I thought I was the biggest Bollywood freak

Turns out there are bigger Bollywood freaks out there! :P I just returned from Rahman's concert which happened at Palace Grounds. I walked in and was handed 3D goggles. I didn't expect a 3D screen n all. In the beginning I was pretty skeptic about it but once I got used to them it was really cool! It was like Rahman was 10 feet away from me! :P (I was standing very close to the screen :P) Who cares about Rahman!! There was this REALLY cute saxophone guy sitting right behind Rahman through out the show! That's the only reason I liked the 3D effect! :P :P

Anyway, the night kicked off with an instrumental medley of Chinna Chinna Aasai, Anjali and some other songs, and then Tere Bina and Dil Se. Quite a solid start, it had me all jumpy and happy! :) After that all songs were pretty boring. :P That's why I said I thought I was a Bollywood person! I knew only, say, 60% of the songs he played! I mean, it's me!! The antakshari champion!! How can I not know Bollywood music!? :-o

Well, I guess it's mostly because I think the quality of Hindi music has gone down and everything sounds the same now. Or maybe I'm just growing too old. Gonna be 21.. Sighh..

Anyway back to Rahman, he made the crowd come to life only when he played Chuku Buku Chuku Buku Railey and Patti Rap or something.. Unfortunately I don't know either of the songs! :P For most of the people that was the highlight of the evening! The crowd went nuts! And after that I think it was Mukkala Muquabla Ohhhh Laila.. :P For me of course, the highlight was Roobaroo because I'm probably the BIGGEST fan of Rang De Basanti! That, and Lukka Chuppi from the same movie. I hate to admit it, but I secretly got tears in my eyes when he sang,

"Yahaan sab kuch hai maa phir bhi
Lagey bin tere mujhko akela"

because my mom wanted to come for the show, but hurt her leg in the morning and couldn't. :(
Anyway enough of this emotional bullshit. :P

After those two songs I really loved the saxophone solo :P and also the violinist, Ann Mary. She was really good!

And how could I forget! I HAVE to talk about Remo, he was the most energetic guy on stage! Man! so full of enthu! Especially when he sang Mukkala.. At first when I saw him with a guitar I thought "What a wannabe". Then he picked up the flute and played some good stuff. And then I got to know he was the artist of the Flute Song! That's bloody brilliant! So I got off full respect for him!! You see, I've been addicted to flute playing for two days now. :P Hence the respect!

And then Sivamani, as always he was simply too cool with his weird ideas of percussion! :P

The man of the evening, Oscar winning Rahman! Kudos to him for having made such awesome music! He played so many instruments! And he sang really well! Some songs I thought he wasn't really singing (like Anjaana anjaani from Yuva), but I'm not sure. He either sings too effortlessly or he wasn't singing at all. Hehe.. But the best thing about Rahman is that no matter how famous he is, it doesn't get to him! He's so modest and cute.. He's so NOT a snob! He's a very sweet natured guy!

The main drawback of the evening was the set list. They played such random songs. There were many boring phases when nobody in the crowd knew the songs! I mean they played songs like Thok De Killi from Raavan and some three songs from Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na.. Who cares about those songs! Rahman is famous for songs from Roja and Chaiyya Chaiyya and stuff! They should have played more popular songs. Those random songs are OK for Bombay or something, not Bangalore. And the sound was bad. :-/

Anyway it was entertaining enough. :)

The background visuals were brilliant! Can't believe they pulled off something that cool at Palace Grounds. Really neat graphics and stuff! I hadn't seen anything like it before! The graphics were very effective when they gave a palace-ish look to the entire stage during Khwaja Mere Khwaja. Very good stuff!

Ok before this post gets too long, I'm going to end it. :P Thanks to Rahman and his guys for a fun filled night and for taking me back to my antakshari days with Hamma Hamma and Dil Se n all! :)

Oh that reminds me! Every single time anyone got "ha" while playing antakshari, this would be the scene -

Person 1: "Yamma yammmaaa yamma yamma.. Yeh khoobsurat samaa.. Bas aaj ki raat hain zindagi, kal hum kaha tum kaha."
Person 2: So what's my next letter?
Person 1: "Ha"
Person 2: Ok "Hamma Hamma Hamma-hamma-hamma"
Person 1 (Secretly doesn't like Person 2, so says) : Ohohoho!! That's not the starting!! "Ek hogaye hum or tum" is the starting. Go jump! Shut up and sing some other song okay?!
Person 2: ? Hmpf.. Ok.. Fml.. :-/
:P

Cheers!

"Dabba" movie!

I just returned from Inox after watching Stanley Ka Dabba, evening show. Most of you might not have heard of this Bollywood movie by Amole Gupta. I hadn't heard of it either. Over the phone my sister said "We're going for Stanley ka Dabba". I said "Family ka what?". She said "No!! STANLEY ka DABBA! It's supposed to be like Taare Zameen Par!" She went on to explain how everybody wrote very good reviews of the movie, how Rajeev Masand said the movie is a brilliant work of art, blah blah blah. I said ok and agreed to go because she promised food at Taco Bell! :D

So the movie began with comical stick figures of Stanley and a fat guy with a big moustache fighting over a ball. Then the movie actually began, where the "cute" little boy, enters school. He doesn't take a dabba to school, he eats from other's tiffin boxes, so he gets busted by this fat oaf of a teacher who eats from everyone's dabba. Trust me, he is the most disgusting man you'll ever see on screen! His mouth is perpetually watering (literally) and he keeps wiping it off with a dirty hankie and burping loudly after eating! Yuck! So we saw again and again, shots of tiffin boxes being opened, eaten closed and just like that it was half time!

Only the last ten minutes of the movie make sense and add some sort of story to the two hour-long torturous piece of crap! Seriously! I have never seen such a pointless movie. We laughed ludicrously through out the movie! It just made no sense! There's a song every few minutes that goes "dabbe dabbe noodles ke dabbe, paneer, mushroom, bleeaarrgghh". :-/



Nobody can even act in the movie. It's so made-up! Even my sister, who cried while watching Terminator-2 (!) didn't cry! That should explain, there is a major lack of any sort of "feel" in the movie.

Kids can't watch it, they won't understand anything. Young people can't watch it without cribbing about not having gotten high before the movie, old people might fall asleep. Bullshit I tell you. :-/

Yesterday two hours in the temple and today two hours of this nonsense! So not cool to celebrate like this after I passed exams! I should have watched Tamil movie "Ko" or Golden Star Ganesh's "Cool". Dammit I always make the wrong decisions in life! Sigh!

Well, at least I got my Cheese Quesadilla and Unlimited Coke! So I'm still happyy! :)

Cheers! :)