Independence Day, NYC ishtyle!

I saw a little blurb about "Salute India" at the Big Cinemas Manhattan when I went to go see Aisha and Tere Bin Laden. It looked like a fun little festival about Indian culture, it had a parade and Priety Zinta was going to be in the parade.

Now, I am one dense dunce every once and a while, and this was one of those times. After putting the info into my Blackberry for August 15 I thought nothing of it...

Until, that is, I started seeing a lot of "Happy Independence Day!" wishes on my Twitter and was cabbing it home one night, looked out of my window and saw this:

The Empire State building decked out in the full glory of green, white and orange. Then, and only then, did it hit me: it was India's independence day!

I felt like the biggest idiot, but now there was NO WAY I was going to be missing this parade and sure-to-be-general nom fest, so on Sunday morning I rounded up my Babaji (who was in town) and coerced him over to Madison Square Park where we lined up with a lot of Indians, looked really out of place, and I for one, felt really at home.

Babaji kept asking "I'm going to at least get good food out of this, right?" And yes, you did Babaji, but hush up and watch the parade.

Pressed against the barricade, swarmed by Indians and their to-die-for precious babies and once again feeling like I was the only one who spoke English made me all warm and gooey and sad and excited all at the same time.

I have a great capacity for emotion, obviously.

It even rained for a little bit, so I can say that I actually thought we had been transported to Mumbai in the monsoons and I was going to flag down a rickshaw and hop over to Mega Mall for the night.

Alas, I was in New York City, but the feeling was all the same.

The parade was long, full of funny floats and severely lacking in candy throwing but it was good to see women in saris and salwar suits again; and men tucking in their polo shirts into thieir high-waisted pants with sandals and socks.

If you didn't know, I love uncles.

Oh, and seeing Preity Zinta was fabulous. There is some speculation that here and I look alike, I for one don't buy it, especially after seeing her in person. She looks exactly like PZ should look... dimply, smily, chipper, excitable and the like. She's also amazingly beautiful and I love her so... I was a tad happy.

After the parade my father and I walked over to the food tents, I made a B-Line straight to the guy selling these:

It was like being home, ahhhh, kulfi, I ate far too many of you in India, but it was so worth it.

Oh, and I had chai, and samosas and chaat and briyani and naan and these weird veg sausage things that my cook used to make and they were so delicious I started crying and then I refered to India as "home" six times within a half hour and my dad got upset that I didn't recognize my childhood house as such.

And the crowd! Fighting for my space against tiny little Indians just made me so happy.

*sigh*

Can I go back yet?

Also, Indians also produce the most beautiful children. They make latent mothering instincts come out in me.

A Fairy Filmi Weekend

I'm exhausted. I did nothing but watch fillums and then write about them all weekend long.

Take a gander at my thoughts on Aisha, Jodhaa Akbar, Tere Bin Laden and Chunaoti!

Let's Talk About How my Dil Turned to Butter...

Jodhaa-Akbar, 2008
Directed by: Ashutosh Gowariker

I'm right under the "S"... I have a white thing on my head.

Fact: I have a weakness for Rajasthan. It was the first part of India that I saw and I spent a week on the un-air-conditioned, open windowed train cars riding from Delhi to Jaisalmer to Jodapur and everything in between. I spoke a lot of terrible broken Hindi and used a lot of facial expressions and doodles and hand signs to communicate with the people who shared my train car. (It was a beautiful family that actually shared our compartment on our out trip and our return! Talk about fate!)

Our cabin family, well, one side of it. 

There were a Maa and Babaji, 2 sons and their wives and their

 children and two sets of grandparents. 

I think Rajastani women are the most beautiful women in the entire world, their clothing and color choices are the best and their children the most dil-squashingly precious things I've ever laid eyes on. The men are so poised and dignified, quiet and observing. And then there was the fact that Rajasthan always looks like a film set. Billowing curtains, rooftop lounges with cushions and carpets made for a king.

And then there is the architecture. The forts. Be still my heart. I could hardly go from one chamber to another in the Amer and Amber forts without absolutely bawling. On both trips through both forts I had a steady stream of tears on my face because it was the only way I knew how to express how arrestingly beautiful the sights were.

This is me at the Amber Fort. I look a little disheveled (to put it lightly) since we had arrived in Jodapur at 3 am and had to stay awake to wait for our hotel room, and then we hired a driver to take us around...and he left at 9am... and I had been in those clothes for about 48 hours. 

I.Love.India.

Since Jodhaa Akbar was filmed on sight at these forts I had a similar reaction to the film. There was no crying, but placed in a setting that I had found so life altering I was instantly drawn to the film and fell in love with it, even if (at first) it was because I was seeing the forts decked out in their supposed grandeur and beauty as they would have been during the time of Mughal rule.

When I was in Mumbai, actually working, I went one day to a storage unit where we saw the costumes and sets and props from the film. Seeing those, I can only call them works of art, coupled with my boss' insistence that JA was his favorite film of all time, made me have to watch it too. A copy of the film was actually kept in our house, but I was too busy drooling over all the Shashi swag I bought every day, and I never got around to it.

I was apprehensive of both Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai. Yes, the both of them are gorgeous but did they have the umph to pull of a historic, political drama?

The answer, my friend, is yes. A million times yes.

Hrithik is increasingly growing on me, that boy has skills! While in this film he mostly is just commanding and fierce there was something under the surface that brought to life his character of Jalal. With Hrithik, as with Amitabh Bachchan, I have learned that the subtleties are the clincher in their performance. Sure on the surface it doesn't look like their doing much, but building up scene after scene they become an integral part of the fabric with which the film is woven. (Tacky cliches for $100, Alex.) A lot of Hrithik's lines could have been so groan-inducing, tacky and awful, but he kept them from going there by giving his character a bit of stoicism that really helped keep things from going towards the eye-rolling category.

Aish, Aish, Aish... I always forget how much I love seeing her in films when all I see are her on a red carpet looking fug, stuck up, and aloof. (Aish, can we stop with the updos? You look so much better with natural, free flowing hair.) The woman literally mystifies me, mostly because I spend half of the time watching her going "I forgot she's actually really good" and the other half thinking "Man I wish she wasn't such an ice queen in person." (That's just how she comes across to me, take it or leave it.) Jodhaa Akbar is no exception to her prowess. Doesn't she just look her best decked out in full garb, a-la Devdas and Umrao Jaan? She takes on the regal role so well and fully becomes her character that I could not help but to fall in love with her all over again. It was interesting to me how well she played the innocence and doe-eyed wonder that she put into Jodhaa's character, but at turn was strong, independent and demanding. Plus, wearing hardly any makeup, I kept thinking she looked like Juhi Chawla.

I would have been content to watch this film just to "ooh" and "aah"at all the visual spectacle, but thankfully there was dialogue and a story. And oh, my, goodness. I had no idea that JA was a love story! Come on! It's about war, and empires, right? Well, yes, but there is a love story too (stupid me, for forgetting) and it totally knocked me quite out of my senses. My heart felt like warm, melty butter. I was just so entranced by the chemistry between Aish and Hrithik that I don't think I breathed a lot during this film... so by the end of three and a half hours I was a little woozy. Also, I have been spoiled by all the kissing in modern (2008 is not modern, aparantly) Bollywood because I just kept waiting, and waiting, and waiting for a kiss to happen, especially in this scene:


Wah! Wah! Wah! Steam city, my friends, steam city.

The music was... well, it was A.R. Rahman and that's all I can say. I know, I know, A.R. Rahman is the best composer ever and blah... blah.... blah. Frankly, I'm not terribly impressed by him. His music, to me, is just a bit shallow and never quite reaches the emotional intensity that I so desire and long for. I'm not going to deny that his music is very beautiful, but it just leaves me a little underwhelmed.

You're now free to hate me for that comment.

I have to buy this fillum, that' just it. Excuse me, I'm off to eBay!

Tere Bin Laden

Tere Bin Laden, 2010
Directed by: Abishek Sharma

When I saw the promos for this film before Raajneeti I thought I had laughed my bum off, however, now after seeing the film I can't remember doing so.

Can someone please create a course: Indian Comedy and Humor for Goras? Because, I would attend that class and study diligently in my effort to gain some understanding over what makes Indian comedy...well, comedic.

Tere Bin Laden had an extreme British Comedy feel, but I get British Comedy, I split my sides at British Comedy, but this and other Indian comedy films and TV shows just leave me totally confused.

Basically this is how the movie viewing went; I laughed when no one else did and everyone else was laughing when I wasn't.

Despite my lack of comedic insight Tere Bin Laden was a cute film: Ali Hassan (Ali Zafar) dreams of nothing but immigrating to America and becoming a big-shot news reporter, however, his visa has been refused 6 times in as many years, thus making it impossible for him to leave. He works for a junky news station where, while filming a rooster cock-a-doodle-doo off (The "Cock Opera") he spots a man who looks exactly like Osama Bin Laden. He lures the man into a fake interview where they manipulate his voice and words in order to make a fake Bin Laden tape to leak to the press, make lots of money and buy his way into America. When the CIA gets involved and bombings begin all who where in on the scheme feel guilty and propose making a new tape where "Bin Laden" proposes a cease fire and an end to the war with America.

The film is obviously a satire on a lot of things, and at times has the absolute absurdity that makes me really like films like Dr. Strangelove. It was made well, and the actors are good enough (Ali Zafar has a bit of a problem trying to be SRK in his "macho" incarnation... it was rather cute to watch, actually) and the pace is fine but all in all I wish I had just waited until the film came out on Netflix Watch Instantly and saved myself the 13$ and the hour and a half commute home. (If you don't know, subways in NYC on Sunday nights are a disaster.)

My fellow audience members all laughed their bums off, and really seemed to enjoy the film, so again I was just missing something that would have made the film a lot more enjoyable for me.

Aisha... like, totally.

Aisha, 2010
Directed by: Rajshree Ojha

I have to preface this by telling you all that I am an Austen devotee, and that my favorite of her novels is in fact, Emma (eat that, Pride and Prejudice!). And we're not going to delve further into the fact that I always keep a copy of it in my purse at all times, because frankly, even I understand how awkward that sounds.

There are a lot of facets of Emma's personality that often are misunderstood and warped far out of context. She's fickle, languid, rich, well liked, spoiled, capricious, scheming and prone to feelings of superiority, no doubt because almost everyone aligns themselves with her whims, but of all the things I think she is, I do not, DO NOT, perceive her as shallow and uncaring.

So why, why, must she be continued to be adapted as such? Perhaps it is easier to adapt the book and its characters into it's"Victorian"* time period, but you cannot tell me that people such as are found in Austen's novels don't exist today. That is the beauty of her work, we all see shadows of people we know in all of her characters...

Perhaps I'm on the defensive because my shoulders are currently killing me, OR because I really relate to Emma' character and see a lot of myself in her.

Yes, it's Bollywood, yes it's a carbon copy of Clueless and, yes it's utter brainless, fluffy, gooey goodness.  I was actually REALLY on-board with this enactment until the last 20 minutes or so. The film had a good pace, pretty people, pretty dresses, pretty people wearing pretty dresses doing pretty things. But then when Aisha storms into a wedding and declares her love to Arjun in typical RomCom-on-a-microphone-interrupting-a-wedding style I just lost all interest.  Here was our heroine, who up until that moment was confident, cocky, and all around independent (at least emotionally), suddenly declaring that she was nothing without this man around to give her personal worth.

Please note, I have never really had this reaction, but it just seemed so far out of her character that I literally went slack-jawed and shook my head. Where was the sparkling, devil-may-care Aisha that was on screen for the previous 2 hours?  She was gone just like that, and I was so terribly disappointed.

Towards the end I kept getting this film and I Hate Luv Stories mixed up, I couldn't figure out if the characters were making fun of themselves or not, there was something internally that just died later on in the film and left me feeling totally blue-balled (sorry). The film went from "Fun Superficial Self-Awareness" to "Mopey Dopey Superficial Ambiguity".

Now I am no grate admirer of Sonam Kapoor, but I don't dislike her either. In my IHLS post I said that she's just good at being cute, and really, she's just good at being cute. Perhaps it's her characters in the two films but she lacks a sort of gritty quality that I tend to really latch onto with an actor/actress. She is, in every sense of the word, safe.

As far as the Abhay Deol feelings, I just have this to say: Sorry, but I prefer Bobby. That and when emulating my dream man, Mr. Knightley, I just don't find it fair to judge the person because who can blame them when they fall so, so terribly short? It's not their fault...Well, it is, but it's like contrasting Chanel and Coach and really, there is no comparison.

Speaking of Chanel, I always get tickled when people in fillums "own" what I own, and I was happy to see the very Quilted black leather bag that I kiss every night before I go to sleep. I own a truck load of Chanel, but that one is my very favorite.

I should have known that any spawn of Lillette Dubey was going to run away with my dil. Ira Dubey, I love you. I'm so glad you have your mother's voice, please, please, please, make more films and keep being so fantastic.

BUT, for me, Amrita Puri totally stole the show. I could have watched just her for the entire film. Can we say scene stealer? She's wonderful. He comedic timing, simplicity and effervescence just popped off the screen and charmed me. Can we keep her Bollywood, pleeeeeaseeee? She was the most 3-Dimensional person in the film and her character really held it together for me. Love, love, love!

I don't know that I'll pay to own this movie, but it was good enough to see in a packed theater house with enthusiastic Desi audience members who laughed at jokes I didn't get because the subtitles were THAT AWFUL, but then again, I also had the pleasure of running into a Twitter Pal accidentally (which is alarmingly surreal, by the way) and it made for a nice evening out.


Go see it if your an Austen fan, if you like RomCommey stuff, if you're really into Abhay Deol (and I know a lot of you are), go see it with girlfriends, because it's just a girlfriendy-let-us-stay-in-and-give-ourselves-crap-manicures kinda film.

*All the press on this film has referred to the novel as being set in Victorian England. Try the Regency people, it was an era about 100 years before the Victorian age... oh, and it's when the novels were actually written and set.  Example