Normal service will resume....shortly

So astute observers of this blog (or anyone who checks in even semi regularly) will have noticed a distinct lack of activity recently (I even missed celebrating my second blog anniversary, which I will DEFINITELY belatedly be making up for as soon as I figure out HOW). 

If you don't follow my frequent, often semi-coherent rambling on Twitter, here's the deal:

Unforeseen events meant that near the beginning of the month, I had to move house, and find somewhere new to live, with zero notice. There's been virtually zero blogging because I haven't had time in between packing and househunting and moving, but also because I haven't had any reliable, speedy internet except for my cellphone! 

Anyway, all that drama-rama is nearly over now, so the good news is that normal service will resume, hopefully, very soon. As soon as I have unpacked all my dvds.

I CANNOT WAIT TO SIT DOWN IN MY NEW HOUSE AND WATCH MOVIES! 

Also -

Someone asked why I haven't reviewed RaOne yet.  Which is a good question given the title of my blog. I touch on why I rarely get to see new releases in my FAQ and obviously, all of the above applies as well - I've been a little bit busy finding somewhere to live! I DO want to see it one day, but sadly, that day won't be any time soon.

A bitter fruit

Orange (Bhaskar, 2010)

Rewatching Magadheera recently reminded me of a couple of relatively important facts:

1.    Magadheera is still freaking AMAZING and I really, really do need to get around to reviewing it someday

2.    Among the stacks of unwatched dvds that characterise my immediate surroundings, I have Ram Charan Teja's other 2 films: Chirutha and Orange.

So here's another insight into my decision-making process: despite being aware of a somewhat...negative buzz surrounding the film, I chose to watch Orange...because orange is my favourite colour.

It turns out this is a really stupid reason to decide to watch a film. I suspect this is a lesson you can also apply to Blue.

Apparently, the idea behind Orange was to give “Mega Star” Ram Charan Teja a break from his massy image following Magadheera, slotting him instead into a Bomarillu-type relationship focused film, this time: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl back. HAD I KNOWN THAT I WOULD HAVE SKIPPED IT – not because I have anything against romantic films, but because I HATED Bomarillu.  Orange is from the same director AND has Genelia trying to reprise her perky Bomarillu character type. Only with more shrieking mania. I swear to god, the moment Genelia opened her mouth in this film, I wanted to stab myself in the face. (Cherry is fine with what he has to work with, by the way – he emotes, he dances, he kicks butt and even has moments of self-referential glory: “Do I know how to fight?” WINK WINK NUDGE NUDGE and he looks every bit the stylish urban Mega Star … it's just that he's SO much more fun to watch in a better film).

CRAZY EYES

The film opens with graffiti artist Ram (Ram Charan Teja) having an emo meltdown and destroying a huge graffiti portrait of his ex-girlfriend Janu (Genelia). A policeman (Prakash Raj) arrives and tries to discover what the problem is – why this kid has gone batshit crazy. Ram proclaims himself “the greatest lover in the world” and starts telling the long story of how he met Janu, and how it all went wrong. It went wrong, long story short, because Ram's policy from the beginning was to be completely honest with Janu, including his firmly held belief that he could not love one person for his whole life, and Janu couldn't deal with that. SHE WOULD RATHER HAVE A BOYFRIEND WHO TOLD HER PRETTY LITTLE LIES.

My extremely personal reasons for watching Orange to the bitter end:

• Prakash Raj in a policeman’s outfit

• Turns out I TOTALLY know one of the back up dancers in the first song and come on, 6 degrees of seperation etc. I HAVE DANCED WITH THAT GUY IN MY LOUNGE, hence…I’m one degree from dancing with Cherry, right? RIGHT? TELL ME THAT’S HOW IT WORKS. (So I totally watched it to see if he popped up again after the first song. Sadly, no).

Guy in the red t-shirt about 40 seconds in. 

• As the film descended rapidly from cracktastic bad to bad bad, I held out vague hope it would come back around into hilarious bad again. That BORING was just a blip. Sadly, my optimism went unrewarded.

• Ram Charan Teja TOTALLY looks like a guy I went to school with, so I felt mean switching the film off, having a soft spot for Cherry. Even though: DUDE. WHAT THE FUCK.

The frustrating thing about Orange (apart from EVERYTHING, including its meaningless, nonsensical surtitle “Love In Fall” - UM... WAS THE FILM SET IN AUTUMN AT ANY POINT AND I JUST MISSED IT? ARE YOU USING “Fall” to mean something obscure I AM COMPLETELY UNAWARE OF?) is that there IS a vaguely interesting concept buried in there, underneath a shabby mistreatment. It basically means that this film:

1.Starts out entertainingly bad: think overwrought emotional melodramatics from graffiti artist / wildlife photographer Ram (Ram Charan Teja)  and nonsense like the existence of lions in the Australian wild (on the outskirts of town) being used as an aphrodisiac. Oh, and a fight scene with the twist that all the hooligans have different coloured aerosol spraypaint cans...and aren't afraid to use them.

2. Before it veers rapidly into just plain dire: numerous, mind-numbing repetitions of the same confusing, frustrating conversations on the film's bizarro theme:  Ram believes love is a short term only thing; Janu (Genelia, in her most irritatingly shrill role to date) believes that love is for life. And instead of agreeing to disagree, or finding partners who have similar outlooks, the two just have the same arguments and make each other (and the audience) miserable for THREE LONG HOURS, because the narrative – told as an extended flashback from Ram's pov - is so clumsily presented that the point – Ram's whole “love is a short term thing” - doesn't make ANY SENSE until the last few minutes of the film. As a bonus side effect, all men end up looking like lying, cheating, cynical relationship-avoidant assholes, and all women end up looking like neurotic, needy, jealous, relationship-obsessed psychos.

Genelia makes two faces in this film: manic crazy eyes or pouty sulky bitchface

The problem is that the central idea, when it FINALLY makes sense (if you even get that far) could actually make a substantial, interesting, modern film. What Orange tries to do (yet manages to bury under piles of misogyny and incessant repetition of the SAME GODDAMN CONVERSATION) is get us to examine our own ideas about love. Ram's ideals don't allow him to tell lies or change himself for the sake of love: love should last as long as it lasts while it is healthy and good. Telling lies, making changes for someone else – in Ram's view, any compromise is going to ruin the perfect love, so the love – thus the relationship – must end. Janu, on the other hand, believes love HAS TO BE FOREVER. There are examples of her outlook that basically illustrate Ram's point...so...Ram is the hero (and yet again, women are made to look like insane idiots): e.g. Janu's friend discovers her boyfriend is cheating on her when he sends her a text intended for his mistress; Janu appeals to Ram to use his unflinching honesty to fix the situation somehow but he points out that they could just break up. JANU NO LIKE SOLUTION. JANU THINK LOVE FOREVER!

Who is right? Neither of them really – Ram is basically in love with himself, and destined to end up alone forever, the way he's going; Janu is a perpetual child-woman who is infuriatingly obtuse about all aspects of human nature, wide eyed in horror to think that someone could possibly think she's an idiot for wanting to pick a husband out of a hat and think that the love will be instant forever love. But there are enough interesting little moments and situations that prompt you to consider the two extremes, the ways we approach thinking about and finding love, that the cackhanded way this film handles it is immensely frustrating.

Trust your gut

Delhi Belly (Abhinay Deo, 2011)

Delhi Belly centres around flatmates Tashi (Imran Khan), Arup (Vir Das) and Nitin (Kunaal Roy Kapur) who live in slothful squalor in Delhi. Tashi's rich air-hostess fiancee Soniya (Shehnaz Treasurywala) asks him to run an errand for her – all he needs to do is deliver a package – but Tashi delegates the task to his flatmates.

At the same time as Tashi is supposed to deliver Soniya's package, his flatmate Nitin comes down with a terrible case of “Delhi Belly” - requiring a stool sample to be sent off to the doctor. And you guessed it: the packages get mixed up. WOMP WOMP.

So the package (which turns out to be smuggled diamonds) falls into the wrong hands, and the smugglers end up with a container of shit, and UNDERSTANDABLY PISSED, go after the boys in search of their goods.

You'll basically know from seeing the “First Look” trailer for Delhi Belly whether it's your kind of film or not:

I saw the trailer when it came out and scratched the film off my To See list. I'm really not the biggest fan of toilet humour – I can deal with it in small doses but I wouldn't normally choose to watch something I know to be...purposely vulgar, not because I find it offensive but because I think it's gross. To base an entire film around a guy's diarrhea? No, thank you. Delhi Belly didn't look like a film I would enjoy – I don't tend to laugh or remotely enjoy looking at people shitting, farting, burping, or vomiting. So the fact that there's a scene where the gangsters tip the container of shit out on the table, expecting diamonds? That kind of thing ACTUALLY makes me feel sick.

But then the music was released, and along with it, hilarious, seemingly satirical videos that suggested the tone of the film was less vulgar gutter humour and maybe a little more my speed:

Disco Fighter, along with glowingly positive reviews from basically everyone in the world, plus critical buzz that it's “groundbreaking” and “cutting edge” cinema, as well as my enduring, unconditional love for Imran Khan convinced me to go against my gut instinct.

Guess what?

I FUCKING HATED THIS FILM. 

I HATED EVERY GODDAMN SECOND OF IT. I SHOULD HAVE GONE WITH MY GUT AND LISTENED TO THE TINY INNER VOICE THAT TOLD ME FROM THE START “WTF ARE YOU DOING?! YOU WILL HATE THIS! IT LOOKS LIKE YOUR IDEA OF TORTURE!”

As I have already said - not a fan of toilet humour. I own that and expected some degree of vulgarity going in. There are only a couple of actual hardcore gross out moments, but there is a definite focus on the scatological: bums, toilets, farts, poo. One of the problems I have is that Delhi Belly is being held up as this groundbreaking film because it 'dares to go where no other Indian film has gone' in terms of content – but that groundbreaking content is what? That X number of characters are shown on the toilet? That variations of the word “fuck” are said (in English, mind you – to swear too much in Hindi would still be too risque?) a record number of times? That characters talk about oral sex, and simulate sex? That's not content – that's just being 'edgy' for the sake of being edgy. Take all of that away from Delhi Belly and you have a tired crime caper story that has been done to death, nothing memorable or unique or special about it at all.

I can't count the number of times I have been asked about Indian cinema being “pure” by people who don't watch Hindi films: they always want to know if it's true that there's no swearing, no sex, no drugs, no kissing. Even before Delhi Belly I could answer confidently “No, that's not true” and offer several good films as examples; today I would not offer Delhi Belly as one, because of the LACK of substance.

I understand that people like this film because it captures the way the youth today speak and act. I get that: it's thrilling to see ourselves reflected on the screen, thrilling to hear things being said that no-one ever says in a Hindi film. Rishi would never have spoken so openly about going down on a girl! But that's not enough for me: give me a film that captures the zeitgeist but tells a relevant story too. Give me fleshed out characters I can care about, instead of swiftly sketched outlines in a paint by numbers plot. Films like Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara are sometimes criticised for taking place in an unrealistic, unattainable filmi reality where everyone is rich and perfect – but at least those films have a universal emotional core that anyone can identify with. This is my main problem with Delhi Belly, I think: it left me feeling nothing. I was bored – I didn't care about the story, I didn't care about the characters, and in the end, I was pissed off, because the massive marketing campaign that promised I would be shocked and offended and wowed by this groundbreaking cinematic spectacle was a crock of shit. If anything, in the end,  I was just mildly nauseated.