Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!

Kamao to zero. Churao to hero. Abhay Deol belts out an easy, restrained performance as Lucky, a teenage rebellious sardar who grows up, inexplicably, into a clean shaven young man with a languid smile and an easy-going demeanor, with an ever-increasing penchant for thievery.

As the film progresses, the small time stuff, ok he starts with a Mercedes, no two of them; becomes an addiction to con, flick, steal his way to becoming infamous and talked about, as the mystery thief who flits from city to city across India, making away with booty of all kinds. 2 dogs, hundreds of music systems, DVDs, TVs, cash, jewellery and a musical greeting card later, he is caught, only to escape again.

Paresh Rawal plays a triple role. Neetu Chandra is the fiesty girlfriend who has moral issues but eventually falls for his charming ways and accepts him as a benefactor/boyfriend/husband(?). Kind of like Charles Sobhraj, legendary smooth operator I thought. And Lucky has a side-kick who is in and out conveniently. Archana Puran Singh is superb in her brief time on screen.

The flow of the film is almost like A Few Years In The Life Of Lucky kind of movie. Very real dialogues. Subtle, suppressed and layered humour. Almost a 'Delhi peoples' Bunty and Babloo, what with the male sidekick. Watch it. It's different.

Bitings Anyone?

Drove up to Daman last weekend. It seems that the snakes jokes have had an effect on the Gujarati populace. At all the restaurants, the hotel that we were staying in and even a beer bar that we stopped at for a break, no not for beer, thank you, were all asking us one thing - bitings sir? French fries, Peanuts masala, Cheese-pineapple, Boiled Chana and so on, now all qualify as Bitings.
Bram Stoker's creation must be out of a job by now.

RaveD er DevD

The film is in four parts. There's a Pre, Paro, Chanda and then, of course, Dev D.
All's well till the Pre and Paro. During Chanda, I looked around to see if anyone was really into this. And then, what was the need to put in the MMS scandal and the BMW hit and run case?
In the wild rave of a fantasy ride version of good ol' Devdas, with sex, drugs, booze and a bit of faux Elvis Rock and Roll thrown in for good measure, where did these two things come in?
All in all, a commendable effort to dream of and put together a film like this. The five stars and 4 stars are a bit too much. Maybe all the aiyyashi left the reviewers with a long-lasting heady feeling. Like a few of us were left with a headache.
But for a few who have taken these comments to figure that I disliked it, well I feel it is a must-watch because of the way it is made. It just might be that it joins the list of films that have become milestones in Indian movie making and we just might see other filmakers let loose with their own wild ones.

This One Takes The Cake

When professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong.

http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/

More iWoes

Just gave the iPhone for a look-over. Vodafone tells me there is no one in Mumbai to do that. It will have to be sent to Bengaluru. 15 days.
- Well, the screen goes blank (imagine that on a full touch screen!).
- It hangs randomly.
- The battery of course is not happening. To change the battery you change the phone. The Happy to Help guys had no clue that there is an additional battery pack available on the Apple Store
Wondering what to do - use it, sell it or crack it and use it.

11.02.2009
Got the iPhone back. Replaced and shiny and brand new!
The sarson ka saga continues...

03.08.2009
Called up Vodafone helpline.
I say, 'I pay Rs.35,500 for a 16Gb handset ($699 +). Plus I commit a minimum of Rs.9,600 a year for the iData Plan. How come I get the Edge/GPRS service for just half the time? Do I get money back for the deficient service?'
Sir, we are happy to help, but last week there was an outage, so now it is working fine.
I say, 'I am not talking about last week, but since August 2008.'
Sir, thanks for the patience for keeping you on hold for a long time, but my service engineer says just reset Network Settings on your phone an it will work fine.
I say, 'Thanks.'