dil to baccha hai ji

The promotion of Ishqiya is gaining momentum, the gaali-galauj and the censors adding to its publicity. It has three of most superb, outstanding actors and favs of mine. Outside "tumhara ishq ishq aur mera ishq sex", here is a refreshingly innocent song just out from the movie.

Its a VB-gulzar gem rendered with his characteristic innocence and mithaas by rahat fateh ali khan. (just see how he enunciates dil-too-baccha-hai-ji). The sound is that of an oldie-classic set to a waltz beat (think dil ki nazar se, nazron ke dil se), with the crispiness of a modern recording.

aisi uljhi nazar unse hat-ti nahi,
daant se reshmi dor kat-ti nahi,
umr kab ki baras ke safeyd ho gayi,
kaari badri jawaani ki chhat-ti nahi

vallah ye dhadkan, badhne lage hai,
chehre ki rangat, udnee lagi hai,
dar lagta hai tanha sone mein ji.

dil to baccha hai ji.
thora kaccha hai ji.

Very passionate artists in the making of the song. Or maybe they resonate with me more than others do :) The para could have been composed better tho.

saari jawaani katraa ke kaati,
peeri mein takraa gaye hain,

dil dhadakta hai to, aise lagta hai wo,
aa raha hai yehin, dekhta hi na ho,

prem ki maare kataar re.

Plenty of usual gulzarisms - I bet he doesn't have to try hard, just bring in a new thought and let it flow with the usual metaphors. There's an interesting moment at 7:44, where VB cues raahat, which he conveniently (and with some guilt, a moment later) ignores and continues with his style. The song is a masterpiece. Awaiting the audio release (there is at least one sukhwinder song too).

Actually there is more. Here is this song in a promo, and another one ibnbatuta. Look at vidya balan man! mujhe is shareef-zaadi se ishq ho gaya hai. :)

rdb

a nice video remembering rahul dev burman. 

paa, again

Paa is a roller coaster ride. Extreme wit, full of irony and poignancy. Its perhaps one of the best native scripts after khosla ka ghosla, altho in a different genre. The bum jokes, the crazy giggle, the unfailing wit and sarcasm, boiling with irreverence, and of course the title song. The film does have its digressions - well the story teller needs his space. R Balki (I don't know what he was doing before) upps his cheeni kum humor interleaving between his childish and mature modes - the writer's source of craziness is a complete mystery for me. his sense of humor is unfailing - wonder how many more (deeply humane) slapsticks he's hiding under his belt. and seriously, i fell for vidya balan all over again.

and if this and this don't send you crazy, nothing else can. naseer and arshad put together, casting couldn't get better. add vidya balan with all her oomph and cold, you fall short of words. the latter RGBG is another crazy ensemble. The trailers give me butterflies :) I am hooked.

paa

Paa's music has been out for a while. The title song rendered by AB is only next to Maa by shankar mahadevan, though in an entirely different genre. Beautiful lyrics by swanand kirkire. Illayraaja has been recycling tunes from his non-Hindi movies for sometime. Paa too is one of them - here is the original sung by Illayraaja himself from a recent Tamil movie. Illayaraja doesn't sound as cool as SDBurman tho :) The older version has multiple string instruments in the interlude, while the newer version relies on a more complicated percussion. But the real credit for this song goes to AB for his mindblowing rendition.

and it couldn't get more difficult to distinguish between real and contrived than this speech by Om Puri.

tum mile

Just finished watching Tum Mile, review here. Far more mature version of love aaj kal in terms of depiction of the relationship. Has its flaws, but very well done. Vishesh films has quite successfully created its own genre, ever since they discovered Emraan Hashmi. I wish his face and voice expressed a bit more. Soha Ali Khan looks old in the movie, I was surprised she is 31. Its almost a crime to look so beautiful, more so if you are redoing it in the second generation.

Mohit Chauhan's new album Fitoor doesn't fail to recreate his sound. No praises enough for the nasheela voice immersed in the characteristic staccato style of singing. Already performed babbaji (the fact that i completely fail to understand that song makes me like it even more :), looking fwd to challeya. I wonder what language (peshtu?) that interlude blabber (in challeya) is in - never mind, the song can be done without it too. 

rediscovered songs

now that's not a good excuse to write a post but then..

so there was this shelved (?) movie called DUS (98), which was probably one of the first shankar-eh-loy's movies. two songs chaandni roop ki, and piya piya lived with me forever. chaandni roop ki is so amazingly meditative; its incredible how such compositions could be brought to life.

there's a relatively unknown ARR movie vishwavidhata (97). hariharan's zulfein ghataon si is so breathtakingly beautiful - both poetry and rendition.

I realised that the two songs above are similar in theme. Sandeep chowta's mitti (?) had this beautiful groovy song khoobsoorat hai tu - the song sung by sukhwinder (+mahalaxmi?) is very hypnotical in composition, and the fusion between classical vocals and the groovy base is exploited to its best. I was surprised to find its video here and after watching the video I'm pretty much at loss of words: I guess people have their own clever ways of visual hypnosis. :)

I liked YMI, don't know if I wrote earlier. what's ur rashee is supposedly boring - still haven't got hands on it.

road, the movie

It's abhay deol's next. it has tannistha chatterjee. and the promos look splendid. a better one here. i don't know when its going to be released but it would def be a great watch. Its a desi "country" story done very slickly - among the few in 'we need to tell our stories' genre.

Interesting that dev benegal is directing it. I watched split wide open in 2000 in calcutta on a random occasion perhaps by mistake. It remains to date, one of the wildest movies (dark comedy, in particular) I've seen. I used to think that dev benegal was some sort of cinematographer - turns out he has directed only three movies in his lifetime of 30 yrs. I've always wanted to watch english august but could never lay hands on it.

Read somewhere that Phir Kabhi is lovely. Waiting to watch it.