Please let me know if you agree or disagree with my thoughts.

Seriously, I feel the plot was brilliant. The theme had a lot of scope for humor and for emotions, which they failed to utilise. The script was not engaging,was broken in some places and the characters just failed to generate empathy.

The things that I liked about the movie was that both Priyanka and Uday played their roles well. Although I felt Priyanka was over-the-top at some places and also looked superficial but she made it up for it in some places like the title song ‘Pyaar Impossible’ and also the scene where Abhay is about to confess his love to Alisha, but suddenly the door bell rings and Dino walks in to create the run-up to the shabby climax.
Uday has definitely done very well in all his scenes. I liked him more in this role than any of his previous films including the Dhoom series.
And with this I have killed all my chances of ever working with YRF!!

Just when Arjun feels he is very close to achieving his dream, he hits the rock bottom. The twist comes when Arjun gets his friend Mannu(Salman Khan) to UK,and asks him to join his band. Things go out of control when Mannu manages to steal the show completely at his first concert itself and achieves the fame and the popularity in one second that Arjun has been fighting for all his life. He realises it that very moment, that God has, in a very unfair manner given him all the passion to be a musician but gifted all the talent to Mannu.

Things turn really bad for Arjun from there on..he feels extremely jealous and betrayed by God for the first time. He expresses it very well actually in the church,when accuses God for playing with him all this while, and curses himself for being so naive because he kept consoling himself in the hope that God has something extraordinary in store for him. Arjun is left with only two options:Either he could concede and give away everything he has to Mannu or fight his way up even if it required to actually destroy his innocent friend. He settles for the second option.

Arjun tries to actually get Mannu into drug addiction, Mannu being naive falls for his trap. But Arjun does not succeed because the audiences loved Mannu more than him, which he could stand at all. I agree the pre-climax scene at the concert where Arjun blabbers out his negative thoughts in front of 90,000 people in the fully packed Wembley stadium, was not dealt with properly. The confession could have been done somewhere else, at least not in front of the fans, because it only backfired at him.
The group disbands after this, leaving everybody including Arjun and Mannu bitter about things. The final climax scene is actually cute with Salman showing his selfless side to his best friend Arjun, happily welcomes his friend at the station in Punjab. The last song is again at Wembley stadium where Mannu and Arjun sing about dreams and success. It sums up the whole movie. The message is that success is incomplete if you don’t have your friends and family with you to celebrate it.

The movie poses a simple question in my mind: Many people run after their dreams, unaware of the fact that passion is not the only thing required to achieve success. Talent is very important. But how does one know whether they are talented or passionate unless they reach their goal. Also what if you realize it only when its too late, and you cant turn back?
On the other hand talent alone can’t get you anything. Passion needs to drive your talent to the right path, like Mannu was wasting his talent singing/playing for a band in marriages, unaware of the talent that he was gifted with. It was Arjun who unlocked his talent and gave him a platform to showcase it.

I guess people who identify with this movie, like me, will love it, but if they don’t they have all the reasons to hate it. Going by the reviews, many of the critics have slammed the movie left, right and centre. I guess when a movie is based on personal experiences or deals with things which are real but very intricate, fails to have a mass appeal.

But anyway, I can see effort put into this movie. Songs and lyrics are outstanding according to me. People are naturally comparing it with Rock-on which is wrong, because it’s a matter of chance that this movie came after Rock-On, had it been released before it, the fate of this movie might have been different. Who knows?

The story telling is the most imp part of such movies, and hinges more on characters and how they develop over time, rather than some radical events in the movie. This requires a good hold over tapping into strong emotions in a very subtle manner so that it has the quintessential feel of contemporary indian cinema.

Broadly speaking, coming -of-age stories stick to a 3-act play kind of format. The first act defines the character and what he wants or does not want from life/people/ or himself, the second act brings a conflict to his life, which sort of acts like a catalyst to change his views about things, or helps him get a focus in his life or steers him in a definite direction. The third is obviously the climax, which basically shows that the protagonist finally achieves his goals and how he develops/changes in the whole story. The function of the side characters is to kind of form the catalyst that help the main character steer towards his final destination.

Wake up sid! is a very fresh take in this genre. The two main things that make it stand out are:
1) It’s as realistic as it gets!! Director Ayan Mukherji, has captured real people in all his characters. Be it the slacker/aimless Sid who lives a very laid back kind of life, does not plan things beyond a day, does not want anything but just have fun and party hard with his friends and lives each day as it comes. Very true for a person who does not need to earn money on his own, as his rich dad can always provide for him. And has never been pressurized by his parents or circumstances to make his own living and pay his credit card bills. Even Konkona’s character of Aisha Banerji has been very well written. She is a bong gal from Kolkatta, very intellectual, and has a passion for writing. Comes down to Mumbai to earn her own money and be independent, which has been her dream forever. Meets Sid on the first time, and a friendship kicks off immediately in between them. I am sure many people can relate with this situation.

2) Secondly, an intrinsic character about this movie is that the conflict in Sid’s life, does not necessarily change from a nothing to a Superman, or someone who stuns everyone with his achievements out of the blue. The transformation is very believable and also very logical. In the end, he ends up turning his passion for photography into his profession, which is very likely, as he is not very pressed for money or lack of opportunities. He wants to work, but does not want to choose something very boring just for money !! This is why, I would like to stress again, that it’s as realistic as it gets.

Overall, i would say it’s a good movie to watch once a year at least to just shake us out of our lethargy, to find a goal or to just wake up!!

From the promos one could guess it would be a rom-com, something that Ashutosh had not tried before. Now, the title itself tells a lot to the audience and in turn builds up an image in his mind. I already had a format in my mind and certain elements that i thought should be a part of the movie. For ex: Why 12 priyanka’s instead of 12 different gals? Why is Yogesh looking for a match for himself in this way? What is the conflict in the story? How will each of the gals be different from each other? And which gal will Yogesh finally choose for himself and more importantly WHY? Phew!!!

Following Bollywood’s latest craze for ‘official adaptations’,the concept of WYR was derived from a Gujarati novel called ‘Kimball Ravenswood’ by Madhu Rye. The concept is no doubt very interesting and also has a mass appeal as everyone has a rashee/zodiac, so it kind of ticks the first item on the producer’s checklist: Will anybody go and watch my movie?

But I am not very sure if every novel can be turned into a movie script? Cinema as a medium demands that the audiences feel for every character, and that the story moves in a way where the audience connects with the protagonist at every point. There has to be a focus. This in turn says, having too many parallel plots or sub-plots in the movie dilutes the effect each character has in the movie.

Ashutosh broke down the story in to one main plot (Yogesh looking for his match) and two sub-plots( One of Yogesh’s family, and the other of his uncle, whose doubting wife adds a bit of confusion in the story).
Obviously the intention of adding the two sub-plots was to have some space for humor. But the script and the dialogues didn’t do much justice to the comical situations, hence it failed to generate humor in the places they were placed. Very disappointing for the audience, who have to sit through 3hrs 45mins for the movie.

Another issue with the script was that each of the twelve gals had to
be etched out with just a couple of scenes and a song. Although Priyanka was brilliant in all the 12 roles, the script didn’t carve out each zodiac sign convincingly enough. I can hardly remember any traits/idiosyncrasies of 6 out of the 12 gals. I agree its not fair to expect that the movie will tell me everything about all the rashee’s but most of the time I could not understand why was one zodiac different from the other? Some of the gals were not given any space to show their traits at all specially Jhankana, whose story revolved around her being under-aged and nothing else!!!!

As far as acting is concerned,Priyanka was superb in all the 12 roles. She was definitely successful in playing 12 different gals, but not 12 different rashees, and that again is the script’s fault. Harman was very good, i think he suited the role, although, I didn’t feel there was any sort of consistency in his character. He didnt look worried when he should have and he didn’t look in hurry when he should have.

By and large, the music was good. I think it helps to make some of the characters memorable.

Overall, I would say, the movie answers some of questions but contradicts my logic for the others. Like the climax was just not acceptable to me. Yogesh gets married to Sanjana (Acquarius) in the end but I didnt understand why? Was it because she was available, because she found her Bf cheating on her?Or was it because of her rashee? If yes, why isn’t the reason clear? Maybe the idea was only to formulate a method in order to help Yogesh look at as many gals as possible in such a short period of time, and leave the whole rashee connection at that point.

I would conclude, not all novels can be turned in to movies, there can be serious format discrepancies, script and concept issues with that. The mediums are very different and hence the end results are also very different from one another.

Before watching Kaminey I was trying to guess what exactly will Vishal do by using Bollywood’s most successful formula of Twin-Brothers. I was hoping that he would actually deviate from the usual confusion that is being created because of two similar looking people and not spend most of the show time in showing the different characters mistaking one for the other. The plot did touch on that a bit but moved quickly away from it as well, putting the audience in more suspense, right in the middle of the movie, about how the story would unfold.

Kaminey is a movie about all of us actually. It talks about ambitions, persistence, dreams, desires and money and greed.Very human. I think the scene with Shahid(or Fahid) running in front of the stallions really symbolizes what we all are going through at some level. Running after ambitions, goals, deadlines or buses!! The story line is actually very simple and not very new, but its the arrangement of the events that makes it very interesting. It’s a movie that moves very fast, has suspense and anticipation of danger at every step. It’s a roller coaster ride, which no one can control and it throws you from one sub-plot to the other in fraction of a second. I actually felt mentally exhausted after watching the movie, as there was just so much to digest and track at the same time.

The dark comedy used as a seasoning at the right places is just outstanding:The scene where Guddu is made to sing in the police station by the cops because that’s the quickest way they could get the information out of him was hilarious. Its funny to imagine that a person can go through so many troubles in a single day-getting the news of impregnating his gf, then getting married on the same day knowing that he could easily get killed by his gf’s brother, who is a local gangster, then getting beaten up at his own wedding, finding out that his gf actually does not stammer and had lied to him, and then finally getting harassed by the police because of his brother!! All in a day !!

As far as the acting is concerned, I must say, Shahid has surprised me. Honestly, I had written him off very early on. Although he has given some good box office hits like Jab We Met and Fida and Ishq-Vishq, I was never convinced he could feel the character that he was playing. In Jab We Met, I didn’t think he showed any range or anything new, the movie was dependent completely on Geet’s character, wherein she would act and the others would only react.
Shahid pulled off both the lisping portions and the stammering portions EFFORTLESSLY. I liked the way he used his voice to throw anger and hatred in words which were actually funny because of his lisping!! Like when he meets Guddu towards the climax and says ‘Manhoof’ !!

The music and the background music were stimulating to say the least. Specially the pieces which had ‘Go Charlie Go’ for the chase sequences just helped build up the level of excitement. ‘Dhan Ta Nan’ was the soul of the movie, it encapsulates energy, anger, impatience and speed.

All in all, I loved watching it and these kinds of movies are literally pushing the boundaries of Indian Film Industry. Bringing more subjects and topics under the ‘main stream’ genre.
Looking back I can say it has been a good half year for the industry till now, in terms of discovering and re-discovering talent. Financially, I am not very clear about the maths even now, as there are no official nos. that one can believe.

So given that there are only a few kinds of love stories that one can have, it was left up to the the screenplay to justify the significance of the movie. The screenplay used the liberty of non-linearity of the medium and hence successfully drew comparisons and contrasts between love stories of two different generations by jumping from one period to the other in a very random fashion !! sometimes difficult to follow.

The music has been used intelligently by peppering them at places that would generate curiosity or set a mood or carry the plot further.Like the first time ‘Dooriyan’ is played in the background ,it sets a platform for what was coming next and in many ways conveyed the confusion that the characters Meera and Jai were going through. Also the song has been picturised by using random shots from scenes that would come later in the movie, setting the conflict right in the beginning which is very important. Making it very engaging for the viewer.

As far as the acting is concerned, i think either Deepika can’t act or there was something really wrong in the way ‘Meera’ was written. Deepika was absolutely blank and expressionless in places when there were no dialogues(like the backyard scene at her wedding night).She could not convincingly pull off the very emotional scenes that were the very highlights of the movie. On the other hand, Saif did a great job in the scene when he gets mugged in a dark alley in San franc and he gets beaten up in order to save meera’s photo.

Actually, the modern love story was crafted in a way to show characters who held back their emotions (like the light hearted and logical conversation at the cafe between Jai and Meera about their break-up or the Departure of Meera at the airport) but the story fails to hit hard even in the climax, when Jai finally comes back from San Franc to be with Meera. Deepika just fails to get the ‘pinning’ and the ‘pain’ across, that she has been through over the last two years of not being with someone whom she loved so much. Had it not been for the beautiful lyrics and the superb melody of ‘Dooriyan’, the scene would have been an absolute disaster.

Saif as a Sardar was horrible. His body language was not like a sardar, he spoke too slowly for a sardar and also his accent was bad. Saif as the ‘alpha male’ was good but i would not like to give too much credit to him for that because I believe he is naturally like that as well. That is the Saif that all multiplex goers would love to see and that comes very effortlessly to him as well.

Recently bollywood has caught the ‘sardar- flu’, a trend started by Akshay Kumar in Singh is King. I have heard that Ranbir Kapoor is also playing a sardar in his next movie called ‘Rocket Singh-The Best Salesman of the year’. Both Akshay and Saif have failed to impress me so far as sardars, so my hopes are all on Ranbir to play a sardar with conviction and energy that is very inherent in them.

The new gal-Gisele Monteiro (who’s name I am not supposed to know) in the movie playing ‘Harleen’ was brilliantly casted. The innocence, the shyness, the nervousness was just ‘perfect’.

In short, I would say that the message was clear and well communicated.

For the first time I actually felt the music of the movie helped it pull off the intensity that was lacking in the actors. So in a way the songs were relevant or complimenting the situation and carried the plot further.

Acting was average, nothing special about the characters that I would specially remember after watching the movie.

Script was strong in many places and was successful in bringing out the nuances of the story. But it also had some lose ends like in the cafe scene when Jai asks Meera if she had pre-planned to break-up with him, she does not actually give an answer! That made me expect a dramatic out-burst at some point when she would reveal to Jai about what she wanted actually. But i guess it was a googly!!

Characterisation was brilliant, except for Meera! I don’t understand her at all !!

Imtiaz has also started ‘packaging’ his material in a safe way and has marketed it well. This story is also meant for the youth which I think is becoming his trade mark !! Also, did you notice that Imtiaz likes to have characters that too much or don’t talk at all??!!

Overall, I would say its a good example of how one can learn to be a good editor if he was dealt out with a pack of good/bad scenes with some music!

After getting the industry status in 1998, Bollywood saw some big corporate houses(Reliance ventured in to Adlabs, Big Pictures, Big Music etc) taking some serious interest in this industry and a host of production companies(PNC, Percept Pictures, Excel Entertainment, Sahara) and distributors came into existence. As a result the industry saw a structural shift, giving rise to companies that could now produce more films in a year, could distribute them on their own and making good margins. This lifted Bollywood out of the shambles that it was in just decade ago. The effect being that Hollywood studios like Disney, Pixar, Fox want to co-produce, and invest in Indian cinema. This will automatically lead to increase in overseas sales which currently contribute roughly 10% of the total revenues.

Bollywood has also grown in size as the producers don’t need to depend on theatrical releases alone in order to recover their investment. Home videos and satellite rights were also contributing significantly to their top and bottom lines.

The studio model and an idea of having a production house was pioneered by none other than Yash Chopra himself, the biggest name in Indian cinema who has given some memorable movies like Chandni, Silsila, Kabhi kabhi etc. However, the recent years haven’t been very profitable for the company. With a host of films like Tashan, Tara Rum Pum, Kabul Express, Roadside Romeo(animated movie,co-produced by Walt Disney), Thoda Pyaar Thodi Magic all failed to perform well at the box office even after having A-list actors in their kitty for every project. The only projects that did well at the box office were noth SRK starrer ‘Chak De India’ and ‘Rab ne bana di jodi’.

YRF seems to be in serious trouble now. They recently laid-off 20 people; apparently they were executive producers. They are also stepping back from the distribution business now, as they are now turning extremely risk-averse. Due to this, Karan Johar(owner of Dharma Productions)who literally admires Yash Chopra’s work and contribution to cinema and is a close family friend, had to find new distributors(UTV Software Communications) for his upcoming releases Ranbir Kapoor starrer ‘Wake up Sid’ and Multi-starrer film ‘New York’. KJo managed to sell both his movies for a whopping Rs 78 cr.

But in my opinion the biggest cause of YRF’s troubles is not recession(which came in only later) but bad choice of scripts and high cost of production. They also marketed the product in a wrong way, projecting an image of something which was not the true essence of the movie, like Tashan. I guess they did take risks by giving chances to new directors and script-writers but they failed to execute things well. Some of the bets paid off well like Chak De India. But we all know that a company can’t depend on 2-3 break out successes. They have to be consistent in performance and have to market the product for what it is. And these days the ‘word of mouth’ travels 10x faster than before, Therefore a bad movie will die out more rapidly, with box office collections falling sharply in a couple of days time, with bad reviews floating all the over the internet with blogs and discussions dissecting the movie and performances, as opposed to a week’s time earlier on.

I see a leader emerging out of all this chaos though. Progressing gradually and carefully, UTV Software Communications(listed in AIM/BSE in 2005) is now one of the biggest names in the industry challenging established players in scale and box office success across different genres and budgets. They gave a bunch of hits in 2008, like Fashion, Oye Lucky Lucky Oye, Jodha Akbar and Race. Although Race and JA contributed 30% to the kitty, the company’s business model is to produce a mixed range of films, including small and big budget movies, signing the best talent and bringing efficiency in production costs.

UTV seems to be diversifying their portfolio of movies/IPRs pretty well, producing movies on new and old themes in order to cater to the tastes of diverse and demanding Indian audiences. They are actually carving out a niche for themselves, where people have started associating quality with their name. Although recession has hit them equally, they are not going to scale back this year. They are actually hoping to see some rationalization is their cost structure, which seems difficult, as bulk of the costs are ‘Star Costs’. If they manage to get that correction, then probably they could also get a better ROI(Return on Investment). I guess another big chunk of expenditure is marketing costs, and this has actually increased as a % of total budget of the movie, because pictures are promoted as brands these days and hence involve more investments in marketing them.
In 2008 they produced 10 movies, and this year the pipeline contains 15-16 odd films. The next big one I am really waiting for is Vishal Bharadwaj’s Kaminey starring Shahid Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra expected sometime in June 2009.

As a result of the economic slowdown, I can see a serious shift towards good content, efficient capital allocation and correction in star prices(Akshay Kumar charged Rs 20 cr for Tasveer, and it grossed Rs 16cr at the box office)which was making it difficult to recover costs most of the times. I guess only the strongest and the most versatile can weather this storm and one day an Indian movie produced, directed, distributed and performed by Indian artists, based on an Indian subject would get an Oscar.

For long time I had visualized myself becoming a director one day and had started conceptualizing ideas in my mind. But I hadn’t had any first hand experience with script writing nor did I go to any film institute, so I was pretty much clueless about how to go about it.

Once I reached Mumbai, I started networking with people and building contacts. Met some journalists who were friends of friends and who happened to cover Bollywood for a TV channel. Luckily, I got my first meeting with a famous anchor/director/actor who was looking for some assistants for his new film. Even before I could realize I was sitting at his office in Andheri. I have to confess, I was and I am star struck. I could not believe I was sitting in front of him and that I would get this opportunity so easily. They say that at least 400 people come into Mumbai everyday to pursue their dream for Bollywood.

We talked about many things like the ‘diverse Indian audience’ to ‘who are actually good/influential directors?’ to ‘what makes a good story?’ I must say the discussion was pretty intense, and I got to know a very insiders’ view of things. Here are the main points:

1) The director claimed that he was the best in the industry because his debut film in 2007 made a gross of Rs 136cr at the box office. And that he proved everybody wrong, including his own crew members, as nobody believed that his movie could even earn Rs 50cr.
2) He insisted on claiming that the new bunch of directors who claim to make realistic cinema are actually living in a ‘bubble’ and are not able to understand the audience at all. They are all ‘wrong directors’ according to him, who are not even good storytellers. Most of them have been box-office flops. And people have lost money producing them.
3) He told me that whatever he knows about film making is without ever assisting any director, without going to any film school but by just watching movies on CDs, VCDs, DVDs etc (obviously all original). He also gave me a DVD of his movie, in which he had shown the complete making of his movie from pre-production to post production including all the aspects of film making. I watched it and found it really helpful and learnt some technical details as well.
4) During our conversation he realized I belonged to the newer generation who believed in telling realistic stories in subtle ways with underplayed acting and don’t believe in actors dancing around trees and singing songs in the rain. And hence he said there was a lot of garbage filled in my mind, which he will try to clear up in due course of time and broaden my horizon.

Then the topic switched to things like whether I could read/write/speak hindi, whether I had done something before this etc. He was also very curious to know whether I had quit my last job or was I fired!!? He also asked me to get into shape! As he wanted a good looking team all the time, he reasons, that it benefits everyone…fair enough!! He claimed that all the young guys and gals in his office could become ramp models and could give top models in this country a run for their money. He added that they were also very good at their work.

After an hour long chat with him, I finally managed to convince him that although we belonged to different camps all together, we both loved films and film making. And he seemed genuinely happy to know this.

Who knows if I was just plain lucky to have met the right person or all this ‘dark side’ of Bollywood is just a myth? I would like to believe the latter.

The manifesto says that they will work against the compulsory use of English as a medium in education, administration and judiciary. The motive is to provide a level playing field to all by abolishing ‘expensive English medium’ schools. If this plan is executed then we will have to see many top graded public schools being shut. Surprisingly, Mulayam’s two sons have gone to such public schools. Being anti-english has been his pet theme every time elections are around. But this actually poses a big concern for the Indian IT /BPO sector. The main reason why India actually became a significant hub for outsourcing is because it has a huge English speaking population, along with the cost advantage. If it was not the case then even China would have gained a lot of business from the developed countries. China is already going full throttle with English education, which is already alarming for the sector.

The other point which is of great concern is the ban on use of computers in new projects where the work can be done by hands. Again, I believe this step is retrogressive. This sort of shift will take us back by decades of advances that technology has made to increase the productivity and efficiency of human capital.

The manifesto also talks about cutting back stock trading and abolishing the ‘mall culture’.When the fact of the matter is that Samajwadi party was drawn to the ‘mall culture’ when they were in power in the state.

Clearly, the party leadership is being short-termist by trying to woo the rural India and alienating the urban section by putting such themes in the manifesto. Any government in power should try to move ahead by adopting forward-looking policies for economic and social development Which will be a gradual process but being retrogressive and short sighted in order to please a certain segment of the population for votes is absurd.

In order to fight this disorder, I believe the youth will have to shed their complacency and stop with the coffee table discussions about politics and actually go out and vote, so that tainted ministers and warped ideologies don’t end up being in power and rule us another term.