Friday, January 29, 2010

How was 'Phir Mile Sur' made? Inside story!

Are you wondering why did Zoom decide to recreate 'Phir Mile Sur'? Here is the top secret unearthed by our under cover agents (borrowed from UTV Bindass's Emotional Atyachar).

Zoom honchos had thought of making a music video featuring Bollywood stars but then someone suggested why not piggyback on something already popular and remembered! And they decided to do 'Phir Miley Sur'.

Here is how the "creative team" acted on the brief given by producers:

1) We need to have the 3 Khans doing what they are best known for. So Salman has to be shirtless (and keep his mouth shut!), Aamir has to be with kids (audience needs to be reminded that he is the conscientious Khan!) and SRK doing his trademark open-arms thing. And obviously all need to be given equal footage.

2) We need to show the young 'achievers'. To this someone said most of them may not be recognized by public. Good Point, so we need to show their more famous dad with them. Here come Ustad Amzad Ali Khan with sons Amaan and Ayaan, KJ Yesudas with Vijay, Pt. Shivkumar Sharma with Rahul. Pt. Ravi Shankar is unwell so Anoushka will have to do alone.

3) Bollywood's first family. No it will look like a family album. OK, we will do it in more discreet manner. Let's drop Big Ma. (She's a politician anyway!) Big B can sing, so let's keep him alone. And the beta-bahu can be shot together. (Someone said ya, may be we can sneak in a bar of Lux also somewhere!)

4) Musicians. Rahman HAS to be there but since we don't have anything like storyboard so we don't know what to do with him. Shankar-Ehsan-Loy can do a "Rock On" but who will tell them their piece which sounds like a crescendo is actually not in the end! Sivamani can be trusted to do something crazy. God bless the person who suggested inclusion of Ustad Rashid Khan. Shreya Ghoshal and Shan can be clubbed with east India. Sonu Nigam can be used as playback for stars.

5) Bollywood. But we have to keep whole country in mind, no? Uhh ok, Vikram and Surya from Tamil, Mahesh Babu from Telugu, Mammooty from Malyalam. Happy? Rituparna Sen Gupta and Sonali/Atul Kulkarni will go well because they can be shown as Bengali and Marathi (respectively) as well! (The guy who suggested this got a bonus.). Now we can fill in as many Bollywood guys as we want. (This thought made them so happy, they all shared a McAloo Tikki)

6) Budget. We have already spent 99.875% of our total budget on stars so get some sportsmen to whom we don't have to pay conveyance charges and yet people recognize them. Enter Gopichand-Saina, Vijayendra, Sunil, Abhinav and Baichung. Technicians? Unh who needs them. We can edit and put it all together ourselves on a Mac. So what if lips are not in sync with lyrics or fingers not in sync with the instrument. Oh, it's still not 16 minutes? Let's put in some stock shots of armed forces.

And then as they say rest was history. (PMS got such a bad response, that it was relegated to history books in first week itself!)




Monday, January 04, 2010

Why does 4th Estate act as 4th Idiot?

Before comparisons with 'Five Point Someone' and Chetan Bhagat's allegations hit the press, only thing being written about '3 Idiots' after the release was its box office collections. The business is being claimed to be even better that previous topmost grosser 'Ghajni'.

As is the trend in the country, our mainstream media (and obviously the film awards) measures the worth of a movie by the crores it makes, or doesn't. Come the award season (which is round the corner) this film will sweep all the awards. Come the Oscar nomination time and Delhi/Mumbai based 'national' channels will start propping this and some other money raker as India's nominees.

Coming back to movie's collections and how media has gone in a collective orgasm about how many crores the film has made in first week itself. Does anyone pause to remember that it is just an year ago that 'Ghajni' had set new records? The reason was extensive release and inflated ticket rates in multiplexes. Once again we the movie goers have been made to payup through the roof for the movie. Instead of highlighting this producer-multiplex nexus which ultimately makes general public suffer, media simply shouts from the rooftop whatever numbers the PR agency sends to it, without even trying to validate those figures.

Secondly, if a movie makes truckloads of money does it mean it is a great film? Many critics have said that Raju Hirani's previous outings in Munnabhai series are lot better than '3 Idiots'. But since this movie has made more money than other two combined, does it make it better than them? I don't think so. So just why is media so pumped up by its earnings? Report about the earnings, but don't make it the best thing ever happened to cinema just because it has made money.

Is it too much to ask for?

Friday, January 01, 2010