Idhar udhar ki baatein
Iqbal : Movie Review
After quite a while, I saw a true-blue classic in the Theater. (No, Mangal Pandey comes close but does not quite qualify.) And what a movie it was! Iqbal stands out for its breathtaking realism, for simple scenes and dialogues which haunt you long after “The End” has flashed on screen, for tying together in a simple manner the world of the handicapped and the world of dreams. In bringing together the likes of Naseeruddin Shah (his first movie, if I recall rightly, after Sarfarosh), Girish Karnad, the supremely talented Shweta Prasad (of Makdee fame) and last but not least Kapil paaji, Subhash Ghai has pulled off a casting coup.
And after the eminently forgettable Hyderabad Blues 2, Nagesh Kukunoor has finally come of age. Not just as a director, but (perhaps far more significantly for the future of parallel cinema in India) as a scriptwriter. He dares to dream big. He carries a deaf and dumb late-starting village lad through to the Indian cricket team. He exposes the multiple facets of, and the multifarious facades behind, the world of cricket at its highest level in India. Politics, match-fixing, bribery, nepotism … and a face-saving act by the paaji at the end.
True, cricket is over-hyped in India and does not need yet another movie to promote it. But at the end of the day, Iqbal is less about cricket and more about hope, about standing upright in the face of all odds, about achieving the impossible.
Go watch Iqbal. It made my day. It will make yours.
+++
Sania Mirza rocks. You go girl!
+++
My dream match would have been a Sampras-Federer Wimbledon final. But an Agassi-Federer US Open Final comes close.
How would I like it to go? Well, I love watching Federer play, so I’d root for him to win all the points. But then, Agassi’s my overwhelming sentimental favorite, and I’d like him to triumph in this, his probable swansong at this Open.
Bottomline: Federer should win all the points, but Agassi should win the match.
Impossible? Probably. But if it did come true – such fun!
+++
"It's only dreams, and dreams are all I have, to take your nightmares away" - Rock Star Kassim
Nowadays dreams are becoming so educational. I saw a hi-tech one recently. Here goes:
In my dream, I was happily busy doing nothing whatsoever when daddy rushed into the room, holding my cellphone in one hand and his cellphone in the other hand.
"Son", he exclaims excitedly, "I wanted a backup of all the numbers stored in my cellphone, so I connected my phone to yours and copied all my numbers onto your phone directory!"
"But daddy", I spluttered, "Don't you have hundreds of numbers on your cell?"
"Yes", daddy claimed proudly, "my cell memory size can take upto 500 numbers."
"But my cell can only take 70! And I already had 70 stored contacts! What happened to them?"
"Don't know, didn't check", said a confused daddy.
"Oops!" I exclaimed and grabbed my phone and checked. And horror of horrors -- all my contacts had been deleted! And replaced by the first 70 of daddy's contacts, which only included those whose names began with A and B!
And then -- I woke up out of fright.
Dreams have indeed become so hi-tech nowadays. And dreamers have become so nutty :((((
After quite a while, I saw a true-blue classic in the Theater. (No, Mangal Pandey comes close but does not quite qualify.) And what a movie it was! Iqbal stands out for its breathtaking realism, for simple scenes and dialogues which haunt you long after “The End” has flashed on screen, for tying together in a simple manner the world of the handicapped and the world of dreams. In bringing together the likes of Naseeruddin Shah (his first movie, if I recall rightly, after Sarfarosh), Girish Karnad, the supremely talented Shweta Prasad (of Makdee fame) and last but not least Kapil paaji, Subhash Ghai has pulled off a casting coup.
And after the eminently forgettable Hyderabad Blues 2, Nagesh Kukunoor has finally come of age. Not just as a director, but (perhaps far more significantly for the future of parallel cinema in India) as a scriptwriter. He dares to dream big. He carries a deaf and dumb late-starting village lad through to the Indian cricket team. He exposes the multiple facets of, and the multifarious facades behind, the world of cricket at its highest level in India. Politics, match-fixing, bribery, nepotism … and a face-saving act by the paaji at the end.
True, cricket is over-hyped in India and does not need yet another movie to promote it. But at the end of the day, Iqbal is less about cricket and more about hope, about standing upright in the face of all odds, about achieving the impossible.
Go watch Iqbal. It made my day. It will make yours.
+++
Sania Mirza rocks. You go girl!
+++
My dream match would have been a Sampras-Federer Wimbledon final. But an Agassi-Federer US Open Final comes close.
How would I like it to go? Well, I love watching Federer play, so I’d root for him to win all the points. But then, Agassi’s my overwhelming sentimental favorite, and I’d like him to triumph in this, his probable swansong at this Open.
Bottomline: Federer should win all the points, but Agassi should win the match.
Impossible? Probably. But if it did come true – such fun!
+++
"It's only dreams, and dreams are all I have, to take your nightmares away" - Rock Star Kassim
Nowadays dreams are becoming so educational. I saw a hi-tech one recently. Here goes:
In my dream, I was happily busy doing nothing whatsoever when daddy rushed into the room, holding my cellphone in one hand and his cellphone in the other hand.
"Son", he exclaims excitedly, "I wanted a backup of all the numbers stored in my cellphone, so I connected my phone to yours and copied all my numbers onto your phone directory!"
"But daddy", I spluttered, "Don't you have hundreds of numbers on your cell?"
"Yes", daddy claimed proudly, "my cell memory size can take upto 500 numbers."
"But my cell can only take 70! And I already had 70 stored contacts! What happened to them?"
"Don't know, didn't check", said a confused daddy.
"Oops!" I exclaimed and grabbed my phone and checked. And horror of horrors -- all my contacts had been deleted! And replaced by the first 70 of daddy's contacts, which only included those whose names began with A and B!
And then -- I woke up out of fright.
Dreams have indeed become so hi-tech nowadays. And dreamers have become so nutty :((((
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