...Blog ko tho kal ka kar sakta hoon! Sorry folks, I am still getting into a rhythm with writing and am finding it extremely difficult to write consistently what my mind holds. Nonetheless I am taking the liberty to cheat a little and predate this blog :D Anyways moving on, I have updated the date of this blog to the 23rd. The day was very important to me for personal reasons but that's not what this blog is about.
No!!!! This blog is also not about the movie Kal Ho na Ho...I am just not ready to go into discussion about a movie that had one of my friends raving about it and another one wanting to kill the whole film industry:) I am happy to take the middle path that the movie was OK, saved largely by pleasing eye-candy visuals, non jarring soundtrack and moments of levity.
However I think I might have hated the movie had I seen it at home on my TV... and I am pretty sure that I will not see it in future either. This thought is what I want to speak about today.
I am a big big Movie buff. Not only do I like movies I like all variety of movies. I have watched multiple reruns of movies as diverse as Sound Of Music, The Good the Bad and The Ugly, Kagemusha and Pulp Fiction. I have sat through Aravindan's movies where every little gesture happen in real time(once I clocked 4 mins of screen time given to a lamp to flicker out; remember the Sunday Afternoon art movies on good ol'DD :D ) and have enjoyed the risqueness of Aankhen(alright! alright! I was young then;)) Now would be the time when you ask Where is all this ego-trip leading to? Well all of this rambling just shows that frankly I have no great taste and am a sucker for the dream-merchants.
So what? Well over the last few years I am adding more and more movies to my hate list. This did not concern me earlier as I thought that I am just maturing and developing better taste. I though that at last I can be on the same level as my esteemed friends who watch movies critically and are very grudging with their praise. However on 23rd I realized nothing has changed. I am still a sucker for the big screen. That's when it struck me...the difference was the atmosphere,the larger than life screen, the theatre, the Dolby surround, and the pop-corn.
When one goes to a cinema hall one has committed to watching movie for a specific period of time. He does this in a (generally) quiet and dark atmosphere where all his senses are attuned to the movie. If the movie is a masterpiece he comes away from the hall either feeling really elated or deeply disturbed depending on the subject of the movie(for the movies of the latter variety I can never see Schindler's List or The Thin Red Line again) Now suppose you take an average or less than average movie. Even these movies can salvage some points with the viewer by at least giving a pleasant experience if not a great one. (For eg. in Kal Ho Na Ho I did find the melodrama a lil bit over the top...however the experience was pleasant once one shuts down the mind. )
Now compare this to watching the same movie at home. Great movies still end up giving us pleasure, the only loss being graphical or auditory. However when average movies are run there is a big problem. Many time movies are average because of weak storylines and to watch such stuff on the idiot box is somehow much more irritating then on the big screen. Add to this the fact that most of the time we spent in front of the idiot box we are constantly shuffling through other stuff to do, or some other priorities to meet or checking up on other channels for other family members. Basically time spent in front of the idiot box is very impatiently spent. Hence when we see something that we find stupid we tend to have exaggerated anger against it as we feel that our time is being wasted. Hence we end up panning the movies we see on the TV.
So I have some to a decision. No more pirated movies for me. Maybe I will see a little less but I will see movies in halls. If I like a movie I might get its VCD or DVD but I will never make a decision about a new movie based on what I see on the small screen . I hope that this will bring back awe for the magic of movies in me.
And yes! Amitabh Rocks!!! :D
I will leave you with my fav dialogue/sound clip of KHNH
" Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen KaantaBen" :D
