Gopi Gopika Godavari

"Nuvvakkadunte nenikkadunte praanam vila vila.. Nuvvekkadunte nenakkadunte mounam gala gala.." This is the song that has been playing on my car stereo for a long time. It was only for this music that i went to watch the movie in spite of the reviews thrashing it.Gopi(Venu) is a singer heading an orchestra in Hyd and Gopika(Kamalini) runs a mobile hospital that serves to the villagers on the banks of Godavari river. When Gopi finds a cell phone that is misplaced by Gopika's friend, their acquaintance beings as Gopi picks up Gopika's call. Gopika asks Gopi to return the cellphone to her friend but he finds her dead (no.. that's not the movie about). Anyway, they get to know each other over their conversations and when they were to meet each other, he is hit by a group of thugs and he loses his memory. All the while, Gopika's mother wants Gopika to marry a fellow doctor. The rest of the story is about how they unite.

I entered the theater expecting a nice comedy and a good romantic story with Godavari background. Well, that's the movie about except that none of it worked. Establishing romance between the lead pair over the death of a friend is little weird and even shot in an unconvincing way. The new actors chosen for comedians are pathetic and so is the script. It left me wondering if am watching a stale stage drama that tries to entertain with all the comic forwards that we see everyday in our mail boxes. Adding to that the camera work is hard to digest at places. Too close shots or the shots from the taken from the top doesn't work well.

It does not bring in the expected reactions. The comedy scenes with weird mannerisms don't evoke any kind of laughter while i see the people laughing out to the tragic scenes in the end. More than the actors, the movie seem to have failed because of the director whose ways does not seem to fit well for the movie. Unlike Sekhar Kammula's Godavari movie, this doesn't even capture the beauty of the river.

As the story moves on a dull note, even the songs fail to enthrall. The background music is appealing at places.

My Rating - 5/10

Blues Again

To an old friend..

Blue Hills

Ok. It's a lake. May be a river. It's the birthday of my brother and i had to do a painting for him. Not very typical of me. There were many years that passed without me even taking a notice of the day. Anyway, this time i had the urge to do something and sometimes when you really want to do something, it gets really tough to do it. Same is the case today. The mind was blank and i couldn't find any reference. When i almost gave up, i found a snap from our Sankranthi trip that i could roughly use as a reference. So here it is..


Kishore, i wish you many happy returns of the day. Have a good time..

Trip To Tirumala

4th July - With little sleep on Friday night after the movie Oy!, we (Subba, Venky and me) woke up to Saturday morning at 7 A.M. By 8:30 we were on the roads headed towards Tirupathi. Just outside the city we stopped over for breakfast at Kamat. The article on Michael Jackson left me wondering on the amount of material published on him in the last few days. It also left me an urge to buy his hits though that never happened in the trip. The sun was little easy on us for the whole journey. That ensured a comfortable ride expect for a minor detour into the villages as the traffic got struck on the main road with protests over hike of fuel prices. The detour was however a nice experience driving among the greenery and the narrow banks of the river with a minor stop at a farm. By 2 P.M, we were in tirupathi to join our friends from my native place Saagar, Seshu and Indra.

Like most others this was very much an unplanned trip. However, one good thing we did was to get the contacts to procure tickets for early morning darshan. I mean good if we ignore the fact that we paid the double the cost for them. After lunch in Woodlands and a little rest, we went up to Tirumala to collect our tickets and to check the availability of cottages. The drive through the ghat roads in the teasing rain was a nice one with the distant mountains playing hide and seek in the mist formed by the rain. As we were inquiring for the tickets standing under a tree, a mango fell of the tree right beside us. Got to mention that it was tasty one. We got the darshan tickets but not the accommodation on the top. The recommendation from M.P didn't help a bit. When we saw people waiting for long hours with similar letters in hand, we just drove down the hill and were back to our hotel.

The darshan was scheduled for 5:30 A.M. Irrespective of certain guys waking up at 3 A.M, it was past 5:30 by the time we checked out and started up. On the way we made a little stop at the petrol pump. The usual lethargy in the early morning to get out of the car and check the meter cost us 200 bucks. I hate this robbing at the petrol pumps. I hate these souls and i wonder if they do it at the instructions of the owners. Anyway, leaving that behind, we were on the top by 6:30. Quite opposite to my predictions, the queue was still open for us. Four of us finished our darshan in an hour but with our little mistake the other two who were to join us at main entrance weren't allowed in. We had to wait for another 3 hours for them to get in as everything came to a halt to make way for Anil Ambani's visit. Meanwhile Subba went missing. After looking for him at the exit for almost an hour we walked back to the car to find him sitting there with the newspaper and the laddoos beside him. Once Saagar and Seshu were into the temple, they were out with in half an hour and we started down the hill.

After dropping Saagar and Indra at tirupathi bus stop we were on our way back as the songs from Kick, Gunde Jhallumandhi, Gopi Gopika Godavari, Pournami, Chirutha and Bujjigadu played on the stereo. With one stop after Chittoor for mangoes and another one for lunch under the mango trees, we were to back to Bangalore by 7 P.M as the trip meter touched 620 km.

Oy!

Yeh.. That's what she likes to call him.. Adhi vinagaane mana hero gaariki zack zack mani guitar tho rock song play chesi natlu vuntundhi.. That's how he puts it..


An extremely rich guy who lives life to the fullest falling for a relatively poor girl struggling to pay off her home(splendid one by the sea) loan installments. It's a formula that can rarely fail. Let's see. Sandhya(Shamili) lives life on certain principles and has a list of attributes that she looks for in her partner. Needless to say, our hero Uday(Siddharth) is made of everything opposite and the whole first half is centered around him trying to charm her as he shrouds himself in the attire she is looking for. Siddharth is his usual self in the movie and from the moment he utters his first dialogue, you know what to expect from him. His acting has become very much predictable but that doesn't mean it does not appeal. It's just that you expect more because he is capable. The movie starts on a dull note and takes off with the above 'zack zack' dialogue before the second song. Sunil's introduction after the second song starts spilling laughs in an otherwise serial like flow. From there on, the movie entertains till the end of first half where our hero confesses his love and also comes to know of her terminal condition with cancer.

Concealing the truth from her, he takes her on a week long trip to Kaasi fulfilling her other wishes along the way. Unfortunately, the movie also starts heading in the same direction as the comedy fails to spill the laughs, as the scenes lack the energy and connection seems missing between the lead pair. Casting of Shamili for the character seem to be a wrong choice. She looks heavier for Siddharth and totally fails to bring in the energy to the character. I wouldn't be surprised if this becomes the last movie for her. The second half of the movie runs flat except for few scenes that evoke laughter. There is a lost connection with the story as they progress through the trip.

Songs in the movie are appealing except for the first one in the second half. Costumes chosen for Shamili could have been better.

My Rating - 6.5-7/10

Hangover

There were plans. Plans to read 'The Kite Runner' over the last weekend and that still remains a plan for the coming weekend. For the old times sake, i wanted to finish it up in a single stretch. I have vivid memory of the days in college when i used to rent a novel in the evening and finish it up by early morning with very few exceptions like 'The Fountainhead' and 'The Godfather'. There were little interruptions then. Last Friday, the vodka and the chicken took over even before i started on the book.

Hangover on Sunday morning. Subba and me. INOX, Garuda mall. Wow.. That was one hell of a movie.. A fun ride all the way. Like Suman, it's been long time since I have laughed so hard in a theater. The last one was 'Bheja fry'. But unlike Bheja Fry, this movie gets offensive in parts. It's the story of three guys waking up to a huge hangover after a bachelor's party in Las Vegas with no memory of the night that passed. Adding to that, there's the groom missing, an abandoned kid in the totally messed up hotel room and a tiger in the bathroom.

The guy besides me was jumping all over his chair. Walking out of the theater i could hear a girl saying "When am gonna turn eighteen after five years, am gonna party like this". That's the feeling one would walk out with.

My Rating - 9/10

So Fine

If there are times when nothing seems right, when every action becomes mechanical for the sole purpose of survival, when nothing even remotely seem to amuse, those are the times that just went by. Waking up on a morning with no feeling for the day ahead is not a good thing to happen. And that went on for days. The days that kept me aloof. With little interest to talk and even little to listen, the days dragged on. However just as anything else, it just passed on.. There finally is light.. And i can see the work that got piled up for the weekend :)

Even in the middle of all these, i couldn't stop laughing my guts out when my colleague approached me with the news of his appointment with the doctor for his stomach pain. While taking the appointment online, he wanted to use a better word for lower stomach and he settled for "lower domain". Get thinking on the treatment he's gonna get..

Sometimes, there's a fight for the title. Starting at "Fine Otherwise", i moved on to this one. "So Fine" is a fabulous song from Guns and Roses.

Confused

It was 1 A.M an hour back and my body wasn't ready to rest. I generally would be in a state of euphoria after i paint. And so, i thought of posting something before i sleep. The next half an hour was spent in thinking of the topics for the post and none of them materialized. By that time, my body was totally ready to rest but my mind wouldn't let it do that without posting something. So, just for the sake of post, i thought i would list out the topics that occurred to me in that half an hour.

1. Do another painting. The mind that wandered for the subject returned with a null. Should i put up a painting that i did a few years back? Nooooo.
2. Keep the ipod in random mode and list out the first 10 songs that's on the list. Should i or should i not? May be some other time..
3. Write on my journey of music. Hmm.. That would take a while..
4. Take snaps of the little things from my room with whom i share some history. What? Is that an idea? Do i really want to put them on display? May be it wouldn't be bad to look back after few years.. But no.. Not now again..
5. Write about why the old B&W songs would never lose their charm. Aren't they more expressive with few cuts and lengthy shots? Probably.. But..
6. Should i take up a random image and try to cook up a story around it.. May be, think like an alien.. I thought.. Really weird.. Humans can't comprehend..
7. Should i write something on my forgetfulness.. Well.. I can't remember all the things that i generally forget..
8. Write something on my messing up the office times while being awake at the late hours.. No.. It's too late for any writing..

It's 2 A.M now and i can happily rest with this one being posted...