Sleeping through the static

After Aap Ka Surroor and Partner , I watched Anjan Dutt's Bow Barracks Forever! and was thoroughly frustrated. After two masala movies, with cliched dialogues, insane situations, lavish sets and dollops of thumkas , I suppose I wanted a film more in touch with reality. The premise of this picture promised as much, seeing as it's based on an Anglo-Indian community in a ramshackle, claustrophobic paada (dwelling)in Kolkata. But it was not to be so. Kudos to Dutt for tackling a community-specific topic, and as a director he's in good touch, but its Dutt the screenwriter that lets the story down. He's chosen to depict people whose livelihoods are under threat if their building is taken over by real estate sharks. But Dutt doesnt etch out the characters well enough. Yes, he has a lot of them bus still, they're not meaty enough. We don't know why a few of them are the way they are. They're zombie shadows, either lolling in the background of a bustling city an

Sachin Tendulkar went past 11,000 Test runs on day two at Trent Bridge. He looked sluggish, but finished the day unbeaten on 57. He needs a big hundred. Anyways, enough of that. There should be a season for cricket. Not the scattered, ICC-drawn calendar we follow now. Its not next to impossible, as we're made to believe, given the international teams that play, split by hemispheres and climates. Look at sports in the United States. There are spring, fall and winters sports. One ends, another begins. Some run simultaneously. In that sense, there's a certain charm to the English county season. Games begin when the snow has thawed, the greens have been cleared. Thats the romance missing in the international calendar. Sample this para written by Ed Gammons, one of the best baseball analysts and writers, in the fall of 1975 after the Boston Red Sox lost the race for the World Series. "We have postponed autumn long enough now. There are storm windows to put in, wood to cho

Okay, I’m back. A lot has happened since I last got on this page. India elected its first female President in a muckraking political poll, Tony Blair left office, Australia won its third consecutive World Cup, and Paris Hilton went to jail, and the seventh and final Harry Potter book came out. But yeah, I’m not here to discuss all that. Saw Himesh Reshammiya’s debut film, Aap Ka Suroor – The Real Luv Story yesterday. Sold-out show at 11.00 a.m. in Bangalore, of all places. And get this, there was an auto rickshaw parked on the second to last floor of the mall, smack between an SUV and one of those fancy little cars. I can just see the rick driver, collar up, taking the morning off and driving through the gate, telling the security guard that he was a paying customer here to watch a film, and that like all the other customers, it was his right to park his vehicle in the space allotted. Awesome! But yeah, back to the film. You don’t expect much walking into a picture like this, right? I