Challenge-d to the hilt!

Why should I go buy a ticket to a Bengali film if it cannot even command 15 minutes of attentiveness from its audience?

Well, I don't have any rational answer to that after I laboured through the screening of the film which was being touted as the next-big-budget-crowd-puller from the Tollywood stables and yes, it was none other than the much publicized/marketed (courtesy-t2, The Telegraph) - Challenge.....nibi na sala.

People with even a feeble grasp of Bengali would be hard to convince regarding the "respectability quotient" of a film with such ruffian leanings in its nomenclature itself. Still, I ventured an audience in hope of "some mindless entertainment" if not a "memorable love story" told "differently" as is always promised. Needless to say the company of friends who would give any film a chance in their idle weekends made it sort of inevitable for me. One of them travelling half the city to watch the opening show of "Don Mutthuswami" is a case in point.

A detailed review would be a waste of cyber-space so let me put the slush succinctly, if ever there was such a phrase i.e. Shipping tycoon dad's (Rajatava Dutta) overprotectiveness about pretty daughter(Subhashree) meets fierce, fun-loving, goon-bashing brawn of college boy (Dev) and the "challenge" is born. The inanity of the proceedings is exemplified by the fact that the only dialogue evoking ceetis and taalis in the entire film belonged to the Mithun-starrer "Mohaguru" (explains why the last Bengali film I watched in a theater was "Tiger" by Mithun). The newcomer pair does little except pose prettily or murderously as and when required by the invisible script, if any. The saving grace of the film is some definitive moments when Biswajit Chakrabarty ( hero's father) helps us to some laughs in his encounters with the caricature that Rajatava Dutta has come to make of himself with every passing film.

In short :

People who went to see gravity/logic/physics/biology-defying action sequences came back disappointed.
People who went to see a cute/cuddly/teddy-bearish love-story with fresh faces came back empty handed.
People who went to check the "promised land" of micro-minis, hot-pants and tank-tops (as in the film posters) came back frothing at their mouths - demure salwar-kameezes being the chief culprit of them all. Traitors! Frauds! Thieves!


So, next time any director promises a "different" film make sure you send in your friends ahead of you to get the right review and not the ones doctored by newspapers to give trash any semblance of respectability. After all, hard-earned money is not best-spent in buying boredom of a darkened auditorium, that too empty.

Did I mention that my ticket was paid for by a friend.
Yes, the same one who went for "Don Mutthuswami"'s premiere.

Watched 'The Apartment' a few minutes back.

One of the finest feel-good movies made according to me.

And doesn't Shirley Maclaine look cute in it!


Trivia : 'Life in a Metro' was a tolerable lift-off from this film

Wall E-derful !!!!!!

A tale about how a trash-arranging robot finds love and changes how humans look at themselves and Earth, Wall-E is a film surely to be loved by all.

The wide-eyed robot and EVE join hands to bring Life back into the toxic wasteland that is Earth and give us a joyride inside the Axiom starship with all their friends and foes.  

A detailed review would be a dampner to people who have still not seen the film.

It has all the ingridients to light up your day. Go watch it!

Me ? Superstitious ? What an idea !!!!!!

I am not known to be a superstitious person. Yet, for all these years I have had my own set of rituals. Ones which were not overtly visible at all and were meticulously guarded in their execution. I never resorted to them in 'times of peace' as opposed to 'times of war' as we called our examinations during school. Those two dreaded weeks in the year when there was hardly any 'light and happiness' around you. Wherever you looked there were bespectacled boys and girls cramming their last minute notes, revising the revision-worn revisables for the umpteenth time. On the other end were 'Us' - a bunch which swung between amused ridiculing of the 'Others' and feeling the pangs of tension ourselves. Whenever glancing at the sea-like syllabi, taking stock of the situation and resolving to give our 'reasonable best' a fear of retribution at having mocked all the studious people seemed to hang over us ominously . And deep down in our guts ( I say 'our' because I am sure the others felt the same way) there sometimes arose this sinking feeling when D-Day dawned and hence the refuge in rituals. This selective fidelity perhaps makes me inadmissible to the hallowed club of 'Devotedly Superstitious People', the ones who did it all year round. But, then we have our arguments too. We were never the ones who studied anytime but just before the exams were thumping at our noses and knocking at our doors. So, we, of all people had the right to be superstitious unlike the ones who put in their hard-work on a daily basis. They were destined to succeed. We only had hope to do so.

Enough of arguing my case.


My 'acts of faith' during exams ranged from waking up at the same time as the first exam, pouring a generous dab of oil on my hair, bathing with exactly the same number of mugs of water ( and yes, never hot water. Not even in chilly December), combing exactly in the same manner as yesterday, tying the shoe-laces in a pre-fixed order and taking the same seat in the bus/auto-rickshaw that took us to our school. Nothing fancy. But as the years rolled on I suspected I was developing some kind of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I quite liked the name of the ailment then and I have renewed my fascination for OCD since I watched Jack Nicholson in 'As Good As It Gets' but, at times I felt 'it was time to change'.

"What with this silly fixation with rituals? I am getting hooked!"

So, I began to test the efficacy of my 'little acts' by being random from the next exams that I took. I didn't do too well. But then, who does in +2 Science ?

Slowly I desisted from my set of superstitions one by one and finally I was 'cured'. ( I know I sound like those dubbed dum-dums in Asian Sky Shop commercials). Now I hardly have a pattern to my activities. Any of them. I am the first one to cross the road after a cat has crossed it as perplexed onlookers, themselves reluctant to cross the road, gaze at my arrogance.

Why this long winding post on personal superstitions then? All the talk about rituals ?

I have this habit of never leaving a book unread for a long stretch of time once I start reading it or leaving a film midway. I have done just that, unintentionally though, in the past two days. ( I don't consider leaving 'A House for Mr. Biswas' after reading the first 200 odd pages an authentic 'exception' because it was, to put it very politely, a forgettable ordeal. An instrument of sheer torture by virtue of its literary stagnation) I left 'Judgment at Nuremberg' and 'Citizen Kane' midway and went off to sleep. Though I was dog-tired on both the occasions the old ghosts of OCD were troubling me a bit, to have left two films midway in their run in two days. I have never done that before. Hence the post. Hence the remembrances. This might just redeem me.



P.S - I know a boy who had all the makings of a perfect OCD specimen. Someday I intend to write an epic-post on his gamut of rituals and beliefs. But, I hear he is improving too.
He is superstitious about 'improvement'. :)

Joker takes it all in 'The Dark Knight'

Though half of the first half was an experience akin to watching some silent classic by Charlo owing to bad sound quality in the theater the man we all went to see allayed our pain and then transformed it slowly into a sort of manic glee as our eyes twinkled at his menace with awe. The Dark Knight is Batman. But the Shining Armour Trophy surely goes to the Joker.

I was half skeptical about Heath Ledger doing justice to the originality and ominous eccentricity that Jack Nicholson brought to the character of Joker. He immortalized it in all its maniacal menace. He made it an emblem of maverick villainy. But Ledger has done more than fine to inspire awe amongst the Caped Crusader's most ardent admirers. He has brought immortality to the deranged depravity on that painted face. Christian Bale is good. Michael Cane is suave. Maggie Gyllenhal is wasted. Morgan Freeman is just fine. Gary Oldman and Aaron Eckhart are superb. Heath Ledger is just magnificent. It is his film.

I don't want this to be a detailed review. I would only ask you all to go watch the movie and discover it for yourselves. No one will rue it, I am sure.

Boredom does strange things to you.

I am either glued to the net or watching movies the whole day. Also I am making a list of the ones that I am watching( right at the bottom right ), right from 1st June onwards and making mental notes of the ones I am eager to watch. I am sure it will look substantial before the month is out.

Lack of people posting on their blogs isn't helping things either.