Horizon

When I was small and used to live in my village, during my visits to my farms I used to look at the horizon and actually believe that far away there is a place where earth meets the sky. At times I used to run towards it spreading my hands in the air in order to touch the sky. The longer I ran, farther the point where the earth meets the sky gone.

Now I have gone through schools and college; and have been taught that there is no such place where the earth meets the sky. Call me a fool, I am still running hands spread in the air trying to touch the sky. Although there is one thing that sometimes scares me. What if I manage to touch the sky? What will happen then? No running, no spreading of hands in the air. Will I be happy or sad? I don't have the answer. I just know one thing. In all these years I have started to love the running.

Vampire Diaries

Don't be confused by the title of the post. I am not going to talk about the recent craze love struck vampires of hollywood, neither it is about the more traditional blood sucking ones. However it is closer to the later, since it is about not a fictional creature, but a very real vampire of our time i.e. Ram Gopal Verma. After sucking audiences' blood for last few years, he has gone sanskritified and ab wo logon ka rakhta chuste hain.

What expectations one would have from a movie, which is being aired on TV exactly 3 weeks after it's release? That's how excited I was while watching this master piece, Rakhta Charitra, from master story teller, RGV, starring master actor, Vivek Oberoi. (Or is it Viveik? Someone please tell him mandir jaane se, naam badalne se ya fir jagah jagah logon se mafi mangne se accha actor nahi bante. Uske liye actually thodi si acting karni padti hai.)

The movie started with a very irritating voice narrating the story of Veerbhadra, who happens to be the right hand man of local MLA or MP or some political leader in some capacity Narasimha Reddy. Narasimha Reddy is somehow made to believe that Veerbhadra is actually using this closeness to build his own ploitical career and without waiting for a second both Veerbhadra and Narasimha are political rivals wanting to kill each other. Nagmani, who was responsible for this conflict plans for Veerbhadra's Murder by the help of one of Veerbhadra's aide Munda. What then starts is Rakhta Charitra, someone is killed in every 30 seconds by either Pratap Ravi or by Bukka Reddy or some random character. They make killing look such a simple and easy task. Matlab chai peete hue decide kiya ki Naagmani (who happens to have an army of people protecting him) ko maarte hain aur lunch me Naagmani ko hi kha gaye.

After all this blood bath our hero decides to join politics and wins the election just like that by help from actor turned politician Shivaji Rao.

We are then told that there is more about the movie, which we will come to know on 3rd of Dec, when the second part of the movie releases. By this time mere shareer me rakhta ki kami se I start feeling weak.

We are told that it is a true story and our creative geniuses have conveniently picked up all the killings and only killings in that story and made a movie out of it and subtly named it Rakhta Charitra. Very few details are offered and whatever is offered is offered in that irritating voice of the narrator. You so much want to mute your TV, while the narration is going on. The only expression of the entire movie is anger. So all the leading characters of the movie look angry in all the scenes, hence no need for a second expression. Every leading character has a dedicated irritating back ground score, which is used to suppress the dialogs spoken by these characters saving useless expense of dialog writer and leaving the audience wonder what the hell these guys would be saying to each other leading them to take drastic decisions. OR may be there was a dialog writer who would have quit because of not being able to handle the challenging task of using word Rakhta in all the dialogs.

RGV must get rid of his obsession for zooming on to the faces of his actors so often. You can even count the hair inside the nostrils of all the actors. Gross, isn't it? Exactly.

I am sure none of you would be interested in how much I rate this movie out of 10 after what I have written above. So I would not go through that exercise. I watched it on a lazy and boring Saturday, when I had absolutely nothing to do and nothing better on TV either. That is the only situation this movie can be seen.

Once Upon a Time

Once upon a time there was a man named Sultan Mirja, who ruled the sea of Mumbai and he had a say in all the illegal trade across Mumbai by virtue of being the king of the sea. He was a visionary, because he knew the rout to smuggle anything inside Mumbai is the sea. He also had a heart of gold, helping every needy person around, or may be he always felt guilty about the things he did and wanted people to pray for his well beings. Anyways, people believed that he was their savior. He falls for a starlet Rehana and she is impressed by his power. The fact that both of them had a tragic past brought them closer and the promise of a brighter future kept them together.

There was a young man Sohaib who, so impressed by Sultan's life, wanted to be like him. He kept himself busy committing petty crimes and gifting the winnings from those to the pretty sales girl next door, Mumtaj. Of all the ugly things he did all his life, while dreaming to be the King of Mumbai, Mumtaj was the only pretty thing in his life. By fate he manages to get into the gang of Sultan and manages to win his trust.

Then there was an ACP Agnel, who vows to put an end to the rule of Sultan Mirja and in order to do so he ends up ignoring the crimes committed by Sohaib, believing that he is the answer to the question named Sultan. In the end, he puts it appropriately, it's easy to choose between good and evil but it's really difficult to choose between two evils. By the time he realizes that he chose the worse of the two evils, it's too late.

So that's the story of what happened many years ago in Mumbai, which changed the face of the Mumbai underworld for time to come. In the movie Ajay Dvgan plays to the role of Sultan Mirja, a role similar to that he perfected in Company. The only difference being he wore black in company and white in OUTM. Emran Hashmi plays Sohaib, but is not able to show the rawness required to play the dreaded don. Kangna and Prachi play the two leading ladies Rehana and Mumtaj. While Kangna's role is vital for the story Prachi's story seems to be forced into the proceedings of the story, however both the girls have performed well. The name that requires special mention is Randeep Huda, playing ACP Agnel Wilson, who proves that given a chance and a role, he can deliver. The story is simple and everyone knows how it unfolds. The only thing that really disappointed me where the dialogs, it sounded more like philosophy lessons than real life conversations. Don't understand why everyone has to talk in metaphors all the time. The costumes and music has the needed feel of the 70's.

I would rate this movie 6 out of 10. You can go and watch it on a lazy Sunday without being disappointed.