Love Thy Neighbour...!!!!

The "Aman Ki Asha" initiative by Times of India and the Jang Group of Pakistan (one wonders whether the literal convenience of the use of the phrase "of India" in the former's name was the driver behind selection of TOI!!) is an interesting attempt at Track II diplomacy..........Evoked very interesting responses across all age groups and across all mediums.....For starters the soundtrack is amazing.....and the 2 min ad which runs on television is very touching and innovative.....feel good types.....But the problem possibly has never been with the common man of India and Pakistan.....Its the political setup of both the countries which essentially need to determine the way forward. All the niceties of the ad campaigns and other Track II initiatives end with the common man feeling good for a split second after the ad....the political top brass would obviously not and should obviously not be deviated from securing their political objective.....Of course the campaign managers of the AKA campaign would claim that the latest ad goof up of including the ex-Pakistan Air Force Chief in an Indian Ad Campaign for the Girl Child was completely a result of their ad campaign (http://bit.ly/5C9ICW)!!! In fact the PMO instead of apologising could have given this devious logic and gotten away with it maybe....Anyways, coming back to the point i was trying to make....The fact that this country which we are trying to love keeps sending messengers of love makes our task that much more difficult...I am sure we all agree that there is no need for us to love Pakistanis more than the Chinese or the Americans or the Portugese for that matter....As in, we as Indians or Pakistanis need not take a symbolic and potentially farcical stand of loving the neighbours concerned a bit more to enable resolution of the Kashmir issue......Let representatives we have chosen through the most expensive electoral process in the world decide what is right for the country and do the needful....If that involves bombing terrorist camps in Pakistan...so be it...or even if it means making bus journeys to Lahore and praising Jinnah so be it as well....And finally one wonders whether the people behind the AKA campaign would be cringing in their seats when they saw the IPL teams giving Pakistani players the royal ignore!!!! Maybe the franchise owners did it in Aman ki Asha !!

For the Record !!!

"'3 Idiots' grosses Rs 315 cr in 19 days" (http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/media/entertainment-/entertainment/3-Idiots-grosses-Rs-315-cr-in-19-days/articleshow/5437995.cms) spooked me. How could there be so many idiots across the world!!!! The movie freak in me who loves Akshay Kumar movies and who is an ardent admirer of the package that is Shahrukh Khan (people who know me well enough would obviously call it an understatement) just could not accept this piece of news at face value. Got me thinking it did. Does the collections of a movie truly reflect the success of the movie? Do the collections figures widely quoted across the various forms of media get entirely to the producers? Well....a bit of research and possibly this is how the various players in the movie industry rake in the moolah :

Producer - The producer charges a minimum guarantee fee before the movie in return for film rights in a territory within the country. Producers can recover up to 30 per cent of the cost of the film, pre-selling it to distributors. If the movie does well and the distributor recovers his money, any additional inflows get divided between the two. We are talking exclusively of ticket sales and do not include satellite rights, music rights and so on.

Distributor - They offer an MG fee to the producer to book a territory. And spend on print and publicity on which they take a 20 per cent commission. Any overflow of revenue after recovery of the MG fee and commission is divided between them and the producer.

Exhibitor - The old system in which distributors paid a rental to the theatre irrespective of whether the movie ran or not is rapidly becoming history. Under a new system revenue gets shared between theatre owners and distributors. Generally, in the first week of a release, the split is evenly 50:50, in the second week the producer gets 40 per cent and the exhibitors the rest, in the third week the producer makes 30 per cent and if the movie continues into the fourth week, he gets 25 per cent of the collections.

Coming back to original agenda of pushing 3 Idiots off the pedestal, lets get to the list of highest grossing bollywood movies ever.....and much to my dismay...i find 3 Idiots perched right at the top with gross collections of Rs. 157 crores followed by Ghajini with collections of Rs. 115 crores. The top 30 grossing movies features 7 SRK movies, 6 Aamir Khan movies and 4 Akshay Kumar movies. Amongst the producers, there is no doubt as to who leads the pack. Yash Raj Films with 5 out of the top 30...not bad eh!! No other producer has managed more than 2....

But guess what all the above figures were not adjusted for inflation....the highest grossing movie ever after adjusting for inflation ....hold your breath....is Sholay with an adjusted net gross collection of Rs. 162 crores....followed by Mughal-e-Azam and Mother India.....One very interesting statistic which strikes me is while the unadjusted highest grossers included 4 movies from the 1990's and 26 from the next decade which has apparently come to an end (am still confused about how a decade could be over in 2009!!)....Once you adjust collections for inflation, you have 4 movies from the 1990's and 7 movies from 2000 onwards which means 19 movies released before 1990's would have been topping the charts in terms of collections had they released today.....!!! Also vindicating my point...no Aamir Khan in the top 10 of this list...SRK with DDLJ and Salmaan Khan with Hum Aapke Hain Kaun are there though....

This just confirms what one suspected all the while. The resetting of records has to be taken with a pinch of salt....a lot of it has to do with the scale of production as well....the number of prints which are released is possibly a very important determinant. 3 Idiots released with a record 1892 prints across the world...To say that Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham released with a paltry 635 prints..

Possibly we need to change the way we judge the success our movies achieve....Having said all that, one must give credit to Aamir Khan who takes so much pain for each of his movie.....Come this February...i expect ET to carry this "My Name is Khan grosses all time highest collections"!!!!

Something about terrorism...

The news that the football team of Togo had been attacked while they were on their way to Angola for the Africans' Cup of Nations came across as something very weird. Perceptions are built with time. One of the perceptions which i had developed over a period of time was terrorism and terrorists could not afford to antagonise the common man. For e.g. a terrorism in Kashmir would probably come to an end if Lashkar - e - Toiba operators plotted an attack on Sachin Tendulkar. Lets face it - the common citizen is probably more attached to his/her sporting or movie icons than a fellow citizen who was killed by the last terrorist attack. Terrorists who dont give a damn as to whether they are killing the sporting icon of a country or a common citizen are most dangerous and unpredictable. Lets hope we never have such terrorists - for that matter lets hope we dont have any sort of terrorists.

For terrorism to thrive, it needs tacit support of atleast one section (howsoever small they may be) of the population who empathise with the cause. For e.g. forcing shopkeepers to shut down their shops purely on account of the fact that the leader of a political party feels prices are too high (no doubt as to whether these guys are terrorists or not!!!) cannot be sustained unless a portion of the population wants to take a day off and shit at home. Precisely what ails Bengal.

Another form of terrorising people potentially is writing one's blog and push it to your face by linking it to Facebook!!!! Anyways hoping for a terror free world....yours terrorisingly....AV

Artists i discovered/rediscovered in 2009

My childhood friend called on the night of 31st December 2009. While i was speaking to him over the phone, i realised we were the same guys who used to rush down to the local music shop to be the first to buy the cassette of the latest movie. From cassettes costing between 25 and 50 rupees, we have come a long way to storing music on our mobiles and ipods. What was striking as well was the fact that the ease of sharing music has facilitated the spread of music. While going through the 500 odd songs which i have on my mobile, i realise that most of it has come from going through somebody else's mobile/ipod and transferring it via bluetooth or data chord!!! Well....for starters...the list of songs/artists i am putting up are not in any particular order...:

Coldplay/Speed of Sound - The year began with rediscovering "speed of sound" - the song which i remember since probably for the past 6-7 years. Till the beginning of the year i adored the song for the lyrics and instruments used in the song apart from the song as a whole of course...Only after delving further into the songs of coldplay did i realise that this was typical coldplay....amazing lyrics...amazing use of instruments...piano, guitar, drums....To name a few of my coldplay favourites ....yellow, clocks, fix you, swallowed in the sea, talk.

Maroon 5 - When you start of listening to Maroon 5, the song "She will be loved", what strikes you is the unconventional voice of the lead singer. Lyrics need to make sense for a song to be good, whatever be the subject. These guys are pretty good at what they do. Have a couple of other songs as well which are very very ear friendly.

Pritam - Call him names for lifting the odd song from indonesia or honolulu for that matter, but you cant deny credit to this man for dishing out song after song after song through the year which sound music to the ears (pun intended!!). Be it the tracks of love aaj kal or ajab prem ki ghazab kahani or tum mile or new york....the sheer consistency in belting out chartbusters never ceases to amaze me....Although he does the rotten movies too, he does save the best for the best. He has probably taken HR's place as the music director for the masses (till HR returns of course!!).....

Strings - I have always been a Strings fan ever since i watched and heard "Duur" and "Anjane" on Channel V in 1999 or 2000. And have kept track of most of their songs thereafter. But this year got their songs on to my mobile..........Duur, Anjane, Na Jaane Kyun, Zinda, Aakhri Alvida to name a few. They are sensational to say the least and some of the lyrics which they have got on their song is one of the best ever probably.........especially zinda....cant have enough of them!!!

Udit Narayan - Pritam brought with him the trend of using unconventional singers....guys who used to sing only for their albums....mohit chauhan, neeraj sreedhar, atif aslam etc...and not demeaning all of them (they are great too)...the music directors somehow seem to have forgotten Udit Narayan. The fact that i missed his singing became clear when i heard "Sau Janam" from Whats Your Rashee. The freshness of the voice (along with the image of him singing with open arms and a wide smile) was divine. Pity we dont hear of him too much these days.

Rahul Sharma - I heard Rahul Sharma for the first time two, three or four years back while surfing channels. The memory of the santoor still remained somewhere in the corner of the mind. And when i sat down to download songs on a cold January (2009) morning, it came rushing back from the corners...My limited knowledge of music notwithstanding, I never imagined somebody could do so much with a santoor and possibly come up with a tune where santoor plays with drums in the background...Listen to the pieces of music in your earphones and they are gems.....

Phil Collins - For people who are struggling to recall who is phil collins i can make two attempts :

• The scene in hangover where mike tyson asks the protagonists to shut up since his favourite part of the song was about to play - "In the Air tonight" was the song and is something differently good,
• Another day in Paradise is a song which i think lots of us have come across somewhere.

Phil Collins has a very unconventional voice with a great feel...try him out...apart from the two mentioned above, try "One more night" and "Cant stop loving you".

Suresh Wadkar - The three or four lines which he sang in "Raat ke Dhai Baje" in Kaminey were as good as the two or three lines Alka Yagnik sang in "So gaya ye jahan" in Tezaab. He sounded refreshingly soothing to the ears (am using such adjectives for want of better adjectives).

And a special mention to the album that was Kaminey. "Raat ke Dhai Baje", "Kaminey" (title track), "Phatak", "Dhan te Nan", "Pehli Baar Mohabbat" were all masterpieces in themselves in all aspects..... the rendition by the singers, music, lyrics (by Gulzar).........

I am sure i am missing out on quite a few of my favourites, but i guess one never can cover all songs.....the quest for music continues