Never Lost for Words...

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

pratikshathanki — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 17:33:16 +0000

Sometimes even when the ingredients are all perfect, movies fail to taste as they should. For me ‘Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close’ ended up to be something like that. It has endearing Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock. It has a highly emotional core where a son loses his father in the 9/11 attacks.

The kid named Oskar has a very complicated way of dealing with his grief that weaves the entire movie. He goes around entire New York trying to find the lock of the key that he thinks his father has left behind for him as a clue to some game. He has some wonderful and some very annoying scenes with a very predictable story. It has its moments but the movie somehow even with some very powerful emotional scenes feels contrived and artificial.

‘Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close’ is nominated for two Oscars. It is highly unlikely to win in the Best Film category with other eight very unique movies.

However, the best Supporting Actor nomination for Max von Sydow playing the grandpa is well deserved (though Christopher Plummer is almost supposed to be a sure thing for this category).

Film awards have definitely lost the zing they used to have. But somehow An Oscar nomination still makes me at least respect a movie for some reason simply for the old times’ sake. That same respect took us to the theater to watch ‘Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close’. Wish we had waited for the DVD.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Awards, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Movies, Oscars, Tom Hanks

The Artist

pratikshathanki — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 09:09:03 +0000

There are many ways to tell a story. But the thing is, with an overdose of movies from all direction, nothing looks original anymore. At a time like that, it is the format, style and the way the story often take over. I’m not talking about the junk entertainment that is churned out in Bollywood or Hollywood for that matter. But watching a movie like ‘The Artist’ makes you think, makes you laugh, makes you sad and makes you care for the characters.

There is a whole generation out there now which might have never seen a black n white movie. As a child of the 80s I remember those Charlie Chaplin movies on Doordharshan in India and a lot of Black n White movies of Ashok Kumar, Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand and actors of that era have told me melodramatic and sometimes interesting stories in my childhood. However, I wonder the generation after me really got any taste of that.

The Artist – nominated for 10 Oscars this year – is a black n white, silent movie for 99.5 per cent of the run time. And for some reason it has opened to mixed reaction from the audience, where the youngsters walk out of the theaters claiming they don’t follow the silent movie or don’t like the black n white. Thankfully the number of people with such reaction is much lesser than the ones who actually found it to be heartwarming tribute to the vintage Hollywood.

The story is simple, George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is the superstar of the Silent movies and the tide is changing as in the late 1920s the talking movies are coming. His producer shows George footage of a talking movie and tells him, “This is the future” and George tells him with mocking laughter, “If this is the future, you can keep it.” His ego and some miscalculated steps bring him down from the stardom too soon. When the transition to the talking movies doesn’t happen for Valentin, he tells himself and the world that he is an ‘artist’ and silent movies would stay on. He makes a failed attempt at producing and directing one out of his own pocket. However, he couldn’t be in denial anymore.

On the other hand, as a movie star, he had touched the life of a beautiful extra artist Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo), who gets phenomenal success in the talkies as a lead actress and still holds Valentin in high regard. Valentin’s relationship with the cinema and Peppy drive the movie around. His side kick here isn’t a moderately good-looking man with a heart of gold who can save him at the right time, this job is given to the Dog, Uggie who can act! Uggie can give acting classes to many Hindi film actors.

There is nothing new about the story of a star falling down because of his ego but again, it is all about the way the story is told. Valentin talks with his face and Peppy plays her part right. But all this is happening on the screen without the dialogues. I was surprised but I didn’t miss anyone talking on the screen at all.

It is the scenes that stay with you, when Valentin burns his film reels and gets caught in the fire himself, when Uggie acts up on an accidental gun shot of Valentin or when Peppy thinks of Valentin while putting on her beauty mark that he gave to her.

This is a French production paying homage to Hollywood and you end up thinking of movies like Singing in the Rain. (Though that one was a musical talkie, the story seems to follow it very closely.)

There is no rhyme or reason why something catches the fancy of the whole world. But here, I can think of one. Perhaps, ‘The Artist’ strikes the right chords cause it speaks the universal language of silence.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Movies, Oscars, Silent Movies, The Artist

Why Women are Bad Drivers… Really?

pratikshathanki — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 03:22:00 +0000

I’ve encountered plenty of ‘drivers’ who never give sides, overtake from wrong sides even on highways without a signal, honk or a light. I’ve witnessed plenty of accidents too… Strangely enough, none of them have involved women, at the max, women slow down traffic or scratch some cars here and there….

And yet, I was recently ‘test’ed with this subject: Why Women are Bad Drivers…

Really?

I just wrote a piece for Femina two months back about bias against women in offices, and almost concluded with a positive note that times are changing. But again if a corporate is handing out such topics for tests, how gender neutral have we become?

I fell for it because I wanted to evoke a response and the test was for a reputed enough company. But then I checked that some universities are also doing ‘researches’ on such subjects. Again… Really?

Here goes the not hard-hitting, most bizarre subject I ever had to write in the name of content-writing:

Why women are bad drivers?

Are women really bad drivers? The subject of this essay seems to assume that all women are already bad drivers and one is supposed to simply explain the reasons. There have been statistics supporting and negating this thought but it will be unfair to judge women drivers without digging up a bit of their past.

Women haven’t had it easy. They couldn’t vote, they couldn’t inherit property, they couldn’t work and the list of things they were not ‘allowed to do’ just a century ago is pretty long. It has been since past one century when women have come out of homes, received education that wasn’t simply knitting, cooking or related to doing house hold chores and raising a family. Of course there have been exceptions in form of successful political, scientific or artistic women. But they are of a handful number. Obviously womankind isn’t that familiar with driving as much as men are. Men take up driving as second nature, while still rigid parts of some societies look at a woman driving any vehicle as ‘independent’, and that doesn’t necessarily mean a good thing for everyone.

After the struggle of centuries, contemporary women finally have a life and a say in things. However, there are still countries where women are not allowed to drive, not because they are bad drivers, but simply because they are women. The whole accusation or stigma of women being bad driver smells of gender bias. Sometimes under confident, conventional women also join in to abuse women as bad drivers.

Still if one looks at it logically, there are way more men drivers in the world who have been driving since a few generations now and are still bad drivers. However, they are not remarked upon, or discussed like women drivers. Personally, since past many years, whenever I’ve read of serious, fatal accidents on the roads in newspapers, they’ve been caused by male drivers in 9 out of 10 cases.

If looked beyond gender bias, women are physically and psychologically different. They are emotional and they are supposed to be the care-givers in the families. This whole difference might reflect in their driving abilities in a positive as well as negative way. They are slow drivers, sometimes over careful and sometimes have their mind on other issues while driving.

Womankind has learnt to drive much later than men. Their level of confidence, emotional detachment required for driving, compartmentalization of thoughts, are some areas where women are improving. Yet, the level of skills and confidence in today’s woman driver is way better than what it was a decade back.

When someone says a woman is a bad driver, it is mostly judged on the yard stick of how men drive, and men themselves have not been excellent drivers anyway. Instead of who is a faster or a better driver, it makes sense if men and women focus on driving safely. As far as the question – Why women are bad drivers? – is concerned, such a generalized statement or observation can have negative psychological impact on future women drivers who could have the capacity to be much better and safer drivers.

Filed under: Driving Tagged: Women

Dad, I just spoke to DEV ANAND…

pratikshathanki — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 05:16:00 +0000

There are memories and then there are special memories. Suddenly when my timeline started with RIPs for Dev Saab, a simple memory just turned special.

My first filmi article for Ahmedabad Times in early 2005 was all about when and if sequels will ever take off and boy they did. Krish, Dhoom, Sarkar and what not! Many people have been writing about sequels before and after this, but this one was written when they were considered to be DOOMED. Allow me some self-indulgence, I’m grieving. It has been a tough year for film buffs…

Anyway, what my mind fished out was my very brief interaction with Dev Anand for it. He said sequels will not succeed as long as people keep playing safe. He may not have succeeded with all his experiments, but he did try his hands at subjects that people shied away from.

What he told me at the time was good enough for my article. But it is a lot more than just the quote because he was the first celebrity (and of what stature!) I ever spoke to as a journalist. Friends and colleagues my age had no interest in him. He did have a glorious past, but no one was too interested in whatever he did in past 20 years. I looked him up for this particular article just because at that time, A Jewel Thief sequel had just happened. The minute I dialed the number, I was a bit nervous, now when I think of it… I’m retroactively starstruck…

His assistant just patched me through and the enthusiasm he showed to a TOI newbie calling him from a smaller city was no less than someone interviewing him for the BBC. I could use only about 100 words out of his 15 minutes of enthusiastic take. That friendliness pushed me into calling or talking to almost anyone and everyone…celebrity or not… When it comes to work, you can’t play safe all the time…

Right after that call… I called up dad and had a subdued scream at office: I just spoke to DEV ANAND…

Dad and I have cried together every time we watch Guide… we aren’t much fussed about how the book is better than the movie thing as long as the movie makes sense to us. We will cry over Guide some more in future whenever we watch it.

Don’t even get me started on his endless array of amazing songs and good looks and his contribution and all that. A lot is being written about it already.

Dev Anand won’t experiment anymore, but his persona and never say die attitude lives on…

Filed under: Ahmedabad Times, Dev Anand, Movies Tagged: Movies

What’s in a surname?

pratikshathanki — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 09:30:00 +0000

The French women do not want to be called ‘mademoiselle‘ any more, they prefer ‘madame’ that doesn’t give out their marital status.

Now as this TIME article says Germans have done away with Fraulein and cosmo women in English speaking world prefer Ms. instead of Miss and Mrs.

Many in the comment section of the article have called this a small issue and how women should focus on work and a lot of blah. They are mainly men, who have never had to change their names, and were never put in that position.

A big number of urban women have their passport, a variety of licences, bank accounts and a lot of official formality in their name before they get married, everywhere in the world including in India. And especially in India, once they are married, the whole conversion of name lands them on a ‘mission’ where either they want all their documents in a hyphenated or a full on married name.

New age guys have evolved too. They don’t get ruffled with their wives maintaining their identities. But that too doesn’t make everything okay. Some friends who kept their maiden (another worrying word that is) names, ended up with a mayhem cause their father’s names were mistaken for their husband’s names if they indicated their status as married. This doesn’t only involve red tape of going through a lot of sarkari babus, there is also a lot of cultural confusion in the process. Every time someone mentions if I’ve kept my ‘maiden’ name I feel like the Fairie Queen from the 15th century.

Too much to think of, I know. The thought could open a very tricky pandora’s box for every thinking gal.

Simply accepting the things as they are do not solve any thing. Doesn’t a salutation sans marital status everywhere in the world make sense? A Ms. and Mr. or a Shri and Sushri (instead of kumari/shrimati etc.) in India can solve a lot of identity crisis for women. A lot has changed for women over past 100 years, and there is a long way to go. Sometimes, inertia or an unwillingness to challenge accepted belief, abiding by tradition and not putting off family members, all of it seems to contribute in this name game.

There can be no judgement against those who are completely converted to their married names, retained their maiden name with a hyphen or kept their surname as it is. Women have never been told who exactly made these rules and why are they supposed to play along with them?

There are a lot of bigger issues out there in the world. Women are a part of all of them. They can do without this irritating name changing business without hurting anyone, even tradition. Don’t we make new traditions everywhere as we move on in time?

Filed under: name, surname, time magazine Tagged: Wondering

Where is my voice?

pratikshathanki — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 16:46:00 +0000

No one ever tells you how much book reading or movie watching or net surfing is enough.

There is no calorie count on in-take of stories. Even though you digest bizarre old plots recycled again and again, taste music, experience the relationships of characters, it often leaves you with post-Rajma effect.

Irony is, more and more movies and books are becoming forgettable. One still manages to recite: ‘love is not love which alters when it alteration finds’, but most new things do not seem worth memorizing.

Talking of memorizing reminds me of school and some days of college where students of any stream and subject will be found cramming, mugging or eating up words, ‘notes’ and ‘material’. There used to be ‘material’ even for literature students, where hardly anyone cares about marveling at an original Coleridge or Frost, and can score a first class by simply reading a printed bunch of papers prepared by a frustrated lecturer.

Times have changed. Now we have to find something impressive to put on our status messages. There you often find quotes from classics and pearls from a generation in between. How smart they make us look! Oh wait, there is also a software that can help you change that intellectual status message every few days. Never mind the originality of status messages and tweets, cause we don’t remember any of it any way.

The fact is, we still ‘remember’, have it in our memories, that a quote of Shakespeare or Twain is worth it.

So what exactly sticks in our brains from all the memorizing? Is memorizing something like creating an image, an imitation in our minds? We all seem to have collectively and unconsciously decided that most new things are not worth memorizing anymore. Post a news link, ooh-aah over it. Forget it. Our heads are buzzing with current affairs, sports, disasters in such a way that saying ‘there is no time to stare sounds’ like a cliche and very few will identify without googling that it comes from Frost.

Watched Finding Forrester recently where a reclusive Pulitzer winning author William Forrester (supposedly based on JD Salinger) gives his prodigy Jamal his own old work to type and tells him eventually in the process of re-typing something old, he’ll discover his own voice.

For some reason, we do re-type a lot of old classics, but our own voices are nowhere to be found in those live-streams. All we’re left with is mundane routine.

Filed under: rambling Tagged: Wondering

Midnight in Paris, there is something about Woody Allen – part 6

pratikshathanki — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 06:22:00 +0000

A Woody Allen movie gives only two possibilities, either you love it, or you haven’t got it.

Now you can mix and match with these two, for example, you can love it without getting too. If you claim to get it and don’t love it, you’ll automatically fall down the ‘haven’t got it’ rabbit hole. If you are still not satisfied, his next movie tries to explains how we all are often dissatisfied with our present.

Well, this is not the best example of a rant, but it shows an after effect of watching a Woody Allen movie.

At one point of time, in Midnight in Paris, Gil (Owen Wilson) implies that Paris could be the most beautiful, romantic city in the universe. There is no place like Paris anywhere else (nothing new there). Taking this logic, Woody Allen is Paris of the world of cinema. No one can make movies like him. He is so original that there have hardly been any attempts at imitating his style. But yeah, he does repeat his rants. If you have seen and got one of his movies, you’ll get the thread of most others.

He was a quintessential New York man. But has no qualms about admitting he can’t afford to make movies there anymore. Thankfully for viewers, he picks up a beautiful European country these days. You get to see Paris in this movie like never before. He has managed to capture and showcase the timelessness of Paris through his perspective. The first five minutes montage of the glimpses of the city produced a collective ‘awww’ from the audience.

In Midnight in Paris, a Hollywood script writer visits Paris with his fiance and her family. His fiance is more suitable to him on paper (a usual norm of romantic comedies these days). He starts taking mysterious midnight strolls around the city. He bumps into Hemingway here and Fitzgerald there, while Cole Porter is singing in the background. Thus begins a surreal fantasy that is a rare treat for the imagination. Owen Wilson channels Woody spirit quite well.

Sometimes corny, sometimes crisp, more imaginative and poking fun at ‘the pedantic ones’ this movie is endearing. Doesn’t matter if you have been to Paris or not, if you have read some books, have an eye for colours and your eyes gleam at the rain drops, chances are you’ll love this movie.

Filed under: Movies, Woody Allen Tagged: Woody Allen

Postcard from Upleta

pratikshathanki — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 10:52:00 +0000

Upleta is a town in Saurashtra region of Gujarat. As a kid when taking an overnight bus to Porbandar, visiting Nanabapu during vacation, Upleta came as a stop in the early morning.

Today, it has a whole new meaning to me. A Mr Gambhir K R from Upleta, wrote a postcard addressed to my dad in Ahmedabad inquiring about my book web@home. [Those who can read Gujarati can read the postcard itself.] Over past 10 years since the book was published, many things have changed in the way we use the Internet but still those who are just starting out, to open a browser, typing a URL in the address bar are new things to small town India. Someone recommended web@home to the man who works as a security guard and has no professional use for it, but wants to learn to use Internet as a hobby. He managed to find my dad’s name and address through common surname. It is definitely a small world but it is also a queer one where a man wishing to learn more about internet is writing a postcard to the writer.

Dad in return, used his name and address on the BSNL website and found his phone number, called him and arranged to send him a free copy. This whole incident makes you wonder if old technology remains new for someone in some corner of the world till it completely dies down.

Another thing I noticed is, he wrote this postcard on the 15th August and started with the salutation ‘Jai Bharat’. I’m addicted to using ‘howdie’ and ‘hola’ these days and his clear cut identity dripping through the postcard makes my Facebook messages look suicidal and fake.

If he will ever get online and Google himself, land on this page and find his postcard or not, I’m not sure. What I’m sure of is that he is going to get the book in a day or two, and he will be able to use email to contact the writers and their fathers asking for the availability of the books he wishes to read in future. Hope he retains the salutation.

Jai Bharat to you all.

Filed under: India, postcard, upleta Tagged: nostalgia

Of celebrating Independence Day and gauging fan-fiction

pratikshathanki — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 11:05:00 +0000

Those who are away from home miss it the most. But as they say, if you are feeling homesick, it means you come from a happy home.

Celebrating India’s Independence Day with some episodes of Shyam Benegal’s version of Bharat Ek Khoj. I’ve left reading Nehru’s Discovery of India half way some time back in Ahmedabad. I’ll make sure to finish it soon. Our history and inheritance is so overwhelming, one can hardly claim to understand it all. Positive or not, in the past or in the present, India does make a splendid subject or background to a story, fictional or otherwise.

And yet today’s political and many social circumstances often makes one wonder if contemporary India is a fanfiction version of a glorious past. No matter how much we love to nitpick, we all have a version of India in our hearts that we love and cherish…

Speaking of fanfiction, check out this Oped-youth page in today’s Tribune: Tales that never end. [or ePaper version] about how some people literally put their imagination to use in continuing their version of some favourite stories…

Filed under: Bharat ek khoj, Discovery of India, fanfiction, Independence day, India

Remembering Shammi Kapoor

pratikshathanki — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 07:15:00 +0000

My last memories of Shammi Kapoor were in Twitter last year when he invited Deepika Padukone for a cup of coffee. The man kept in with the rhythm of the world till his last moments. He was the one who ‘moved’ on screen to the rhythm. Men didn’t budge even when they were singing on silver screen in India. It was Shammi Kapoor who broke the stiff brigade and brought liveliness.

Of course there are going to be several Yahoo references floating around while remembering him from his legendary song from Junglee. But he was also a pioneer of technology users in India in his own way as one of the initial users of a dial-up internet connection and a Mac computer owner decades back.

He has many hit films and despite being part of the Kapoor clan, he has his own identity. Though as a very young child I remember his advertisements of Pan Parag. He even managed to be a forerunner of actors with another legend Ashok Kumar, for working in ads before everyone else jumped on the bandwagon.

Thanks to Dad, we’ve been repeatedly watching his ever-green flick ‘Teesri Manzil’. It always makes me wonder, how Mohd. Rafi’s voice suited Shammiji so well, it never felt like there was lip-sync involved there. I had a serious crush on the man when watching those classic black and whites like Dil Deke Dekho.

As time will have it, the technology he loved and had vision to embrace it before most of his country, today makes it possible for all of us to pay a verbal tribute to the legend. This post has to end with a song, and I can’t think of a better one than this at the moment:

Filed under: Bollywood, legends, Memories, Movies, Shammi Kapoor