I saw True Romance last night, the Uncut Director's Cut. I have to admit that except for the Quentin Tarantino association, I knew virtually nothing about the movie. Was taken aback by the Sonny Chiba references. Too many monologues abound - but hey, what's a Tarantino-scripted movie without monologues? Dennis Hopper waxes forth on Sicilians, Christopher Walken makes a chilling guest appearance, Christian Slater talks about Oscar movies, Sonny Chiba, Elvis Presley, James Gandolfini gets poetic about killing, and Tom Sizemore and Chris Penn get into detail about the how prison life contributes to a happy marriage. Probably the best Doctor Zhivago reference in any movie I've seen. What also struck me was the uncanny resemblence to some of the plot points in Preacher ( the comic book) - the "Mentor" appearances in the restrooms ( Val Kilmer played that? Wow! ), the way the characters Alabama Worley and Tulip O'Hare have this inherent ass-kicking ability inside themselves that manifests in odd, scary ways.



My DVD ( bought for 20 Rs in Kathmandu ) appears to have three commentary tracks, the deleted scenes and the alternate ending. Heard the first fifteen minutes of the Tarantino commentary today morning - yum!

Awesome music find of the week: Balligomingo. Luscious female vocals over soaring, lush electronic soundscapes.

Blossom has copies of both Apollo's Song and Ode to Kirihito, two Osamu Tezuka classics being reprinted by Vertical books, with snazzy cover designs by Chip Kidd and a very very readable English translation. I had bought Kirihito when I was in the US, and was just about to order Apollo's Song, when a friend called up to inform me about its availability in Bangalore. He also went to the trouble of buying it for me and sending it through someone who was travelling to Hyderabad, and as a result - new Tezuka book for me to read. Yes! 541 pages of Tezuka goodness! Though I honestly hope that people aren't buying this book for their kids - its dipped in mature themes, I see loads of cartoon nudity as I flip through the book, and the opening sequence is bizarre look at human reproduction.

The next Tezuka offering by Vertical is another 600+ tome called MW, available for pre-order on Amazon. It's due for release in the US in November. Am I getting it? You betcha!

The other item on the pile is an Indo-Russian production which I bought because (a) I remember being totally floored by the movie when I saw it as a kid and (b) It was available for half-price at a Planet M sale. Bless you, Indian DVD companies, for understanding the necessity of price cuts in your offerings. I bought and watched Raghu Romeo on the same day and would have also bought Benegal's Junoon, but I got into an argument with the salesman. The MRP had been slashed from 350 Rs to 199 Rs, and then there was a 50% discount. The salesman had put the discount on the original price, not the revised MRP, and no amount of cajoling would make him budge. The hell with it, I will just buy Junoon some other time.

About Ali Baba Aur Chalis Chor - I remember very vividly the innovative design of the "Open sesame" cave, which showed a waterfall flowing in reverse and the cave opening in the cliff. When I watched the opening sequence again today morning, it was surprising how well the scene still holds up today in terms of SFX. Does not look cheesy. The other thing I noticed was the proliferation of Russian actors - and except for the well-known Indian artistes, everybody else seems to speaking in Russian, with the Hindi lines dubbed on. So it was a bilingual production! Most of the production crew was also two-fold, one Indian cameraman and a Russian one, two directors, two production designers - I am keeping an eye out for the other Indo-Russian fantasy film I know of - Ajooba, which I remember was a turkey the first time I saw it, but I don't mind seeing it again. The scene where Sonam ( playing an Arabian princess ) puts a miniaturized Rishi Kapoor in her blouse deserves an award in itself. Did I just type that? Yes, I just typed that.

Amazing. The complete movie is online on youtube.

Three years ago, I made a post about DVD pricing in India and how it was extremely brain-dead to charge big money for DVDs of movies which come with no special features and bad film transfers. I ended the post with a fingers-crossed comment about Lagaan not having come out on DVD yet and about how I trust Aamir Khan to "rock my socks off".

I can uncross my fingers now.

Lagaan has just been released on DVD for the first time ever. And not just that, the documentary The Making of Lagaan ( which has two alternate titles - the Indian version is called Chale Chalo and the international version Madness in the Desert) by Satyajit Bhatkal has also been released. I saw the DVD, which has been called the 'Anniversary Edition', at Music World last Friday, and I bought it yesterday. Putting my money where my mouth is. I promised myself I would buy it THE MOMENT it was released. Late by three days, but yeah, I paid up. The single DVD set comes with deleted scenes, which I had already seen before, thanks to a pirated DVD I bought off National market. It also includes the song 'Rey Bhaiyya Chhootey Lagaan' , previously released as 'Zin Kinak Zin' in a double-cassette collection called The Spirit of Lagaan that had background scores, dialogues and the songs from the movie. ( Including the Sadhna Sargam version of 'O Paalanhaare', which I think is way, WAY better than the Lata version we are familiar with) Also picked up the documentary, though only the VCD seems to be available right now. Odyssey was offering a copy of the book The Spirit of Lagaan free with the DVD, and so I picked that up too, though I already have a copy.

Watched the movie again last night, with someone who hadn't seen it before. Both of us LOVED it - c'mon, who wouldn't? It's Lagaan, after all. The transfer was perfect, the sound slightly schizophrenic - kept going high and low everytime the music stopped or crescendoed. I have a feeling it might be because we were watching it on stereo speakers. Rachel Shelley looks as beautiful as ever - wonder what she's up to nowadays?

(breathless) ( gasping for air) (SQUEEEEEEE)

Just did a Google search for her, and...and...Rachel Shelley's appearing on the third season of The L-Word. And in an episode of Coupling as well. What? WHAT?

It somewhat pains me to think that when I talk to kids today about Rachel Shelley, they will remember her as Helena Peabody from L-Word rather than Elizabeth from Lagaan. *sigh*

Ok, fanboy hat off. This is good news. I can now revel in more Rachel Shelley goodness with ease. Though I thought the first season of LW was pretty boring, hot lesbian women can only take up so much of my attention.

Back to Lagaan. Just when I was being very happy about my acquisition from yesterday, there came a bombshell, when I went to the www.lagaandvd.com website. You know, just to check out the press release and shit.

Turns out, there's a 3-DVD Collectors' set . That comes in a wooden box. With lots of additional goodies. Priced at a fairly decent 2000 Rs. GODDAMNIT, I knew I should have waited.




So far, I have - two pirated copies of the Lagaan DVD ( one with the deleted scenes that stops midway into the film, and the other with a bad transfer and audio, but works), the official single disc edition. I NEED the three disc edition, and I think I am going to have it. Soon.

Rajnikanth from promos of Sivaji: The Boss and Ian McShane as Al Swearengen in Deadwood.

Junji Ito is messing with my head.

Junji Ito who? A horror creator from Japan. Known primarily for a series called Uzumaki (Spiral in English, also made into a not-so-good movie) and for Tomie. Tomie. I read scans of this series a couple of years back. Fairly gruesome story about a drop-dead beautiful girl (heh heh heh) named Tomie, who has the power to make people obsess over her, and ultimately, kill her.

Except, Tomie does not stay dead easily. She regenerates, inspite of having been hacked and slashed and dismembered and, in one mega-sicko sequence, being ground to a paste and mixed with Sake. She regenerates, and sometimes, most of the time, actually, she comes back in ways that are extremely distressing to an unsuspecting manga fan who is having his dinner. Take my word for it.

The scans I had read before were from this defunct company called Comicsone, and the translations weren't too good. Dark Horse comics has taken to reprinting all of Junji Ito's works in a series called Museum of Horror, and I recently bought volume 2. Excellent stuff, more so because in this volume Ito's art seems much more polished than the early Tomie stories. Now to find volumes 1 and 3.

You can read a complete Junji Ito horror story right here.

* * *

Gaurav got a bunch of my stuff back from the States. A Sergio Aragones Groo pin-up, a Harry Roland Vampirella painting, a Tony Harris Starman page, and a 2-page Kevin Maguire splash page from Gen-13/Fantastic Four( my first double-page splash! Woo Hoo!). The splash page had some of the most detailed inking I have ever seen, I spent a good half an hour just looking at the intricacies. Apart from the artwork, he got back the complete Hellboy collection, the first three volumes of Lady Snowblood, quite a bit of Ellis - all of which were part of Brady's collection that I had purchased this year, most of which is still at 2fargon's place in the States. I finished the Hellboy volumes sometimes yesterday - started them in the airport the day before. Yes, I was travelling.

* * *

How was the last year for me? Very trippy. Right from Jan 1st, 2006, half of which I spent in Bangalore airport, I seem to have been travelling like mad. I cannot remember more than one or two weekends in the first three months of this year when I was in Hyderabad. None of these trips were too restful, except for a Mumbai trip in April, where I spent three and a half days in invigorating company, and the last week of the year, which was my Back To Basics trip. I nearly ended up spending half of 31st December in an airport too, but I didn't mind it one bit, nosirreebob.

In case you haven't been following the LJ too obviously, last year was also the year of Original Art. ( 2004 was the year of The Comic Book, 2005 the year of The DVD ) Technically, I bought my first pieces on 25th December 2005, but in 2006, the acquisition of my first Quitely page broke the 200$-eBay-barrier. I slacked off sometime in the middle of the year, but then I had this life-altering conversation with a friend, sometime in September, about why he is going to collect original comicbook art, and only original art, after he graduates. There was a flash of light, in which I realised how right he was. And from then, there was no looking back.

It was also, in a slighter degree, the year of a near-complete comicbook collection. I bought out a collection from someone in the US, and effectively that has put an end to fervent searches and snipes on eBay. I am contented. For now.

A depressing year, as far as new music goes. Apart from the fact that my sister gifted me an iPod shuffle, there has not been any hallelujah-worthy moment in music for me, this year. (Yes, that's right, I have become a jaded old fucker. Rape me, my friends. Which reminds me that I waded through Nirvana's discography sometime back. Excellent rush of happy memories that was. ) No, hold on, let me remember some music-worthy moments from last year...

- The live Zero-7 video that Vasu showed me, that made me go and listen to all of Zero-7 for a couple of days.
- Listening to this band from Nepal called Nepathya, who do rock versions of traditional songs from around the Himalayas. Infectious!
- Rediscovering DJ Krush, who I had heard a little bit of in 2005.
- Siddharth singing 'Appudo Ippudo' from Bommarilu, Shreya Ghoshal on the songs of Anukakonda Oka Roju, and, most important of all, 'Dole Dole' from Pokiri.
- All the adgy mixes.
- Kailash Kher's Kailasa, the live DVD as well as the CD.

Hmm, seems like there might be a mixtape in the offing after all...

The first half of the year, I took this rather drastic measure of choosing to ignore ALL blockbuster movies that are released. It was meant to be a one-year abstinence from all things corporate-Hollywood-and-Bollywood-ish, but the idea got chucked somewhere along the way. I did not watch too many movies either ways - probably the fact that Sympathy For Lady Vengeance did not impress me as much early this year has something to do with it. The ones I saw were reruns of the ones I saw before. Repeat viewings rock, don't they?

About the rest of what went on in my life, well, all of you who know me already know about what's going on, so do I really need to write it all down? The rest of you will have to make do, I guess.

* * *

Right now, I have in front of me the following - Pride of Baghdad and Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall, both hardcover. Genshiken volume 3 - I had bought volumes 4 and 5 yesterday on the last day of the Odyssey sale. DVDs of Pitamaghan, Vettaiyadu Vilaiyadu, Anjali, and Jillanu Oru Kaadhal. A neat Hitman page, drawn by John McCrea and inked by Gary Leach, featuring the last appearance of Sixpack, that I picked up from the post office today morning. Ramesh Menon's Mahabharata is occupying my nightly hours.

Ain't life grand?

Did I mention that my discman died two weeks ago? My faithful companion since 2001 ( or possibly 2000, considering that it was originally absolut_69's baby that I stole away and paid him six months later), my ecape valve during final year examinations, Sunny Deol-infested bus journeys, my PRECIOUS little precious finally gave up. Was bound to happen, but I am not giving up easily. It's off for repairs now, and the guy at the service center ( unauthorized, the Philips guys said they don't repair discmans, especially not the Expanium, and DEFINITELY not this model.), the guy said the lens needs to be changed. I don't have too much hope of it working for more than a year, new lens or not, and I am pretty sure it won't be able to read any of my older Frontech mp3 CDs. But no matter. I am not giving up on you easily, precious.

It's one of those unacknowledged laws that whenever you lack the means to listen to music, your urge to listen to music increases dramatically. I have been spending my free time ( Ha ha ha) revisiting some CDs that I hadn't heard in quite sometime. Travis, Moby's Play, Dixie Chicks, Bad Company, Jethro Tull, Van Morrison, Cowboy Junkies. Loads of Suzanne Vega too.

Has it ever happened to you that you hear a song, and then don't hear it for a long time, and when you hear it again, it sounds completely different from what you had thought it sounded, in terms of the orchestration and the arrangement? That happened to me with Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, a song which I keep remembering because of the opening lyrics, that go - If I ventured in the slipstream, between the viaducts of your dream, where immobile steel rims crack, and the ditch in the back roads stop - Could you find me? Would you kiss my eyes? - the imagery just kills me, man. I heard it after a long time, and was really, really taken aback to find that it was not really as guitar-driven as I remembered it was.

And now for some venom.

I think it was V For Vendetta that did it, finally, but I realised that the ratio of returns to investment has been mindblogglingly low for all the movies I've seen in theatres this and the last year. Movies that I've loved and enjoyed, like Sin City, Hostel, The Devil's Rejects, even The Corpse Bride have no chance of attaining theatrical releases in India. What do we get? Pap. Bile-inducing insults to my brain. Pixellated eye-candy with six tracks of digitized nonsense. So I say, enough. No more movies in theatres. No more paying inflated prices to be mentally assaulted for 90 to 180 minutes, and with cellphone ringtone interruptions too, to boot. Especially comicbook movies. I have been completely uninterested in Superman Returns ever since yada yada yada and I am not really interested in talking about it, thank you. If you see it and you like it, well, I am happy for you. Obviously you haven't been reading Doom Patrol or All Star Superman, so I can't really say I am too happy for you, but yeah, you should know that I have absolutely no problems with you watching Superman Returns. Nope, none at all. Not a teensy weensy bit. Honest.

The trailer for Spiderman 3? Not interested. Ghost Rider? Pah! 300? Ditto. Nacho Libre? Well, yeah, interested, but I don't think it's coming to theaters here, so there!

I was also more than a little pissed off because the last copy of Hanzo The Razor available at secondspin.com got sold off this week, as did the two copies of Varttina's Miero. GRRRAH! My credit card's maxed out, so I couldn't pick it up. CD-WOW still has it, but it's almost twice the price.

I am a man of taste. I shall now go home and listen to Himesh Reshammiya until I fall asleep. I have a presentation to make tomorrow morning. Er, today morning. I am in such an ebullient mood (Part of the reason: Roger Ebert gave Superman Returns two stars. I don't really like the guy, but that didn't stop me from grinning a lot on reading his review) that my technical presentation has taken on shades of a standup comedy routine. Wish me luck.

The year ends on a high. The DVD rip of Sympathy For Lady Vengeance Chan-Wooked its way into the torrentsphere and is now Parked in my harddisk. Ditto the complete scans of Mai The Psychic Girl, the first manga I read in my life.

Purrr.

One good act of vengeance deserves another.

You get all kinds of DVDs at National Market. Especially blockbusters, the kind of big-budget movies that go on to make a lot of money and win awards and all that. All three of the Lord Of The Rings movies have been available at National Market, and in different formats too. You can get the fullscreen versions, the widescreen versions, all three movies in one disc, all three movies PLUS Spiderman 1 and 2 on the same disc, or if you are really feeling adventurous, all three LotR movies and the three Harry Potter movies in the same disc.

Me? I was feeling a bit more adventurous.

( And a good thing I was, too. )

Other things I bought last week: The DVD of Dil Chahta Hai (2-disc Edition) The double disc edition brought out by Sony is fast going out of print, the only one I can see at the Planet M/Music World outlets now are a very pirated-looking single disc version that sells for 400 Rs. The 2-disc set cost me 500 Rs. The extra disc has got a couple of unmastered deleted scenes, a "making of" where everybody kisses everyone else's asses, and a couple of theatrical/TV trailers. Why did I buy it? Because I needed a version of DCH that has all the songs mastered properly. One with a proper image transfer ( T-series had brought out an atrocious VCD that totally sucked. I had a pirated VCD sometime back which was of better quality than this legit version, honest injun! )

And of course, I bought it because it's one of my favouritest movies, ever.

Also picked up a 256 MB GeForce card for the PC, and now I am playing the Punisher like crazy. One thing I loved about this game is the way they have brought in Ennis's scripts and characters, and in some cases, even the dialogue. Next Up: Half Life 2, and GTA: San Andreas.

Possibly, very possibly, the most romantic movies I have seen, this one and its sequel.

Anil told me about it first, when I was in IIM Calcutta, sitting bleary-eyed in his room and burning truckloads of divX movies. "Very good movie", he said, "Came out quite sometime back, not really a big hit or anything, but I liked it." "What's it about?", I remember asking, and when he said it's a romantic movie, I almost did not copy it to disc. But I did. And promptly forgot all about it until last November, when Prashant and I, walking down MG Road to the nearest Citibank ATM. ( Later, we found out that there was one right on Brigade road, and we needn't have walked all the way, but I guess if we hadn't, this conversation wouldn't have occurred, and I wouldn't have been writing this line.) We were talking movies, and from a long critique of Baise Moi, which appeared as a half-brained copy of Thelma and Louise, to talking about Susan Sarandon films and then to women-oriented ones, Uma Thurman and Kill Bill included, he suddenly asked me whether I had seen this movie. I had not, of course, and so for the next half an hour, I was given a from-the-heart lecture on it. Damn, all of a sudden I wished I had my divX movies here with me.

kvk mentioned it a couple of days later, and also mentioned that the sequel had just come out. What was this - the world seems to have seen this film before me, and everybody loved it! Something had to be done, and the next time I was in National Market, I asked them if this was around. I was shown a trashy Pierce Brosnan flick that had a similar name. Bleh. A couple of days later, Prashant found the sequel while rummaging around for Tarantino movies. "Give it a miss, it's sure to be a camera-print version", I suggested. He didn't listen to me, thank the Lord.

So the other day, I was hanging around all alone in the house, a little too tired to watch a high-octane action movie, and a little too downbeat for a comedy. Let me watch something I generally wouldn't watch, I thought. The only romantic movie around was the sequel, and ok, I watched it. Finished it. Watched the Making of-documentary ( it wasn't a camera print, after all) Watched the film again, wishing all the while I was in Hyderabad.

I found the first movie at National Market a couple of days later, but it was part of a combination, and I didn't really want to buy it that way. So I waited. Yesterday, Sasi went a little berserk at all the Bergman/Truffaut movies he saw there - and he ended up buying the combo-DVD as well. And so, as Mark Knopfler was playing at Palace Grounds, 2 kilometers away from where I live, I watched The Movie. Possibly, very possibly, the most romantic movies I have seen, this one and its sequel. Oh, did I just repeat myself?

Some of the conversations in the first movie sound contrived, I agree. It appears too easy, too spontaneous. But it's beautiful. The second film is not perfect, but the way it takes the theme of urgency even further - it's shot almost in real-time, and yes, the soundtrack *sigh*. The dialogues are a wee bit more realistic, maybe because the two lead stars chipped in with their own lines? Some of the lines make so much sense now after the first movie. The ending? There could have been no other.

Just for the record, I plan to watch both the movies again. Back to back. And with the right person.

( The song I am listening to now... )

As it turns out, I have been mispelling a writer's name. Inspite of having read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, it took me a google search to figure out that Susanna Clarke's first name is *not* spelt "Susannah". Damn. Which means that the teeny little disclaimer about perfect spelling on my user-info does not hold good any longer. I swear - if I had a knife nearby, and if I wasn't so chicken-hearted, I would be slicing off my little finger in disgrace.

Couple of happy things:

• I bought myself a complete set of the six Akira graphic novels on eBay. And a set of Daredevil, issues 26-69, the delectable Brian Bendis/Alex Maleev run from the same seller.


• Discovered the joys of Berke Breathed's lovely comic series Bloom County. Got some of the collected volumes off a sale for 50 rupees each. It was the sight of the dog pushing the wheelchair of a Vietnam vet, both quoting Star Trek, that brought me to this conclusion. Highly recommended.


• My Andrew Vachss collection is now technically complete. I have all the books until Pain Management (2001), which is fifteen books in all. I haven't seen the newer novels in stores anywhere in India.


• Picked up a first-edition copy of Gods, Demons and Others by RK Narayan (with the dust jacket intact) for 100 Rs. This was one of the first books I bought with my own money, sometime in December 1988, and I don't really remember where the copy is, right now. But getting this version made me real happy. I loved the delightful tone of voice in which RK Narayan narrated these stories, when I read this book the first time - inspite of knowing most of them by heart ( courtesy Amar Chitra Katha.
  

The more Takeshi Kitano movies I watch, the more convinced I am that the guy is the Japanese equivalent of Shah Rukh Khan, playing different facets of himself in all his movies. But then, the joy of watching a Kitano movie lies in observing the cliches that he has mastered - the silent, brooding protagonist, the in-your-face violence that launches itself in extremely creative ways, Joe Hisaishi's scores, the wisecracking foil played by Susumu Terajima, and the self-destructive ending. It's not a problem being repetitive ( after all, most classic rockers made a fortune out of repetitiveness), it's a problem when the repetitiveness becomes in-your-face, loud, and crass. None of these are attributes I would associate with a Kitano movie. Fireworks was a picture-perfect film. Every other minute of the movie, I would want to pause the player and just observe the frame, each moment a cinematographic masterpiece. After a very, very long time, I have this urge to paint (which is not necessarily a good thing, I know), because of this movie.

Whoa whoa whoa, what do we have here? Francois Ozon's Swimming Pool is all set to be released in Delhi sometime in March, and Bangalore/Chennai in April. Not bad at all, though this will be the good-bits version, or maybe the good-bits-are-hidden-but-you-can-try-make-sense-out-of-what-we-show-you-version as decreed by our hallowed Censor Board.

I live in a country where you get live albums by Isaac Hayes at book sales for 60 Rupees a CD. I don't know whether to be glad or pissed. ( Pissed because had I been a little late, someone else would have bought that CD. Damn)

Did anyone notice the market for old comics in India? A fine example - Blossom Book House is selling copies of Indrajal comics from the seventies and eighties for 20-25 Rs each. Issues that have a cover price of 1-2 rs, and which are missing covers are being put up with these kind of prices, and surprisingly, people are buying them at those prices. Everytime I go there, the issues I saw the last time are gone, and more copies have come in, with similar prices. Makes me glad I filched all those old Indrajal comics off assorted cousins and uncles a decade ago.

The more I look at Paris Hilton, the more I am reminded of Kareena Kapoor. Not a good thing.

Kisna: The Warrior Poet, is rife with subtleties. You know, the Subhash-Ghai kind of subtleties, like showing a black horse and a white horse gambolling around together. That's supposed to symbolise love - brown guy (Vivek Oberoi) and white girl (Antonia Bernaud). And when the movie begins with this sort of subtle imagery, you do not let that faze you. You sit down calmly, and think of myriad ways to painfully assassinate the director, the cast, the scriptwriter - basically everybody involved with this film. (Except Antonia Bernaud, perhaps. Poor girl must have hardly realised what she was getting into.)

Isha Sharvani, that lady you've seen twirling around a rope and doing those eyepopping leg-splits on those trailers? Guess what, that's all she does throughout the movie, so you better get used to your eyes popping out for 2 hours and 35 minutes. You would love to have this kind of girl around the house - she gets happy, she twirls on ropes; she is dejected, she twirls on ropes; she's angry, she twirls on ropes some more. And when she finds her homegrown loverboy in the arms of a firanghee and is spurned by him in the name of karma and dharma and karma-dharma and dharma-karma and all those B-movies of the eighties? She twirls on ropes atop a burning tree . Get it? Get it? Burning tree. Symbolism.

The events unfold in this quaint little village called Dharmaprayag, which is where the rivers Alakananda and Bhagirathi meet. ( How do I remember this bit of information? There's an Odyssey quiz coming soon, buddy, and you never know where these quizmasters get their questions from.) So, the first half of the movie, Dharmaprayag's where all the action is. You have a distinguished English lady coming to this village, where everybody behaves like B-actors trying hard to come to terms with acting in an A-movie, and getting regaled by Banjaran dancers from Rajasthan, and being snubbed by some yo-dude-checkisout-type reporters about her ignorance of India and Indianness. Surprise, surprise, the lady turns out to be fluent in Hindi, and also turns out she has a story to tell. That, of course, is the story of Kisna, which was supposed to have happened in 1947. Why did the lady delay her return to India and her meeting Kisna again? Because she watched Titanic just last year, and if Gloria Stuart can do it, so can she.

I would love to say some more about Ghai-saab's refined tastes, like shooting a song against a blue sky with dancers wearing blue inside a blue-crystal cave-ish kotha. ( Blue. Kisna. Blue. Get it? ) And amidst all this bluescreen shooting, the poor man forgot that to have an item number, ( Ssshhh. Never mind the fact that this is 1947 and item numbers didn't exist then. Dude, you had item numbers in 53 BC, when Emperor Ashahrukha was around.) you need an item. Not Sushmita Sen. I don't remember seeing any part of her body moving, other than her eyes. Yes, she was that bad.

Then there is a scene which is Subhash Ghai's tribute to Raj Kapoor. You have the river Ganga flowing by, and you have two lovers, and you have Raj Kapoor to pay homage to, so what do you do? Kick yourselves if you didn't get this. You have the babe call herself Gangotri, dress up in flimsy white clothes, and then go have a dip in the Ganga. Dude, I love this homage-shit, man. I haven't seen...you know...the goods on a babe in a Hindi film since the last time Ganga was unclean, hey Ram. ( Yes, I haven't seen Shaque and I suggest you don't, too. )

What a dump of a movie. This is the last time I go to see a film just because it has Rahman music in it. Humph!