Geo's talkies - Rang De Basanti

Hindi cinema recently has been going to a process of transformation. There's a 'Sarkar' on one end and a 'No Entry' on the other. There's the Ram Gopal Varma school, the Sanjay Gupta school (which includes Mahesh Manjrekar) and there are the Chopra's and the Barjatyas. Karan Johar fits into the Yash Chopra mould perfectly. One school of filmmakers make movies that cater to the audience in a very sweet, bubbly and happy-go-lucky way and the other cater to an audience in a raw, ripped open, reality baring way.

Rakesh Mehra's latest offering 'Rang De Basanti' is one of the movies that's as commercial as a Hindi movie can be and manages to retail a semblance of sensibility with patriotism and some real concerns churned into the narrative. The movie opens in the UK where we find 'Sue' (a budding filmmaker) who wants to make a movie on the Indian freedom struggle after reading a diary written by her grandfather James McKinley who was an office in the British Police force in the 1930's in India. This diary captures the last days of India's freedom fighters who took the path of violence - Bhagat Singg, Chandrashekhar Azad ..... etc.

After some initial setbacks to her vision, Sue reaches India to meet Sonia and figure out a way to make her movie. They have auditions in college campuses which don't quite work and the audience is held in splits in these moments. Diljeet (DJ), Sukhi, Aslam and Karan are a group of friends who quite correctly stand for the youth as they are in the country today. They don't care too much about the heroes from the past and don't look at them beyond the textbooks. They simply have lost hope in the dream that was called 'Hindustan'.

Amidst the fun, beer drinking and the aish-o-aaram of college, the audience is introduced to some right wing elements which we all can strongly relate to. Laxman portrays the role of a hardcore swadeshi who see modern culture as a pollutant to 'hindustani' values. Sue sees her characters in these guys and coaxes them into playing their respective parts for her documentary. It all begins without any commitment or seriousness from all the players. Ajay, Sonia's fiancée is an airforce pilot who get's killed in an air crash.

This incident changes their perception, which was already being swayed by the powerful characters of the freedom fighters, totally. To make things worse, the govt blames Ajay for the crash which precipitates the situation and spirals to a point where the lead characters end up taking an idealistic decision. This leads to a situation where the present day men and the freedom fighters from the past, become one in spirit.


RDB is humorous, it's patriotic, it evokes a strong patriotic fervour in us without sermonizing. The music of the movie has been composed by AR Rahman and to say that Rahman has exceeded his brief would be an understatement. The prayer song composed to go with the situation when the lead characters enter the Golden Temple is out of this world. All songs have been apt and fit the movie well, most of the songs are used more in the background with the visuals taking the main role in the narration except one romantic song and a bhangra song.

Binod Pradhan's camera work is neat and appropriate. Sameer Chanda has excelled in production design and art direction. Screenplay is coherent without any loose ends and the credit goes to Renzil D'Silva. Prasoon Joshi has penned the songs and dialogues and most of the conversation will keep the audience in splits. Special mention has to be made about Kiron Kher, to me she's one of the most under rated actresses. One smirk on her face and you can feel her pain, one smile and you can feel the attachment of a mother, she excels in the role of DJ's mother.

Aamir Khan is one of the finest actor in India and when you see him as DJ on screen you know why. Atul Kulkarni plays the role of Lakshman to perfection. Kunal Kapoor as Aslam plays the Muslim youth role neatly and giving his character depth is Om Puri in a cameo as his father bleating out the normal sentiment against India. Sukhi is Sharman Joshi and in this movie we see him in a new avatar, someone who fears he'd die a virgin. Siddharth (the same guy we in the South saw in Ayutha Ezhuthu) manages to give a convincing performance. It's Madhavan who steals the show as Flight Lieutenant Ajay Rathod and Soha Ali Khan plays Sonia, his love interest, Soha though has a long way to go in terms of acting. Waheeda Rehman plays a cameo role as Madhavan's mother and brings the old school acting and mannerism into the contemporary script, very refreshing. Alice Patton as Sue does justice to her role in the movie and manages to stand her ground, especially in the scenes when DJ seems to have feelings for her.

Rang De Basanti is surely worth every rupee you can spend on it, give it a watch and let's see if you get lumps in your throat during the movie, believe me, there's are more than just one or two moments for that to happen.

Mia - my little sister

Timepass, thanks to GE

Keep refreshing this URL to see various styles of animation come up ... neat job
An innovative HONDA commercial
Here is the gallery of a multimedia artist in Mumbai, superb work

Cable wars in Tamilnadu - State v/s Private operators (read SCV)

I believe the state has no business in deciding on what people should watch. I do admit that there is blatant wrong doing of the cable service especially in Chennai where there is this horrendous set-top box and no other metro in India had the guts and gumption to embrace this fine concept which could have brought a lot of transparency to the cable service industry.

As a customer we should be sure of one thing, there is no such thing as free lunch. Many of the so-called cable channels that are supposedly fleecing the customers are off the highest quality and the procure transmission rights to sports events and exclusive telecasts at exhorbitant prices and a small part of that is passed on to the subscriber. The programs that are telecast on those channels don't generally cater to the normal soap watching crowd. An example I'd like to cite is Formula One. Thanks to Narain Karthikeyan, Formula One is covered extensively in the media. There was a time in the past when the national newspapers would cover the event on a column on their sports page. After the advent of PRIME sports we got a chance to see them all live and this channel later became Star Sports.

News was not a commodity those days as it is today in India. It's sad to see the amount of interest an Amitabh Bachchan on a strecher can generate when he surely should be deserving a lot of privacy in times like that. The media can't feed people of enough junk, that's the plain fact. All news channels resort to some sort of political bickering or sensationalising news like a rape or a horrendous murder. But there are also one or just a couple of balanced new providers who when viewed discernly can be identified because they don't resort to who is bigger.

The state has hardly done an angelic job with the services it provided as a monopoly in the past nor is it today. Electricity theft is rampant and is dubbed as tranmission loss. Freebies are doled out in the name of welfare and that causes a big loss to the exchequer. When DOT was the sole service provider of phone connections, we have all faced the various difficulties involved in getting a telephone connection and problems with the quality of service. Bringing in competition has levelelled the field and is putting the consumer in a seat where he can choose the best that in there on the plate.

Let's imaging a scenario where the cable services is in the hands of the government and please pardon my humor. General elections are round the corner and the govt decides to give out free cable connections to poor farmers in thanjavur, and pass a bill wherein all the rural unemployed will get one cable connection free. How is that for a novel idea? I know I am kidding and trivialising this debate, but this is entirely possible. What if the government decides to play it dirty and blank out certain channels like SCV is doing? What if the government decides to put up a box in each box (free of cost) and regularly keep an eye on the channels a household watches? Why should the government be subject to this exclusive information? Isn't it an invasion of one's privacy?

Instead of talking about taking over another man's business, the government if it's concerns are genuine should work towards setting up it's own cable infrastructure, believe me, the profits it can make from this is huge. Our country's thirst for petrol and bandwidth is exponentially increasing and apart from cable services, the govt can sell bandwidth on it's infrastructure for voice and data services. Let the government take up the challenge of living up to it's name, provide budget cable services and believe me, there won't be a huge reduction in the cable TV charges. I have always believed that a normal Thamizh household's viewing needs can be fitted into a Rs.50 per month subscription assuming that we can have a couple of Tamil Channels (which require a decoder included) and a host of other free to air channels.

Viewers who need anything more than what is offered can be charged extra monthly/annually depending on what their viewing preference is. If this plan succeeds, people who are currently having service connections from other service providers will automatically be pulled towards this because they'd see no sense in them coughing out exhorbitant charges only because there was no competition. It will also prove to be a watershed for the current service providers who will have to eventually straight up their act and come up with competitive rates and better services. Monopoly at any time in any service industry will corrupt people, competition will straighten it all out. Maruti, BSNL, Computer manufacturers, mobile service providers are some examples where competition had made things difficult for them to survive in a scenario where once they had to competitors. These companies to our joy have found better ways to attract customers and provide top-notch services for almost the same price as their competitors.

Some links related to this post ....

News in chennaionline.com, a popular e-zine
News reported in business line