QUALITY CRISIS
Bollywood, despite its voluminous output, compares poorly with world cinema
MARK MADE: A still from Saudi Arabia’s Wadjda
In a city known for its frantic filmmaking activities, it is quite ironic that Mumbai lacks a film culture. Barring a few film societies, students and practitioners of the craft of filmmaking who flock to see the city’s yearly International Film Festival — MAMI, most of its denizens are pathetically unaware of the existence of world cinema beyond Hollywood. So when ordinary viewers from the rest of the world derive their creative pleasure from films from diverse countries like South Korea, Iran, Serbia, Israel and even Thailand, Mumbaikars are engrossed in their homegrown fare which this week constituted soggy diets such as Youngistaan, O Teri and Dishkiyaoon!
Efficient marketing can turn a nonentity into a valued product, and as long as it fetches profits, nobody bothers about quality. Bollywood is a successful brand in the world today, making Indians proud of its international reach, whereas in reality it is the NRIs who patronise such mush while serious filmgoers look down upon it as kitsch, worthy of just a cursory glance, marked by condescension or outright rejection.
Not that it matters what the west thinks of our films — and as long as they make money — but when we compare our output with some of the films coming out of countries like Saudi Arabia and Iraq, countries where there has never been any film making culture, one sits up and is forced to take notice, and cringe at the quality (or lack of it) that Bollywood churns out in comparison.
Wadjda (2012) was Saudi Arabia’s bid for Best Foreign Film in the 86th Academy Awards, but it failed to get a nomination. The first Saudi film to be shot by a woman director — Haifaa al-Mansour, the film traces the efforts of a 12-year-old girl, Wadjda, to win a Quranic learning competition in her school. Not because she has any special love for her religion, but because the prize money would enable her to buy a bicycle. When the school takes away her prize-money to contribute it towards the Palestinian cause — because Saudi girls are forbidden to ride two-wheelers or drive cars — her mother, who is fighting her own personal battle against her husband’s plans to take a second wife, buys her a bicycle.
For Haifaa, her insistence on shooting the film on the streets of Riyadh for authenticity was fraught with insurmountable problems, because as a woman she could not publicly mix with her male crew members. She directed her scenes from inside the back of a van, through a walkie-talkie, after conducting extensive workshops with the actors.
It is ironic that a film which is so critical of Saudi Arabia’s stringent religious codes and patriarchal values was at all allowed to be sent to the Oscars, but it points towards a certain hope for the future — that a country that does not have a single theatre or film industry is encouraging such practices. “I think Saudi Arabia is changing a lot,” Haifaa said in an interview, “There is room for women and room for arts.”
Bekas (2012), a Kurdish film from Iraq, another country which lacks a filmmaking infrastructure, unlike its neighbour Iran, traces the journey of two shoeshine boys — brothers Zana, 7, and Dana, 10, who embark on a quixotic journey to reach America on their donkey named Michael Jackson, to meet the Superman, who they believe will alleviate all their problems and pull up Saddam Hussein for causing them so much despair through his wars which claimed their parents.
Director Karzan Kader, who studied filmmaking in Sweden, debuts with this feature that turns a critical look at the state of affairs that existed in the early ‘90s under the dictator. Its striking cinematography, witty moments and accomplished performances by the two kids raise the film beyond its depressing subject and make it endearing to its worldwide audience.
Obsessed Hindi film aficionados need to be aware of such efforts instead of being perennially smug about Bollywood presence in international film festivals where halls go empty. Awareness of world cinema could go a long way in changing audience tastes and the kind of inane films that pass off as entertainment in our country.
Efficient marketing can turn a nonentity into a valued product, and as long as it fetches profits, nobody bothers about quality. Bollywood is a successful brand in the world today, making Indians proud of its international reach, whereas in reality it is the NRIs who patronise such mush while serious filmgoers look down upon it as kitsch, worthy of just a cursory glance, marked by condescension or outright rejection.
Not that it matters what the west thinks of our films — and as long as they make money — but when we compare our output with some of the films coming out of countries like Saudi Arabia and Iraq, countries where there has never been any film making culture, one sits up and is forced to take notice, and cringe at the quality (or lack of it) that Bollywood churns out in comparison.
Wadjda (2012) was Saudi Arabia’s bid for Best Foreign Film in the 86th Academy Awards, but it failed to get a nomination. The first Saudi film to be shot by a woman director — Haifaa al-Mansour, the film traces the efforts of a 12-year-old girl, Wadjda, to win a Quranic learning competition in her school. Not because she has any special love for her religion, but because the prize money would enable her to buy a bicycle. When the school takes away her prize-money to contribute it towards the Palestinian cause — because Saudi girls are forbidden to ride two-wheelers or drive cars — her mother, who is fighting her own personal battle against her husband’s plans to take a second wife, buys her a bicycle.
For Haifaa, her insistence on shooting the film on the streets of Riyadh for authenticity was fraught with insurmountable problems, because as a woman she could not publicly mix with her male crew members. She directed her scenes from inside the back of a van, through a walkie-talkie, after conducting extensive workshops with the actors.
It is ironic that a film which is so critical of Saudi Arabia’s stringent religious codes and patriarchal values was at all allowed to be sent to the Oscars, but it points towards a certain hope for the future — that a country that does not have a single theatre or film industry is encouraging such practices. “I think Saudi Arabia is changing a lot,” Haifaa said in an interview, “There is room for women and room for arts.”
Bekas (2012), a Kurdish film from Iraq, another country which lacks a filmmaking infrastructure, unlike its neighbour Iran, traces the journey of two shoeshine boys — brothers Zana, 7, and Dana, 10, who embark on a quixotic journey to reach America on their donkey named Michael Jackson, to meet the Superman, who they believe will alleviate all their problems and pull up Saddam Hussein for causing them so much despair through his wars which claimed their parents.
Director Karzan Kader, who studied filmmaking in Sweden, debuts with this feature that turns a critical look at the state of affairs that existed in the early ‘90s under the dictator. Its striking cinematography, witty moments and accomplished performances by the two kids raise the film beyond its depressing subject and make it endearing to its worldwide audience.
Obsessed Hindi film aficionados need to be aware of such efforts instead of being perennially smug about Bollywood presence in international film festivals where halls go empty. Awareness of world cinema could go a long way in changing audience tastes and the kind of inane films that pass off as entertainment in our country.
Mumbai Indians have not bid for Indian Super League football franchise
New Delhi: At a time when the apex court has taken a serious view of a cricket board official's conflict of interest in the ownership of an Indian Premier League (IPL) team, another team, Mumbai Indians, has decided against bidding for a franchise in the forthcoming football Indian Super League (ISL).
"Mumbai Indians owners have not put in a bid because IMG-Reliance has been granted the master rights of the ISL to maintain the highest standards of corporate governance," an IMG Reliance source told IANS Thursday from Mumbai.
Bidding for the city-franchises of the IMG-Reliance promoted ISL, backed by the All India Football Federation (AIFF), closed March 27. Mumbai Indians owners IndiaWin Sports is a group company of Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL).
Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Guwahati, Goa, Chennai, Pune and Kochi are the franchises up for auction, and the top eight bidders will get to own the teams in the cities of their choice.
IPL franchises, Shah Rukh Khan's Kolkata Knight Riders and GMR, the promoters of Delhi Daredevils, have both placed bids for the ISL.
Another bidder is a Sourav Ganguly-fronted consortium, which includes the Spanish football club Atletico Madrid.
The source said ISL, to be launched in September, had received 14 bids against the purchase of about 30 'Invitation to Bid' (ITB) documents.
Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Guwahati, Goa, Chennai, Pune and Kochi are the franchises up for auction, and the top eight bidders will get to own the teams in the cities of their choice.
IMG-Reliance, in collaboration with AIFF, has engaged consultants Ernst & Young to evaluate the bids before the ownership of the franchises are announced in the second week of April.
The football league has a clause that insists on corporate social responsibility of owners.
"The mandate for winning a city team in the ISL is not only based on the highest financial bid, but also on the bidders' proposal of a sound plan for developing football in the catchment area they wish to bid," a source in the organisation told
"The bidder has to commit to a community development plan that includes promoting grassroots talent in their city and an academy in the next five years. These key clauses would be part of the deal," he added.
Review: Main Tera Hero is total paisa vasool!
Not exactly meant for family audiences, Main Tera Hero is a refreshingly unpretentious, says Paloma Sharma.
The first in a long enough list of good news is that at least, for once, it is original(ish).
Bollywood has owed us, the faithful, one for a while now and it's been a long time coming.
Perhaps the most refreshing thing about Main Tera Hero is that it features no superstars in the lead role which gives you the chance to watch Varun Dhawan transform from that-guy-who-isn't-Siddharth-Malhotra to Varun Dhawan.
A blend of Salmaan Khan's cool, Shahid Kapoor's energy and Govinda's dance moves, Dhawan redefines the words 'screen presence' with his high-voltage performance.
A slight reminder of a more raw Ranveer Singh from Band Baaja Baaraat, one can only wish Dhawan hadn't debuted with Student of the Year or he'd easily have had a higher ranking among his contemporaries.
Ileana D'Cruz is not to be left behind as Dhawan's love interest, shedding the solemn air from her debut Hindi release (Barfi!) to reveal a more fun side (which I personally prefer).
Dhawan stars as Srinath Prasad, a happy-go-lucky 25-year-old from Coonoor, who is the apple of his mother's eye and the bane of his father's existence. Srinath -- or Seenu, as everyone so lovingly calls him -- hasn't passed out of college in quite a while and his father taunts him over not having earned a degree.
Unable to bear it, he departs from home and ends up in Bangalore at a college called TIFT where he bumps into Sunaina (D'Cruz).
Despite vague warnings from several students, Seenu continues to pursue Sunaina in perfectly filmy fashion but thankfully, this film also features minimal rowdy behaviour on the hero's part, as well as consent.
Sunaina too has feelings for Seenu but is terrified into silence by her fears of what her stalker and his gang of TIFT's most notorious boys might do to him.
Sunaina's stalker is no ordinary man. He is the feared Angad Negi (Arunoday Singh) -- a powerful police officer with severe anger issues who has manipulated Sunaina into agreeing to marry him -- but Seenu is not afraid of him.
Ever the trickster, Seenu devices plan to save Sunaina from Angad but unbeknownst to the three of them, someone else is in the picture; and like Angad, she too equates love with possession.
Before I go any further I should probably clarify that after bearing Aisha and Jism 2, Main Tera Hero has made me fall just a little bit in love with Arunoday Singh. His transition from the big, bad cop to nothing more than soft putty in his lady love's hands is aww-inducing.
Singh displays great comic timing and greater range as he goes through the film delicately balancing Inspector Angad Negi's persona between black and white.
Negi's assistant, Peter, is portrayed by the evergreen Rajpal Yadav who is back in his element after a while. I'm grateful to the makers of Main Tera Hero for giving Yadav the kind of screen time he deserves to be able to truly entertain, and not just be a jester in the court of the kings and queens of Bollywood.
Incidentally, Yadav also has a kissing scene of sorts. Watch out for that one.
After two cringe-worthy releases (Gang of Ghosts and O Teri), Anupam Kher is seen enjoying his screen space as Vikrant, the bhai from India to Africa, who has only one weakness -- his daughter, Ayesha (Nargis Fakhri).
Kher's cheesy, insipid act (and I mean that in a good way) is just the boost that Main Tera Hero needed in the second half of the film. Meanwhile, Fakhri has improved by leaps and bounds but is yet to really get there.
Main Tera Hero rests almost solely on the bases of strong performances extracted by a tough taskmaster, director David Dhawan -- who makes a surprisingly clean film for the most part but doesn't seem to have been able to resist the temptation to indulge in a few less-than-tasteful jokes post-interval.
The second half is primarily where the problem lies. The script dwindles slightly. Too many characters with too many subplots emerge, messing things up for a bit.
Nevertheless, Main Tera Hero keeps you on your feet and Milap Zaveri's crisp dialogues never fail to extract a chuckle. Artfully edited and kept at just the right length of 128 minutes, it never gives you a chance to yawn.
The soundtrack is thankfully devoid of the usual mandatory sufi-pop track and instead chooses to go the masala way, which suits the energy film a lot more. However, the songs still remain largely unrelated to the story and keep cropping up randomly.
Main Tera Hero largely belongs to Varun Dhawan but not exclusively so.
It is to him what Ajab Prem Ki Ghajab Kahani was to Ranbir Kapoor -- and Main Tera Hero could have been there, at the same level as APKGK, had a little more thought been put into the production design.
Main Tera Hero succeeds where films like R... Rajkumar, Chennai Express and Phata Poster Nikla Hero failed.
Not exactly suitable for family audiences, Main Tera Hero is a total seeti-maar, paisa vasool film and refreshingly unpretentious.
The first in a long enough list of good news is that at least, for once, it is original(ish).
Bollywood has owed us, the faithful, one for a while now and it's been a long time coming.
Perhaps the most refreshing thing about Main Tera Hero is that it features no superstars in the lead role which gives you the chance to watch Varun Dhawan transform from that-guy-who-isn't-Siddharth-Malhotra to Varun Dhawan.
A blend of Salmaan Khan's cool, Shahid Kapoor's energy and Govinda's dance moves, Dhawan redefines the words 'screen presence' with his high-voltage performance.
A slight reminder of a more raw Ranveer Singh from Band Baaja Baaraat, one can only wish Dhawan hadn't debuted with Student of the Year or he'd easily have had a higher ranking among his contemporaries.
Ileana D'Cruz is not to be left behind as Dhawan's love interest, shedding the solemn air from her debut Hindi release (Barfi!) to reveal a more fun side (which I personally prefer).
Dhawan stars as Srinath Prasad, a happy-go-lucky 25-year-old from Coonoor, who is the apple of his mother's eye and the bane of his father's existence. Srinath -- or Seenu, as everyone so lovingly calls him -- hasn't passed out of college in quite a while and his father taunts him over not having earned a degree.
Unable to bear it, he departs from home and ends up in Bangalore at a college called TIFT where he bumps into Sunaina (D'Cruz).
Despite vague warnings from several students, Seenu continues to pursue Sunaina in perfectly filmy fashion but thankfully, this film also features minimal rowdy behaviour on the hero's part, as well as consent.
Sunaina too has feelings for Seenu but is terrified into silence by her fears of what her stalker and his gang of TIFT's most notorious boys might do to him.
Sunaina's stalker is no ordinary man. He is the feared Angad Negi (Arunoday Singh) -- a powerful police officer with severe anger issues who has manipulated Sunaina into agreeing to marry him -- but Seenu is not afraid of him.
Ever the trickster, Seenu devices plan to save Sunaina from Angad but unbeknownst to the three of them, someone else is in the picture; and like Angad, she too equates love with possession.
Before I go any further I should probably clarify that after bearing Aisha and Jism 2, Main Tera Hero has made me fall just a little bit in love with Arunoday Singh. His transition from the big, bad cop to nothing more than soft putty in his lady love's hands is aww-inducing.
Singh displays great comic timing and greater range as he goes through the film delicately balancing Inspector Angad Negi's persona between black and white.
Negi's assistant, Peter, is portrayed by the evergreen Rajpal Yadav who is back in his element after a while. I'm grateful to the makers of Main Tera Hero for giving Yadav the kind of screen time he deserves to be able to truly entertain, and not just be a jester in the court of the kings and queens of Bollywood.
Incidentally, Yadav also has a kissing scene of sorts. Watch out for that one.
After two cringe-worthy releases (Gang of Ghosts and O Teri), Anupam Kher is seen enjoying his screen space as Vikrant, the bhai from India to Africa, who has only one weakness -- his daughter, Ayesha (Nargis Fakhri).
Kher's cheesy, insipid act (and I mean that in a good way) is just the boost that Main Tera Hero needed in the second half of the film. Meanwhile, Fakhri has improved by leaps and bounds but is yet to really get there.
Main Tera Hero rests almost solely on the bases of strong performances extracted by a tough taskmaster, director David Dhawan -- who makes a surprisingly clean film for the most part but doesn't seem to have been able to resist the temptation to indulge in a few less-than-tasteful jokes post-interval.
The second half is primarily where the problem lies. The script dwindles slightly. Too many characters with too many subplots emerge, messing things up for a bit.
Nevertheless, Main Tera Hero keeps you on your feet and Milap Zaveri's crisp dialogues never fail to extract a chuckle. Artfully edited and kept at just the right length of 128 minutes, it never gives you a chance to yawn.
The soundtrack is thankfully devoid of the usual mandatory sufi-pop track and instead chooses to go the masala way, which suits the energy film a lot more. However, the songs still remain largely unrelated to the story and keep cropping up randomly.
Main Tera Hero largely belongs to Varun Dhawan but not exclusively so.
It is to him what Ajab Prem Ki Ghajab Kahani was to Ranbir Kapoor -- and Main Tera Hero could have been there, at the same level as APKGK, had a little more thought been put into the production design.
Main Tera Hero succeeds where films like R... Rajkumar, Chennai Express and Phata Poster Nikla Hero failed.
Not exactly suitable for family audiences, Main Tera Hero is a total seeti-maar, paisa vasool film and refreshingly unpretentious.
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