Archive for May, 2010
Kites Swipes Song from Lord of the Rings
I liked Kites a lot. But, a day later, I’m still so disappointed in one aspect of the film, it merits its own post.
A haunting, ethereal musical theme pervades much of the movie. The song is beautiful, and it augments the movie’s most emotional sequences. You can listen to a snippet of it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekk0G8oa7N4#t=02m13s
There’s only one problem. Kites composer Rajesh Roshan didn’t write it.
I don’t mean Roshan may have accidentally used a melody that he’d heard somewhere before. I mean he took an entire song, pretty much note for note, from another movie’s soundtrack.
As I wrote in my review of the film, “[t]he song is identical in melody, key, and instrumentation to ‘Aniron (Theme for Aragorn and Arwen),’ written by Enya for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.” However, Enya is not properly attributed as the composer anywhere in the film’s credits (source: IMDb).
Here’s a clip of the original song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CT3zbqpUb5s#t=1m29s
Maybe there’s not a lot of overlap between fans of Hindi films and fantasy geeks like me, and Roshan figured he wouldn’t get caught. Fellowship didn’t even make a million dollars during its run in India (source: Box Office Mojo). Or perhaps Roshan was just being brazen, and he didn’t care if anyone found out.
In either case, he can’t claim sole credit for Kites‘ music.
Update: I’ve heard that it may not be Roshan who’s responsible for appropriating Enya’s song. It may be Salim-Sulaiman, a pair of brothers who composed some of the background music for Kites.
Movie Review: Kites (2010)
3 Stars (out of 4)
The opening monologue of Kites explains that, while a kite looks free as it soars in the sky, there’s always someone back on earth holding the string. So it is with the two star-crossed lovers in this Hindi-English-Spanish action-romance.
Hrithik Roshan plays J, a part-time dance instructor living in Las Vegas. When he’s low on cash, he charges $1000 to serve as a temporary husband for women seeking American green cards.
J catches his big break when one of his dance students, Gina (Kangana Ranaut), falls in love with him. She’s desperate and socially awkward, but she’s also the daughter of a wealthy casino owner. J decides to date Gina for her money, and he’s welcomed into the family in time for Gina’s brother’s wedding.
The brother, Tony (Nicholas Brown), is a thug who likes to smack around his Mexican fiancée, Natasha (Barbara Mori). J recognizes Natasha as a former green card-seeking client. He married her when she was using her real name, Linda. She doesn’t speak English, but J determines that Natasha/Linda is also trying to marry into the family for money. The two exchange longing looks behind the backs of their respective partners.
The night before Natasha’s wedding to Tony, the abuse becomes too much for J to take. He and Natasha knock Tony out and flee to Mexico. As soon as Tony wakes up, he pursues them.
The story is told in a series of flashbacks, beginning with J tumbling, bleeding and unconscious, from a freight car. Critical plot points — such as how J wound up in the freight car — are shown through multiple flashbacks from different perspectives, with more information revealed each time. It’s done with great attention to continuity and makes for an interesting storytelling style.
Roshan and Mori are a perfect romantic duo. They make their gold-digging characters charming and relatable. They’re not motivated by greed, but by a desire to escape poverty. Their love story is moving, culminating in a beautiful scene to end the movie.
The car chase sequences are exciting and well-executed. Producer Rakesh Roshan (Hrithik’s father) clearly spent the money to make the action sequences look top-notch.
I have two main problems with Kites. Nicholas Brown, who plays Tony, seems to have been hired primarily for his ability to speak Spanish. His clunky, amateurish acting doesn’t measure up to the performances by Roshan and Mori.
In his defense, he isn’t given much to work with. Most of Tony’s dialogue consists of restating the same thing in different ways: “Where is he? You said he would be here, and he’s not here. The room is empty. Where is he?” It would be hard for any actor to sell such filler material.
What bothered me most about Kites is a problem of apparent intellectual property theft. The score, attributed to composer Rajesh Roshan (Rakesh’s brother and Hrithik’s uncle), is dominated by J & Natasha’s love theme — a song not included on the official soundtrack. The song is identical in melody, key, and instrumentation to “Aniron (Theme for Aragorn and Arwen),” written by Enya for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. The only difference is that the Kites song isn’t sung in Elvish. Click the links below to compare for yourself:
Kites Love Theme, (allegedly) by Rajesh Roshan
Aniron, by Enya
A shortened English- and Spanish-only version of the movie, called Kites: The Remix, opens in theaters next weekend.
Movie Review: Road, Movie (2010)
Road, Movie is like a happy dream. You wake up, momentarily unsure if what you experienced was real, but left with a feeling of contentedness.
Vishnu (Abhay Deol) is desperate to avoid following his father into the hair tonic sales business (“A drop of Atma Hair Potion, your hair springs into motion. Everything else is an illusion.”). He convinces a family friend to let him drive a 1942 Chevy truck cross-country, where the truck will be sold for scrap.
Vishnu is scarcely more qualified to drive an ancient truck across an Indian desert than I am. He doesn’t know how to operate the truck and expects to be able to phone for help when it inevitably breaks down. But in the desert, there’s no cell phone reception and no one to ask for help.
His savior is a kid of about ten, known only as The Boy (Mohammed Faisal), whom he liberates from a job at a roadside tea stand. The kid is a smartass; when Vishnu frowns at the quality of the tea he’s served, The Boy asks if he’d mistaken the stall for a Starbucks.
But The Boy is also hard-working and resourceful. After the truck breaks, he leaves, returning the next morning with Om (Satish Kaushik), a hobo who fixes the truck. In exchange, Om asks for a ride to the fair, though he only has a vague idea of where the fair is.
Om is as enigmatic as his namesake. He’s got a knack for solving problems, both mechanical and interpersonal. His bizarre directions must be followed on faith.
This rankles Vishnu, who has no respect for Om. In fact, Vishnu doesn’t respect anyone he meets on the road. He disdains the lifestyle of the desert dwellers, as though they choose to live in poverty and constant thirst.
Vishnu’s opinion begins to change after a cop pulls him over for having an improper license. The tiny police station is the only building for miles, and the cop is clearly starved for entertainment. Om, noticing that the truck once doubled as a mobile movie theater, suggests that they show a movie that night in exchange for their freedom.
They position the truck to project an image onto a wall of the police station. No one bothers to move the bicycle propped against the wall. Word spreads, and soon there are dozens of people watching a grainy film from the ’70s with rapt attention. Om explains to Vishnu that this is often the only form of entertainment in this rural area, and a rare one at that.
Vishnu opens up even more when the group happens upon The Woman (Tannishtha Chatterjee), a young widow wandering the wasteland. He offers her a ride, though it’s hard to believe his motives are purely altruistic, given how pretty she is. The growing group continues on in search of Om’s fair.
The rest of the movie is equal parts fantasy and road trip. The characters acknowledge that some of the events seem magical to the point of impossibility. But everything serves to open Vishnu’s eyes to life outside of the city: harsh but not without its charms. It gives him plenty to think about, as a young man trying to find his place in the world.
The fantastical elements of the movie aren’t limited to plot points. The scenes of the nomads watching the old movies projected from the truck are enchanting. The nomads’ sense of wonder and joy is infectious, reminding the audience how great the escapism that films provide can really feel.
As unpleasant as Vishnu’s adventure is at times, Road, Movie inspires that same sense of wanderlust that all great road movies do. As the truck rolled across the Indian desert, I started thinking about the trip to the American Southwest I’ve been meaning to take for years. Eventually, I began to wonder if, perhaps, Mobile-Movie Theater Operator in Rural India was a job I should consider. Impractical, yes, but a happy dream nonetheless.
Runtime: 1 hour 35 minutes.
Retro Review: Yuva (2004)
4 Stars (out of 4)
My recent (and long overdue) viewing of Dil Se sparked my interest in other films by Mani Ratnam. I thought 2007′s Guru was okay, and I was interested in watching some of the director’s previous films. I was pleased to discover a copy of Yuva at my local library and even more pleased by the movie itself.
Yuva (“Youth”) begins with a drive-by shooting on a bridge. Arjun (Vivek Oberoi) sees Lallan (Abhishek Bachchan) shoot Michael (Ajay Devgan), the stranger who’d just given him a ride on the back of his motorbike. The context for the shooting is provided in three flashbacks, one for each of the young men.
Lallan is a career criminal who does the dirty work for his older brother, Gopal (Sonu Sood), an aide to the corrupt politician Prosonjit Bhattacharya (Om Puri). Violence permeates his life. When Lallan isn’t beating up student protesters, he smacks around his wife, Sashi (Rani Mukerji), who clings to the hope that he’ll find a respectable job. That becomes unlikely when he’s contracted to kill Michael.
Michael is a student leader who inspires disenfranchised village voters to stand up against politicians like Bhattacharya. When need be, he’s not afraid to resort to violence, just like the politicians he opposes. The contract for Michael’s death is issued after he and dozens of students invade Gopal’s home as a means of intimidation.
Arjun is a recent college graduate who dreams of moving to the United States. He considers changing his plans after meeting Mira (Kareena Kapoor), who’s engaged to someone else. He stops Michael on the street and begs him to chase after Mira’s taxi, which they catch up to on the bridge.
The trend in American movies and TV shows with a similar construction is for the opening scene to double as a climactic scene, but Yuva’s opening scene returns to end the first half of the movie. The second half sees the three men decide whether to continue on their present paths, or make a change for the future. Their lives intersect again in the climax.
While the plot is generally about politics, Yuva‘s main theme is violence. It’s a gory film, compared to other Hindi movies. Even though most of the violence involves fists, it graphically shows just how much damage a punch can do.
The three main characters relate to violence in different ways. It defines Lallan, who learned to fend for himself after being abandoned by Gopal at a young age. He can’t get away from it, even for the sake of his pregnant wife.
Arjun fights as a matter of self-preservation. As the witness to a violent crime, his life is in danger unless he’s prepared to defend himself.
Michael’s relationship with violence is the most complex. As a student leader, he opposes the brutal tactics of intimidation employed by some established politicians, yet he’s happy to pick a fight with their goons to achieve his own ends. He’s more of a populist than Bhattacharya, but one wonders if he’s really interested in changing the political culture.
Yuva is engrossing and fascinating, as it seems to present a practice of politics so different from that in America. But with a man bringing a gun to a presidential rally last summer and an armed march in April to demand Second Amendment rights, it might not be as different as we think.
Movie Review: Badmaash Company (2010)
2.5 Stars (out of 4)
Why is it that movies espousing the belief that “crime doesn’t pay” spend so much time glamorizing the ways in which crime pays?
Badmaash Company‘s (“Rogue Company”) protagonist is Karan (Shahid Kapoor), a recent college graduate from a middle class family. His father (Anupam Kher), who’s worked for the same company for 25 years, expects him to earn an MBA and follow a similar path. But Karan dreams of making it rich as his own boss.
Karan and his buddies, Zing (Meiyang Chang) and Chandu (Vir Das), try to make fast money carrying goods from Bangkok to India on behalf of a smuggler who uses them to avoid paying the import tariff. An assertive girl named Bulbul (Anushka Sharma) joins them on the trip, quickly becoming friends with the trio and falling for Karan.
The quartet devises a way to import goods and skirt the tariff. They make a lot of money, until the Indian government drops the tariff from 120% to 20%, destroying their profit margin.
Karan’s father realizes that his son’s sudden wealth isn’t from a legitimate job and kicks him out of the house. Karan, Bulbul, Zing and Chandu then fly to America to recreate their scheme. Karan’s uncle, Jazz (Pavan Malhotra), provides the financing, though he doesn’t know the illicit nature of their business. The scheme works until alcohol, ego, and suspicion from the authorities destroy the crew’s business and their friendship.
Of course, when things are going well, they go really well. There are dance numbers in bars and shots of the characters shopping at Prada and stepping out of limousines. People sell their souls for less. If the movie wants to show how dangerous greed is, why make it look so cool?
One reason is that it’s easier to show montages of characters doing neat stuff than it is to script meaningful dialogue. It’s a shame, since the scenes of character interaction are good. Early in the film, Karan and Bulbul talk about their plans for the future over coffee, the first date in their budding romance. Kapoor and Sharma have an easy rapport that is enjoyable to watch.
Sharma’s confident Bulbul is crucial to the film’s success. She acts as the face of the business, flattering the buyers without being overtly sexy. She’s the kind of woman men want to make happy, even if they don’t expect anything in return.
Badmaash Company‘s problem, odd as it may seem, is a lack of exposition. There’s no explanation for a rift between Jazz and Karan’s father. And the inevitable reunion between father and son is limited to a shared look with no conversation. It didn’t have the same emotional impact as a Karan admitting his failings and asking forgiveness would have.
That said, the story is reasonably well told and the acting quite good. There are worse ways to spend 2 hours and 24 minutes.
Links
- Buy Badmaash Company on DVD
at Amazon
- Badmaash Company at Wikipedia
- Badmaash Company at IMDb
