sashank_kini-1
Joined Feb 2007
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When we were kids, we played a popular game called 'Simon says'. In this game, one kid from the group became 'Simon' and issued instructions to the rest of the group, like 'Simon says sit' or 'Simon says jump'. The person who failed to perform the action immediately lost the game and sat out until the winner was declared. The six contestants who compete in a reality show that offers the winner a chance of the lifetime to shake hands with President George Bush (now former President, of course) are so hare-brained and crotchety they'd all fail in first round of a Simon Says game, forget making the list of NDTV's top entrepreneurs (as the film states. The only way this can be justifiable is if NDTV is equally harebrained) or worse, representing India to greet a President. It isn't just the contestant choice that's ridiculous but the selection committee itself which includes two unhinged women who conduct a series of absurd tasks in elimination rounds. It's really a stretch to believe that the US consulate would these circus freaks to work for them, who seem fitter as inmates of a mental asylum. The only reality shows that fits the bill for these cartoons is the garish 'Timeout with Imam', the Indian 'reality show' (though it's obviously scripted) that's currently polluting MTV India. For those unfamiliar with the show, think Spencer Pratt & Heidi Montag.
Actor-director Kunaal Roy Kapoor's satirical mockumentary is too incredulous to work as a satire or mockumentary, and edges on farce with non-stop tomfoolery. The characters in 'The President is Coming' are so in-your-face obnoxious and in-each-other's faces offensive that they put you off so much, you'd wish that carnivorous plant from Cadbury Bournville commercial would devour them up. These aren't likable caricatures, like Sheldon Cooper in Big Bang Theory or Meryl Streep's wonderful Camilla Bowner in 'Web Therapy', whose verbal darts during their repartees are sharp but don't hurt. In 'The President is Coming', the characters want to draw blood every time they open their mouths. At one point, a guy asks a girl 'Are you a sl*t?... A wh*re?' (later, it is found that the girl had recorded a sex-tape with another male contestant in the past) like he's asking about weather. Even the wicked Barney Stinson from comedy series How I Met Your Mother would've been more tactful.
There are seven contenders fighting for the title of 'The Most offensive character' in the film. Let's begin with the host Samantha Patel, a bossy uptight always-Miss-Right anchor who dons Barkha Dutt's bob cut. There's hardly a moment where we don't see her putting down her timid protégé Ritu Johnson and telling her who has the last word. She's later found to be a kleptomaniac stealing cutlery and statues from the location of the reality show. It's surprising that this character, who wants to remain in the spotlight always, doesn't ask the reality-show's camera-man (who's off-screen, holding the camera, through which we view all the action) for close-ups, or come too close to the camera only to block others from view.
The six contestants include Maya Roy, an author who loves the works of Ernest Hemingway, except she thinks she's better. A strong-minded forward-thinking divorcée, she is irked by the misogynistic, homophobic, antediluvian thinking of co-contestant Ajay Karlekar, a Hindutva social worker who believes he and George Bush share the same qualities (he's got that right, at least). She is also very shrewd, using contestants' weaknesses to get them eliminated. One victim is South Indian Ramesh S., a closeted homosexual who is learns all the rules of straight-flirtation but never gets them right. Then there is billionaire's daughter and budding entrepreneur Archana, a scatterbrained brown skin Paris Hilton without the puppies, and Rohit Seth, an accent trainer running the unimaginatively named 'Speak easy'; this is the couple that was involved in the sex tape scandal. The guy who asks her whether she's a sl*t is Kapil Dev Dholakia, a stockbroker who can speak stocks and shares very easily but nothing else. When asked what the capital of US is, he replies 'Dow Jones'. The film gives this painful guy a sweet revenge by dressing him up as Madonna in the Round 'American Masquerade'.
You just can't choose some who calls Osama Bin Laden as Sri Sri Ravi Shankar as one of the top six contestants of any quiz based reality show, especially one where the winner meets Mr. Bush. One just can't be so ignorant, so offensive and so ludicrous unless paid handsomely by the TV to act this way. There's also some obvious blunders for which no explanations are provided. Firstly, where's the entire crew that's shooting the event? Are we to believe one that there's only person shooting AND operating the boom mic (a device to capture sound. Oftentimes makes special appearance in films due to careless editing) and there's no security except one mousy watchman? And why would one character reveal a maleficent hidden agenda in front of TV cams and security cams? All these annoyances and blunders rob the spotlight from moments of mild delight.
Ernest Hemingway once said 'The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof sh*t detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it'. Anuvab Pal may not even make it to the long list of such writers. His film reeks.
Actor-director Kunaal Roy Kapoor's satirical mockumentary is too incredulous to work as a satire or mockumentary, and edges on farce with non-stop tomfoolery. The characters in 'The President is Coming' are so in-your-face obnoxious and in-each-other's faces offensive that they put you off so much, you'd wish that carnivorous plant from Cadbury Bournville commercial would devour them up. These aren't likable caricatures, like Sheldon Cooper in Big Bang Theory or Meryl Streep's wonderful Camilla Bowner in 'Web Therapy', whose verbal darts during their repartees are sharp but don't hurt. In 'The President is Coming', the characters want to draw blood every time they open their mouths. At one point, a guy asks a girl 'Are you a sl*t?... A wh*re?' (later, it is found that the girl had recorded a sex-tape with another male contestant in the past) like he's asking about weather. Even the wicked Barney Stinson from comedy series How I Met Your Mother would've been more tactful.
There are seven contenders fighting for the title of 'The Most offensive character' in the film. Let's begin with the host Samantha Patel, a bossy uptight always-Miss-Right anchor who dons Barkha Dutt's bob cut. There's hardly a moment where we don't see her putting down her timid protégé Ritu Johnson and telling her who has the last word. She's later found to be a kleptomaniac stealing cutlery and statues from the location of the reality show. It's surprising that this character, who wants to remain in the spotlight always, doesn't ask the reality-show's camera-man (who's off-screen, holding the camera, through which we view all the action) for close-ups, or come too close to the camera only to block others from view.
The six contestants include Maya Roy, an author who loves the works of Ernest Hemingway, except she thinks she's better. A strong-minded forward-thinking divorcée, she is irked by the misogynistic, homophobic, antediluvian thinking of co-contestant Ajay Karlekar, a Hindutva social worker who believes he and George Bush share the same qualities (he's got that right, at least). She is also very shrewd, using contestants' weaknesses to get them eliminated. One victim is South Indian Ramesh S., a closeted homosexual who is learns all the rules of straight-flirtation but never gets them right. Then there is billionaire's daughter and budding entrepreneur Archana, a scatterbrained brown skin Paris Hilton without the puppies, and Rohit Seth, an accent trainer running the unimaginatively named 'Speak easy'; this is the couple that was involved in the sex tape scandal. The guy who asks her whether she's a sl*t is Kapil Dev Dholakia, a stockbroker who can speak stocks and shares very easily but nothing else. When asked what the capital of US is, he replies 'Dow Jones'. The film gives this painful guy a sweet revenge by dressing him up as Madonna in the Round 'American Masquerade'.
You just can't choose some who calls Osama Bin Laden as Sri Sri Ravi Shankar as one of the top six contestants of any quiz based reality show, especially one where the winner meets Mr. Bush. One just can't be so ignorant, so offensive and so ludicrous unless paid handsomely by the TV to act this way. There's also some obvious blunders for which no explanations are provided. Firstly, where's the entire crew that's shooting the event? Are we to believe one that there's only person shooting AND operating the boom mic (a device to capture sound. Oftentimes makes special appearance in films due to careless editing) and there's no security except one mousy watchman? And why would one character reveal a maleficent hidden agenda in front of TV cams and security cams? All these annoyances and blunders rob the spotlight from moments of mild delight.
Ernest Hemingway once said 'The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof sh*t detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it'. Anuvab Pal may not even make it to the long list of such writers. His film reeks.
Tamil A.L. Vijay's Thalaivaa has courted controversy after theaters in Chennai which originally intended to play the film received bomb threats, thus leading to a no-show on the first week of its release. It has however reached a cinema hall in the quaint but economically mushrooming city of Vadodara, my home-town. And my brothers, or rather bros, in Chennai, consider yourself saved (except for that poor fan-boy who committed suicide after his idol Vijay 's ( i.e. the lead actor and not A.L. Vijay ,the director) film didn't see a release in Chennai. Bro, a word of advice: there are better things worth giving up your life for)! For the film is such a god-damn ridiculous piece of trash it should be kept out of human reach.
I believe one S R K Karnan has filed petition with the Chennai High Court alleging that the film portrays the lives of his father and grand- father, two social leaders in Mumbai's slum-ridden area of Dharavi, in a highly unflattering light by distorting facts and depicting the two men as dons and thugs. His petition would probably be rejected, but if he does make another one claiming his lineage is portrayed as boneheaded idiots, he'd probably win the claim. Thalaivaa is hardly a biopic. Neither is it about "the people" as the protagonists in the film often claim. It isn't about Anna, who if Karnan's claim is true has been based on his granddad. Neither is it about Karnan's father. It's all about the idiotic hero Vijay. His screen-time and close-up shots confirm this. He dances , he romances, he sings, he jokes, he does dollops of dishum- dishum (fight) and some poor imitation of Robert Di Nero in Godfather and Abhishek Bachchan in Ram Gopal Varma's Sarkar/Sarkar Raj, whenever he gets a free time from all the dancing, romancing and dishum- dishuming.
He's a wannabe dada/don. The film itself is a wannabe Godfather, a wannabe Sarkar, a wannabe typical-Indian-romance (but with twist) and at times even a wannabe ABCD (Prabhudeva's film on dance). It spends much of its time worshiping its hero Vijay, to an extent that it kills of Anna's character (played competently by Sathyaraj) pretty quickly. It wastes little time to reveal its true intentions of becoming another in the endless list of forgettable kitschy 'romance-drama-action' money- spinners that are dumped on mass audiences by Kollywood and Bollywood. Sathyaraj, playing Anna, is a former coolie who eventually becomes the protector of honest slum-dwellers of Dharavi by delivering justice through violence and force. But the film relegates him to a shadow, one appearing occasionally to tell his son how busy he is, as soon as Vijay enters. He plays Anna's NRI son-settled-in-Melbourne Vishwa, and the film abruptly switches gear from dead-serious drama to hokey-jokey comedy. Comedian Santharam joins in as Vishwa's buddy Logu to fuel the film's path of self-destruction, and for a while we get an unappetizing feel of watching 'Sarkar + Comedy'.
Enter love interest Meera (played by dusky beauty Amala Paul) and the film enters 'romance mode', spending almost an hour till we exclaim "Oh my goodness! What happened to the original plot?!!" (that comes right before the interval, so you can be bold enough and try to ask whether you can come in after interval and pay half the ticket price. I wouldn't recommend that either as things get even worse post-interval). Vishwa and Meera participate in a dance contest and win, overcoming hurdles like being attacked by their competitors. But why are these things important in a film about Dharavi, its people and its self-proclaimed leaders? Why on earth would he think including a series of comedy sketches, one involving a cook who cannot cook, another about a bunch of single-men in Melbourne pining for Meera and the third involving Meera lying about her marriage with a sleazy-looking B-grade movie star, would be a good idea? Because they absolutely do nothing to further the plot, and they last as long as Durex condoms. And how ridiculous is it for a film to forget itself, and jump from drama to comedy to romance and return only to kill of the character of Anna, poor Anna in a car blast?
Twists before the second half – Meera and her dad turning out to be undercover police after they visit Mumbai along-with Vishwa under the pretext of discussing with Anna about Vishwa's marriage with Meera, and a guy named Bhima claiming responsibility for killing Anna to avenge his father's murder (Anna had killed a hate-monger named Varadarajan Mudaliar in the past). Bhima is really a weirdo – he meditates chanting Anna's name (then Vishwa's; actually the words chanted during meditation help in relaxation so it's hard to understand how chanting one's villain's name will increase animosity towards that subject: weird spirituality) and he sounds like an evil cyborg, credit awful dubbing (he's played by Abhimanyu Singh, a pucca Punjabi puttar). Vishwa meanwhile spends his time either channeling his inner Sylvester Stallone/Salman Khan, pounding men after men with brute energy, or drinking bhaang and doing masti (fun). The condition of this film post- interval turns from rubbish to muck to sheer atrocity.. I recommend a CT scan after watching this film.
I believe one S R K Karnan has filed petition with the Chennai High Court alleging that the film portrays the lives of his father and grand- father, two social leaders in Mumbai's slum-ridden area of Dharavi, in a highly unflattering light by distorting facts and depicting the two men as dons and thugs. His petition would probably be rejected, but if he does make another one claiming his lineage is portrayed as boneheaded idiots, he'd probably win the claim. Thalaivaa is hardly a biopic. Neither is it about "the people" as the protagonists in the film often claim. It isn't about Anna, who if Karnan's claim is true has been based on his granddad. Neither is it about Karnan's father. It's all about the idiotic hero Vijay. His screen-time and close-up shots confirm this. He dances , he romances, he sings, he jokes, he does dollops of dishum- dishum (fight) and some poor imitation of Robert Di Nero in Godfather and Abhishek Bachchan in Ram Gopal Varma's Sarkar/Sarkar Raj, whenever he gets a free time from all the dancing, romancing and dishum- dishuming.
He's a wannabe dada/don. The film itself is a wannabe Godfather, a wannabe Sarkar, a wannabe typical-Indian-romance (but with twist) and at times even a wannabe ABCD (Prabhudeva's film on dance). It spends much of its time worshiping its hero Vijay, to an extent that it kills of Anna's character (played competently by Sathyaraj) pretty quickly. It wastes little time to reveal its true intentions of becoming another in the endless list of forgettable kitschy 'romance-drama-action' money- spinners that are dumped on mass audiences by Kollywood and Bollywood. Sathyaraj, playing Anna, is a former coolie who eventually becomes the protector of honest slum-dwellers of Dharavi by delivering justice through violence and force. But the film relegates him to a shadow, one appearing occasionally to tell his son how busy he is, as soon as Vijay enters. He plays Anna's NRI son-settled-in-Melbourne Vishwa, and the film abruptly switches gear from dead-serious drama to hokey-jokey comedy. Comedian Santharam joins in as Vishwa's buddy Logu to fuel the film's path of self-destruction, and for a while we get an unappetizing feel of watching 'Sarkar + Comedy'.
Enter love interest Meera (played by dusky beauty Amala Paul) and the film enters 'romance mode', spending almost an hour till we exclaim "Oh my goodness! What happened to the original plot?!!" (that comes right before the interval, so you can be bold enough and try to ask whether you can come in after interval and pay half the ticket price. I wouldn't recommend that either as things get even worse post-interval). Vishwa and Meera participate in a dance contest and win, overcoming hurdles like being attacked by their competitors. But why are these things important in a film about Dharavi, its people and its self-proclaimed leaders? Why on earth would he think including a series of comedy sketches, one involving a cook who cannot cook, another about a bunch of single-men in Melbourne pining for Meera and the third involving Meera lying about her marriage with a sleazy-looking B-grade movie star, would be a good idea? Because they absolutely do nothing to further the plot, and they last as long as Durex condoms. And how ridiculous is it for a film to forget itself, and jump from drama to comedy to romance and return only to kill of the character of Anna, poor Anna in a car blast?
Twists before the second half – Meera and her dad turning out to be undercover police after they visit Mumbai along-with Vishwa under the pretext of discussing with Anna about Vishwa's marriage with Meera, and a guy named Bhima claiming responsibility for killing Anna to avenge his father's murder (Anna had killed a hate-monger named Varadarajan Mudaliar in the past). Bhima is really a weirdo – he meditates chanting Anna's name (then Vishwa's; actually the words chanted during meditation help in relaxation so it's hard to understand how chanting one's villain's name will increase animosity towards that subject: weird spirituality) and he sounds like an evil cyborg, credit awful dubbing (he's played by Abhimanyu Singh, a pucca Punjabi puttar). Vishwa meanwhile spends his time either channeling his inner Sylvester Stallone/Salman Khan, pounding men after men with brute energy, or drinking bhaang and doing masti (fun). The condition of this film post- interval turns from rubbish to muck to sheer atrocity.. I recommend a CT scan after watching this film.
The Ship of Theseus is a painstakingly dialectical observation of the transient human forms journeying in the sphere of reality. It examines the paradoxes in arguments about human beliefs, values and ideologies, exploring through the cave of space and time to find answers in the arcane light of truth. The film is deep, sometimes dense enough to put you into a storm of confusion, yet its mysterious powers to stimulate your mind into questioning the basis of existence is nevertheless a remarkable feat for writer-director Anand Gandhi. It's all the more astonishing to know that Ship of Theseus is Gandhi's debut feature film, and wait it you hear the biggest shocker – this work comes from the same man who began the incredibly contrived 'evil mother-in-law vs. saintly daughter-in-law' tradition in Indian television soaps such as 'Kyuunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi (Because the mother-in-law was once a daughter- in-law herself)' and 'Kahaani Ghar Ghar Kii (Story of Every Home)' more than a decade ago.
This man has completed his journey, his eight-year pilgrimage at last (he conceived his idea in 2005, after making two short films 'Right Here Right Now' in 2003 and 'Continuum' in 2005) and he has found some answers, which he brings to the world in the form of Ship of Theseus. His search is probably still on, yet this film is as good as it gets.
Anand Gandhi captains his Titanic Ship along its course, and it remains totally unhampered by any stupid icebergs. The easy way to look at this movie is that it's about organ donation, but on closer look, you'll see the theme of 'reconfiguration of human psyche by external forces' shining through. The film's structure is so massive, it's themes so multitudinous, that you don't feel sure at times whether you are moving in the direction the film intends you to move. My advice for those who can't understand everything would be to leave it to God and just understand what's easier for your mind to comprehend. Subsequent viewings will reveal further answers.
The cinematography by Pankaj Kumar is extremely fluid, and Gandhi allows the camera to remain static over long periods of time. That's where our actors, Aida El-Kashef, Neeraj Kabi and Sohum Shah (also the producer), do all the excellent visual communication, bringing an emotional intensity which gives these philosophical concepts a simpler, human form of expression. There's some powerful imagery here that draws our focus to the grand scheme of things. We begin to question ourselves then, wondering "God knows why ?". Our journey begins.
For the full review, go to http://sashankkini.wordpress.com/
This man has completed his journey, his eight-year pilgrimage at last (he conceived his idea in 2005, after making two short films 'Right Here Right Now' in 2003 and 'Continuum' in 2005) and he has found some answers, which he brings to the world in the form of Ship of Theseus. His search is probably still on, yet this film is as good as it gets.
Anand Gandhi captains his Titanic Ship along its course, and it remains totally unhampered by any stupid icebergs. The easy way to look at this movie is that it's about organ donation, but on closer look, you'll see the theme of 'reconfiguration of human psyche by external forces' shining through. The film's structure is so massive, it's themes so multitudinous, that you don't feel sure at times whether you are moving in the direction the film intends you to move. My advice for those who can't understand everything would be to leave it to God and just understand what's easier for your mind to comprehend. Subsequent viewings will reveal further answers.
The cinematography by Pankaj Kumar is extremely fluid, and Gandhi allows the camera to remain static over long periods of time. That's where our actors, Aida El-Kashef, Neeraj Kabi and Sohum Shah (also the producer), do all the excellent visual communication, bringing an emotional intensity which gives these philosophical concepts a simpler, human form of expression. There's some powerful imagery here that draws our focus to the grand scheme of things. We begin to question ourselves then, wondering "God knows why ?". Our journey begins.
For the full review, go to http://sashankkini.wordpress.com/