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Friday, October 04, 2013

Will Ranbir End Up Being Mannered As His Father and Grandfather?

Indian actors we have observed for three decades, ah, may be more, have a career graph that goes something as follows:

1. A good debut
2. A star is born
3. Success goes to his head
4. He becomes mannered

Almost all stars from Dilip Kumar to Rajesh Khanna to SRK have followed the above pattern, except, may be, a few like Aamir Khan. We haven't yet seen Besharam starring Ranbir Kapoor, but from what we have heard from the grapevine he will end up as mannered as his father and grandfather in acting. Yes, we liked the earlier Raj Kapoor and then he transformed into this mannered actor, as if he wasn't sure of himself. We also liked Rishi in his earlier days (remember Bobby, Khel Khel Mein, our coming of age movies), but then he too went for mannerisms of his father and uncles. Ranbir could be saved from mannerism, which, then, could go on to create a real good actor - a rare one - in Hindi filmdom. Somebody please save this newcomer because we see a lot of talent in him. This is the view of a dilettante, so it can be disregarded as pure blog fluffery.

Neways, we are bothered by the absolute lack of new ideas in Bollywood. They are making films to make the cash box ring, nothing original is dished out, it's always the rehashing of old ideas, ad nauseum. We watch a lot of films on UTV's World Movies and we would urge Bollywood directors to take time out and rest their swollen heads on cushions - if needed - and watch them days on end for inspiration. Oh my God! What great movies, what slick movie making. Today we saw "Janis and John" about a couple who do impersonation of Janis Joplin and John Lennon to fool a cousin into giving them money. Must say French movies are the best. Even the Polish movies have more polish (pun unintended) than ours.

Movies are all about story telling and if the story isn't right the movie will turn out to be trash. Really. We consider this as the absolute gospel truth, given what our critics might allege, our critics be damned. We need to pay for good stories and have good writers instead of hiring a hack to do a story in five days sitting in a five-star hotel. By the by, our neighbourhood scriptwriter is writing another story and we wonder what it will be all about. He is a talented film director who hasn't had a film so far, except for some Bhojpuri films. We wish him well.

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