Sunday 15 February, 2009

In other rooms, other wonders

I just finished reading Daniyal Mueenuddin's "In Other Rooms, Other Wonders" . After a long long time, I read a book from a sub-continent writer that was simply un-put-downable.

Before I get into other stuff ... I am wondering, is Daniyal pronounced "Daniel"?

Anyways... a simply fantastic writer. The stories are so wonderful. Like I read @ Ultra Brown - the excerpts floating around don't do justice to the actual stories or the book at all.

Whenever I think of the book, I feel I just finished watching a movie - thats how vivid the whole thing is in my mind.

Last year, I spent 10 glorious days travelling across Punjab ( the Indian side ) and loved everything about the state - the sights, the smells, flavours, tastes, the stories. And to get a glimpse of the other side of Punjab through this book - was a treat. Absolute treat.

That apart, I have been meaning to write about a couple of movies I watched recently.

Starting with Slumdog Millionnaire. First of all, I must express the absolute frustration I had trying to pick up the music CD for Y. It took me about 6 trips to the various famous music stores of Bangalore - Music Planet, Planet M, Crosswords etc - before I could pick up the CD. A good 15 days after it was officially released.

So much for muscling out small gems of Bangalore like "Rhythms" and becoming the de-facto stores for music. The staff @ the store had not even heard of the movie when I went asking for it.

As for the movie itself, most of the people around me were wondering what the fuss was about. Most people caught on to the weakness of the script pretty quickly but I dont think that was the reason for the dis-enchantment or the surprise about what made the western audience take to Slumdog Millionnaire in such a big way.

IMO, the whole thing is visual. What we saw - the face of India ( no, am not talking about the slums or the crowds or the skin color in particular ) - is familiar to us. We have seen it in many ways - in hardhitting commercial, out and out commercial and artsy movies. The face, the 'visual' of India.

It was that familiarity with the face - that made us wonder about SDM's popularity I think. Whereas, for the western audience - this was a new visual treat on their screens.

I have been thinking of a better way of expressing this - but cant come up with anything better as of now.

And by the way, Anil Kapoor has done a fantastic job in the movie..

Next is Dev D and Luck By Chance.

Luck By Chance - was nice. Not great. But nice - engaging and interesting to watch. Agree with all of the review comments - the sudden ending, etc. And Y and I came away thinking that we want to see more of Zoya's films to decide if she is as gifted or better than her brother or some of the other young turks out there. Right now, I dont think she is. The movie seems almost like "All of us have this one great movie or novel in us" kind of thing. Only, she got to make it.

Dev D - like No Smoking - makes one thing very apparent. Long shadows of all the 'famous' directors across the world looms large over Anurag Kashyap. He is still posing in some ways about statement, making a point etc. This aspect takes away from his story-telling ability, quite a bit.

Anurag Kashyap needs to become a little more invisible in his movies. That will make his movies work better. The pace of the film will become more taut. The point in the making will be much sharper. The ending would not be so abrupt.

Having said that, the film is good. Abhay Deol shines. He is fantastic. Again - having seen Punjab, I can believe that Dev D can happen in Delhi/Punjab setting.

The music - thats all the rage - is also a poser in some sense. As in - there is so much variety and hint of ability. But - none of the compositions give one a sense of depth. But still - its a great set of songs. I like them!