जोधा अकबर

Finally I finished watching Jodha Akbar in 3 days! watching 15-20 mins for the first two days before I would get to sleep, but on second day the music impressed me a lot and I could not wait to watch the entire movie.

What can I say now? Movie is a brave attempt on part of director. But again lack of knowledge and research was evident, as is the case for most of bollywood movies. There were tribals.. typically from North East dancing in the show put up for Akbar. What the hell were north eastern Indians doing there? I thought director thought to include them in the dance show to make it look grand!

But no doubts, the music was really imposing, particularly the background score. It was indeed AR Rehman music. And it had the grandeur needed for the royal story. It did remind me of mughal-e-azam. Of course one falls short of wards to describe this music. It's really nice to see some film makers and musicians do not shy away from having classical music. Effective use of sitar. But the lyrics were not great in most of songs.. Manmohana could have more touching lyrics, it was really straight forward colloquial of current times.

Most of the movie had scenes in day light. Some scenes look good in night. The dance show could have been put up in lamps and candle lights rather than in bright sun... I mean there were so much of tents pitched up around in that dance show.. it looked as if we were watching the sets themselves. Compare that too 'Mohe panghat pe' from Mughal-e-azam.

I guess image of one grand thing of past can just not be erased by any number of newer versions in the recent times. Like original ramananad sagar's ramayana is still fresh in our memories, and still looks much more real than all the clones made after that. Similarly, comparison of Jodha Akbar with K Asif's master piece is inevitable.
In terms of communal harmony, they could have shown more. In the end Amitabh bacchan says this was the story of Jodha Akbar. I am sure there could have been lot more to that. The movie in fact showed very few instances of their love.. most part was about war and politics. In the old movie.. we also saw Akbar celebrating Janmashtmi, can giving rides to bal gopal krishna.

But anyways , this was indeed different.

रामायण

I was watching रामायण after very long. I guess last time I watched it was when I was in class 8 or something. Here mummy is alone at home, so to give her company, I watch it. I found that even today, when so many hindi films have been released since Ramanand Sagar's रामायण , still this one carries so much emotional value. I feel moved to tears in many scenes. Unlike Mahabharat, रामायण is story of so much love and affection . One can notice the word 'sneh' umpteen number of times in one episode. One really feels like having cleaned his mind and heart of all vices. Every character in the story (ofcourse barring few - kakayi, manthura and those from Ravan's camp), have so much love for each other. Every one's fighting to give comfort to some one else. I feel that Ram's age must have been the most peaceful and stable times on earth.

Timing of my realization of these things is pretty apt. I mean very recently Karunanidhi questioned the existence of Ram. He was giving some arguments that he claimed were rational. Even I am myself a computer science graduate. But still I feel influenced by these mythological stories. At least they are putting in us some fear for god, some fear from doing fallacies. If he wanted to make bridge, then he should have gone ahead, but not by inciting people by attacking faith of people. I remember once I was complaining to an Austrian Professor that in India, some rivers get polluted a lot because people put dead bodies and other things in the reiver for religious reasons. Then even that chap, who was complete foriegn to hinduism and mythology replied,"But people have faith in that. It's the question of faith." And Karunananidhi is from south India, the land, where we can find most religious people in India. Even that bridge is ultimately for welfare of people, then it is actually service of God, people would not have complained if that new bridge is making the lives easier. But it is crap to say things about Ram sethu or for that matter Ram's existence per se, as this was all uncalled for. It's like if we can build a hospital for destitute by breaking some temple, then it should be fine. But we should not break the temple because we don't believe in the deity worshiped in that temple. May Ram give some sense to these morons.

Lakshya

Watchin lakshya makes my heart goin out again for Indian Airforce. The places they operate in are simply awesome. The film has just started, they are showing so beautiful and towering mountains. But for the first time this thought came into my mind that I can see those beautiful places even if I am not in Force. I can go to those places during vacations! Really I can go there with my family and friends anytime. So I should start loving and respecting a civilian's life as well.



Movie is pretty nice. The valleys and mountains and b'ful rivers that were shwown were scintillating. Acting of Amitabh Bachhan , I found , was gerat after a long time. I really wanna have the discipline of Defence Forces in myself. I really liked the elegance and grace they carry with themselves. Their gait is also awe-inspiring. They are so much full of etiquettes.



The song 'main aisa kyun hoon' is done with so much iof innovations. The contrast of black and white went really well. Hrithik's dance is as usual very good.

But the acting quite nice. So was not that of Preity Zinta. She moves her body a lot. Hrithik always looks like that autistic child he played in the other movie. Even non-serious roles can be done normally rather than behaving like a child.

The second half of the movie where hritik and zinta take their own paths of lives
was quite matured. They really acted sensibly. Best part was the less use of words and judicious use of backgroud music. They worked more through silence and through their body language and facial expressions , rather than just delivering dialogues
as in most of hindi movies. The visuals were beyond my expectations. It was like I was watching LOTR. So high mountains . I wonder if in reality they climb such mountains. And how would they be doing in dark. The movie did not have one hero. Like RDB, every character was the hero in itself. This was one of the fewest war movies I loved. It was not just a love story. Not just the transformation of a confused soul into a responsible guy, not just about courage and passion of Defence
personnels. It was a perfect blend of all. The transition from one of these forms to the other was very smooth. Really gud cinema.

Mixed doubles and School

The 2 good movies i watched today. Well good is a relative term. Even for one person, the same movie feels good in one frame and sucks in another. But both the films were good time pass, reason being they are not the regular hindi movies with the same old crap of cheap humor or skin show or some stupid tune of emotions and related crap. Mixed Doubles had very earthen feeling, 'coz acting of all the characters was very natural. I could very well find similar dialogues in our daily lives during my stay in Delhi, particularly those of Naseer and his wife!! I hardly felt I was watching movie. It was enjoying seeing the arguments between the parents of Konkana sen. Though Konkana sen and his husband formed an urban couple, but I guess I have similar ones , I could relate to them. Their son was again very much like I would find in my uncles' homes. All in all nice movie.

School. God it tried to take me back to school days, or to my future. The scholl was an Airforce School. Again here the acting was pretty good. Don't remember the name of the principal, but it seems he does very nice work, and has really refined himself as an actor over the time.

I guess now I can generalize that low budget movies are the ones that are liked. Atleast for me, this generalization does hold true.

Natalie Raps

A day in the life of Natalie Portman. This rap just rocks : Natalie your are a crazy chic Shut the f*** up and suck my d***!! Natalie we all love you, Shut the f***up I will f***u too!! Natalie what you want natalie to drink and fight wht u need natalie to f***all nite

The lost temples of India

Another excellent documentary I found is :




After watching this, I realized that India had and India has more resources than many developed countries. All we need is honest people to utilize the resource.

The statements worth noting are :

"India had golden age, when Europe was languishing in dark age.".

"Excavations for temples were stopped when the British architect found erotic statues on the walls of few temples he found. Hindu religion was then assumed to be immoral and corrupt and Christianity was pure."

"Mughal rulers devasted the Hindu temples and structures to erect their monuments and erase signs of Hindu culture"

"The Mughal Arhictecture presented the image what Britishers or the western people had thought of the eastern or Indian world - pure , moral, with no more erotica or sadhus half naked"

Indira Gandhi and Operation BlueStar

I loved this documentary. I was born around the same time she was assasinated. And did suffer because of the riots that broke out afterwards, though I was a only a kid, few months old.

Life is beautiful

This is a story. A story of happiness. But not an easy one to tell.
That’s how it begins. Yes, I watched the movie yesterday. It’s as beautiful as the director is claiming life to be. I had seen it earlier also, but in pieces. Could not get to sit and watch it properly. This time I did. First half was candy floss. An air of mirth all around. The music was really lovely, particularly that of Venice version opera. Humor was really sharp and intelligent. It seems that in the English version, they have made the same Italian actors to speak, as their English was perfectly European or rather Italian, as we observed in Rome.

Second part begins with a whimper, though Guido tries his best to cover that, with extra ordinary capabilities, and he does succeed. Their child was like an innocent lamb, about to be butchered. He was speaking American English. After watching the movie, I was even more drawn towards the history of Germany, concentration camps, Jews etc.. And few days back I watched Sound of Music. So my state of mind was already oriented in this direction. On the top of that, I am reading this book Fire from the sun, which is about (at least from the chapters I have read ) cruelties inflicted by Maoists. So the whole air around me these days is full of the political history, wars , crimes and I am diving more and more to gain further insight in what actually happened. Moreover, I am staying in Austria which seems to me, a clone of Deutschland. The German I heard in the movie is quite familiar. After watching that movie, I could not resist myself from exploring the history further on Wikipedia . I learnt how the Jews and people of some other some other races and kinds were exterminated in the concentration camps.





Kids and old people were told that would be given shower and they were thrown into gas chambers. That was shameful.

While going to Milan, I met a French lady, who told that even France was also quite involved in such heinous crimes but they don’t accept this.

But what is nice is that people have today moved on in their lives, and not carrying the burden of history even now.

But I was surprised to learn that America wasn’t involved in such crimes against humanity. It along with Britain and Soviet, rather liberated people from the camps. Of course, it dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and that brought us into nuclear age. But that was war and every country was it’s best to win over the other. And indeed America went too far in that attempt. But what Germans did was not war against a country , but a madness giving vent to their hatred for their hatred against people of different race.