Dus Kahaniyaan – Jeffrey Archer on Viagra
Friday, 7 December 2007
I was planning on faking many an illness and also planning on the whole modalities of watching 2 flicks this week as there were 2 movies released this week. I wanted to see the bad and then the good, so opted to see Dus Kahaniyaan before I watched Koya Koya.. I think I did the right thing.
I was one of those people who were very optimistic about this film. I believe Short films are a great way to tell a story and really can make a man think well. We have had so many good ones from across the world of this concept and this one had a good caveat also. It was by different directors. I had started to drool when I first read it, but quickly got scared when I realized that the man of all style and no substance would be at its helm. Sanjay Gupta has gone and done essentially what I feared. Essentially Dus Kahaniyaan is about 8.5 stories which really could have been a whole lot different. I am not sure why they picked up those stories but they sure did pick up some Good Jeffrey Archer ones and the problem arose from there. A twist in the tale is something Archer has been doing quite well for a long time and there are many readers of his book across India. Sanjay Gupta & Gang seem to want to cater to an audience whom they consider intelligent but give out stories that their audience all would have read and enjoyed. So there is initially a missing gap. The next thing is the indianization of those stories. This is where the thing goes awry. We are a populated nation but do we really obsess so much about SEX all the time. I mean all the stories somehow center on lust, sex, everything below the navel and sadly the brain is forgotten. This applies to the one Woman Director also who could not sadly move above the ridiculous. This cliché beating is itself become a cliché. Amrita Singh and Minisha Lambaa were not even required. Any of those standard item girls who are constantly used in White Feather films could have been used as they really had nothing much to do. Why could she at least not think up of something more meaningful? Shucks…
I told 8.5 bad stories above only because I loved Gubbare & the last one (Rise & Fall). The names were somewhat nostalgic in Rise & Fall & old movie watchers will guess why the names. I hated “Rice Plate” for many many reasons. The first was the bad botch up of the old Jeffrey Archer story of the Benson & Hedges fiasco and the second was the sad but continual affair of Bollywood/Hindi Film Industry with the whole region south of the Vindhyas. I am from South India and have been a really big part of the Hindi Film viewing crowd. Its acceptable to see guys in 70’s, 80’s talk about all south Indians as “Kyo Ji..Hahn Ji” in that really bad accent we are all supposed to speak Hindi in but do actors like Shabana Azmi also have to do the same old thing. I saw Mr. & Mrs. Iyer. It was about the same thing. We South Indian are all supposed to be racist and what not but really we have not had any major riots or bad blood between our communities and I fell quite secular & proud south of the Vindhyas. This constant comment on the South certainly jars and a total Waste of Naseer in the small role he was given. People who will see this movie will understand why this piece is so irritating.
The other irritating part is the complete waste of some really good actors like Anupam who comes in as a token Dad for about 3 minutes, Jimmy as a druggie, Naseer et al. Then the other problem was the “What If” (I quote this because this is the name of my first short film) analysis of Ghosts and the Para normal. Dudes, we all belong to the country of “Ram Gopal Verma” and have seen more than enough and some really good analysis flicks of the What if syndrome. I mean “Sex on the Beach” by Apoorva Lakhia is so sick and really cheap that it makes you feel slightly nauseated. Dino hams and then the story are so boring and well you gotta see it to understand how stupid it is.
See it if you cannot get tickets for any other movie, see it if you want to see Nana after a long time, see it if you want to see Sanjay Dutt play a role of a don, see it for a lot of technical balderdash but please do not see it to see some stories as there are none and it could have just been named “Dus Bakwaas Rip-offs”.
Cheers & Good Night,
Deepak
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
i saw the movie today and actually i think its a sincere effort from all the people involved in making all the different stories…… nana patekar was top notch and i quite liked the story named ‘rice plate’which was directed by rohit roy a good first attempt and the story with sanjay dutt was good to ‘rise and fall’ from these short stories we can come to know that a good actor just needs 2 or 5 minutes to show their calibre and how good actors they are ’shabana azmi,nana patekar,amrita singh’ are just too good …..so i guess it should be watched once by the bollywood lovers :p
I think 7 out of the 10 stories were gud.
The 3 stories – lovedale(aftab), high on highway(jimmy) and sex on the beach(dino) were horrible
Sex on the beach is worst of the lot.
well even i felt that indian directors r often so obsessed with sex
however “strangers in the night was quite well delivered
i mean u think its all about lust & sex
but itz abt saving a child
quite an interesting one
I too liked the story “Rice Plate”. The South Indian granny could be my granny. And I am not south Indian. The story had a message (I know, Shabana’s accent was bit haywire.) Good job for Rohit Roy.
However I agree:
1. All stories were cliched and predictable. Even the rice plate.
2. Sex on the Beach was most pathetic story. In fact, all ghost stories (also LoveDale) were pathetic.
3. Gubbare was good. Good message.
The first story about cheating couple was also ok. Secret sharing movie by Neha Dhupia and Mahesh Majrekar was bit different. Not bad. Rise and Fall is cliched Sanjay Gupta movie. Stylish gangster story. But yes, when movie ended, I thought movie abhi baaki hai. I refused to get up.
there are two women directors and not “The One woman director “. Jasmeet Dhodhi who directed Lovedale is…you guessed it.. a woman :-)