A blood bath in the markets, so keep it together folks! This storm too shall blow over!
Just finished Hari Kunzru's "Transmission". Gripping read. I'll try and review it when I get the time. Reading Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" at present and loving it!
All of us have been conditioned to believe that people have to be passionate, follow a dream, else life is nothing but a compromise. Great men were passionate - Vincent Van Gogh, Jim Morrison, Fox Mulder. If you are working 9 to 5, then it is assumed that your life is a compromise. If you don't go bungee jumping, don't party every weekend, or watch movies on weekdays, you have become old and jaded. Or so we are led to believe. Rock On!! works on similar premises - if you don't become a rock star, your life is not worth living. The fabulous house, the loving wife, the BMW don't offer an iota of comfort if you are not a rock star. Or at least, a pale imitation of one.
So there we were, G and I, being cool on a weekday evening, wasting our precious time on Rock On!!, a movie that is filled with one cliche after another! Director Abhishek Kapoor (such a perfect filmy name) doesn't even attempt to use something so banal as intelligence. Why try realism, when pseudo realism will do? Why bother at all, when Shankar, Ehsaan and Loy have done all the hard work for him? Never mind if your cast can barely act, the music is great and all they have to do is swagger around and look cool.
When will Bollywood learn the difference between an investment banker and a wealth manager? Did you know that a selfish moron who can't appreciate what his wife is trying to do to make him happy will get a blinding flash of clarity at a passing comment from some third person? Could I get my hands on the teleporter that Arjun Rampal used to navigate Bombay traffic and land up at the right spot before a 5 minute song ends? Mr. Kapoor, too many short cuts may make your job easy, but attention to detail never hurt a movie. See Johnny Gaddar if you want to know what I mean!
Verdict: Pretentious, shallow and a total waste of time.
PS: Shahana Goswami and Purab Kohli deserved better. Two bright spots in an otherwise dull movie.
PPS: The end credits say "Don't download the music, buy the CD". I downloaded, then bought and regretted the purchase. Dudes, if you want us to buy, then the least you can do is give us better sound quality on the CD!
A couple of weeks ago, I went out to have dinner with some people my husband knows. I was the last to arrive at this chic SoBo (South Bombay) joint and was surprised to find them sitting outside the restaurant. My eyebrows went up in the air when I was told that we had a child in the group, who would not be allowed inside. Is this India? - was my first reaction. But when I went home and thought about it, it didn't seem like too weird an idea. How many times have you been to a public place where kids are running berserk, even as their parents smile indulgently at their misbehaviour? More often than not, people (self included) don't mind because of the social conditioning. This Times of India article on child free zones in the country offers some interesting perspectives.
I don't know if I agree to the idea of child free zones, but people could ensure that their children do not create trouble in public places. My Indian friend who lives in Tokyo once told me that the only children in Japan who run amok are Indian; the local children are supposedly very well mannered. Maybe its just the way we bring up our children.
