Wedding bells for Saif, Kareena soon!

Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor have been busy denying immediate marriage plans lately and even dismissed rumours of a secret wedding some time ago. However, Saif's mother Sharmila Tagore has now openly declared that the actor is planning to marry Kareena "very soon". "Saif has spoken about his intention to get married very soon. He told his dad ( Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi) and me about it," Tagore told a section of the media.

While there is no specific date announced yet, a source close to Saif said that the actor will wait till the release of his upcoming production Agent Vinod, which also stars Kareena.
The Sriram Raghavan-directed superspy flick Agent Vinod is scheduled to release on December 9 and Saif, producer and hero of the film, is going all-out to ensure a lavish, state-of-the-art thriller. Portions of the film have already been shot in quaint locations such as Morocco and Latvia.
"Saif is too busy on the career front to get married right away.
He is currently on a long outdoor schedule for Prakash Jha's Aarakshan . Once that is through, he will shift focus back on wrapping up the shooting of Agent Vinod and then concentrate on the film's post-production and pre-release publicity campaign.

Cinema of the soul

Cinema has become a part of our lives and we watch everything that is heavily publicised — good, bad and the ugly. In the larger interest of humanity cinema has to be taken to its highest end. There must be a burning desire and a commitment to share a particular passion with the world. Good is a loosely used word, its potential limited to just an acceptable level of goodness.
Very few films have been worth living with, mainly because the maker didn’t live with the idea long enough or the idea is not part of the soul’s journey!
We need to feel deep within how and why simple things happen. How to take the audience along with you. For instance, Guy Ritchie has a complex structure for a simple plot to compensate for high-end production values. He has fierce, loud, exaggerated characters in high-voltage moments. Cinema becomes an extension of their madness. Colours and textures are monochromatic and bizarre. The cause and effect come together in the second half of the film, nearer the resolution, almost seeming as if the end is written before the beginning. But it helps to place the first half effectively so that you live more with that than the climax! You leave with a sense of victory of your intelligence, that you discovered it all.
So start with that prophetic style of writing in which a complex and bewildering set-up is intelligently unravelled by a pro-active audience. There is a simple narrative and an intelligent device for telling the same story. In cinema, the possibilities are unlimited. The screenplay is a game that you play with the intelligence of the audience. You don’t say it all, you keep planting clues all along which get resolved in the end. The structure is the innovation and arriving at the end is the miracle. There is an electrifying and startling relationship between the story and how you tell the story. While you keep it lean, you surprise the audience with the device. Your opening is the way you will unfold your journey. The modern mind is distracted and shallow. It has always been served with a loud, larger-than-life, exaggerated sense of reality, which is unreal not only in history but equally far from an authentic and aesthetic interpretation of the period or the mood of the theme. The imagination runs amuck on every level, thus never finding a cinematic interpretation to pages from the past.
Writing cinema is art within art with the powerful evolution and interplay of the idea, the story, the unfolding and the writing of sound and movement. The thirsty world needs an inspiring idea. It needs a simple thought visualised and dramatised beyond the realm of imagination. It needs a continuous conflict; a clash of reality and dreams; of ideas bashing at the gates of imagination; the struggle of the good and the bad. Thus, film writing becoming larger than life. A dream within a dream. Entering into the subconscious. If you die in your dreams you age beyond time.
Today people are living in a virtual reality, therefore, cinema can take that quantum leap in the imagination, which is refreshing and exciting and becomes an edge-of-the-seat experience. Esoteric ideas can be woven into it or it can be based on an esoteric idea. Idea as a devise is a new way of structuring a film to excite the participation of the human mind. From magic to virtual imagination challenging the laws of nature, the human mind has taken an enormous leap into a realm that confronts science with psychology and psychology with science using simple emotional devices as a peg to hold human relationships and values. The whole ethos of drama has changed, going beyond fear to enter the extended experience of excitement and realisation beyond time. On the other extreme the whole way of looking at the world is threatening and prepares one for the worst holocaust.
Cinematic writing evolves a new vocabulary in the language of moving images, gives new meaning to the dictionary of cinema, new glossary to dialogue, a new dimension to action and imparts psychology to body language and sensibility to movement.
Nothing happens without a reason. Reason is the biggest cause. It is even beyond the power of humans. When we cannot be humans how can we even ever imagine to be superhuman? Yet, there is a faint reflection of the Almighty in all of us to make us all understand what being human can be all about.
This is the outer end of all positive art, which makes art a prayer.
— Muzaffar Ali is a filmmaker and painter.
He is the executive director and secretary of the Rumi Foundation.He can be contacted at www.rumifoundation.in
Source: The Asian Age

In Bollywood, politics stays out of focus

Politics is to cinema what a mongoose is to a cobra. They don’t get along. In fact, it has to be a truly venturesome sort who treads the verboten terrain.
Take Prakash Jha. He couldn’t attract enough votes, in 2004 as well as 2009, at the Lok Sabha elections to
become a real-life neta. On screen, though, he seeks to rat-a-tat away at venal ministers, corrupt cops and their Rasputin-faced associates. The director’s home state, Bihar, albeit abstrusely has served as a backdrop for his successful quasi-political thrillers Aparahan, Gangaajal and Raajneeti.
In fact, Raajneeti turned out to be a mega-crowd-pleaser. Vis-à-vis its publicity campaign, Ranbir Kapoor-Katrina Kaif had been assigned extra importance, invoking the wrath of co-star Ajay Devgn. Be that as it may, the hot-seller was more an adaptation of The Godfather than a reflection of realpolitik.
Now, to add to his political film library, Aarakshan (Reservation) is around the corner to grapple with a contentious subject: caste-based reservations in government jobs and educational institutions. Jha ho! So what if the faces of Saif Ali Khan and Deepika Padukone are being highlighted in the print publicity? Glamour and popular young stars sell. Politics? Ho-hum, maybe.
Over, then, to this week’s release Gandhi to Hitler. Quite an oddity, it deals with the two letters which the Mahatma is said to have written to the Fuhrer, urging him to give up the politics of violence. Raghuvir Yadav shows up as Adolf Hitler. Stranger things have happened at the movies.
Like Raavan, Mani Ratnam’s adaptation of Ramayana. It said virtually zilch, except for the display of some slow-motion shots of waterfalls and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. Earlier Ratnam’s Guru had detailed a rags-to-riches industrialist’s manipulation of politics and the media, enticing a guessing game. Is that Dhirubhai Ambani? Is that Ramnath Goenka? Compared to Ratnam’s uncompromised work — Iruvar — Guru was fair to middling.
Point is that for popular cinema, politics can be a side dish, never the main course. The memory of the prints of Kissa Kursi Ka being destructed during the mid-1970s still lingers. So why travel that route, anyway?
After all, politics implies a maze of complications, taking a stand and a hyperventilation of duh-or-die convictions. Difficult. There’s no more radical critiquing, no subversion. No M.S. Sathyu’s lament at a divided nation in Garm Hava, no Gulzar masquerading Suchitra Sen as Indira Gandhi in Aandhi, no Saeed Mirza Leftist-inflected Salim Langde Pe Mat Ro, no Jabbar Patel’s look at chief ministership ke chukkers as in Simhasan. And no taking off the lid between politicos and media barons, as in Ramesh Sharma’s New Delhi Times.
Ram Gopal Varma’s Sarkar portrayed a political leader, again in the tradition of The Godfather. It alluded to the real-life political leader strictly between the frames. Political frankspeak isn’t acceptable, political correctness is. Because this card ensures patronage by the ruling party and a slew of awards following fierce lobbying with the ministries, fixers — not to forget those seasoned hangers-on in Delhi’s dank offices and Ashok Hotel’s kabab-and-paneer tikka party halls. In the event, the show business movers as well as wannashakers have to do the right thing.
Concurrently, political parties of various hues have drawn star names to pitch in their lot for poll campaigns. Salman Khan has achieved the absurd feat of campaigning for rival parties. And some of yesteryear’s heroines, TV termagants, beauty pageant winners and slumdog kiddies have been drawn to the fold for cash fees, either for a single campaign trip or as a package deal.
Ironically there is little or no danger of the election circus ever becoming a subject for a film script, serious, comedic or both. If an element of politics is essential, it has to be the tried and tested. To date, it’s a tradition to festoon the walls of government and police chowkies depicted in popular cinema, with calendar portraits of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri and Indira Gandhi. A bid to win brownie points from the ruling party? Or just plain old-fashioned art direction?
At one stage, particularly in the 1950s and ’60s, Bollywood films often flashed stock footage of Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Nehru and for a secular touch Maulana Azad, addressing the nation. Infallibly, the flashes drew goose bumps besides thunderous applause from the front benches as well as the balconies. Predictably, such flashes are no longer used, indicating that the moviegoer is no longer excited by post-Independence fervour. Like it or not, popular cinema has to adopt an apolitical stance, sit on the fence, and go with the current flow. Evidence: the volte-face from the rabble rousing anti-Pakistan movies (Gadar and Hero, for instance) to the brief abracadabra-like honeymoon with the announcements of pro-Pak co-productions.
Mahesh-Mukesh Bhatt took the lead towards cross-bordering by ransacking the sufi-pop music of Pakistan. The Yash Chopra confected Veer-Zaara, an Indo-Pak romance, close in genre to RK Films’ Henna. Very gung-ho with such developments, information and broadcasting minister Ravishankar Prasad had even announced a film on cross-border dosti to be produced by a Pakistani and to be directed by an Indian. It never happened.
Aah, such is politics.
Source: The Asian Age

A Big B deal for Deepika

Deepika Padukone is very upbeat about continuing her success streak with the soon-to-be-released Aarakshan. On the personal front too, the actress seems to be happy with her constant companion Sidhartha Mallya. She shares some interesting nuggets about her journey with superstars and of course her special friend Sidhartha.
On her return with Saif: Yes, now we are part of a more dramatic journey in Aarakshan. But even in Love Aaj Kal, we weren’t really the quintessential romantic souls. Remember how we broke up in the very opening sequence of the film?
On choosing a serious subject like reservation: Well, if you look at my track record, I have done a number of films with a strong subject line, within commercial parameters. I believe that a film can be entertaining even without those regular song and dance affairs.
On her confidence in Aarakshan: Whether a film is in the right direction or not is something that you get to know only when it releases. However, one thing that I am very sure of is that the team’s intentions were honest from the start.
On her journey from Shah Rukh Khan (Om Shanti Om) to Amitabh Bachchan (Aarakshan): Just like Shah Rukh, Mr Bachchan was equally nice to me and made me very comfortable. But still, as the camera starts rolling and you are mouthing your dialogues, you are constantly wondering if he is judging your performance. I think it is indeed a big deal to be actually looking into his eyes and saying your lines. Trust me, it isn’t easy.
On Sidhartha Mallya: I don’t like to hide facts. But earlier when I presumed that the media would respect my privacy, I was disappointed. That’s why now, I’m a lot more careful about what I let out regarding my personal life.
Source: The Asian Age