Cannes and Cannots.

No Indian film has gone to Cannes this year.

The only film going from India is made by a Sri Lankan director called Vimukthi Jayasundara, called "Ghatak" and Vimukthi is Sri Lankan.

But we have sent Sonam Kapoor to "walk" the red carpet, and she has the wishes of Deepika Padukone that walked the damn thing last year.  Two years ago, Aishwarya Rai got mad that Sonam was going to walk that same red carpet where she goes every year to sell her perfume or deodorant or soap or whatever for that company she endorses.  This is what we get our idiots to go to Cannes for.

If I made a lousy cake, I would not go anywhere near a cake baking competition.  If I couldn't run fast, I wouldn't go anywhere near a running race.  If I didn't look good, I wouldn't enter a beauty pageant.  So, what is it with movies?  We make totally shitty movies, that even our audiences don't want to watch that much, but for some reason, these bozos from Bollywood, well, mostly from Bollywood, have no problem going to Cannes just to rub shoulders with some better film makers.  Don't these shitheads have any shame?  Or maybe they don't even know good cinema!  Wonder which is worse.

Listen to this Sonam Kapoor talk - it is all about the dress she is going to wear.  Fair enough.  She doesn't have much else to carry to Cannes.  That Rai woman has been going for years, and apparently it is a "dream team" to be on that red carpet with Eva Longoria and Lucy Liu!  God, can anybody NOT see that this is a way for that perfume company or deodorant company to cover all races and nothing else?  Okay, these three are old hags now, but what about young Sonam?  Why should she get sucked into this shit?

Because she can't find any real work.  By real work, I mean, finding a real movie to do, one that has a script and some integrity.  Her Dad Anil Kapoor apparently gave her a pen, according to an advertisement he features in.  Like he is some incredible achiever passing on some ageless ancient wisdom of his lineage to his young daughter!  Up until Slumdog Millionaire, which the whole of India shagged with for a while, even though it was not an Indian film, nobody in the world knew who the fuck Anil Kapoor was.  They still do not, but the Americans thought they should cast him in 24, to make 24 more "global".  So Anil Kapoor went!  He played a Middle Eastern prince!  Could he play an Eskimo?!!  This shit is hilarious.

The Americans are dumb enough to think putting Indian faces will sell their shit to India.  It won't.  We will buy OUR shit, or THEIR shit, not them making our shit, or us making their shit.  Why can't these nitwits wake the fuck up?  No Hollywood studio has succeeded in making an Indian film.  No Indian producer wants to make an international film.  There are a few but those chicks are horrible film makers.  They showed up in some of these festivals with their "issue based" shit because of the issues and because they were chicks.  Nothing else.  Now, there is a hole, and what a relief that must be!  It would be hard to defend any of our mainstream B-wood movies against anything of quality, a roadroller included.  Imagine what torture some of these fools must go through when they land in Cannes with totally pretentious, clueless movies that our audiences lap up with generous doses of forgiveness!

Now this Vimukthi kid has been devoting himself to watch Sathyajit Ray films.  Ugh!  Could he have found anybody less marketable?  And he's even mentioning how his film might open Indian films to international audiences!  Our films are already OPEN to international audiences!!!  There are any number of Patels and Singhs and other Indians all over the world.  All of them DO watch our movies!  Ray did make movies that people in film schools shag over, while the honest mainstream audiences mostly sleep.  Drowsy art.  But at the very least, Ray would not have chased after glory at Cannes.

Doesn't Europe produce shitty movies?  OF course they do!  French directors themselves are caught in a warped bubble of imagination that neither sells nor inspires, and hardly ever connects.  They are mad about Hollywood taking all their money, but will never make the kind of movies Americans make.  Americans don't care too much about high art, but are fantastic at telling stories on screen.  They keep it simple, and they take everybody's money.  So, Cannes wants as many rowdies in its gang as possible, and who to fill the gap better than Bollywood?  Just to make noise, not to show up with anything of quality - doing exactly what they do in India anyway.

Cannes = a place for our actors to show up.  TV = a place to find out where our actors are showing up.  Cricket grounds = a place for our actors to make sure they showed up.  Advertisements = seriously, what the fuck does Shah Rukh Khan know about paint?  Social causes = shoot endangered animals, but talk about saving the tiger.

Ah, showing up!  What else do Bollywood actors have to do anyway?  Why do they have to make this single act so painful for so many of us?

Why do we have to show up anywhere, anyway?


http://www.indianexpress.com/news/sonam-turns-style-diva-on-cannes-red-carpet/791883/

"The gown had a sense of humour"?  No shit.  The other Indian chick showed her panties?  Are you kidding me?  I bet there are some hooligans cheering and clapping there.  There'd be many more if these fools did this on the streets of Mumbai, but they won't be white skinned.  Anything for whitey, bitches?

Well done, Bollywood.

- BSK.

London Dreams, Mumbai weeps.

London Dreams is like many other B-wood movies – about a dream, a fantasy, and a ride that doesn't always have to have its seat bolted to any kind of reality, or in this case, believability.

If three Indians are brought together by fate, even after their lives having taken completely different paths to that point, and the singular higher purpose that binds them is a rock-star performance at an enormously popular stadium like Wembley, we need something more than a concrete structure of a stadium to believe this story – they probably need to sing in English and play music that most of the people coming there would be able to appreciate.

It is not for nothing that Shankar, Ehsaan and Loy are busy making their living in Mumbai, composing music for Hindi movies. If their music was good enough to rock the world at Wembley, they would have been doing that, instead of Mannu, Arjun and Priya.

Granted that neither of these roles are played by Reese Witherspoon or Joaquin Phoenix who would train till they could render perfect performances for a "Walk The Line", granted that London Dreams has come out of the usual pedigree Mumbai cacophony and is meant for the substantially lowered expectations of typical Hindi language cinema audiences that have been mercilessly dumbed down by B-wood. But, given the story – chasing a dream, could one be blamed for expecting more?

If a film depends on its musical numbers to stand out, it needs to have outstanding music. London Dreams doesn't. If it depends on its storyline to be noticed, it has to have a little more than two friends uniting after many years, a little better character motivation than one of them bringing the other to London, and if their friendship was the big mover, then the token girlfriend should go through an experience of her own that is a lot larger than changing hands. None of this is part of this movie called London Dreams which has had a great deal of work done in the promos and the publicity, but very little on the script, as usual.

Scene for scene, you would expect two experienced actors like Ajay Devgan and Salman Khan to easily deliver the undemanding, oversimplified love to anger range of emotions that B-wood cinema invariably spits out mercilessly on its audiences and the director ensures they don't enter any dangerous territories of challenging performances. Everybody is adequately over the top exactly as you could expect from a B movie from B-wood.

Asin's role as always, could have been performed by any girl in B-wood, and she's adequately available to the uninspiring demands this script places on her. Priya is at the centre of a great friendship gone sour, but when there is such a human endeavour in progress like chasing that elusive dream of a great live performance before a big human gathering, how can we burden her with the extra gravity of the personal?

So, the men are allowed to bring the story to its (chrono)logical end, which is rather soothing after the long drawn out indifference to the music and the story. As for the earth shattering moment that brings Arjun down to earth, we all saw it coming, for that is what happens to good guys who went down the wrong path in Hindi movies. They never give us the pleasure of telling us that they had a great time on the dark side, do they? Because they have a reputation to protect – of being ready for the next mediocre film to do the same expected things all over again.

Yet another vague, purposeless, weak kneed, over-hyped, glossed over, noisily promoted offering from B-wood, with nothing special to offer. But then, heck, you can get to see Wembley, and some of us who aren't lucky enough to be sleeping with ear plugs in air conditioned comfort after paying the money to get in, we might even catch glimpses of Paris, Amsterdam and Rome. Want a good movie from B-wood? Dream on.

PS: Sure this was written before the release of the film, as you can tell by the time of this post, but did it make any difference, really? If you've seen the film, please tell me why I should too!

IPL closing fiasco.

Miss South Africa IPL Bollywood? Well, that's a hard one to live up
to. The girl who just won is shaking to Akon's music. Akon is the
real article, but what the heck does Miss. Dune Kossatz from East
London really have to do with IPL or Bollywood? Absolutely nothing,
and she doesn't look like she will play any real part in any real
Mumbai movie either, because for heaven's sake, she is a white girl,
and very white if I may add.

Why does the IPL suffer from the insecure mindset? Who cares about
the cheerleaders and so called Bollywood celebrities at the end of the
day, when Gilly is tonking a 30 ball 80 or when Murali is weaving his
magic on the pitch? Who even cares about the thousands of people who
are already in the ground watching the match telling us how great the
IPL is and how great Modi is? Why did we have to make a TV event out
of IPL donating money to schools in South Africa? It isn't as if
there are no schools in India the IPL can donate money to, but that's
another matter all together.

We really got more than fatigued with the DLF maximums and
cheeseburger level marketing stunts that could get nothing but
"cheesy". Try putting together something Philips brilliant and
Vaseline dull at the same Timex time, Fevicol together! To add to the
endless list of senseless associations Modi can throw together in his
cart called the IPL, now we have a contest amongst women selected on
TV, from live audiences at cricket matches, ostensibly to work with
the biggest loser of them all, Shah Rukh Khan! Apart from a cheap
noise level generated amongst those curious about all things Indian,
what can this possibly do, for cricket or for the IPL in particular?

Oh, here comes Katrina Kaif, who herself cannot make up her mind
whether she is an Indian. What's with her totally fake accent, and
oh, God! Just when I thought I'd never hear this song again, here we
go with Jai Ho! What heartless organizer would make Katrina Kaif
shake to this overrated piece of crap? Those topless brown skinned
fools dancing around her look straight out of the wannabe actor failed
list. Oh, let's not forget the namaste at the end of it.

The real deal South African product on view is really good. The lamps
that lifted into the sky, the fire act, Akon himself, and the rest of
the hypnosis is not bad. Original to some extent, almost creative,
definitely not bad. The moment there is something Indian to fuse
with, they are thrown out of rhythm. How does that happen? Well, it
cannot get any better with A R Rahman's Jai Ho nonsense passing off as
something "Indian", can it?

The funniest part of the night was definitely the speech by the South
African president, Mr. Jacob Zuma. It was as if we finally had to
reduce this event to an ancient Doordarshan style underwhelmer just to
keep our feet on the ground. Zuma certainly ground us to death with
his boring speech when the spectacle was already unfolding in the
background. Pathetic, but funny. It was as if Modi had decided to
cruelly balance all his extravaganza with a little tempering of
people's enthusiasm!

I wonder if any speech by any head of state can hold its own against
the spectacular Phoenix Fire act the South Africans put up. What a
show! Phew! And the fireworks, indeed, the best part of any event,
but perhaps overdone for the IPL? If we can forgive Shah Rukh Khan's
overexposed presence at all loser events of the KKR and Shilpa Shetty
trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life when she can't
tell if her team lost or won, that is.

Another real article now, again South African - a genuine performer
again - Eddy Grant. You cannot miss quality when it is this obvious,
especially when it comes from a seasoned pro. But why do the
presenters always have to ask us if we are READY? Would the program
really wait for us if we weren't? Oh, never mind.

What we were definitely not ready for is the lousy television coverage
of the closing ceremony. It appears as if the same company covering
the cricket had been thrown an extra bit of work. A sports coverage
unit does not have what it takes to cover a stage event - they're two
different animals all together. What kind of clown but Modi to
oversee such a blunder and cover it with some more glitz? Covering
Sivamani during a Chennai Super Kings match is very different from
covering a full blown professional performer unleashing his full
bandwidth on the stage.

Now, after the "closing" ceremony, we come to the Highlights, and we
might even care to remember the trophy has not been presented! Heck,
we don't even know the man of the final! Basically, the IPL hasn't
yet been closed. But the ceremony is over. We haven't had the
winners celebrating, or the commiserations to the runners up. I
wonder who has been the most tortured by this cruel twist of event
design.

Basically, with Modi, anything goes. There are clowns like Samir
Kocchar calling the IPL trophy beautiful, while anybody with a
molecule of taste will puke at that terrible design. He can even be
forgiven for calling the closing ceremony an opening ceremony, but the
"beautiful IPL trophy"? Come on! The IPL is a monstrosity. It has
its best moments on the field, in the essence of the cricket being
played amongst some very good competitors, but the rest of it really
is like a Mumbai movie, loud and unnecessary, but always THERE,
hitting us in the face. Modi would have made the perfect "Bollywood"
producer.