Wednesday, November 25, 2015

You too ! Aamir Khan

Every day, a celebrity appears in news, all because of the statements, they give in public.Most recent inclusion in the list is of the perfectionist, Aamir Khan. He made a statement on behalf of his wife, Kiran, who apparently is worried for the safety of his child. She is scared of even opening newspaper, wondering what new news might hit her. Now, I ended up  wondering about few things.
Every body is asking, whether Aamir asked Kiran, which country she want to shift to?
I, on the other hand, wanted to ask, what was his response to her worry. Did he agree with her views? Whether he discussed with her about probable country worth shifting? or did he try to convince her that her worry is not true picture of India, and India is the best place on earth to live?

What I heard and read doesn't include any statement about his views. What does he believe? Whether he wish to answer the critics or not is different, but he should speak out about his own point of view regarding the issue. ( I am expecting his clarification, only because he has made a controversial statement, and that too with the gun on some one else's shoulder.)

Second thing which arise is, where all did Kiran go to experience intolerance. Can she highlight few incidences which can explain her growing worry. I do not believe, she has any personal experience in this regard. There must be only one source for her to gain information - media.  If one puts on TV and check any news channel, now a days, only one thing is being discussed - Intolerance and how it is growing in last 7-8 months. If a person keeps listening such discussion every now and then, his mind starts getting saturated with that topic and his perception will start changing. Possibly, Kiran fell pray to this stunt and created her own impression that intolerance in India is increasing. One thing for sure is, in a city like Mumbai, you can not really feel intolerance. People here, just have not time for that.
So, this has to be an impression inherited by Kiran and transferred to Aamir, all from media.

The media is the biggest culprit here. They are painting a picture, which probably doesn't exist. Or may be there are few incidences here and there ( which used to happen earlier too),  but by connecting them through some weak link and making a big story out of it, media is just trying to mint money. Check any talk show, and the participants are just blabbering with real stuff discussed. Rather than finding solution on such issues, media is trying to ignite it more and more.
The end result is, people like who otherwise literary ignore such unnecessary chaos, also at some point of the time, gets involved. Just the way, I am writing this post. If the media is not controlled in time, it will end up igniting this issue to such an extent, that unknowingly and unnecessarily it will lead to polarization making this society unstable.
Freedom of speech is a must and necessary, but it doesn't mean freedom of being irresponsible. Today's media is behaving irresponsibly and only for their personal interest. They some how are managing to get even celebrities involved in this stunt.

I urge every body to act responsibly. Do not give statements which leads to controversy and misunderstanding.
Finally, being scared of situation and believing in media hype might happen to any body, but to think of leaving country as a solution to it is simply not acceptable.

Saturday, November 21, 2015

Katyar Kaljat Ghusli - review


Katyar Kaljat Ghusli is the first Marathi movie, I have ever watched in theater. It is also my first movie watched after a break of almost 2.5 years in theater. Last movie, I watched was Ironman III. And it was not a great experience to spend money on.
So, after reading many reviews, listening to experiences of those closed ones who watched it, I, one fine day, decided to watch this movie.
Now, I have seen this play earlier, where Rahul Deshpande plays the role of Khan Saheb, and it was an impressive performance. Subodh Bhave, there, played the role of Kaviraj, and he made that role look significant. A comparison between the play and the movie is thus inevitable.
Let's talk of movie first. Songs are all awesome. The most beautiful part of the movie. Surprise package:  Shankar Mahadevan. He has really brought the character of Pandit ji in reality. Ofcourse, he must not have to take any extra efforts for the lip sinking on his own songs. But, he managed to protray different age shades of the character very well. I actually believed him as an old Panditji from his body language. Only scene, where I didn't feel connected is the one where he looses his voice near the lake. There was too much of special effect tried in there.
Subodh Bhave has also done a fantastic job. He has actually enacted the singing style of Mahesh Kale, who has given him voice. A similarity I found between movie and play where Mahesh Kale himself played this character. What I couldn't digest is a slight aggressive nature induced in this character. The play protray this character as a person, who just want to learn music. The feeling of revenge, never appears in the play for this character.
The weak link of this movie, according to me is Sachin's Khan Saheb. People may say, that he has done an awesome job, but I personally felt it more of overacting. After watching Rahul Deshpande as Khan Saheb, I just couldn't digest him in the character. I feel he was supposed to induce egoistic nature in the character because of the singing prowess he has achieved over the years. But, here, it seems like a mixture of hatred, revenge and egoistic nature ( without even actually  defeating Pandit Ji). Sachin has survived only because of dialogue delivery in Urdu, else, I consider him as a weak link here.
All other characters are fine. Mrunmayi Deshpande and Amruta Kahnvilkar are ok.
I felt bad about the character of Kaviraj. Compared to the play, his character in the movie has been degraded badly. It has been made pretty much unwanted.

Inspite of this, over all, the movie is good. It is worth spending money on. It does not give you complete satisfaction, but it provides you some old tunes ( redone here) to humm in spare time.