So(it's finally)Ohh-Ver-Ya!!!

It's been a good six months since my last post. But then, my blog posts are all about experiences that I relate to and, feel strongly about. So irregular though I may be with my postings, I do mean to keep blogging as and whenever I can.

Reading this movie review brought to mind the deciding question put forth to

Question: If you could live forever, would you and why?

Answer: "I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever,"

Watching Saawariya, after all that hype, felt just like that. All much ado about nothing! Phew...

                               sAAHHHwariya - Where madness meets madness

The story goes, Raj is a newcomer to this wonderfully stylized (ripped off from Moulin Rouge) red light district. Actually, for all its worth, there are no red lights there only blue, green and yellow.

Inspired by the popular game, Need For Speed: Underground, SLB decided that all buildings should have neon and for some reason, numbers. Anywho, Raj meets Gulab (who is wearing a ring bigger than her face), and sings. Gulab says hello, sings, Raj introduces himself, sings, then he leaves to find a lodge, sings there, walks out with a football, sees a girl on the bridge, sings, the girl sings in chorus… I'm guessing it was somehow required that everybody sang to convey their most basic of thoughts.

Following this, the opening script was something like:
00:30 - Raj starts singing.
01:00 - Gulab starts singing.
01:15 - Prostitutes (in electric blue saris) sing

01:45 - Lamp post starts singing.

By the first 10 minutes, you will feel your head becoming heavier and experience a choking feeling. Do not worry, for this is your brain trying to strangle you. Brains don't have hands, so it's all good. By the first 15 minutes, you're wondering "Why is everybody singing? Why? Why?". A leaked SMS from Karan Johar sent while he was attending the premiere says - "o dear god y is evrybdy singing o shit y wont it stop sumbdy make it stop aaaaaaaaa" .

Anyshit, Raj befriends this girl, by doing an impersonation of Rocky which is even worse than Sylvester Stallone's impression of Rocky and promises to keep it strictly platonic and in the next 5 seconds falls madly in love with her. Why? Because the script fucking said so, that's why! And the next morning he expresses his new found love in one of the most traditional of ways by flashing a windmill, not once but several times. It could also be that he is urinating outside the window. Either way, the AETW (association for ethical treatment of windmills) is sure going to be pissed. He wears a frickin' towel and dances around all nilly-willy. Then he humps a piano and sleeps on (with) it. Lilipop finds him sleeping on (with) the piano and remarks that her son used to do the same thing. He then submits his "application for luvvv" to his boss asking for a leave, and his boss just so happened to be a good mood, so he denied him. On seeing her the next night they run around some more - all singing and dancing of but ofcourse! :-)

And then after all of that and more, she runs off somewhere. The next day she opens up to him telling him her deep dark secret (surprise...surprise): that's she's really - a Jew (Jesus Christ...gimme a break!!!) and that she fell in love with this another dude called Imaan a year ago, but hasn't heard from him since, and about how he never shows up online. Raj now (as if to duly return the obligation) lies to her too, telling her he's a Jew too, while in reality he's Kurdish and then, voila,they become good friends! Then suddenly from somewhere, a flashback shows her, Salman and a duffel bag. Salman brought the duffel bag to the set and absolutely refused to be parted with it. The stars say the duffel bag smelled very much like dried meat, and had a note stuck on it saying "this does NOT contain the highly endangered Black Buck" and, whenever people came near to it Salman exploded into raptures of "I didn't do it… I didn't... no… stop looking at me… what is wrong with you people…" Then she makes him "scrap" Imaan on Oar-cut, a popular social networking post office. "

The next night they have a whole dancing fiesta where Raj wears this magenta velvet suit, and dances around in 'gay' abandon like a monkey on crack. It is of interest to note that of all the times, he is called "handsome" he is sported wearing that velvetty suit.

However, in this town, handsome could be a codeword of some sort to mean "one who dances like an epileptic chicken". Supposedly, the velvet suit caused much confusion on the set and Salman strongly believed him to be a couch and tried sitting on him several times. Okay, so here's the tricky part – he shimmies and then claims to be in love with her. She shrugs it off with her freaky laugh where you can't make out if she's crying or laughing or dying. That Sonam Kapoor chick is one crazy bitch. And then our man's suddenly like, "Damn, I ain't getting laid tonight, so might as well try somebody else" and so he goes to Gulab, but in the process gets his ass kicked by her bouncers, then returns to Sakina, and on talking and singing some more, she changes her mind, and agrees to rub flowers with him. You see, Bollywood didn't discover sex until 2032, and they thought making out was taking a trip to the country. Sex is usually depicted by the rubbing of two flowers together onscreen, going down, after which there're odd sounds like a baby screaming or whatever the hell it is that is applicatory. Right then, Salman appears with his Bag-o-Beef™ and she is suddenly torn by her choices. Should she go for the under-actor or the over-actor? Meanwhile, to help her make her decision, Raj does a poor imitation of himself, which was already a poor imitation of someone else. Pondering over what seems like an eternity - of a few nano-seconds she ditches him and runs for Salman. They walk away. End of story. And the credits roll while you go "HUH? WHAAAA? WHAT JUST HAPPENED? IT' FREAKIN' OVER? AND I SPENT a 140 bucks on THIS?!?!???

In brief, I will now summarize the movie for you: Guy wants girl. Guy does not get girl. Simple!

Expected ending: Raj elopes with Imaan. This movie is based on a novel, White Nights, by Russian playwright Fyodor Dostoevsky. I will now summarize another famous Russian play, Three Sisters, by Chekov: Three sisters want to go to Moscow. They don't. Simple again! ;-)

See a pattern? Fit twelve (or more) songs into this "extremely complicated" plotline and you have Bride & Prejudice. Or Saawariya. I forget. Anywho, the point is that the climax of this movie happens 10 minutes before the movie actually starts. Or maybe even before you get to the theater. This is possibly the most anti-climatic, anti-conclusive, anti-windmill movie I have ever seen. Rani Mukherji is the only saving grace, but even she can't save this lumbering mass of lengthy pointlessness. This is so pointless that it makes the WWE seem like the human genome project. Never before have I felt such gratitude toward the theater management for cutting scenes from a movie. This movie sucks so bad, it makes a vacuum cleaner look like a moderately powerful suction device. I have a new found respect for Salman Khan, and that's mainly because he doesn't sing. Sanjay Leela Bhansali, you are done for! Done for! If you think that you will gain some remuneration from audio sales, you are wrong! The extremely diligent audio pirates of India are out there right now screwing you. Bit by bit (all manner of puns intended). You will suffer. The circle of life shall be completed! Food will be eaten! Justice shall prevail! so shall...Om Shanti Om!

Saawariya is one of the best movies I've seen this year. Yes, if by best I mean utterly screwed up, and by movie I mean one huge music video, and by seen I mean slept through, then by all means, yes. Saawariya (beloved), derived from the Dravidian word Savirya which means insufferable-piece-of-shit is basically Moulin Rouge meets Rocky meets Dr. Doolittle, give or take a few prostitutes and black people who can talk to animals. The sheer extent of its similarity to Moulin Rouge is so frightening that it's scary. You have lighted windmills ala Moulin Rouge, Victorian era cityscape ala Moulin Rouge, frescoes ala Moulin Rouge…. you get the point. What it doesn't have, however is Nicole Kidman. But to compensate we have the lovely, manic depressive Sonam Kapoor on whom scientists have recently speculated, using her mood swings as a more accurate measure of time over the Cesium atom.

As you all know, this movie is directed by none other than Sanjay 'Leela' Bhansali. With a middle name like that, he was picked on quite a lot at school. And drowning these harrowing memories in marijuana smoke for the past 20 years have finally taken its toll. So, in effect, this movie was inevitable; to those who are still complaining: you had it coming, so stop whining. Anyway, Mr. Leela's ultimate fantasy during this period was to make love to a unicorn. But his penultimate fantasy was to make a movie in which the singing and dancing were only exceeded by more singing and dancing, in a city where it is perennially Christmas. Or the people were just too goddamn lazy to remove the Christmas lights every year after Christmas, so they just left it on all the time. As you know, each director has his/her own trademark – for example: Karan Johar's keeps his actors so well dressed that they are often mistaken for mannequins, Gurinder Chada (a special shout goes out to Gurinder Chada's son: "Yo momma's so fat, when she walked in front of the TV I missed 3 commercials") crushes the actors to death when they refuse to comply, and so on… SLB has a few trademarks too; all women HAVE to wear make-up all the time. Even the really old people, who can be seen decomposing right in front of the camera.

The main characters in Saawariya are:
Ranbir Raj (Ron-beer Ra-jh) : The protagonist of this movie, he is a musician and suffers from epileptic seizures frequently. Songs have cleverly been inserted at points where he has convulsive fits to make it seem like he is dancing. Ranbir is played by Ranbir Kapoor, who is as charming as a weasel in a cardboard shirt.
Sakina (Suck-e-nah): The female lead, is played by Sonam Kapoor whose character is based on a JK flip-flop. She has 2 modes of acting: crying and laughing. And toggle. Nobody really\n knows what she does in toggle mode.

Gulab (Goo-lab): This is a "guest appearance" by Rani Mukherjee, who plays a high class prostitute. Her guest role is explained by the fact that the only time she does NOT appear on screen is the time she "deals" with her "clients". The movie acknowledges special thanks to her at the beginning. This is because, at the end of the shooting SLB went and told her "OK Thanks Bye".

Imaan (Ee-maan): Another guest role, Imaan is played by Salmaan Khan, who plays a Nawab who comes into town, reads the Koran upside down and then leaves. Oh, and in between he and Sakina have a passion filled fling. By fling I mean conversation, and by passion I mean lots of crying. Special thanks were also given to Salman, but unlike Rani he was paid. But due to a certain contractual error, SLB was able to pay off Salman entirely in refined salt.

Lilipop (Lee-lee pop!): The mother figure to Raj, she is one crazy cookie. Zohra\n Sehgal plays this role with elan. She wears lipstick all the time. And can be seen decomposing in real-time. That's just plain creepy. Heather Whitestone, who was selected as Miss America 1995.