Chak De India - A Review

OK, so I watched Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Chak De India the other day. Or rather, I was dragged to the movie, at least initially. I was skeptical about the movie for many reasons, with SRK's history of hamming through roles not being the least of them. And then, it was indeed a difficult concept to make a good movie about. I mean, the movie was about our national passion (not), hockey, and women's hockey at that, for crying out aloud. This would have been a difficult movie even for an old Hollywood hand to work on, leave alone most of our extremely (un)creative Bollywood producers: How do you direct a hit movie whose story revolves arounda gaggle of mostly-unattractive female players playing, to most minds, a decidedly unglamorous sport, and where the climax involved the women's hockey world championship finals. Hmm. And then there was also that Punjabi title: Who knew, the directory might just decide that the lady hockey players must also keep vrath for karva chauth as part of the preparations for the hockey world championship. But thankfully, director Shimit Amin did no such thing; a lesser director may, perhaps, have, and God knows we have plenty of them here to go around.

So, the story is about this wrongly disgraced Muslim Indian ex-hockey captain who seeks to redeem his honor by taking it upon himself to coach the Indian women's national hockey team, who are regarded by the Sports Authority of India's mandarins as basket cases. To cut a long story short, SRK does exactly that, which of course we should have expected, considering this was an S-R-K movie. He cannot have not done that. But what was interesting was the writer and director's interpretation in how the movie should play out. The tight script and direction kept me riveted to the seat as the hockey drama unfolded. And some fine acting from mostly unknown names most definitely added to the effect. And for once, SRK didn't ruin it with his anally retentive monologues.

Notables:

• The movie was refreshingly politically correct, without being too preachy, although a couple of times it teetered on the edge. For example: When the whole hockey team gets into a fist fight with some lecherous Delhi boys (surprise!) who are panting after some so-called "yellow" skin.
  
  
• The South Indians (singular rather) weren't dark, ugly, conniving losers. OK, maybe dark, and there's nothing wrong with that, but none of the other three. The director even decided to have a scene where the South Indian player (a Telugu character whose name I don't recall) is assumed to be a Tamilian (Telugu, Tamil, what's the difference, eh), and she promptly retorts to her North Indian interrogator that, yes, there's obviously no difference between Telugu and Tamil people, just as there's no difference between Punjabi and Bihari people :| So, whilst attempts were made to correct historically-flawed portrayals of South Indians in Hindi cinema, the director wasn't bending over backwards to make them look like super-cool characters either; they were just regular guys and girls, like everyone else. Which is good.
  
  You're probably wondering, at this point, why I'm discussing this particular point in such great detail, but I have this gigantic bee in my bonnet about how South Indians were viewed by North Indians in the past: As dark, stupid, ugly, conniving losers. Not by all North Indians, obviously, but by enough; unflattering portrayals in Hindi cinema seemed to speak for the rest. And I'm glad that has changed. Hindi cinema has finally caught up with reality, in more ways than one.
  
  
• Unfortunately, it looks like the Biharis/Jharkandis are the new South Indians, as far as Bollywood is concerned. They're depicted as dark, ugly, and not particularly bright. And they've been caricaturized in the most cardboardish manner. Sigh. Biharis/Jharkandis of the world, unite!
  
  
• As I said earlier, a movie that revolves around a sport is not the easiest to make. It's obvious that a lot of research has gone into the making of this movie; the parts of the movie that revolved around the world championship in Melbourne were strikingly realistic, and everything seemed to have fallen into place nicely. Many kudos!

All in all, a delightful little (or not-so-little, considering how much money may have been pumped into the Australian leg of the shooting) movie, that was came as a pleasant surprise. May there be more of director Shimit Amin's kind!

What am I reading now?

The Long Tail by Chris Anderson.

The book is a fantastic analysis of how the Internet and digital technologies, amongst other things, have enabled, to summarize the tag line, endless choice to create unlimited demand. He applies his knowledge of Economics, acquired during his stint at The Economist, to propose and finetune a theory that's mostly commonsense, but yet something that nobody had theorized before. Whilst the author's not trained as an economist, his ideas are nothing to be sniffed at. This book is the latest in a series of books that have come out in the past few years that have analyzed sociological changes from an economist's point of view. And so it belongs right up there with Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point and Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner's Freakonomics. Very esteemed company, indeed. No more details from me. As some are wont to say, go read the book.

STC India's 9th Annual Conference

STC India's 9th Annual Conference is being held on October 26 and 27, 2007 at the Cidade de Goa. I have attended 4 of the 8 conferences that have been organized in India, and I've found them to be very refreshing experiences. These conferences are fantastic opportunities for networking and rubbing shoulders with industry achievers, not to forget that the conference also informally doubles as the mother-of-all job fairs!

Much as I'd like to attend this year's conference, I'm doubtful because of my work schedule that leads up to a mega product release in December. But we'll see what happens. But I've eased my conscience by pitching in with content for the conference website, while bestest friend Mira worked on the design. Feedback, bouquets, brickbats? anthony2francis 'at' yahoo 'dot' com. You know what to do!

Can I rave about Susheela Raman, please?

You're probably wondering Susheela who? And I would have to, a week ago. Until I watched this lovely movie called Touch of Pink, and I heard strains of her work as part of the movie soundtrack. And I was so sold.

Her seductive voice stayed with me much after the movie. I stalked her on the Internet, but because of the very esoteric nature of her work (fusion music with Carnatic as the somewhat dominant theme), finding and downloading her numbers off the Web were that much more difficult.

But I'm glad I stayed the course, because the result was very rewarding. I downloaded her album Salt Rain, but I'm trying to sample her work one number at a time. Till now, I've heard Nagumomu Galeni (which is somewhat annoyingly titled Nagumomo) and O Rama. Over and over again for the past 3 days. And I still don't seem to be able to get enough of it. Both of these numbers are improvised, "fusioned" covers of Carnatic music icon Thyagaraja's works. And how.

She's been able to bring this brilliant twist to the original works, and whilst that might roil the purists, I sure wasn't complaining. My only beef was that, possibly because of her western upbringing, she tended to blatantly mispronounce and aspirate, even, some Telugu words. But I'm happy to look the other way as I let her music just waft soulfully across my being. Or something. My only regret is that I don't understand the Telugu that is sung. The sheer lyrical beauty of the sounds demands understanding. Having lived in Hyderabad, India for more than 10 years, I understand and speak the colloquial language reasonably well, but my lack of formal training in the language certainly doesn't help in understanding 19th century classical Telugu. Maybe some day...

And oh, Mira Nair's The Namesake also features her work as part of the soundtrack (a very cute offbeat ditty titled Yeh Mera Deewanapan Hai).

Touch of Pink - A Review

I watched Touch of Pink for the second time at a friend's place last Friday, and the movie felt just as fresh, the way it had the first time 2 years ago. The movie's excellent screenplay, whip smart dialogues, excellent performances by most of the actors, and an excellent accompanying soundtrack (dominated by Susheela Raman's seductive voice, but more on that in another post) make it a movie buff's delight. God knows this movie should have been an epochal hit (it has all the makings of one), but the ethnic theme of the movie probably explains why it wasn't (although to my mind, this movie was as crossover as they come). The fact that it's a gay-themed movie is only incidental; the ideas of love, rejection, marriage, and family, around which the movie revolves, are universal.

It's a lovingly-told story about a somewhat dysfunctional Khoja Muslim family: A widowed mother (Nuru, played by Sulekha Mathew) who lives off the generosity of her wealthy sister and her pretentious, ostentatious family in Toronto, a closeted gay son (Alim, played by Jimmy Mistry) who lives with his white boyfriend (Giles, played by Kristen Holden-Ried), and all the confusions that arise in love and relationships when the Nuru decides to pay a visit to Alim, and he is forced to come out to her about his sexuality.

The dialogs are most excellent and very high in bitch-quotient (very reminiscent of the tactics employed by the writers for Desperate Housewives). My only complaint about the movie was that it got a bit preachy with the holier-than-thou ending. But they're just minor quibbles, considering what an excellent movie it was for the most part.

This is how good gay-themed movies are made, as opposed to the somewhat underwhelming Brokeback Mountain. But that's just me. Now, just go watch that movie, y'all.