Dastak - Entertaining string of plays in Singapore

Applause first for the gargantuan efforts required to bring together this event.

Appreciate the explosive mix of professionals and amateur actors drawn from society making an explosive mix

The light and sound design was impressive. Really thoughtful there to put in the subtitles making it a bigger challenge to the actors and the person controlling it to ensure synchronized play

The concept is as helpful to the audiences as laudable it is for being a creative concept. A burst of 10+1 plays played out one after the other to a live audience is a challenging concept and a treat for the paying audiences.

It will be unfair to even start with anything but praise realising the enormous task of getting this mix of incredible talent drawn from people not essentially from the entertainment industry

Rayana and Veena were simply outstanding with their dialogues and emotion. Veena (who I have seen as an excellent dancer) , was fully into her character while Rayana recited reams of dialogue with the absolute ease of a professional. Any disturbing growls you may have heard during the performance were the sounds from the GI system desperately wanting the desserts being referred to.

KPSandhu and Namita lal were very impressive with their absolute intensity.

Jhamela did tickle with some fun moments aided by the irrepressible Aditya .

Kamli with its subject was naturally intense and overall with their actors above par

Expectedly the most pleasant one was the simple neat play by Gopal Dutt and Neelu Dogra. The acting is so effortless. It almost seemed like they did not need any rehearsals. Nothing less expected from them but there was a certain simplicity reminding you of Basu Chatterjee movies.

Blue diamond will remind you of Farooque Shaikh and Deepti Naval
Guru ka Brahman was intriguing and had the toughest expectation of impressing the audience with the opening act

Subin with his genial smiling face from Dhund catches your attention.

Icing on the cake - the 30 min dance drama Nukkad performed on the lawns like a street play and so beautifully designed with minimum props and yet making an entertaining impact. One could see scores of children who have perhaps forgotten the Panchatantra, glued . Masks with some really electrifying designs and creative classical music used by Ponamma to direct this unique act of animals left a great impression and audience left asking for more. Just wondering if performed under controlled focus lights, some jungle audio and audible dialogues could have helped scale this into a full fledged theatrical on the epic tales. This can actually be a mass booked play performed for kids in schools here.

The festival director Shalaka deserves to take a bow for stringing together years in a row, a festival of this scale and keeping the cultural and drama theatre going great guns by promoting new talent.
If you have not made your stop at the Goodman's Art centre yet, try out today unless of course they are sold out!

The next time stop is at Star Theatre I guess

Shaadi Pe AANA....Confused Hoke Jaana

Ever Imagined being on a horse cart which has horses attached on all the four sides trying to pull it in different directions. Each time a horse gets tired the other fresh ones pull the cart in a different direction. Conclusively you end up at the place you started. Find it awkwardly  ( Akwward mind you ) silly example this. Don’t blame me if you remember this when you exit the theatre after heeding the Zaroor pleas of Ratna. Speaking of Exit I almost exit I almost got up thrice towards the end assuming the end was in sight. But no Siree. It was not to be. The director had blank wall surprises in store. You know the blank wall types, those that face you when you exit the theatre.  Twisting and turning in all directions without an end in sight. Before it opens a mysterious door and let’s in the noise and bustle of the real world outside.

Nasty? No I am not being more so when I think Raj Kumar Rao is the best thing happening in recent times and for second time this week a surprise – a new face on the Hindi landscape ( well almost new if you ignore her disastrous intro movie) Kriti.

I think most of the movie going audience can now identify the gallis of the key towns in UP since most of the movies in a couple of years have been google mapping their stories in the intricate alleys. Is that Bad? Well not actually considering there is a lot of colour to exploit, male chauvinism still throbbing across the open surface of society but never hindering modern cigarette smoking women who lurk beneath the scared veneer and wait to escape like Kangana or Rani.

Rajkumar does not seem to have had a chance to leave the locales as he reprises his small town confident full of values and some beans character intent on hooking the love of his life. Dowry deals are done as a matter of fact. I sat up tense and tight hoping for a movie tackling the evil that still has Indian society in its clasp. There are no bad people here. All victims of circumstances, who have accepted and justified to themselves the usefulness of the wrong doing so as to keep themselves relevant on the food chain. Grab dowry from son to fund their daughter’s marriage. Sadly the director Ratna related to two directorial families does not even bother to justify the hero’s ignorance of this particular deed of his family while getting all hot and bothered about other values of love and trust in his life.

To cut the long chase short, a madly in love couple faces challenges in repeat cycles till you get exhausted and pray they never meet again.

I almost suspected the director at one point asked Rajkumar to play the good deed guy. He executes it beautifully. She then goes up to him and says oops sorry can  you be the bad guy…so he does it …Oops no you need to be the good guy. The distributor says so…So rajkumar being the expert that he is does it with elan with great support from a confused heroine who is happy being treated like a door mat that has for good measure feminism written all over it as she allows everyone to trample over her.

To be fair the director has an eye for drama and visuals and extracts excellent work from all characters around bringing fine nuances to even minor characters. Only she is not sure which direction the cart has to go. I ended up thoroughly confused and angry. Angry because I just could not bare to see the Rajkumar act and a lovely Kriti waste their efforts to finally do an ‘akkward ‘ dance at the end.

Govind Namdeo keeps going red and all hot. I almost feared he could have a cardiac arrest on the sets. Too intense man. Confident actors like a hiding behind her hubby Navni or a very natural Nayani dixit as Abhas sister stand out.

Rajkumar Rao owns the familiar territory though Kriti in her beautiful pink manages to hold her own in this twisting like a top in all directions enterprise.

Wish the director had stuck to Dowry and acted as a medicinal dose for the erratic society. Instead it ends up looking like it turned a blind eye to it and supports it.

Watch it if you liked all the recent Kanpur, Lucknow outings in the recent past and crave for home.

Try not to confused hoke wapas aana !

**1/2

Qarib Qarib Good

Movies these days have started featuring 'real women'

When you watch 'Qarib Qarib..' you sense a quantum relief to not to have watch boring heavily decked pancaked anorexic women pretending to be someone they are far removed from .

Parvathy in the company of Irfan is least worried about having to worry about her makeup or watch her weight:-) . Slow paced yet the two stars carry the movie forward with common intelligent banter. It is not impossible but difficult to believe that a simple dating site in india actually gets two people to set off on a journey while distrusting each other and being so unalike.

It was pleasant to watch a unkempt Irfan slipping those wry one liners while a perfectly unsure Parvathy tries to redeem her widowed lonely life while trying her best to remain occupied and shackled with boring errands.

]The pace is slow enough for you to want to peek into the neighbour's open mobile phone as he finishes urgent what's apps ( dude why do you come to the movies and why do I land up next to people who always want to read their mobile texts in the dark auditoriums :-))

Yet they are so real that you want to know what they do next

There are no surprises but am just loving some of these movies that refreshingly break Norm and tell simple stories and take you to Shillong in the north east instead of the beaten to death tourist places like Kashmir

***

****
Kangana is my female Amitabh Bachchan. Never has any actor owned the screen so much. She is confidence personified, actress par excellence. She has the gritty diligence of Aamir in taking ownership of a script and also actively contributing to it. So no wonder that the script writers get jitters when there is a glamour for credits to be shared with this brilliant actress. Her screen persona is luminscent. She dazzles in a striking combination of brilliant exposition of her art and exuding natural beauty.

Simran is hoisted on her slim looking but strong shoulders with the ease of Hanuman lifting the whole mountain in search of life saving sanjeevani. She is not sure what part of the bold script of an independent woman will work . Circumstances force an ordinary housekeeping employing at the Hilton to mix up with dangerous money lenders and start stealing all in an effort to chase her dreams and at the the same avoiding possible betrothal.

There is an effort to sketch out the characters of her parents , prospective husband and friends well but with an half hearted approach . A slight elevation of that effort with more punch in the dailogues mouthed by these side props of the story could have catapulted this movie to another league .

And yet despite its obvious story drag you can never take your eyes of the screen as she shares a camaraderie with a barman, an extremely natural selfish relationship with her parents and a truly believable romance that envelopes her and her prospective husband.

The story never lets you guess correctly and you clasp your slightly bored and sometimes slapping with happiness,  hands  together till the end
A very satisfying visit to the screen where you get the pleasure of watching the evolution of what is possibly the resurrection of fresh story telling and innovative acting by one of the best exponents of the art

Kangana way to go !

Nothing Rings True !

At the end of the movie as I sighed over a lost chance, it seemed like three great creatives who seemed to bask in their individual luminescence without ever properly connecting. With Imtiaz you know that you can get ready for wit flying all around without any background music drowning out the calm esoteric exchanges. One is always ready to be pleasantly surprised as he fries culture to a light brown without ever burning it. His quest for defining love continues. However for once I found a connect between all the three missing – the director and the two actors don’t seem to thread convincingly.

A tour guide in Europe who diminishes his own self esteem while leading around groups of gawking tourists while not dithering from moving around in a Jagaur open top or was it a Bentley. And he bumps into the female tourist who is for a flimsy reason searching for a ring and that somehow is supposed to be the excuse for a road trip. I think the collapse begins with this unconvincing plot. Searching open roads wide eyed,  days after losing it somehow ridicules the purpose of the story itself. Assuming that it is just a ruse for the director to escape to his favourite cobbled stone pathways in picturesque Europe, the lost ring rings so untrue. Add to that insufficiently fleshed out references to Gujarati and Punjabi where mention of Dhokla, Fafda and Tractor somehow are sufficient to infuse strength of their native backgrounds into the characters or so the makers believe.

Their travails are nothing to write home about except to mention that it seems like a long dialogue smattered with chuckle worthy witticisms along the way but few and far. The monotony of the dialogue drags you down such that the entry of an interesting goon actually brightens things up.
The hero is clearly unconvinced that he should play out his tour guide character to the hilt so he must have impressed on the director to allow him to own a high end car and book tickets to a metropolitan city in India while for some strange reason he is unwilling to go back home. Home as punctuated by grey and white eerie clips reminding one of Love Aaj Kal Saif Ali Khan’s track.

SRKs cheeky romance which girls swooned over seems intact but lacks lustre. It is really Anushka with her high decibel performance almost risking going over the top that keeps you from rejecting it outright. She seems to have a reaction for every dialogue that her costar mouths. She breathes a lot of spunky life into her act.

The music drags the movie down while the superior photography compensates. Except for the hummable Hawayein a song where SRK seems to come into form and the song also syncs with the spirit of the film

I sense a disparity in the intended script of Imtiaz and the final execution probably imposed by the makers. Else it is difficult to find a confused Imtiaz after his brilliant JWM or a LAK or the more recent Highway or Rockstar. The characters grow on you for sure but you hardly feel for them in the lackluster climax other than to heave a sigh of relief and rush to catch your last bus home.

Stunning acting ensemble elevate MOM

Before I change my mind let me tell you my stars for the movie 3 1/2
Why would I change my mind?
Because it is a reluctant must watch.

A movie where you better not be having popcorns while Sridevi comes on the screen because you will for certain choke . She is that brilliant . And this coming from someone whose only good impression of the actor is a rare Sadma or Chaalbaaz or the more recent English Vinglish .

But here she gives you goosebumps and in case you think those spectacles are steaming up they are actually involuntary tears rolling down

A docile but friendly teacher and mother , loving younger one , a normal life with a kind husband and a rather disconnected step daughter.

When something disturbs this linear life it is upto the mother to step up and hold up  a light to justice

The story is not surprising and to an extent cliched and yet you dare not move your attention away from the excellence in acting
Ensemble that pervades the screen

And as for the sort of Justice meted it you no doubt wonder if it is the only way to treat the diseased minds in our country that is a threat to the welfare of the fairer sex

In the meantime you really wait for what's next with the protagonist . Way to go is all I a new fan  can say to Sridevi. Bravo !

Who let the starter out ? who who ?

For my countrymen. Please migrate while someone finds a starter for the Tubelight.

"Heroes" meets "Bajrangi" meets "Little Boy" meets...Oh forget it !!