CRACKTASTIC SEVENTIES GLORY!

Dharam-Veer (Manmohan Desai, 1977)

 Does my Apocalyptic Leather S&M get-up make me look fat?

Seriously! What I want to know, above and beyond ANYTHING else, is HOW THE HELL somebody in their right mind comes up with a film as completely, utterly, gloriously out-of-control batshit insane as Dharam-Veer. If you cannot find something to love with lunatic passion in this movie, you have no joy in your life and you are henceforth dead to me. That’s my new motto.

So, in true Manmohan Desai masala fashion, the extremely convoluted plot is focused around twin brothers who are separated at birth and raised in vastly different circumstances. Dharmendra plays Dharam, the son who is raised in poverty; Jeetendra plays Veer, the son who raised as part of the royal family of OMG GET THIS: a mythical medieval kingdom.

  "Um, dude, hate to break it to you, the future called, and YOU KILLED FASHION."  

In this nameless medieval kingdom, it’s TOTALLY NORMAL for princes to frolic with poor villagers and become best friends forever. Back in the 70s, the “we’re best friends” song between two male heroes of a film was totally acceptable and not even weird. Dharmendra and Jeetendra rock it with a song claiming their friendship is the eighth wonder of the world. It’s like the Dharam-Veer version of “Yeh Dosti”. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Bobby “Junior Dharmendra” Deol and Akshay Kumar, who just make “the male friendship song” really really creepy many years later in Dosti: Friends Forever. But that movie is a whole different post.

The fashion of the day is apparently “We just used every fricking costume that was in the Costume Warehouse” and thus the look of the film is more “cracked out school play” than “coherent period design”.

Leather automatically equals butch, right? Even if it's technically a dress?

 

 NOT Colin Firth in Pride and Prejudice.

   

 NOT an alien robot from the future. That would be Bipasha Basu. BOOM.

 

 In his spare time, the Rajkumar can be found performing at the local amateur LATIN DREAMS karaoke night at Club Copacabana.

But it’s in the smaller details that things start to get OMG RIDICULOUSAWESOME.

Pran plays a hunter who WRESTLES TIGERS and also trains the heroes in the art of the SAMURAI (omfg!)

 "ONE two three ONE two three...LET ME LEAD DAMMIT!"

He also has a magical pet falcon called Sheroo that can UNDERSTAND ENGLISH and STEAL BABIES.

"Pran is NOTHING without me".

He also has a wicked-cool mustache and ponytail (!) and wears A PONCHO. Maybe I am the only person that finds that super awesome, BUT I DOUBT IT. If you don’t love Pran, you HAVE NO SOUL.

 Love me, love me, love me, your mama says you love me, your papa says you love me.

In addition to Pran the master Samurai, Dharam-Veer prominently features:  

PIRATES

GYPSIES

MIDGETS

AMPUTEES 

A CRAZY SADOMASOCHISTIC PRINCESS

That is blood on her forehead. The blood of Bobby Deol's papa.

Dharmendra, while engaged in some weird sadomasochistic foreplay with the aforementioned Crazy Princess:

(seriously, first, she locks him up in a cage and lets midgets poke him; then she chains him up and whips him; then he catches her and ties her up with a rope and drags her around for a while…and THEN THEY FALL IN LOVE?!) exhibits some 70s evidence of….you know it…smooth pits. Suits him too. But! Armpit Hair Mystery #1 goes back further than I originally thought! (Also: Dharmendra fulfils this film's man candy quotient. Is that wrong?)

 You know what those are? Dharmendra's armpits. His DHARMPITS.

BOBBY DEOL! Oh SCHO SCHWEEEET! He’s really really cute.

...though dressing a kid like that HAS to inflict some kind of mental trauma.

The full insanity of this film actually cannot be truly conveyed in words or screencaps – you really have to experience it in its full glory. I don’t want to recount the convoluted plot for you because not knowing where the lunatic plot is going to go next is part of the fun. Also, I got kinda distracted by the fashion at several points and may have got a little confused so…it’s entirely likely I would summarise it completely wrong anyway. YOU NEED TO WATCH THIS MOVIE THOUGH. YOU WILL BE BETTER FOR IT.

And we all observed Pran's Poncho. And we saw that it was good. 

Dharam-Veer is my new acid test for whether I can get along with someone or not. You don’t get D-V? Get out of my life.

ZERO thumbs up, ladies and gentlemen. Poor form.

Okay kids, so Kat and Hrithik are appearing together FOR THE FIRST TIME on the cover of Harpers Bazaar. Exciting right?

So I'm not the biggest fan of Katrina Kaif - though she's growing on me the more I see of her; and I certainly cannot wait until Hrithik renounces his Grizzly Bear look forever more. The day cannot come soon enough. 

BUT THAT IS NOT WHAT THIS IS ABOUT.

 

If I recall correctly, AND I THINK I DO, Hrithik's AWESOME DOUBLE DIGIT is on his right hand. 

BUT LOOK. Something is BIZARRE in BAZAAR land (hah, see what I did there?)

 

WHERE THE FRICK IS HRITHIK'S DOUBLE THUMB?

They photoshopped it out?

ARE YOU FRICKING KIDDING ME?

Poor form, Harper's Bazaar. POOR FORM.

Smoking kills

No Smoking (Anurag Kashyap, 2007)

The last film that made me feel simultaneously intrigued, confused, and more than a little spooked in the way No Smoking did, was David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. With that one, though, having been well prepared by Twin Peaks and the Lynchian reputatian for surrealism and let’s face it, utter weirdness, I knew what I was getting into.

No Smoking, on the other hand, was something of a complete and utter mindf**k from start to finish. Not only is this unlike ANY film out of Bollywood I have ever seen, it is among the strangest, most intriguing, most puzzling films I have seen from any industry, IN MY LIFE. (I would like to point out that I did a film-based degree. I have seen and studied some weird-ass films).

On the surface, No Smoking is about a man’s addiction to smoking, and what happens when he enters a mysterious rehab programmme to try and quit. K. (John Abraham) is the smoker, forced into rehab by his anti-smoking wife Anjali (Ayesha Takia) who threatens to leave him if he doesn’t quit the cancer sticks. Paresh Rawal plays Baba Bengali, the head of Prayogshala – the mysterious rehabilitation centre where after K. signs a contract, he is committed to no smoking, or forced to suffer the consequences. 

If you like films that don’t require you to think or pay attention or have an opinion or involve yourself actively in any way, choose something else to watch. No Smoking forced me to use the analytical part of my brain that has recently only been used to unpack episodes of LOST. Only in this case, instead of “What do the Numbers mean, and will Jack ever stop crying?” 

Jack + his tears = JEARS!

it’s “OMG is K. dreaming? Is he awake? Is any of this actually REAL?”

At several points in the film, it's not WHETHER the filmmakers were smoking, but WHAT they were smoking that is in question. 

Seriously. I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHAT NO SMOKING IS ACTUALLY ABOUT…but I am pretty sure that the theme of cigarettes and smoking = only a very small part of a film that you could write a thesis on. There is much much MUCH more going on than ‘a guy trying to quit smoking’ and that either intrigues you or is totally not your kind of film at all. I already want to watch it again to try and decode some of the symbolism and try and figure out what the hell this crazy film is trying to say.

Whatever the esoteric message is – it is oddly affecting, and by the time the film reached its surreal, bizarre climax, I was quite emotional. Even if I’m not yet sure exactly what it is that No Smoking is about, I have a few ideas. I think part of the significant pleasure I derived watching this film was trying to gather my thoughts about it – and I will give you this, if you are planning on watching: I think the title cards at the start are significant. ALL of them.

HIGHLIGHT/RANDOM OBSERVATION:

"Whaddya mean, this isn't what you meant when you said I was smoking hot?"

One thing that pleases me greatly is John Abraham in the lead as K. I think JA is underrated as an actor, and I think he makes some really interesting choices in the roles he takes on. It’s so easy to assume that a model turned actor like John Abraham, who is really really ridiculously good looking, is successful because of his looks – but I think that JA works hard and doesn’t just take the first project offered to him, making careful choices to show that he is an interesting, intelligent actor, and not just a piece of meat.

Today's weird celebration

Hahaha! Shahrukh Is Love officially gets more hits from google searches for "armpit hair" than for ANYTHING Bollywood related. So, as a celebration of this awesomely weird fact (which itself is a celebration of my OWN extreme weirdness - see the FAQs if you have no idea what I am talking about!) have some hunky John Abraham pit action:

My Name is Khan

My Name is Khan (Karan Johar, 2010)

(See lead-up squee here). 

Let’s get the bad stuff out of the way first.

There are moments in My Name is Khan that are among the cheesiest, most painful to watch, most clichéd, unnecessary and unsubtle moments I have seen in any Hindi film to date. I had been warned by a friend about some “terrible supporting actors” and was prepared to overlook that – but the problem was deeper. It was the plot. Something that started out great ended up…bananas.

It’s not as simple as blaming it on the “Curse of the Second Half”, though it is true that the latter part of the film’s narrative is where it seems like director Karan Johar and writer Shibani Bhatija lost faith that the story they were telling was strong enough; or perhaps worse…they lost faith that the audience would be savvy enough to glean the political message they were trying to convey, without making it overtly political, without making it BIG and EPIC and UNSUBTLE, involving stereotypical “Bollywood” plot-twists in a film, that, up to that point, had felt like a refreshing departure from the improbable.

But I don’t really want to focus on what I think was a misstep on the part of the film-makers. I think that My Name Is Khan was an ambitious film for KJo to make. It’s all too easy to stick to what is safe and comfortable; I think this was a step outside of a comfort zone. I haven’t yet seen a Western-made mainstream film tackling issues of religion and identity in the aftermath of 9/11 that has approached the thoughtfulness and sensitivity that MNIK shows in places. With ambition there are bound to be mistakes made because of being in untested territory. So I’m going to cut KJo a lot of slack, because when it comes down to it, I am thankful he made this film, flawed as it is.

More importantly, there are moments in My Name is Khan that are among the most touching, achingly beautiful moments I have seen in any Hindi film to date. And the strength of these moments, and of the film’s message overall, more than make up for the flaws. I’m going to join the chorus of MNIK supporters on the net and echo what they are saying: this is a film that MUST be seen. I knew, of course, going into the cinema, about the Shiv Sena controversy leading up to the release; after seeing the film, I am sadder than ever at the state of the world we live in, that a film with a simple, beautiful message, has had such a ‘welcome’.

There are only two types of people in the world: good people and bad people. Regardless of the bits of this movie that you and I like or dislike, what needs to be said, and known, is that the people who made My Name Is Khan….they are good people.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

Kal Ho Naa Ho (Nikhil Advani, 2004)

The first ten minutes of Kal Ho Naa Ho are a test. When I put the dvd on the other night, ready for what must be my third or fourth viewing of a film I remember loving, just getting through the opening was a struggle.

Because the introduction – setting up Naina (Preity Zinta) as an angry young woman with a miserable life, is pretty much the cheesiest most stilted melodrama ever. By the time it got to the point that Naina’s whole family (minus the evil grandmother) were praying together on the floor for an angel to bring light back into their lives (and BOOM, coincidence, their mysterious new neighbour’s bedroom light coincidentally flicked on JUST AS THEY WISHED FOR  IT) I was rolling my eyes and thinking maybe I had been high on crack (KIDDING!) or really naïve when I watched KHNH first time round.

 The family that prays together...um...prays together.

But the testing intro to the film really is that – a test. It’s asking you, the viewer:

“Are you in this for the right reasons? Are you willing to let us SHAMELESSLY MANIPULATE YOUR EMOTIONS for the next 3 hours? If you just want a garden-variety rom-com, go watch something with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan being cute. But look – if you submit to our blatant penchant for extravagant romance, melodrama and things that sometimes don’t make a bunch of sense, and you accept it because this movie is pure indulgence, then look what we will give you as your first reward…” 

Who wouldn't want THIS?

Shahrukh stars as the aforementioned ‘angel’ Aman,(but he’s not LITERALLY an angel, he’s just an ordinary guy – don’t make the mistake I did first time round and be all like “Wait…what?”) who tries to change the unhappy life of Naina (Priety Zinta) and her only friend, Rohit (Saif Ali Khan) by making them fall in love. The predictable complication arises when Naina falls for Aman instead (because seriously – who wouldn’t? IT’S SHAHRUKH KHAN, COME ON. Plus have you seen how much eyeliner Saifu is wearing in this film?).

Okay, so , this picture doesn't illustrate the eyeliner situation that well, but ehhhh...it's Saifu! Before the unfortunate bandannas and back when he could still move his face!

Basically, if, like me, you:

1. love Shahrukh Khan in all his guises (romantic Rukhie, forceful manly Rukhie, Punjabi-dancing Rukhie, heartbroken crying stoic Rukhie, dimply cheeky impish Rukhie...they all appear...AND MORE!)
2. are willing to suspend your disbelief or turn off your inner snark regarding the fact that certain events are extremely improbable or implausible 
3. love movies that shamelessly urge you to cry until your nose is all stuffed up

This is what I look like for roughly 50% of  the film.

then I urge you to see Kal Ho Naa Ho. It’s ROMANTIC AND HEARTBREAKING AND FUNNY AND SAD and what more could you ask for on VALENTINE’S DAY?!

OTHER THINGS KHNH HAS GOING FOR IT

-         Classic love triangle! Rohit loves Naina but Naina loves Aman! (and Aman might love Rohit...)

 

-         I’m a sucker for the “falling in love” songs in Hindi films, and Kuch To Hua Hai has been one of my favourites for a long time. Every single time I watch KHNH, I start crying at the exact same place in the film – during this song, when Preity and Saif are waltzing by themselves. GETS ME EVERY TIME.

 

-         SRK (who has the most expressive face in the world) uses every expression ever invented and some that have NO NAMES:

-         Special guest appearances! I won’t spoil the good ones for you but there was one cameo I had NEVER noticed before:

 

UDAY! He pops up in the most unlikely places!

-         KHNH does 2 things that I absolutely adore in Hindi films: 1) that thing where it delays letting you see the face of the star of the film for ages (in KHNH we spend 10 minutes SRK-less and then see the back of his head like 20 times before the glorious reveal); 2) a key scene on a train or at a train station (in this case, at a train station). I love when Hindi movies have a train in them in some form. I don’t know why.

Armpit Hair Mystery #1 and other Frequently Asked Questions

Where do you see your Bollywood movies?

I live in a provincial town at the bottom of the world – about as far away from all things Bollywood as you can possibly get. So the answer is, obviously, I BUY THEM ON THE INTERNET. For the most part, if I really want to see a movie, I have to buy it (though things, it seems, are changing now, given Striker just released globally – and for free! on youtube). Bollydvd.net has been extremely good to me and I recommend them highly, Nehaflix has an awesome selection (but the shipping for Australia/NZ can be steep) and have also got magazines like FILMFARE (yay! I love me some Filmfare!). Amazon.co.uk is good too.

Who is better, Shahrukh Khan or Akshay Kumar?

Aaah, a shoutout to whoever keeps googling this and landing on my blog. Weirdly enough, my flatmate asked me this the other day, sensing my loyalties were shifting. I explained it to him like this:

Shahrukh is love. 

Akshay is lust (hmmm, alternate blog title?). 

I LOVE THEM BOTH EQUALLY. Don’t make me pick a favourite.

If you’re talking talent, rather than blatant male objectification, then you know what? Still can’t pick it. The Khiladi and the Badshaah are neck and neck in my books.

Can you even speak Hindi?

Nope. I’m picking it up bit by painful bit from the sheer quantity of Hindi DVDs I watch though. But I still can’t say anything useful, because I am lazy and haven’t opened my Teach Yourself Hindi book for weeks now.

What’s the deal with your creepy armpit hair obsession?

ARMPIT HAIR MYSTERY #1 is what I call it, thank you very much! It’s all Hrithik Roshan’s fault. It was during my Hrithikmania phase, when I was watching all the Hrithik I could get my hands on, that I noticed that his armpit hair (along with his chest hair), once dark and copious and OBVIOUS,

was COMPLETELY MISSING in Dhoom 2. 

Like, his pits were smoother than mine. Obviously, the first question I asked was “WHY?” And the next was “Is it just Hrithik?” So from then on, almost against my will, I started obsessing over the armpit hair, or LACK THEREOF, of various Bollywood heroes. A glimpse of pit can brighten an otherwise dull film for me. I KNOW I AM SICK. But it intrigues me so!

-         Is it for hygiene purposes? Some sources suggest this is the case (and that pit hair removal is not unusual among Asian men).

-         Is it for aesthetics? Wax the chest, the pits have to match?

-         IS IT A CHARACTER CHOICE when the hair comes and goes from film to film? (interestingly enough, looks like this could be the case! It could indicate that the character is Muslim, according to Wikipedia and this interesting thread)

Ok. Enough. I know it’s weird and creepy to think this much about armpits. (Though now that I know a possible reason for it, I think my obsession may be over).

While you're on the subject (the subject being crackpot ideas related to Hrithik Roshan), what's the "double-thumb" theory?
That every movie Hrithik Roshan is in somehow involves a deeply significant, lingering-for-just-a-fraction-too-long shot of his awesome double-thumb. And/or a shot of him shaking hands with someone, and a lingering-for-just-a-fraction-too-long reaction shot of the hand shakee looking at Hrithik's awesome double thumb. I SWEAR, this happens in Dhoom 2. Aishwarya does it. I SWEAR. Please note, this theory has not really been extensively scientifically tested.


What about the SRK "I have to get wet and bloody" theory?

You must have noticed that Rukhie gets wet or bloody in like, every film he is in. Preferably both wet AND bloody. I reckon it's in his contract that he bleeds from the mouth and gets a bathing scene or he walks. Not that I am complaining.
 

If you had to pick one Bollywood film to recommend to a newbie, what would it be?

Om Shanti Om. It was my first Bollywood film, and I loved every second of it – and continue to love it. The fact that it is full of filmi references and in-jokes didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the story at all the first time round, but means that every time I rewatch it I “get” a little bit more out of it – be it a reference to a film I’ve finally seen or heard of; or recognizing someone new in the epic star-studded Deewangi Deewangi song. Om Shanti Om has everything – it’s funny, sad, melodramatic, thrilling, colourful and jam-packed with stars and will always be my favourite Bollywood film, because it was my first.

SUPERSQUEE

Around a year ago, out of curiousity, I checked out my very first Bollywood film - the only Bollywood dvd the library had a copy of at the time. Om Shanti Om was, in retrospect, a hugely ironic 'first' Hindi film, given the immense number of filmi references and in-jokes it contains, but (obviously, given I have a BLOG now) I LOVED EVERY SECOND of it (and one of these days I will get around to reviewing it, when I have the time to devote to what will always be my favourite Bollywood film, because it was my first). Shahrukh Khan secured forever a place in my heart as my first Bollywood hero, and so, IMAGINE MY IMMENSE EXCITEMENT that on Monday, I get to see my first Bollywood film at the actual movies, in an actual cinema, in the company of actual like-minded individuals...and Rukhie, because it is destined and fated and cosmic love, is the leading man. My Name is Khan. OMG SQUEE etc.

Seriously, I am like a four year old on Christmas morning  I AM SO EXCITED. I've got the tickets! I'm really going!



PREDICTION: I cry at the sheer joy of being in the movie theatre, before the pre-film advertisements are even over.

Proceed with extreme caution

Koyla (Rakesh Roshan, 1997)

If you have an aversion to mullets, avoid this film.

If you have an aversion to Amrish Puri, avoid this film.

Seriously, if you dislike him to begin with, after he says "Bloody fool!" for the 378th time you will really loathe him. And then there's all the raping.

If you like your Bollywood films to be sweet, family-friendly entertainment, be it a star-crossed love story focused on the hero getting the girl or a whacky slapstick comedy involving hilarious criminal capers, or an old school masala with long lost brothers, evil overlords and a convoluted plot resulting in good triumphing over evil…this film is not for you.

Koyla is the first Bollywood film I have seen that I have found seriously disturbing. Initially, I ordered it based on the presence of my beloved Shahrukh, and on the strength of a screenshot in the PPCC’s review of the film:

I think the PPCC used the exact same shot! SERIOUSLY, CAN YOU SEE HOW I WOULD BE INTRIGUED?!

 that made me somehow (erroneously) think that Rukhie bit someone’s face off (!!) and that Koyla would thus be a hilarious gore-fest I could laugh at. At any rate, I was intrigued.

The story is a misogynistic Mills and Boon saga: rich tyrant Raja (Amrish Puri) sees a local girl, Gauri (Madhuri Dixit) and falls in love with her instantly. He tricks her into marriage by sending a photo of another man – his mute stableboy, Shankar (Shahrukh Khan) – with the proposal. Gauri discovers the deception too late but with Shankar’s help, escapes the prison Raja keeps her in. But can she and Shankar evade the Raja and his men forever?

The horrible truth is that Koyla is a deeply unpleasant film, with scenes of gratuitous and brutal rape and violence that actually made me feel ill at points. This is not the kind of film you can laugh at – for every absurd moment, there is a moment of real shocking violence or brutality that ultimately gives the film a nasty undertone. There was none of the warmth, optimism or satisfaction I get from watching any other Bollywood release – not even at the climax where revenge on the bad guy is predictably had, and in this film the bad guy is so fricking bad you’d think it would feel really good to see him go up in flames.

But if anything, I just felt relief that this nasty, unpleasant, horrible film was over. Really not recommended.

BEST SHAHRUKH MOMENT:

The Rukh, the Rukh, the Rukh is on fire!