Bachna Ae "Definitely Maybe" Haseeno

Statutory warning: I might be forced to delete this post and eat my words if my prediction turns out to be wrong.

Edit: This turned out to be not-a-copy and quite a decent movie. So 'Definitely Maybe' survives till some other director takes it up!!.


So Raj(Ranbir Kapoor) might walk out in his expensive suit into the street. You wont know where he is going. There will be a song where he flirts with girls in the way. We see a wannabe casanova on screen. But wait, by the time song ends, we see him entering a school to pick his child. Yes, minus the bollywood plugins, this is how 'Definitely Maybe' starts off. Its a guy-meets-three-girls-story in a span of 15 years. Its about a getting-divorced father telling his daughter the story of his three loves. He changes the names of the girls and asks her to decide (or guess) who her mother is.

So I see Deepika as his college girl friend, Bipasha as Summer (Rachel Weisz) and Lamba girl for April(exactly, she is the cute pretty one!!)

'Bachna..' is not released yet and I havent got any sneak preview yet. This is just a gut feeling.I dont know what I should be hoping for when I say "Lets hope for the best".Should I be right or wrong? :)

A guide in amateur movie making - Post production

I have had my hand in making a number of short movies/photo stories for friends and the place where I work at. A few times, it would be as good as arranging a few photos in the Windows Movie Maker and clicking the 'Create Movie' button but then there are times when I have spend hours burning the night oil sitting in the front of my digital video editor, playing around with everything in the video- velocity,color, contrast or anything. Often it takes hours or even days just to get the right combination or that right setting which suits the directors 'Eye' especially when he had at his disposal a normal handy cam to shoot with. So if you are one of those aspiring directors/editors/cameraman who is looking to make short movies and impress people, be aware of the following. Listen when I am speaking from experience. :)

1. The foremost important thing is to know who you are making the video for. If you are doing it for a friend, be sure that he is going to be grateful that you are doing it (This point holds good only as long as you are making a presentable movie :)). Keep him in loop about your work and set the expectations right. Your friend shouldn't be expecting it to 'have the look-and-feel of Sin City'. If you are doing it for the place you work in or some place,handing you the work, make sure that you know who is in charge. You wouldn't want to spend a lifetime on it and then later hear someone tell you that "Cool, the movie is good but my boss is in charge. I am not sure what to do with it".

2. Try to use something other than Windows movie maker for editing because the transition and effects options, it gives, are very limited and is very easily identifiable. Moreover its known to affect the quality of the video.

3. Never do it for free. People never value anything they get for free. Ensure your return whether its money or anything else. If you are trying to impress anyone by not charging anything, chances are that your DVD will end up in that waste basket which is kept for electronic waste. (It comes with a board- For Floppy disks, CDs, printer cartridges etc)

4. Never deliver a movie ahead of time. It will be taken for granted, tossed around, there will be reviews and requirement changes as if you were making a software. Keep them waiting till the last moment. They will be dying to have a look at it!!

5. If you are working on a concept video, make sure that its re-usable from your end. You might end up putting your best ideas into a video and it might get lost in a heap once you deliver it to the 'client'. It might never see daylight again. You are not smart enough if you cant take this video, edit all the text and the images (My concept videos are usually full of text and images) and make an entirely new one with whatever stuff you actually shot using a camera.

6. Expect the worse. Seeing the video you just made, might take you to Cloud Number Nine. Others who see it need not feel the same. Take it easy if your video doesn't see daylight again and keep in mind point number 5.

Happy Movie making and all the best!! I will be back with a Pre-production guide soon!! :)

The King is Akshay!

Once in a blue moon, Bollywood gets new additions to its long list of formulaic, cliched but surprisingly entertaining paisa vasool movies. In recent months, I remember laughing my heart out watching Shirish Kunder's "Jaanemann" and his better half's SRK starrer 'OSO'. "Singh is Kinng" belongs in the same genre. Its so silly and at the same time, so entertaining that your stomach literally aches out of laughing. Akshay Kumar carries the movie on his shoulders and he is present in almost every frame of the movie.
The storyline has essentially nothing new and it is the story of Happy Singh(Akshay) who ends up as a troublemaker for his friends and foes irrespective of his intentions and he is cleverly packed off to Australia to bring back Lucky Singh(Sonu Sood) who is a fellow-villager-turned-Don, bringing disgrace to the entire community. Happy meets Lady Love (who is seeing someone else) in the way and in a turn of events ends up substituting Lucky as the King.
Packed with insane jokes and intimidating situations, the director gets it right in terms of comic timing. Tit bit jokes stuffed into serious sequences sets the audience on a laugh riot. Most strikings are the sad stories narrated by Yashpal Sharma's character on almost every sequence. The bunch of actors including Yashpal Sharma, Javed Jaffrey,Neha Dhupia fits into the narrative perfectly. Om Puri and Kiran Kher does well in the roles. Katrina-Pretty-Kaif looks more ravishing than ever and she has amazing screen presence.
Akshay dons a never before look in the turban and towards the half of the movie, he dons an extremely stylish look and the song "Bas Ek King" stands out in terms of style. The movie is produced by Vipul Shah who is a renowned director himself and Sanjay F Gupta (renowned DVD rip-off specialist director) does a neat job as the joint Cinematographer. The presence of two directors in the set seems to have helped Aneez Bazmee. I had carefully avoided his previous movies -Welcome and No Entry. But something made me get into the theatre the first night itself and it was really worth it. Akshay is infact the Kinng and he is already the other superstars a run for their money!!

Taare Zameen Par DVD pack - 1 FlipBook + 1 Pencil-Notebook + 2 Paintings + 3 Discs!!

The much awaited DVD is out and trust me, it won't disappoint the fans. The touching story of the eight year old Ishaan Awasthi(Darsheel Safary) who suffers from Dyslexia had flooded theatres and neighbouring streets in tears months ago. The movie is now out in the DVD version and it comes packaged with a lot of interesting stuff. To start off, there is the movie DVD, which is nothing more than your normal Anamorphic wide screen video with 5.1 Dolby Digital sound and it has the optional Directors commentary (which is not very common as far as Bollywood releases are concerned). Then comes the second Special DVD which has the making of the movie, deleted scenes including scenes walk through by Aamir Khan who gives us reasons for the deletion.
Then the DVD cover says that there is a panel discussion on children, which I haven't checked out yet. Then there are the usual promos, trailers and stills in the special DVD. The TZP pack also contains a third disc, this time an audio CD, which has the whole background score. This is an interesting addition because Bollywood was never known for releasing background scores as a separate CD. (As far as I know, it was done only for RGV's Sarkar Raj previously). That sums up the digital content.
Now comes the best part. The DVD comes in a pack which looks like that of a branded shirt. Inside the pack is stuffed two great quality hard prints of the two paintings that are made by Aamir's and Darsheel's characters towards the climax of the movie. The 'Flipbook' which was a major tear-jerker in the movie also forms a part of the package. Yes, you actually get to keep a copy of the flipbook :)
Then there is a TZP special pencil and Ishaan's notebook. In the notebook, Ishaan describes the relevance of each character around him in the movie in his own unique kiddish style :)
Priced at Rs.499, It is expensive but still worthwhile for fans and yes ofcourse I have my copy already!!

Rendition

Tagline: What if someone you loved just disappeared?

Terrorism is the buzz word in India since the last few days. Last week, there was something similar to a One day cricket match happening in the Indian parliament with both sides chasing 271 for a no-confidence motion. Suddenly, we have the whole nation searching for bombs in each n every single by-lane. At the same time, there are cease-fire violations in the LoC and one more Indian soldier lost his precious life. So this is a movie blog and Why am I talking about social issues?
All this terrorism asks me to educate all my ignorant readers (the very few of them if any ;) )and hence the movie 'Rendition' I saw a few months back. The movie refers to an existing practice in the US which is termed as 'Extraordinary Rendition'. According to this, anyone suspected to be involved in terrorism can not be tortured in US soil by their intelligence but they can be transported to one of the friendly/allied nations and can be tortured and interrogated there. So we have Reese Witherspoon starring as a wife of an Egyptian with a green card and he has a name similar to that of a wanted terrorist. As soon as he enters US after an official overseas trip, he is whisked off by CIA to an unknown foreign location and interrogated there. All the records of his entry to US are ofcourse erased. So the movie covers the troubles, his pregnant wife Reese Witherspoon goes through to find his whereabouts with the help of a friend with some political links. Then there is the sub-plot involving the interrogator-General of the foreign nation, attempts on his life and his daughters romance with a local boy. The narrative especially the second part is Nolanistic and ends up in a pretty interesting way winding up many loose ends. The movie as a whole is not 'great' and is just above average. But then I heard about 'Extraordinary Rendition' for the first time here. Found the movie very informational :). Wiki has lots of info on this.
The movie also stars Meryl Streep (as a senator if I remember right) and Jake GyllenHaal as a CIA agent somewhere in African continent where our guy is renditioned for torture.

A few favorite background scores

I had previously written about a few favorite original soundtracks. Now its time for the score alone. In some cases, the theme is going to be attached with whats happening on the screen. Otherwise I just love the music :)

Once again, not in any particular order. Writing it as it comes....

1. Braveheart - Anyone who have seen this movie on William Wallace(Mel Gibson) CANNOT forget the theme music. For a novice like me, it sounds like an instrumental mainly made out of flute and the Scottish Bagpiper. Its haunting and every time you hear it, all those scenes come back.

2. Shawshank Redemption - The movie definitely has a huge HUGE fan base but I do not hear much about its music like I hear about Braveheart or Titanic. There is a shot in the movie where Andy Dufresne is driven in to the prison in a bus and they show the top view of the place. A brilliant shot and arousing music when we see Mr.Red placing a bet on the lean man with silver spoon sticking out of his mouth to lose it that night.

3. Last of the Mohicans - A friend once told me that there is a great chase sequence towards the end of the movie with this particular music in BG. I never saw the movie for another couple of years but loved the music. Later when I saw it, I loved the sequence just for the music.

4. Hotel Rwanda - The scene where the bus with all the tourists from the Collin Milles hotel are about to leave, a priest turns up with lots of refugee children. When the army forces him to leave the refugees, our Hero played by Don Cheadle takes charge and he consoles the priest saying that he will take care of them. Touching!

5. Snatch - The thugs are chasing Tyron and the dogs chasing a hare. Turkish bets on the dogs. The movie breaks into a brilliant techno music sequence as we see in slow motion, the foresaid chase sequences interlaced. Amazing comic timing from Guy Ritchie

There are a lot more favorite themes and more obvious ones like the themes from The Matrix, The Mummy, Titanic, James Bond themes etc. I am already feeling lazy :)

Freedom Writers

So Hilary Swank is a High School English teacher and most of her students in Class Room 203 are 'at-risk' students having close links to gang members and violence. The movie has its share of cliches. Still it stands out pretty good. One reason being, its a real story. In fact the movie end credits show the photo of the actual Erin Gruwell (played by Swank in the movie) and her batch of students. The movie itself is based on "The Freedom Writers Diary" by teacher Erin Gruwell.
The students belong to different races who of course keeps fighting with each other and their inner demons and the teacher tries to bring about a change. The way the sequences and narration are handled is pretty interesting and the direction is top notch. The teacher uses the holocaust and 'The Diary of Anne Frank' to teach the students tolerance and to send across the message. The students are asked to write diaries with their own stories and experiences. Good old internet tells me that these diaries are pretty famous and has been inspirational for a lot of students.
The movie had its TV premiere in HBO today. Should be able to catch it this week in the same channel :)