Expectations 'Rising'

When Mangal Pandey released, being an Aamir Khan film  the junta had high hopes, and expectations.

Films based on historical characters, however, can be tricky. Remember Asoka? Not only did Shahrukh and Santosh Sivan fool around with the spelling of his name, they screwed around with the basic story and character.

Ashoka is known to us all as the Emperor who was so repelled by the death and destruction caused at the historic battle of Kalinga that he renounced war and embraced Buddhism.

But that portion never got its due prominence in the film as reel after reel was wasted in unfolding the love story between Asoka and some imaginary princess played by Kareena Kapoor. (I went back home and dug up an ancient Amar Chitra Katha to confirm that fact - the princess never actually existed!).

As Oscar Wilde once said: Any fool can make history, but it takes a genius to write it. To that I would add, it takes an even bigger genius to film it.

The only truly watchable and yet authentic biopic I've seen is 'Gandhi', whose life and thoughts were very well documented both in his own writings and those of his contemporaries.

While staying true to the key events in Gandhiji's life, Attenborough managed to add drama, emotional depth and cinematic sizzle to produce a moving and memorable motion picture.

Fact vs fiction

The point I'm making is that historical films work when they somehow manage to fit our pre-conceived notions of how the character actually existed and yet add some elements which raise the effort above documentary, to the level of a film.

In the case of Mangal Pandey, the beauty is that while the name of the character is familiar to every schoolkid, no one knows much about the guy. So you can embroider all the fiction you want onto the facts and probably get away with it.

As director Ketan Mehta himself admits: "There is not much historical data available about the life of Mangal Pandey except for the episode when he sparked off the revolt. However, a lot has been written about the life of the cantonment and the cultural atmosphere of those days. Besides lots of legends involving him have been passed over the generations. So Mangal Pandey is the mix of this written and oral tradition of history.'

History as you like it

Of course there are many versions of the 'truth'. A book by Oxford educated historian Rudrangshu Mukherjee asks: Mangal Pandey: Brave Martyr or Accidental Hero?

The author claimed Pandey was an ordinary sepoy who, under the influence of bhang, committed a reckless act for which he was hanged. Mukherjee's analysis examined whether Pandey really was the heroic figure history had made him out to be, or just a soldier who happened to get lucky.

The book had its share of controversial statements such as: 'Nationalism creates its own myths. Mangal Pandey is part of that imagination of historians. He had no notion of patriotism or even of India. For him, mulk was a small village, Awadh.'

It also went on to claim that Pandey's action was contrary to the spirit of insurgency: 'A rebellion is a collective will to overthrow an oppressive order. Pandey acted alone; he was a rebel without a rebellion. The name Mangal Pandey meant nothing to the sepoys who raised the revolt in 1857.'

And that too, is quite believable although hardly inspiring...

We've already internationalized Mangal Pandey 'the hero' through school history textbooks. With the release of the film the legend has been sealed.

Mr Mukherjee may well be right but it hardly makes a difference!

More than a Mutiny?

Besides the curiosity generated by the Aamir Khan factor, the producers cleverly played the patriotic card.

"India. 1857. The British called it the Sepoy Mutiny but for Indians it was the First War of Independence", says the official website.

Of course there was no concept of 'India' as we know it then... We were just a rag-tag collection of princely states. Although Arab travellers clearly defined "sindh" (from which we get the name India...), which included the ports of Gujarat as well as the southern ports like Calicut.  So, clearly, culturally and historically India as an entity (though not necessarily a single united country) existed.

The primary trigger for the uprising was the belief that pig and beef tallow was being used to grease cartridges. So it was more about protecting one's religion than fighting for your country. The question is, had the British been more sensitive to such cultural issues - as multinationals are today - would they have been spared the events of 1857?

I saw how Mangal Pandey - the film - tackled these issues. But was his rebellion accompanied by patriotic exhortations - the kind which we associate with the freedom struggle that followed?

Or did the film stick more closely to the facts: that he unwittingly set off a chain of events (Bahadur Shah Zafar, Rani Laxmibai, Tatya Tope etc) which came to acquire some semblance of a 'war of independence'.

Personally, I hoped the film makers erred on the side of subtlety and didn't make it a 'Bharat Mata ki jai' kind of film!

We have now known which way the biskoot crumbled.

The movie Asoka, was based on an historical character but in the beginning of the movie, the introduction clearly mentioned that this movie is not based on fact, it is a romanticized version of the story. Asoka was a commercial film, it's main aim was to "appeal to the masses", which it did. The love story of Asoka had been added to the story to make it more commercial. No one really cared about the fact that Kaurvaki didn't exist. But apparently, there might have existed a Kalinga girl called Kaurvaki, who may or may not have been a princess, and who may (or may not) have been Ashoka's second or third wife (don't remember which....I read this in some paper from the ASI which talked about some inscriptions found from that era, that indicate some such story). So the movie took some distant speculated fact, and wove a love-story around it. :-)

Asoka was one overrated, hyped movie where the actual issue and story never got importance/relevance and it was reduced to a mere Bollywood love story. People that time, made a hue and cry and spoke more of the liberties taken by SLB in changing the story of Devdas, where Paro meets Chandramukhi but never really bothered to talk against the changing of the actual life of a great Indian Emperor Ashoka in the movie.

If you are looking for history, if u want to watch a documentary, THIS IS NOT A FILM FOR YOU. BUT, if you are a fan of the Hindi film industry and if you understand the essence and need for this industry then you will enjoy the movie.

I do not understand the need for critics, in fact i feel the whole idea is WEIRD.A film is a piece of art, it is an expression, how can it be good bad or great. It can just be. Yes, art just is. Every artist has something in his mind when he paints, now that idea is art, how can that idea be classified or examined?

Majority of the people in India, are poor, they just aren't ready to see the reality. Hindi films give them an escape, they give them hope that things can work out. Not so many people know about our glorious past, if some not-so-realistic movie can at least make them see a part of it, i think its great. You need fiction and a little drama to make a movie, but change the entire story/ characters for that ?! That is ridiculous.

That is the essence of Bollywood and that is why we "need" it.

Bottomline : History is one of those things that changes every moment, depending on who's talking about it, and which voices are loudest :-)

Star Wars (finally) did it !!

Special Message From George Lucas


“In a few short hours, many of you will have the greatest cinematic experience of your lives. This movie has been over 28 years in the making. When Star Wars first became a glimmer in my eye, I knew that the final episode of the prequels would be one of the defining moments in the history of motion pictures.

Shadow and I have slaved for nearly three years on this one. Revenge of the Sith has all the darkness and foreboding of The Empire Strikes Back. It has all the escapism and excitement of Return of the Jedi and it has all the wonder and magic of the very first Star Wars film."

I have to agree there - Star Wars Episode 3 rocked. And I say this despite not being a 'true fan'. I saw the original Star Wars series years after it was released - on the small screen and that too in the 80's, and when you view a movie a decade after its time it can never have quite the same impact.

George Lucas decided to film the prequels to the sacred trilogy because in the late 90s he felt that CGI technology had finally made it possible to make a Star Wars film which fully recreated his original vision, without artistic compromises.

No doubt Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones were spectacular in terms of their graphics, special effects, action sequences - all that jazz. But they simply lacked the emotional involvement viewers felt with Luke, Hans Solo, r2d2, Yoda.

There was an array of new and some old characters but the connection with the original films was tenuous at best.

Episode 3 however changed all that. Finally you get to see how and why Anakin succumbs to the 'Dark Side'. Why he needs to wear that horrendous Darth Vader outfit with the 'Stephen Hawking' voicebox. And so on and so forth.

Old vs the new
Of course, the accompanying visual spectacle is also a treat. Yoda in a light-sabre sequence is the kind of action you could never have seen in the pre-computer era. Yet, I think perhaps the untechnological Yoda had a lot more class.

Incidentally, the person who created the 'Yoda' puppet back then used Albert Einstein's wrinkled face as a reference.

Because there were so many limitations, and no technology that time, Lucas and his team had to rely on extreme inventiveness and ingenuity in the original series. They had a will - and found the way. And that added something special to the whole effort.

That's why the film blew the socks off the world when it was first launched. It was a timeless good vs evil; father vs son story. And it created a new genre of films and a whole new way of film-making.

As an article in the Guardian notes:
Lucas was painstaking in his attention to special effects, and insisted the film be made in the then newly-developed Dolby Sound, giving its battles a thunderous resonance. With its opening scene, as a giant Empire battle-cruiser swooped over the audience's heads after Princess Leia's tiny spaceship, film goers were hooked. As one critic put it: 'No make-believe time and place had ever been created with such magnificence or microscopic attention to detail. It was mind-blowing.'

At the end of Episode 3 you really want to go back and watch the original series again in the theatres. But I don't know - they might seem tacky in the special effects department to an audience now used to better.

The only way to take care of that was to refilm the episoded 4,5 and 6 but that really made no sense. There were some rumours about sequels being filmed though - but could be just the wish-projection of rabid fans.

Passion Paid
Star Wars was also the story of how one man who believed in what he was doing successfully rebelled against the rules of film making in Hollywood.

As one fan website recalled :
Every single studio in Hollywood passed on the project except for 20th Century Fox. Fox gave Lucas $ 10 million to make what is perhaps the most influential film in the history of cinema. Fox released Star Wars Episode 4: A New Hope in May 1977... By the end of its first theatrical run, Star Wars was the most successful film in North American history with a gross in excess of $ 290 million.

The amazing thing was - Lucas never doubted what he was doing. That's why instead of money upfront, he negotiated for control.

He asked for the rights to the final cut of the film, 40% of the net box-office gross, all rights to future sequels and ownership of all the merchandising rights associated with Star Wars... At the time, science fiction films were not very profitable. Hence, Fox thought they were ripping Lucas off... In the end, this deal would eventually make Lucas a billionaire and cost Fox an untold fortune in lost revenues.

There's a lesson in there for all of us!

The Man behind the Magic
Not to say Lucas is THE ultimate in film making. He had his human weaknesses. An article in one of the magazines called him "a man who prefered working with special effects to working with human beings".

In the past he had chosen to work with unknown actors, whom he could then fill with his own ideas... While Hollywood's other creative geniuses staked their success on writing and directing talents, Lucas' brilliance was due at least in part to his wizardry as a film editor.

Like many such genuises he paid a heavy price in his personal life. Immediately after 'Return of the Jedi' released he also went through a painful divorce. It appeared that he poured all his energy and passion into his work - and his wife could not take it.

With his fortune Lucas decided to build his own Xanadu, 6,000 acres of Skywalker ranch, in Marin County, north of San Francisco, which would have its own studios and editing suites, and began development in the mid-Eighties, expecting his wife Marcia, an accomplished film editor who had worked on Star Wars, to take over its running. She rebelled. 'He was all work and no play,' she complained.

She wanted trips to Europe, he wanted to build an empire. As Biskind says: 'Success was winding Lucas tighter and tighter into a workaholic, control-driven person.' Marcia had an affair. They filed for divorce, and she took $50m of his fortune (now reckoned to be worth around $2 billion). He was crushed. Divorce was for Hollywood, not the scion of small-town America.

Behind every great work of art/ labour of love/ magnificent passion is an incredible story of success, and small and great sacrifices !

May the Force be with us all!

The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Feast

The decoration done at Ariyankuppam Church (Pondy). Sept 1 - Sept 8 which is celebrated as The Nativity of The Blessed Virgin Mary the world over.

Also known as The Purification of the Virgin Mary in some parts of the world. In Poland this is called Mother of God of the Blessed Thunder Candle (Candlemas).
The Birth of Mary (Eastern and Western tradition) .

The winegrowers in France called this feast "Our Lady of the Grape Harvest".
In the Alps section of Austria this day is "Drive-Down Day"

These images were taken while returning from office. Captured a bit in dark and light option but still i guess the images are clear.

Except that the western images of Mother Mary have been edited.

Big B mania

Whoops !! This iz awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwsommmmmmmmmmmmmmm . The official page of Mr. Amitabh Bachchan's blog - bigb.bigadda.com.
A tremendous & huge collection of Mr. Bachchan's images and a read through. His day-to-day experiences of work (on-work and off-work) and home. All members of his family have their own contribution to the blog. Inspiring and at times touching. Right from his start till date. All penned down by Mr. Bachchan himself. Really awe filled and soothing. A must read for all who are into blogging.
 Read one blog daily and it touches you.Was kinda fan of his earlier but now am following him and his blogs.
Keep up the good work, Mr. Bachchan.

Beetle Mania !

It was the year 1934 when Adolf Hitler announced that a car shouldn't just be a privilege of the wealthy. That's when he summoned a young Austro-Hungarian engineer by name of Ferdinand Porsche to talk about his plans for a car. Hitler specified the car should be small, durable and air cooled. Hitler christened it Volkswagen which meant the people's car. And that's exactly when the Beetle came into existence. Since then the little VW became the first car in Europe to pass the million production mark in 1955. It also pretty soon adorned a cult status making it one of the most popular vehicles around.Over the years, the Beetle's design has kept evolving, but it wasn't until 1998 that the little car received a total makeover. Based on the Golf Mk4 platform, the new 'Bug' was an all new car although it borrowed heavily from its predecessor in terms of styling. There have been no major changes on the design front since. But that's because it did not need any. The original VW Beetle was one of the most recognizable cars on the road and the modern day equivalent is a well-executed contemporary take on a classic which, ten years after its introduction, still looks fresh and eye-catching. Like the re-invented Mini and the Fiat 500, the VW Beetle is a stylish piece of retro-design which although harking back to its original form exudes a modern feel to it. The rainbow silhouette, the bulging fenders with the round headlights, in fact everything about the car emanates a charm like none other. When you stop in a parking lot, onlookers will swarm around, peek in the windows and bombard you with questions. If you love being the center of attention, Volkswagen's New Beetle is the car for you.

History of the Beetle

The history of the Beetle really goes back to pre 2nd world war Germany when Ferdinand Porsche had a vision of a mass produced vehicle that was affordable to the average German, an idea that was shared with the young Adolf Hitler who himself could not drive, but was a car fanatic. In 1934 he stated that his government would support the development of a 'people's car'. Impressed by Porsche's design capabilities, Hitler delivered him the design brief of a car that could carry two adults and three children at a speed of 100km/h with at least 15 kmpl and cost almost as much as a motorcycle. In 1937, the coachbuilders Reutter, based in Stuttgart, were asked to make 30 vehicles which would eventually be shipped to various festivals and fairs to entice the German public to buy. There were Saloons, sunroofs and convertible models. Hitler also introduced a savings scheme where the public could collect stamps that would eventually pay for the car. On the 17th February, 1972, the Beetle finally overtook Fords model 'T' as the most popular car ever made, later disputed by Ford who found new production figures, the Beetle went on to make sure there was absolutely no doubt. The last Beetle to be made in Germany left the production line in January 1978, bringing the end of an era. This was not the end of the Beetle though, production continued in Puebla, Mexico and the 20,000,000th Beetle rolled off the Mexican production line in May 1981.

Although, the Beetle has been an icon, but still there are reservations to this beauty. Its micro in size but macro while looking at the pocket size. The specs are good but the spending might not be that better. Try it.

Thai chakra

I took this shot at a local Thai restaurant in Pondy in the summer of 2010. The decor here is simply beautiful. I took many shots that day, in between my bites, especially because it was unusually empty. The color of the wall here is red. The shine on the wall was caused due to the lights that were directly projected on these artifacts. The details on this one is simply beautiful. I did add some picassa touch to this image to reduce the effects of the lights, but for some reason couldn't get rid of the shine from the wall.

100 Rupees

a 10 year old boy was very happy ... his dad had just got him a bicycle... although the cycle was a second hand one but nonetheless he was overjoyed... and so was his dad.... the little boy soon started the process of learning how to ride the cycle with the help of his elder sister... the falls, the bruises, the cuts... he remembers them all... although it hurt he never did mind all that... he was living his dream of riding his bicycle and that was what mattered at the moment... he still remembers the final push his sister gave to the bike after which he glided the cycle without any support... how his sister was running besides him and panting while he took his first ride unaided ... how he came rushing back in to tell his mother that he rode the cycle without any assistance... as soon as his father entered the house he told him the same... and the father was smiling seeing his son happy... 100 rupees couldnt have been better spent