A critique of critcs

The other day I was having a discussion with one of my friends about why we watch movies. Whether they serve any purpose other than entertainment? The animated discussion reached its crescendo when she suggested that OSO (Om Shanti Om for the uninitiated) was stupid and over-the-top, to which my reply was that, it was the first movie in a long time that was blatant on your face entertainment. So what really is the purpose of cinema? We hear so much banter about movies being realistic, reflecting life in all its purity. If realism is what we are looking for then why were the doordarshan documentaries boring?
If we look at movies from the eyes of critics, then we will see them using all sorts of superlatives for movies which imitate life, but are very critical in heaping praise on movies which offer nothing more than pure unadulterated entertainment.
The blog being a critique of critics, I would now like to introduce two very able (??) but very different critics. So ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for Raja Sen (Rediff) and Taran Adarsh(IndiaFM)

Raja Sen: Raja Sen writes regularly for rediff, but is very selective in choosing the films he would review. Often made to eat his own words as the movies he shredded to bits become blockbuster. Over-analytical, over-critical, he has a reputation of being quite anti-bollywood. His reviews are a must read for CAT aspirants as he carefully chooses his words and logically tries to analyze every scene, every camera angle. But his predictions are woefully short. He is the second most hated critic, just falling short of a gentleman to be introduced shortly. Still I would say he knows cinema. I end up envying his knowledge, though I fail to understand that why as a critic he fails to understand his audience. Why would he mix and match a bollywood movie and a Hollywood taste. He came closest with his reviews of Jaane-tu and Singh is King, where rather than analyzing the follies, he rightly pointed that the movies do strike a chord, which is kind of the whole point. But I have to admit his reviews are a lot of fun to read, they are a bible in absolutist reviews.

A Raja Sen sample:

Movie: Jaane Tu
Rating: 4/5

Taran Adarsh: The most hated critic of this generation and beyond, his reviews are very helpful, you just have to replace all his adjectives with their antonyms to get the perfect review for the movie. So while Musafir is a 4 star movie, Swades is 1.5, DCH is 2 stars. I have yet to see a person so condescending that he feels that the audience are almost always dumb, looking for cheap titillations. To use a modified Godfather quote “he insults our collective intelligence”. Has a very very limited vocabulary, and freely uses the words/phrases hoi-polloi, old wine in a new bottle, leave your brains at home etal. His reviews, cease to be reviews but turn into futile exercise to predict a movies’ performance based on star-power, director, glitz and gloss. He is notoriously known to apologize for his negative reviews for movies which eventually turn out to be hits (case in point Chak De). Needless to mention his reviews are almost always off-track. And yes, every stars’ latest performance turns out to be the best in his career, whether it is Anil Kapoor in Musafir (now really?) or Amitabh Bachchan in Bhootnath (what can I say?). They say he is the most famous critic, this in itself is an insult to the ‘aam janta’. Let’s hope some better sense prevails and we are relieved of his stupid, inane, wannabe analysis. But I must point out I love reading his reviews, they almost always make me laugh, and as for the rating just subtract his rating from 5 to get the actual rating for the movie. It’s all about the math you see; the most useless piece becomes useful. Oh ya I almost forgot, some of his most memorable lines are “cut the gyan, cut the crap!!” Amazing way to start a review!

Taran Adarsh samples:

Movie: Dhoom 2
Rating: 4.5/5

Movie: DCH
Rating:2/5

I now finally get back to the same basic question. What purpose does cinema serve? My view is simple, if a movie is able to make even one person forget his/her worries and make him/her laugh, cry or dance then it has achieved its purpose. So personally I may hate a movie but if makes my grandmother laugh for even half an hour it is praise-worthy cinema, because it is not about you or me, it is about whoever can appreciate it.
So let us all laugh, cry and dance and enjoy the wonderful medium of cinema to enter into the make-belief world, where we can dance under traffic lights, where good always wins over evil, where the movie never ends till everyone is happy. Let us all decide for our own-selves what suits us the best. A review after all is just a personal opinion and no more.

Go Roger!

The world needs its champion. Men need greater men to resurrect them. The world needs Roger Federer. There is a strange, almost divine connection I feel with him. Somewhere he motivates me to stand up and deliver, to maintain a dignified silence when cynics question me. There isn't another champion quite like him. One can see a Zen like calmness to his demeanor. So while we have the world writing him off after a dreadful season (really??)(2 finals, 1 semi-finals, 1 Olympic gold), he quite effortlessly scripts history with a win at the US Open. The way he does it, makes him special. As he himself mentioned he has created a demon for himself, where he is expected to win every tournament. It's quite cruel, how the world eagerly waits to see a champion fall. It’s the ideal blockbuster movie, meteoric rise and a great fall. It's easy to see great men crumble under such pressure, and then some men, rise like phoenix. The world cheers again for it's something they never expected, it's a story they've never seen. Naysayers have their pens out, waiting for a fresh new fall. It is then Roger Federer arrives forcing people to eat their own words, not because he has a point to prove, not because he his competing against anyone, but because he competes against himself. Because for him success is not defined by numbers but by commitment to one’s craft, by tenacity and by the ability to surprise everyone but HIMSELF with his achievements.
The short blog is my salute to a great champion, a great player and a fabulous human-being. Go Roger, the world is your oyster!