Here I am

Yes Fear. Rama hasn't abandoned her blog yet. I recall that I haven't done what I do every year end/beginning - talk about films that released. Of course it is my thing now. I have to do it even if we are well into Feb now.

This time I thought I would write about films that nobody liked but I did. That's the theme for 2009 films, people. Hence, Kaminey, Dev D etc which were surprise hits are out of the picture. Firaaq and Luck by Chance are great first-attempts but everybody concurs with me on that. Also, films that nobody liked and neither did I are going to remain unacknowledged (What's your Rashee?, Ajab prem..., Kambaqt Ishq eeeks)

But maybe I should say a word about 3 Idiots. It was a passable film with some nice moments, and some really dreary moments too. I have always suspected films that have been critically acclaimed and have got boxoffice success too. It makes egoists like Aamir even more complacent. Aamir is not a bad actor or a bad ghost director but his better-than-mediocre skills should not be mistaken for inherent genius. Rajkumar Hirani has done better than this in the past and I wish he had made this film too. Now for my list:

1. Delhi 6 - The minute I mention this film people say bad climax. I have to point out again and again that Delhi 6 had a much shorter climax with fewer histrionics than his earlier Rang de Basanti (the 3 Idiots of its time - the film nobody likes to find fault with). Delhi 6 made fewer promises and delivered more. RDB can never ever hope to come near this piece of filmmaking.

2. 8X 10 Tasveer: Say what you will, I like this film. I didn't even mind Akshay Kumar in it. Oh yes, Nagesh falters somewhere in the middle but keeps us engaged till the end. He tries his hand at every genre and I think the point is not how well he succeeds viz-a-viz other experts in the said genre. We have to see what he brings to a thriller, using the top actor in the genre, and how he makes it his own.

3. Love Aaj Kal: Hirani may have succombed to the Aamir bully but Imtiaz Ali manages to save his film from Saif (he almost loses that battle with Deepika). People found it meandering and incomprehensible in places. I loved it for these very reasons. It doesn't have the universal appeal that Jab We Met had (though it did get boxoffice success) but it has complexity and substance as well as entertainment and relativity. You don't need to get it in its entirely and that is why you will never lose it completely.

4. Quick Gun Murugan: What can I say about this that I haven't said already? A Bengali uses a largely Bollywood supporting cast and a Kannada protognist to make a Tamil film. National integrity or creative nonsense? Political incorrectness is a hit with me.

5. Dil Bole Hadippa : This will probably be the most controversial in this list. Not only will I support this mediocre film but I will also compare it with Chakde India, find the latter lacking in places that the former fills in. Razor-thin plot, zero originality, zilch conviction and bad filmmaking - and yet DBH has something. While Chakde had the slap-in-the-face feminism and the cliched underdog-beats-all plot, DBH is about naivity and nativity. It threads the thin line between retrogressiveness and non-western progressivism. It can and does trip and therein lies its unrealised potential. In her last speech, Rani doesn't articulate any politicised feminist thought. Her question is a simple one - how can you stop one from dreaming? If Nandita Das seems to hint in Firaaq that unpoliticised women can be the only secular people in Gujarat, Rani comes close to this idea. The third world woman tries to speak in her own language - or am I seeing what I want to see here?