The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Madness, melodrama and laughs
That’s ‘Bollywood Calling’, the latest film from the director of the acclaimed ‘Hyderabad Blues’, Nagesh Kukanoor.
By Deepa Kozhisseri

Song and dance around trees, rivulets of tears, a fair deal of make believe blood and then laugh at it all — that’s “Bollywood Calling,” the latest film from the director of the acclaimed “Hyderabad Blues,” Nagesh Kukanoor.

“When I went to Bollywood, I thought that there is so much chaos here that if I lay back and watched it all, I could make a film,” said Kukanoor, at the premiere of the film in Delhi on Monday night.

Bollywood, the hub of India’s cinema and mayhem and melodrama, is the muse for this talented director of low-budget movies who has emerged as king of self depreciating humour with the film starring leading Indian actor Om Puri and American actor Pat Cusick.

“I am not poking fun at Bollywood. At the end of the day my film is also typically Bollywood (read melodramatic),” he said. In “Bollywood Calling,” an unsuspecting Pat Stomare, who stars in small-time Hollywood movies, is thrust into the chaotic world of Bollywood. This is the brainchild of Subramanium (played by Om Puri), a producer who concocts his first-ever pairing of an American with the legendary aging Indian star Manu Kapoor played by Navin Nischol.

Manu and Pat play brothers who are “separated by destiny and united by faith” in the film “Maut” described as an action-drama-romantic extravaganza, with the young aspiring starlet played by Perizaad Zorabian. The film journeys with Pat into the colourful, confusing and chaotic world of Bollywood.

“I had the opportunity to visit several Bollywood sets and I had just come from a white collar job in the USA. After seeing the confusion of this place, the first seed of ‘Bollywood Calling’ was sown,” Kukanoor said.

Kukanoor, a chemical engineer by profession, gave up his lucrative career as an environmental consultant in Atlanta and using his personal savings acted and directed the hugely successful “Hyderabad Blues” which went on to become the largest grossing low-budget Indian film in English.

The film has been to several international festivals winning audience’s awards at the “Peachtree International Film Festival in Atlanta and the Rhode Island film festival. In his second film “Rockford” Kukanoor played the lead. “I still enjoy acting, significantly second only to directing,” he confessed.

“Bollywood Calling” is his most ambitious project to date. He hopes that that he has finally made a truly crossover film, an attempt to take films from India to the rest of the world.

“‘Bollywood Calling’ is funny, crazy yet one can see the method in the madness. What I like about Kukanoor is that his films are refreshingly real, great laughs yet sensitive portrayals,” said Kavita Sood, as she walked out of the premiere.

“If a film makes a person happy or angry, it comes from a devastating film maker,” said Kukanoor. And if the laughs at the premiere were anything to go by Kukanoor is well on his way. —IANS

AUDIOSCAN
Sweet, melodious ‘Aashiq’
ASC

AASHIQ (Tips): Sanjeev-Darshan are not yet in the top bracket of music directors, but they are working their way up all right. Their compositions may not be brilliant, but have enough melody to set them apart. In a way, they are following in the footsteps of Jatin-Lalit who also specialise in such low-key sweet songs.

Most of the songs here have been rendered by Alka Yagnik and Udit Narayan. Two of their duets, Teri aankhon mein mujhe pyar nazar aata hai … and Tum kya jano … are marked by syrupy smoothness. However, their Gori tera nakhra … is rather staid.

Roop Kumar Rathod joins Alka Yagnik in singing Aashiq mujhe aashiq … and makes it perhaps the finest song of the collection.

Ironically, singles are not quite as good as the duets. Charche hain hamare … (Udit Narayan), Gore gore gaal mere … (Alka Yagnik) and Ched do … just about pass muster.

Lyrics are by Sameer.

WOH MERA HOGA (Tips): The title song makes you believe that this will be a typical Ila Arun album with lots of folksy songs. But it is entirely different. In fact, that is the only song that Ila sings, along with Alka Yagnik. All others are either by Alka Yagnik or newcomer Mohd Salamat.

All these are quawwali-type songs made famous by Altaf Raja. Mohd Salamat has a promising voice and does full justice to this brand of singing.

Music by Ali-Ghani is not very original (it has snatches from several film hits) but is very hummable.

The songs have been penned by various writers, including Nafees Alam, Rahat Indori, Zameer Kazmi, Prashant Vatsal and Qaisur-ul-Jaffri.

LADDOO KHA (Gas): This album by Balle Balle Boys is a blast all the way. It takes absolutely first-rate pop tunes, fits in absolutely outlandish Punjabi-Hindi lyrics to these and comes up with several winners. The lyrics are outlandish (Pee le lassi, don’t be fussy...). But the music is brilliant. In fact, if you don’t put your attention to the lyrics, you may come to believe that you are listening to some serious songs.

These have been written, composed and performed by Balle Balle Boys. The title song is in two versions.

ART & CULTURE
Fascinated with space
Suparna Saraswati

Space most certainly defines and structures art and its allied forms in order to communicate with its occupant. The genre of art and aesthetics is changing constantly and so are their norms of appreciation.

It is indeed a craft to create a display of art objects of all dimensions and sorts. And this what curator Peter Nagy has proved in the ongoing exhibition at Panjab University Museum titled “Context as Content Museum as Metaphor”.

A brief encounter with one of the artists, Samit Das, made one go down the memory lane regarding the legacy of Corbusier’s Chandigarh, its inception, beginning plans and initial trial and errors in the execution of the master plan.

“My fascination is with space, as an art inclined individual. Seeing the high points of Le Corbusier’s architectural genius in creating the design and look of this modern city and then viewing the university museum as a possible venue for interpreting my norms vis-a-vis Corbusier’s pattern, I conceived a slightly unique exhibit from an architectural perspective. To me, the term architecture does not merely state concrete buildings, a book also is specimen of this discipline.” These are Samit Das’s opening remarks about the show and his participation in it.

Q: How distinct is this work by you than your previous exhibits done within India as well as outside?

A: Well , no work by me is alienated or done in isolation, contextually speaking. Yes, each exhibit has its own inherent appeal and originality in its presentation.

Q: Are you attempting to juxtapose or correlate paradigms in a given art situation?

A: In this exhibition I am concentrating on the phases of the growth of Chandigarh as done by an architect and its aesthetic and structural art presentations by a design artist.

Q: What are the highlights of your display?

A: Texture, basic structure, three-dimensional city plans, the capitol complex and the feature of the open hand, all are a combined sort of pinnacle of my work in this show. These photocopied printouts and their assimilation in the floor, walls, pillars and tables, are positions of the elements I’ve used to depict the various phases of Chandigarh’s birth and growth .

Q: What is Chandigarh to you?

A: Oh! It is a deadly kind of a place, in the sense that its `stiching into sectors’ and `chopping of complexes’ most certainly adds to its glamour of being a nubile urban settlement. A chance to see a concrete wonder so attractive, yet elusive, in today’s humdrum world is tremendous.

SIGHT & SOUND
Co-host’s face ‘frozen’ on DD
By Amita Malik

This week I am not going to pass judgement but place facts before the viewer and reader and let them judge the strange case of Stephen Hawking and the media.

I was rung up by a distinguished editor, who is a neighbour, at 8.15 a.m. on the morning of the Stephen Hawking public lecture at Siri Fort. “Are you watching DD News?”, he asked. “Oh, no, not first thing in the morning”, I groaned. “You must” he insisted, so I switched on and found a large face, with its mouth open in the process of speaking, frozen on the screen. After watching for five minutes, I rang up my neighbour. “It’s been like that since 7.50”, he said, “I first tried ringing Sushma Swaraj but she is naturally still inside her home. Then I tried the Prasar Bharati CEO’s house, but they said he had left for office, so I tried his office, but there is no reply. Then I tried the house of the Additional Director-General of DD News, Mrs Deepak Sandhu, but they said she is out of station”. Meanwhile, the face, that of the unfortunate Prof Lohiya, one of the co-hosts of Prof Hawking stayed frozen on the screen for a full hour, until 8.50 a.m., to be precise. No one, it was apparent, had either noticed or cared. My neighbour said Lohiya was winding up his chat with Stephen Hawking when his face got stuck.

At 10 a.m. I myself tried the CEO’s Mandi House office. Either no reply or engaged. Ditto Doordarshan’s PR. Then I rang up the Secretary of Information and Broadcasting in his office, but he was ill and not attending office. Then I got through to the Joint Secretary who was very courteous and concerned and promised to find out what had happened and let me know. He was as good as his word and when I got back from an assignment there was a message from him on my answering machine to say Doordarshan had said it was all the fault of the cable operator. Meanwhile, my neighbour had rung up his sister in Greater Kailash during the crisis to double check. She also had Prof Lohiya’s face frozen on the screen and since her cable operator is different as ours it is now DD’s word against the cable operators who naturally, also pleads not guilty. The clear loser? The viewer.

Meanwhile, there was the Hawking lecture at Siri Fort at 5 p.m. Two colleagues asked if they could drop in to watch it at my place on DD, I kept the tea and samosas ready only to find at 5 p.m. that there was no relay of the lecture. A friend with a pass who had joined a long queue at Siri Fort had rushed to her nearby home to watch the lecture on TV more comfortably, only to find it was missing. DD later told me it was due to — you guessed it “technical problems” — which an electronic engineer friend suspected was no problem except DD did not know Prof Hawking spoke through a synthesiser and lost its nerve at the last moment. Another version is that DD was late in asking Discovery Channel for permission and after that Hawking’s hosts also took their time so, whatever the reason, Indian viewers did not get the greatest living scientist on TV. DD then told me his lecture would be telecast at 10 p.m. the next day which I missed as I had to attend a wedding. The next day a friend told me it had been on, on DDI for a change, from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. I missed that too because I had a press conference and there was no intimation in the papers. Since none of my friends bar one gets the News Channel, they wondered why it was not on DD’s best channel at prime time. Net result: Almost everyone missed Prof Hawking on TV for one reason or another.

It was comforting, for a change, to find less blood and gore and three happy endings in last week’s instalment of Hospital. And fascinating to compare the telecast of the Screen Film Awards on DD and the Golden Globe Awards on Star World. The main difference was in the anchoring. DD’s TV anchor being nothing short of horrific and the woman anchor on stage always trying to cut out the much more professional and charming Rahul Khanna. Al Pacino’s acceptance speech for his lifetime award in New York was a moving insight into his personal as well as professional attitudes. Only Rekha matched him in grace and poise at our end.