Digi's Blog

CONTAINS SPOILERS, AND IS LONG A lot was resting on the shoulders of Aanand L Rai – whether he’d be able to create the banaras atmosphere effectively just as he showed UP in Tanu Weds Manu, whether he’d do justice to the wonderful music of A.R Rahman, and most importantly, whether the two lead actors would escalate the movie by their acting or cause its downfall. Well, Aanand Rai manages all these things, and much more! As he puts it, Raanjhanaa was never meant to be a simple love story. The movie begins with Naman Jain (Kid Dhanush) falling in love at first sight with Zoya. From that scene onwards, you know Raanjhanaa is going to be the actors’ show throughout. Naman Jain (Jhaangiya) is fantastic as usual. Every frame in which he is there lights up due to his lovely acting. And soon kundan grows up. That school phase is wonderfully done. Firstly and most importantly, neither Dhanush nor Sonam seem too old to play school going teenagers. They infact convincingly look as school stud...

Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra is synonymous with fantastic music. Rang De Basanti and then Delhi 6 were massive blockbusters. This time however Mehra opts for Shankar Ehsaan and Loy instead of A.R Rahman. Let us see what the trio presents to us. Mehra is known for including a short musical/lyrical piece in the soundtracks of his movies. First there was “Ik Onkar” in RDB and then there was “NOOR” in Delhi 6. Here we have “GURBAANI” – a lovely short prayer like piece sung by Daler Mehndi. And boy, Daler paaji rocks. I have always held the opinion that both Daler and his brother Mika sing such songs very well. It is a pity that we get to hear them most often in Punjabi dance numbers. Gurbaani’s short duration of 1.40 minutes is enough to showcase Daler mehndi’s scale range of singing. He is simply brilliant. But the winner is the fab arrangement by the composer trio. What a lovely way to begin a soundtrack! “ZINDA” is easily and undoubtedly THE anthem of the year. The song starts off with h...

It was indeed a pleasure to find a hard bound book delivered to me by Blogadda; that too a book which dealt with a topic which needs to be given more attention than it is currently getting. “SHOES OF THE DEAD” is penned by Kota Neelima and describes the situation of farmer debt related suicides. The book describes multiple stories all ultimately related to the same problem. And so we have one plot depicting young Keyur Kashinath, a novice and son of the democratic party’s general secretary. He is new to the political scenario and faces the problem of an increasing number of debt related farmer suicides in his constituency Mityala. How he deals with his own arrogance, ego and gets a dose of the real problem in the constituency is shown in the book. On the other hand, we have a top class honest and bold journalist named Nazar who is frequently aided by a woman also associated with the concerned constituency. And finally we have the main plot of Gangiri Bhadra. Ga...

Tanu weds Manu was a very special film – the earthiness of the movie, the lead actors’ very natural acting and most importantly the music. What an album it was – wedding song, a romantic song, a semi classical song, and that piece of awesomeness which we know today as “RANGREZZ”. So it is just natural to expect a LOT from Aanand Rai’s 3 rd bollywood outing. As if that was not enough, he ropes in A.R Rahman to compose the music for Raanjhanaa. After a slight blemish (Read Jab tak hai jaan), let us see whether Rahman bounces back with Raanjhanaa. “TUM TAK” was the first song released few days ago. On watching the video of the song, the song didn’t appeal too much to me. The song was edited too shabbily for the video in my opinion. But things took a total turn when I heard the entire audio song. It turned out to be marvelous. Guitar and manjeeras welcome us in the beginning of the song before Javed Ali starts singing. Javed’s super splendid vocals are just an auditory t...