MxMIndia

Category: MxM JOURNALISM REVIEW

  • Ranjona Banerji highlights former navy chief Arun Prakash's damning indictment of TV media's role over skirmishes on the LOC.

    Ranjona Banerji: Country can’t be held ransom to career ambitions of anchors

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    As journalists, we are expected to develop some sort of responsibility about our larger role in society. This can occasionally go beyond the spicy story and the exciting scoop. But now twice in a short span, we have seen TV going overboard over rather dangerous subjects. The first was the extreme jingoism displayed over skirmishes at the LOC between India and Pakistan. I quote from an edit page piece by Arun Prakash, former navy chief, in Friday’s Times of India: “If the incipient Indo-Pak crisis of the past fortnight had any lesson to convey, it was that the road to perdition is lined with shrill, hysterical TV anchors, bloodthirsty politicians and a seemingly somnolent national security establishment.”

     

    It is a damning indictment of the TV media and no less true for all that. And now, India and Pakistan having “stepped back from the brink” to quote Prakash, we have TV jumping into the treacherous waters of Hindu-Muslim relations. By overplaying and then seeking out endless reactions to Union home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde’s remarks about terror camps and the RSS and BJP, TV anchors are attacking a fault line that has in the past created massive disruptions in Indian society.

     

    It is all very well that some TV anchors became famous by covering wars and others became famous by covering riots but the country can hardly be held ransom to these career ambitions. A quick look at how newspapers have treated Shinde’s remarks – and the BJP’s reactions – and you get a clear indication of how a more mature, experienced mind functions. This is not a game.

     

    **

     

    Headlines Today has decided to look ahead to the next general elections and make its own forecasts through opinion polls. This faith in election forecasting is indeed endearing – most got it wrong at the recent Gujarat assembly elections for instance. The general elections are due somewhere in mid-2014. Anything is possible in the interim and it is amazing to see that a media house puts its faith in a survey done now.

     

    **

     

    I would have thought – foolishly as it turns out – that the Justice Verma committee report on rape laws would have got better play in the media. Reports on the report were scattered across pages making negotiation a little difficult without a GPS tracking device. Analysis has also been insufficient – so far – although The Indian Express has an edit page piece by Pratiksha Baxi which does shed some light:

     

    Perhaps, people are still reading through the report and trying to understand it?

     

    **

     

    I met some second-year students of a prestigious Mumbai college yesterday, studying the BMM course. I was asked why when I started my career I had opted to be a sub-editor when I could have been a journalist. This question I confess stumped me for a good five minutes. I tried to explain that everyone who works in the editorial section of a journal is a journalist (I’m guessing the same applies to news channels!) but all I got was a blank stare. A journalist, from what I now understand, is a reporter. That’s it. So let that be a lesson to all of you swanking around behaving like journalists when in fact, you are nothing.

     

    A few more questions and I discover where they come from: the bulk of their faculty are their own ex-students, with little or no experience. As long as HR departments believe that only people who do these bogus courses are worth hiring, senior journalists (reporters, sub-editors all) must take a greater interest in media courses across the country. No?

     

  • Every week, Deepa Gahlot casts a critical eye over media reviews of Bollywood releases… in Reviewing the Reviews

    Reviewing the Reviews: Race2

    Race2

    Key Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Deepika Padukone, John Abraham, Jacqueline Fernandez, Anil Kapoor, Ameesha Patel

    Written By: Shiraz Ahmed

    Directed By: Abbas-Mustan

    Produced By: Ramesh Taurani, Ronnie Screwvala, Siddharth Roy Kapur

     

    It’s not often that a big budget, star cast film, made by the successful ‘director duo’ Abbas Mustan gets the critics to collectively sneer at it. Their films have always been high on style and low on substance, but with Race 2 this imbalance is even more pronounced, because the content is practically non-existent.

     

    So early in the year, a film already listed as one the worst of 2013… and there’s 11 months still to go.

     

    Race 2 got mostly 2 or 2.5 star ratings, except for TOI’s standard 3.

     

    Shubhra Gupta of The Indian Express commented, “There are often good reasons why retreads do not reach the same level as the original. In 2008, Race gave us bad guys and very bad girls who used bronzers and booze as lethal weapons, and Abbas Mustan managed to make of that mix a slick thriller. Five years later, we have a sequel, and it’s all so been there-seen that-so-what, that Race 2 just passes in front of our eyes without registering.

     

    Anupama Chopra of Hindustan Times quipped, “Race 2 is essentially a big-budget cartoon in which coolness is all. The director duo Abbas-Mustan (this is how they credit themselves) have no pretensions about what they are making – full-on masala with a dash of revenge, a slice of heist and characters who are either strutting their chiselled bodies in slow motion or betraying each other. The frame is crowded with good-looking people, mouth-watering cars, casinos, gargantuan hotels, planes and yachts. The money being tossed around is, and I hope you’re sitting down for this, 15 billion Euros. It’s the good life, and because this is a comic book, there are no consequences.”

     

    Vinayak Chakravorty of India Today wrote, “Look hot, act cool, fight tough. When it comes to action thrillers, Abbas-Mustan obviously stick to that brief while instructing their cast. The idea has clicked for the director duo for years though they fell flat with Players last year.

     

    Abbas-Mustan never believed in giving much of a brief to their writers, though. In most cases the script has indulgent winks at a foreign hit or two, suitably altered for desi tastes. Smart packaging and an engaging narrative style do the rest of the trick. Race 2 sticks to these basics, except the part about engaging storytelling.”

     

    Saibal Chatterjee of ndtv.com was scathing, “Race 2 proves how difficult it can be for a producer to let go of an idea that yielded a box-office bonanza the first time around. The makers of this film obviously haven’t heard of, or do not believe in, the law of diminishing returns. Race 2 isn’t so much a sequel as an ill-advised rehash. Revenge, one character says, is a dish best served cold. Ideas, for sure, aren’t best served stale. This is the second year in succession after 2012’s Players that Abbas-Mustan have the honour of unleashing the first Bollywood biggie of the year. Race 2, like Players, is big only on nausea-inducing clatter.”

     

    Madhureeta Mukherjee of the Times of India was relatively kind. “Get ready for jobs that ‘blow’, bare bods, chains, fists, fruits (of passion) et al. Kinky, huh? Not really. This is what goes into a high-flying, testosterone ride called Race 2, where everything blows up – from beastly cars to bronzed beautism. Macho men dive into mid-air and cars casually fly. The men are smart, but their gizmos are smarter. The women are ‘haute’, but mean machines give them a run for their curves. Such is this race of brawn and biceps (with limited brain power).”

     

    Janhavi Samant of Mid-day lists the defects thus, “Performances, phew, the film has more close-ups of cars than faces, so the less said the better. Fancy cars whiz past at high speed, alpha men charge and swagger ahead of exploding cars in slow-motion, men and women show off their sculpted bodies while coming out of the sea, or women in bold, bright red lipstick and nailpaint dressed for the ramp, even in a bedroom romp, and everyone talks about some billion-trillion-gazillion Euros worth of deals in vain – Race 2 is a bimbo film, all horsepower, no brainpower.”

     

    Karan Anshuman of Mumbai Mirror wrote tongue-in-cheek, “Here’s the plot: A is rich, B is rich, C is very rich. There are girls attached to all: secretary, sister, girlfriend: D, E, F (no, they’re not one person). These are all Indians in Turkey giving you the impression that they run the country. There’s also some action in Italy and since Abbas-Mustan shot that bit in front of Istanbul’s world-famous landmark Ayasofya, you get a good picture of how smart the filmmakers think you are.”

     

  • Party spokespersons interrupt and shout all the time when someone else is talking, rues Ranjona Banerji

    Ranjona Banerji: Party reps also to blame for News TV

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    True confession: I have avoided watching television news for the past week. The result: grey hair count has come down, wrinkles have reduced and I sleep better at night. Well, all right, that’s the kind of hyperbole I normally accuse TV anchors of, but still. It has been some kind of an improvement on my life. On Monday night, I decided to try again. I got Karan Thapar and guests discussing Ashis Nandy and his “controversial” statement on caste and corruption on CNN-IBN. I got Arnab Goswami also discussing this controversial statement on Times Now and then I got Rajdeep Sardesai also discussing this on CNN-IBN. There was something else on Headlines Today by which time I was so confused by so many of the same people saying the same or different things on so many channels that I gave up.

     

    The problem is not just the anchors, it’s also their guests. The BJP people always look like they suffer from severe dyspepsia and 10 bottles of Digene have not helped. The Congress people look like they have advanced cases of extreme arrogance and are too superior to even be part of a discussion. The BSP people look puzzled that they’re actually there (it’s usually the same person, I admit). The SP person is unsure whether this TV is a good invention or not. The Shiv Sena chap is always smiling except when he has to speak – then, he’s angry. Most of them are lawyers, which makes you wonder… None of them has ever been taught that it is not polite to interrupt and shout all the time when someone else is talking. This makes you wonder only if you have spent all of the 63 years since we got that Constitution under a giant boulder.

     

    Rarely, has anything been achieved by these debates. The only person who made sense through the whole Nandy fight was Yogendra Yadav. I suppose though he is now a politician too, since he’s part of the Aam Aadmi Party and will soon get his own look for TV debates. Sigh.

     

    **

     

    The best part of the television I did watch last week was Kunal Vijaykar playing a desolate Nitin Gadkari on The Week That Wasn’t. A fine piece of acting! Also, a fascinating discussion on CNN about “catfishing” – people who get fooled into online relationships with invented online personas.

     

    **

     

    Meanwhile, kudos to Mid-Day for its story on vegetables grown in gutters in Mumbai and to Hindustan Times for its coverage of the Jaipur Literary Festival, minus too much aw-ing and ah-ing. The Times of India had a round up piece on the festival with two bylines but read like a PR press release.

     

    **

     

    Having ripped into ESPN-Star last week over coverage of the Australian Open, a slight scheduling course correction was visible and the final was telecast on EPSN despite the last ODI between England and India and the Ranji final being on the same day. Indian tennis fans are grateful and would be even happier if we weren’t taken for granted so easily in the future… Ah well.

     

  • Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare on nightly news and on the internet

    Ranjona Banerji: Dissecting the discussions on telly…

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    “Well Mr Arnab Goswami, now I know why they say you’re a dangerous man,” said actor-superstar Kamal Haasan to Mr India-Wants-to-Know on Times Now on Thursday night. India’s most celebrated TV anchor (NDTV’s Barkha Dutt was ousted from that position a while ago, regardless of what Hillary Clinton may believe) demurred shyly at the charge, honoured though he may have been. However, in spite of all Goswami’s promptings, Haasan maintained that he would leave the country if pushed in the future and the secular nature of society was threatened.

     

    Haasan in fact mentioned two things which are at the forefront of discussion in India – in roundabout ways – neither of which Goswami picked up on. The first was that all this happened to Haasan on Mahatma Gandhi’s death anniversary. And the second was that the demolition of the Babri Masjid did more damage to us than we have fully understood.

     

    **

     

    The arrest of former Madhu Koda aide Anil Bastawade (for some reason Times Now reporters also insist on using his middle name which is Adinath) has excited Times Now more than anyone else. The mining scam under the former Jharkhand chief minister is estimated to cover about RS 4000 crore (also according to Times Now) but one cannot determine how far Bastawade’s involvement goes – somewhere near Rs 250 crore which seems a little meagre for so much excitement.

     

    **

     

    Karan Thapar’s Last Word on CNN-IBN discussed freedom of speech and the capitulation by governments to threats from fringe groups in view of recent events. The problem was that Thapar and three guests all had the same viewpoint – that the Tamil Nadu government had infringed on freedom of expression with its ban of Kamal Haasan’s Vishwaroopam. The only man who disagreed with Kumar Ketkar, editor of Divya Marathi, Aryaman Sundaram, lawyer and Najeeb Jung, vice-chancellor of Jamia Milia, was AN Krishnan, advocate general, Tamil Nadu. Krishnan kept referring to TN CM as “Amma” which sounded even more incongruous than his arguments about a possible law and order situation if the film was released.

     

    This makes for a non-argument since Krishnan was the only opponent. And while Thapar’s show is one of the few on Indian television where guests behave themselves, a discussion requires various points of view.

     

    **

     

    The Lokpal bill was threatening to overtake television again – or so I gathered from Twitter and a reasonable discussion on Rajya Sabha TV. Friday morning’s newspapers as usual took a wider view of life. But they were depressing in their own was as they were full of molestation of teenage girls, upper caste murders of Dalits in Maharashtra and rapes…

     

    CNN-IBN by the way has to be commended on its coverage of the murder of three Dalit youths in Maharashtra over a love affair with a Maratha girl. We clearly need to be reminded over and over again of our low and base nature and how outdated traditions continue to cause more harm than good.

     

    **

     

    This is just an observation but Firstpost, the news and views website of TV18, which was well-received when it started and has become very popular, has now started to pick up a fair amount of flak on social media. I am not sure whether this is because of its somewhat waffling political opinions or the ill-considered comments on Shah Rukh Khan by my former colleague Venky Vembu or the natural attrition which follows popularity… A reality check is perhaps in order?

     

     

  • Every week, Deepa Gahlot casts a critical eye over media reviews of Bollywood releases… in Reviewing the Reviews

    Reviewing the Reviews: 2-2.5 stars for David

    David

    Key Cast: Vikram, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Vinay Virmani,Tabu, Lara Dutta, Isha Sharvani & others

    Directed: by Bejoy Nambiar

    Produced: by Bejoy Nambiar & Sharada Trilok

     

    Bejoy Nambiar’s David is the kind of film that exasperates critics. It has a lot to commend it for, but like the runner who trips before the finishing line, it just doesn’t make the grade. Visually masterful, with an inventive idea and structure, the film goes wrong with it script and pacing. Which is why most critics settled for a 2 or 2.5 rating, instead of 3. But they all read like it hurt to pan this one.

     

    Rajeev Masand of ibnlive.com commented, “Oozing style and technical finesse reminiscent of his earlier film Shaitan, Nambiar’s latest has some genuinely tense moments, but suffers gravely on account of flabby writing. Each track feels unnecessarily stretched, and there are bizarre moments in each story that’ll have you scratching your head in bafflement.”

     

    Sukanya Verma of rediff.com wrote, “Bejoy Nambiar’s gorgeously packaged, well-acted but underwhelming David is like a split personality, racing on three different tracks exhibiting the skills and shortcomings of both these fellas. On one hand, it is incredibly grand in its ideas and challenges the traditional structure of storytelling. On the other, it’s uneven, often dragging pace and frantically shifting moods, unable to hold fort.”

     

    Shubhra Gupta of the Indian Express was disappointed too. “My problem with David is not that it didn’t suck me in, on and off. There were a few passages which are well executed, and there’s no lack of drama in those: Nambiar knows how to lift scenes and inject tension. What the film doesn’t do is to pull together. Within each strand itself there are loose parts, which even smart editors like Sreekar Prasad can’t do much about. The film is also hobbled by inconsistent acting : some of it is credible, some is strictly passable.”

     

    Karan Anshuman of Mumbai Mirror was relatively mild. “Director Bejoy Nambiar shuns convention like a Shaitan shuns his morals. With David, he brings us three short stories of diverse genres and delights with his now characteristic visual flair but perhaps is a tad ambitious in attempting to thrust together multiple yarns in 150 minutes that could’ve been entire films in their own right.Still, David is infused with energy and where it lacks in substance, it makes up in style and original thought. It is essential to treat the three segments as individual plots by disregarding the muted manner in which they connect at the end. You may get the feeling that you’re watching one film considering the tales intercut with each other, but your ticket cost will essentially be three shorts for the price of one feature.”

     

    Sanjukta Sharma of The Mint had a style-over-substance complaint, like most others. “With his first film Shaitan (2011), Bejoy Nambiar burst onto the narrow Indian indie scene as a director for whom a story on screen is as good as its post-production, machine-fed visual acrobatics. Call it the Guy Ritchie school. His new film David, a narrative involving three separate lives that share the same name, firmly establishes him in that school. We need some of those directors—optimizing a visual in every sense, and the medium’s technological possibilities. Style does not exclude substance.”

     

    Madhureeta Mukherjee of The Times of India raps it lightly on the knuckles. “The film swiftly transitions between eras, dramatically changing in colour, content, emotion and drama. Even the music – rock, remix, retro – blends beautifully across time zones. It suffers at story-level – the first half builds intrigue and enthusiasm, but turns blase soon after. The plot with D1 grips, D2 goes so deep to find purpose it loses us, and D3, even with interesting mix of characters leaves us in stupor…Yes, the Devil’s in the detail. But maybe David needed more ‘D’ of ‘Depth’ in the story to make this more ‘Delightful’.”

     

    Saibal Chatterjee of NDTV.com wrote with some admiration, “It is apparent from the outset that the unusual narrative triptych that constitutes David has inherent potential. It is another matter that it is, at best, only partially realised. Yet, in the end, writer-director Bejoy Nambiar delivers a film that he can be proud of, even more so than of Shaitan. Soaring, stylized, scruffy, scrappy and sharp by turns, David is never low on energy.  It plays around with a wide range of emotions, from the extremely intense to the oddly comical, from the flightily romantic to the strictly familial. It is about retribution, love and forgiveness – that is what each of its father-son stories respectively deals with. As the film repeatedly moves from the sublime to the absurd, it courts the risk of careening out of control. Mercifully, it doesn’t.”

     

  • Ranjona Banerji on how editorialising on a TV channel can be dangerous + the effect of newsrooms not hiring anyone over the age of 45

    Ranjona Banerji: Everyone on Times Now wants to be an Arnab Goswami

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Editorialising is a strange word. It, in effect, is a bad thing. Yet a newspaper must have editorials and an editorial page, where the newspaper’s stand on issues and considered opinions find a space. It is the core, the heart of a newspaper if you will. But when a reporter shifts away from the facts to deliver a judgment you have the taboo of editorialising. In most newspapers, there is a host of checks of balances, starting from the junior-most sub-editor who can stop a reporter from straying (and still mistakes can get through). But what happens in a TV channel?

     

    The short answer is: I don’t know. TV news in India is a beast which operates by a different set of rules. One reads in Caravan that Times Now does not bother to fact check or grammar check or anything check its running news updates which scrawl across the screen in case it misses out on “breaking” news. Can this be true? Empirical evidence suggests that in most news channels in India the common mantra seems to be: run first, check later.

     

    The reason for this diatribe is a curious set of running scrolls which I read on Times Now very late on Sunday night. India had lost the Davis Cup tie against Korea 1-4. To anyone who follows tennis, India’s top players and the All India Tennis Association have been locked in a fight for a year now and 11 players refused to play Davis Cup unless their demands were met. In this stand- off, India fielded who they could. Only a miracle could have saved India from loss and that miracle was not forthcoming. No surprises here to anyone who follows tennis or even sport.

     

    But Times Now ran a series of what I can call judgments or opinions: Players party after humiliating loss; What is there to celebrate?; Players celebrate Davis Cup loss and so on.

     

    Since then, I have unsuccessfully looked for the story to corroborate these news bites. I can myself think of a number of reasons why the players had a party, if indeed they did (as should anyone who has ever needed to drown a few sorrows!). I can understand that everyone on Times Now wants to be Arnab Goswami and thunder on about what the nation wants to know. But if Times Now wants to retain its 9 pm weeknight ascendancy, it needs to curb the enthusiasm of its other staff and allow Goswami’s the exclusive right to be India’s prime conscience-keeper.

     

    And editorialising needs to remain what it is: a bad word in the wrong hands.

     

    **

     

    There is a distressing age-ism in newsrooms where anyone over the age of 45 finds it increasingly difficult to get employment. I understand the current obsession with youth but it is also evident that all newsrooms suffer from lack of experience at various levels. The loss of institutional memory, informed opinion and superior judgment will be felt sooner than later and by that time, the current generation will have grown up on half-baked knowledge and the younger workforce will have lost out on the basics. This will be sad but unfortunately seems inevitable.

     

    **

     

    Many serious media commentators are disturbed by the lack of social diversity in newsrooms and are blaming this for the outright casteist and illiberal attitudes of media outlets in general. Any views on this?

     

  • The obsession of TV channels with Narendra Modi and newspaper-owners finding a friend in Markandey Katju don't amuse Ranjona Banerji

    Ranjona Banerji: Modi mania on news telly

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Narendra Modi gave a speech at a Delhi college and half of India’s TV channels wondered if it was time to anoint him as India’s new prime minister. The Gujarat chief minister has not yet been declared as a PM candidate by either the Bharatiya Janata Party or the National Democratic Alliance. With the general elections due around mid-2014, does this mean we are we going to be subjected to a year and a half of the same discussion on TV? Should Modi be the PM candidate? What will happen if Modi becomes the PM candidate? Will the Janata Dal (United) stay within the NDA? What does Nitish Kumar think and so an ad nauseum.

     

    Not that this isn’t an important subject. The problem is that so far not only is Modi’s ascension just speculation, there is a very real fear that we may be discussing nothing else for the next few months. BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad had a tough time on Times Now standing up for his party reserving the right to decide on its own prime ministerial candidate within its own time frame. If the onslaught of the nation’s right to know from Arnab Goswami wasn’t enough, Prasad then decided to take on veteran journalist Kumar Ketkar as well, for being a BJP detractor.
    It will be interesting to see whether new channels will telecast all speeches made by chief ministers in the national capital from now on, in case any of them feel they deserve to be prime minister…

     

    **

     

    Press Council of India chairman Markandey Katju has endeared himself to owners and managements of all media houses by bringing up the problem of governments using advertisements as a form of blackmail/coercion. Katju in his inimitable style wants some legal action against governments who behave like this. Owners, managers and editors all concur that governments regularly behave like this, particularly state governments which are more vindictive than the Centre. Some also complained that private companies can be as nasty as the government. Many pointed out that the press – print and television – are pillars of democracy and has to be supported. The additional problem of newspapers and magazines being sold for much less than production cost was also mentioned.

     

    It is indeed commendable that so many owners are so concerned about the importance of the press and the role it plays as a vital part of a democracy. These protestations would have been slightly more believable if owners and managements had not resorted to dubious and destructive practices like “paid news” and Medianet and its variations. Much of the degradations of the media today have come from within the media itself and unfortunately, senior journalists have not been strong enough to withstand owner/management pressure.

     

    As far as private companies and their advertising choices are concerned it is frankly hilarious that managements are complaining about advertisements being withheld because of negative stories which are well within journalistic rights. I know of no management which has supported a journalist doing a story which might hurt advertising. In fact, enormous pressure is put on senior editors whenever management gets to hear about such an impending story. This breast-beating to Mr Katju is nothing short of hypocrisy.

     

    The Press Council chairman may do well to take a closer look at how media houses function and speak to more journalists if he really wants to clean up the system. He can start with “paid news”. I put the term in inverted commas in the desperate hope that it has not yet become a legitimate part of the lexicon.

     

  • Every week, Deepa Gahlot casts a critical eye over media reviews of Bollywood releases… in Reviewing the Reviews

    Reviewing the Reviews: Special 26

    Special 26

    Key Cast: Akshay Kumar, Kajal Aggarwal, Manoj Bajapyee, Anupam Kher, Jimmy Shergill

    Directed By: Neeraj Pandey

    Produced By: Viacom18 Motion Pictures

     

    This second film by Neeraj Pandey of A Wednesday fame got surprisingly rave reviews – mostly raves, some rants too, but a general 3 to 3.5 star rating.

     

    It didn’t seem to bother any critic that the film glamourises criminals, but perhaps the climate of the country is such, that audiences want to see the powers that be humbled.

     

    So, in spite of plot holes, what-the-hell moments and an insipid romantic track, Special 26 has pleased quite a number of reviewers and public alike.

     

    Anupama Chopra of Hindustan Times gushed, “Special 26 is the best Hindi film I’ve seen this year. Inspired by a real-life heist in 1987, writer-director Neeraj Pandey constructs an elaborate cat-and-mouse chase between cops and robbers. Except, here, you’re rooting for the bad guys.”

     

    Rajeev Masand of ibnlive was positive too but also picked flaws, “If the film falters occasionally, blame it on the pacing; the first half feels particularly stretched out because of the needless songs that act as speed-bumps in the way of a smooth narrative.”

     

    Sukanya Verma of rediff.com wrote, “Pandey’s filmmaking has always prioritised matter over cosmetics. Like A Wednesday, Special Chabbis isn’t exceptional in technique — no fancy camera work or hip background score — but practical enough to assemble a robust, taut film that gets over sooner than you think. His focus is on movement to imply a breathless pace. All his characters are constantly on the move with long-shots of their energetic march towards the camera. But that doesn’t undermine his ambition or how effectively it achieves the same. Filming on New Delhi’s bustling Rajiv Chowk and transforming it into 1987’s Connaught Place is no easy task. Barring a fleeting shot of a Peter England showroom, Pandey recreates an earlier time with old Only Vimal advertisement logs and outdated car models like Ambassadors, Premiere Padminis and early Maruti 800s forming the sparse traffic.”

     

    Shubhra Gupta of Indian Express liked it, but with reservations. “There’s something greatly impudent about smart thieves impersonating a crack CBI team and making off with valuables from the homes of the rich and the corrupt. They do their research and execute the heists with precision, and keep getting away with it, till one day they come up against a smarter officer who smells a rat. A cat-and-mouse game begins, and the film keeps up the momentum, and keeps a nice surprise up its sleeve for the wrap.”

     

    Sanjukta Sharma of Live Mint was not terribly impressed. “The story and screenplay have the promise of a simple and linear heist. But Pandey digresses. He opens up a love story for Ajay. There are songs. There is a bhangra number set in Chandigarh. There are way too many scenes of either the four con men or the CBI team just walking towards the camera in slow motion. Past events are shown repeatedly in flashback. The background score, which imitates a bad disco track from the 1980s, hammers the film throughout. Every small action is set to music. Above all, a banal justification of why Ajay decided to pose as a CBI officer, giving him a fake moral aura, spoils just about everything about the character.”

     

    Madhureeta Mukherjee of The Times of India raved,”Inspired by a real incident, Neeraj Pandey cuts to the chor-police chase and weaves an intelligent, mind-racing thriller, keeping you tightly strapped to your seats. It captures the 80’s era beautifully; and the cinematography (Bobby Singh) is a cut above (special mention: scenes in Connaught Place, Delhi, and Kolkata streets). The powerful background score enthuses the pace. The only place he loses momentum is the romantic track and dance number, kinda unwarranted, we must say. Interestingly, this con-job story is not superbly-stylish or stealthily serious. It doesn’t stun you with a social message like Pandey’s A Wednesday, but it grips, excites and ahh…climaxes too! And no … you can’t fake this one! Catch it for pure cinematic orgasm.” (Huh?)

     

    Saibal Chatterjee of NDTV.com raved even more. “One absolutely failsafe way of figuring out the efficacy of a movie is to measure how heavy its runtime weighs on the audience. Special 26 is actually quite a long film – it is a shade under two and a half hours. But it feels much shorter than it really is. It glides by with such effortlessness that it leaves behind no unsightly footmarks. Special 26 is an intelligently scripted, superbly acted, enthralling and believable heist film that is more than just that. Writer-director Neeraj Pandey’s maiden film, A Wednesday, was a taut thriller that delivered a sharp comment on the nation’s frequent and bloody brushes with the spectre of terrorism. This one turns the spotlight, if only tangentially, on India’s collective and seemingly never-ending struggle to rid itself of the scourge of rampant corruption.”

     

    Janhavi Samant of Mid-day commented, “There is no doubt that Neeraj Pandey’s second film is a winner. Pandey and his production crew also stay strictly loyal to the era of the story, India of the 1980s. Only Maruti 800s and Fiats on the roads, no skylines visible anywhere, briefcases, watches, the look is authentic and enhances the sober mood of the film. The story is fast-paced and thoroughly gripping, so much so that the protagonist’s minor romantic track actually seems like a drag. Much of the film’s success can be credited to an absorbing and audacious plot and its gentle sarcasm and quiet humour.”

     

    Pratim D Gupta of The Telegraph wrote, “About 26 minutes less and Special 26 could have been a great film. That’s roughly the length of the two songs and the irritatingly redundant romantic track, which serves the star in the lead but does extreme disservice to what is otherwise a fun, sharp and thoroughly entertaining movie experience. Like he had done in his much-loved directorial debut A Wednesday!, Neeraj Pandey again scores with a one-line concept. Latching on to the 1987 fake CBI raid – and robbery – of the Opera House branch of Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri in Mumbai, the writer-director spins an engaging – maybe a tad loopy – con heist, a genre curiously ignored in Bollywood. Asli power idea mein hai!”

     

    Sudhish Kamath of The Hindu got it right. “You got to love this Neeraj Pandey. For, he has his heart in the right place. Special 26 is in many ways similar to his fantastic debut thriller A Wednesday. It packs in the collective angst of society towards a certain group and provides catharsis through the actions of the protagonist. But there are departures as well, if the first was about vigilante justice, this isn’t half as righteous. It’s no Robin Hood.”

     

  • Ranjona Banerji finds once more that TV news has taken the art of debating to an all-new low

    Ranjona Banerji: Yes, Karan Thapar, TV debates can sink further – and they have!

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    TV host and columnist Karan Thapar very kindly articulated in his Sunday column in the Hindustan Times what many of us have been saying for a while now: TV debates in India have reached rock bottom. Well, welcome to Irony Central. Because while Thapar was writing about what passed for debate after sociologist Ashis Nandy’s comments about lower caste corruption at the Jaipur Literary Festival last month, TV debate delved deeper than rock bottom when it came to the execution of Afzal Guru. (http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/ColumnsKaranThapar/TV-a-Mea-Culpa/Article1-1009279.aspx)

     

    Given that we have to take any subject and then imagine all the possible, probable and delusionary scenarios around it, Guru’s hanging gave us in the media a field day. First, we had to try and create a Bharatiya Janata Party versus the rest slugfest. Not satisfied with that, we then had to make it a this-terrorist-versus-that-terrorist yelling match. When that did not create enough fireworks, we had to jump into why did the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir do what he did, say what he did and more.

     

    The word “should” now dominates our TV screens. It is flashed at us thousands of times a day: Should the government do this, shouldn’t the government do that, should he had said this, shouldn’t she have said that: the points where the news itself is actually shared or discussed has almost vanished. Instead, we are confronted with a barrage of judgmental possibilities.

     

    Unfortunately, none of these postures leads to any meaningful conversation or insights. Everyone on TV it seems wants to score cheap points off the other and all discourse is either limited to one-upmanship or attack. If any of these people who invade our homes every night and assault our senses were part of a school debate, they would be summarily dismissed the minute they opened their mouths.

     

    There are undoubtedly questions to be asked about Guru’s hanging, about the death penalty, about those who wait on death row, about legal aid, about others accused of terrorist acts, about political support for some of the accused, about the complicated politics of India, about the bloodthirsty nature of our populace – these are only some of them. But you would not have found an iota of sense from TV.

     

    Why Indian news TV does not occasionally abandon its love for traditional Indian theatre forms like tamasha and jatra and try one-on-one interviews with experts to illuminate an issue is puzzling. (To be fair, Karan Thapar does.) Is the only reason for these debates to create a spectacle or is there some journalistic purpose still discernible to anyone? It is certainly not apparent to me.

     

    Meanwhile, for those inclined here is a debate carried in The Hindu over Guru’s hanging. First do read the piece by author Arundhuti Roy and then a response by journalist Praveen Swami.

     

    http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/a-perfect-day-for-democracy/article4397705.ece

     

    http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/the-vanity-of-1312-truthtelling/article4400821.ece

     

    **

     

    I will not repeat that to make sense of any issue you have to read a newspaper… all right, I have just repeated it and it remains true.

     

    **

     

    To further illustrate the point, on Monday night, CNNIBN had an excellent exclusive story about the CBI accusing its own prosecutor in the 2G spectrum case of colluding with an accused. In an interview with the CBI director Ranjit Sinha, editor Rajdeep Sardesai kept on with the same line of questioning: will you do this and will you do that. Why not ask the director about corporate corruption, about the quality of prosecutors, about the difficulty of the 2G case. By focusing on a possible result at all times and to the exclusion of everything else, we lose out on the nuances.

     

    I for one refuse to believe that all Indians are too dumb to understand anything but the most obvious and cannot comprehend anything that it is not presented in a high-pitched hysterical manner.

     

    **

     

    And while we’re on this 2G case, perhaps it is time for the media to revisit the Radia tapes and assess whether enough has been done to safeguard our credibility. Sorry, excuse me while I die laughing.

     

  • Ranjona Banerji has a feeling that disclosure of this latest scam needs to be credited to The Indian Express

    Ranjona Banerji: So who really broke the Agusta Westland story?

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    If you are tired of the “I’ll be the judge, I’ll be the jury, pronounce you guilty and chop off your head” trials held in TV studios every night, try reading The Indian Express to get a deeper and wider understanding of the Agusta Westland helicopter deal and the Italian investigations into Finmeccanica. Although Times Now has been taking credit for this story, it does appear as if Indian Express has done (and had been doing) the bulk of the work.

     

    TV news channels seem now incapable of acting like journalists and have become trapped in their own images as it were. The details of this deal and its wrongdoings are still being revealed – the Italians have not named any Indians apart from former air chief marshal SP Tyagi and his cousins. Therefore, Indian journalists might consider some further investigations. The TV approach of calling sundry politicians who know nothing about the details of the deal and then cross-examining them maybe a good ego massage but it serves very little journalistic purpose. At least, we need not have the incredible sight of political gadfly Subramaniam Swamy directing CNNIBN editor-in-chief Rajdeep Sardesai on how to conduct this investigation.

     

    **

     

    An intriguing piece of news was hidden somewhere on the inside pages of the Times of India’s Mumbai edition. The Information and Broadcasting ministry is considering cancelling the licences of newspapers/journals who are involved in “paid news”. This comes after the Election Commission has taken action against politicians involved in bribing newspapers, journals and news channels (is there a more polite way of saying this?) to get favourable pre-election coverage. However, even at that time, questions were raised about why the media houses were allowed to get away with it.

     

    What will media houses make of this? Can the loss of the right to conduct business deter owners and managements from further perverting their “products”? Is the fear of government action the only way to force the press to follow its own ethical code? Or will we now see a spate of stories targeting the I&B ministry and the very amusing spectacle of various CEOs of media houses attempting to justify their dubious practices in long-winded and badly written edit page articles?

     

    **

     

    Is it just me or was this Valentine’s Day one of the least silly we’ve had in recent times? There was the usual quota of love-no love stories, but nothing seemed extraordinarily over-the-top. A little more humour and fun might have been interesting. Judging from the number of jokes made by Indians on twitter, the traditional newspaper idea that no one reads humour columns in India is ready to be challenged. Rohan Joshi for one does a very good job at making us laugh in Mid-Day on Saturdays and The Week That Wasn’t has tickled ye old funny bone for eight years on CNNIBN now. Bring it on, I say!

     

    **

     

    This is a slight departure from the serious and grey-haired subject of the woes of journalism. But can we have better sub-titles and less censoring of English programmes on TV? The number of words which are bleeped out have crossed all bounds of sense and are worthy of a separate programme on Comedy Central – which by the way is the worst culprit. For the morally clean-minded: vulgarity alert. You cannot hear the words “penis” or “vagina”. That is one thing. But you cannot even hear the word “booby-trap” which has nothing to do about “boobs” or breasts. I shudder to think what goes through their minds when they come across a character named “Dick” or someone feels a “prick” from a rose bush… More seriously, what happens when characters discuss breast or testicular cancer?

     

    With that happy thought, I leave you for the week.

     

  • … and, save the Mumbai Mirror, no play to the drought scene in Maharashtra

    Ranjona Banerji: Katju, Chaudhuri and the freedom of speech

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Press Council of India chairman Markandey Katju is a man who neither minces his words nor is he frightened of airing his many opinions. He started off his tenure as PCI chairman by stating most journalists neither knew what they were talking about nor how to go about their jobs. He threatened to file several cases against all kinds of transgressors in the Indian system. He claimed that 90 per cent of Indians were idiots. And now he has called the bluff on the claims of development made by the Narendra Modi government in Gujarat.

     

    For some reason, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Arun Jaitley had been very upset by Katju’s article published in The Hindu. He immediately wrote a counter article for the website rediff.com demanding Katju’s resignation as PCI, calling him pro-Congress (in BJP speak that is apparently akin to questioning someone’s parenthood). Katju responded by saying that Jaitley should resign from politics. Rajiv Pratap Rudy of the BJP likened Katju to a “vagabond” while Digvijay Singh of the Congress questioned whether Jaitley was defending Modi because he owed him is Rajya Sabha seat.

     

    This low calibre back and forth looks like ideal journalistic cannon fodder but we seem to have become even more faux earnest and full of ourselves than normal and perhaps take politicians too seriously…

     

    Of course, the issue of whether Katju has the right to freedom of speech has been forgotten in this whole fracas. A highly opinionated man is surely entitled to his own opinions? He might need to take this up somewhere…

     

    **

     

    Talking about freedom of expression, the curious case of the Gwalior court directing the Department of Telecom to block 73 URLs mentioning IIPM and Arindam Chaudhuri has demonstrated once again how India’s cyber laws infringe on this basic right. The University Grants Commission has once again posted on its website that IIPM is not authorised to award degrees says a story in Tuesday’s Economic Times. The UGC was one of the URLs blocked by DoT.

     

    The connection between IIPM and various media houses is hardly news and it is one of the ways in which this institution, which has had many questions raised against it, has managed to survive and thrive. All those journalists who have done investigations into the promises made by IIPM have been targeted by the group, which has used its media clout to get favourable publicity in spite of its lack of recognition by the UGC. The UGC in its July 2012 notice had warned students that the “institution was not recognised by the higher education regulator and not authorised to award degrees” to quote The Economic Times.

     

    Even if Chaudhuri is fighting defamation charges, the UGC information is surely vital to prospective students? It is interesting that while our TV channels are chewing their intestines every night over the Agusta-Westland helicopter deal, we have not seen Chaudhuri being hung, drawn and quartered on some TV channel… The power of advertising?

     

    **

     

    As far as the Agusta-Westland deal is concerned, instead doing hard core investigative journalism, our TV studios have turned into trial courts and giant advisory bodies where celebrity news anchors tell everyone else what to do and what questions to ask. So far, however, no one really seems to be following their thundering instructions.

     

    **

     

    Kudos to Mumbai Mirror’s Sunday edition for its cover story on the drought in Maharashtra, which has not got much newspaper play in the city. We need to be reminded from time to time that there’s an India beyond malls and anti-aging creams…

     

  • Ranjona Banerji writes on the coverage of the Hyderabad blasts on TV and in the papers

    Ranjona Banerji: Ad gains over news at TOI

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    A bare few hours after the serial blasts happened in Hyderabad our news channels were on their usual inquisitorial quest for answers to questions only they wanted answered. A person who does not spend his or her life in front of a TV screen would have had little clue about what had happened but would know that the chief minister has visited (why, though if he hadn’t the question would have been why not), that the Union home ministry had sent indications (why had no one acted), that America had managed to pre-empt terror attacks (why can’t we) and was it the Lashkar-e-Taiba or Indian Mujahideen or a response to the hanging of Afzal Guru or a reaction to Union Home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde’s comment about the RSS and BJP holding terror camps.

     

    Yes, you might be wondering: what happened and in which part of Hyderabad, how many people died and how many were injured. For this you would have to read the scrolls running at the bottom of your TV screens since the Intifada was in full flow. I must give credit to Headlines Today for putting a Google map up on screen but since they didn’t contextualise the area – Dilsukhnagar – one was none the wiser.

     

    By the time the newspapers arrived on Friday morning, none of Quasimodo’s questions were answered and instead we got the details of what had happened. When journalists are taught about the Five W’s and an H, no one tells them that ‘Why’ is the only question to be asked. Or maybe they do. Judging from what passes for instruction in journalism schools in India…

     

    Of course, the only newspaper which could not answer the right questions was The Times of India’s Mumbai edition. Because it came covered in glossy orange selling something or the other and a tiny legend somewhere told you that, “This particular edition had to be released at 10 pm, which is much earlier than usual, for unavoidable reasons. For the latest news, please go to…”

     

    The “unavoidable reasons” were clearly the money which was to be made and perhaps newspapers should just tell its readers the truth: “We have sacrificed the news today because so-and-so advertiser has come up with this daft idea and as a result we have had to change our printing and distributing schedules”. As to who the advertiser in this case was I cannot tell you as I threw the glossy orange paper aside and didn’t bother to look at the name and could not be bothered to pick it up again. Did anyone else pay attention and rush out and buy the product or service or whatever?

     

    **

     

    There have been some complaints that the Indian media has not picked up on the Shahbagh protests in Dhaka. Many of these complaints are in the Indian media itself, but in the opinion sections. The Shahbagh protests are being compared to the Arab Spring and refer to the anger amongst young people that those who sided with Pakistan in the Bangladesh movement for freedom are not being sufficiently punished, amongst other things. The murder of one of the main organisers of the movement, a prominent blogger, has also angered lakhs of people.

     

    Once again, the impact of social media cannot be underestimated. As for the Indian media, it is so obsessed with its own ideas that sometimes it forgets to look outside the window. Or maybe the windows are all covered in some glossy colourful newsprint provided by advertisers.

     

    **

     

    My careful (or willy-nilly) assessment of the weather bulletins on BBC World has led me to this conclusion: the weather people at BBC World are bored sick of the weather, which to them was usually a search for wherever the sun was shining. So now they package weather news into peppy little nuggets of holiday information. This is the right time to go skiing in Austria, sun-worshipping in “Ibitha” and so on. Meanwhile, there may be hurricanes, typhoons, murderous snow storms, droughts and anything else happening, but who cares? Just pack your skis and head for Innsbruck.

     

    Ranjona Banerji can be followed on twitter at @ranjona