Friday, October 01, 2004

Mighty Khan storms Bollywood in Tezaab-The Acid of Love

Move over Shah Rukh, Aamir and Salman. The latest addition to the ‘Khaan-daan’ is here. Introducing : Mighty Khan!! Is it a name, is it an adjective? No silly, it’s a grammatical miracle!!! With a name like Mighty, how far are you from toppling the big guns!!! I can already see the new mantra in Bollywood: “Mighty is righty”. Think about casting Mighty in a mythological where the court announcer goes “Aa rahe hain shaktishaali Mighty kumar” which when ably subtitled would be “Entering the court is mighty Mighty”

Enough from this Mighty groupie about what could be. Let’s talk about what “is”. Mighty Khan is making his debut in ‘Tezaab – the acid of love”. Thank you. I had no clue about the acidic tendencies of romance. Now I know what someone means when they sing “Seene me jalan ….” when lost in love. It’s bloody brilliant. The sequel could be ‘Ksharavishishta – the alkaline side of love’ (feel free to correct my translation). Am I looking forward to it or what?

Of course, even Mighty Khan needs a waist to wrap his mighty hands around. That thin waist belongs to Miss Shruti Sharma. Shruti is a former Miss India, and after making the perfunctory statements about admiring Mother Teresa, she is promptly doing her duty towards the poorest of the poor – by entering Bollywood and entertaining the masses. I don’t know why people think it is hypocritical. It makes perfect sense. Of course, the missionaries of charity shouldn’t expect her resume anytime soon.

For those whose interest has been sufficiently aroused, please see a trailer of this movie (please note that the file is 5MB in size). Now to the rant. It doesn’t take a genius to look at the trailer and figure out that it is another remake of ‘Unfaithful’. If Miss Mallika Murder Sherawatwas not enough, Miss Sharma, suitably aided by Mighty, take the risqué factor to a new level (no risk here). I have defended the formulaic Bollywood output for years now, and could still hold a lively argument on the topic. But this kind of titillating output in every second movie that comes out is disgusting. If you thought this trend is going to end in a nude scene in Hindi movies, well, it has already happened (Miss Janaki Shah in a movie called Shaque … don’t even get me started on the premise of the scene!!) There is a place for erotica in Indian cinema, but it should be a niche area and it should be done tastefully. This isn’t the way!!!

Oh well, the post got heavy at the end. If anyone from India is reading this, do inform me if you see the exact same promos or a toned down version on TV (I know internet sites don’t have censoring, hence the question)

4 comments:

Avinash said...

Watched the trailer. I was reminded of the email I wrote to u abt why I attack bollywood movies more virulently here. There seems to be this wave of "skinny" movies. I watched a few of them like murder, hawas etc and even a few scenes from Jism. They are like poorly made amateur porn movies. The consensus here in CLL is that instead of wasting time watching these stupid films just get a Z-TV disk from baba and watch the real stuff.

phucker said...

Seen the trailer online, have not seen it on TV yet, but there is very little cencsoring on Indian TV these days. Cutting out the F word from 'The Sopranos' only started sometime this year... and that show has been on air, prime-time for 2 years now!!....About the fact of an increase in 'vulgarity'...I'll agree that the stuff shown these days is pretty in your face and mostly crass, but I recall a time (1993) when there was a huge controversy over the song Choli Ke Peeche Kya Hai from Khalnayak, with Madhuri in it. If I recall rightly, that song and its lyrics were considered vulgar at the time(not by me though)...my how our standards have changed...! The thing is, when Christina Aguilera rolls around in the mud with no clothes on, you don't mind, and she's anything but 'tasteful'. When Madonna semi-masturbates on stage we don't mind, and I could argue it doesn't look very tasteful when she does it either. So I'm asking a question - is it simply that we're used to seeing (i.e. de-sensitized) to white people being this way, and can't really handle Indians because we're not used to it? I will admit that some of the scenes are just bleah! But seriously, we do need to get some sex/sexuality into our movies...simply because when Saif Khan and Sonali Kulkarni finish their song "Yeh Ladki Hai Kahan" in Dil Chahta Hai, they should bloody well kiss at the end of the song instead of stand up in the movie theatre just looking into each other's eyes!#@#!! Looks like I've turned into Devil's Advocate here...anyway, speaking of interesting names, have you heard of "Taarzan: The Wonder Car"? Good Lord! Good Lord x1000!!!!!

Parth said...

Tarun may have a point here. Maybe we are desensitized to the same skin show on Western television. I disagree with his point about finding Christina Aguilera's antics tasteful. I don't, and therein lies the point. I guess in the 80's and early 90's when were growing, there was a clear distinction between us and them, the Indian culture and the Western one. The western culture was always considered distasteful, materialistic and crass, and we were in some way different from that. Whether that thinking was justified is a debatable issue. There are nuances that were glossed over while making that generalizaiton. Now, the distinction is blurring so fast that it is disorienting to someone like me who has been out of the country for over four years. Bringing sexuality out of the closet is different from depicting sex brazenly. I should be explaining this better, but its not coming out too well. Oh well, I can always reserve another post for the same :-)

RTD2 said...

Well..I think Indian films have usually had some raunchy songs and scenes for a while now, which I think is as distasteful as Christina rolling around in mud, if not more, what with fat ugly moustached heros and thunder thighed women (but that's just me and my internalized norms of beauty!)
That aside, I heard that the earliest Hindi movies made used to have kissing scenes and stuff. Suddenly for 30-40 years we became socially indignant and repressed, with a holier than-thou-attitude which dictated that it's ok for firangi moral-less people to do it, but oh my, we are too pure and cultured for such brazen displays! For the land of the Kama Sutra, where we worship naked goddesses but don't think of respecting, never mind worshipping mortal women, I think it's a prime example of Indian double standards. Sex happens, even in India!