Movie Review: Freaky Chakra

Freaky Chakra (2003) was certainly an offbeat film in current Yo-Bangalore.
I had been meaning to watch this for the past two years, mainly cause it seemed so weird. Needless to say I had no access to it, unless I was willing to spring 15 $ for it. When I had asked my local Bollywood video rental guy then he had said " Yeh Freaky Chakra Wakra nahi hai".
Freaky Chakra is made by VK Prakash & Ziba Bhagwar (who also co-wrote the screenplay). It is an interesting movie with The Writer(Ranvir Shorey/VJ Ranvir Shorey) introducing the characters as the story unwinds. Deepti Naval is Ms. Janaki Thomas, a doctor by training who gave up being a doctor after she was unable to save her husband and now works as a beautician for corpses. She has an absolutely stunning apartment in Bangalore. Obviously a lot of though went into planning it, or maybe they just rented it as is. Anyway it is aesthetically pleasing to see her apartment. Her life is seemingly hard because she goes around complaining about everything. One gets to see the mundanity of her life and the depressing circle of life she leads with her (seeming) high point of the day being an obscene call in the night from her perverted neighbor, Mr. Sundaram (Sachin Khedekar). In person Mr. Sundaram is in love with her and comes to her apartment with a series of ailments since he has heard she is a doctor and she slams the door on his face denying her medical training. In the building also live Babloo and Bunty, two sardarji kids, who are adoreably naughty and keep bothering her. So far seems like a boring life, which it is.

The writer comes in between to add comments here and there to help us understand the characters better. Anyway to add some spice to this we add a young 19 year old guy who " is worried about medical school, is horny all the time and is a virgin" priorities of which change in his worried mind. Once he enters the storyline there is an element of freshness which love brings to ones life. And the writer and Mr. Sundaram get affected by it.

Overall the story is laid back and might not have too much depth to it, but it certainly is interesting. Some of the dialogues are funny, stupidly funny. And the dialogues have things like Hey Da, what is going on? Hey Man, what are u doing?. The music by Ousepacchan is pretty cool (definitely south indian)(and has a piece by Chopin, which does repeat a lot). It is very Yo for the most part, not that I mean it in a bad way. It is a lighthearted love story between the 19 yr old kid and the 40 odd year old Ms. Thomas. There are a couple of 'clean' shower scenes, which I guess is as much steaminess as an Indian movie can show, though they make fun of the censors and went with an A rating. Overall, it is a fun movie and is an addition to the Indi-English Movies Repertoire. Perfect for a lazy weekend.

Movie Review: Morning Raga

Morning Raga was an absolutely stunning movie, I mean that mainly in visuals. If the music does not appeal to ones sensibilities, at least the visuals will. It features a lot of standard south indian carnatic music, not to mean that it is not great.
Morning Raga (2004) is directed by Mahesh Dattani, (whose previous movie was again an offbeat movie- Mango Souffle). The movie is mainly in English with Telugu interspersed here and there.
Morning Raga has a simplistic story which leaves one free to take in the visual & musical splendor. Shabana Azmi is 'Swarnalatha' who is a musician in the village. Her accompanist on the violin (Vaishnavi) is the mother of the main protagonist 'Abhinay' (Prakash Rao). The other female protagonist is 'Pinkie' (Perizaad Zorabian) who is also musically inclined.
The movie starts with a great title song which also moves the movie forward and gives one a sense of the life 'Swarnalatha' leads and the important relation between the Singer and the Accompanist. Her dream is to sing in the city and she gets her break to perform in the city though her accompanist does not want to leave the village to go to the city. As movies go the bus in which Swarnalatha, her son Madhav, Vaishnavi, Abhinay are travelling to the city collides with a car driven by a drunk man on a bridge, causing the bus to plummet down killing a lot of people including Madhav and Vaishnavi. Leaving Abhinay motherless and Swarnalatha filled with guilt and childless we zoom forward 20 years to a time where Abhinay is in his probably late 20s working on creating Jingles for ads. He quits and moves back to the village, where his father (Naseer) is a landlord/landowner. He does not care much for managing the land and wants to start a music group.
He meets Pinkie in the village in an accident (it is a movie, afterall). He re-connects with Swarnalatha, falls in love with Pinkie, creates a music group and resolves the guilt among them and moves onward to create great music. (Of course Pinkie has a past which connects hers to theirs, afterall what was she doing in the village one would be bound to ask).

The movie is based in a village in Andhra and Hyderabad. It is a juxtaposition of the traditional village with the Ipod/Powerbook totting genXer. Shabana Azmi is great in her role, in comparison to whom the rest do not have as much depth in their characters, but Prakash Rao does a great job, being the proud young man; Perizaad is perfect for the city girl who stands out and she seems pretty good in her role. The other members have very little to contribute as such. The photography seems very well thought out as is the wardrobe for the characters.

The real talent though is the visuals and the vocal music. Some of the contrast of playing music in fields was pretty interesting. While the topic can seem overly pretentious, it does not come across as such. While I am not sure if carnatic music snobs would appreciate it, but in the current time when the current generation is so disconnected with the rich musical past which India possesses movies like this can help rejuvenate an interest. And any movie which is not about dancing in the streets of Switzerland or on the Brooklyn Bridge wearing Gap clothes should be appreciated for the different movie which it is.

Review: Indian Fish in American Waters

Well...What can I say...except if I were Manish Gupta, I would probably go incognito or at least not announce it proudly at the end of a crap fest that it was a Manish Gupta film.
I think one can get a very good idea of where this is going.....I am not even going to do my usual movie review here.
I envision a brainstorming session before this movie was created:
1. Why mess with the 'perfection' ie Karan Johar/Yash Chopra/Generic Bollywood crap..we shall stay in the box.
2. Let us make it as filmy as possible.
3. Let us use as many stereotypical characters, after all average is great, since we are making a movie reaching across labels.
4. Let us cram as many bad songs (with the possible exception of one), the usual amount being 4-5, so let us fit it all in...Oh wait we are making a movie in English, hmmn that means the length of the movie will be say around 94 mins. Oh what the hell we will compromise and put in a few songs in English and maybe throw in some Indian music. ...yeah sounds great let us fit in 4-5 songs in English (+ 1 in Indian Classical music)..that is a 'win win' situation.

Sure sounds like a great movie...I can see the oscars pouring in acclaiming the cinematic masterpiece which is ' Indian Fish in American Waters'.
Okay now that I am done venting...here is the review if you still care..trust me the story is couple of lines....my comments are a lot lot lot longer.
Desi guy Navin Reddy (FOB, let me quote the movie " No offense meant labels are just to categorize") from Hyderabad comes to the US (of course to NYC) works in scumbag desifirm run by Bobby Patel. Megha Patel (ABCD) comes to meet Bobby Patel (Patel, no relation in case people were thinking this was a great movie about incest, that at least would have been interesting). supposedly to do research on FOBs, even though Megha works in advertising. Anyway she meets Navin Reddy who in a song goes out with her and falls in love and runs around trees( oh wait he does not do that..I just got it they were rebelling in the movie..OMG). Bobby is the 'villain' who is in love with Megha...wait I am not not going to continue with this story..skip to the end..airport flight to catch....engagement before that with villain.....villain good guy...before the end throw in some scenes very badly inspired by 'Meet the Parents'.. all friends and family make them get back....kiss kiss hug hug..FOB & ABCD live happily ever after ...bridging labels....amazing...

When I saw Mitr my friend, I thought this is bad (stereotypically bad, Revathy bad). When I saw American Desi, I thought that was crap, compared to a similarly themed movie Bollywood/Hollywood. But man now that I have seen this, Bollywood/Hollywood deserves an Oscar.

Okay let me try to focus on the good in the movie....hmmmn..that is easy ....it is over!!!!!
Shweta Melhotra is sort of fine in her role, as is Raj Vasudeva. The End.