Tashan – & What Now?
Folks,
Caught a screening of one of the bigger films of 2008, TASHAN, in LA (Fallbrook) this weekend.
They say a movie is all about stars (this one had 4)
& what now.
I laugh loudest when I hear/see arguments over camera angles/techniques/film vs digital/ other technical stuff (cause in the larger scheme it is so immaterial). But this one had all the right technical and flashy stuff. Super production values
& what now.
They say it is all about marketing. This film was on all the channels, had some prize rushes and trailers on music channels, yahoogroups, print media, online media, etc , etc. Noise was being made
& what now.
They say, give them gloss and music and you are done. This one had relative gloss
& what now.
Some yahoogroups and self styled gurus of marketing claim that it is all about controversy. This one started the controversial relationship between Saif and Kareena
& what now.
They say “they” have got their business sense just right. “They” are great marketers/strategists, etc, etc. TASHAN had all of that
& what now.
That’s right what other dumb/nitwit/bird brained theory will the so called “we know it all,” “we are smart,” “we have a business education,” “we are successful entrepreneurs,” come out with next?????
IN THE ABSENCE OF A GOOD SCRIPT, that is.
When a good script is missing and it has holes, then nothing…and I mean nothing…can redeem it, cause the most basic human instinct is one of brains and intelligence. You cannot assume your audience is dumb, cause they are not. They are in control here and whether you like it or not, film is all about a good product, the good service can fly out of the window and a good product is one that has a good script, it’s skeleton and TASHAN has a terrible script, as did a few of the other “star studded” films of recent times did…Laaga Chunari/Aaja Nach Le/ Ram Gopal Ke/Jhoom Barabar/Tara Rum/ Cash/Sunday/etc etc….pathetic scripts, correlating to a sorry film.
An example of how bad things get in dialogue and script is:
Akshay saying towards the end that “when the need arises even novices have to lift a gun.” Ok and what about the fact that the same “novice” has just shot to death approx 100 cops an hour earlier in the same film in front of the same audience!!!!
Or
The hero and heroine retiring to their “village” (agian an insult to one of the most industrialized town of India) Kanpur! Oh I forgot to mention that I don’t have an issue with their retiring, except that they (the couple) have in combination killed approx 200 cops in the same film…but it’s ok, they are basically decent!!!! But the bad guy…oh he killed a lot less….cops that is…but he is basically bad!!!
I mean come on. Don’t insult the audience.
And don’t blame the IPL, Multiplexes not showing it, rain, sunshine, etc, etc, for reasons, blame the lack of paper/pencil/laptop, cause none of that seem to be used in this film to create a very basic concept called the “SCRIPT.”
Sincerely,
Vivek “gizmos, marketing, style, TASHAN…all very good, but when there ain’t a product…there is nothing to sell and nobody to buy” Kumar
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
Wonder wat makes the ’stars’ work for these!
@vivek
good posting man.
but so call block buster OM SHANTI OM has proven that indian audience in general are super dumb (songs excluded).
You see, lot of movies are indeed profitable ventures so far, its becos of marketing genius saving all these ultra craps.
Today hindi movie is a product and beleive me people in the todays industry are good at selling it..
i guess its eating the creativity of a film-maker (except for the few) who are forced to go on for a safe bet, by incorporating slickness, item songs, masala, multistarers, trailers and even bloody blogs.
GOD SAVE US…BECOS SHOW WILL ALWAYS GO ON…
Great Post Vivek..Very Aptly said
yashraj da tashan.. the hattrick completes..
1. jhoom barabar jhoom
2. tara rum pum pum
3. tashan..
Wait there is more thoda .. thoda magic, rab ne bana di jodi…A splew of so called hits are just round the corner
Tashan was so bad, the mind wonders if there is any sort of review or validation process in the way of filmmaking at Yash Raj
Guys, its good that bad movies are bombing at the box office. I hope people reject the SRK, Farah Khan and Sajid Khan’s nonsensical movies. They have rejected trash coming from Ghai, Dharmesh Darshan and Kanwar…now its high time they should turn their back to these self-proclaimed entertainer directors.
let VC, RGV Rajkumar Santoshi regain their form and give us good cinema once again. Amen!
@Vivek: “When a good script is missing and it has holes, then nothing…and I mean nothing…can redeem it, cause the most basic human instinct is one of brains and intelligence. You cannot assume your audience is dumb, cause they are not.”–But, Vivek, in the past we HAVE seen awful films like Welcome and Race (and many many more films without a god script) resulting in a lot of ticket sales :(
Nice post though–it was fun to read! BWT, how are the films you were scripting for coming along?
Hahahaha…. Vivek I wonder if the joke’s on you….
Last year YRF came out with only one decent film – Chak De. The rest were all nothing more than glossily packaged rubbish – Ta ra, JBJ, Aaja N and Laaga. When you know for a fact that YRF churns out such rubbish, then why don’t you just boycott it all. Why the hell do you go and give a dekho to every movie that comes from them. Just banish it all and let them make that much less from every movie.
See, what I am trying to say is that YRF has perfected the art of attracting audiences by their slick packaging. They sincerly believe (and I am sure they actually do as well) that such packaging will attract enuf people to the theatres once, to more than cover their costs of production. As long as people like you get fooled into this mess, they’ll continue to make movies like these.
As for me, I am quite fond of YRF and Aditya Chopra. I think as a software production house they have mastered quite a few tricks of the trade. Ofcourse movie quality would suffer, but then its not just about making them but also selling them. Just waiting for them to go public (unless of course they are willing to make a private placement offer to me)
@Joyjeet – I think it is the banner (YRF) which makes these actors work. No different from anyother profession. Eg when I graduated working for Multi national banks was the big thing and everyone was clamoring there, without assessing whether it is good /bad /ugly. This included banks like the infamous BCCI.
@Srikant- my earlier comment to this same post (along with the post) got lost, otherwise I had answered on OSO. Actaully liked the first half and thought their digs on the film industry was quite cool. Second half was harrowing for me. As an auditor I would love to audit the “real” numbers of OSO to see whether it was really as big a hit as it is made out to be.
@Deepak – you said it- “validation” seems to be the crux of the problem. The bigger one is “ego in the Indian industry.” Whether it is arty filmmakers or commercial, all suffer from a “we cannot be wrong in scripting” phenomena. Much to the chagrin of the audience!!!
@Adhik- yep there is a new and intelligent audience in India now (and that has nothing to do with education I think, it is more to do with exposure and self awareness) and actually feel good about the new audience.
@Amanda – agree with you. Have not seen Race, but did see Welcome and thought it was awful. Not sure, although to be fair to them at least they were consistent in characterization and story. Tashan almost seemed like it was written by 5 different writers in 5 different times. My scripting is complete and now the director is putting his version in (of course as a team) and we will be shooting in Oct/Nov in Mumbai and LA.Then I will let you decide on how the scripting was. But no stars for me that’s for sure (have fought that battle too long to give in now or in the near future).
@Sucker- if the joke is on me I can laugh at myself, although know Amanda through email so not sure if it was a joke or a question on the status of my film. On rejecting camps, I would never do that, I can like or dislike people, but that has no effect on my choice of films as a viewer. I am a sucker for thrillers and the promos of TASHAN suggested that it was a thriller, hence I went to see it. Personally I love Adi and Yash films, and am the lowest commom denominator. I might not like Sanjay Gupta or an Amir Khan, but if they make a good /entertaining film, I will see it. I knew Zinda is a copy and I loved it, ditto for Musafir, likewise for Rang De. Sometimes the trailer and the story itself are enough to keep me away from a film. Eg I am not into historicals and experimental stuff. Hence I kept away from Jodha/Mangal Pandey/Umrao Jaan (new)/Devdas and No Smoking. By the same token I loved and went first day first show for all of Karan stuff, Partner (loved it more than Hutch) and Black Friday. So I have no filmmaker or banner loyalty (it could be my mom for all I care), as long as the product excites me. Now BRAHM excites me, cuase I enjoyed SHHH and am looking forward to seeing that, irrespective of the outcome. So absolutely am not going to reject any banner/YRF, cause if they are what I am looking for in an entertainment I will go, first day, first show. Then like any “shopping” experience I can be happy or dejected by it. With TASHAN it was the latter, with CHAK DE it was the former.
@Vivek & Sucker: “…not sure if it was a joke or a question on the status of my film.” Nahhi yaar, it wasn’t a joke–I was just curious about how the film is going. Glad to hear you will be filming within a few months. Anyway, keep me posted about how things go.
No worries but when the film does come out, welcome to joke about it or the way i am going about it. As mentioned I can laugh at myself and don’t take myself too seriously, although do take the project seriously. I get trashed on parts of my script and praised for the other by my director all the time (ditto when I wrote the play for Sharmishta) so enjoy both taking and giving it back (keeps for an invigorative dialogue).
@ Vivek: lol! Well, I hope the film doesn’t turn out being a product we all will end up joking about and bashing…but, if it does turn out that way, I’ll be sure to have fun with the Movie Review I write for PB :-)
We may say that there is a new audience but can you explain how come films like Hey Baby,Welcome become superhits while films like Mithya,U Me aur Hum(I agree not a brilliant film but hundred times better than Welcome) do AVERAGE business.The day when films like these become SUPERHITS we can say the audience mindset has truly changed.
@ Anindya – Refer my earlier write up on Ro1, I believe, at least for Mithya, it was a superhit, given the amount of investment and the recovery made. Also per the number of screens played. Hey Baby, would love to audit it’s NET WORTH, not GROSS WORTH, to declare it an accounting Superhit.U Me Hum, don’t know, probably never will since don’t care about Ajay and Kajol as actors. But again will want to see it’s ROI as opposed to it’s AVERAGE gross. Also for MITHYA, the audience was there in the US, the theaters chickened out and hence it had to go straight to dvd. Almost like Google is a great stock, but if no stock exchange sells it, where do I buy it from.
U me aur hum made around 50 crores according to newspaper advertisements…
Looks like the director of tashan lost the first draft of the movie and was too lazy to write again. So he decided let’s shoot the movie and we’ll take care of the story on the sets.
Ditto with Jhoom Barabar Jhoom. After that movie, i don’t see a big banner film without listening to a few reviews. Not like I trust them…but if everone hates a film. It has to be bad. No Smoking was an exception though.
I always thought Rangeela was the better movie than Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge of that year —1995-96.
Both were love stories, former more real and authentically picturized while the later was more patronizing and over the top.
I’m not even sure of the need for a “compete” between DDLJ and Rangeela, it’s not a sport really. Both were brilliant films by inherently brilliant filmmakers. A year can have more than one great film.
What brought on the DDLJ vs Rangeela comparison? If we want realism then Main madhuri Dixit Banna Chahti Hoon was the real one. As a love story DDLJ topped Rangeela. But Rangeela is notable for Aamir and Urmila’s acting and Rahman’s music.
“Tashan” is much better movie then “Dhoom2″, “Dhoom”, “Jhoom Barabar Jhoom”, “Bunty aur Babli” and many more junk thrown at us by YRF.
Pretty amazing how your principles of liking/not liking a movie are so close to mine. I liked the first half of OSO as well, I got more laughs from Partner than Hitch, I loved Black Friday and No Smoking, and I thought Zinda was a very decent remake.
All except No Smoking. Per the promos it did not seem to be my kind of film. Will rent the dvd one of these days and assess whether or not I like it.
Pata nahi yaar aap logaan kya kya kehte rehte ho.
mujhe to kaafi maja aaya Tashan dekh kar.
highlights
1. Akshay kumar. – really sweet.
2. Anil Kapoor.- i for one enjoyed his dialogues. Pehle ajjeb laga. phir hasi bhi aayi yaar.
3. Kareena – was a bomb although I prefer her a lil plumper ..like she was before.
4. Saif – was like himself. pretty decent.
Id like to see a lot more ANil Kapoor. He is so underrated and hasnt done too much work in the recent past. Eashwar and Virasat were fantastic.
He is the right successor for Amitabh.
I loved the movie. Its much better than Race and a lot more other shit.
Akshay’s dialogues rock.
BTW i loved Bunty and Babli too .
dint like Jhoom barabar though.
Are public naach gaan pasand karti hai.
Ppl cannot see black friday and Mr and Mrs Iyer all year long.
Hey Om Shanti Om clicked coz of naach gaana and some humour and love for SRK. Deepika dint hurt my eyes either. Abi kabhi kabhi yahi chahiye hume. Ka karoge.
Hazaron Khwayishen, mithya bhi achi lagi.
Its possible to like tiramisu and jello yaar.
Give YRF some time guys. They will see the writing on the wall and change dheeere dheere.
That’s what makes viewing films so exciting, Darkndusky. Everyone has distinct tastes and like and dislikes. So if you like Tashan, more power to you. and I am all for naach gaana, but like some more than the others. Of course YRF will be back, they have too much cinematic experience not to pull back to their equilibrium.
Seems like even the folks IN TASHAN, don’t like TASHAN.
Rajeev Bhatia (Akshay) is one:
Refer: http://www.mid-day.com/web/guest/entertainment/bollywood/article?_EXT_5_articleId=1115394&_EXT_5_groupId=14
Anil Kapoor’s dialogues, Kareena’s new body and hence more athletic moves, Aki’s clothes and the blond wigs song are the few redeeming factors of Tashan. Just saw it yesterday… I know, I know, should have stayed away but wanted to see for myself. Yeah, it’s as bad as everyone said and wrote. And the last 20 minutes of the film were totally useless. I kept thinking of all the stunt people and how endangering them for such a stupid sequence was totally self-indulgent…
Per the Indian Box Office reports, the estimated collection of Tashan/BRAHAM/KRAZy4/UME HUM, are absolutely the same, i.e. 176 lacs .
I herewith rest my case of going for smaller actors (BRHAM + KRAZY 4) as opposed to the bigger one’s (Akshay, Anil, Ajay, Saif, Kajol, Kareena) combined could not match up to Dino/Rajpal/Irfan……GO SMALL ACTORS !!!!