Skyward Fire

The Christmas of 2009 ended up being the most awesome Christmas I’ve ever had. First, I’d like to wish my good old friend Disha Dubey a very happy birthday. Christmas day is some day to celebrate your birthday. To be born on the day Jesus Christ was born is a whole another legendary story to tell to your kids, once you have some. May God bless you, and I hope you have a great year ahead of yourself.

My girlfriend showing up in Dubai was a welcome change. We went for Avatar in Imax 3D at Ibn Batuta Mall, and she got me a cake for my birthday, which was on the 18th of last month. I hadn’t cut a cake back then, so she had promised me by the end of the year, she’ll get me a cake and that’s what she did. You got to like a woman with some determination. The whole thing was nothing less than a Christmas miracle for me. Considering the harsh time I’ve been having purely as the outcome of a few of my own terrible decisions, this was a very welcome change. There’s nothing like spending Christmas eve with your loved ones. Thank you Shruti!

Avatar in Imax 3D is the best movie-viewing experience I’ve had till date. The story should have had a few more twists though. It could definitely do with some improvements there. I didn’t expect anything ground breaking in terms of the story when I went there. I just wanted to be awed by visual effects. I thought it was excellent for what it was. The movie has magnificent visual presentation. We could certainly use more films like this. Weta, ILM, Framestore, Stan Wiston, Uncharted etc and everybody who worked on this did a phenomenal job! When I came back from the movie, eyes could not believe what I had seen. Just utterly gorgeous images. But to some, the movie might come off as all visual flare, and unfortunately very little substance. Easy to get carried away and lose track of time with you staring at next-gen CGI, though. And James Horner has worked his wand really well with the soundtrack. The music is very-well suiting to the way the movie proceeds. Kudos to the whole team of Avatar and James Cameron for such an awesome work.

Cycle tests in college came to a very shitty end. With my mind elsewhere all the time for the past 4 months, the GPAs right now are a total bloodbath, and if I don’t pick up what I’ve left off, I’ll be terribly screwed as far as the end semesters are concerned. It’s time to get over everything worthless and focus on what needs to be focused upon.

As of this moment, I am with a group of eight people who have assembled at Pharaoh’s Koleos, Twin Towers, Patna, for the state’s first ever IndianAutuer Cinephile Meet, about which, I had previously blogged about in one of my previous posts. Originally, the event was planned at Cafe Olive, but we changed venues after informing everyone due to some technical difficulties. The list of attendees includes:

• Suraj Chandrakar
• Vishal Anand
• Sharad Arya
• Harish Gupta
• Rahul Sehgal
• Vishal Sharma
• Gaurav Dixit
• Ujjwal

Discussions on the following pre-planned agendas took place, in no definite order. The views of the attendees has been presented as-is, and it isn’t my responsibility in case of factual errors or views/opinions from other people that affect another person, group of people or an organization.

1. The Current State of Indian Cinema – As far as Bollywood is concerned, the one and only objective of mainstream film makers is profitability. The audience is fed with what they want, and the bottom-line is all the audience wants is utter masala crap. Indian audience is very naive, and doesn’t really demand much, except for a fairly limited number of media stereotypes. Although independent cinema welfare groups like Indian Auteur have come up are acting as catalysts for bringing about the much needed change, there is still a very long way to go until a revolutionary change. There is a lot of random dancing around trees, unrealistic glamour, hogwash stories, useless item numbers, flat stories and a whole lot of other pile of other steaming bullshit that needs to go away.
2. Cinema in Bihar – The state lacks a proper infrastructure that is much needed by some honest fans in here. Lack of a proper cinema hall in the state adds to the plight of piracy, where people prefer the easy way out, and rent a pirated DVD or other illegal digital media format and get their way it the way they want to. Also, a major cash machine in here is the Bhojpuri film industry, whose number of audience has greatly risen in the past few years, and it’s safe to say the same happened with the onset of the new State government under the leadership of Chief Minister Mr. Nitish Kumar, who continues to head the one-man army in a desperate attempt to carry Bihar to a new era of overall development. In the process, the Government sanctioned huge amounts of money for development of cinema hotspots in town. A recent consequence of the same is the brand new face of Patna’s legendary Mona Theatre, which has been a part of the state’s legacy for decades. The establishment has been given a facelift based on the concept of PVRs in the metros of India.
3. Animated Movies made in India – Basically when it comes to animated movies, us Indians seem to think of something that’s only made for children. This particular feeling amongst the masses is very depressing, since this feeling is what hasn’t given way to proper animated movies in the country, and all we have been left with is bull-vomit like Bal Hanuman, Bal Ganesha, Krishna, and other technically retarded ‘movies’ that were made just for the heck of shaking down cash from the parents’ money while the kids had a forced fun time. There is a tough road ahead for proper animated movies to be made and appreciated in the country.
4. Oscars & Indian Cinema – This particular agenda has been discussed by me personally over here. In depth analysis of all issues concerning Oscars and Indian Cinema comes down to one conclusion. It’s always the most undeserving candidates who have the audacity to challenge something honestly good. Jealousy, controversy and personal ego has no place when it comes to a good piece of work like Slumdog Millionaire, which has been critically acclaimed every where else, but had to face some pointless agonizing controversy for some peoples’ personal reasons.
5. Alternate Ending Brainstorming Session – To make the IndianAuteur meet-up dominate on the fun side too, we decided it would be a nice idea to sign off on a happy note. We decided to come up with alternate endings of our favorite movies. This is the part where we decided to let our brains work free and come up with some crazy ideas. The first movie that came into most of our minds was the unbelievable suckfest called Spiderman 3. It was a universal opinion that that particular movie would have been way better with just Venom on focus, and less of that emo dance sequence. The movie could have ended on Venom’s winning note, instead of what actually happened. Other notable mentions for alternate endings were by Harish (The Butterfly Effect), Ujjwal (Dogma), and not so surprisingly by Vishal for The Dark Knight.

Photography by Oigs

At around 3:30 PM, our pre-planned discussion session came to an end, after which we had the much awaited lunch. Post-lunch, it was time for a very personal screening of City of God on DVD at Vishal’s place. No one except me had seen the movie earlier, and it was loved by everyone. We had also planned a screening of Man on Wire, but time didn’t permit, and that’s how IndianAuteur’s first edition of the Patna meet-up came to an end. And we already have a second edition of the meet-up being planned on a larger scale in the coming months, so watch out this space for details on IndianAuteur Patna Meet-Up 2.0.

Update: On a very important side note, the Indian Auteur website is now online, with the first batch of reviews put up on the launch issue. Do give that a look!

It was earlier this year when I had the opportunity to watch Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire, and it impressed me to the core. This has got to be one of the best films I’ve seen in the last couple of years or so. The movie is about a boy from a Mumbai slum who goes on and wins the game show ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire’, and in between, he unfurls the truth of his enigmatic journey from his boyhood to where he stands now. Everything about the movie is very touching, from the story, AR Rehman’s exemplary music, the wonderful acting by all the children and the actors, the cinematography, and the way the story is told. The movie has left a mark on everyone who has seen it. The movie eventually went on to be critically acclaimed by names like the LA Times, USA Today, New York Post and so on, and was loved all across the world, literally. Slumdog Millionaire went to win numerous awards, and currently stands with 4 Golden Globe victories, 11 BAFTA Awards nominations, and 10 Academy Awards (Oscars) nominations. The movie now stands at #34 on IMDb’s Top 250 list, and has been generating profits on the box office consistently.

Trailer of Slumdog Millionaire

In India, the movie was released in theatres on the 23rd of January 2009, and it brought along a whole lot of controversy, with statement popping up from even the Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan. On his blog, Amitabh Bachchan went on to criticize Slumdog Millionaire saying it was wrong to depict and bank profits on the slums of Mumbai, the plight of the nation, poverty, and the slum dwellers. And he isn’t the only one. A whole lot of Indians who’ve seen this movie think it was very wrong of Danny Boyle and his crew to exploit what’s wrong with this nation. Danny Boyle has been headlined as someone with the stereotypical viewpoint of the West, adding the description of the fact that everyone in the Western world thinks India is a third world country with many poor people and the lifestyle that has been depicted in the movie very precisely. The so called ‘social workers’ and NGOs at many towns and cities have filed Public Interest Litigations (which, in India, are hardly ever in any interest of the public) in various courts citing various reasons why this movie offends them and the sentiments of many others.

What a steaming pile of bullshit?! Period. Truth is, reality happens to be a bitch, and if it bites, it hurts.

Of all, such narrow-mindedness was never expected out of someone of Amitabh Bachchan’s stature, who happens to have a global access to the rest of the world when it comes to promoting Indian cinema on a massive platform. And in a book release function at the Indian city of Jaipur, he went on to say that it wasn’t his statements where he criticized Slumdog Millionaire, but those of the people who blog for him. He also said that Indian Cinema isn’t needy of international recognition and can do without the Oscars. Any one in their right mind can point out the clear stink of jealousy in the tone of Amitabh Bachchan who hasn’t had a nomination in the Academy Awards yet. So, in spite of all the recognition and the respect this man has got from the International Cinema, he just disregarded the Oscars and said they were irrelevant. The point to note here is, this is the man who runs around Europe and Asia trying to promote Indian Cinema through IIFA Awards (which happens to be a mock of the Academy Awards themselves). How does he think that is possible if he is just going to shut out the Academy Awards, which happen to be the industry’s most prestigious recognition ever. In my opinion, it’s the old age taking toll on the man, and he obviously isn’t to blame for his degrading capacity to think, use his mind, and say stuff like that. I’m no fan of his, and I keep at bay from all the tasteless and unoriginal movies that Indian Cinema produces (obviously, there are rare exceptions) and has been producing for an awful long time now. But I had great respect for Amitabh Bachchan always, and now, it has just all fallen apart.

Meet the Children from Slumdog Millionaire

As for the rest of the countrymen who think Slumdog Millionaire is a mistake and the so called ‘wrongful depiction’ of India’s plight is hardly anything but exploitation, well, I cant really comment on the stubborn celebrity-kiss-ass attitude that exists here. The mob mentality is something you cannot argue against and reason out. The truth is, there’s a lot wrong with India, and the rest of the world, and there is just no reason to not publically shed light on it. As far as the slums in Mumbai are considered, all the political parties, whether the ruling ones, the opposition, or the neutral ones see the slums and the slum-dwellers, and even the rest of the financially unstable population as vote bank for elections, and they never do anything about it, and they never will. Majority of Indian cinema-going crowd is naive, and feeds on a whole lot of mindless unoriginal bullshit with a lot of senseless dancing around trees. And it’s not that hard to be completely ignorant when it’s about something serious.

So there you have it. It hasn’t even been 36 hours since Slumdog Millionaire was released in India, and a dozen controversies have been created out of lack of information, lack of presence of mind, jealousy and ego. And that’s just about it. Expecting people to change and think broadly here is not justified, since that isn’t going to happen any time soon. Bottom-line is, Slumdog Millionaire is a great movie, despite of all the negative stance that a few folks have taken up. If you haven’t seen it yet, you just have to check it out.