taare zameen par

its so sad that this blog was so abandoned............at least till this moment.

aamir khan turns director with taare zameen par - and I do my first day second show routine. very touchy, classy, honest and all that. awesome music - I hope it becomes a greater hit than the movie itself - SEL are just awesome at rolling out melodies after one another - no unusual notes; plain melodies full of warmth and expression. the movie could drag less and be less simplistic/preachy in some parts. the award goes to them for drawing the audience back into the movie everytime the audience got distracted. lots of deja vu, lost love - difficult to hold back tears at some moments.

kya tujhko pata hai na maa .
couldn't be a better song of its kind.

i should post more. enjoying the job and the place. khoya khoya chand was an interesting movie with a haunting title song. haven't seen manorama (6 feet under) yet. oh yes, om shanti om had a lovely track. already managed to perform aankhon mein teri :)

vinay pathak

He did sparkling performances in both khosla ka ghosla and bheja fry. bheja fry was basically his show. and I just saw this trailor of johnny gaddar with him in a completely new avatar. so, had to do some (re)search on him (perhaps again). Looking fwd to both manorama and khoya khoya chand.

No doubt that it is his sparse exposure that is working for him. but then again, if every new role appears like a new avatar, I'd say a star is born. I seriously hope he gets more roles like bheja fry.

Also, I continue to wonder how these acting geniuses are made. The list (male): Naseeruddin Shah, Farooq Sheikh, Om Puri, Anupam Kher, Irrfan, Kay Kay, Vinay Pathak..

ARR again

I attended ARR's concert in fairfax, VA. Needless to say, absolutely fantastic. A lot went into the screen(stage)-play of it, much more than I had expected. Completely non-stop show - less than a minute gap between two pieces and that too continuously for 3 hours. some cribbed about show starting half n hour late. Hariharan never fails to create the magic. and life is a waste if you haven't seen sukhwinder perform chaiyaa chaiyya (the elongated version with thaiyya thaiyya, etc) on stage. he has a voice to die for.

caught some sync mistakes - i kept wondering for how much of it were we taken a ride for. (arr stops playing piano to mute his cell phone while the piano sound keeps playing). khair, sukhwinder singh and hariharan were pure and perfect. no praises enuf for sivamani. other guys need to play up to the crowd more, and more importantly, learn to be in sur. i didnt find pray for me brother particularly fascinating except for the haunting muffled short interlude. the amazing part was the cell phones lighting up the stadium - never seen something like that, totally heavenly. there were people falling for neeti mohan, few knew who she was.

the wide range of compositions all back to back made you wonder if the genius look like arr. no drooling is enough. here's the latest interview. the stress on innocence n purity is impressive. also impressive is the effort he puts in getting to those elusive tunes. i found a recent one on youtube here (there are 11 or 12 parts to it) where he is grilled suitably (sometimes gets too cliche, sometimes interesting) by prabhu chawla and arr takes it in a child-like flow. seems that he is being more candid these days as his confidence improves.

bollywood coming

Three fantastic movies released in a row - bheja fry, metro, cheeni kum. all extremely watchable. they beat the familiar bollywood genre by miles. should we say bollywood reality cinema?

metro is dark and i guess therefore less liked. cheeni kum is definitely not nishabd (not that the latter was any lesser). i guess bheja fry was lapped up the most because of the humor. nevertheless, cheeni kum oozes sarcasm and its a delight to see them carry it off without being even slightly obnoxious.

all of them are highly mature presentations and done without strain, almost effortlessly - as if we have been doing that all the time. in retrospect, it is almost unbelievable that these were bollywood presentations.

PS:
JBJ is due this week. lets see. i didnt like bol na halke halke earlier mainly because it wasnt clear whether to be soft or not to be soft. anyhow, the melody is just too sweet to not fall for. rahat fateh ali does the magic again.

jhoom barabar jhoom

The music is out. Not as cool as the movie trailors pretend to be. Let's see. 3 copies of JBJ with different set of singers. Can't figure out some lyrics still. But, the song of the day (and coming months) is ticket to bollywood. Hardcore desi-reggae-bhangra. and it sounds so much in place. and the lyrics deserve mention:

zameen se do inch upur
hawa pe chalti hai tu
kahin pairon ka nishaan jo pade to jhukoon

no no masiye? no no itna simple nahi,
chal dafa ho kahin.
ho thenge? se tera ticket to hollywood.

tu raani hai france ki,
main baansuri baans ki,
humari society mein ye chalta nahi.

no no..

I still don't know what exactly the mukhra is. and the song is so damn foot-tapping. difficult to keep count how many genres it seamlessly combines.

imagination

needed TBA: I met vishal bhardwaj in person. Exhilaration is the word. aaj tak style summary: gareebi ne banayaa genious?

This article deserves to be sooo cited. In particular this quote:

Every now and then I come up with a hypothesis that sounds correct and has the added benefit of being totally impossible to verify. That’s almost as good as knowledge.

math curriculum

an extremely interesting video (arguments are sometimes flashy) on current math curriculum practices in US here. Very detailed (with some bias) on pointing out the problems with math education. There is a followup video1 and video2 that talks abt how we must actually be taught to appreciate math (and not regard it as a bunch of formulas). The followup videos contain far more detailed and unbiased analysis. more impromptu and some parts quite hilarious.

I got the link via this blog - very aptly she points out that its the balance between rote and creative learning that one needs to inculcate. this has been an issue for me for all my life until i started doing research full time - i've had a bias towards creative learning and have struggled with inefficiency. lot of creative work involves re-discovering and therefore you tend to get fatigued much before u reach the peak. stuff that is rote-learned helps u accelerate by avoiding details.

even tho i can indulge myself in slow creative research at this stage, i guess it wud be smarter to keep identifying the rote stuff enroute.

PS: there is another hilarious video from the same math prof here

tere liye palkon ki jhalar

tere se liye palkon ki jhalar bunoon,
kaliyon sa gajre mein baandhe firoon,
dhoop lage jahaan tujhe, chaya banoon,
aa jaa saajna.


movie: harjayee (1981)
music: r d burman
lyrics: ?
singer: lata

The song is an RDB masterpiece. One of the ultimate combos of music, poetry and expression.

rozana

I hope Nishabd garners some controversy. My muse at this moment is the song rozana, sung by AB, music vishal bhardwaj, dont know the guy who wrote it, altho the lyrics are good. a perfect desi pink floyd. and its amazing how good AB is at it. no wonder VB composed it.


rozana jiyen..
rozana maren..
teri yaadon mein hum

ungli teri, thaame hue
har lamha chalta hoon main.

tujhko liye, ghar lautun aur
ghar se nikalta hoon main.

ek pal ko bhi, jata nahi
tere bin kahin.

yun raat din, bas tujhme hi, bas tujhme hi
lipta rehta hoon main.

rozaana...


the expressions at lipta rehta hoon main is amazing. and of course when it picks up pink-floyd style with rozana. the song is polymorphic altho i guess we are familiar with the context. the poetry has a minimalist feel to it which is cool. and together with the musical climaxes it becomes simply awesome. simply can't stop raving abt this song.
almost unbelievable how it conveys deep pain n a soft passion together at the same time. or perhaps it is due to AB's voice - but its simply lovely.

a very happy new year?

a fascinating well-written article here. and gets more interesting here.

new albums are out in bulk. just married is notable. atif aslam's doorie is nice too. and there are more. heaps of movies are also waiting in the release list.