For as long as i can remember, I have been in love with movies. My movie tastes may have evolved over a period of time , but I can’t remember a period in my life when i wasn’t fascinated by them. It has been one constant in my ever changing life . I don’t exactly remember the first film i saw, it must have been a Hindi film on television which use to come on Sundays. That was the only entertainment option available. i must have been five or six , so just as i was coming to my senses, i was already watching films . In short, My love affair with films began almost at the same time as my love affair with life itself. As Dharmendra says in Sholay “Hosh sambhalte hi apne pairon pe khade ho gaye”.
Soon enough we started getting Malayalam films, and it was Hindi films on Saturdays, Malayalam on Sundays and there was regional films that was shown on Sunday afternoons with subtitles. that became a weekly routine for many years and it was obvious to me that i have a certain connect a special liking for this art form of moving pictures, watching them made me very, very happy. I was already having my favorites among the actors and actresses and the genre of films that i favoured watching more. Action and comedy films were my favorites and the more romantic and tragic where the ones i didn’t favour much. And my preference for actors also bordered on those lines. It was always exciting to check out the credit titles of the films at the beginning to see whether there was a credit for fight master or my favourite comedy actors were there. and my interest in proceeding with watching the movie depended on that.
Even though i was very young and ignorant about cinematic techniques, i could feel that there were major differences between different language movies i was watching. The rhythm , the acting , the stories, the music, songs that was shown in Malayalam film was very different from the ones shown in a Hindi film, which was again very different from the regional films – which were mainly award winning art films – that i was getting to watch. Soon enough I realised that these films were actually made for and to be seen in a large theatre on a big screen and what i was seeing was just a small version of it . Being a keen movie buff by now, i longed to have that big screen experience, which would come soon enough.
The wonderful thing about movie theatres in Kerala is that we get to watch movies from lot of languages. Almost every Tamil and Hindi film would have simultaneous release in Kerala in all the major A centres. then there was Tamil dubbed version of Telugu films that were also released. there were the English movies that were released. perhaps between 6 months and a year of their actual release
The first film i saw in a theatre was Kilukkam, the Mohanlal starrer . i went with my father, who it turned out was a great movie buff and a very serious and passionate one. Mohanlal was his favourite actor . he had tried to keep me away from the seductive power of cinema, knowing how it will be an adverse affect on my studies, but he had to give in in front of my determination. After that i kept going out with him to theatres. and after coming back home or on our way back he and i would discuss about the film and he would explain to me about a lot of things about it that i did not understand . That was really my first brush with movie analysis.
But the problem was that he would watch only Malayalam films and may be the odd Hindi film, he was not interested in watching any other language films. so for some time that’s the only movies i watched. But as time passed, I fell in with a bunch of friends who were a little older than me and who were crazy about Tamil and Telugu films. That’s how my tryst with those language films began. I immediately liked the large than life format that the films had, the heroes who danced and fought well and the song and dance sequences, which were mounted on a very big scale.
Now i was pretty well acquainted with the films from these 3 or 4 languages, But, i haven’t seen a single English language film. Because for one, none among my family and friends had even remote interest in watching English films and secondly there was this misconception about them that they were either boring art films or of the soft porn variety. But this conception would change drastically and through a very unexpected channel. My school education was in an Anglo Indian convent, the school Principal up until my upper primary was an old crotchety orthodox priest who ran it with an iron hand, but he passed away suddenly and was replaced by a more liberal and a more affectionate person, who it turned out was a movie nut. The Reverend Father , whom i and very kid in the school at the time remember with great affection and who is the main person responsible for turning me in to the English film dude.
The school had a presentation room with TV screen and VCR where they use to show educational programmes and where visual presentations used to be conducted by training teachers. One fine Friday, Our new principal decided to start showing English films in the afternoon for about an hour, it will take 2 weeks minimum for a film to finish. This went on for about two or three years before pressure from his peers in the board forced him to stop.
The first film he showed us was The Good the bad and Ugly, i still remember that experience vividly as found it very, very exciting. i was stunned by how different the whole feeling of that film was from the Indian films i was watching. The colour, the camerawork, the music, the performance of the actors, it was on a completely different level, in spite of the fact that it was almost 30 year old film. And Clint Eastwood was nothing like i have seen before, so tall, blonde and macho cool, that gun flipping trick he did, before he put in his holster, i kept on doing that for days with pens and sticks. I watched about 10, 15 films during that period which would change my perception of American films. His main criterion for showing a film was that it was good action film. Like our Censors, he would avoid anything remotely sexual, and if a little bit of sexy stuff popped up in the films he was showing, he would have his fingers ready on the Fast forward button, We would marvel at his timing ,the way he was able to skip those moments perfectly ,as if they were never there.
Once i saw those movies,. It inspired me to go out and watch the new English films that were coming in theatres. It was with the time when they introduced the new Dolby sound system and it was a mind-blowing experience. After that there was no stopping, I continued to watch them as and when it was possible for me. The most interesting aspect of those films for me was how they managed to keep a consistent tone or emotion throughout, if it was an action film, it was an action film throughout, if it was a comedy, then the tone was comic throughout as opposed to Indian films that were a mixture of wide variety of emotions.
Now my film viewing had come to include such wide variety of languages and genres. But my intentions in watching them were very clearly defined. Malayalam films for me were the real deal, they were about story, characters , great acting, music and very close to life. The non Malayalam films, the Indian films were really guilty pleasures, you watch them to enjoy the masala, the fantasy, the superb stunts, the huge sets and song and dance numbers, the large than life heroes and the scantily clad heroines. The English films were for the pure genre pleasures, the technical brilliance of the hardcore action films which have become my favourite kind of films.
But by the end of 90’s this routine was to undergo a radical change as there would be a drastic drop in the quality of Malayalam movies . It would become a cheap copy or parody of the Other language films with the great lead actors that I admired like Mammootty and Mohanlal started indulging in antics that were more cringe worthy than their Tamil and Telugu counterparts. The nadir as far as I was concerned was Narasimham which was released in 2000, a crude and disgusting movie and kind of cheap copy of Padayappa that went on to become the biggest hit up until that time. What followed was an avalanche of such similar films, all equally bad to the extent that I stopped watching Malayalam films altogether. I would rather watch the Tamil and Telugu films which were serving the same ingredients in much more style and conviction. I had also become disillusioned with the trends in Hindi cinema which had replaced the more masculine masala cinema that I loved the more effete brand of NRI romcoms to which i felt absolutely no connection. This tilted me even further towards English films.
I had also started reading up extensively on foreign films and getting to know more and more about them and became familiar with world classics even though i wasn’t seeing any of them. even when we got a VCR and then VCD player of our own, getting Cassettes for these films were almost impossible. I couldn’t even persuade my relatives abroad to get me cds or cassettes of these films as they had no interest in them. I managed with whatever I could lay my hands on, the reissues of Mackenna’s Gold or Lawrence of Arabia which I was able to catch up on 70 mm. I Remember there was this AFI poll that published the 100 greatest films of 100 years, I think it came out in 97 or 98 and I realized that there were very few films on that list that I have seen, All those great 60’s and 70’s classics.
But things changed for the better at the turn of the millennium. it coincided with that point in time of my life when i completed my school education and enrolled in college preparing for my graduation. I was unshackled from strict rigors of a convent education and an orthodox conservative family life. That was the time when There was this huge explosion in Information technology: the internet boom, the home video market with the coming in of DVD and the cable channels. so all these new channels like HBO,TMC, star movies, they brought with them all those movies that were unattainable to me. Now pretty much my own man , and with the new found freedom. i completely indulged myself in my passion for movies.
Those four, five years at the beginning of the millennium were truly a renaissance period for me. I got opportunities of my own to go abroad and my main shopping itinerary consisted mainly of films of course. i saw all the classics: the godfathers, the Citizen Kanes , the European films that I have been hearing for a long time. Not just English films, I went back and saw all the Malayalam , Hindi and Tamil films of the earlier period that I had missed. It was not just films but music, art, literature, My graduation and post graduation in academics coincided with my graduation in subject of films also. My Movie sensibilities or my movie conscious was fully formed during that period. It has stayed pretty much constant since then with very little alterations. the kind of movies that i like, that i don’t like, the kind of acting i like , i don’t like. there haven’t been any major changes.
And more than a decade since, today when I survey the movie scene, , I am pretty disillusioned with the current scenario. Not just in India , but around the world. I am afraid that for a very young art form, the best of cinema may be already behind us. Hollywood movies have become completely restricted to just two types of films , either the tent pole of shared movie franchises and universes or the over earnest award bait stuff, both of which hardly impresses me. It’s very hard to be enthusiastic about the Marvel universe phase six or the tenth star wars movie that’s coming out along with a Han solo or Darth Vader spin off. The kind of movies I like the most, the R rated hardcore action picture and the mid budget adult dramas made by auteurs with a definite personal stamp have completely disappeared. The only consolation is that they have started showing up as series on cable channels.
The seven seasons of Mad Men or Breaking bad were like a shot of adrenalin in the midst of these stale studio movie products that were inundating the big screen. I am happy that Malayalam films have gone back to their roots with a new generation of young actors and filmmakers. and that there is a burgeoning multiplex indie culture in both Tamil and Hindi . But I wish there is more good work done in the mainstream space. We need good masala films which is our indigenous film culture That needs to be preserved.
The recent Bahubali films have given me hope. Hope to dream at least. Hope that SS Rajamouli becomes the new Manmohan Desai. Hope that Ranveer Singh becomes the new great masala hero – he certainly has great potential , who will end the hegemony of Shahrukh and Salman who are way past the prime and are hanging in there only because they don’t have any competition. Hope Aamir increases his volume of output as he is already nearing the end of his career as a star/actor. Hope that Mammootty, Mohanlal and Rajnikanth retire gracefully without sullying their reputation any further. Hope Kamal gives up on his harebrained scheme of starting a political party and become a full-time filmmaker. And grandest of them all, hoping A.R. Murugadoss becomes the Salim Javed for our generation and Spyder is the beginning, the Zanjeer of our times. That’s what being high on movies for such a long time does it to you. You always end up dreaming the impossible.
This post was written by Maneesh Krishnan A.K.A MANK
brangan
October 2, 2017
Thanks, MANK — for the post, and the photo.
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Navneeth
October 2, 2017
That is a Baahubali of a write-up. Fantastic read.
I love such personal stories about people getting bitten by the cinema bug and being transformed; would like it if other readers shared their experiences as well. 🙂 Perhaps it could be a new Cinema Paradiso-esque column?
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phaneendra201
October 2, 2017
Very nice post
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Nathan
October 2, 2017
Man(k), you had me up until Hope Rajnikanth retires..Here I’m hoping for a third wind in Rajnikanth’s career that truly blows away the superstar wannabes (Ajith, Dhanush– you heard me), and then you just had to go there!
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Doba
October 2, 2017
Enjoyable read! Thank you. I am not a movie buff but admire the authentic note of passion in your writing. I however did not understand the different genres that you described. As in what is masala? What is tent pole of a movie? I hope you will elaborate when you write the next time.
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brangan
October 2, 2017
Doba: Here’s something on masala to begin with:
Tentpole movie:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tentpole_movie#English
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brangan
October 2, 2017
Next up. KayKay and his fantasies. Raise your hands, those who want this post! 🙂
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Madan
October 2, 2017
Great, great write up thalaiva. Very thought provoking and addressing all the points you have made would require another blog in itself because the last para in particular gives much to contemplate. As Federer-Nadal gradually wind down their careers, I have similar thoughts about pro tennis. Where too will the music industry be when all the specialist songwriters/composers are either done or consigned to oblivion (considering also that it’s become more and more difficult for them to ‘monetise’ their talent)? Considering that the internal combustion engine driven automobile too may be in its twilight, we are perhaps on the cusp of a radical change.
I think TV series have always held the potential to be better than films in the sense of being able to go deeper into the subject and bring out the layers of the story that a film in its compressed 2-3 hour length cannot. For an exhibit, I offer the Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy TV series v/s the excellent Gary Oldman-starrer that released a few years back. As good as the movie was, there is a particular line of dialogue by Smiley “What did he say, exactly?” where even the precise emphasis achieved by Alec Guinness was exactly the way Smiley said it in the book. I was simply floored by the level of detail in the TV series (and also by Ian Richardson). So it’s not surprising that a generation that would prefer to have everything on their mobile phone/laptop screen would prefer TV series to cinema. Of course, the grandeur of a majestic piece of cinema watched on the big screen is incomparable but so too is a performance of the Ninth Symphony (provided it is rendered by a competent orchestra) and yet not many of us have the patience/attention span for classical music anymore, do we?
It was very interesting also to read of your initiation into cinema and contrast it with mine. Without getting into the details, it brought out how much the environment as well as parental influence in the formative years can shape your tastes.
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Ravi K
October 2, 2017
Great write-up, MANK.
“Hollywood movies have become completely restricted to just two types of films, either the tent pole of shared movie franchises and universes or the over earnest award bait stuff, both of which hardly impresses me.”
That’s true of the films coming from the big studios, though terrific independent/semi-independent films are still being made. The indie market isn’t what it was in the 90s, though. Pretty much anything released by A24 is good to great. I don’t know how much access to there is to those types of films in India.
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Rad Mahalikudi
October 2, 2017
Kaykay and his fantasies +1
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Pavan
October 2, 2017
Great read. I enjoyed it. Thanks to Rangan as well. Thanks to you, I finally understood what MANK actually means. 😀
Next up. KayKay and his fantasies.
I am waiting.
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Anuja Chandramouli
October 3, 2017
Next up. KayKay and his fantasies. Raise your hands, those who want this post! 🙂
Oh! Be still my heart!!
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Anu Warrier
October 3, 2017
Ha! MANK – your movie trajectory seems to run parallel to mine though being brought up outside Kerala (and having a Tamilian-in-disguise Mallu father) meant I was exposed to more Tamil cinema than Malayalam in those days. 🙂
I would like Mammootty and Mohanlal to reinvent themselves the way Amitabh and Rishi have done in recent years. I do believe they h ave so much more to give, just not ‘hero’ material any more.
KayKay and his fantasies – I’m almost scared to say this, but ‘Yes!’ 🙂
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Kay
October 3, 2017
“Without getting into the details, it brought out how much the environment as well as parental influence in the formative years can shape your tastes.”
My thoughts too as I was reading the post.
Very well written MANK. But I have a doubt. How do you find time to watch not just the movies but the interviews and other related stuff too? 😝 and all that in multiple languages! I have the memory of a baby gold fish and forget most of what I watch within a week or so.
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Kay
October 3, 2017
KayKay and fantasies + 3 🙂
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MANK
October 3, 2017
Thank you all, Writing this post was quite a torturous experience 🙂 i can write pretty comfortably about the movies, but writing about myself was quite hard, mainly because when you go digging in to your past experiences , a lot of unpleasant memories also come out with the pleasant ones. so it did take some effort. i am glad all of you liked it.
Thanks to you, I finally understood what MANK actually means.
Huh, this post was quite a myth buster wasn’t it?, i can’t believe Brangan conned me into doing this , putting myself out there , body and spirit, warts and all 🙂
And i put both my hands and feet up for Kaykay’s fantasies, i want all the three parts, fifty shades of Kaykay, Fifty shades darker of Kaykay and Fifty shades all over Kaykay. uncensored cut 🙂
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sanjana
October 3, 2017
Great read Maneesh! You took us through your journey of life and films and made them our journey. Go on writing such wonderful stuff.
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Rahini David
October 3, 2017
MANK: After reading this piece I took out my copy of “Dispatches from the Wall Corner” and went through the foreword by KJohar and that forword can be written for you too.
Very often when someone writes or talks about Cinema, they talk about their fascination with particular actors or particular genres or even specific tropes and the others pale in comparision. Cinema often seems to be nothing really more than wish-fulfillment. It is a source of happiness to me when someone respects story telling as a something worthy beyond the glitz of the movie world.
I remember you saying that you’d watch even 4 movies on a single day at times. You still seem to recognise each movie without the the entire thing being a distant haze as it is with me. Some movies are just “that Revathy movie” or “that obscure Barathiraja movie” to me. You remember each with a certain loving clarity that I can’t do with… anything.
I see that you have not written much about theatre as an art form. In fact, I see that it not discussed much this space at all. Do you seek out live performances too?
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Rahini David
October 3, 2017
i can write pretty comfortably about the movies, but writing about myself was quite hard
So now that the difficult part is over, can we hear about how Mahabharat influenced Indian Cinema soon enough or will that topic have to be MANK’s Rumination #100? 😛
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MANK
October 3, 2017
Madan, yes Television series has emerged as a great alternative to cinema, even though i do feel that the self contained nature of cinema is a great pleasure on its own, where you get to see a beginning, middle and end in that span of 2 or 3 hours. the advantage that a tv series has , is that it can go very deeply in to the nuances and subtleties and expand on a lot of plot and characterisation that time constraints do not permit in a movie. A series like The crown goes so deeply in to the psyche of Queen Elizabeth and the little details that make her what she is, that it will be impossible to get that effect in a movie
Ravi K, i agree that a lot of good indie films are coming out from Hollywood , but i do believe they are no where near the artistically brilliant films that used be part of hollywood mainstream in the 70’s. its really hard to make a film like Raging Bull or a Chinatown even in the indie mode, because these films require a certain budget and certain number of days for shooting which is not permissible in an indie environment.
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sravishanker1401gmailcom
October 3, 2017
MANK : Very honest and compelling read shorn of unnecessary verbiage from a die hard movie buff !
What do you mean “when I was young” ? If Kilukkam was the first movie you saw in the theatre, you ARE young dammit !
That last para was the cherry on the whipped cream.
Uh you mentioned that your favourite was R Rated hard core – ACTION –
Okay…..
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sravishanker1401gmailcom
October 3, 2017
MANK : Regarding the Malayalam films shown on DD on Sunday afternoons, my junior at the CA firm, also a MANK but Mathew Kurien used to say :
“One flie crosses the door – State Award”
“Another flie crosses the door – NATIONAL Award”
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MANK
October 3, 2017
Kay, well you make time, when you are so passionate about it, i somehow manage it, without disturbing my work as much as possible .
Sanjana ,would like to hear your story next . you come across as quite a mystical, mysterious person 🙂
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MANK
October 3, 2017
Rahini,. i was quite a live performance buff during my school and college days , but now not so much, time constraints is one of the reason, you can catch a film anytime in a theater, if you miss it there , then there is home videos, websites, you can now access it everywhere. not so much for a live performance
Thanks a lot for your words about the loving clarity i have for the movies i watch, i actually wrote about in quite a detail in the piece , but i cut it out because it became too long and meandering
a good movie effects me in a profound way.I go to a movie to like it, obviously when you spend your money and time for such an en devour, you want to like it.But nine out of ten films you watch turn out to be poor. so you try to find individual things in it you like and a lot of movies have it, just a stray moment here, a song there ,a good acting performance that hits you and stay with you for long or perhaps forever and you always have a connection with that film through that.
And it might sound grandiose to say that movies make you a better person, but actually it does. of course maybe you have to burn yourself through ten bad movies or twenty or may be hundred, but when you find that great film, it always exhilarating and life changing in a way. the Renowned filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan , speaking about his philosophy on film had this to say ” when a person pays money and enters the theater to watch a film,the film or the filmmaker has a responsibility not to let him leave the theater as he came in, the film should make him more fitter for life, for the society. In that darkness , every ray of light projected on to the screen should be an enlightening, soul searching experience for him. it should not be an experience that he leaves behind in the theater , but something that he takes it with him when he goes back to his life and he should go back a better man “.
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KayKay
October 3, 2017
Bravo, Brother MANK! That’s just for the thrill of seeing your article up there. I refuse to read it now, after a 13 hour work day when my brains are fried to shit. No sir, your ruminations deserve to be preciously parsed and perused over a pint. Or to put it another way (since, I have a reputation to uphold after all…):
I refuse to tear into it, groping, fumbling and skimming clumsily across it’s surface, racing to a quick finish.
I intend to wine and dine it, before dimming the lights, chilling the wine and putting on some Luther Vandross before I begin a deep and probing thrust into the myriad pleasures it will no doubt contain.
I’m gonna take my time.
I think I’m gonna enjoy it.
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KayKay
October 3, 2017
B, Rad, Pavan, Kay, MANK, The Warrior, Anuja…be careful what you wish for.
Be VERY careful…..
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brangan
October 3, 2017
KayKay: We are grown-ups. We can take whatever you dish out. The question is: Do YOU have a pair on you? Are YOU going to man up and do this? Go ahead, make my day! Muahahahaha!
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MANK
October 3, 2017
I intend to wine and dine it, before dimming the lights, chilling the wine and putting on some Luther Vandross before I begin a deep and probing thrust into the myriad pleasures it will no doubt contain.
Ha ha haaaaa 😂 , I am trembling from head to toe. Hope my post survive your errr thrusting
And we all know what we are in for. Please please please , make our wish come true
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brangan
October 3, 2017
The makers of Hara Hara Mahadevaki have nothing on this blog’s comments section these days 😀
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Madan
October 3, 2017
“but i do believe they are no where near the artistically brilliant films that used be part of hollywood mainstream in the 70’s.” – Gonna be pessimistic and say those kind of films that you mentioned are not coming back for a long time. One thing is how the studios operate but the appetite is also not there. I THINK it has to be pretty straight up these days to crack gold at the BO and competing with the marvellous franchises is not going to help matters. And it’s not because the audience has got dumb because that doesn’t account for the success of very heavy TV series like Mad Men or House of Cards (heavy compared to what passed for sitcoms in the 90s). It seems that people have certain expectations of entertainment when they go to the cinema hall, kind of like they might of a funfair. They are looking for an escapist release and not for something intense and engaging.But is the Indian market necessarily following the same trends? Not so sure. I cannot imagine something like the Kahaani franchise succeeding in earlier eras. So maybe because our audience is maturing late, we are in a different cycle where there’s still a lot of fertile ground to cover provided the artists dare to.
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Anu Warrier
October 4, 2017
@Kaykay, I can assure you I quaked when I added my vote for an article by you. (I’m almost afraid to say this…) I’m quite sure I’ll survive to read you another day, so… [a tremulous] ‘yes’, it is.
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Pavan
October 4, 2017
KayKay: The rains in Hyderabad took a very severe toll on my health. Nothing else can disturb me. Write whatever you want to. I am ready to face it straight. I too can’t remain idle on a bed, resting powerless.
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MANK
October 4, 2017
Not so sure. I cannot imagine something like the Kahaani franchise succeeding in earlier eras. So maybe because our audience is maturing late
That’s true, if you check our movie history , you could see that we have always followed hollywood trends., but with a gap of a decade or two, mainly because we are a developing nation, most of our sensibilities take more to time to develop as opposed to a developed country like US. So the more gritty violent mainstream movies of the 70’s started coming to indian screen in the 00’s with the likes of RGV and his factory directors like Anurag kashyap . By that time, hollywood had abandoned that style of mainstream filmmaking and left it to the indies
I do agree that the concept of what constitutes a big screen film is remarkably different today,so we wont be seeing the likes of a Chinatown or even a Godfather on screen any time in the future. Now Scorsese is making his next film for Netflix. so your cynicism is justified.
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MANK
October 4, 2017
can we hear about how Mahabharat influenced Indian Cinema soon enough or will that topic have to be MANK’s Rumination #100?
LOL, well cant say. i am afraid i have lost that damn document which i wrote and i am searching for it now. wonder where it disappeared. i still got the iruvar thing which i hope to send shortly.
One flie crosses the door – State Award”
“Another flie crosses the door – NATIONAL Award”
Ha haa.our joke was about a guy smoking. if he smokes continuously for half an hour then state award, for an hour then its national award. 🙂
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"Original" venkatesh
October 4, 2017
KayKay + 4.
Are we now ganging up on KayKay ? Is that the plan 🙂
If yes, i am in. If no. Why not ?
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"Original" venkatesh
October 4, 2017
@MANK : Really well written. Loved it.
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MANK
October 4, 2017
thanks venkatesh, appreciate it.
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Rahini David
October 4, 2017
MANK: Ok so the Iruvar post is on? Great. As good a start as anything. And what do you mean Brangan conned you into doing this? I conned you into doing this. Well at least I started it. Not planning on sharing credit in dragging out the “Reader’s Write In” dude in you. 😛
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MANK
October 4, 2017
Ok ok , you did it, in Kaykay’s lingo , you popped my ‘Reader’s Write In’ cherry 🙂
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Madan
October 4, 2017
“By that time, hollywood had abandoned that style of mainstream filmmaking and left it to the indies” – It’s strange, when you put it that way, it’s as if their mainstream films stopped evolving or rather went into de-evolution instead. Studios took control back from the filmmakers. Which put a stop to financial disasters like Apocalypse Now but also curbed creativity a lot.
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Jose
October 5, 2017
Enjoyed reading this. A writing style that is simple yet lucid and vivid – one that reminded me of R K Narayan’s..
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MANK
October 5, 2017
Madan, Apocalypse Now was not a disaster, it was quite a solid hit. the making of the film was a disaster, of course. the film that practically put an end to 70;s way of auteur filmmaking is Heaven’s Gate. but personal mainstream filmmaking did survive in a limited form up until the earlier 00’s before the lord of the rings, Harry potter series changed the paradigm forever, with studios making only those kind of films
Jose, Thanksa lot, that’s quite high praise.
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Sifter
October 5, 2017
@MANK- Your write-up is like the Old Monk 🙂 And delicious too!
TMC? It was the TCM, right? And ZMGM to add. The mere mention of TCM flooded me with those numerous hollywood movies I got to see of all kinds. And its charismatic, enigmatic, mystery ridden larger than life stars! I am not capable of technical analysis, so allow me to wallow in my memories of the below here:
Barbara Stanwyck, Claudette Colbert, Bette Davis, Ginger Rogers, Joan Crawford, Vivien Leigh, Hedy Lamarr, Greta Garbo, Katherine Hepburn, Rita Hayworth, Greer Garson, Eva Marie Saint, Deborah Kerr, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, Elizabeth Taylor, Rosalind Russel, Audrey Hepburn, Cyd Charisse, Doris Day, Ingrid Bergman, Norma Shearer, Fred Astaire, Yul Brynner, Clark Gable, Gregory Peck, Walter Pidgeon, Spencer Tracey, Van Johnson, Cary Grant, Gene Kelly, Ronald Regan, etc., etc.
Apologies, but couldn’t help it.
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Navneeth
October 5, 2017
MANK, will you be going Solo?
FDFS crowd’s antics felt as if this were a Rajini padam; but it’s their misogynistic reaction at a certain point which was more disturbing.
I wonder if someone has written in detail about the psychology of our cine-going crowds.
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Navneeth
October 5, 2017
Sifter – any love for Henry Fonda or Donna Reed? 😉
Fonda’s understated style would easily have thrived in current-day cinema as well. What a majestic actor.
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MANK
October 5, 2017
Thanks a lot sifter. yes yes, its TCM , first i think it was TNT then it changed to TCM
btw ,Van Johnson ! and No Humphrey Bogart, terrible!. Ain’t looking at you kid 🙂
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Sifter
October 5, 2017
@ Navneeth- Ofcourse Henry Fonda. And Paul Newman, James Stewart. Can’t recall Donna Reed enough though.
@MANK- Humphrey Bogart! Intended to add, but forgot. SMH. I am sure am missing a few more gorgeous ones too.
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Madan
October 5, 2017
” the film that practically put an end to 70;s way of auteur filmmaking is Heaven’s Gate.” – Right, that was a heck of a turkey though it still can’t match Town and Country.
“but personal mainstream filmmaking did survive in a limited form up until the earlier 00’s before the lord of the rings, Harry potter series changed the paradigm forever, with studios making only those kind of films” – Agreed. Hollywood had always dabbled with franchises before like MI but this was when they realised they could tap into the fanbase of these adventure/comic book series and roll out almost assured box office successes.
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sravishanker1401gmailcom
October 6, 2017
MANK : Knowing your ‘lou’ for Kamal’s foray into Reality TV, here’s one for you…
CARTOON : https://thezolazone.wordpress.com/2017/10/06/cartoon-end-of-bigg-boss-tamil-season-one/
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Vee Jay Chan
October 8, 2017
Wish I could write !
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Vivek narain
October 10, 2017
One never knows when a reinvention may take place, a reinvented blond 007, daniel craig eclipsed the whole legacy of bond movies, the badass Jason statham stunned the established action stars of hollywood. It may be more than coincidence that both craig and statham are british. But one thing is certain, the world will go on throwing surprises, no matter how smug the pedants are that they can catalogue and reduce all the contingencies in 0s and 1s. Hindi cinema has been somnambulant for 40 years after the brief run of big B. The golden era of 50-70 has sustained till present, but an upheavel is very much required.
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MANK fan
October 15, 2017
Ayi Ayi Yo, Manesh Cheta so handsome, idli dosa vada sambaram.
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sameoldnewbie
October 19, 2017
Gosh, how time flies! All this talk of Kaykay’s fantasies has brought back a lot of memories from nearly a year ago when I briefly found refuge in your site searching for a specific Kaykay joke in order to distract myself from the horror show that was unfolding in the US in the name of presidential election. As someone who is almost a news-addict, the immediate days and weeks following the election was one of the most depressing periods ever in my life – for I couldn’t turn on TV or visit my usual websites for (very real nausea-inducing) fear of having to watch Trump’s face (I just wanted close my eyes, stick my fingers in my ears and go ‘lalalalalalalalalalaaa’ – I still get the urge to do that sometimes when I see him or hear him talk!) I found your site to be such a safe spot for me then – and decided to do the noble task of finding kaykay’s mother-in-law joke for Anuja (whose writing I love!) 🙂 – which I did find eventually – along with a whole host of other jokes/statements as well – which I compiled into a file somewhere and was going to post here – but didn’t for whatever reason. Anyway, that’s my story done, and I shall look forward to more stuff from Kaykay just like many others here!
also MANK – lovely post. Really enjoyed reading that.
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Rahini David
October 19, 2017
sameoldnewbie: Dig that out and we will vote the “most favorite KayKay quotes” when we are too bored to participate in discussions about Aboorva Sagotharargal remakes.
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Kay
October 19, 2017
Hear, hear!
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MANK
October 19, 2017
Fan & sameoldnewbie : Thanks 🙂
Kaykay’s skill with language is simply incredible. i am not just talking about the kinky stuff. but if you have been to his blog, you will know. the language he uses to dissect the movies, just wow!.
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sameoldnewbie
October 20, 2017
@Rahini – Well I am struggling to find the file but I did start off jotting down statements in an email draft – which I was able to locate – so here goes 🙂
Starting off with Anuja’s own headstone-writing worthy description of Kaykay
“the Lord Of The Lewd, The Viscount of Vulgar,The Priest of The Profane, The Duke of Debasement, The Seer of Sacrilege”
Followed by the famous mother-in-law joke,
‘the Prof’s expulsion arouses mixed feeling in me; kinda like watching your mother-in-law go over the cliff…in your brand new car.’
Then the rest,
– can we re-number this Bitty Ruminations? A TRUE Bitty Ruminations 69 is one where you turn the discussion upside down
TR: I’ll give him 2 things to his credit:
When he bothers to give a shit, the man can compose some pretty decent melodies.
He gave the cine world Amala, star of many an onanistic exertations for yours truly
-An enthusiastic thumbs-up from none other than the film critic of The New Indian Express? Man, you’ve arrived… Or should I say “come”
-B, one sign of evolution IS the capacity to appreciate a nice pair of hooters 🙂 Thanks for the link. The true revelation in the article was…Ellen Ripley had boobs?????
-Oh yes I did. I do what I can to keep abreast of the topic 🙂
-Dated an Exercise freak who insisted on doing 30 laps in the pool even during vacations much to my irritation (as my idea of a breast stroke differed quite radically from hers)
you have to see this link https://baradwajrangan.wordpress.com/2012/05/07/jannat-2-all-this-and-heaven-two/ to get his comment below 🙂
Heaven Two perfectly encapsulates what I thought upon glancing the attached still that accompanies this review 🙂
-For another guilty pleasure that aims low and succeeds gleefully , check out Robert Rodriguez’s Machete, it’s easily his most perversely enjoyable movie since From Dusk Till Dawn and makes me thankful I lived long enough to see an exploitation flick where Danny Trejo’s the good guy and Steven Seagal the baddie.
If nothing else, it answers the Immortal Question:
Where Does A Naked Female Assassin Hide Her Cell Phone?
-Once you keep the original in mind, it comes apart, like clothes on Sharon Stone.
Finishing with his love for Verhoven
Mr.B, yes, the pleasures of watching a lurid exercise in sex and violence is truly something else…it’s a pity Verhoeven’s been shunted back to the Netherlands, I do miss his savagely satirical eye on this pulpy genre!
“What he lacks is Verhoeven’s sadistic vision”…Hah! THAT pretty much sums up what was wrong with this remake. What I missed terribly was Verhoeven’s gleeful revel in the grotesque aided by Rob Bottin’s equally icky make-up (no fondling shots of 3 breasts , no popping eyeballs, no human shield being ripped apart by a hail of bullets?EPIC FAIL!)
And if the agony of seeing one desecration of Verhoeven’s vision wasn’t enough, get set for the Robocop remake!
Oh…the horror!
I just groaned inwardly, when I saw the 3-breasted chick in this version, tastefully covered up in a bra and plonked there without context (I mean, no Mars, no cheap domes, no mutation, so where the F@#$ did the third tit come from?)
I will unequivocally state here that I consider Paul Verhoeven to be one of cinema’s truly underrated and demented geniuses, never given his due in Hollywood because of his obsession with sex and casual approach to nudity, a big no-no in a country where the blood of Puritans fresh off the Mayflower still run deeply in their people.
-Finally, if you can get it, check out Verhoeven’s actual English language debut, Flesh and Blood, a true blood and guts Medieval Thriller that makes the likes of Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven and Troy look like Disney cartoons. It wallows in the grime, guts, squalor and brutality endemic to the period, but as a result comes across like the most honest depiction of that time I’ve ever seen. Not to mention featuring a bad-ass turn by Rutger Hauer and a young Jennifer Jason Leigh who frequently takes her clothes off, God Bless her.
and his comment on Tarantino who I love 🙂
To quote a critic far more eloquent than myself: Robert Rodriguez is great at making Exploitation Flicks. Quentin Tarantino is a master at capturing the joys of watching an exploitation flicks.
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Anuja Chandramouli
October 20, 2017
MANK: Loving this post and the comments!! Thanks ever so much.
Sameoldnewbie: Awwwieee!!! Can’t thank you enough for digging up that gem from KayKay. And you actually compiled a file with KayKay’s fundas!!! I would pay good money to get my hands on that!!!
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MANK
February 6, 2019
Guess ill put this one here 🙂
Al pacino’s performance in the first two Godfather films are my all time favorite movie performances. i always wanted to write about them (Re) Watching Francis Ford Coppola’s restored version of the Godfather trilogy turned out to be an occasion for that. Hope you like it
.https://manksjoint.home.blog/2019/02/06/the-two-godfathers/
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MANK
February 12, 2019
Virumaandi completed 15 years and Even today the Kamal Haasan film packs a visceral punch. For all its debt to Rashomon , it is his ultimate meta movie that analyses Myths,Movies,Truth and Reality.I had a ball writing this , hope you enjoy reading it too
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MANK
February 18, 2019
East of Eden and Point Blank are two of my favorite films and i consider them the best films of their respective leading men James Dean and Lee Marvin. so their birthdays that fall this month turned out o be a good opportunity to write about these films
https://manksjoint.home.blog/2019/02/15/point-blank-dead-man-walkering/
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MANK
March 5, 2019
my post on Cary Grant and 60 years of North by Northwest. Do read
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MANK
March 22, 2019
Oh I almost forgot. Something I wrote on Humphrey Bogart and The Maltese Falcon. You might be interested in reading this
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MANK
April 16, 2019
Today is Sir David Lean’s 28th death anniversary, There is no other film maker’s death that i mourn more deeply than Lean’s. I still yearn for those sophisticated, refined, inmate epic films of his .So i just took a deep dive into one of his more imperfect epics, Doctor Zhivago that explored love and loss in the background of the Russian Revolution , and came back enthralled to write an epic piece on the film. so here it is. Hope you enjoy reading this as much as i enjoyed writing it
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MANK
November 21, 2019
The marriage of a movie star(i love) and a terrific star vehicle is something i live for, especially today, when true movie stars with a great personality and style have become extinct.
Though Three Days of the Condor is considered the typical Watergate-era paranoid thriller.for me, it represents the ultimate Robert Redford movie. Redford is a movie star i simply adore- so refined, stylish and cool , he represents the apex of American movie stardom
Some thoughts on how the star’s persona elevates a film and vice versa.
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MANK
October 5, 2020
On Gandhi Jayanti i watched Richard Attenborough’s epic film for the nth time and was again wonderstruck by Ben Kingsley’s astonishing performance as Gandhi. this time i thought i would write about it
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MANK
October 13, 2020
A Birthday tribute to Amitabh Bachchan who turned 78 on October 11. The film Deewaar was a milestone in his career. No other actor in the world could have pulled off this role as brilliantly as Bachchan did
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Aman Basha
October 13, 2020
@MANK: That’s a lovely piece, Bachchan was really amazing in Deewar though I’d doubt if it was really as perfect as you say it is, the script had some major problems with the Shashi-Neetu pair’s romance and songs, which weren’t just tonally odd and poorly made, but very bad in musical quality too.
About his famous temple scene, I once made an amateur video about it and used the exact same comparison to Mark Antony’s speech there:
(Highly amateur, very basic but strangely, it was the same day AB’s Dadasaheb Phalke announcement came, in fact, exactly after I uploaded it, talk about serendipity)
Among the various films influenced by Deewar, Agneepath is another favorite with a whole new set of problems courtesy the love story with insipid songs featuring Krishnan Iyer MA and no explanation as to why exactly Vijay gets himself ambushed, comes out unharmed only to get shot at again. They were clearly trying to allude to Big B’s hospitalisation post Coolie but the logic was missing. Nonetheless, a very slick film with great visuals and dialogues (courtesy Mukul Anand and Kader Khan), found this awesomely cut trailer which I’ve become addicted to:
My wishes to Big B on his birthday, no one has or will surmount the heights he did and hope he continues to make his body of work taller to our pride and delight.
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An Jo
October 14, 2020
Thanks for this MANK!! I just perused through this – will read it in detail. This is one towering performance in terms of consistency and tonality; my personal favorites however remain TRISHUL, SHAKTI, KHAKEE and NISHABDH.
Something I wrote on DEEWAR on its 40 years completion…
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MANK
October 14, 2020
Aman, that’s a nice video. Is that your voice?
I agree that the entire Shashi Kapoor – Neetu Singh track was very bad. Very badly directed and acted, and songs were unnecessary. Maybe because the rest of the film was so tough and dry they try to add some old fashioned entertainment through the Shashi Neetu romance.
Regarding Agneepath, the screenplay was very bad. Mithun’s character was intolerable. It was again Bachchan’s performance and Mukul S. Anand’s technical brilliance that saves the day. i am afraid Mukul Anand was a very bad director, he was a master of technique but had zero sense of script and performance. Unlike someone like Ramesh Sippy, who may have made some bad movies to the end of his career, but he was a total filmmaker; a master of every aspect of cinema.
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brangan
October 15, 2020
MANK: Thanks for alerting us to this pieces (though I am also subscribed to your blog).
Regarding RD’s score, it’s one of those funny things that happens with creators that always intrigues me.
I have a mild nostalgic fondness for ‘Keh doon tumhe’, but as a whole, I wonder… “So that same year, you were inspired to give all-time-great scores for KHEL KHEL MEIN and AANDHI and KHUSHBOO, but this freaking all-time-great script narration resulted in just these meh songs?”
It’s the same with SHOLAY. A terrific title music stretch apart, it’s such a meh bunch of songs. At most, I sense a bit of an “RD touch” in “Haan jab tak hai jaan…”, but the rest? I mean, even ‘Yeh dosti’ is fun on screen and all, but as a standalone song? Sheesh.
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Aman Basha
October 15, 2020
@MANK: Yes, that is my voice. 🙂
But this is a problem with most Salim Javed films, only Zanjeer, Don and Shakti don’t suffer from this. Kaala Paththar, Deewar and Trishul are mostly a parts-greater-the-whole experience courtesy these lame romantic tracks, all of which feature Shashi interestingly. Sholay was there they got it all perfectly right. To imagine RD Burman made these insipid songs though…
I think one problem with all of Amitabh’s latter day film that is very important and yet is often overlooked is Kader Khan. It is on record that Kader himself admitted his dispute with Amitabh led him to walk out of many of Amitabh films midway, like Ganga Jamuna Saraswati and Khuda Gawah. The hotchpotch nature of films is also due to the hotchpotch of writers made to complete them. Can’t help but wonder if Amitabh’s career could have gone in a different mould if this hadn’t happened:
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Madan
October 15, 2020
I guess it’s like Nayagan. If the movie doesn’t build in integral song situations – at least Nayagan does this with Thenpandi but none of the other songs – the music director, however talented, is basically at a loss. RD just trotted out standard mid-late 70s work for Deewar. Maine Tujhe Manga is like the prototype for the improved (and copied) Tum Ho Mere Dil. Manzil OTOH is a somewhat forgotten AB starrer with a strong soundtrack. Again, Rhim Jhim kind of anticipating the Kishore-RD ghazal direction that led to Humein Tumse Pyar/Agar Tum Na Hote.
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vijay
October 15, 2020
RDB’s better scores often came in quieter relationship dramas like Aandhi, Ghar, Amar Prem etc. Sholay, with its canvas and generic song situations may have thrown him off a bit. Only “Mehbooba” seems to have still a connect for its catchiness
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vijay
October 15, 2020
“And grandest of them all, hoping A.R. Murugadoss becomes the Salim Javed for our generation and Spyder is the beginning, the Zanjeer of our times.”
Murugadoss? seriously?
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Madan
October 15, 2020
Aman Basha: Wonderful video, very well narrated. Yes, you have a great voice for this kind of stuff – voiceover/narration. But also the content – I had not seen this AB rendition of the Deewar dialogue at KBC. Wow, stunning intensity! “Rongte khade ho gaye” levels. If I closed my eyes, I would be hearing the AB of 1975. Hasn’t lost a thing.
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MANK
October 15, 2020
Murugadoss? seriously?
Vijay, i was in my Murugadoss phase at the time, but now I’m over it 🙂
I feel embarrassed now that i wrote something like that, but in my defense, i did say it was my grand hope, i didn’t think at that time he would go down to the level of Sarkar and Durbar. And as a Mahesh Babu fan, i was anxiously waiting for Spyder. Alas!
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Anu Warrier
October 15, 2020
@Aman – man, that clip from KBC! Goosebumps! And his expressions! Oh, man, oh man! That was such a wonderful watch! Thank you, thank you, thank you!
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MANK
October 16, 2020
But this is a problem with most Salim Javed films, only Zanjeer, Don and Shakti don’t suffer from this. Kaala Paththar, Deewar and Trishul are mostly a parts-greater-the-whole experience courtesy these lame romantic tracks,
Yes that’s true. Since Bachchan’s character is always fiery and intense, his ‘track’ in the film is not ripe to make it a full blown entertaining film. So to make the film into a traditional Hindi movie with songs, dance, comedy et all, the makers have to resort to creating other characters, and scenes that many a times take away from the overall impact of the film.
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MANK
October 16, 2020
Aman , do you regularly make these kind of videos?. i feel i have heard your voice in other video essays as well
Regarding Ganga Jamuna Saraswati, the fight was between Manmohan Desai and Kader Khan regarding Kader’s salary. Ganga Jamuna Saraswati was planned as a sequel to Amar Akbar Anthony, with Bachchan, Mithun Chakraborty and Rishing Kapoor playing the three title characters, but after Kader refused to part with his script, Desai changed the film and made Jamuna and Saraswati heroines and Mithun was a relegated to a supporting role.
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MANK
October 16, 2020
Aman, I find it very hard to believe that Bachchan – who is a humble and modest man, at least to my knowledge – would cut off relations with an old pal like Kader Khan for just not calling him Sir ji. There must be some other issue here, but yes Kader Khan’s absence did hurt Bachchan’s films. But i hiring a group of writers ahs always been a Hindi film tradition, and it doesn’t necessarily hut the final product. Take any of the great films of Manmohan Desai or Prakash Mehra – Muqaddar Ka sikandar, AAA etc were written by 3 or 4 writers. Mughal – E-Azam was written by some 6 writers.
It’s the same with SHOLAY. A terrific title music stretch apart, it’s such a meh bunch of songs
Brangan, even that title music is inspired from a lot of Hollywood and Euro westerns, but it is definitely superb and goes well with the mood of the film. The music was at least ok,, the lyrics are even more terrible : Holi ke din dil khil jaate hain,…… gile shikwe boolke doston dushman bhi gale mil jaate hain,…. Yikes!
I think the songs for Shaan were much better
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Aman Basha
October 16, 2020
@MANK: Actually that is the only video I ever made, was a novice in marketing it so it didn’t get much response.
“Regarding Ganga Jamuna Saraswati”
Oh my, this would have been a film to watch, although it may not have hit the highs of AAA, easily as good as Naseeb, unfortunately we got a version with a jism ki garmi scene that made me stop watching it then and there. Wonder if that script still exists, maybe Rohit Shetty can tweak it to serve modern sensibilities.
“I find it very hard to believe that Bachchan ”
Even I found it unbelievable, but then people have conflicts over the strangest reasons and whatever the dispute was, Kader was said to have good recollections of Bachchan before his death as per Kader’s son.
“But i hiring a group of writers has always been a Hindi film tradition, and it doesn’t necessarily hut the final product”
This is true, but then we can figure out some of the writer’s sensibilities if themes and motifs get carried over into different films.
When it comes to Salim Javed, I’ve always had a strong feeling that the concept of a mother figure in Deewar and Trishul where the son hates his father for leaving the mother, yet at a vulnerable moment still has some love for the paternal figure (oedipal complex if there ever was) is Salim’s idea more than Javed’s. It’s mostly because Salim himself grew up without a mother, his mother suffered from TB and had to be kept away from him till she couldn’t recognize him. In Javed’s solo films, the mother figure is not as prominent while Naam does as well as Dabangg, which Salim closely supervised.
All the films by Desai and Mehra had Kader as the common link, if you look at SJ’s writing, although the characters are often downtrodden, they converse in very poetic and metaphor laden language. Kader’s main contribution was the Bambaiyya slang that was possibly never heard before on screen and compared to SJ’s best work, I’ve found Muqaddar Ka Sikandar a better film as a whole, in terms of plot, tracks and music, though it doesn’t have the highs Salim Javed films do. Kader also talks about leaving Khuda Gawah half way, explains why the much better first half had such a rambling second half.
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An Jo
October 16, 2020
So many assumptions are wrong here regarding Bachchan and Kader Khan especially and Mukul Anand….will reserve it.. glad that AB is getting merit on a blog devoted to KH…I will rest with that..
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Aman Basha
October 16, 2020
PS: Is anyone insane enough to put something up for DDLJ on October 20 or should I be the brave one taking on all the hate the commentators here seem to have?
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MANK
October 16, 2020
An Jo please do tell, this is not twitter you know , we can all exchange information cordially
Aman, guess you’ll have to do it man
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An Jo
October 16, 2020
@Aman: As far as you don’t glorify the Maratha Mandir scam of DDLJ — you know, just the to beat Sholay thanks to SRK fans’ inferiority complex, and mostly, himself, having read his biography — being the longest movie running ever in lieu of excuses for prostitution and making out, one is fine…
I don’t believe you will, you are a genuine fan of cinema at least for me..so bring it on friend!!!
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Satya
October 17, 2020
Aman: If BR is fine with it, I don’t know what is the deterrent. Good or Bad, it is what it is. A film that almost single-handedly ruined lives across the nation. Making every fool think that some woman would run into their arms someday after pestering them 24/7 in the name of chivalry. It is to SRK’s credit that the character appears less creepy.
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Anu Warrier
October 17, 2020
@Aman, Oh, we DDLJ haters are a very miniscule part of the cinematic universe. 🙂
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MANK
October 17, 2020
As far as you don’t glorify the Maratha Mandir scam of DDLJ — you know, just the to beat Sholay thanks to SRK fans’ inferiority complex
Ha haaaa, i LOLed on that one. But i think its got more to do with Yashraj brigade than SRK fans.
Even though i despise DDLJ , i have to admit that it was very much a film of its time, so i do forgive is innate stupidity. The same goes for HAHK too.
Satya, i believe the film ruined SRK’s career more than anybody else’s. He never intended to be the romantic icon, he actually hates romantic films . It made him a big star all right, but at the cost of SRK the actor. He ended up stunted in his image like Rajesh Khanna. hence his sudden decline post 2007, as opposed to Amitabh Bachchan , who graduated from being an Angry young man to One man ‘Variety entertainment’ industry to a great character actor. Of course SRK is not as talented as Bachchan, or even as talented as Ranveer Singh or Ranbir Kapoor, but he was the most talented and most well trained – theatrically – of the three Khans
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Aman Basha
October 17, 2020
@An Jo: “being the longest movie running ever in lieu of excuses for prostitution and making out, one is fine…”
What can I say, only sex and SRK sell in Bombay
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Madan
October 17, 2020
Ah, the DDLJ topic again. I agree with MANK on the one hand that it was no worse than HAHK and likely better. It was better than a lot of films made during that period or a little later in the 90s. Better than SRK’s own Anjaam or Ishq. I might even rate it better than Raja Hindustani.
So why do a certain stripe of SRK fans, myself included, detest DDLJ so much? Because he had seemed so much more exciting up to that point. His combination of energy, comedy and villainy was simply explosive in that time when, uh, Idli Anna was considered a major hero. I don’t think he was ever destined to be a replacement or successor to AB but he did similarly break the then prevalent ‘myths’ in Bollywood about what kind of films, what kind of heroes would succeed just as AB had done in the mid-late 70s. DDLJ reduced all that range to one narrow and limited quality – cuteness. SRK still did the best he could with the hand he was dealt – likewise in KKHH. But the damage was done.
That YRF/KJ interlude effectively turned SRK from a new and improved angry man who could laugh and dance to Mike Mohan pt2. Thanks to aforesaid range, he aged better and lasted longer than Mike Mohan but his career did not shape up in the way his breakout roles had promised.
And like Rajesh Khanna, he fell into a mixture of laziness and insecurity and got addicted to mannerisms that further limited what roles he could do. About 3 weeks back, I watched Dhobhi Ghat. Maybe 10 days later, I was thinking yaar who was the well known actor who played the lead role in that film and then, I said why yes, it was Aamir Khan! And then it dawned on me that he had completely submerged into that role and become the character he was playing. Aamir doesn’t often do that (and has often been accused of simply appearing as Aamir in a new episode of Satyameva Jayate masquerading as cinema) but clearly, he has the ability to do that at least in certain contexts; Dangal was another where he sacrificed himself to the role. For SRK with his hyperfast delivery and signature stutter, it is very difficult for him to convince us we are watching the character and not SRK.
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Anu Warrier
October 17, 2020
Agree with both Madan and MANK’s points that DDLJ ruined the actor in him. I adored the manic energy he brought to the screen, the charisma, the cuteness, and the sincerity. It showed up in Chalte Chalte again, and in parts of Kal Ho Na Ho. The only films I really liked him in post his YRF-Dharma avatars were Swades, Chak De India, and parts of Dear Zindagi and yes, even Ashoka.
MANK – the most talented of the three Khans? Ahem. Let’s agree to disagree and leave it at that.
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Aman Basha
October 18, 2020
I do have a bunch of thoughts about SRK the actor and the star, but before going into that discussion, since we’re at the Khans from Amitabh. It’s my pipe dream that when Aamir finally embarks on making the Mahabharata web series, which I hope Rajamouli takes a part of too, Amitabh gets to play Bheeshma. Given how long the series might take, it might be Big B’s final role and what better for the grand old man of Indian Cinema than to go out with a bang as Pitamaha? And it’d be a mark of pride, if the series lives up to the technical standards of GOT, and SRK finally gets to satisfy his matching Hollywood ambitions with the VFX part. Boy, wouldn’t that be amazing
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An Jo
October 20, 2020
@Aman; While your dreams are grandiose, I am not quite sure Bachchan really needs a pitamahah to sign-off into the sunset. He already has this, and at least artistically/critically, it cannot get bigger than this…I hope all those dumb films like the one with Mallika’s gigolo Emraan Hashmi that he has signed are all released before JHUND. JHUND was supposed to be in 2019 Dec but as luck would have it, it would now be relegated to OTT.
If Aamir is truly interested in making MAHABHARAT, with the technological aid of SRK, he should make it for the big-screen, and as you said, throw Rajmouli in, but never, NEVER under-estimate the power of Hollywood in staging such epics. Certain sacrifices? Yes. But Hollywood, definitively!!
And then, to bring in our desi wolf-whistles, who better than Bhai to play the role of Shalya, the charioteer? It is not just a larger-than-life role but more importantly closer-to-path role!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shalya#:~:text=In%20the%20epic%20Mahabharata%2C%20King,the%20side%20of%20the%20Kauravas.
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Aman Basha
October 20, 2020
@An Jo: Jhund and other such films might be great for Bachchan the actor of Hrishida films but I want a great farewell for Bachchan the star of Salim Javed films, Thugs was a major letdown and might have physically weakened Bachchan saab but playing the role of Pitamaha, the ideal son who takes a terrible vow and lives by it, who constantly guards his promise and his kingdom through the turmoil of time. It’ll be awe inspiring to see him in such a role, more importantly Big B has never played a mythological or historical character before.
I would be much happier to have Mahabharata in films, in fact, we could make our own MCEU, the Mahabharat Cinematic Extended Universe, that are close as possible to Hollywood, but it is understandable that this would be safer as a series. One never knows how and where a controversy might hit them. Further, streaming platforms provide a lot more freedom and funds if only for the prestige.
I think there’s a high chance of Rajamouli coming on board, his father is said to be working on the script for Aamir. Also, Aamir has LSC, Vikram Vedha and Mogul to finish, while Rajamouli has RRR, the Mahesh film and another film. So they might go on it together and if Red Chillies VFX does good in LSC, there’s a high chance they come on here too. In simple terms, every Indian moviegoer’s wet dream 🙂
LOL, imagining Bhai riding maybe a Colombo bred mare in the Farmhouse in preparation for Shalya made my day.
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H. Prasanna
October 20, 2020
@MANK Looking forward to your biopic on Netflix. Hope it lives up to your name.
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Madan
October 20, 2020
Aman: Did I imagine it or you had submitted a Readers Write on DDLJ? I had gone through it earlier in the day and when I came back to leave a comment on it, it’s gone. Not sure what happened.
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Aman Basha
October 20, 2020
@Madan: You did, in fact, scroll through what I suppose was an incredibly lengthy piece of mine but I had it pulled out since I decided to submit it to the FC Reader’s Write In for a competition on BR’s suggestion. Am working on a compensatory piece now which might come up today or tomorrow. If the other piece features on FC, I’ll put a link or post it again on November 2nd.
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MANK
October 20, 2020
H. Prasanna , LOL
Yeah ,i personally handpicked David Fincher for the job , hope he is capable of doing justice to my eventful life 🙂
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Aman Basha
October 20, 2020
@H.Prasanna: I didn’t recognize Gary Oldman for a moment, brilliant cinematography, the coin rolling around, the splashes of water from a fountain, Fincher seems to be at his best here. A best director nominee easily.
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Madan
October 20, 2020
I admit I haven’t watched Citizen Kane gulp and don’t know anything about the Orson Welles story. BUT Gary Oldman? Boy, gotta watch this for sure.
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An Jo
October 20, 2020
There’s a competition going on in FC??
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H. Prasanna
October 20, 2020
Maybe I am just seeing what I want to see, but I see a slight facial resemblance between our MANK and the film’s Mank (Herman Mankiewicz, not Oldman). @MANK, maybe you can tell us if there are any other similarities:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_J._Mankiewicz
Mank seems to be another personal dream project of a big name director produced/distributed by Netflix. The screenplay was written by the late father of David Fincher almost 30 years back.
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An Jo
October 20, 2020
@MANK and all: there’s a movie in NETFLIX that talks about Welles’ last movie…please see that..
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND
https://www.netflix.com/title/80085566
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MANK
March 12, 2022
Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather” premiered 50 years ago, on March 14 1972
Some thoughts on the film on its 50th anniversary
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MANK
August 8, 2023
The great director William Friedkin is dead. RIP Genus, the man who made such modern classics like “The French Connection”, “The Exorcist”, “Sorcerer” and “To live and Die in LA.”
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MANK
August 8, 2023
Here is a piece I wrote about “The French Connection”
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Madan
August 8, 2023
RIP Friedkin. French Connection will always be one of my all time favourite films. A particular kind of noir that Holly does so well if only once in a while – unhurried and yet not dragging at any point and keeping you on the edge of your seat. LA Confidential belongs in the same league but, yes, FC being made in grimy NYC lends it a totally different flavour. The way he personalized Popeye and Charnier’s characters also distinguishes it from Day of the Jackal, which came out around the same time and followed a similar realistic style. It’s also a great film but lacks that subway cat-and-mouse scene which is simply outstanding.
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