3 Idiots

3 Idiots is the latest offering from maverick producer Manmohanji. Initially the film was acted and directed by its lead Suresh Jilmadi, but he was doing a fucked up job with both and producer Manmohan had no choice but to take the reins in his own hands. As usual with any bollywood production, the release date was announced 6 years earlier and the makers are still scrambling to get the film out on date. If you are scratching your head as to what the hell were these guys doing for 6 longs years, then you can join the queue with Head and Shoulders.

The story takes off with our protagonists M S Jill and Lalit Jhanot searching for their long lost friend and mentor Jilmadi. Jilmadi went into hiding after the CWG fiasco and since then they have been looking out in every nook and corner of the country for the bugger. Well, if you think they are doing this out of brotherly love, you might as well believe that Tiger woods was gay. Jill and Jhanot want their share of the common wealth that they looted during commonwealth (kudos to whoever names it aptly).

The movie begins sensationally when their friend-turned-foe Chatur Ramalingam (played astutely by Mani Shankar Jaiyar) tells them that he knows the whereabouts of Jilmadi. Immediately Jhanot runs along and hops in a taxi without wearing his pants. For 6 scenes you see the guy all around in his pink undies and wonder "Why the hell you dont get a pants?". But that is where the Director lends his touch (or the lack of it assuming he isnt gay).

In a later stage of the movie Jhanot quips "The westerners standards of hygiene is different from Indians." You are not surprised that it comes from him as he is seen in his undies (pink ones especially) most of the time, eats without washing his hands and poops in open public places. His performance can be summed up grandly in one small word - SHITTY.

Coming back to the story, Jill and Jhanot take us on a flashback tour where along with Jilmadi, they were officials in our parliament and their merry money-making times where they installed equipments worth few lakhs and billed us for crores. The Director's clever usage of the song "Golmaal hai bhai sab golmaal hai" to show their early days is noteworthy. Jilmadi always remained the top dog of the group as he knew his way of dealing things and doing it his way (read it as screwing it up). The ROCKY type build-up to Jilmadi's Olympic preparation ends in a whimper when the country wins a solitary gold medal from a country of 1 billion in the Olympics. But nevertheless Jilmadi and his pals are showing partying in a pub in the next scene as if they had just conquered North pole.

During the process of the CWG, Jilmadi has a love-hate track with Sheila Dixit. The director makes them sing a duet Zoobi Zoobi amidst potholes and craters making us think that it was shot in moon. But anyone wise enough can understand that the song was shot cheaply on the roads of Mumbai and Delhi with shoddy graphics. Sheila has an emotional role and she does her part well even ignoring Jilmadi at times.

Her emotional dialogue as "The bridge that collapsed was for the public and not the athletes was well received with thunderous applause by the public. That confirmed our long-lasting doubt that the government does not care a rat's ass about the tax paying public's useless life. Come on, in a country of a billion, do they care if few hundreds of us die in a terrorist attack or train accident or bridge collapse?

Jilmadi had showcased his comedy side in a few scenes and they are done well. The moment he thunders in the press conference that "The CWG has world class facilities on par with Beijing" is followed by the collapse of the bridge. It is copied from Johnny English, but nevertheless it makes you wish why these son-of-the-guns were not under that bridge when it collapsed.

Jill is like the Sarathbabu of tamil movies. No matter what he does, he is always shadowed in supporting roles. IN the movie "Election Commission", he played hero TN Seshan's useless sidekick. The scenes where he gets trashed by Manmohan in coarse and profane Punjabi is sure to raise cat whistles in the theater.

And now we come to our main performer Jilmadi. No doubt that this guy is an actor class apart. Oh come on, we are not able to stand one accusation, and this guy is like the bed rock of controversy. Reportedly, Kamal Hassan is receiving his coaching to play a corrupt politician in his next movie "Pakka Thirudan". His emotional outburst that he will not quit even if the games are bombed was so wonderful that the lady next to me blew her nose with my shirt. Betting circles are buzzing with Jilmadi's chances to win an Oscar next year.

Music director Rahman disappoints with his music score. But then you cant blame him, when the script itself is shoddy. The song "All is well" sung in midst of bridge collapses, broken beds, angry outbursts and scandals is an ode to Indian voting public. The only concern is that when this film would be released, almost half the delhi is expected to be flying to HongKong and Singapore and it is expected that the relatives of the officials bribed by quarter and biriyaani might fill up the stands.

I was tempted initially to not give the spoiler-ending of this movie, but then as an Indian voting public you should not be surprised. Chatur takes Jill and Jhanot to a neighborhood country which is hosting some sort of international games event. They find half built stadiums, broken bridges and scandals just few days away from event. It does not require an Einstein to figure out that such an 'efficient' effort can belong to none, but to Jilmadi. They all unite together and steal happily ever after.....

But then, as Jilmadi croons and we the amazing Indian public know......All is indeed well. :)

Kaun Banenge Humaare Brangelina?

For the people whose hindi knowledge hangs on the thin threads of "Ek Gaanv mein ek aadmi rehta tha", the meaning of the title of this post means "Who will be the Indian Brangelina?"

Now you are wondering "Should we really care?".  Right?

Of course you should. As per a recent piece of news, apparently Angelina Jolie told a kid from the film Slumdog Millionaire that she is planning to adopt a kid from India. So it means that the ever increasing family of Brangelina is going to increase its count size. They have almost lined up their arsenal of kids from every possible third world countries which are strived by war or poverty or you-name-it.

I dont mean to speak ill of them in this context, because

1. Personally, I can’t even take care of myself, let alone so many kids. So I have no amount of right to ridicule them and their noble intentions.

2. There is a saying in tamil which literally translates to "The one who has long hair, will tie a hair-bun." They have money and they can afford to support them and most of all she has a will to help people and so she does it. Hats off Madam!

Oh...ok you are confused? You are wondering that if they are so good, why we need an Indian Brangelina. Of course we need them. We have this negative image of poor imporvished country which we ought to break and to do that we need to do the reverse of what they are doing.

Meaning?

Lets adopt kids from the first world countries like US, UK, Australia and so on.

For that, we need a high profile couple who have the clout and visibility as Brangelina.And so, like Kaun Banega Crorepati, your options are

A. M K and Jaya

No one knows how to raise kids and making them high profile as M K. Every possible position in his party has been held by his scions or relatives. In short, like Congress has "Jai Ho" as their theme song, DMK should have the song "Where is the Party, Ada Nama Ootula Party" as their theme song. Gels quite well, isnt it?

As for Jaya, well, you got to blame her party men for naming her Amma. If she can be Amma for so many lakhs of her Partymen, couple of children wouldnt hurt.

The additional advantage of this pair is that, they have truckloads of money (so what if under binami) and also the kids wont need to stay alone. They can play with Stalin Uncle, Sasikala Chiththi, Maaran Maama. See, it seems like one big happy family in Vikraman movie :)

2. Raj and Maya

Ok. Arguably quite an odd couple. But see, you should understand the motive behind this whole operation. It is to bring to end many disparities. Raj Bhai is so "Kind" and "soft". Imagine, how nice it will be when he and his team of goons will teach Americans, Europeans to speak and write in Marathi? They can eat Vada paav, go to Chaupati Beach, threaten...eh...sorry...meet Amitabh. Mazaa aayega!!!

Maya Didi will ask her party cadres who are going to contest in the elections to teach the kids to stab (mean chicken yaar), shoot and also talk in "shudhdh" hindi laden with expletives. The children can also have additional statues of their own alongside Maya didi.

They can accompany her to various party meetings where seat sharing, dealings and horse-trading will be done and these kids can then someday take these cultural learnings to their place and "prosper". I mean, why should we be the only spoilt ones?

3. Lalu and Rabri

What...you are surprised? Come one, they are an ideal couple. Look, how much trust you should have if you can make your wife who has hardly crossed the street to buy veggies to run one of the most dangerous states in the country? That, my friends is marital commitment and trust.

And also their rich experience in handling kids close to size of cricket team speaks volumes of their parenting skills. Also the kids can also learn how to feed fodder to cows (or how to make a scam out of it if they are smart enough). They can milk the cows, celebrate holi, go in tonga during election stunts. Aah...Incredible India isnt it?

4. Simbhu and Nayanthara

Eh....sorry...I needed 4 options. And quite frankly this constitutes the Brangelina type Bad-Boy-Plus-Hot-Lady concept. Donno if you have any reservations against them. Of course we can swap them with Salman and Katrina (although the western kids might not want to hug Katrina as her name resembles a hurricane :P).

So what do you think? Who deserves to be the winner?

Shoot your thoughts and opinions or even your choices on who makes an ideal couple to be the Indian Brangelina.

Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa

We all feel sleepy in the afternoon. And when you add the fact that our Indian food is so amazingly designed to be heavy, you cant resist feeling sleepy.

Worse, I had a presentation today morning for which I had to slog yesterday night and I had only 2 hours of sleep. My eyes were super-duper red like Vijaykanth and I was barely able to look at the monitor. 2 huge mugs of coffee failed to keep my eyes open.

As luck would have it, many of my clients left in the afternoon and I was left alone. Wondering what to do, I opened my favorite site...YOU-TUBE. I closed my eyes and decided to enter anything that would come to my mind first. I typed Kabhi haan Kabhi Naa and found this song. Its amazing that even though it has been years since I listened to this song, I remembered its lyrics and also the shot angles. SRK looks so young and innocent and if I remember correctly Suchitra Krishnamurthy used to appear in Sunrise ads.

The initial music sounds like the old song "Dilbar mere Kab tak mujhe". Kumar Sanu ruled Bollywood in this period and Jatin-Lalit were in prime form. Hmmm....well...to let one secret out, this was our gang's theme song for their respective school crushes :-).

For more nostalgia, click here.

Superstar?

In all these years of my film viewing, I believed that ROCKY was the best underdog movie ever made. Be it Stallone's almost flawless screenplay or the perfect casting of actors or be it Bill Conti's inspirational theme music, to me ROCKY is the perfect epitome of a Never-say-die spirited movie.

But sometimes we get to witness things that shake our very foundation of belief. I am sure that Stallone is not reading this, and if he does he would be terribly sad to lose this crown to some rank outsider. But then that’s the power of truth. It remains irrefutable. Just check out the clipping below. If you haven’t seen it till now, you can curse your stars now....yeah....you may as well plan to murder me.



The moment you see Sam Anderson gyrate and emote on screen, you don’t know what emotion grips you immediately. Is it anger? Laughter? Disgust? Hatred? Or....surprise? How could someone be so self confident to do this? You may as well wonder what was the whole point of making this piece of junk when you know for sure that even the cast and crew member's kith and kin would not mention their association with such a terrible piece of work.



Maybe they didn’t know what to do with shit loads of money and wondered if this was the best way to spend it lavishly. The hero Sam Anderson's dance movements could contemplate Michael Jackson to recreate his famous Moon walk or force Hrithik or Prabhudeva to take penance from dancing. His emotions in the climax are razzy-worthy and if this was the emotion that the director approved by saying CUT.....I guess he must have been blind or must have been napping. I guess he was napping during the whole making of the movie itself.



I dont know how may people saw it in theatre's (hey...did this thing get released). For trivia lovers it is a movie called Yaarukku Yaaro. Believe it or not...this guy has an Orkut community in his name. Usually I would have posted such stuff in my other blog, but I guess my concern to entertain my fellow blogmates just overtook my interest in story telling.

If you feel good about yourself a few notches higher or if you had some hearty laugh....you know whom to thank :-)