Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Robot revisited II

This is a follow up to my last post.

In my last post I just wrote about one song that made the 'most' sense to me. Has anyone heard that Kilimanjaro song. I was so sure that this song is not in english that when my friend repeatedly told me that this is in Hindi I did not believe a sin...gle word he said. I was even ready to bet some fair amount of cash on this thing. But I did not. Thank god.

Here is the starting of that song :

किलिमान्जारो लड़की पर्वत की यारो
इसका रूप निहारो यारो यारो
मोहेंजोदारो इसको दिल में उतारो
जंगले जंगले पुकारो यारो यारो

Now tell me if you are subjected to crap like this how would you react? This is insult to the music listeners all over the world. One should find the guy who wrote this thing and beat him in front of everyone right in the middle of the busiest square in town. I mean come on... Even the stupidest guy can write more lucid thing than this. Is there any relation at all between these words? One might get an impression that some one is trying to teach a 5 year old how to pronounce words in Hindi. One needs to tell Mr Kirkire that when you put random words together and if they rhyme then that doesnt make a song. At this point i feel that mere subjecting him to public beating wont do any good. We need to set an example by stoning these kind of people in public. And if ever this is being implemented then I should be the one who gets to cast the first stone, as I have suggested this in the first place. :p

Robot revisited

Many of my friends didnt like the way i wrote about Rajni's Robot. I also was trying to find any silver-lining to this movie. After spending couple of minutes(actually it took me only split second to come to this conclusion but i am being polite :p) i realized that there is none. Lets put it in other words - my meager mental capabilities failed to acknowledge the hard-work(?) that people put in making this movie(I almost said crap, but hey, thats just me :p). I agree that i failed to recognize the talent in this movie(like there is any in it). Speaking of talent lets look at it through other perspective, look at the Hindi lyrics of its songs. First let me tell you a story about a very 'talented' guy :

In 1970 a Marathi guy was born. His parents christened him Swanand. Boy shows talent in songwriting and decides to go into the film line. He gets his big break winning Filmfare Award for writing a song 'Piyu bole' for an artistic film Parineeta, Boy continues his journey and keeps getting kudos and accolades for his songs. He wins National award twice(Lage Raho Munna Bhai and 3 Idiots). Now he feels like he is on the top of the world and there is no way he could achieve anything more than this. So he decides to write songs for one movie,no, let me correct myself, for a phenomenon called Robot. And this is where he makes BIG mistake of his life. Boy, now grown man fails to understand that its not a good idea to translate any song from one language to another. But still takes upon the responsibility to do so. And the outcome of it is very unbearable Hindi lyrics of Robot.

By now you must have figured it out that these songs are my next target to deride here. When i was watching this movie in the cinema hall i could have bet 1000 bucks that some of these songs were not in Hindi. Well i am glad that i did not said that out loud or Shiva, the guy who was sitting beside me would have been 1000 bucks richer. I googled those lyrics and here we will dissect at least some of those 'lyrical gems'.

Following lines are taken from song Naina miley
a) I am a super girl dil pyaari wraper girl : This is in english in the original song so this was the first thing that my ear caught. But still this doenst make any sense. Why would Ash call herself a super girl. In the movie her character is of normal run of the mill stupid south indian girl. And whats up with the adjective 'wraper girl' Swanand dude, seriously??

b) Neeley se naino ki, Chaavi hai meri hai : here Swanand fails to hide his Marathi roots. The fact that Robo Rajni calls Ash Chaavi does this for him.

c) Pyaar ki gaadi main, motor na jadh jaye : very cheesy one. One could have thought a better way to capture the same emotion in words(if there was any emotion in it).

d) Shutdown bhi bhula main tadapa hoon saari rein : Again writer shows his mediocrity. I know one cant sleep at night when one is bitten by love bug. But comparing 'shutdown' with sleep is just doesnt fit.

e) Sensor mere takke hai naa sakoon hai na hi chill : The above explained thing goes for the usage of word sensor in this context too. And one more thing Swanand, are we making our Robo very hip by making him say some teenage lingo(chill)?

They played this song during the promos so i targetted this one. If you listen to other songs then you will understand others are written on the similar line more or less.

I was your fan Mr. Swanand Kirkire but you have proven yourself that the thing you wrote for Robot was nothing but 'Kirkiri'.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Funny Games(1997)

Whenever i see anyone wearing white golf gloves, it would remind me of Mickey mouse and the sight of which would put a smile on my face. But after watching this movie the mere sight of people wearing white golf gloves would instill fear in my heart(in everyone's heart for that matter, if that person has seen this movie).

The story goes something like this - two bad guys(who are wearing while golf gloves throughout the movie), Paul and Peter enters the house of Georg and Anna and threats the family in every possible sadist way. And finally they kill them all.

But this simple story is accompanied by brilliant direction and some very well crafted dialogues. Its not just usual run of the mill horror/psycho thriller movie. One of the baddies Paul breaks the fourth wall too often through out the movie and 'talks' with the audience, this act of his almost connects you to his mind. At one point in the movie, Anna picks up the gun when Paul is not looking and then shoots Peter. After Peter is dead Paul picks up the tv remote and rewinds the whole scene and in the next run grabs the gun from Anna and prevents Peter's death. Here we come to know of directors real intentions. It brings many question in one's mind(clearly what director wants us to). And we start thinking like Paul.
In the end when Paul and Peter kill the whole family, they talk about the parallel universes and some quantum physics stuff. While their talk is not very comprehensive but it makes one question the idea of morality. Again revealing one of the brilliance of the director.

All the actors have done very impressive job. The character development is very good. We feel pity for Anna and Georg for being victims and at the same time we find bad guys Paul and Peter very interesting. If you need a dose of morality and judgment then its a must watch.

Robot review

Initially i was not going to watch Rajni starer Robot. But after reading today's TOI, i changed my mind. There is an article on front page which starts with - "Why would someone go to a theater at 5am to watch a Rajinikanth movie? Simple — ...because tickets were not available for the 4am show". Very strong start indeed. It went on and on reminding us(not 'telling' as we all know Rajni) how great Rajni is. After reading this article a thought came to my mind that the least thing that he could do is not endorse any consumer product. Cause if he did so then people will blindly buy it, no matter what. I am sure ITC(Indian Tobacco Corporation) must have approached him several times to lobby for them, but i am glad Rajni didnt comply.

Now few words about movie. How is it? well, its up to an individual how he perceives this movie. There are only four characters in the movie -
1.Vasu : Rajni as a brilliant scientist who creates a robo
2.Chetti : Rajni's robo avatar
3.Ash's character : (Please excuse me for forgetting her characters name, but she doesn't do good job to make you remember it) as Vasu's girlfriend
4.Danny's character : (Another forget-me-after-watching-movie performance) vasu's mentor cum bad guy

There are two supporting characters(Vasu's two assistants), who provide some comic relief(One can argue if their presence did more harm than good...). But i will stick to my original opinion that there are only 4 characters, as Ash's character + Danny's character + two comic characters can be treated as just two characters, Ash is that lame.

The story goes something like this - Vasu, being cliched ignorant brilliant scientist, creates a robo. Robo can do anything(1 robo = 100 human). He decides to donate this robo to Indian army. But he couldnt get an approval as Danny is one of the approvers(and as mentioned above he is the bad guy). Danny wants to sell this robo to some terrorists for money, so he uses a trick to 'confuse' Chetti(robo). Now someone might say how can he do that. But remember Danny is Vasu's guru, Vasu's character is played by Rajni and if someone is slightly better than Rajni(i know all of you will disagree with the notion of anyone being better than Rajni) then he also can do anything, even make Robo commit a mistake.



After being thrashed by Danny, Vasu decides to make Chetti perfect. One might wonder how he accomplishes that, the answer is - he decides to give him feeling. ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? If you have seen countless robo fiction movies or read any of Issac Asimov novels, you will immediately understand that that is not such a good idea. But Directors love of Robo-cliche doesnt hold him back from doing such a thing that has been done by so many directors, writers before him.
Now Chetti has feeling and i know you would have guessed what a guy would do if he has feeling. Yes, you are right sir, he will fall in love. And this is where Ash comes into the picture. Due to the lack of characters in this movie, Chetti immediately falls madly in love with the only female character in the movie which happens to be Ash. And he does some things for her like helps her cheat in her medical exams, kidnaps a Mosquito who bit her(I swear i am not making this up, he even talks to the Mosquito!!!!), delivers a baby(not hers but of someone else's baby) blah blah blah....
Now what have we got here, there is Vasu who loves Ash and there is Chetti who also loves Ash. Here again the director has expressed his love for cliches by using another, very common formula - Love Triangle. Now, jealous Vasu dissembles Chetti and gets engaged with Ash. Meanwhile other character of this movie, Danny, makes a contract with bad guys to sell them robos for destructive purposes. After failing in several attempts of making his own robo, he retrieves parts of Chetti and makes him good as new, except for a new chip in him(which will make Chetti bad guy so now we will have 1Chetti = 100 bad guys). And here director outdoes himself by using another cliche of converting a good robo into bad one, same as The Terminator.



At this point in the movie Chetti starts making dummy-robos. He creates an army of them. And this is how final battle begins. Army of dummy-bots versus Vasu accompanied by indian police. Then its followed by some cheesy action where dummy-bots meta morphs themselves into different shapes and sizes and kills many, destroys property blah blah blah



In the end Vasu manages to take the chip implanted by Danny out of Chetty and that is the end of bad Chetti. One might think that this is the end. But its not. They file a case against Vasu for the mayhem caused by Chetti. The court gives out a verdict which says human kind is not yet ready for Chetti and he should be dissembled for good. So Chetti(remember now he is a good guy, 1Chetti = humans) takes the responsibility of doing it by himself and while doing so he delivers some of the most cheesiest totally predictable dialogs of history of cinema.

Phew, the movie ends. But i really wonder if Ash's character starts practicing medicine she would kill more humans than Chetti did throughout the movie, considering the fact that she cheated in her medical exams and one other small thing - she is downright STUPID.


P.S. :

The moment i entered the cinema hall i regretted my decision. But it was too late by then. And this damn movie made me so sad(i was sad and not angry as i was way past anger after first half an hour) that i decided to deride this... crap publicly. This is my first ever written movie review. The more i wrote about Robot the more i remembered how much waste of a time this movie was in the first place. It compelled me to write even more bad things about this movie. And the things that i have written above are not even half of it. I wanted to write even more things. But i though it would be too lengthy and wont be will accepted.

For example i didnt comment on Rajni's legendary fighting skills. While we are on the subject, i did not under stand why did they turn Rajni into a Robo to do such humanly impossible stunts? I mean, given Rajni's reputation, he could have done all of his stunts(including removing his own head and creating his own army and many more things like that) being a normal human being. Here the 'normal' adjective is redefined for Rajni, as Rajni is superhuman(i almost said abnormal....) so his 'normal' is way different than normal normal.

I also left out the part about the songs. I am against translating the songs word to word from one language to another keeping the music same. It just doenst work. I mean if particular words with particular rhythm in one language is unique thing. You cannot just translate the words without disturbing the rhythm. The same thing can be said for the songs from movie 'Hum se hai Muquabala'. Do you know the lyric of the songs? Both Urwashi and the title song have great music(thanx to AR Rehman) but the meaning of the words is simply unbearable. After saying these things its needless to say that all the songs from this movie sucked real bad. I couldnt remember a single song after the movie was over. I couldnt even tell the song that was being played in the cinema hall was in Hindi or not.


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