A medium wedded to tedium
I guess we all need the comfort of madness on a medium that’s wedded to tedium. It’s with some degree of liberating pleasure that we sit through the machinations of her jealous mother-in-law in Star Plus Kyonki Saas Bhi Kabhi Tthi. Last week, she was heard counselling her goodygoody daughter-in-law Tulsi on how to keep her husband Mihir under her thumb. Of course, we know Mihir’s mom is doing this to create a rift between her son and his wife. But Tulsi and Mihir don’t know it as yet. No wonder the girl who plays Tulsi looked puzzled to the extreme.

Nowadays we often get confused by the schedule shuffles on satellite television. Zee has gone and re-scheduled ALL their primetime programmes between 9 and 10 p.m. Guess why? No one’s getting a crore for answering that one.One of the programmes that has suffered a see-rious setback is Hukumat where Sudhir Pande plays a goodhearted underworld don who speaks in rasping tones. I’m yet to figure out whether Pandey is trying to be Marlon Brando in The Godfather or Prithviraj Kapoor in Kal Aaj Aur Kal. Or perhaps a blend of both. Last week he screamed at his screen wife for packing her bags to leave for Pune. Imagine how loud the Bombaiyya Brando would have bellowed if the wife was leaving for Kolhapur or Thane.

Incidentally director Rakesh Sarang had earlier made a similar serial with a similar storyline entitled Shatranj for the now-defunct Channel El in which the central character spoke in Brando’s husky whisper. If Sarang is so enamoured of The Godfather why doesn’t he simply remake Coppola’s classic on Indian television and call it Hukumat Shatranj Ki? Incidentally, Sudhir Pandey’s rival gang on Hukumat spearheaded by Govind Namdeo, seems to have gone into hibernation. Maybe they don’t make mayhem like they used to?

Now that Rajesh Khanna is going to be seen on the small screen I wonder what Rohit Roy intends to do with his acting style. I ask because the Roy boy shows a huge Khanna influence in his acting style specially in dramatic scenes. Last week on Sony’s Tujhpe Dil Qurban when Roy told his senior that he wants to re-join duty and never mind if his mother is in the hospital, Roy narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips the way Rajesh Khanna did in his heyday. So good na? We already had Aamir Khan, Akshay Kumar and Salman Khan lookalikes. All we needed was an echo from the distant past to complete the picture by ‘remote’ control.

During the past week there have been several preview/analyses of Khalid Mohamed’s Fiza. The one on ETC last week had Hrithik Roshan commenting on the songs and dances. Speaking of the choreography for Aaja mahiya Hrithik blurted out, “Farha is the best.” Oops! I hope Saroj Khan wasn’t listening. Musician Ranjit Barot confessed he would normally not spend a single paisa to see a Hindi film. But for Fiza, he would. The material that evening interspersed with truly appreciative commnents by actors and technicians proved one thing. The director has a lot of goodwill within the film industry.

Zee News has done it. A story on The Inside Story on the rather strange contradictions which characterize censorship in our country. The story was fair, many-sided and disturbing. Rather than simply talk about the disregard for censorship, the Zee News team actually went out into theatres for the morning shows to prove how blue films are interpolated into the censored feature film. Fortunately, the screen was blurred. But the rest of the ‘passed’ footage shown that evening was lewd enough to make us blush. I wish more views were solicited from inside the industry than just the ubiquitous Mahesh Bhatt and Sawan Kumar. The latter complained that if discrepancies were pointed out by a filmmaker by drawing references to previously passed works the censor panel said to forget about the past. Strangely, no representative from the censor board was asked to defend some of the more serious charges levelled against the censor board.

Movies and movie-related stories have become big business on Star News. Two interesting stories last week indicated a growing dependence on showbiz to countermand the selfimportant excesses of politicians who regularly appear and disappear on Star News. The first story was on young second and third generations NRIs who are preparing themselves to become actors in Mumbai. One such dude told Star News that Govinda and not Tom Cruise have always been his favourite. While Hindi movies about NRIs coming home have swamped the boxffice, a small group of youngsters have taken a cue from these movies to return home.

The other story on Star News on the night of September 3 was truly intriguing. It was about the cassette sales of Mohabbatein. A spokesperson from HMV claimed that 15 lakh cassettes and 15 lakh CDs of Mohabbatein were sold on the morning of the music’s release. The interesting story was accompanied by footage from Yash Chopra’s films down the years to show how the music in his cinema has always been special. But what about a line or two on the special relationship the moviemaking maestro shares with the Melody Queen Lata Mangeshkar and what an important role she plays in the success of Yash Chopra’s music? That would have really completed the picture.

The old adage ‘Physician, heal thyself’ returned to me when I happened to catch last Sunday’s episode of Bournvita Quiz Contest. Being a Teacher’s Day special teachers from all over the country had been invited to be quizzed rigorously on their likes, dislikes. The most interesting segment had the teachers fumbling over the spelling of words like ‘extortionist’. And guess what? Doing away with a celeberity guest Bournvita Quiz Show that morning featured an ambidextrous wonder-girl named Sasha.

With Kaun Banega Crorepati being the only gameshow in town, old quiz shows like the Bournvita quiz and Mastermind seem more like bum chums from our old mohallah we wouldn’t like to forget just because we’ve moved into a new posh bungalow in an upwardly mobile locality.

Subhash K Jha