Rocket Singh - Death of A Salesman

...or something like that. Saw this one today. It's not a great movie by any stretch and the running time at 2.5 hours is way, way, way beyond breaking point, but it's the only Ranbir Kapoor film I've seen so far that I could sit through without wanting to repeatedly punch him in the face, and that's something. Perhaps it has to do with his ugly mug being mostly hidden behind the Sardarji getup. Also his demeanor is diffident rather than the usual boorish, which makes him almost affable. It's also nice to see a film pay attention to actors other than the matinee stars and there are some decent performances on show here (Gauhar Khan as the ignored office girl is very good and Prem Chopra does a wonderfully restrained act as the grandpa). But there are no really brilliant scenes or layered characters, only some amusing digs at the cutthroat sales industry.

This is a film that some people will consider "very good for a Hindi film" because it actually tries to adhere to the plot, the drama is dialed down and there aren't any elaborate song and dance sequences. Fine, except that the film is not hugely exciting beyond that. It's nowhere as absurdly fun as a 99 or a Tere Bin Laden, and I wasn't interested in it's characters the way I was for the ones in Khosla ka Ghosla or Oye Lucky. But like I said, I could actually sit through (spread over two sittings, but still) a film with large swathes of Ranbir Kapoor in it, so there must be something good about it.

Movies, movies...

Over the recent years, Marathi cinema, has put up some interesting examples of middle of the road sensible cinema, like Gabhricha Paus, Jogwaa, Valu, Harishchandrachi Factory, Deool etc. Khel Mandala [Viju Mane]...is not one of them. The plot has Dasu, a hereditary puppeteer trying to make a living in big bad Mumbai, finding an abandoned child that is blind and deaf/mute. He raises her in expected Samaritan fashion, and uses her as part of his act, controlling her moments by strings like a puppet. You would imagine that a story like this would involve some melodrama and tear-jerking and it wasn't that I walked into it blind-folded, but the film, at least whatever I saw of it, has little other than cliché and crudely wrought sentiment. Oh yes, I walked out of it halfway. I didn't expect to, I even spent an ill-advised hundred bucks on samosas and coffee at the interval mark, but when early on in the second half Dasu starts having romance song fantasies about the journalist girl who appears sympathetic to his cause, I had an undeniable feeling of having better things to do with my time than sit through this claptrap. Till that point the film was like Mehmood's Kunwara Baap, without the bizarreness that gave its predecessor a morbid curiosity value. I predict the following things to happen later in the film:

1. Dasu gets complete KLPD over his imagined romance, and the journalist pairs up with her rival who runs competing stories about Dasu's “exploitation” of the child to steal her thunder
2. The handicapped child is adopted by the rich childless housewife that bonds with her.
3. Dasu dies of cancer / in a riot in protracted dialog-spewing fashion.

In case any of you see it in full, let me know by how much I miss the mark.

The Avengers [Joss Whedon] last night was pretty much what I expected it to be, a watchable disposable popcorn film (though I didn't have any popcorn). The story is ass, and you have to “marvel” at the need to go through three origin films to culminate in something that essentially comes from a randomized plot generator machine. What mainly works in the film's favor is Joss Whedon's penchant for witty dialog and character interplay – this ain't quite Firefly but it's a decent diversion. The most pleasant surprise comes from Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner / The Hulk. What Ruffalo / Whedon achieve here is make Banner interesting enough that you're not just waiting for him to go big and green. I didn't care for Tom Hiddleston's Loki in the Thor film and I don't particularly care for him as the main adversary here – he has too much of a mousy clerk air to really fill the boots of a mischievous God. After a shaky and schizophrenic first third, the dialog and action pick up sufficiently for the film to serve its purpose. The climax is a lot of computer generated imagery and stuntwork put together. I'm sure a lot of skill and hard work went into it but I'm not blown away mainly because the film rarely gives a sense of its lead characters being in any real danger. A classic adventure film, predictability notwithstanding, will attempt to give you some *gulp* moments in its good v/s evil battles. Here, no one seems to be breaking much of a sweat, they're so busy being cool. Anyway, if you like action-oriented comic book movies, you'll definitely find something to like here, just don't expect to find the Holy Grail.

Saw Singham [Rohit Shetty] today with my mum. Having heard so much about the visual quality of the blu-ray I really, really wanted to like this film – if it had been anywhere as entertaining like Dabangg was, I would have definitely bought the BD. But that was not the case. While both these films fit squarely in the masala movie bracket, the difference is that Dabangg took care to see that the script was tight and constantly entertaining – the quirky father-son / brother relation, the attitude of the lead characters, punchy dialog, good pace and humor etc. In Singham everything between the fight scenes drags tremendously. Ajay Devgan (or Devgn or whatever the hell he wants to call himself) has a chiseled physique and he may be better at action but his persona is so dour I don't feel any liking for his character, and in a film like this that's a fatal flaw. Prakash Raj does his usual campy act and he's good but this same role was done with more humor and chutzpah in Bbuddah Hoga Tera Baap. Looks like I won't be buying the BD because I can't imagine wanting to see this film ever again.

Megamind [dir. Tom McGrath]

One of the problems I have with many of the live-action superhero movies of the past decade or so is how they've gone emo-core or gritty (or both). Tim Burton's Batman movies kicked off the trend of the sombre comic book hero movie, but at least Batman was a more natural fit for that style. Since then, that route has been mostly a case of diminishing returns, and it's mainly the animated films that have given me my classic comic book movie fix. The DC animated features were in “serious” mode, but packed in sufficient thrills and superhero moments in their crisp running times to be worth the while. The Incredibles from Pixar remains the benchmark for the most fun superhero movie I have seen in more than a decade. Megamind is not up to that level but it comes a close second.

Short of getting an official license, Megamind is the closest is gets to telling a Superman - Lex Luthor story (close enough that I'm sure DC's lawyers must have at least vaguely considered some kind of legal action). The main new trick here is that we see things from the supervillain's point of view. Blasted off from his doomed planet by his parents in a spaceship (sound familiar?) Megamind as a baby crash-lands in a prison, where he learns his rights and wrongs (mostly wrongs). He also finds the world unfriendly to his more obviously alien appearance and nerdy personality (as opposed to his rival Super...Metro Man's hearty All-American Hero avatar). The rejection causes him to discard all attempts to befriend it, paving his way to becoming Metro Man's arch-nemesis. Sure, the plot is borrowed but kudos to Dreamworks for having an actually lucid script that's not just a collection of gags and references. Oh but all of this build-up is just the start of the film, and pretty early on Megamind, much to Metro City's, and particularly, Lois Lane clone Roxanne Ritchie's dismay manages to get rid of the hero.

What's a supervillain to do now that he has destroyed his only match forms the interesting and often endearing remainder of the film. The film throws up some lovely possibilities when juxtaposed against the Superman canon – Luthor building another superhero to battle with...and falling in love with Lois, even adopting an alter ego to court her? Hah, interested, aren't you? I won't spoil any more then. In any case, unpredictability is not the strong suit of the movie; it's charm, smile-inducing giddy boyish charm. The voice actors are a big part of the charm – Will Ferrell and Tina Fey totally nail it as the unlikely pair, Jonah Hill as Megamind-generated hero(?) Titan handsomely delivers, and Brad Pitt offers strong support as Metro Man. The setting and style is akin to The Incredibles' brightly colored retro-chic. It works equally well for this film, and the costuming is absolutely gorgeous. And then of course the thrills. The action sequences in the film, in particular the airborne ones, are as good as I have seen in any superhero film. All through I was thinking, THIS is how they should be doing a Superman film, not some dull gritty reboot.

Where Megamind falters is in its anxiety to cover all bases. The character of Megamind's minion (called...Minion) is half-hearted in construction and adds a noticeably more child-oriented element to the story. There are also instances where the ambitions of a scene are undercut by the need to place in a recognizable “Hey, it's that one!” soundtrack reference; Ozzy's Crazy Train was a fun addition and Michael Jackson's Bad is justified, but Welcome to The Jungle seemed to have been included only with the idea of passing on cocaine money to Axl Rose.

But these are petty niggles. Megamind is a fun and lively superhero movie, and very likely to appeal to pre-Frank Miller era comic book fans. In other words, there's no school like old-school.

The African Queen [dir. John Huston]

If The African Queen were to be made today, it would probably have more youthful stars (unless they went in for that old standby Harrison Ford, in which case it'd be called Indiana Jones and The Naval Juggernaut), a more convoluted and breathless screenplay, and far more elaborate stunts and explosions to qualify as an “adventure” film. But this was in 1951, when you could still have an old-fashioned romance with mature actors skilfully folded in with a rousing Boy Scout story about two people in Africa on a dinky little riverboat laden with explosives going on a mission to sink a German gunboat.

Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, as a boatman and a missionary respectively, are the unlikely middle-aged couple that set forth on this foolhardy mission, and beyond everything else they are what keep this film afloat. Having previously encountered Bogie only as the hard-edged arrogant bitter protagonist (Maltese Falcon, Big Sleep, Treasure of Sierra Madre), it was a pleasure to see him going sweet, and he shows a fine talent for comedy here. Hepburn gives her character the required hauteur without appearing unnecesarily mean (although perhaps the scene where she icily dumps all of Bogart's gin into the river is a close shave), and the chemistry between her and Bogie makes their emerging romance endearing enough to gloss over its convenience. Yes, there are thrills, when the boat has to be steered over rapids, when they go past a German fort with snipers firing, when they get stuck in reed-choked swamp territory. But African Queen, as scripted by Huston and James Agee, is at heart a romance, one that is charming not cloying, innocent not naive. The dialog drips with wit and intelligence, and, equally important, it remains consistent to the characters. A lot of the film was shot on location in Africa which invaluably builds the atmosphere and mood, and Jack Cardiff's technicolor photography is not in the same league as some of his work for Powell & Pressburger, but it makes for a sufficiently sturdy and pleasant presentation.

African Queen is a wonderful example of the old-school romantic adventure. Curl up with your beloved (or just yourself), a big tub of popcorn in hand and settle down to enjoy a genuine example of Hollywood movie magic.

For those that want to know, Paramount's blu-ray gives a lush video presentation of the film. The image is not always pin-sharp but that would mostly be due to the technology and shooting style of the film. Primary colors when seen have a nice pop and there is still a good amount of fine detail to be enjoyed. The Dolby digital mono soundtrack is decent but ordinary and one wonders if a lossless track even in mono would have had more punch. The sole extra on the Paramount BD is a very worthy one, an hour-long retrospective that comprehensively covers the making of this classic, with new and archival interviews and lots of production stills (Better yet, it is also in HD). For those in the UK, there is a blu-ray by ITV which features the same presentation of the film and the retrospective, and in addition features a feature commentary by Jack Cardiff.

Bioscope [dir. K.M. Madhusudhanan]

My God, this is one of the most beautiful looking films I have ever seen. When I say this, I don't mean it with some qualifier like low-budget film or Indian origin film or something like that. I would readily put this one in the same ballpark as films by Werner Herzog and Bernardo Bertolucci and Michaelangelo Antonioni and still say, “My God, this is one of the most beautiful looking films I have ever seen.” I doubt there's a single shot in this film that cannot be simply framed and hung up as a work of art.

Of course, it's not a film I can recommend in an unreserved fashion because the elliptical script also has the narrative cohesion of a work of art (although never to the point of being aggravating), but if you are one with the idea of film as the magic of moving image, of poetry in motion, this is as good as it gets. The moving image is an integral part of the film's soul, its lead character Diwakaran (Murugan) succumbing to the magic of the early movie projector. Diwakaran, a sensitive dreamy young man with a consumptive wife, in turn aims to spread the magic bringing the instrument to his village. In the pre-independence era the film is set in, the arrival of the bioscope in the village provokes whispers of ghosts and witchcraft, and even his affectionate family is disturbed at what might bring a curse upon them.

This may sound like a ripe royal melodrama but Madhusudhanan and his collaborators DOP M.J. Radhakrishnan and Music Composer Chandran Veyattummal completely discarded such tropes, transforming the experience through visuals and sound into one of sublime cinematic sensuality. Beyond an initial viewing there is even no need to keep track of the narrative, just submit yourself to the phantasmagoria of iconic imagery that is Bioscope.

The good news is that the NFDC-Shemaroo DVD is in general a very good presentation of the film. The image is on the soft side and can occasionally be quite dark but I think it reflects the intended look. Primary colors are incredibly rich and the all-important shadows are deep. Although there are minor scratches/blemishes now and then, the print is quite clean by most standards for Indian films and major damage is thankfully quite rare.

But there is a single flaw in the transfer which is quite egregious given the visual nature of the film. What we have here is a non-anamorphic transfer in 16:9 ratio, which means that if you have a 16:9 widescreen TV the image, instead of filling the screen completely with its gorgeousness, will stretch out with black bars. Additionally the subtitles fall in the region of the black bars, so zooming in will lead to them getting cut off from view. You can get around this if you have an HTPC setup like I do (VLC Player ftw!) or have some fancy DVD player that allows you to alter the position of the subtitles, but really it should not have to be addressed like that. It's a shame because otherwise this is a tremendously good effort.

But don't let these niggles stop you from experiencing what is surely one of the most absorbing painterly experiences in cinema.

Deool aka The Temple [dir. Umesh Kulkarni]

On the whole I did like Deool a good deal more than Umesh Kulkarni's previous effort Valu – The Wild Bull. The comparison is apt because Deool can be seen as almost a follow-up to Valu. It is set in a similar sleepy hamlet where again, an unusual event cascades into a series of actions and consequences. Here the local simpleton Keshav (Girish Kulkarni, who bagged a well-deserved National Award for his role) while resting under a tree, believes that he has had a sighting of Dutta aka Shiva, and dashes through the village announcing it to all and sundry. But not everyone is happy with the news: Social worker Anna (Dilip Prabhavalkar) is a rationalist and the local politician Bhau (Nana Patekar) has been ordered by his higher-ups to convey “Madam's” message of development (no prizes for guessing which party is being referred to). They try to play down the event but the superstitions of the local populace, including Bhau's wife (Sonali Kulkarni, looking more attractive in her plump homely avatar) and the machinations of Bhau's nephew who sees the building of a temple as his way to breaking out of Bhau's stranglehold, take matters all out of proportion.

Like with Valu, the rural setting has been realized very well, and in its way the film raises some pertinent issues about the line between development and commercialism. The building of the temple brings piped water and electricity and prosperity to the village, but renders it a tourist-happy stop that the locals labor to feed off while their fields lie uncultivated. Keshav's faith in his sighting is genuine and he too is initially pleased at the striking changes that Dutta has brought to his erstwhile ignored hamlet, but grows gradually disillusioned at the commercialization of devotion that his neighbors and friends have gotten into in the aftermath of building the temple – It's a shrill but meaningful point that most of them have cut down their actual visits to the deity's sanctum because they're too busy profiting off the faith of visiting pilgrims. It's not absolutely bleak and biting like Billy Wilder's Ace in The Hole, though, and the people behind the temple are not unduly demonized. In a wonderful scene that comes midway into the film, Bhau and Anna have a debate over the legitimacy of the events that have occurred in the wake of the temple and the effect it will have on the place and the people. There is no absolute right or wrong here, and appreciation must be given to the script and the mature performances of the two seasoned actors for walking this fine line.

What keeps me from unreservedly singing this film's praises is its very meandering style, something that I had a greater problem with in Valu. I grant that there is a certain sense to depicting rural life with a slowed down rhythm, but at 2 ½ hours the film gets tedious, has some uneven tonal changes and is not especially richer for it; in fact the impact is diluted by repetition and pointless excursions into too many territories. A good story is one that carefully selects its themes and threads, and does not try to jam in every single idea the writers thought of. There are some more obvious clunkers like a disconnected item song, an ironic addition for a film that talks about exploitative commercialization. But the film is still to be appreciated for its mostly sincere telling of an interesting original story. Here's hoping for more and better from these guys.

P.S. The opening credits sequence featuring "sand paintings" is one of the most charming and creative sequences I have seen. Budding artists will love this.

Ghost [dir. Puja Jatinder Bedi]

Saw Ghost tonight and it was dire. Even the gore, a couple of scenes aside (including a total WTF crucifixion scene), is not enough to overcome the utterly amateurish and absurd proceedings. Sayali Bhagat (as a doctor who wears off-shoulder above-the-knee skirts on her night rounds) is another no-talent washout from the beauty contest scene and Shiney Ahuja looks like he might have been more comfortable in jail than acting in this film. Continuity doesn't seem at all to have been on anybody's minds while shooting the film and there's just too much cliche and dead space (hur hur). It might have fared a bit better as a troll-film at the cinemas, but on the other hand I had here the option of skipping the horrible songs so that evens out.

The DVD from Venus matches the general wretchedness of the film. It's 2012 and what we have here is...wait for it...a NON-ANAMORPHIC widescreen presentation with milky contrast and an obnoxious opaque logo on the top left (which occasionally drops a copy of itself down the screen like a turd). The sound design is unbalanced with low-key conversations barely audible while sound effects and BGM are too loud in the mix. Should I be glad this wasn't for a good film?