Kaminey, just good.

If there is anything other producers can learn from Vishal Bharadwaj and the production house UTV motion pictures, it is how to market your movie well. With all the tricks in the book and some out of the box, from expected Shahid-Priyanka romance rumors to pandering to the artsy school of Vishal's followers, the makers got the marketing machinations right. The buzz surrounding the movie in the week upto its release was so great that one and all were awaiting the release of the movie with bated breath. And then God disposed. The swines flew over the Kaminey's nest, and movie halls and multiplexes in Mumbai and Pune were shutdown by the panic stricken city corporations on the same weekend that Kaminey was to be released. Any producer worth his salt will be able to easily rattle off that Mumbai and Pune constitute about 40-50% of any Hindi movie's opening weekend earnings in India. Rumors suggest that the movie might have easily lost about 5-6 crores because it was not showing in these 2 cities in the first 3 days of its release in India. By Monday when the movie released in Mumbai, the reviewers had mostly given the movie positive reviews, but they had also let out considerable plot lines, and the pirates were out with their copies. In short, the movie lost considerable amount of money, and if it were not for the viruses, it could very well have been a runaway hit.

So it was with huge expectations that I set off to see Kaminey after a long working Monday. Even after reaching the movie hall a good 1.5 hrs early to book the tickets, we got tickets just 4 rows away from the screen. And by the time we walked into the theater it was houseful, on a 9.30 pm show on a rainy Monday. Just goes on to show that probably the virus refused to kill the hype created by the movie.

And then the movie starts. And from there onwards begins the downward spiral. Sure the movie is good, but is it great? Na, I beg to differ.

The movie starts well. An excellent plot. Twin brothers from Mumbai slums getting separated during their school days. As expected they are as different as chalk and cheese, with one added twist. One lisps (says 'f' in place of 's'), one stammers. They haven't been in touch with each other for the past 3 years, and then things turn turtle in a span of 24 hrs and they are forced to come to terms with each other. The first 20-25 minutes of the movie is power packed, and if you lose attention, you will be forced to seek clarifications from nearby seats. The movie introduces a slew of characters, all of them more kamina than the other, and that's why the title.

I won't dwell into the storyline. Just suffice it to say that goodie-boy Guddu (the stammering one) needs a huge amount of money to keep his same night wedded Maharashtrian wife Sweety (the Maharashtrian bit is important in the plotline), for which he needs help from cunning-boy Charlie (the lisping one), who quite by accident chances himself upon an illegal drug consignment and has the entire Mumbai underworld and the police behind him. Everyone has a gun, and no one is afraid it fire it. So there are people killing people in every other scene, and you have to keep pace to remember who was the last one killed and by whom. Which is all good, but by the end of the movie, when there are still at least a dozen more characters left who are still ready to be as kamina as it can get, it begins to weigh down on your nerves. There are just too many characters. Except for Shahid, Priyanka and Amol Gupte, there is less screen space for the the director to develop the rest of the characters. They just don't stay enough with you.

Add to that the non-linear writing and the very unpredictable twists and turns. Which is again not bad at all. It reminds you of Quentin Tarantino's style of movie making. And it would come as a shocker to the Bollywood audience, who are used to being treated as an unintelligible species for most of their movie watching lives. So all this is good, but somehow by the time you reach the end of the movie, there has been so many twists and turns that VB had to resort to a forced wrap-up. And that is where probably my biggest disappointment with the movie is. All the characters in the movie indulge in a climactic gang-war which is hugely unconvincing and unintentionally funny at times. It reminds you of the Priyadarshan type of slapstick movies, where in the end everyone ends up dishooming each other. If Priyan does it, the critics pan him. If VB does it, the critics praise him. Partial, I say.

The film's dialogue is top-notch; VB has written some dark, humorous lines. Take the example of the one of the last scenes where Guddu is explaining to Charlie how much he loves his brand new wife and would want Charlie's drug consignment of coke to keep his wife, and in Charlie retaliates "Toh kya meri kokh ujadega?" (kokh-coke kinda analogy)

The movies boasts of stellar performances from all of its lead actors. Shahid Kapur has put on easily the best performance of his life, and in his varied roles as Charlie and Guddu, he brings an amazing range of emotions from innocence to raw sexuality to the table. It was high time he broke away from his chocolate-boy image, and Kaminey was just the kind of movie that would help him move further in an industry which is increasingly looking for younger actors to take the place of its ageing superstar Khans. Priyanka Chopra has another hit and a gem of a movie in her kitty after 2 consecutive hits - 'Dostana' and 'Fashion'. In her role as the feisty and aggressive Marathi mulgi, she initiates sex and abuses her goon of a brother - all in fluent Marathi. Amongst the slew of supporting characters, Amole Gupte stands tall as the 'Jai Maharashtra' chanting Bhope bhau. But it is easy to see him getting slotted in similar kinda roles just like Manoj Bajpai after 'Satya'.

VB again comes across as a very very good music director, and all the songs in the movie are excellent. 'Dhan Te Nan' will probably remain an eternal club favorite, just like 'Beedi' will remain an eternal jhatka-licious favorite from his previous 'Omkara'. And he does a brilliant job incorporating two brilliant RD Burman numbers in the soundtrack - 'Duniya mein logon ko dhoka kabhi ho jaata hai' & 'Do lafzon ki hai'.

In all a good movie, but it comes nowhere close to VB's previous good movies like 'Omkara', 'Maqbool' and even the kiddie movie, 'Makdee'. His last movie, 'The Blue Umbrella', which I didn't watch, also got good reviews. So it was but natural to expect a lot from Kaminey. It's one thing to deliver an excellent take on a solid Shakespearean tale, or a good Ruskin Bond story; its another to pick a script, write a screenplay, and direct it from scratch. Tough ask. The movie doesn't fail or disappoint completely, but it doesn't rise upto all its expectations. If you tone down your expectations, then Kaminey is quite awfome.

Ignite and Pecha Kucha style presentations

We might all have sat through boring presentations in our academic and professional life where the talkative speaker just goes beating around the bush and takes a good 10-15 minutes to arrive at the point. I know I have and have also dozed through many of such presentations. In this age of real-time instant gratification, how can corporate presentations be left behind? So welcome to the new world of presentations, a new style that is creating a buzz around the world - present all your ideas in a slotted time of 5-10 minutes in 20-25 slides or less. This brainwave is said to have started first from the Pecha Kucha style of presentations. In Japanese, Pecha Kucha stands for "chit chat" and the aim is to come to the point as quickly as if you were chit chatting with a friend. Recently Mumbai hosted its first Pecha Kucha night and the newspapers were abuzz with news about the presenters and their topics from that night. The presenters on Pecha Kucha night in Mumbai were mostly from the fields of architecture or design.

Taking a cue from this style of presentation, the IT and business world are also fast moving to adopt a style of brisk paced presentations. "Ignite" nights are being held all over the world and sometime in November 2008 and January 2009, Bangalore held its first two nights of Ignite presentations. The format for the Ignite style of presentations is to present your ideas in 20 slides, at the speed of 15 seconds per slide. That would give each presenter 5 minutes altogether to present their ideas. The presenters for the Bangalore Ignite night spoke about topics very diverse from wildlife to mountain biking. There was not a specified range of areas where the speaker had to limit himself to. The Ignite nights in Bangalore have been a huge success and were followed by Ignite nights in Pune, and there are some networking groups looking to bring Ignite to Mumbai next.

Our firm too started on a similar presentation pattern lately, and to introduce the firm members as to how to get used to a brisk presentation style, we held our first session of 'Lightning talks' similar to the Ignite format yesterday. The firm members had to pool in with their topics and an abstract by a particular date, out of which 10 topics were selected for presentation yesterday. I was one of the selected participants and I spoke on the following topic "Decoding Indian General Elections 2009". Since we were presenting from Mumbai for a worldwide audience and video conferencing options are not that trustworthy given bandwidth issues, we decided to record a video with the presentation playing by the side and send it across for the conference yesterday. Here is a link to the video and here is a link to my presentation (Pls ignore the weird master slide formatting differences coming up on the slides, I didn't have enough time to work on those). Play both of them side by side, and you can see the slides rotating every 15 seconds with the audio output playing simultaneously. I had fun presenting my first Ignite style presentation, let me know what you think.

Teach India: Day 1

Last Saturday was when I began my first set of teaching lessons to students from local language schools ('vernacular' is a cringe-inducing word, I try and avoid it as much as I can). Thus finally ended my month long initiation into the Teach India program. You can call TOI's Teach India campaign a body shopping campaign looking for volunteers to invest their free time teaching under-privileged kids under the aegis of some non-profit NGO working with such kids. After presentations and talks by multiple NGOs, I chose Kotak Education Foundation working in the slums of Bhandup close to where I stay. Two weekends were then spent with the KEF volunteers understanding the background of the kids, what they expect and how to go about it. Finally we started our coaching sessions with the kids last Saturday. I would be responsible in coaching them on English conversational skills. Some points that I noted from day 1:

1) We were specifically instructed to try and weave in Cricket and Movies into every conversation with the kids. Invaluable advice when dealing with them. MS Dhoni is a huge hit with the kids.
2) I realized how huge Shahid Kapoor is. My volunteer partner, Sanyo & I together have been entrusted with 11 kids. 7/11 kids named Shahid Kapur as their favorite actor. Just goes on to show that the Khans and Akshay and Hrithik have grown too old for an upcoming movie generation's tastes, and in all likelihood, will be phased out with the younger lot of actors replacing them. Shahid with his chocolate boy looks and great dancing skills holds maximum potential. If only, he knew how to act.
3) The kids are very undernourished. All kids that we handle are 14 yrs old, but they could easily pass off as 10-11 yr olds in posh India or even younger in the western world.
4) The boys and girls are really shy to interact with each other. When they were asked to sit with each other, the girls sat on one side and the boys on another. When we try to mix up the girls and boys there was much resentment and for the first hour the group exercises yielded no results because the mixed teams refused to interact with each other.
5) Don't get into written English. Spoken English in itself is a tall task, getting into written English would mean much, much more efforts.
6) This exercise also made me realize the price that India has to pay for globalization. A more globalized India means a more 'English' India. A more English India means that most of rural or poorer India would need to learn a foreign language. If not that, then they would be excluded from the benefits that come from globalization. We really need to figure out a more inclusive approach for growth.