Moviemania (or to be precise, "Movie mania")

The moment I started writing this posting, I noticed the red wiggly under the word moviemania. It’s a surprise that “moviemania” does not exist in the dictionary as a single word – well, at least not in the MS-Word dictionary. Anyways, I love watching movies and my style of watching movies is not about getting a CD at home and watching it on “home theatre”… for one, I don’t have a home theatre… I used to have a kinda one – a Sony system bought from Malaysia some 10 years back which I retired couple of months back (it’s still taking some shelf space so if you are an antique collector, be my guest!). In any case, I don’t want to have a home theatre (in case this posting is read by an enterprising salesperson, pls don’t bother) because watching movie at home is as good as kissing your beau over phone. Good but not good enough (more often than not, kiss over the phone is a majboori). Movies should be watched in style… it should be an event… you must spend good 4 hours on this activity and you must watch it in a real theatre…

I am fortunate to have friends who share this passion and we end up watching a movie almost every weekend… you can spot me, Priti (my wife), Munje (oops, sorry – Munjay) and Dolly (Munje’s wife) at E-square almost every Saturday/Sunday (in case you are planning to kidnap me for a ransom, the movie theatre plan will not work because we are shrewd and wise enough to go for a different timing everytime… an easier plan might be on my way or back from the office... or may be not!... in any case, kidnapping me may not be such a good idea – try an easier pick like Laloo… if not anything, you will get some chara (fodder) or alkatra (tar) as ransom)

Coming back to the topic of movies, the real issue with watching movie in a theatre is that it really hurts when the movie is a cropper… The year 2008 started very well with lots of good movies… but last few months have been really bad (including Rab Ne..., Singh is King (sorry Harsh) and Ghajini)… I think “A Wednesday” was the last good movie that I saw in the theatre… a movie like “Welcome to Sajjanpur” is good enough to watch at home (without a home theatre, mind it and no CD please, let it get released on UTV movies) but not in a theatre… a movie has to be really good if watched in the theatre (or hall)… I was fortunate enough not to watch Rab Ne… Munje SMSed me from the movie hall that he was choking to death and I must send an ambulance along with paramedics for his rescue… That was good enough a hint for me not to watch the movie…

Tlatest that I watched was “Delhi 6”… I did not know much about the movie (in fact, the only thing that I try to figure out about a movie is if it’s “good” or “bad” – once you get more details like story etc, its no fun watching the movie)… just knew that it had Rahman’s music and the song “Masak ali” is pretty catchy… I had seen some promos and realized that it was based in Delhi (yup, the name also suggests so!). Anyways the movie was a real sixer… a real mind boggler… I wonder what the director was trying to show… and why the movie is called what it’s called… Someone told me that it’ because the place shown (Chandni Chowk) in the movie carries the zip code “6” in Delhi but I think differently. It's because there are some 6 stories running in parallel –
- The story of “Kala Bandar” or black monkey (someone told me that one Harbhajan Singh is refusing to even talk about this movie out there in New Zealand… guess he thinks he is pretty close to Australia and any monkey talk can land him in trouble)
- The story of a 2nd generation Indian American trying to come in terms with his roots
- The story of the sweet romance between Abhishek and Sonam (difficult to believe that this skinny girl used to weigh 90 kgs only a few years back – there is hope for people like me)
- The story of a girl from a lower middle class family, trying to fight her destiny (Am sure the Sony folks have paid a bomb for getting “Indian Idol” mentioned so often)
- The story of the fragile Hindu-Muslim peace and unity in this country
- The story of an untouchable and the double standards of the society around untouchability

I know there are many more stories but unless I limit this number to 6, my theory around the name of the movie fails!

All in all, this would have been a good novel to read… it’s a good “art” movie under the wraps of commercial cinema – may be to attract the multiplex crowd (which essentially decides the fates of the movie these days)…
If you haven’t watched it, don’t bother – wait for it to get released on UTV movies or Sony or whatever…

That's all for this edition... Till next time - Dasvidaniya...

ps - My comments on Dasvidaniya (the movie) in the next edition (whenever that happens!)