want to understand.

Thanking You..

When their Principal announced Macbeth – second and Maximus – first, I thought it was some joke! But when she said there was a difference of just 5 points, it hit me hard.

So…we lost Blitzkrieg by just 5 points and it was a tough competition and it doesn’t get any closer and Jai Hind and Nationals are the two best colleges in the galaxy and we love you and you love us! But all said and done, the fact is that we did lose. But we’ve set an unforgettable standard. And for the first time I’ve seen so closely, the kind of efforts that go into making it so unique and special.

I have more than 200 people to thank for this. But firstly, my ACL Manizaay. You’ve been an equal supportive leader as I said in that speech :P. But seriously, I could always rely on you for doing all the work if I wasn’t around and you were always calm and composed. From taking attendance of the juniors between the events to getting me food from the canteen, you did it all without cribbing even once! Thank you.

When I came to know that Prabal and Parth are directing the play, I knew I wouldn’t have to take care of it even once anymore. And we all saw how it was…it was the first time that I cried watching a live performance. Parth, you completely deserve that Best Actor award that you’ve got and I salute you! I remember you wanting me to become the CL for Blitzkrieg since last year, and that was one of the main reasons why I wanted to do it. Prabal and I, when it comes to such work, always share this understanding which is a bit on the emotional side. You inspire me to do things that I never thought I could do!

I was a bit skeptical about dance initially when no one was willing to do it. The auditions and the re-auditions were also a problem. At one point, we also doubted Apeksha’s decisions. But people came up to me and told me that it was the most beautiful dance ever, and I just nodded my head in agreement. Thank you Apeksha, Rhea, Rikin, Megha and the entire dance team for the performance that has raised the bar and set our standard so high!

The fashion show…I will never ever forget it! Sharana and Pasham assured me since the beginning about how they’ll manage it. Little did I know that I’d be learning how to walk the ramp after 2 days! But I’m really glad about it, winning the fashion show was one of the best moments. Pasham and Sharana, I never knew that you work so hard for putting this up! And I must thank Akshat for that speech just before the event that really helped us! Apart from that, I worked with so many new people, saw Rohita’s (H silent!) huuuuuuuuuuuuuge house and finally went to the famous (All Hail) Maganlal Dresswala!

I cannot forget the amazing filmmakers – Niren, Adip, Neville, Dinesh, Udit, Tarun, Reema and everyone else, who gave me their best productions and worked 24x7! I can’t stop thanking Ritesh, for all the support that you gave me. I would’ve been an ass at War of the CL without you. Thank you Angad for not saying ‘No’ even once for anything. I’d put you in any event and you’d do it willingly.

Special thanks to Rikin and Farhan for being such all rounders and entertaining me all the time. *Chop Chop Chop* for Rikin and a kick to that volunteer from Farhan!

There are so many other people I need to thank - Ady, Jamie, Sriram, Sharat, Chandni, Upasana, Krutika, Amaan, Nikhil, Henna, Afee, Jharna, Priyanka, Urvashi, Ankita, Shruthi, Atit, Nisha, Akhil…for all the help that I could get.

Thank you KC volunteers, specially Aarish, for helping us out in every way. Thanks Nationals, for being such a great competition. As a famous dialogue from a Hollywood movie says - "What would we do without you...you complete us..."

I’m sorry to Aakash and the band team for screwing up the whole band by not verifying the rules. I’m sorry to the entire play team for the miscommunication which dint let you take what you deserved. And I’m sorry to all my enthusiastic juniors whom I couldn’t take in for any event since there were very limited entries.

Some comments that kept me going all the way –
Parth – “If you are the CL, I’m ready to dance naked on the stage!”

Pasham – “People depend on you, and if they see you crying they’ll lose all the faith.”

Prabal – “You wanted the best play, I gave my best play ever!”

Sriram – “For the first time in my life, I’m feeling all Contingent-y!”

About being the CL, they say its madness. I felt it was easy. It wasn’t easy. YOU made it easy.

Things won’t be the same for me. I’ve learnt a lot, gained a lot of respect, and seen so much of hard work. And now, I feel incomplete. Today when I got up, I felt like everything’s over and I have nothing to do in life now. But I guess that’s how everyone feels after doing so much.

Thank you everyone. Thank you, for living the dream.

Sapan
CL, Blitzkrieg ‘08.

Out of thoughts!!...but anyway watch the philam

It's not that I don't want to blog...it's just that I'm not able to...is what I've been telling my friends since weeks. Earlier I had the I-have-my-exams-coming-up excuse, but now it's just plain laziness. I like to term it as 'the writer's block', but then it makes people wonder which writer am I talking about...

I've been also reading other's blogs which makes me want to write, but then as I said I guess I'm out of thoughts to write about. Not that my life is very monotonous or boring, but as of now there's nothing as interesting for you to read, or for me to write.

So I thought I'd atleast put up the movie that I made for my Culture Studies project. It's not as boring as it sounds, it's about an international travel show that explores Bombay. I think this is till now my best technically properly made movie, though because of the lack of resources and no funds, there's nothing much that we could do.

Please watch it and do comment. Earphones suggested for voice clarity as some scenes are not dubbed. Hope you enjoy!







P.S.- The quality of the video might not look as good because I have compressed it from 3.3GB to 175MB, to upload it here.

Polaris '08 - The Height of Mismanagement

Like always, Wilson College BMM dept came up with the first inter-college BMM festival of the year. But unlike always, it was a jigsaw puzzle for everyone, with even volunteers trying to find the missing pieces.

Didn’t get what I mean? Alright picture this - globalization as the theme (with most of the events unrelated to it), a purple cow as the mascot (who came on stage when things were delayed) , unknown faces as the judges, unenthusiastic sponsors, confused volunteers, and all this clubbed with the unstoppable rains of Bombay – a complete hotchpotch.

Let’s go one by one. Firstly, it occurred on 25, 26 and 27 of July, making it a 3-day long festival for the first time. While most events were unrelated to the theme, those which were related to it were quite complicated – like the ad event where participants were given countries like Croatia, Kazakhstan, Mexico, and asked to make non-tourism ads for them. One of the major problems was that the organizers themselves were so doubtful about these events that when confronted with even a small problem, they would get harrowed.

Events like cage football and box cricket grabbed the guys’ attention, as it was more fun playing them in the rains. The talent show, band event and short film fest is worth a mention because they could keep the public attracted to them.

People were really looking forward to a workshop by Chetan Bhagat, but all he did was promoting his film. It was sheer disappointment because it was like ‘the’ most awaited event, but all we saw was the movie promo and a few questions related to it. Workshop by film critic Rajiv Masand was rather interesting though.

Even though there were a numerous events, there was hardly anything innovative or new. The celebrity quotient was also very low. The sponsors were not able to create any vigor or excitement within the crowd (radio partner should have done something to pull the crowd).

KC took the trophy, followed by Jaihind and then Xavier’s.

It would not be an understatement if I say that it was not well organized at all. Power cut was very common, but they somehow managed with that. Even the prize distribution in the end was quite a mess as the host announced the events and the winners very randomly. The prizes were good though, winners got Spykar jeans vouchers and Fastrack goodies. The best singer got an I-pod shuffle and the best guitarist also got a guitar! Now that was something out of the box I must say, rather than plain certificates! It did make the participants happy about winning.

Although it wasn’t one the best festivals that we ever had, being the first BMM festival of the year the footfall was quite high and audience response as a whole was commendable.