BYLINES-BLAH, BLAH, BLAH
‘One city-countless emotions’ that’s how Life in a -Metro expresses its spirit.
‘Rivals in Love’ screams the recent release Raqeeb.
Movies and their titles and the accompanying bylines. They are a peek into the gist of any movie’s story.They are also called taglines depicting the spirit of the film. They could also tag along just for the heck of it. It is an interesting phenomenon of late with Hindi Masala movies and Bollywood fare in general. I mean it was there earlier also but in the overcrowded era of competing channels and diversity of entertainment avenues,just to stand out in the clutter and attract eyeballs bylines are becoming a kind of a staple. It seems movie’s title is a brandname and the byline is an explanation of the intangible value of the brand.
I don’t recall Sholay or Deewar or even Zanjeer having such bylines. Those were the staid and laid back days when name of the banner, directors’ name or sheer star-power was enough to make the movie shine and stand out.
To some extent it makes lots of sense and it may not have any upfront impact but on a subconscious level it may be leaving some impact. So far so good.
Things of late are becoming weird. Sample some of the bylines:
‘When good meets bad-it sparks magic’- Good Boy Bad Boy. Now what can you make out it. It’s neither here nor there. Neither good,nor bad-just plain spiel.
‘A sugar free romance’- Cheeni Kum. A dash of salt generally adds to the flavor of any romance that is normally construed as full of sweetness. So called spats provide some hot-chillie flavor. Still romance is deemed to be full of sweetness. Its base is sweet. Now taking all the sugar out of romance would knock the very bottom out. If it is not going to be sweet then too much salt would make it unpalatable. If salt is also not there then it will make it bland or if salt is retained and lots of chillies are added then it will be too hot to handle. Or it could have lots of sourness. Lime n lemony is ok but all lemon and oranges would deprive eve of an apple. So what can you make out of such a byline. Is it for patients with blood pressure or diabetes. Should censor come out with an other viewer’s category!
‘Stealing stones n breaking bones’- Fool N Final. This is what tags along under Sunny Deol’s photo in the press publicity of this film.Breaking bones is expected from Sunny but stealing stones means what? Is he too down and out that he has to stoop to stealing? And that too stones? Or the publicists were too stoned to come up with such a byline.
‘Based on True Rumours”-Shootout At Lokhandwala. This one defies any rational interpretation. Rumors are rumors How can they be false or true? Facts can be. I mean one always comes across a warning Beware of rumours. Beware of rumour-mongers. No one says beware of false rumour mongers but believe in the true rumour mongers!
And the caravan moves on..It is interesting to note these bylines and wonder what might have gone in the crazy producer’s conference rooms with all those gol-takias and cushions(sans any chairs and tables) to brainstorm. It’s not that things are all that bad. There have been some wonderful bylines for the movies. Few good ones recently have been:’When right keep right-when wrong set it right’-Rang De Basanti. And ‘The Greatest Battle lies within’-Spiderman 3
But one of my favorite is ‘Come fall in love’ from Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge! What are yours?
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
not a fan of gupta. but ‘based on true rumours’ is a clever (or trying to be clever) antithesis/ oxymoron
This post is hilarious.
Tagline
Stealing stones n breaking bones
krysh, it wasnt an advertising idea when it started. when people wanted to name their film n figured out that d title has already been taken, they started putting these one lines. so that legally there is no issue. title becomes new n still will have the word that one wanted. in the bold the title was written n in smaller letters the taglines. but now it has become more of a fashion…to define d film n its title with taglines.
my fav is and will always be Daag – The Fire…..what the fuck….Stain the aag….now how does that read….what has stain got to do with fire….
vasan…for me also!! was thinking the same. was wondering if barjatya’s decide to give taglines then…hum aapke hain kaun….pata karke batao ? or for bhansali…hum dil de chuke sanam…aur kya kya denge or black…the magic of miracle worker!!
i also think Kranti[bobby deol] was too good…..No FIR, No Charge, Direct Insaf/Justice or someting like that….
Mukta Should have named their new venure as Gud Boy Straight Boy….maybe their byline might have made sense…..
VB
) @ daag-the fire.. let’s not forget “baaz – a bird in danger”.. wtf??
Oh please stop making DDLJ a cult classic. It wants to make me puke. Mushy sentimentality makes this movie is full of shit. It is time we stopped turning this nonesense into a work of art. I beg of you please stop.
@krysh to my memory and so too to imdb’s :P, RDBs tagline was ‘A Generation Awakens’ and not ‘When right keep right-when wrong set it right’. and yeah DDLJ seems so bad/irritating now with the same/similar storyline/setting being overused today(or till now), but still it was a good movie at its time. its just become irritating when anyone speaks about DDLJ now…
vipin // if you were aged btwn 15 – 22 in 1995, it’s guaranteed that you were a DDLJ fan(atic). and also, it’s quite possible that you would have watched it more than once.
krysh // good write up. my fav is lagaan – once upon a time in india.
So does that mean one should keep praising this stupid movie all their lives? Don’t you guys think that it is time to stop putting all these stupid flicks on the pedestal and strongly oppose them? We are not in that age bracket any more. It is time to praise people who are condening this kind of cinema. It is a juvenile cinema.
I guess that is end of this discussion. Great.