underrated actors

rediff had this user-poll on under-rated actors. so i thought i shud record it since its a constant theme in my head. below is a cut-paste from one of the readers.

I don't necessarily agree with the ranks (e.g. vinay pathak n ranvir sheorey are far more talented) but the entries are very appropriate. I maintain that bollywood is going through its second golden period, and we better sit up and take notice. :)

Top 5 under-rated actors:
1. Shiney Ahuja 2. Abhay Deol 3. Vinay Pathak 4. Ranvir Sheorey 5. Boman Irani

Top 5 under-rated actresses:
1. Gul Panag 2. Chitrangada Singh 3. Ayesha Takia 4. Koyel Puri 5. Rituparna Sengupta

Top 5 under-rated directors:
1. Vishal Bharadwaj
2. Navdeep Singh (of "Manorama")
3. Dibakar Banerjee (of "Khosla ka Ghosla")
4. Anurag Basu
5. Sriram Raghavan
6. Shashanka Ghosh (of "Waisa bhi hota hai")
7. Jahnu Barua
8. Imtiaz Ali (socha na tha, jab we met)
9. Rituporno Ghosh (of "Raincoat")
10. Tigmangshu Dhulia (of "Haasil")

Top 5 under-rated contributors in other forms:
1. Jaideep Sahni (writer)
2. Arvind Kannabiran (cinematography)
3. UTV (production house)
4. Shantanu Moitra (music)
5. Amitabh Shukla (editor)

Note that I have left out usual suspects such as KayKay Menon, Konkona Sensharma & Rahul Bose, The reason is that they are not that under-rated anymore. Also, the directors list consist of 10 entries instead of the regular 5, as I believe there are more talented directors out there with no face recognition whatever, than actors. Feel free to add to the list.



Some more guys: Irfan, Jimmy Shergill, Pawan Malhotra, Zakir Hussain.
smriti mishra - u cant help notice her in one dollar curry. and saw dil dosti again recently. biryaani khayenge hujur?
raima sen
manish tiwary (dil dosti etc)

i'm sure i missed many more.

anuranan

anuranan means resonance. (very corny :)

watched this awesome movie. rahul bose, rajat kapur, raima sen, rituparna sengupta. both rahul bose n rituparna overact and ham (i used to think that it was aparna sen who used to make rahul bose ham). its a pity why the director fails to control them. perhaps becos its his first film.

anyhow, the script is good. and just when you think its another "before sunrise", the story takes a dramatic turn so much that it hurts. somewhere, inspite of its clumsiness, the movies strikes a chord. and for sure, a few scenes here and there did manage to escape to surrealism (rather than being corny or cliched).

its amazing how rajat kapur has a "cold shoulder" role lying around almost everywhere for him. god knows wot wud have happened to these movies without him. and no words enuf for raima sen . she is totally awesome in her restrained performance. i had kind of noticed her in manorama 6 feet under, few days back, playing a mix of push-button seductive and otherwise helpless role. she is hugely talented - and i'm so surprised i haven't been rooting for her since earlier.

so that makes manorama 6 feet under a true classic. two great actresses - gul panag and raima sen and the fabolous doode abhay deol (u can never ignore vinay pathak).

mithyaa

mithyaa is a horribly cool cult movie. reminds me of jaane bhi do yaaron - but of course that is an exaggeration. same team - rav sh, vin pat, rajat kapur. rav sh should get a lifetime award for this performance. :) the genre prolly is darker than dark comedy.

u
me
aur
hum.
vishal bhardwaj again composes masterpiece drowning melodies. let's see how ajay devgan does.

jodha akbar : ash gow went old-fashioned. forget history, forget wars, it was all about chemistry. and chemistry was done and shown well. hrithik had a towering presence ( iguess which made the movie believable) - yet he seemed to lose gravity once in a while. and finally the taming of a rajputain didn't look that difficult.

also, i was looking for rafi songs to sing. came upon this wonderful rafi-madanM number ek haseen shaam ko (dulhan ek raat ki). it b/w and nutan looks beautiful. lip-synching to such numbers wud be so difficult. same with this one (shashi kapur lip-synchs awesomely) and this one (where did KK learn to lip synch). and leave alone lip-synching to pure classical numbers like this one. and lastly, it would be a crime to disregard this performance.

tanhayee

again long time. tons to write but difficult to recall.

strangers is a fantastic movie. kay kay has such a presence.
khoya khoya chand was a psycho-thriller :) welcome was too hilarious.

oh yes, bombay to bangkok. pretty sure this won't fly like all kukunoor previous productions. tons of reasons. but the secondary track of the gangster (vijay maura) n the shrink (manmeet singh) had a horribly cool chemistry. both are superb actors - wish they had replaced the main theme :)

jodha-akbar track is out. arr doesn't fail with his unusual note combos. more later.
being part of the community, i must link here. I hope someone puts the video on youtube.
i've grown a liking for coupling. its definitely what inspired how i met your mother.
just being close to NY makes me feel like so much is happening. :)

finally, i need to focus more on my singing career :)

nagme hi nagme hain
jaagte soti fizaon mein
husn hai saari adaon mein
ishq hai jaise hawaon mein.

- jodha-akbar, arr, sonu, madhushree?

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.

ustad divas

finally laid my hands on this album. supposed to be a sequel to piya basanti. only that it pretty much lacks the soul of the previous album.

this is the title song piya basanti video.

this is the "leja leja" video from the new album. pretty much commercialized (n state-of-the-art :) ) tho with a cute undertone. the video, for most part, is pretty harsh to suit the song - they could have easily made a more sensitive presentation(again to make it more commericial, i guess). and the models don't look good at all. I wish it was more like the prev one (minus the overacting). seriously i dont understand why they needed to baby-dollize this could-be-wonderfully sensitive song n video.

the haiye re, more piya are better than leja leja in my opinion. sandesh shandilya surely lets me down - he could have really avoided the heavy arrangements and the usual feet-tapping stuff.

arr on guru

here is arr's latest one on guru.

- we don't get to hear somebody called qadir khan, too bad esp if arr says it was a brilliant recording.

- so gulzar taapoes again - this time from amir khusrau. yeh sharbati aashiqui = ae hairate aashiqui. it was ghalib+iqbal in dil-se, and of course the zihaal-e-muskin (gulami). interesting that guru is shot in turkey too (amir khusrau was half-turkish)

salaam-e-ishq

audio is out. SEL have done a good job. movie should be a craze. funny how many cool releases are still lined up this year. songs are highly situational. a lovely review here: the colors of songs put into words very nicely.

- as the review says, babuji lacks the sensuality.
- adnan sami is fabulous. i think he sang a song in taxi 9211 last. i realised his voice is nasal; but his renderings have way way more expression than other singers. and his compositions for "lucky" were terrific too. the "uhnnn" before "that's rite" gets on the nerves slightly tho.

- ya rabba almost gets there but really doesnt make it. don't know if SEL wanted shafaqat ali for this one and couldn't get him. somehow kailash kher (altho he has tried very hard) doesn't fit into this songs mood - one needs sonu nigam's expressions here. perhaps rahat fateh ali (jiya dhadak) should have been called for here.

- saiyaan re is the one i truly like (besides adnan sami one). yet another kajra re but very different. and as the review says, shilpa never seems intimidated by shankar m. sameer's lyrics rise to the occasion.

SEL retain their stress on melody (n pronounced dholak) - even at the cost of sounding repetitious. much unlike arr, they rarely play with unconventional note patterns- all compositions are smooth n melodious and generally have a slight deja vu. still i'd like to complain more about guru than S-e-I.

guru

guru audio is here. altho i dont have a link to point to. and its more bombay than dil se - if at all a comparison can be made. its again a new sound with accordion having prominence in more than one song - will catch on i guess - tho i clearly hate arr's way of drowning voices under arrangements. gulzar's poetry nevertheless gets excavated with time, hoho.

and we hope the nation croons to this marvellous theme qawwali (whose lyrics again get excavated in a different song)


dam-dar dam-dar chashm chashm-e-nam
dam-dar dam-dar chashm chashm-e-nam
sun mere hum-dum
humesha ishq mein hi jeena


this one is dedicated to nusrat fateh ali. would be nice to have a version in his voice too. anyway, so the qawwali background is introduced in "tere bina", but the lyrics come out in another song "ae hairat`h'e". this one by hariharan n alka yagnik is a crazy one to say the least (and perhaps will become a favorite in a few days). the song belongs to a qawwalish-ghazal genre. something like when you replace a soft tabla with a clean dholak. abrupt jhatkas do give a good feel to the song - and other songs too have such effects. frankly, the ghazal gets lost in the qawwali+percussion, but i guess that was the intention. too bad.

ae hairate aashiqui
jagaa mat
pairon se zameen, zameen lagaa mat.

the sthayi is remarkable - specially with hariharan playing with the notes -and more so with dam dar following it. the paras could be handled better - arr simply repeats notes where one could improvise much more. surprised to see alka yagnik do justice to her part.

other songs are more situational - maybe will gain presence with time. "tere bina" is a virah song, sung by arr n chinmayee(??). plays with different lyrics - and jhatkas feel out of place in normal sargams - altho it starts feeling alright:
dam dar dam-dar mast mast dar (2)
dar dam dar dam dam
o hum dum
bin tere kya jeena

chinmayee's voice suits the song superbly - it has a strong folksy strain. and gulzar's lyrics need to be excavated further here.

tere bina chand ka sona, khota re,
peeli peeli dhool udaawe, jhoota re
tere bina sona peetal
tere sang keekar peepal
aaja kate na ratiyaa


PS: gulzar uses the same kosa-bosa (recall omkara) in barso re.

ae khidkiyon

ae khidkiyon buraa na maanna,
ye TT ka khel hai.
apna hridaya vishaal ho na ho,
ye ghar to beshak ik jel hai.

quote

the idea of getting obsessed with an idea is extremely awful, and yet very interesting.