Movie Review – Shanghai

Dibakar Banerjee is among my favourite directors, simply for the way his films stick out among our multi-colour, sappy-sweet three-hour dozefests that pass off as films.

In all the discussions I have had with friends, our understanding of films and their content amuses me. The common saying is, “Film entertaining hai, yaar. Dimaag nahi lagana padta hai.” This is what is entertaining – the Rohit Shettys and Prabhudeva films where Tata Sumos fly and women expose their navels and giggle. On the other end of the spectrum are the films that are supposed to move you to tears, or teach you a moral, or have some deep significance. The kind of films that Bhansali or Bhandarkar churn out regularly.

Dibakar Banerjee, through his films, manages to steer clear of either of the two stereotypes. His films are funny without a fat or dark guy being ridiculed, and they make you think without resorting to melancholic soundtracks and deep, philosophical mumbo-jumbo dialogues.

Those of you haven’t watched Oye Lucky, Lucky Oye and Khosla Ka Ghosla should do it immediately, to get what I mean. The characters have their own quirks and tics. They are funny, the situations are funny, and the detailing permeates to more than just the opulent sets – the detailing lies in the naming, the dialogues, the characters literally breathe their roles.

With Shanghai, Banerjee is going to uncharted territory. The film is dark, gloomy, and hopeless. And even though these should be mere traits of a film, it is considered bad, chiefly because our biggest blockbusters are all colourful and cheerful.

It is also the largest film Banerjee has attempted in terms of scale – his most outrightly political film.

The story is about a small town symbolically called ‘Bharatnagar’, which is all set to transform into a Shanghai – thanks to Special Economic Zone (SEZ) and other investors coming to the town. The whole town is in a state of celebration, when an activist, Dr. Ahmedi visits the town to talk to the people of the evils that await the town. He is no messiah, though. He is manipulative when he wants to be, and doesn’t mind making out with one of his students. But since he has ruffled a few important feathers, he gets bumped off.

What follows is the story of how three people become involved in a murky tale of grime and grease. Abhay Deol is a Tamilian IAS Officer, Emraan Hashmi is a pornographer/photographer, and Kalki Koechlin is one of Dr. Ahmedi’s students who wants justice.

The performances are top notch. While Kalki Koechlin takes some time to sink into her character, Abhay Deol and Hashmi – in my opinion two of the most important actors of the coming generation – are at ease with their roles right from the beginning. You have to watch Hashmi grin with his paan-stained teeth to see how much he has evolved from the guy who would sing a slow and song and seduce anything that moves. Abhay Deol’s accent, like his conscience, keeps slipping and finding its foot, but in no way does it hamper his performance as the IAS officer who wants to avoid being a mere pawn in the hands of ministers.

If the film is still playing in theatres far from you, go ahead and give it a watch. If it’s not, wait for it to come on TV. If you want to piss Kapil Sibal off a little, download it from the internet and watch it.

For it’s a film that deserves a watch. How long do we have to be subjected to no-brainers under the garb of ‘dimaag nahi lagana padta hai’. Since when did not using your brain become equal to having fun? And why don’t these people just sit at home and masturbate then? Us mein mazaa aata hai, aur dimaag bhi nahi lagana padta hai.

The film requires your patience, and some overlooking. It is satisfying, and frustrating. It is slow at times, and frantic in the others. It is silent, yet screams out to be heard.

And honestly, how many films can claim to do that?

Movers and Shakers

If you grew up in the era of Doordarshan, ‘Surabhi’, ‘Subah Savere’ and ‘Good Morning India’ will ring gigantic, creaky bells in your head.

I remember watching everything on television – from the time the transmission began at 5 in the morning, to the time it ended at 11 pm. From the friendly aunty giving out the deaf and dumb news, the ascetic professor teaching physics formulae in Gyan darshan, to the middle aged scientist giving agricultural tips in Krishi Darshan. If there was something on TV, I was standing in front of it – watching in awe as the shapes formed themselves and the sounds appeared to jump out of the box.

A few years down the line, the cable television revolution happened. I clearly remember how I heard about it. I used to play cricket in front of our house. One such day, a kid came up to me and said, “How many channels do you get on your tv?”

I looked at him as if he had asked me how many testicles kidneys I had. “Two”.

“We get more then 20 channels”, he said. I am generally sceptical of people, and I took time to believe him as well. I later went to his house, and was amazed to see it on television – in colour. He explained to me that there were channels that showed films all day. Only films. All day. I was shocked.

What about the Sunday evening 4.30 slot? If they showed films all day, how did the family do any work? Didn’t they all just sit as a family and watch all the films day in and day out? And what about those channels that showed news all day? Who watched that channel? Who would watch a channel that showed news all day when there was a channel that was showing films all day? I felt lost, amidst the choices the remote offered, and the questions my brain posed.

In a few years, I was comfortable with cable television. Of course, we had only Doordarshan at home, but my friends at school spoke to me about the marvels of cable television. About Zee Horror show episodes, of MTV albums, of Cartoon Network shows. Eventually, we jumped on to the cable television bandwagon too.

And since I used to watch Subah Savere and Krishi Darshan, when I watched Movers and Shakers for the first time, I was charmed.

I had seen Shekhar Suman in Dekh Bhai Dekh and other shows on DD. Amidst the loud, caricaturish shows on television, his show came as a breath of fresh air.

Firstly, he openly took potshots at ministers, cricketers, and film stars – the holy trinity of our country. I marvelled at the balls of the guy who could mimic Vajpayee, Laloo, Javagal Srinath on national television and get away with it. The jokes were funny, but not insulting.

And then the choice of guests – from artists, to sportsmen, to writers, to musicians, to ad-guys, to poets. For the first time, I felt that we had more than just film stars in our country. And Shekhar Suman had this way of bringing out the best from the guest.

He was cheeky with the younger ones, but reverential to the older ones. I remember watching Pandit Jasraj’s episode. Who would have thought that the man was utterly hilarious? That the man who could churn out sargams like a cursing rishi, could also be a chivalrous flirt when there was a woman in front of him? Or the episode with Ratna Pathak Shah, or the one with Laloo himself?

Switching between Hindi and English, cheeky and inquisitive, Shekhar Suman managed a certain freshness into the show that kept me glued.

And even though the format was the same as the American talk shows, I found his show much better. I can’t stand the smugness that David Letterman brings into his shows, the whole ‘I’m so funny, you could choke on my dick’ smugness with which he says his jokes. Jay Leno is fine, but repeatitive after a point. But Shekhar Suman mixed the Indian cynicism with a certain Atithi Devo Bhava respect that seemed to be perfect for the audience.

 Apart from Sonu Nigam’s Sa Re Ga Ma, this was the only show I would watch religiously.

And then I grew up.

A few days back, I heard that the show was being rebooted.

Shekhar Suman was still there, the format was the same, even the band was the same.

The Curious Case of Shekhar Suman – Age is just a decimal point.

He seems to be getting younger by the years. He somehow looked prosthetic, and the jokes seemed the same, and criticising a politician didn’t seem so sacrilegious anymore.

After 15 minutes, I changed the channel. Probably because it was because I knew there was a hundred other things I could watch. Or probably because he didnt seem like the genuine, cheeky Shekhar Suman anymore.

Or probably because I knew that I could always log into the internet, I could watch a film, play a game, talk to a friend, or stalk someone on Facebook. I dont know what it was, but I just couldn’t connect to the show this time around.

Or may be some feelings are meant for a particular era, not meant to be felt again. 

How to be a Facebook Photographer

If I ever have a son, before kicking him out of the house at 15, I’ll force him to take up photography. Even if he doesn’t like it, because I know that it’s for his own good.

For, if nothing changes about the world in a few decades, photographers will continue to be the luckiest bunch of people. I mean, look at our times.

Even if you are a crazy, psycho, peadophile with an oily smile, if you have a camera, you get to hang out with all the girls. Because you take pictures. And upload them on Facebook. You are important. People need you.

Photographers are an interesting bunch. Thanks to liberalization and uncles abroad, every Tom, Dick and Harry now has a camera. And every Tom, Dick, and Harry is a photographer. And every Tom, Dick, and Harry is important.

Now, I don’t have a problem with photographers as such. They are friendly people. But once they get hold of an SLR camera, there is a transformation. There are strange effects that the black object has on people’s lives and they can’t shake off those effects even if they want to.

Product of their times, I tell you. I believe every generation has a set of chutiyas.

In the 90s, there were the Roller Skate chutiyas. These kids would roam around wearing roller skates, living testimonies of the fact that the wheel might not have been the greatest invention on earth.

Zipping and zapping from here to there, roller skaters of the 90s were like Rahul Roy, very cool – but extremely transient. Of course, then liberalisation struck us, and bicycles and bikes were available. Which meant roller skating became as cool as picking your nose in a marriage video.

In the 2000s, came the Guitar Chutiyas. Wannabe rockstars who held a guitar and sang songs of love, pain, and peace. The Guitar chutiyas carried their guitars everywhere and threw up strange words like ‘chords’, and ‘progressions’. Victims of a clear case of ‘EveryoneGivesAFuckitis’, Guitar chutiyas strummed away to glory like everyone cared, and some of the 3-chord wonders are still available on youtube.

And then, in the 2010s, we have the Facebook photographers.

If you’re still interested, here are the rules you need to follow to become a Facebook Photographer.

The Display Profile: If you have a camera (which automatically means you are a photographer), you HAVE to put it up on your Display Picture. Otherwise, how else will the world know that you are a photographer? What if they think you’re a carpenter or something??

The Display Picture will have the person, and the camera next to/in front of the person. Remember, the man is as important as the camera and hence the term ‘camera-man’. A display picture with the person holding the camera and taking a picture of yourself in the mirror leaves no doubt in the mind that you are a cameraman/woman. You know, just in case people mistake you for a shoplifter or bootlegger. All I am saying is you need to make your identity clear.

The Dvaita Philosophy: Facebook Photographers follow the duality in presence. They are different from their photographs. In fact, their photography is a separate, breathing entity altogether. So much so that there will be two profiles for the Facebook Photographer. One is ‘Facebook Photographer’ (the person’s profile), and the other is a separate page called  ‘Facebook Photographer’s Photography’. If you are a Yo! photographer, you may call it ‘Facebook Shutterbugs’, or if you are confident of yourself, you may even open a page called ‘Facebook Photographers’ Fan Page’. Yes, I know!

The Original Photographers: Every photographer will use his/her originality and creativity and take some extremely creative pictures that no one earlier has either attempted or shot. Some of these extremely original photographs are: 1. The poor kid: The poor kid is guaranteed to win you ‘awww’s and ‘ooooh’s from your fans on Facebook. Screw things like Right to Privacy, I mean, they are poor right, what do they care? Then there are the photographs of babas in fairs, the close ups of flowers, or the close up of the chameleon on the rock. Your work is to come up with such beauties and open the eyes of the rest of the world.

Editing: Once you’re done with taking the photograph, you have to remember to edit the fuck out of it. Deepen the colours, improve the brightness, alter the focus, and throw in some shadows for effect. But photography is about the photograph and not the effects, you say? What rubbish! Would Sachin be the same without his MRF? Or Karan without his Kavach and Kundal? Or Rakhi Sawant without her …. you get the idea! Similarly, when you have those effects on photoshop, why not use it? I mean, computers are emitting out gases and ruining the world. It’s only fair that while we are at it, we use whatever resources we have with us.

Copyrighting: After you’re done tweaking the photograph, remember to stamp your identity over it. This is done by putting your watermark over the picture. Here, it is important to remember that others may take away your picture from your profile. Hence, it is important to put the watermark clearly on the photograph. I would suggest putting a huge watermark right across the middle of the image. The watermark becomes more prominent than the actual picture? What nonsense! Haven’t you seen the most famous painting of the world?

The Global Tagger: But your work is not done after taking that terribly original photograph. You have to tag people to your photograph. This is where you have to be magnanimously generous. The more number of people you tag, the higher your ratings go. Your friend, his friend, his aunt, her neighbours, their dog, it’s vet, his child, and their teachers. No one that you know should be spared from the joy of watching you capture that poor little child on the road or that bumble bee that waltzed into your room. I mean, after all, your uncle in the US spent so much money on getting you the camera. What is the point in quietly pursuing the profession?

Follow these simple steps, and you’re all set. Remember to take your camera everywhere – who knows, you might discover a peacock shaped turd in the potty? The sky is the limit.

*****

IPL 5 : Five things I am NOT going to miss

The guys tolerated Ganguly and Agarkar for three years, and SRK for 5 years. Truly deserved the title. Congrats, KKR !!

To begin with, I am not one of those who complain that IPL is ruining cricket and all that tripe. How do you know that cricket is being ruined? Is there a quality check that tells you how cricket is being ruined? If lots of money entering the sport is what ruins it, West Indies cricket should be the purest, right? How come brother Gayle is hanging out in India and butchering hapless Indian domestic bowlers for two years now?

So, let’s get this straight. There’s no ruining cricket. It’s like lamenting that Mario the video game was going extinct. Yeah, it was an awesome game and all that. But how long can you watch a man with a cap jumping on tortoises and collecting stars? People move on, and want different things. 

I find it funny how people like Harsha Bhogle write seemingly well-researched articles like ‘5 cricketers to watch out for in the future’ on cricinfo. Let’s face it, in the five years that Lalit Modi stormed into our lives, only Ashwin and Jadeja are the players who have made any impact in the national cricket side. For most others, it is a two month extravaganza that you can’t avoid. For me, it gives me something to watch everyday on TV. And frankly, if I have to choose between soap operas and asinine films on Zee Cinema, I am happy with the IPL, thank you very much. 

This year’s IPL took things one step further. While we had fakeIPLplayer giving us fake insights into the happenings of the KKR dressing room a few years ago, this year proved that the guy was a Nostradomus of sorts. This year’s IPL saw sting operations about match fixing, rave parties with cricketers claiming they thought they were birthday parties, and molestation cases where Siddharth Mallya finally broke to the world the etiquette that a future wife needs to follow. What more can you want?

However, not everything was rosy. There were still a few niggling worries that bugged me throughout the season. 

 

1. Shastri and Gavaskar’s cliches: What will it take for the BCCI to realise that noone really listens to these guys anymore? Coming up with the choicest of cliches time and again, Shastri and Gavaskar have rubbed off some of their awesome predictability on their juniors – the extremely original Arun Lal, and the guy who makes marathon chess matches seem like 3D porn – Laxman Sivaramakrishnan. 

In all fairness, Gavaskar has seemed to mellow down quite a bit this season. But Shastri, how do you stop an idea whose time had come and gone 20 year ago? The man crusades on, with his ‘travelled like a bullet’ and ‘pin-drop silence in the crowd as Sachin departs’ references like there is no tomorrow.

 

2. Danny Morrison’s drug-induced howling: When Danny Morrison was brought into the commentary box a few years back, it was a breath of fresh air. He did not adhere to the Shastri dictum of two cliches an over, and seemed to bring in some sort of a humour in his commentary. Now, after three years, the shouting gets on my nerves. I understand if you are excited about a match. But if you’re howling with joy when Kings XI Punjab beat Deccan Chargers chasing 123 in 20 overs, I am sorry my friend, we know it’s fake.

We in India know what is fake. For years, we have used China mobiles. We have seen Tushar Kapoor beat up bad guys thrice his size, and we even watched a film where Fardeen Khan invents the world’s fastest car. We also have Rakhi Sawant. So when something is fake, we just know it.

3. Product Placement: Even though the IPL did not accept my suggestions a few years back of having fielding positions called Kohinoor Extra Cover and Anne French Fine Leg, the IPL has not stopped short of going the whole 22 yards when it comes to product placements. Citi moments of success still jolt us out of our sleep, Karbonn Kamaal catches win matches, and DLF maximums exist in every match.

Thankfully, the MRF Blimp, some marketing guru’s idea of a funny joke, has been done away with. But the product placements just go on. This year, we had Akshay Kumar with his moustache cheering for Ganguly’s team. He spoke passionately about Pune being his favourite team, which is funny, because two years back, he had said his heart beats for Delhi Daredevils. Change of heart? You bet!

 

4. Idea Ads: Times will change, people will be born and eventually die, Shakti Kapoor will proposition a young woman and then apologise, kingdoms will rise and then decline, but Idea will continue to make the crappiest ads on television. I badly want to meet the people who come up with those ideas. What exactly are their motives? Who do they research about? Who is their target audience? The All India Chacha Chaudhry Fans Association?

I mean, we understand that you want to promote the concept of ‘heavenly apps’? Does that mean you torture us with an ad a day, with Abhishek Bachan dressed in white, and a bunch of morons around him, on a set that looks stolen from the film ‘Thoda Pyar Thoda Magic?’ Are we really that dumb? The IPL is undoubtedly the time of the year where most companies come up with their best ads, as they are ensured a steady viewership over a month and a half. We have seen some of the finest sets of ads in the IPL. And then there’s this company, stubbornly sticking to Abhishek Bachhan, and testing out patience and mocking at our intelligence, year after year. How much longer?

 

5. Navjyot Singh Sidhu: But of course you guessed it. What do I say of the man? He has officially gone nuts.

The last time he was in the news, he picked a fight with a guard and blocked the road in Andhra Pradesh when he had come to attend a wedding. Before that, he told a co-commentator ”Don’t fuck with me” and was banned from the live commentary panel and restricted to the pre and post match discussions (the part of the match where you go out for a smoke, take a crap, come back, switch on the channel and say, “Abey, yeh kab tak bakega?”). This time, Sidhu was again in the pre and post match discussions, which shows that the IPL has some sort of viewer sensitivity. Every match that he sees, is the best innings he has seen in a long time. Every discussion includes one of his shayaris and allegories. This year, to spice things up for us, he started saying small one-liners just before the camera panned away at the end of the session. That little ‘chak de phatte‘, or ‘ghumade balla’ to make our day.