Karthik calling Karthik

The much awaited movie, Karthik calling Karthik, is generating its fair share of publicity. So I decided to join the bandwagon and contribute – for free, mind you. Farhan darling, you owe me one.

So I am speculating. What could this movie be about? Here’s what I think. Karthik (Farhan) is wooing Lambi (my assumed name for Deepika) and they like each other and all that jazz.

Moving on to the main plot:

Lambi and her miniature genius are having a whale of time. However, as all famous couples of Bollywood movies, they come across a major hurdle that threatens the very core of their rock solid relationship (yeh Fevicol ka jod nahi hai?! Saala duplicate maal!). Things happen, people die, a bridge collapses somewhere in the world and Lambi announces that she is bored of her hair now and cannot tolerate Farhan’s good hair days anymore. (Adhuna Akhtar, you’re so sacked) People do get bored you know. Farhan pretends to not notice and continues singing songs while Lambi fumes in a corner. The movie is pretty boring until THE CALL.

Conversation

Caller: Hi, is this Karthik?

Karthik: Yeah, this is Karthik, who’s this?

Caller: Yeah, this is Karthik.

Karthik: Yeah, this is Karthik, who’s this?

Caller: Yeah, this is Karthik.

Karthik: I just told you, this is Karthik. Who the hell are you man?

Caller: Dude, this is Karthik. What’s wrong with YOU man?

Karthik: Why you little prick….

Caller: Dude, its Karthik.

Karthik: YEAH. THIS IS KARTHIK!!!!! WHO THE BLOODY HELL ARE YOU?????

Caller: THIS IS KARTHIK!!!!!

Karthik: Dude, just stop repeating what I say or I will cut your….

Caller: THIS IS KARTHIK!!!!!

Karthik: YEAH THIS IS KARTHIK!!!! JUST WHO THE #*^% are you?????????

Caller: Karthik!!!!!

Karthik: WHAT!!!!?????

Caller: WHAT what?

Karthik: YOU piece of….(Suddenly there is a cross connection…and both idiots hear Lambi giggling on the phone)

Caller: What the fu…

Karthik: SHHH!!! This is my girl's voice. Listen to what she is saying….

Lambi: Can you believe it sweetheart? Those dimwits are not getting beyond their own name….so damn funny….I KNOW!!!! Khee kheee kheee giggle giggle….(silence)….oooooh yes let’s do that baby….meet me in an hour…..yeah Tanya I will be on time….muahhhssssss (air kissing sounds)

Lambi’s line goes dead.

Silence.

Caller: Karthik?

Karthik: Don’t start that shit again……

Caller: Dude, my girl’s name is Tanya.

BOTH: SON OF A BITCH!!!!!

I am SO waiting to see whose version is better :D

My name is Khan. I am not a terrorist. (Killing people with my boring movie doesn’t count)

Herd mentality can be a bad thing. You have a nagging doubt about going ahead with what the majority seems to recommend, but instead of voicing out and vehemently protesting the atrocities of having to subject to another individual’s opinion, you gulp down your insecurities and hope for the best. This is when things like My Name is Khan happen.

After proudly announcing to the world that I would not, under any circumstances, watch this movie even for free, I took the bait and paid a precious 180 bucks for this sob fest. Had I known about the ordeal I was about to go through in the next four hours (K-Jo wtf?! FOUR HOURS?!), I would have happily switched to drinking sulphuric acid from a cocktail glass while smoking up on poisonous fumes instead.

I am not going to write about the story and the director’s vile attempts to make me gouge my eyes out after every five seconds. I will, instead, write about a few observations in the movie, the glaring flaws and of course, the weather, as and when I get bored. Which is a strong possibility considering what I am writing about.

• I do not know whether Shah Rukh Khan was acting or was just being his normal self in the movie
  
  
• A thirteen year old boy with Asperger’s Syndrome pumps gallons of clogged water by cycling away for many tireless hours and no one even thanks him. Unless you count bragging about the boy being one’s student as appreciation
  
  
• Is it just me or does Shah Rukh Khan look more blind than unfocussed?
  
  
• Coherent speech be damned, our hero does his imaginary singing in perfect clarity as and when the situation demands it
  
  
• Kajol meets Shah Rukh for the first time as she went about rescuing him from the crowd that had alighted from a bus, as they were pissed with Shah Rukh for standing in the middle of the road. Kajol then goes on to lecture Shah Rukh on the philosophy of fear. In the middle of the road. Note the absence of the crowd
  
  
• Kajol’s heart wrenching trust in just-met-guy-on-road-a-month-ago. “Please take my son to the museum. I do not care if you have Asperger’s Syndrome and certainly have no regard for your dislike of crowded places.”
  
  
• Kajol – “Oh, you have Asperger’s Syndrome AND are jobless! My faith in love is restored! My son will finally have a father! So what if it means a whole lot of adjusting for you. This movie is not about Asperger’s Syndrome anyway.”
  
  
• Shah Rukh, with such touching innocence, emphasises to pronounce Khan, his surname, in a way similar to the process of trying to get some phlegm out of your throat
  
  
• Note how boy and wife call father and husband, not ‘Dad’ or ‘Rizwan’, but ‘Khhhhhh-hhhhh—hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh-----hhhhhhhhhhhh---an’
  
  
• Indian boy is killed in broad daylight, in awesomely big soccer field, and not a single soul notices this. The pleasures of murdering in a big school! *Must execute all my enemies here*
  
  
• Kajol doesn’t apply make-up when she is accusing her husband of being a Khan, but remembers to put some on when she goes around making people aware of the case of her murdered son *sniff*
  
  
• Shah Rukh goes backpacking through America without so much as a steady job in place, donates all his money to a fundraiser and STILL manages to travel without a hitch. Oh, and please take special note of ‘I am constantly travelling and am almost broke, but I still look bath fresh’
  
  
• Where there is water, Shah Rukh will cycle - (scene of floods caused by Hurricane Katrina). BMC team, here is your long awaited candidate
  
  
• Inspite of being afflicted with Asperger’s, our protagonist seems to know the A-Z of organisation when repairing a falling church (Superman, eat this!)
  
  
• News shows anchored at BBC / PBC are aired in Hindi or Hinglish. Indians, be ashamed. People of another nationality, who do not understand the language, are willing to tune into shows where our Indian correspondents will talk in Hinglish. Maybe they really dig the English parts
  
  
• Indian correspondent is scared of turban attracting violence in post 9/11 America, but retains beard. Is also fair-skinned, so the beard literally stands out. Is hoping that prospective attackers will ignore his reputation as a reporter, his fancy clothes and watch, and assume that he is too poor to have a shave
  
  
• Barkha Dutt (which I keep mistyping as Bra-kha for some hilarious reason). I am not sure what the lady is doing here
  
  
• While the US government lacks apathy, Indians come to the rescue of the people stuck in flooded church. Of course, it doesn’t matter that an actual rescue team is missing. Main hoon na!
  
  
• President Obama look-a-like wannabe. (goes into laughter fit). He is the REAL hero. He gives a rat’s ass to all security protocols of the USA and allows the barricades holding a surprisingly behaving crowd to be opened, so that our hero can come through *standing ovation*

I watched this movie with a friend who has sworn me to secrecy for fear of being socially rejected. I don’t care about social rejection anyway. After watching My Name is Khan, you pretty much stop caring at all.

Movies of substance

Mammo, a movie directed by the multi-talented Shyam Benegal, was made way back in 1994....it is more of commercial cinema and not the kind of movie every person would want to watch. I saw it by chance on Doordarshan, when I was a kid, and although I didn't understand much of it, it stayed in my mind. I saw it again around a year back and this time, I understood every bit.

Riyaz, a 13-year old boy, lives with his grandmother Fayyuzi (Surekha Sikri) and her aunt Mehmooda Begum a.k.a Mammo (Fardia Jalal). He lives in a humble house, isn't rich and is quite bitter about his father abandoning him. They are a delightful trio, with tiny harmless squabbles over petty issues occurring between them every now and then. Although the grandmother is quite conservative, which for her age, is not surprising, Mammo on the other hand, is quite free-spirited, modern (for 1994) and an out-of-the-box thinker. And she is about the same age as her elder sister too. Yes.

There is this one scene where she finds Riyaz playing around with some cigarettes in his room, and she sneaks up on him and catches him red-handed. Instead of scolding him severely, she lights up one cigarette, takes a drag, coughs and grimaces over its filthy taste, and then tells Riyaz that this not worth his time and tells him to put it away. It works! Jalal smoking a ciggy is also captured on the DVD cover of the movie. Ultra-cool!

Mammo was born during the British Raj in India, but was one of the thousands who fled to Pakistan during the partition era. Having settled down there, she was automatically termed as a Pakistani citizen. All was well until she realised that she couldn't conceive. To add to her woes, her husband expires a few years later, and property issues and the 'barrenness of her womb' resulted in her relatives throwing her out of the house. With nowhere to go, she comes to India to stay with her sister on a temporary visa, which has to be renewed every month.

To end the constant trips to the visa guy, Mammo somehow scrapes for some money and bribes a police inspector to issue her a permanent visa for staying in India. As luck would have it, the police guy who issued her a permanent visa gets transferred. The police inspector who comes in place of him gets hold of Mammo, labels her an illegal immigrant, and arranges to have her 'transported back' to Pakistan. She is forcibly put onto a train to Pakistan, and no heed is paid to the fact that she has a visa, and the heart rendering pleas of her old sister or young grandson are ignored.

Riyaz and Fayyuzi make many attempts to trace her, but all in vain. Many years later the boy grows up into an adult (played by the versatile Rajit Kapoor, of Byomkesh Bakshi fame), and starts penning down memories of his beloved grand aunt, who in her little ways, made the burden of their lives, a little easier to bear. He hopes to reach out to his lost aunt through these memoirs, and be reunited again.

The movie is a beautiful rendition of how political games can override humanitarian values, and how the Partition has caused many unhealed wounds to this day.

What happens in the end? Watch to find out.

The last movie I watched was Wall-E

As is the case with every Pixar movie, the characters in this movie have emoted beautifully, almost seeming like they were anything but inanimate objects, which i believe, only accentuated the wonderful display of emotions.

Set in a few light years ahead of the new millennium, the movie showcases how, a simple robot, unknowingly, through his simple ways, goes about waking up human beings to the cause of saving their planet from complete extinction.

The storyline is beautifully carved around the protagonist, WALL-E. His simplicity and innocence, and his heart-rendering affection for female android EVA, is almost reminiscent of the character played by Tom Hanks in FORREST GUMP. However, when the movie ended, I couldn't help thinking that the love angle in the movie (of that between WALL-E and EVA) could have been avoided. If they were to be friends, a brother-sister duo, or just two plain strangers out to save the earth, it would have been just fine. But as lovers, I opine that a little focus was unnecessarily shifted away from WALL-E — who with his inability to speak coherently, could yet convey the message more comprehensively than words ever could.

Somehow, the love angle tainted an otherwise flawless movie. It's not that the love angle was not explored beautifully. It was not handled in a crass or comical manner. The simple devotion that WALL-E nurtured for EVA is indeed touching and cute, at times. But I feel that movie makers ought to do away with the tactic of having to drag a love angle into every movie they make. Two people don't need to fall in love to save a planet. Or make a splendid chef, as was the case with Ratatouille, another brilliant (and my favourite) Pixar movie. A mouse and a man become the best of friends. What a combination, and a winning one at that. For me, friendship always score above love.

But overall, a splendid movie. Nothing beats the graphics quality of a Pixar movie. A must watch, on the big screen. Four out of five, I would say. Watch it.