Mysorean

I am yet to come up with a way of writing this. Rahman won the Oscar – not one but two. And he did it in his characteristic matter-of-fact style. His acceptance speeches have already attained legendary status. He was christened a ‘Living Legend’ by one of the news channels. Another channel was discussing with one of the great Bollywood personalities who was saying some stuff about Rahman that we have already heard a million times. And that’s precisely the problem with Rahman – you cannot say anything about him that has not been said before. And he never gives you even a hint of a chance to say something about him!

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…and I am here. God Bless!

Those were Rahman’s words on winning his second Oscar (for Best Original Song – “Jai Ho” alongwith Gulzar) of the day. This is his full acceptance speech [Link]:

I just want to thank again the whole crew of Slumdog Millionaire, especially Danny Boyle for giving such a great opportunity. And the whole, all the people from Mumbai. The essence of the film which is about optimism and the power of hope in the lives, and all my life I had a choice of hate and love. I chose love and I’m here. God bless.

When he one the first one too he was quite at ease with the whole situation. This is what he said when he won his first one [Link]:

Before coming, I was excited and terrified. The last time I felt like that was during my marriage. There’s a dialogue from a Hindi film called “Mere paas ma hai,” which means “I have nothing but I have a mother,” so mother’s here, her blessings are there with me. I am grateful for her to have come all the way. And I want to thank the Academy for being so kind, all the jury members. I want to thank Sam Schwartz, I/D PR, all the crew of Slumdog, Mr. Gulzar, Raqueeb Alam, Blaaze, my musicians in Chennai and Mumbai. And I want to tell something in Tamil, which says, which I normally say after every award which is… “God is great.” Thank you.

If you didn’t know he won two Oscars today, then you have been living on the Moon or something! What a day! Thanks to all those who passed on their congratulatory wishes on the win! Really value each and every of those calls, sms’es and mails! Thanks guys! Thanks!

See this:

Source: http://www.goldenglobes.org/nominations/index.html

And this:

It was just a matter of time. If you followed the American press you would have predicted this easily. But for me, I was still doubtful because I thought ‘Water‘ was good enough for an Oscar nomination atleast. Anyway, here we are today. While the press is glossing over the first Indian to be presenting an award at the Golden Globe awards ceremony, here we have a fellow Indian citizen winning one. You know who means business!

And I hope the comparisons of ARR with the other Indian music directors stop now atleast. I am in this mood to take these infinite potshots today! Let me let that instinct be for now…

Photo courtesy: Arijit, fellow ARR fan.

This is my moment. This is every Indian’s moment. Let’s celebrate!

Watched this movie ‘Santhosh Subramaniam’ yesterday. Its a tamil remake of the telugu blockbuster “Bommarillu“. Here is a feel-good review about the movie. I am not sure it is so pleasant to sit through, but it is okay. The point of bringing it up here is that I wanted to discuss the concept of the movie. I liked the fundamental idea of how an over-caring parent can actually affect the childrens’ lives. Though I have certain differences in the way I think reality pans out and the way the movie does. The discussion here is not about the movie. I just want to pick the concept and start a thread here on it.

Parents, some of them, do not realise that they are overstepping their roles under the garb of ‘caring for their children’. In fact overstepping would be the wrong term to use. They would cease to be parents when they don’t understand what’s the best interests of their children. There are some parents I know who always are with their children, physically present I mean. As absurd and practically impossible as it might sound, I know some of them who do this. A manifestation of this is seen in the mentality of the parents while deciding on sending their children out of station for studies. That child has to make a living on his/ her own and you need to give him/ her the best possible education. If the best means outside the city you are staying in, then so be it. What is the big deal? The kid will stay outside your shelter during his/ her formative years and will learn to deal with the world on his/ her own terms. This will help the kid become a much better person. Why can’t parents understand this?

I know a father of two who had to send his younger daughter for her MBA to a city that’s around 300+ kilometers away from his home city. He reacted as if the daughter was being pushed into the dungeons knowingly. It took me quite some time to convince him and then his wife started off with her usual “She is a kid, will she be able to manage?” kind of stuff. Well, I told them, its precisely why she should be sent there so that she will learn to manage. Manage herself, her friends, her stuff, and pretty much everything that relates to her. Hostel life is something that teaches you what you need to do yourself to become successful in life. And such overprotective parents really affect the development of the child. Today the child can walk into a railway station all alone, spot her train, get into it and reach the destination without any pangs of pressure. Just ask her mother to do it – she cant travel alone even to save her life! Even her dad (the mother’s dad) is not sure if she will reach the destination for which she is seated in the train! And she wants to bring her daughter up to become like her.

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When I wrote this, I did expect a lot of flak. And one particular comment particularly caught my attention. And that was from my good friend Biju. He said and I quote “and would suggest a small correction.Best actor(male) should go to Darsheel” And trust me I was seriously thinking about it till it so happened that Darsheel refused to accept the Star Screen Award given to him for Best Child Artiste. He has apparently said that he should be nominated in the Best Actor category.

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Nagesh Kukunoor was a name nobody had heard a decade ago. ‘Hyderabad Blues’ came along and changed something in Bollywood that people always thought was ‘parallel cinema’. Singlehandedly Nagesh Kukunoor made this ‘parallel cinema’ merge with the mainstream with his subsequent offerings like ‘Bollywood Calling’, ‘Teen Deewarein’, ‘Rockford’. ‘Iqbal’ and ‘Dor’.

Comedy has always been a part of Nagesh’s cinema. He has not consciously used a seperate track for comedy except for Shreyas’ role in ‘Dor’. Even in ‘Hyderabad Blues’ the comedy was sewn within the situations of his usually strong storylines. ‘Bollywood Calling’ was entirely tongue-in-cheek. This time round he has gone ahead and entered the genre of the season – comedy with ‘Bombay to Bangkok’. Will it work? Let’s wait and watch.

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The year 2007 ended on a brilliant note with the release of “Taare Zameen Par”. It started off with a highly successful film in the name of “Guru”. We had the hutke movies like “Chak De India” rake in a lot of moolah as well. At the same time we had typical masala movies like “Om Shanthi Om” and the comedy flicks like “Welcome”, “Heyy Baby”, “Partner”, “Bheja Fry” and dare I say “Cheeni Kum”. We also had duds like “Nishabd” and “RGV ki Aag” from the usually reliable Ram Gopal Varma. Even Yash Raj films came up with a dud like “Jhoom barabar jhoom”. There were the critically acclaimed commercial failures like “Ek chaalis ki last local”, “Dharm” and “Manorama six feet down under”. There were those that were neither critically acclaimed nor were they ever poised for commerical success “Eklavya” is one I can clearly remember.

Let us look at who takes away the honours for the 2007 Hindi film awards as decided by me!

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Shankar arrived on the scene with “Gentleman”. Followed it up with “Kadhalan”, “Indian”, “Jeans”, “Mudhalvan”, “Boys” and “Anniyan”. Each one of them is a blockbuster in its own right. And maybe when the collections from all these movies are aggregated together they might equal the collections of his last movie “Sivaji”. It was the Rajnikanth factor that made the movie bigger than it probably deserved. Superstar Rajni, as he is affectionately called by his fans, can make ordinary films into a one-film-industry.

The rumours are that the collections of “Sivaji” have crossed Rs. 250 crores whereas the highest grossing Indian movie was somewhere near the Rs. 100 crore mark and that too was a Superstar Rajni movie. The nearest in collections by a non-Rajni movie was Rs. 60 crore. Imagine a single man churning out two movies that combine for revenues of about Rs. 350 crores. There are crores of companies with hundreds of people trying hard to generate that kind of revenue per year. Here, you have one man single-handedly ensuring that the movie will attain blockbuster status.

And people ask me why does it make front page news whenever he signs a new movie, ha!

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The results are out. And as I had predicted Naresh Iyer wins the award for the Best Playback Singer (Male). Yay! Am so happy! He also responded to my congratulatory sms with a “Hey! Thanks a lot!”

I feel like celebrating this moment by posting the lyrics of the song which won Naresh the Award:
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Yes, you guessed it right. After Rajni mania, it ought to be fever. What else do you expect? There is some magic stuff that Rajni does that sweeps us off our feet!

Ok ok ok. Let us come to reality. Our trusted mechanic, a former mechanic of the Superstar, helped us get tickets to the second day night show at Baby Albert theatre in Egmore. So I actually got myself to watch Superstar earlier than I thought.

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