The Bunny Effect

Arya2 (Sukumar, 2009)

This film is insane.

I can't really put it any other way: this film is completely, utterly mental; definitely one of a kind, and FREAKING AWESOME. Arya2 was my intro to “Stylish Star” Allu Arjun and I CAN'T FREAKING BELIEVE IT HAS TAKEN THIS LONG FOR ME TO HOP ON BOARD THIS PARTICULAR TRAIN.

THIS IS HOW AWESOME IT WAS:

1.Only a few hours after watching this film I was back on the 'net eliciting the expert opinions on the best films to order to fulfil my NEED for more Allu Arjun. Guess what? I have some extremely knowledgable and wickedly encouraging Twitter/blog pals, particularly when it comes to the finer points of appreciating the...erm....QUALITIES of the actor fondly referred to as “Bunny”. INSTANT CONVERT. Bunny is my new honey. 

 

What do you mean, this picture is completely gratuitous?

2. My laptop refuses to screencap the dvd. I think because the movie is so insanely awesome it would cause my laptop to spontaneously combust should images of it be permanently stored on my harddrive.

I doubt I would have been as immediately smitten had I chosen a different introductory film (although actually, apparently it's quite common to react like this, according to my pals, who ARE the experts. “Ah”, they told me “you've been hit by the Bunny effect” - and regaled me with their own tales of seeing one Allu Arjun film and having to order a pile more immediately).

Arya2 – as I've already mentioned – is utterly mental, and I mean that literally. Allu Arjun plays the Arya of the title, and Arya, it is very rapidly revealed, is KIND OF A PSYCHO (albeit a psycho who turns out to have a heart of gold).

The story – omg, how am I even going to begin to recount the story? - begins in an orphanage, when a clearly disturbed child – our antihero Arya - decides to befriend (through manipulation and near drowning) another of the orphans: Ajay. That Ajay doesn't particularly WANT Arya's friendship doesn't matter: Arya is a devoted friend. THE most scarily devoted friend anyone could ever wish to have. Arya gets Ajay's name tattooed on his arm, such is his love for his new BFF, and he forces Arjun to reciprocate in kind, making them sort of tattoo-blood brothers. When a rich couple come to the orphanage and can't decide which of the two to adopt, Arya and Ajay flip a coin to decide who gets a new life: Arya wins, but he sacrifices his victory and lets Ajay go with the couple and start a new life. Ajay is thrilled...not because he gets a new life, with new parents and a promising future, but BECAUSE HE IS FINALLY FREE OF ARYA.

But you KNOW Arya isn't going to let go of his best friend just like that.

Skip forward a few years, and Ajay (Navdeep) is a successful computer engineer, and against his better judgement, gives his “old friend” Arya a job after Arya saves him by taking on some thugs who were hassling him. Because Arya is essentially a drunken thug himself, and because Ajay doesn't want to hire him at all, he comes up with what he thinks is a foolproof loophole: Arya must be a PERFECT employee and the moment he makes a mistake, he'll be fired.

Arya transforms seamlessly into Mr Perfect and becomes the most popular employee in the company, reknowned for his morals and good behaviour. Which frustrates the crap out of Ajay.

And then Geetha (Kajal Agarwal) enters the picture. Both Ajay and Arya fall in love with her, but while Ajay keeps a respectable, respectful distance, Arya embarks on a full-on stalk-a-thon; maintaining his Mr Perfect act for the rest of the company but revealing his “bad” side ONLY to Geetha: acting on impulse, chainsmoking, drinking – making Geetha seem like SHE'S crazy for protesting about “Mr Perfect” when the rest of the company refuse to believe her accusations against Arya. Finally, in desperation, Geetha professes her love for Ajay, just to get Arya off her back. Little does she know that aligning herself with Arya's BEST FRIEND FOREVER is not the best way to get rid of Arya.

And this is where things REALLY get tangled. It's best to just watch it because...omfg. The love triangle gets uber complicated with a fourth party and a gang war entering the picture, EVERYONE'S in love with Geetha, Arya manages to get...sort of accidentally married, there's a super cute reference to Sholay, and somewhere along the way, Arya's creepy stalker psychotic behaviour actually stops being genuinely scary and becomes genuinely loveable. This film actually made me go a) YAY A FILM THAT PORTRAYS STALKING AS TOTALLY SCARY RATHER THAN ROMANTIC AND HAS THE GIRL RECOGNISING THAT (because how many thousands of films have stalking = the ultimate in romance?) and then made me b) metaphorically punch myself in the face and simultaneously applaud the filmmaker for making me FALL IN LOVE WITH THE PSYCHOTIC STALKER.

I can't really write much about this film without sounding like a huge Allu Arjun fangirl, because he freaking OWNS this film. Like, imagine this sentence is a cursory nod to the other performers in the film who all do a decent job. But seriously? ALLU ARJUN. His name is a FULL SENTENCE.

Also...THE SONGS! Are ADDICTIVE. Everyone has heard Ringa Ringa by now (even I had and I'm obviously WAY late to the game):

but can I just end this review with the song that I am OBSESSED WITH?

Check out the knee move and learn from others' experience: leave it to the expert (Bunny).

I know this was a basically fangirly useless review but that should give you some idea of The Bunny Effect. BASICALLY DO WATCH THIS MOVIE BECAUSE IT IS GOOD. Okay? Good.

Jail

Jail (Madhur Bhandarkar, 2009)

I'll save you 2 hours of your life and skip to the end: here's the message Madhur Bhandarkar wants you to take from Jail, his 2009 “exploration” of what REALLY happens behind bars:

He's not subtle about it either (surprise). Much of this film is like being hit over the head with a big, blunt Message in Capital Letters, be it the Difficult Plight of the Man (or Woman, I guess, this is the new millenium) with Morals Working in a Corrupt System; or There Are Homosexuals in Jail Too You Know; or Don't Get Involved With Gangsters You Will Only Lose Your Soul.

Observation #1: there's not a lot about what “really” happens in jail that hasn't already been adequately explored on film or reality television. If Jail was meant to be a shocking expose, it really, really falls short because what it reminded me of, more than anything else, was The Shawshank Redemption with added ridiculous courtroom scenes with special “Bollywood law” and a distinct lack of a compelling plot or interesting characters.

Seriously. That's a huge, huge problem, because initially (we're talking first five minutes, when I actually felt sorry for poor baby-faced Neil Nitin Mukesh who CLEARLY WOULD NOT SURVIVE A NIGHT IN A REAL JAIL) I liked the premise, and thought it had legs. 

 

I could have seen those legs too, had they not been pixeled out.

Premise: Successful baby-faced guy with an awesome job I didn't pay any attention to except he just got made REGIONAL MANAGER which is apparently a BIG FREAKING DEAL Parag Malhotra Dixit (Neil Nitin Mukesh) has a dream life and a beautiful girlfriend (Mughda Godse) who looks and acts kind of vacant but whatever, apparently they're totally in love (no chemistry so use your imagination). His room-mate/coworker is a bit weird but I guess he pays the rent so Parag totally overlooks the fact that weirdo roomie is constantly borrowing, without asking, HIS CLOTHES, HIS CELLPHONE, and GOD KNOWS WHAT ELSE. He's also always asking him for rides home from work at the last minute and he CARRIES A MAN-BAG.

Dude, DON'T YOU KNOW THAT THAT'S HOW YOU TOTALLY GET PULLED OVER AND END UP IN A SHOOT-OUT WITH THE COPS? Before you know it, weirdo roomie is dead and Parag is in jail for both shooting at cops and possession of a crapload of narcotics.

That's as exciting as the film gets, because from now on FOR THE NEXT TWO HOURS, we enter a repetitive cycle of

• Neil Nitin Mukesh crying, sulking, or having an emo about being in jail.
• Conversations between Neil Nitin Mukesh and Manoj Bajpai playing Nawab, the Morgan Freeman “Wise Older Prisoner” character. Basically: Parag is an idiot and Nawab is wise and kindly and is destined to be disappointed in Parag's choices...or is he?
• Look! There are corrupt prison guards! Look, prisoners pretend to be each others friends then sell each other out to get ahead! Look! Life on the outside goes on! Look! Neil Nitin Mukesh is crying again!
• Ridiculous court scene based entirely on Bollywood law principles.

Observation # 2: The films that depend on the law the most for their storyline to make sense HAVE THE LEAST GRASP OF IT and resort to highly simplistic, illogical “Bollywood law” (resulting in mass facepalms from the audience). An example of Bollywood law: “Witnesses saw that you did not have a gun and that it was your friend that fired at the police, so we acquit you of the charge of shooting at an officer” (YAY!) “But the drugs were in the backseat of your car so they must be yours, and the law says you must have 10 years in jail, and this is unchallengable in court, and I'm the judge and my word is law” (FACEPALM).

There's a minor bright spot in the form of Arya Babbar:

but he's not worth watching the film for. IT'S SO BORING.

It would have been awesome if ultimately, it turned out that Parag, sweet, unprepared for jail, babyfaced innocent Parag, who won the trust and goodwill of everyone...WAS GUILTY ALL ALONG. (Okay not especially original, but it would have been satisfying). As it is, I prefer my innocent guy gets sent to jail films to run along the Sunny Deol lines: less crying and whinging about it, more KICKASS REVENGE.

Sad news

 Shammi Kapoor died today.

Oh Shammi-ji, you were one of a kind, my favourite filmi grandfather, and the original heartthrob. How could anyone NOT fall in love with you after seeing Junglee?



Rest in peace, you exuberant lion of a man (though really, I hope wherever you are, you're dancing up a storm). 

Shor In The City

Shor in the City (Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK, 2011)

DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT READING THIS IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE FILM.

“Shor” means noise. Cacophony. Din. Anyone who has spent any time in any big city will know that the noise never stops – and this seems to hold especially true in chaotic, colourful, extreme Mumbai as the city celebrates the eleven days of the Ganesha Chaturthi festival.

Set against the incessant noise and unceasing activity of the city are three unrelated narratives about fairly ordinary people making their way through this extraordinary city: how the choices they make will impact the rest of their lives. As the song says: “Karma is a bitch”.In Shor in the City backstories aren't important. Characters are presented as they are in the here and now, the way you'd encounter them in a city. Or a newspaper story (which is where the inspiration for the narrative threads in Shor came from). The comedic collides with the horrific, the touching with the sinister, characters' free will gets all tangled up with seemingly unavoidable fate.

There's Abhay (Sendhil Ramamurthy), a recently returned NRI who expects his return to Mumbai to set up a small business to be something of a homecoming. Instead he finds something altogether more threatening. 

 

This was my least favourite of the stories - there was just something...missing. I don't mean performance-wise, Sendhil is (surprisingly) great.

There's Sawan (Sundeep Kishan), a wannabe cricketer who discovers that to be selected as a Mumbai under-22 rep, he'll need to pay a bribe he can't afford.

His relationship is also suffering from his blinkered focus on his sporting career. 

 

And there's Tilak (Tusshar Kapoor), a small-time criminal and publisher of pirated books who is slowly realising he can be a better person,

 The book he's referring to is The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Did you know Coelho essentially PIRATES HIS OWN BOOKS? He's an advocate for peer-to-peer sharing of his books, which makes the choice of The Alchemist for the pirated book that changes Tilak's outlook on life REALLY VERY INTERESTING - see also Tilak's desire to give his friends copies of the book he genuinely enjoyed, his realisation why people pay money for books and his desire to pirate responsibly: to put a good quality, accurate copy on the market. What message is this film putting out there?

while his far more corrupt friends Mandook (Pitobash Tripathy) and Ramesh (Nikhil Dwivedi) get involved in a foolhardy scheme to sell guns to the Mumbai mafia.

The film, as the title suggests, is full throttle cacophonous chaos from the get-go; the moments of intentional quiet are vivid contrasts to the hustle and bustle of the city, the constant chatter and traffic and crowding, the wheeling and dealing, the hum that is the background to any city. When the sound disappears, it's unusually touching: the dream-like conclusion when Tilak melts anonymously back into a crowd celebrating Ganesha Chaturthi; the horrifying episode with the bomb and the aftermath of the bomb exploding, the sound of which affects the way Tilak hears the world around him.

Maybe it's obvious, but my favourite story by far, and the one I haven't been able to stop thinking about, was newly-wed, The Alchemist-enlightened Tilak's. Tusshar Kapoor does a lovely, LOVELY job of conveying Tilak's awakening desire to act more in line with the person he already is – whether it's firmly insisting his pirated books are intact and possess all their pages or exhibiting wide-eyed wonder at discovering his wife can read, and went to college, and knows intimately the book he loves. And the ending – oh the ending! I know that some people were kind of “meh, fakeout, whatever” about it, and some people probably just think it's weird or anticlimactic...but that ending! I CANNOT STOP THINKING ABOUT IT. This could be my favourite scene in any film I've seen so far this year.

MEGA SPOILER:

Tilak wants a new beginning...left for dead, alone in the bank, there's something so pure and perfect and utterly Bollywood about the way he opens his eyes as a huge idol of Ganesha, remover of obstacles, passes the window.

He's bathed in light. He's alive – he winces at his gunshot wound – and he makes his way outside, unseen by the police or the bank staff, as the Ganesha parade passes by. He melts into the crowd but as he does so, he sees a boy who looks just like the boy he tried to save from the bomb.

He has his chance at a new life: he can start living a new way and become the man he wants to be.

 The last time we see him he is with his wife.

I love that ending. I love that he sees the boy. I love every single expression on Tusshar Kapoor's face. I love that I don't really know what it all means,

 Like this scene. This scene is haunting me. 

or understand just how the boy came to be there, and the way I interpret it is quite likely different to how you interpret it. I DO tend to overanalyse.

But that's the whole beauty of Shor...  Much of it is open to interpretation if that is your thing; if it's not, you don't need to go down that road, you can just enjoy it for the glorious attention to detail, the dialogue, the stories and the outstanding, thoroughly excellent performances. 

 

I feel like I need to watch this film 12 more times before I can even attempt a proper write up that remotely does it justice, but for now, this will have to do.

Stanley Ka Dabba

Stanley Ka Dabba (Amole Gupte, 2011) 
 

The tagline “A little story with a big heart” describes this film perfectly.

I don't even know what to say about Stanley Ka Dabba (Stanley's Lunchbox) except that you HAVE to see it. I don't know where to begin: it's utterly, gutwrenchingly heartbreaking, it will make you frustrated with the world, and probably angry and deeply sad; and in the same moments fill you with absolute gratitude and hope thanks to the small, ordinary, seemingly everyday acts of kindness and courage and friendship that are revealed in this extraordinarily lovely film.

The story revolves around Stanley – the one kid in his class who doesn't bring his lunch to school. There's obviously something going on with Stanley from the start – he arrives at school ridiculously early, sometimes with bruises he explains away with a clear gift for the gab, and he only eats when other students share their lunch with him. This is a problem for one of the teachers, a Mr Verma, though not in the way you'd expect.

Verma is the only teacher who never brings lunch to school, though it's obvious that his reasons and Stanley's reasons for lacking a dabba are quite different. Verma fills his own stomach by picking at staff and students' dabbas alike. Any morsel given to Stanley is a morsel Verma misses out on. So Mr Verma, a vile, greedy, grasping little man (played by the film's writer/director, Amole Gupte) embarks on a petty personal vendetta against Stanley (Partho, the most exquisite, adorable child actor I have ever seen), who employs all his creativity and charm in just trying to stay in school, resorting to drinking water to keep his hunger at bay.

There aren't enough films like this – combining an unvarnished, ordinary story with a backbone that isn't melodramatised or schmaltzed up. Stanley Ka Dabba has so much pure, genuine heart – in the celebration of Stanley's friends' guileless, supportive friendship; of the simple, right way of doing things triumphing over the selfish or lazy. I hate writing reviews of things I adore with every cell in my body because I don't know enough words for “outstanding”. Just do yourself a favour and watch it already.

How My Impulsive Love For Rahul Khanna Ruined My Reputation: A Public Service Announcement

Those of you reading this blog who know me, in real life or just through THE MAGIC OF MY WORDS (ha!), will possibly know the following things about me already :

a) I'm sometimes a little bit impulsive, and

b) I can occasionally be a bit of a geeky completist, and

c) I have mad love for Rahul Khanna, also sometimes referred to within these pages as “The Hottest Khanna” (not...strictly true, since Vinod owns my heart forever but you know, if it's a competition between Rahul and Akshaye...anyway, I digress).

So anyway, these random facts all combined today to hilariously try and destroy my squeaky clean reputation, all because I just wanted to own ONE MORE FILM WITH RAHUL KHANNA IN IT.

It began, innocently enough, with this:

See #7 on the list? Hi Fi Log was the only film on Induna's “Rahul Khanna filmography” that I didn't already own, so I clicked Add To Cart.....CRITICALLY, without clicking through to see the cover., or discover it was classified as “Mature/Obscure”. Nor did I look elsewhere on the net to read a synopsis – what can I say? I prefer to be surprised. Hi Fi Log, in my imagination, was about a bunch of rich, jet-setting people who probably swan around wearing jewels and designer clothes and drinking cocktails poolside looking fabulous. 

 Pretty much the definition of "poolside, looking fabulous"

In my imagination it was kind of like an Indian Bold and the Beautiful. After all, it had RAHUL KHANNA in it. He would probably be wearing a tuxedo most of the time when he wasn't swimming laps in designer Speedos and making all the ladies swoon. Plot? WHAT PLOT? Of course I'd buy it without looking at the cover, which would probably be purple with lots of diamonds on it and Rahul Khanna in WHITE TROUSERS (swoon). 

 

This pic comes from MissMalini.com and for that we should ALL GIVE THANKS

THIS IS IMPULSIVITY IN ACTION.

Hint: this is why I should have read a synopsis (taken unedited from YouTube where you can watch the whole movie):

Hi Fi Log is a story about a male prostitution in the Hi Fi society.
Rich sex hungry women, who like to booze, party have fun are willing to pay big amount of money
to fulfill their sexual desires. Rahul is a young guy with aspiration to become an actor, struggling to survive in the big city,
meets a agent (dalal), who convinces Rahul to become a giglo.
Rahul agrees and starts visiting rich auntys to satisfy them, What follows is lot of hot masala scenes, aunties in hot bikinis.
He meets and falls in love with Kajal (karishma) and also befriends a co-worker giglo guy. One of the aunty gets caught by her husband,
making out with a male prostitute and the angry husband shoots both of them. The police carries out investigation and the whole racket is busted.
Also his co-worker giglo gets infected with AIDS and dies. Rahul finally realizes his mistake and quits the HI Fi city life to go back to his village.

HERE IS THE PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT:

Just in case you haven't figured it out yet, the Rahul Khanna we know and adore is not in Hi Fi Log. That is to say, this sexy guy:

Dear Rahul, I am sorry for even ACCIDENTALLY thinking you were in a really bad film. 

 

doesn't get down to luridly hilarious seksi times with any, errr...rich aunties.

 This guy is though. TBH, this is PROBABLY Abhay Bakshi? I have no idea who the OTHER Rahul Khanna is. 

 The DVD cover doesn't lie though:

A "Rahul Khanna" rocks it in this film,

to a creepily hilarious soundtrack of the Backstreet Boys "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)" played at like, quarter speed. *facepalm* It's like that episode of Friends, where Phoebe's twin sister Ursula is an “adult film star” who uses the name Phoebe Buffay as her p0rn name.

Nor is Hi Fi Log really a p0rn film - well, not by Western standards anyway. It's certainly....very bad, from the snippets I watched. Possibly hilariously bad, based on the glorious disco-p0rn titles, the Backstreet Boys as atmospheric music and the fact that the cover suggests it's supposed to be SO SO HOT yet this:

 Ooh bikinis.

 

This appears to be the big item number. 

 hahah steamy seksi time

seems to be the extent of the action (not that I really went looking!). Oh yeah, there are no subtitles. I may just save this one for a No Subtitles Sunday when I'm feeling brave. And reckless.

WHY EVERYONE AT WORK NOW THINKS I AM A PERVY WEIRDO:

Let me set the scene a little for you. I order dvds fairly regularly and my favourite regular courier has figured me out and knows to bring them to me at work. Today, he brought me a package and my new co-worker made a joke I have heard like, EVERY TIME I GET A PACKAGE: ''Oh, more p0rn off the internet huh?”

Oh how we laughed. “No, seriously, just some Bollywood dvds” I told her.

And then I opened the package and sitting right on top was this.

WHICH WAS NOT THE PURPLE DIAMOND-COVERED WHITE PANTED RAHUL COVERED DVD I THOUGHT I ORDERED. Just to compound the hilarious horror, after tweeting my innocence, SWEARING that I had only ordered the film for Rahul Khanna, I got this DM:

Confirmation of HIS innocence. DAMMIT. 

So anyway, back to my co-worker. “OH MY GOD YOU DID BUY P0RN!” she cackled, “That's not Bollywood! In Bollywood they don't even kiss or swear!”

So then...I made it worse, by kind of...going on a huge rant about how OF COURSE Bollywood has seksi times and kissing and swearing and violence. I may have argued too fervently in the other direction, in fact, so now coworker believes that Bollywood is a filthy den of sin and I am a big pervy weirdo who orders Indian seksi-time films off the internet AND WRITES ABOUT THEM. SIGH. 

SO ANYWAY MORAL OF THE STORY: Rahul Khanna isn't in Hi Fi Log, long story short.

Special bonus P.S.A: Govinda is not in Main Aur Mrs Khanna, despite 99% of filmographies on the net saying he is. I WATCHED THE WHOLE MOVIE and shame on whoever mistook Bappi Lahiri for Chichi. Just thought I'd throw that in there while I'm doing selfless good deeds. 

Snakes snakes snakes!

Happy August!


Okay so I know I've been totally crap at participating in any of the recent blogosphere...things (sorry Kapoor Khazana, turns out the Kapoors < the Deols in my book; sorry Shameful Pleasures Week, turns out I'm just not really that shamed about any of my viewing choices) (also, I HAVE amazingly actually posted in the last couple of days if you wanna click back)...but I am super excited about Dustdevil Liz's Nag Panchami Film Fesssssstival! If you've never seen the distinctive, addictive, hypnotic glory of a snake movie, then YOU ARE DEFINITELY MISSING OUT ON SOMETHING WONDERFUL. The news is good: in the next couple of weeks you can visit the links Liz will be collecting here and enjoy all manner of snake film related wonder and delight! 


Seriously. I cannot emphasise this enough. SNAKE FILMS ARE THE SHIZZ, YOU GUYS.


Here's all the snake action I have previously had the good fortune to encounter on the blog:


Gangaa Jamunaa Saraswathi: aging Big B pretends to be in his 20s, encounters a whole mini sub-plot with the Lord of the Snakes helping him out of tricky situations 


Aayirathil Oruvan: my Southie boyfraaand #1 Karthi has to face a bunch of challenges on the way to find a hidden ancient civilization. One of the challenges: a village overrun with seemingly evil enchanted SNAKES.


Nagina: Sridevi as a snake-woman, enchanting Rishi Kapoor in THE supernatural snake drama. YOU HAVE TO WATCH THIS ONE. 


Nigahen: Inferior sequel to Nagina, saved only by the studliness of Sunny Deol as THE SNAKE BOY. Warning: Anupam Kher is REALLY annoying. 


Prem Shakti: This was actually the first nagin film I ever saw, and so retains a special place in my heart. IT IS CRACKTASTIC. Also: CHICHI! Also: Chichi's snake dance will always be my favourite, above and beyond Sridevi. FOREVER.





Naag Panchami: Shashikala plays the crazyass queen of Naglok, the realm of the snakes, hell bent on wreaking vengeance on poor Prithviraj Kapoor because he refuses to worship her. This is one of the best, most entertaining films I have EVER SEEN. 


I only have one snake film left on my shelf unwatched and unwritten up, but it's THE snake film: Nagin. I saved it especially for the Fessssssstival! 


Because I know that probably won't be enough snaky goodness to satisfy my cravingssss, I'm thinking maybe I can justify ordering like, a billion Jeetendra films (OH MY NOT EVEN SECRET LOVE FOR JEETU) in the name of Nag Panchami? Yes/yes? This awesome post suggests I am on the right track.