More musings...

Too cool for comfort

There was a time when I was intensely rooting for Abhishek Bachchan’s success. He was a talented actor living in his father’s shadow and most industry people had already written him off. He was the quintessential underdog. And I thought he made a spectacular debut in Refugee.
Five years and 14 flops later, he’s one of the hottest stars around. But now, I find myself actually wishing he delivers a flop. No, I’m not being nasty. But I do think that success has gone to his head. And that beard. Gosh, it annoys me. It seems like he's got more chemistry with his beard than with any of his leading ladies. I think he needs to be rudely jerked back to Earth. He needs to rediscover acting and bury his designer gear. I want the Abhishek of Yuva and Sarkar, not the uber cool AB Junior of Bluff Master and KANK.

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Cinematic quest

After the agonising film that was Paheli, Amol Palekar is back to making cinema that’s a real slice of life. His latest film, Quest, releases on Friday and talks about the relationship between a man, his wife and his homosexual partner. But I wonder why it’s taken mainstream cinema so long to tackle the subject of homosexuality?
It’s been talked about in our literature for decades. It’s even been tackled by theatre. So why are filmmakers the last ones to come to grips with these issues, compared to other art forms? Interestingly, it isn’t just Hindi cinema that’s woken up to reality only recently. Even mainstream Hollywood filmmakers had the courage to make Brokeback Mountain only recently. But now that the dam has burst, I'm looking forward to more such insightful films.