Wednesday, October 6, 2010

THE GREAT INDIAN ENTERTAINERS : PART 1

Remember the days when there was only Doordarshan, there were movies only on Saturdays and Sundays. When out of boredom you even watched movies in regional languages with sub titles. The whole concept of watching Television followed a time table, there were time slots for NEWS when children finished their homework, there was nothing known as Daily Soap, Sunday was the best day of the week. The Entertainment industry has changed in past 20 years and the change is drastic. This change spans across the whole entertainment cloud encompassing Films, Television, Advertisements, and Print Media.
Since the topic will be spanning over variety of entertainment, we will try to address each and every parts in detail, thus this post will also be in series.
In the first installment let us try and classify the Indian Films as per current standards:-
Today Films (By Films I am strictly talking about the Indian Film Industry) can be classified under various heads. The very basic classification suggests films to be of two types:
Commercial and Non Commercial Cinema. A Commercial cinema is one which does fare amount of business at box office and vice versa. If we further try to classify the Indian Cinema we will get following sub categories:-
a. Yash Chopra school of Cinema: - Predominately love stories shot mostly at the locales of Amsterdam and Switzerland. Hero generally wears bright clothes (Red Sweaters, White shirt with Beige colored chinos) or designer wears (Harley Davidson, GAP, Gucci etc.), Female leads are unnaturally beautiful. Everybody is rich.
b. Karan Johar school of Cinema:- This is derived from the Yash Chopra school. Shot mostly in USA(especially NY). Again nobody is poor, everybody is very rich and even if anyone is poor by chance, he does not look like one. They have other complicated issues.
c. Ram Gopal Verma school of Cinema:- Shot without lights. Whenever a film goes to floor, nearby hospitals goes out of stock for blood. Heroes (if there are by any chance) have moustache. Over 60 people are hired to scream while recording. Generally have 5 sentences per 15 mins.
d. Vishal Bharadwaj school of Cinema:- Mostly adaptation from Shakespeare, with a lot Indian slangs. Female leads specifically use slangs. Weird Camera angles, sometime it looks as if you are sitting on a merry go round and viewing the movie upside down.
e. Anurag Kashyap School of Cinema:- Kalki Kochelin or Maahi Gill is surely in cast. Songs are either folk or rock or both. Protagonist is either the biggest rascal or the dumbest person alive in the world.
f. Abbas Mastaan school of Cinema:- Again Adaptation but not from novels but from DVDs. Too many plots tied together. Hero knows scuba diving, car racing, shooting, karate etc in general. 7-8 Cars goes up and down in the movie.
g. Priyadarshan school of Cinema: Paresh Rawal is surely part of movie. There is always confusion. Tom and Jerry kind of climax sequence.
h. Bhatt school of Cinema: Songs or singers are imported from Pakistan. Promos excite kids less than 18 years of age. Script writer is not required. Script is mostly written on DVDs rather than on paper.
i. Farah Khan school of Cinema: This is Manmohan Desai school of Cinema with no changes.
j. David Dhawan school of Cinema:- Slap stick comedy. Almost every character insults the other characters. Songs appears from nowhere and you cannot even guess from where the background dancers came. The Background dancers are same for all the songs only costume changes.
k. Benegal,Gulzar,Nihalani,Jha school of Cinema:- will shoot daily activity of a person and tell us it is a movie.
These are the general categories in which we can classify the Indian Film makers. I have very high regards for Indian Cinema and everything written above is just for fun. No Offence is intended to any party. In next installment we will try to cover the various school of TV shows.

“Kyunki Picture abhi baaki hai mere dost…..”

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Ayodhya Verdict

Ayodhya issue is in the spot light these days with the verdict coming out on 30th September. Not only on the day of the verdict but rather a month back, people have started speculating about the verdict and its consequences on the nation. TV Channels aired the regular debates featuring the top notch advocates, politicians, editors, speakers and even representatives from Film industry. Everybody in the country seemed to have an opinion about the issue and rightly so as the democratic country each one of us should have a clear opinion and should be allowed to express the same.
As the citizen of India we all must at least be aware of what exactly the dispute was and why the court has not been able to resolve the issue for 60 years. As youngsters we all have witnessed what happened in 1992 when country suddenly broke into series of riots, bombing and many other fiascos. It was a challenging period, but I personally feel that a turbulent period is required in the history of every nation to change the overall perception of its citizens. This was evident from the calm and composure the citizens of the nation have displayed this time during the whole verdict period. The only unrest whatsoever was among the elites, the so called opinion makers in India. The common man was unmoved and was least interested about the verdict; sure they were worried about the consequences of the verdict courtesy the continuous debates on news channels.
The priorities of India as a nation and Indians as the individuals have changed over the period of last 18 years. The psyche of the citizens compared to 1992 has changed a lot and really gives lesser attention over matter of religion, caste etc. The priorities have shifted more to the materialistic and individual requirements compared to religious and national interests. To some extent this is good as in the case of Ayodhya, as we were least impacted by the verdict. The same opinion was also claimed by many opinion makers on news channels that the Indians have matured enough to react on the matter of religious interest and has shown immense maturity by not reacting to the situation in hand. I will say maturity of the citizens is a bit exaggerated here as the same people have attacks of hyper tension when Mihir dies on national television. A friend of mine once quoted during one of such discussions that this generation is a ‘by product of mixed ideologies’, and I could not agree more. Think for a moment that, what is that one philosophy, principle or rationale that you have been following in your life and you understand the reason for that. One point of view that is independently yours and is not motivated by any other source and specially does not bear a western influence.
The same is true for the political outfits in the country; none of the leading political parties have a distinct philosophy of their own. Congress never had any philosophy; BJP has a confused stand as they cannot fight on the grounds of Hindutva anymore, reason the ideologies of the citizen is not the same anymore; the local parties are handful and seriously lack a strong view point. The only political outfit which at least has a clear cut philosophy and sticks to it is Shiv Sena, again I am not defending whether it is correct or not, but at least it has a clear cut agenda.
6o years for the verdict, which is something not unusual for law suits in India, a reconciling result and a confused nation, there is not a single thing that will be unlike India. In this particular section I cannot draw a clear line what is correct and what is not. This is the bare reality what we have to face and even after reading this section nothing is going to change, we will continue to be ‘by product of mixed ideologies’ , Media will continue creating hypes about anything and everything necessary or unnecessary. But sometime it is good to introspect ourselves. Just wait for a second look inside yourself and try to find one rationale that is completely yours.
I have written 750 words, you have been reading it for 15 mins and still many does not know what Ayodhya case was really about and even then you might have a opinion about it, after all we are ‘by product of mixed ideologies’.
To end this section one great quote
“One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes ... and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.”