Archive for the month 'June, 2008'

When Kiran Met Karen : Master Piece or Just For Titillation?

It’s quite amusing if one takes a look at recent times Lezzy (lesbian) films with an Indian sub-context. Actually No. Let me rephrase this.

Watching the (only) two Lezzy films from mainstream Hindi cinema was an amusing experience, at least for me. I’m referring to Deepa Mehta’s Fire (1998), and blink-and-you-missed-it, Karan Razdan’s Girlfriend (2004). Of course, the two films differed widely in terms of storyline, direction, and other production aspects. Let’s not even go into difference in the acting department.

However the common thread between the two is this: Both films needed a reason for lesbianism. Homosexuality had to be explained and given a valid raison d’etre: the lead characters of both films were abused, sexually and emotionally, by members of the opposite sex, therefore they turned to other women for ‘solace’.

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Bray-King News !

Breaking News … CBI cordons off Sector 25 in Noida, breaking News, Lie detector Test on Krishna, Rama, Kumbhkarna. I am not able to find more characters to the string of names which come up on everyday news stories these days. The news items only pertain to Neeraj Grover’s gruesome murder or Aarushi and Hemant’s mystery. Or for a change cops charged for raping a woman, and the woman killing herself for not being heard by the Haryana Police.

I would rather the news channels dedicate their prime time for news which has more sense, than some botched up investigative cases which are of no consequence for people far across India. Instead, what these channels bring on the idiot boxes for all of us is nothing but Breaking News, which either has to do with cordoning off, lie detector tests or suicide which maybe murder. I shudder to think what the new age, impressionable children and teenagers are being fed with as far as news is concerned.

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Thoughts On Aamir

(*Warning : Some spoilers ahead)

Here’s the thing about Aamir – by the end of the movie, I wanted it to end, so I could leave the hall. But, doesn’t that mean the film wasn’t good? Actually, it was, very very good. As the film twisted and turned through the narrow galies of Dongri and Mohammed Ali Road, I was left thinking, how uneasily the notion, ‘we don’t write our own fate’ sits on me.

The script is tight and the direction (for a first timer) is great. It begins on a plane, and follows the protagonist Aamir Ali, through the few hours after he alights from the flight from London. The airport immigration officer checking his luggage four times ostensibly because he’s a Muslim foreign-returned doctor is a bit exaggerated. Class and education still continue to have a hold over our consciousness no matter how many ‘terrorists’ have been found to possess degrees.

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Review 10 Ka Dum : Not Bad For Starters

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(Well its Salman Khan. And I tend to get a wee-bit emotional when it comes to him but then again this is no new news for you. Which is why when the time came to review the very first episode of 10 Ka Dum, I choose my dearest friend to take it while I could spend the entire 60 minutes simply ogling at the man and not worrying about the rest.)

Take a glass piece to the eye, crinkle up your nose, and revisit a much thinner Salman Khan of two decades ago. His expressions, his accent and his I’m-so-Kewl attitude remain much the same as he played the bad-boy-turned-good in the Rekha and Farook Sheikh starrer Biwi Ho Toh Aisi (1988).

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