Cheeni Kum -- Review

Cheeni Kum was a long awaited movie and a bunch of us friends got a chance to watch it last night at the Theaters here.

The premise of the story is around two protagonists ... Buddhadeb Dasgupta (Amitabh Bacchan), owner of a high profile Indian restaurant, Spice6, in London and Nina Verma (Tabu), a Delhi based software engineer visiting her friend Shalini, at London. The movie starts with proud and arrogant Buddha having a tiff with Tabu, who thinks his top class Zafrani Pulao is too sweet for her taste and she comes back with her own authentic Zafrani Pulao. This event bowls Buddha over and an unusual romance builds between them. This provides amusement to the restaurant employees, who get a break from their tough boss and also to Buddha's mom (an amazing Zohra Sehgal) and cute 9-yr old neighbor Sexy (the very cute Swini Khara).

The romance builds around Nina coming back daily to the restaurant to return his umbrella on rainy London evenings. Eventually, Buddha lets go off his guard and falls for this intriguing women. There is a problem however, Buddha is 64 years old and Nina is only 34 years old. The two are convinced they need to get married. Its easy to convince Buddha's mom. But its very hard to convince Nina's dad (Paresh Rawal), who himself is only 58 years old. How the mission is accomplished forms the rest of the plot.

There are a lot of amazing things about this movie. Foremost are the performance of Amitabh and Tabu. They are just natural for this role, as though they were going through it in real life. Amitabh's performance as a snooty, arrogant and proud chef is amazing. He has the best dialogues in the movie ... a non stop stream of one liners ... they are far too many of them, that tickle the funny rib. Tabu at the same time is no-nonsense, refusing to let go of her ideals but at the same time very human.

Sexy is the best supporting role in her cute part giving "romantic" advice of a 9-yr old to Buddha. Her fundas would shock anybody. Zohra Sehgal has an amazing energy going even in this advanced stage of her life, she is 95 yrs old now! She has a very cute dance at the end of the movie.

The rest of the crew plays a very good support cast, especially the chefs who keep making fun of one another, particularly the one with teeth jumping out of his mouth ;-)

The soundtrack is very awesome, especially given that Illaiyaraja has composed the music. He has reused a lot of his past work in Tamil and Kannada movies. Shreya Ghoshal has sung all songs to perfection.

First time director Balakrishnan, who was formerly an Ad Man has done a fantastic job, keeping the movie fast paced with loads of comedy.

On the flip side, the movie loses pace in the second half. It could have used some crisp editing. Paresh Rawal's talents are mostly unused, which is very sad, given his amazing comic abilities. The comedy dries up too, in the second half.

Nevertheless, it is a worthy watch ... maybe worth watching a second time too and owning the DVD for those laughs, isn't a bad idea. :-)

"Shwaas" -- a movie worth watching

We recently watched Shwaas. It is a marathi movie made in 2004 which was India's official entry to the Oscars that year.

The movie is the story of a Grandfather and grandson who live in Rural Konkan region. The child is 4 years old and is stuck with cancer of the retina. The grandfather brings the kid to the city for the treatment and the news of the cancer is revealed. It is a really hard moment because the kid has a choice between blindness for the rest of his life or death ... if he chooses to live, it means that he can never easily pursue his favorite passion of education.

The emotional movie has many a touching moment including the "climax" where the child has one nice evening to remember before his operation and the moment where he stumbles upon the realization that he'll be blinded forever. Ooh! I am getting goosebumps typing this :-)

The kid portrayed by talented Ashwin Chitale and the grandfather by Arun Nalawade have put in Stellar performances. They have been very well supported by Sandeep Kulkarni as Dr. Sane, Amrutha Subhash as Ashawari the social worker and Ganesh Manjrekar as the kid's uncle.

Bhaskar Chandavarkar's music is perfect for the movie's setting.

I'd definitely recommend watching it. Read here for a full plot summary

The inspiring story of Suresh Kamath

"Suresh Kamath, the managing director of Chennai based Laser Soft Infosystems Ltd is an unusual man. Unlike most other entrepreneurs, he does not aspire to create a business empire; his sole ambition is to provide employment to 10,000 people. He also plans to reserve 40 per cent of the jobs for the disabled."

Read the whole story

The old woman who gave her town a swimming pool

An inspiring video of how Maisie raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in her own simple and inspiring way.

"The Namesake" -- my review

After procrastinating on this for a while, Ramya and I finally watched "The Namesake". It was well worth the wait :-)

Premise

The story, as must be already known, is about the immigrant Ganguli family (Irrfan Khan and Tabu) in upstate New York and their two children Gogol (Kal Penn) and Sonia (Sahira Nair). The movie begins in a bit of a flashback around Irrfan and Tabu's marriage. They make a very cute couple who are beginning a new life together. Then the children arrive and gradually grow up among their white counterparts. Somewhere along the way, Gogol hits a roadblock about his name where everyone starts teasing him about its weirdness and he feels left out. This leads to constant bickering with the parents about why they named him so. The name incidentally happens to be derived from Nikholai Gogol, a favorite author of Irrfan.

The rest of the movie is about how Gogol comes about to discover the links behind his name and eventually discovers the peace and freedom which has always been missing in his life and leads to all the confusion and battles of his life.

First off, what really impressed me about this movie is how well the story has been formulated. Jhumpa Lahiri's work is really amazing. What is more amazing is how well Mira Nair has brought to life such a complex story to life without getting drawn into lazy frills or avoiding difficult shots. That, for me, is the mark of a true filmmaker.

The other two winners of the movie are music and cinematography. The movie starts off in the mid-70s and ends somewhere in the last couple of years. The music shifts according to the different eras and different moods. It literally drew us to become involved in the movie. The background voice for Tabu's hindustani alaaps are really haunting. But, our favorite was definitely the sexy remix of Mukesh's soulful "Yeh Mera Deewanapan". No one could guess that this song could be remixed!!

The camera work has been stunning in being able to capture the beauty of New York and Kolkata. Ramya, who lived in New York for many years was continuously baffled about what part of the city was being showed! The shots were stunning. Kolkata has always been famous as the city of joy and the camera work has captured the dizzy life of the city. We were left with the feeling of being home and wanting to visit Kolkata on our next trip to India :-)

As far as acting goes, Irrfan, Tabu and Kal Penn shine in their own right. Irrfan has played the sensitive role of a dad with aplomb. He doesn't push his son too hard to discover everything about life. He gives the gentle nudges required but then again gives his son the space that is required by children to discover life. Irrfan's scene where he has a long chat with Kal Penn was definitely very moving and brought out the value of being a dad, really well.

Tabu plays the role of a wife and mom in a way that probably only she could. She is shown to be a normal, everyday woman who loves her family like crazy and is deeply strong and powerful yet kind and gentle on the top. Aren't all our moms like that? :-) Yet, in the latter half of the movie she emerges as a brave woman who is out to balance and shoulder the responsibilities of the family. Her scenes in this part of the movie are sensitive and very moving.

Kal Penn has evolved a lot from playing the boorish college kid in "Harold and Kumar go to White Castle". There are shades of that at the beginning of the movie. He then gradually evolves to playing the confused kid in the middle of the movie making interesting decisions about his lifestyle and preferences. But where the really best part of his role emerges is towards the ending where he is forced to take a long look at life. He could have been a lot more human in his emotions but still manages to get the message across.

The rest of the cast is mostly ok and doesn't have much of screen time to make any impact. The movie running time is mostly ok, though it drags towards the end. The ending could have received some crisp editing.

That apart, its a fabulous movie ... a movie at the end of which, Ramya and I got into a long winded discussion about parents, parenting, immigrants and life in India. You'll surely would want to do that :-) We plan to send a gift of this DVD to our parents as soon as it releases ... this is one of the better tributes we could give to them, for the fine job they've done!

Random observations from a weekend at the beach

This last weekend had gorgeous weather ... so, Ramya and I took the opportunity to visit the Santa Cruz and Monterey beaches. On Saturday, we went to Santa Cruz with my sister's family including her 3 yr old tiny tot Tarun. On Sunday, we went to Monterey's 17-mile drive with Ramya's cousin.

There are few interesting things I noted ...

• no matter how many sea gulls' photos I take, I am always excited to take lot more of them!
• sunny days cannot have any impact on cold beaches
• cold beaches can't turn away excited kids who somehow get great joy in running into the waves
• kids run around in the cutest outfits such as Tarun's white vest and trainer pants. Of course, girls of his age have more colorful stuff to wear! ;-)
• If there are too many boulders on the path to the water then the crowd stays at a comfortable distance and prefers to take photographs
• The ones who tread past the boulders are guaranteed the pure joy of tredding on untrodden sands
• Older uncles and aunts have a nice way of romancing, that can be inspiring to us, the younger lot ;-)
• Squirrels, who are normally shy, get past their reserved nature and dare to jump into people's pockets, if the pockets contain food.
• Dippin' dots, that claim to be the future of ice cream, are really tasty and unleash the taste of ice cream in your mouth even though they don't seem to be able to do that
• its great to get face painting done, especially if its similar to the one your spouse got ... it triggers stares from the older folks and giggles from the kids.

LA-gannada for dummies

Years ago, a bunch of us friends in Los Angeles invented a new form of Kannada called LA-gannada. Following is a small tutorial in la-gannada to help people become better
users of this wonderful langwaze. it is by no means complete. Examples, where needed, are in red.

Some basic conversions:

• alaa -- "hello", a form of greeting
• bezaan -- "bejaan", a lot
• biskit -- "biscuit" or taking for a ride
• bondbidthu -- "came off" (Eg: yelligo hoytha idhe suddenaagi naayi bondbidthu -- was going somewhere and a dog came off)
• chamak -- taking for a ride
• checchax -- smashing away to glory
• chitranna -- reduced to pieces
• coolamma -- a more english version of kewlamma
• coolagiru -- suggestion to some1 whoz acting hyper to cool down
• enzaai -- "enjoy", a suggestion to start enjoying
• fleece -- "Please"
• fleeco -- A major request
• foozaari -- "poojari" or priest
• frazay -- "praje" or a disciple/subject
• gaan -- destroyed/finished
• hifi -- something too good
• hoytha idhe -- "was going"
• kewlamma -- exclamation following something relieving
• lavalamma -- exclamation following an achievement not possible by ordinary mortals
• naayi thara -- something too good
• nimazzi -- "nimm ajji"
• soofar -- something too good
• tofi -- "topi" or taking for a ride
• vaagbudnaa -- shall we take off?
• vaana -- abbreviated form of vaagbudnaa (Eg: yelligo hoytha idhe -- was going somewhere)
• yaffo yaffo -- exclamation
• yaffo yaffo dileefouraffo -- major exclamation
• Conversyaa Rules
• ([A-Za-z]*)[ts]ion --> \1sy[aa]+ where \1 is the Regular Expression in parantheses
• english word --> la-gannada equivalent
• conversion --> conversyaa
• permission --> permisya
• promotion --> promosyaa
• any occurence of p followed by h has to be changed to p (ex: philadelphia --> piladelpia)
• any occurrence of p not followed by h has to be changed to f (ex: paper --> fafer)
• cryptography --> cryftograpy