Guest Author: Prakash Rajgopal ( the guy in the Gulshan Grover beard).
BENGALURU, Bangalore or just same ol’ BANGY. Oh how fortunate art thee to have been the soil which played host to Rock in India. How golden is thy spirit to have seen history in the making!The biggest International Rock Festival India has ever seen! Nine bands! Two headlining acts! The chance to get 8 hours of thrash/hard rock drilled into metal heads! What a mouth-watering prospect! Which genuine rock enthusiast would miss such a historic event? One of the top four metal acts in the world, Megadeth was playing in India. Yes, MEGADETH!! It was the last leg of their United Abominations Tour Of Duty. March 14, 2008. Palace Grounds, Bangalore. After a month of eager anticipation since booking the tickets, the day had finally arrived! We all HAD to be there to witness it. And we did!
We (my friend Harshal and I) reached the venue well ahead of time, at 1 pm. As we arrived at the venue and were waiting for the gates to open, we could hear some sound checks going on inside. There were already some people loitering around, most of them wearing black tees. I could see lots of Maiden’s, some Slipknot’s, Children Of Bodom’s, Nirvana’s around along with the usual Megadeth ones. We also saw a girl and a guy walking in, with the girl wearing a Megadeth tee, and the guy wearing a… hold your breath… 50 Cents!! Yo mama, he was right in da club!!! I also saw a guy wearing a Master Of Puppets tee. I wonder what became of him. Soon, Sujoy arrived with his gang just in time for the gates to open, and we headed inside. There were two stages on the venue. A smaller stage that was meant for the Indian bands, and a bigger one up front, obviously for Megadeth and Machine Head .
Here’s a run-up of all the bands in the order of their appearances:
1. Casino Blues: The band from Guwahati formed by Joshua, the lead singer of the Independence Rock winner band-Faith. They might’ve rued the fact that their’s was the first act of the day. With the scorching sun was beating down everybody’s necks, most of the people preferred taking shelter in the shady corners of the ground to avoid being burnt. The band had some catchy numbers. But they didn’t catch enough attention. Enough said.
Verdict: Mediocre.
Sujoy’s Verdict: Joshua has got strong vocals, but it got sunburnt.
2. Prestorika:
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Shoaib Mansoor’s Khuda Ke Liye (KKL) has finally hit the Indian screens after raking in crores of Rupees at the Pakistani box-office and winning rave reviews simultaneously at film festival circuits worldwide. It is indeed a historic event that after almost four decades, a Pakistani movie is being released in India. However, I’d not like to call it a movie concerning only Pakistanis. At heart, KKL is very much a global story. The story of the never ending battle between beliefs of the fundamentalists and the liberals. Khuda Ke Liye questions each and every aspect of the Muslim ideology and clears all clouds of myth related to Muslims in a post 9-11 world where Pakis and Sardars are assumed to be associates of a terrorist organisation conspiring on a terror attack on America.
This entire debate of Islamic fundamentalism has been portrayed beautifully in a story of three characters. Mansoor and Sarmad are brothers who have a budding musical career and reside in Lahore. Sarmad is faced by Mullah Tahiri, who instigates him to join the Jehadi league and presents in front of him, an orthodox interpretation of Islam as a religion which considers music and arts as haraam and denies basic human rights to the woman kind. Sarmad falls prey to Mullah’s sermons and starts sticking on to the salwar attire, starts growing a beard and even insists on his Ammi to wear a Hijab. On the other hand, we have the liberal Mansoor, Sarmad’s brother, who leaves for the US to pursue his higher studies in music at GoodEnough College in Chicago. At the wake of 9-11, Mansoor falls prey to the highly suspicious American feds who treat him as one of the Talibans and pick on each and every detail of Mansoor’s stuff left in his apartment. The third protagonist is Mary, born to a Pakistani father in London, and who wants to get married to a Brit. Her father conspires to get her married secretly to a Paki, without her consent. He takes her to Pakistan and with help from Mullah Tahiri, marries her to Sarmad in a remote village on the borders of Afghanistan, so that she can’t escape. This entire episode of Mary being captivated in an open prison, being deprived of her right of choosing a life, and all of this brought upon her by her own father shocked me to the core. Not only that, when she tries to escape, she is “punished” by being loaded by the burden of parenthood. All in the name of God as prescribed by Mullah for Sarmad. And Sarmad- he is forcibly taken to war and has to prove his “mardaangee” by killing someone. And yet again, all in the name of God. As the chapters of the story unfold, we even get to experience the serene music of Mansoor at his California Music School. The plot travels through three nations – Pakistan, England and the USA to convey the message of how twisted minds and their even more twisted interpretations can unleash chaos on a world that is already filled with chaos . [Continue Reading…]
Let me begin with: What a Movie!!! Cloverfield literally rocked my world. This is the best movie I have seen of the “monster movie” genre and that is including King Kong, Jurassic Park, Alien, Predator and even the Korean “Host”. I still can’t believe that the wait is now all over and I have been a part of that cinematic experience that I have been counting down to, ever since the first teasers hit online-the exceedingly mind-numbing visual of the head of the Statue of Liberty tossed on to the streets of NY. And all of this being captured on a handycam. Right even from the days when it didn’t even have a name to it (and was rightfully named as JJ Abrams’ next project), the fanboism to the movie had peaked until it’s release. And now that I have watched IT, I can be quite peaceful at heart and satisfied enough to talk my heart out about the movie. I loved Cloverfield, every bit of it.
The premise is a Manhattan’s typical yuppiedom party thrown for a Rob who is leaving NY for a job in Japan. And a friend of his is given the cam to record farewell video testimonials. And then, suddenly amidst the discussion among Rob, his brother Jason and the cam-holding Hud, with no warning, no background score and no cinematic trumpet announcing the arrival of chaotic destruction, cometh the Monster. Now, we have seen gazillions of monster movies set to the backdrop of Manhattan.But if you expected this to be just another one added to the list, I must say you are mistaken. This leads the list. And whatever you saw in those teasers, just try and imagine to multiply that intensity of 30 seconds by almost a 100 times and spread it across a movie of length 73 minutes. Yes, it is that good. Yeah, but for the monster movie sucker that most people are, they would expect a deep plot on the genesis of the monster, the characters who are gonna be later killed by the monster, should have built a rapport with the audience before they are swallowed or trampled upon. And yes, wide pan angles, bird’s eye view, a camera rolling through the legs and barely missing the monster’s tail, and yeah lastly the monster should have a NAME. Cloverfield breaks each of that stereotypical guide to making monster movies. And guess what, that is where it made all of us awestruck. It literally is the monster movie for the YouTube generation- where a million hits go to the reaction videos of 2 girls and a cup. And so, if you expected all the above mentioned guidelines of making a monster movie to be followed, I am sure that you’d be let down. Because I hardly remember the girl’s name, the monster doesn’t really has a name and neither is anyone interested to give it any, the panic at the streets is very real, the toxic smog made me almost cough, and the combat scenes look a straight report on the CNN. [Continue Reading…]
Get ready for some real pot-mouthed ladies. I mean onscreen. Girls here don’t shy away from speculating the count of BJ’s and rampantly indulge in BJ jokes. They snort the white powder and drink till they drop. Welcome to the Jungle of the 21st century heroine. She is no longer the girl in the sari, but is suffering from the “pink thong, black lung” syndrome. Another addition to the cast is the stereotypical effeminate designer whose panic is “ejected” in his histrionics. And yeah, still more BJ jokes. And the guys;now they only say “FUCK” when they are either angry or offended. Not like we do-e.g. Fuck No,Fuck yes, Fuck may be. You get it. But that’s just where Bhram (an Illusion) begins. Antara Tyagi (Sheetal Menon) is a model troubled by casting couch predators and more than that, her dark past. She keeps wandering in her past and keeps away from male company. That’s until she is hit on by saadda hunk Shaan (Dino Morea) who is the brother of an investment banking tycoon Dev Rawal (Milind Soman ). The narrative jumps directly to the action area by adapting a non-linear flow, loaded with flashbacks and all jumbled up.
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The plot encircles around these few characters: Shaan, Dev, Antara and her past. Everything else is pretty much an accessory. Shaan falls in love with the weird and introvert Antara. Antara doesn’t know that her life is coming a full circle with the entry of Shaan in her life(I would like to interrupt here to ask: Why do Indian movies have (almost) always followed the format of a first half which ends with a couple of events summing down to a suspense with an intermission in between? Is it because they want us to think over during the pee break as to what is gonna happen in the next episode? Ooh! how smart are we!!). The first half of the movie juggles from one sub-plot to another and sometimes entangles the puzzle even more, rather than solving it. So here’s what happens – Shaan brings Antara to meet his family- Bhaiya and Bhabhi- Antara accuses Dev to be the rapist and murderer of her sister, an event which happened 10 years ago in ‘Unnees Sau Teeranve” (1993) on her birthday. Second interruption: I would like to take a moment here for myself to pat my own back. I noticed a goof-up here. Antara’s sister drives her in a Maruti Suzuki WagonR to meet Dev in the resort. It’s 1993, and no Maruti Suzuki WagonR had been produced then by the manufacturers. Thank you! Now sit down and read further. [Continue Reading…]
