kishore kumar, RNBDJ, SM

I chanced upon this hilarious interview of Kishore Kumar. Probably taken during late 70's - maybe he got more mad with age - or maybe he only spoke in atishayoktis. The article is such a comic masterpiece. Intrigues you so much about the character.

On a side note, Passion for Cinema is a wonderful site for people like me.

And on the main note, I'd like to (finally) put it down on paper that Rab ne bana di jodi and Slumdog Millionaire are, in true sense, movies built around the same exact theme - romantic idealism. The quintessential theme is the one which bollywood is identified by, and scoffed at by our beloved desi-movie-watching pseudo-intelligensia. SM is made a thousand times more wonderfully than RNBDJ, which is perhaps why it is receiving so much applause. But, when you start looking for the key idea, the germ, the inspiration (if any) that the writer may have had - its plain old romantic idealism. And sadly, none of the movies does justice to the thought - in fact, I would say that RNDBJ is a far more sincere portrayal of the idea that SM - SM merely manipulates the critic to convince him/her of an illusion of the inspiration, almost like an insult to the thought. However, SM's story had the real potential (due to its true-to-life characters) to put forth romantic idealism so that it would jhakjhor the audience; the depiction failed to milk the potential. RNBDJ instead was complete fairy tale - a sweetened dose of romanticism; I don't know, maybe it is the bollywood thing - depth of emotions is often diluted for the common masses. The interesting thing that I found was how Aditya chopra managed to recreate the scene from DDLJ - the girl begs the guy to elope with her, and the guy refuses, as a true romantic hero. It was turnedaround though in RNDBJ (the villain and the hero were indistinguishable), but how so beautifully.