Paifa vafool!

Yesterday we went to watch a movie. Which is news, under the circumstances. The missus was apprehensive of going into a movie hall. She's read somewhere that crowded air conditioned spaces are the ideal transfer points of H1N1. Thankfully nobody in the plex coughed, sneezed, or looked sick in any manner. Nobody was wearing a mask. Yours truly was the only person letting out an occasional cough and getting regarded with alarmed looks. I'm told young Ms. Ayushi is having a similar experience in school. These days their teachers are told to stay alert for probable cough and cold symptoms. And every morning at the assembly, under those observant eyes, our daughter feels a huge sneeze welling up inside her whenever she looks at the morning sun. She says the sun getting in her eyes makes her sneeze. I believe we are a family of nervous sneezers and coughers.

About what we chose to watch, I'm more than satisfied.

Kaminay is farp. Kaminay is ftark. (It even has a racy number called fatak, which, shock of shocks, is actually about Shahid Kapoor the goody NGO worker Guddu, extolling the virtue of safe sex with a bit of pomp and circumstance, inside a red light district. I'd never have guessed. But I get ahead of myself here....where was I? ) Yes. Kaminay has the the Vishal Bhardwaj stamp of quality. In extra bold letters too. The slight variation here is in the pace of events as they build up towards a climax. Were Mr. Bharadwaj playing cricket, this would be his debut in oneday matches. All them gangsters, the chase scenes, the arson and shootouts, this is territory often frequented by a fellow Tarrantino fan, Fanjay F. Gupta. But like they say, the proof of the effing is in the color of the baby's eyes. I'm quite sure if Guptaji were to make this film, a certain Mr. Dutt would be playing the kamina played here (with sublime panache', I must add) by Amol Gupte. And we all know how it would turn out, don't we? So there.

The triumph of scene and dialogue writing that was integral to Omkara and Maqbool takes Mr. Bharadwaj to new realms here. Unlike these earlier adaptations where the literary backbone demanded him to dispense the bard's famous monologues every once in a while, here he has more freedom over the original storyline (unless, that is to say, this is his take on The comedy of errorf. Just a thought). The result is spectacular. In Kaminay, Vishal uses the economy of words and subtle wordplay to perfection. It all starts to happen in the first 90 seconds of the film. When Charlie the lisper lays out the rules of the story and lets you know why he will call an f an f. That opening grabs one by the balls and fixes the attention squarely. From then on it's one rocking ride.

The gems of dialogue were discussed in great detail by Raja Sen on rediff. The only thing I might add is the one instance where the dialogue was left unsaid. In the early minutes of the film, Charlie says something like, "watt usse nahi lagti ki kaunsa rasta tum chunte ho. Balki watt usse lagti hai ki kaunsa rasta tum chhodte ho." Now I couldn't make much of it at the time (in any case, I have limited understanding of mumbaiyya language; in my opinion, agar CFL nahi jalaoge to bahut watt lag jayega). Not until towards the very end of the climax when Charlie decides to play proper and not pick up the two huge diamonds from a dead Tashi's hand, and gets shot at the back as a result. You are shown a tight close shot of the hand with diamonds and the dialogue is left unrepeated. Masterly!

Shahid Kapoor acts like he's the future of hindi cinema. Well, perhaps he is. He and Abhay Deol. But the refreshing surprises are in Ms Chopra's hurricane Marathi lines, the awesome ensemble cast of cameo players largely unseen in hindi screen (especially the bong brothers), and every character defined with nuances. From what one has seen in an otherwise drab year for Bollywood, surely this will be the one 2009 is going to be remembered by.

sólo el amor puede ser incumplida romántico

The most annoying element of Vicky Cristina Barcelona is the voiceover narration. Sometimes it makes you feel you are watching a documentary on Travel and Living. In an interesting way, it is also the most redeeming feature of the movie. It's like Mr. Woody Allen washing his hands off any glitches in scripting. It's like Mr. Allen is saying, "See, these are my people. I didn't have anything to do with them, they were like this only. Hell I don't have an effing clue what they'd be up to next. I'm only here to tell their story. Watch them if you like. If you don't, I'm sure some plexes are still showing The Dark Knight."



The unusual thing about the narrative is that it reads out in broad detail the nuances of characters rather than allow the script to reveal them slowly through their actions. In fact the action only serves to corroborate what has already been said in the voiceover. I'll give an example.

(This is the voiceover script during the third minute of screen time when Vicky and Cristina make their appearance)
The two had been close since college, and shared the same tastes and opinions on most matters, Yet when it came to the subject of love, it would be hard to find two more dissimilar viewpoints. Vicky had no tolerance for pain, and no lust for combat. She was grounded and realistic. Her requirements in a man were seriousness and stability. She had become engaged to Doug because he was decent and successful, and understood the beauty of commitment. Cristina, on the other hand, expected something very different out of love. She reluctantly accepted suffering as an inevitable component of deep passion and was resigned to putting her feelings at risk. If you asked what she was gambling her emotions on to win, she would have been unable to say. She knew what she didn't want, however. And that was exactly what Vicky valued above all else.

Makes you wonder if you are at a theater or a book reading session, yes, but you have to give him an A for audaciousness. Don't know if it's just me, but the way the movie begins with the narrator launching into character analysis of the protagonists, it reminded me of Springtime a' la Carte. (Now where's the connection? read on, before you jump and shout) It seemed the director's way of saying, like O'Henry did in his time, "look, n00bs, a film is not written like this. Never, never, do this at the beginning of a script that you write. (Of course I can pull it off, because I'm Woody Allen)".

Does it work? Well, after a fashion, to a large extent, give or take a few vagaries of the plot, it does. Me, I'm not your Woody Allen aficionado, but many people in the know are calling this one of his best. To my mind, it has the feel of an European director's film rather than one from an American raised in Brooklyn. Think Bertolucci if you will. Though that may be largely attributable to the backdrop. While watching VCB, I was intermittently reminded of Stealing Beauty, because the central idea of young American women rediscovering themselves among unknown people in a beautiful foreign land is common for both films. Interestingly, within this genre too this one is unique. Here, the life of the protagonists remain exactly the same at the end of 96 minutes of storytelling. Only thing they possibly take away from it are the life-defining experiences of a summertime.

How did the characters play? I love Javier Bardem. It's a pity I've seen very little of him.(only No Country last year, got to watch more espanol movies) He makes it look entirely feasible for an intriguing stranger to walk up to the table of two totally unknown young ladies and propose upfront a weekend tour to another city involving art watching, good wine and food and wholesome sex. His character Juan Antonio the artist does this, and Bardem makes it look completely decent and good-humored. One can only wish one could do that in real life.
Penelope Cruz has been walking away with the awards. She has the author backed role which is the centre piece of this drama, and she plays it with perfect over the top panache'. But it's Scarlett Johansson who really impressed me with understatement. A petite bundle of genius, this young lady is.

If there's anything VCB teaches us, it is this. In life it's not always possible to know what you really want. But if you have a good idea what you don't want, it'll often do.

Tauba tera Jalwa

I live in a funny place. Let's see. The other night I got away quiet as a cat, to catch the late show of DevD. I was Desparate. Asking the missus along was out of the question. Firstly, this is the exam season, and she's busy with young Ayushi. Moreover I sensed she might not like it ( I'd heard the second half dragged a bit.) As luck would have it, the screen (screen, is an overstatement. It's actually the friendly neighborhood movie hall) was showing only matinee and evening shows of the flick. For some odd reason, Speed returns(hindi)U/A was showing on the night show. Not amused, I quietly crawled back, to many a jibe from wifey and dear daughter, gleeful at my misadventure. But did I give up? Hell no, I Was desperate.

Thus it happened that this afternoon I played possum and left office early, feeling terribly guilty and all, remembering the hazy old days of bunking school as a kid to watch Shakti . There were, in all, about thirty people in the theater, none of them older than 20. I was in a time warp. I was quite enjoying the film. Then, fifteen minutes from the end, with the story going around in circles, oh, another one of those childhood miracles. Blackout in the theater. Did I mention time warp?

It took inordinately long for the show to resume. After what seemed like a hour and a half(but was actually seven minutes), during which I'd completed two phone conversations and was now seriously weighing my options, action came back on screen. The film dragged to its compromise ending. Am I glad I stayed back till the end? I don't know. But boy did I enjoy my absconding schoolboy act? you bet.

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About the movie. Anurag Kashyap has a way with scripting. Like everybody else is saying, the first half is flawless. If Anurag's treatment has grabbed you by the collar from the very first frame, towards the end of the first half he lifts his craft to such a crescendo, it's like, where do we go from here?

Abhay Deol. One hears Amir Khan has kept a dog named Shahrukh. This lad can raise a kennel full of Khans one of these days. It's a pity his films are hardly getting mass attention. Then maybe it's better this way.

Mahi Gill. What can I say? Watch her to believe. In many ways she became the essence of Paro than in any other version we've seen. You'll say her role has been written too well. But then, you get a feeling she has that ability to redefine every character she plays.

I could go on about every bit player. But the truth is Mr. Kashyap has given his characters so much meat and so little greasepaint, you get to like his folks instantly. I simply loved the three singer/dancers who act as some kind of set prop to Dev's decadence. They reminded of the three balladeers in There's something about Marie, yet so different. It was funny in a very dark sort of way.

If Devdas, as in the original, was essentially about love lost and self-destruction, in the modern day version, he is more about lovelessness and decadence. He can get so bad he'll make SRK's Dev look like a teenager stealing a smoke by the side of the school gym. At the same time he'll be infinitely more vulnerable with his skinny frame curled up in just a pair of dirty jeans on the brothel floor. Coming back to it, that is the whole point of Anurag Kashyap's interpretation. One feels mighty impressed by his work. Towards the denouement of his film he looks a little lost, true, but that's acceptable for somebody with the kind of storyline he has taken on.

I'm afraid I'd given a miss to No Smoking owing to bad reviews. But come March, I'm not going to miss Gulal. It'll be fascinating to watch where Mr. Kashyap goes from here.

Rab and aur sab


Do you see Rab, i.e, God, in Shah Rukh Khan's countenance? Do you, Punk? Because this young lady here, she does. And, of course I don't. But then I've had myopia since about the same time they discovered Ethiopia, which was way before this young lady was even up to the task of wetting her nappies. The lady has a condition, you say? Pity, no? Such a fetching young girl. Like a breeze of fresh air, a friend remarked. Like the girls in breeze soap commercials, I added. Anoushka, her name was. Proficient in every-thing. Dancing, emoting, raising hell on a hyabusa, you name it. Only thing she has a glitch with is her face recognition software. It seems she has difficulty in identifying people every time they change their clothes, don a pair of contacts, or put mousse in their hair. No problemo, I said. You only gotta buy yourself a lenovo, lady, and you're all set. (Wait ! Are those lenovo laptops designed to recognize chhote nawab's mug only? food for ponderance.)

Decades ago, one thirty-something filmmaker had told a story of a couple who got married by circumstances. How they lived the bliss of love blooming haule haule in the surroundings of mundane domesticity until tragedy struck, was the mainstay of his masterpiece, celebrated for decades around the world. Ever afterwards, dozens of films have been made in India with a similar starting point. The premise is a tad frayed at the edges. Umpteen directors good, bad and ugly have grabbed that ball and run with it. Until one day, the ball dropped. With apologies to John Donne, one needn't send to ask on whom the ball dropped, it dropped on Adi.

Several reviewers have trashed the movie and vent disappointment over Aditya Chopra's fall from grace. I wouldn't dwell on it. Let me list the positives. The sets are good. SRK as the bespectacled John Doe a.k.a Surindar Sahni gets a B- plus for effort. But only as Suri, mind you. In his other avatar he is insufferable. If you can skip the movie but sneak inside the hall at about 70 minutes into the proceedings, you could stay for 5 minutes and watch the Shyamak Davar choreographed Bollywood tribute dance, which I found kind of nice despite ghastly music. Especially Kajol briefly impersonating Nargis which was really something. And surely among positives, young Anoushka too, she's a darling. I can never forgive Adi Chopra for giving her a wrong launch. In spite of being YRF product with an Amritsari backdrop, the film has very little sarson-da-saag and makki-di-roti, like some apprehensive souls had feared.

What else is there? Oh, SRK will walk out of this debacle unscathed. Same for Yash Raj Films, who look like they can take 10 flops for every moderate hit they make. Not so much Aditya Chopra, whose credentials as the midas man should take a serious beating after this.

The year end is drawing nigh. It's been a pathetic year for the big budget vehicles for top league Mumbai stars and directors. The biggest success among which was perhaps Singh is Kingg, a fact that pretty much tells the whole story. I'm, however, going to put my money on the Christmas release. Maybe Amir has a finger on market pulse. Maybe Ghazini will deliver. One lives in hope.

God Tussi Great Ho- the review
(Another one bites the dust)

Bruce : Lord, feed the hungry, and bring peace to all of mankind. How's that?
God : Great... If you wanna be Miss America.

God : Bruce, you have a divine spark. You have a gift for bringing joy and laughter to the world. I know, I created you.
Bruce : Quit bragging.

Say you were Rumi Jaffrey for a half-year. No, let's say God gave you the kind of resources and laissez faire Mr. Jaffrey had while he tried to reproduce Bruce Almighty in amchi Mumbai. Now, the first thing you'd probably want to do is exclude the brand of humor in the original movie that you believe your Indian audience might not appreciate. For example, like in the lines above. Mark it, I said it's what you believe, not I. And definitely not your viewers, who, according to you, are from Ulhasnagar and Jhumri Talaiya and such like, and they are so crass that a brilliantly impossible story and kickass punchlines can't hold their attention for one hundred and sixty odd minutes unless your vertically challenged club bouncer of a hero struts in wearing his form hugging floral shirt and breaks into a vulgar jig every now and then to the tune of some asinine music. You'd also feel somehow that the God-meets-man-and-shows-some-tricks scenario can only appeal to the audience if presented with the right sort of special effects,e.g, melting skies, a road on the clouds, folks walking on air and vaporising at will, that sort of stuff. You'd moreover, doubtless require that between your bouncer and his girl, there should be a rival lover angle for comic relief. Hell, it worked in Mujhse Shaadi Karogi, and it worked in MPKK, didn't it? It always works man, and you know how to do it. In fact, your first half should only comprise your brand of triangular fun, right? God? Oh He'll wait. You know your crowd too well. Hell, you can twist them around your middle finger, huh, Rumi?

(But guess what, Rumi Almighty? While you were busy touching up the special effects, somebody's gone and changed the rules. The audience now, most unfair of them, are hardly pining for an item number on Aksa beach. Even your mentor doesn't know what the viewer wants anymore. Yes, the formidable Dhawan grapples today with the balancing game between the republic of Barka kana and the plex crowds. And you thought you had it all made, didn't you?)

Nuff said. If you were Rumi you wouldn't make these mistakes, I'm sure. I know I wouldn't. The trick here was making it with minimal creative liberties. One had perhaps one of a dozen greatest original comedies of all times, and all one needed to do was add small desi touches here and there. One needn't let loose a creative diarrhea. One certainly needn't select a lead actor who plays all his roles like he is on stage doing a live show (my choice was Arshad Warsi, remember?) and a former beauty queen who looks like she hasn't slept in a week (Priyanka, go spend a month at some spa, please, and quit worrying how Katrina is moving ahead). Speaking of mistakes one shouldn't make, one should also never, never include that mad monkey Sohail Khan in any sort of cinematic enterprise.

In the original film, the homeless man never talks to Bruce Nolan. He does it with his puns on the placard. In the last scene, his board reads: Armageddon outta here. And his face morphs into God's (Morgan Freeman's) as he walks away. In Rumi's edition, he's made that man Salman's chummy and confidante. Towards the end, he is granted a long denied wish, and turns into a barking dog. They put him in a cage and take him away. An eye-opener on how far backwards Rumi had got it all.

You have freed me traveler, now go free yourself.

To reach the castle of the Zade emperor, you must take the north road. And cross the border between Heaven and Earth. Then you'll have to pass through the gate of no-gate. (Which means you either have to be a Zen master or you must be carrying something very special.) On to the Five Elements Mountains, land of the Immortals. Where, once every 500 years, the Jade Emperor hosts the Peach Banquet. It is here that the Heavenly Ministers gather to celebrate the longevity and drink the elixir of immortality.

Don't know about you people, but me, I'm a sucker for such crypto-Confucian nonsense. Over the weekend, I'd been watching The Forbidden Kingdom. As usual, late to the party. But having a whale of a time.

It is said in enlightened circles that even the greatest Zen masters and Taoist immortals could not actually defy the laws of gravity until a genius named Yuen Woo-Ping came along and introduced them to the invisible wire trick. You see, the no shadow kick, the Buddha palm technique and the one finger death touch were all very fine maneuvers to have in your repertoire, but when push came to shove, they just couldn't make you fly. Only when they learned how to give a fuck for physics, did they become the stuff of Academy awards. To borrow an expression from the movie, their ch'i became like fire. And I became a true fan ever since.



I hear the biggest action flicks of today question the very demarcation of right and wrong. They delve deep into the mind of the evil and try to find out what drives him. Logistics not permitting, I have not yet watched the greatest superhero/action movie ever made, so you can call it a case of sour grapes, but I still doubt if I'll be equal to the task. Given a choice, I'd pick the simple Amrish Puri type villains over the uber-complex Joker any day. In this regard, the Chinese hardly ever disappoint. Their villainous warlords are straightforward and true to imagination. Take a regular despot like Mao Zedong. Throw in the flowing tresses and some high kicks. Add a goatee for effect, and you're pretty much done.

A good villain is a good start. However, he alone is often not enough for a good evening's entertainment. You need to have a silent monk doubling as the crazy monkey, a drunken immortal who mouths the most confounding Zen philosophy, but as it turned out, was not really immortal to begin with, and an orphaned kid prodigy mysteriously named the Southern Sparrow, who for some unknown reason shifts back and forth between the first and the third person while alluding to herself. A witch who performs most of her sorcery with the aid of a mile-long whip, or, in the absence of it, her silver white wig, which can magically grow to, like, a length of fifty yards instantly at the moment such need may arise. That is to say nothing of the misfit hero who has little to do except looking lost and acting dumb. Only then you can look forward to time well spent.

What else? Oh there's plenty. Gems like this when Jackie Chan (Lu Yan) gets the wrong side of an arrow and is looking at slim chance of survival without his elixir.

Jason : He needs wine. It's his elixir.
Medicine man : We will send a walking monk.
Lu (From the bed) : Don't you have a running monk?

Or during the famous fight scene between Chan and Jet Li ( the monk):

Lu Yan : [the Silent Monk does a Praying Mantis stance] Praying Mantis! Very good... for catching bugs! But not Tiger!
[does a Tiger Stance]

Paisa wasool. Plus I also learned the Mandarin for "Cheers". Which is, Tamb'ei!
I recommend. But then, I'm shallow. You watch at your own risk.

In other news, we'd been at work studiously perfecting the Moj'ito. Wonderful drink for warm monsoon evenings. A little birdie tells me that Castro had once remarked, " Moj'ito ergo sum".

Myriad Mistakes

People say that the 3 mistakes Chetan Bhagat has made in his life are the three novellas he's written. On my part, I think that these people are jealous and unkind, to the point of being rude. I don't wholly subscribe to their school of opinion. For starters, as financially viable ventures, they have all handsomely paid off. In the process, he's also making India read like never before (this, a gem of a coinage by m/s Penguin India, instantly puts him on the same kind of a pedestal as a certain Dr. Radhakrishnan, a Gokhale or a Vidyasagar.) Yessir, In his life, Mr. Bhagat has done good, despite all the jealousy, and he's merrily dedicated his book to "My Country, which called me back." He's still keeping his day job, through when does he make time to visit office in between all the book promotion tours and reading sessions is anybody's guess. In short, his life so far reads like an utterly improbable balancing act, brilliantly pulled.

So, what gives?

You know, it's difficult to put a finger to it. Unfortunately there's no better way to put it than say that it just doesn't feel right. It's like watching Arnold do a drag show time and again. It's obvious Mr. Bhagat has Bollywood aspirations. All he wants to play to is his college student readership. All he wants to write for is a mainstream Indie film. He even drops names of his Bolly friends in Acknowledgements. There's nothing essentially wrong with that. One only wishes that with his kind of education and his capacity for lucid prose in an undergrad vocab (a rare trait in an MBA, who has been trained to jargonise and obfuscate.. but I digress), he should try and scratch the surface a little, put up a little classier act, and kind of do an Sabrina Dhawan instead of a Vijay Krishna Acharya, if that's the allegory I want. But there, that's his one undoing. He seems fixated on kitsch.

Let's look at Chetan's other strength. He has the ability to structure a compounded story with multiple characters woven around real life surroundings and sometimes, incidents. His first born, mostly autobiographical, had hit home with its freshness and cadence. His second, just to cash on his debut success, was born out of second hard research and third hand influences, noticeably of Hollywood flicks. The effect showed. You can't produce a halfway decent novel out of some idea that struck you upon watching Bruce Almighty. Perversely, this again sold. So, by the time of his third release, Mr.Bhagat had developed some very annoying habits. Even though much of his storytelling is still in the autobiographical mode, he will needlessly start and end his story in first person, encounter a protagonist, and try to stitch it all into his real life. Every story will also have a happy ending, fuck probability and likelihood. Every story will have a drawn out climax which reads like more a screenplay than a book. (In fact, this time around, the finale, y'know, the felling of Kans mama with a cricket ball, was so graphic, it evoked visions of an Ekta Kapoor serial. It cried for that same zoom in, zoom out, pan right, pan left, then go negative and back to color...treatment.) To make things worse, now and then, in between workaday storytelling, he will throw in some profundity which is the written equivalent of a ceetee bajao piece of dialogue. Sample this :

A very good friend is a dangerous category with Indian girls. From here you can either make fast progress. Or, if you play it wrong, you go down to the lowest category invented by Indian women ever..the rakhi brother.

In my humble opinion, this time around, Chetan had bargained with too big a landscape to go with his inane storyline. If there is one part of India which has seen the most action during the last decade, it is Gujarat. If he had to keep in frame that time, and those events, he should not have dealt in such shallow sentiments.
Two: by the time he was shaping up for Godhra, the whole ruse of his plot had fallen into a predictability trap. Which is not a good thing for a novel which has a purported USP of pace, twists, and turns.
And three, if he is writing about a child cricket prodigy and his abilities, he has to be a little convincing in his cricket commentary. I mean, "the medium pace ball rose high on the bounce and smash! another six," or, " Ali spun as if in a dance and connected-six!" just don't cut it.

Source and Source

Mujer de mi hermano,La

Does eating exactly 20 grapes for breakfast make you radiant and succulent like Barbara Mori? Must it take an impotent man to be cold in what is obviously a heated pool at night with his horny young wife, who has recently rediscovered her sexuality through an adulterous affair? Can fornicating only on Saturday nights raise your ying or something? Isn't it odd that “Soy alérgico a los peces” is an expression you learn early in Spanish classes? (Is it a genetic thing in the Hispanic race which makes them largely allergic to fish?) Why should the walls in the master bedroom of a wealthy entrepreneur (where much of the action take place) look like the walls of a warehouse? What will make a man piss in the pool in his older brother's home after having sex with the brother's wife?

A barrage of such questions, and more, raced through my mind as I sat watching La Mujer De Mi Hermano . And Peanuts man that I am, I was like " no,yes,no,yes,maybe, what do I care?" Y'know, Peppermint Patty and Sally Brown rolled into one.
It's a bit late in the day writing some review for a three-year-old film. But some things just have to be done and be away with. Ever since I heard of barbara Mori and utubed her, I'd been looking for her much talked about bona fide movie debut. Then, they say, if you really really want something, the whole universe, and the torrent networks, will come together to get it for you. They are right. So I've had the film on my hard disk about a month now but since I waste so much time moonlighting on other peoples' blogs, I could finish watching it only this evening.

With a title like My Brother's Woman, can you expect anything more than an arty skin flick? Does the film raise profound ghosts on subjects of Catholicism, abortion, homosexuality? Is the backdrop of a Latin American society and their family values essential to the narrative? Have I ever seen an issue like sibling homosexual exploitation being brought out in a movie? Is there any other surprise in the storyline? Did the predictable ending disappoint? Does the film work, as any sort of meaningful cinema?

Why not, yes, very much, nope, none, no, and yes, sort of.

And finally, does Barbara Mori rock? Am I fan now? Am I looking for her other films too? Do I think casting her in Kites was a good idea?

YESSSSS! Yes,yes and I don't think so.

While finishing, the best piece of dialogue : ( On the morning after)

Zoe's gay friend : For the love of God! Wipe that guilty look off your face. I wish I woke up with something to feeI guilty about.

Zoe( Mori) : Look at how he left, that is--
ZGF : Who cares how he left? What matters is how you came.

Stupendous! Four stars.

Heart of the run
(Of grain whiskeys and Royal Bhutan)

The desired spirit is called ‘the middle cut’ or ‘the heart of the run’ and starts to come through as the alcohol content reaches about 75 percent. The heart of the run is the only part of the distillate that will become whiskey. 20 minutes into the second and final distillation the heart of the run start to come through. This so called ‘heart’ is the only part of the distillation that is used. The process of collecting the ‘heart’ takes 3-4 hours. The alcohol concentration of the heart is between 60 and 72 percent, and has an average concentration of 68 percent. This raw spirit is cut with water to 63.5 percent, which is considered to be the optimal strength for the spirit to interact with the casks during storage.

One has sampled some sacrosanct single malts( few and far between), some just about palatable single malts, some hallowed big names of blended scotch, some overhyped BAD blends, some surprisingly good underrated ones, and more than anything else, stuff that barely escape being in the hooch category, in one's not so illustrious career.
G-E-L-E-P-H-U. Name rings a bell? Nope? This blogger has written about the distillery there and it's products. Much as the prime offering is a well known brand in certain circles (picture right), this correspondent found CSJ an average whiskey with unusually strong flavors and a fast-acting blend. This is the best they have on the shelves, priced at about $10 a 750ml. However, the whiskey I really want to discuss here is the ambitiously named "Bhutan Highland". The label honestly says it's a grain whiskey, as opposed to "blended scotch malts", whatever that means in these parts. With a curious looking yellow ribbon tied around the neck of the bottle. Dirt cheap, just above $4 for the same quantity. For that kind of pricing alone, my friend and I had at first taken it for modified tharra. Grave mistake it would have been.
Don't know if it was the cute ribbon, the honest proclamation, or the lighter color of the fluid that made me buy a bottle. For the next three evenings, my friend had I, over diverse terrain, in extremities of weather, under various states of physical exhaustion, have only happy happy memories of the whiskey to recount. Ah, the clarity it struck you with! The energetic delivery! The effortless follow through! I rate it none inferior to Ishant Sharma.
Fooling apart, what I seriously felt about the spirit is :
a) That it's obviously a single grain whiskey, technically, from only one distillery and all, much in the mold of the eminent Cameron Brig or, Invergordon, none of which I've had the pleasure of tasting.
b) The gelephu people, who had a quality whiskey on their hands( blame it on the fabled highland spring waters or the quality of Bhutanese hop) didn't go the fancy maturation in wooden cask route, which explains the absurdly low price. It was bottled fresh off the distillery, like many other whiskey makers in Asia do.
On the third evening, when we finally and truly realized the enormous potential of the whiskey (by which time the bot was empty too) we wanted to travel to Gelephu, kiss the hand of the brewer and congratulate him, and urge him to barrel his fine produce for at least six years before bottling. Then he could give m/s Whyte & Mackay a run for their money.

Your pajamas... were stolen?
Yep. I wonder what this city is coming to if a bloke's pajamas are no longer safe.
( Lt. Kellaway & Stanley Ipkiss, The Mask)

My sentiments somewhat. I wondered the same wonderment last evening (with a different if) when I asked three friends, one after another, to come over and let's drink some fine whiskey and spend a great evening watching the DVD of No Country. (Ok, quite mediocre whiskey actually, but that's beside the point.) Each one of them declined, citing lame reasons. So here was I, and there was Anton Chigurh and all that gore. And my wife somewhere in the background constantly jabbering at me for exposing the kiddo to such mad violence.
.... Caught in that sensual music all neglect/Monuments of unageing intellect.
I won't try to review the movie. It's been reviewed enough. Apparently there's a raging debate on about who killed Llewelyn Moss, the Mexicans or Chigur. I really couldn't figure out, though I might just go with the former. And then again, if Chigur really was inside that motel room when the Sheriff entered, or, the Sheriff was just trying to picture him inside. I figured the later.
The point everybody seems to have converged on is that The Brothers Coen have come out of their creative rut back into the noir zone and dark humor. Well I dunno. The movie felt more dark than humorous. Although there were some brilliant flashes like this..
-Don't put it in your pocket.
It's your lucky quarter.
-Where you want me to put it then?
- Anywhere. Not in your pocket.
Or it'll be mixed in with the others
and become just a coin.
Which it is.
Priceless. But mostly it got so dark you could use a flashlight to catch that humor. I'll take their bright humor any day. Think O Brother. Or even Big Lebowski.
Having said that, it's a nicely crafted film all the way. Sort of grows on you. But it's not overwhelming. It certainly stays longer with you than Departed. But nowhere near as long as A Beautiful Mind, or Forrest Gump.
I'm drinking more of that mediocre stuff tonight and trying to watch George Clooney. It's my oscar week.

Some people, well, a handful of very special people, value my opinion for the sixpence it is worth. About the big releases of the week, that is. It is for their benefit that I put finger on keyboard. Tonight. To write this here review of OSO. But first of all, one has to take an oath. To restrict, if not altogether avoid, using certain words and phrases. Which are: sixpack, abs, era, magic,tribute, Bollywood and picture abhi baaki hai, mere dost!

Take a bow, Farah Khan. Though at the outset, I must confess I find the film OSO only mildly interesting when put in the same canvas with Main Hoon Na. Call me biased, but as a director's first baby, MHN just blew me off my feet. In this, her second outing, Farah sticks to tributing Bollywoodana, which has sooo become her signature, but oversteps the spoofing bit in parts. Having said that, every Farah Khan film will be hers and hers only forever, because it's she who wears the pants and is the man in the house, for all the monkeying SRK can supply. OSO works. How well, will be put to debate, but as a reviewer, one's not ecstatic. It works in spite of SRK who's gotten so big he often spoofs himself on screen, and gets away with it, especially in K-Jo flicks.And here too. Watch the filmfare nominations and SRK's two films which are completely alike.

Well for those of you who are all praise, I can think of numerous positives which caused your song and dance :
The walk-in star parade was handled supremely. This number was very hard to live up to hype, and Farah passed muster. Attagirl! I know some people who still get dreamy eyed remembering the chemistry of Shahrukh and Kajol in K-Jo hits, and it's a treat for them too. Here, everybody's been given due footage and respect and every star seemed to be having fun blah- blah. As songs of this genre go, this one'll go right up there. Sajjid in Hey Babyy couldn't even come close.

More importantly, the first half leaves very little room for complaints. Manoj Kumar did complain, and we get his point. Like I said, the spoof overreaches in places. And sometimes chronology is sacrificed in favor of including all and sundry. Imagine Govinda commuting from Virar in the70's. But I'll accept that in the name of artistic license. And art it really has become, the way the period is recreated. Sabu Cyril, take a ceeteee.

If one looks at OSO from the strict and narrow angle of recreating, revisiting or remaking ( I'm sure that's NOT the word) the great seventies reincarnation formula movie KARZ with a generous bunch of digs, asides and jokes thrown in, one can't see much scope for betterment. But it is in Farah Khan's journey as the dream weaver, Bolly ishtyle, that one would miss a pilgrim's progress. Considering she's the chosen one, the torch- bearer who'll carry forth the legend, the inheritor of the Manmohan Desai angle, she seems to be stuck in the groove someplace, having too much fun on the way and losing sight of the objective. That's perhaps why the second half sucks a bit. Not because it is drab, but because Farah is in a wrap-up mood, and willing to let slip. So she can't rein in SRK's hamming in half two, alas! And what's so smart about yelling fish where fuck is intended? I'll bet this was Shahrukh's idea.
The Dard-e-Disco number's completely yuck, so is SRK trying to play some young stud like Hritik or John. For neither is he young nor a stud and the effort makes it all the uglier. The fun never leaves the set though, like, when he says, Qwali to main kar chuka hoon ab mere dard ko express karne ke liye ek...disco! you realize after leaving the theater that Farah and he were referring to MHN.
It must be that my eyes are going due to old age, but I couldn't see in Deepika Padukone what the world and Vijay Mallya must've seen. Judging purely by the sheer force of presence, women double her age, take Bips, take Vidya Balan, would any day steal a march over her. She showed great promise coupla years ago, when she was doing ramp and print. But her looks are a letdown here. That's my humble opinion. Now for histrionics. A born actor she's not, but I'll give her a coupla years to grow as one. I'll wait for a real performer to come along before I cast my vote for best female debut of this year.
Rest of cast. Kiron is superb. Shreyas seems to be heading towards a career of playing supporting actors. He does good. Arjun is bad. And of course Shahrukh is ugly. And the quick gun Murugan routine, done to death in early days Channel V, needn't have to be drooled over so much like most critics are doing.
I gave Om Shanti Om 6 in the beginning. Then I reckoned I was only watching it on a DVDrip and added 10% for a multiplex experience. So 6.5 it is. Final and non-negotiable.