MxMIndia

Tag: Alfred Hitchcock

  • There's more reason than one why there's much excitement about mega-show Satyamev Jayate that kicks off on May 6

    The Importance of Being Aamir Khan

     

    By Biswadeep Ghosh

     

    Do you know anyone who hasn’t heard of Satyamev Jayate, a Sunday show with which Aamir Khan will make his debut on the small screen? Impossible, unless your reclusive acquaintance inhabits a cocoon and has no access to the television, newspapers and the internet. The most intelligent strategist in the Hindi film industry, Aamir has emerged from behind an impenetrable veil to discuss the show with the media. He has discarded his aura of exclusivity that makes him unreachable so often, the result being that journalists are relishing each and every moment in the company of the superstar. They are reporting on his first ever serial faithfully, making Satyamev Jayate, a forthcoming Aamir Khan event many Indians are waiting for.

     

    Those who have followed Aamir’s career with detached objectivity know a few things about the man. He has manufactured an image of being ‘serious about what he does’, as if his counterparts in the entertainment industry are a bunch of flippant characters for whom life is one big joke that never ends. As part of his image-building exercise, he has highlighted his social activism, a quality he seemed to have developed after being in the industry for a long time. He is his own USP, using the power of which he is giving veiled hints about what Satyamev Jayate will offer to the viewer.

     

    A ‘thinking man’s actor’ and a ‘perfectionist’, Aamir has given countless interviews while humming a tune of mystery-heightening ambiguity. ‘It’s about connecting people, touching human hearts. It’s about human stories, coming to understand what life is like. For me, the show has been a kind of a personal journey,” he told the Indian Express. Please read the excerpt again. What exactly is he saying? Actually, very little, but that is the idea anyway. He has been categorically clear that he doesn’t want to discuss the specifics. It is as if Satyamev Jayate is an Alfred Hitchcock thriller whose plot will give the criminal away before the film begins.

     

    The show that has been dubbed in many languages will be telecast on the Star network and Doordarshan. The Star-Doordarshan tie-up will ensure viewers everywhere, whether they live in a Vasant Vihar mansion in New Delhi or in a village named Hatgamariya in Jharkhand. That it is being shown on an early morning Sunday slot implies that everyone, right from hardcore Aamir Khan fans to reluctant TV watchers, will be tempted to check it out. Cricket being the only area in which satellite television channels have shared network space with Doordarshan in the past, Satyamev Jayate will inevitably get the maximum number of viewers of a non-cricket show in the initial stages at least.

     

    Not that promotion of films or television serials is a new phenomenon. In today’s times when nobody can ensure a film’s success, even Salman Khan who hardly ever promoted his films till recently has changed gears to talk about his releases before they hit the marquee. The strategy has worked. Always the most active channel-hopper, Shah Rukh Khan’s marketing of Ra.One redefined the way in which a film is being sold by the Hindi film industry. Of course, Ra.One did not succeed the way it was expected to. But SRK tried.

     

    The master strategist, however, isn’t SRK: and certainly not Salman. It is Aamir. While both SRK and Salman have had their share of flops, facts prove that Aamir has had the least number of failures at the box-office. Even a mediocre film like Ghajini rocked, its success story partly written by viewers who went to watch Aamir’s eight packs: a fact that was marketed very smartly through his interviews and other promotional campaigns. When he produced Delhi Belly, he went all out to discuss the film’s ‘language’: one big reason why many viewers hit the halls to watch it.

     

    The big satya is that Aamir is better at the game that everyone plays. Not that his approach makes the success of Satyamev Jayate, a hundred percent certainty. Major film stars have hosted hyped shows, many of which have flopped. Amitabh Bachchan created history with the success of the first edition of Kaun Banega Crorepati, but Shah Rukh Khan failed to make the sort of impact his diehard fans believed he would. SRK did experience some success as the host of KBC’s third edition, but his decisions to host Kya Aap Paanchvi Pass Se Tezz Hain? and Zor Ka Jhatka: Total Wipeout had disastrous consequences. Govinda as the host of Jeeto Chappar Phaad Ke made zero impact. The Salman Khan-steered show Dus Ka Dum started off really well. By the time the second season came to an end, however, its popularity had withered away. Akshay Kumar experienced success with Fear Factor: Khatron Ke Khiladi. Yet, few bothered to see him in MasterChef India: Season 1.

     

    Aamir’s well-disguised expressions have spun a lot of curiosity about Satyamev Jayate. The show’s reach is far wider than that of others hosted by film stars so far. If it succeeds, it will write an extraordinarily significant chapter in the history of Indian television. If not, the story of its failure will be discussed for a long time: more so, because it has been made by a man who owns a magic wand which nobody else does.

     

    The star is at the centre of a shrewdly developed promotional campaign. But once Satyamev Jayate hits the small screen, it won’t be long before hype gets jettisoned by the people’s acceptance or rejection of the real thing. The suspense around the show will guarantee a full house on the opening day inside each household. Having been there, done that, Aamir surely knows that is not enough.

     

  • Yawny soaps, tepid Hitchcock, but a riveting Javed Akhtar.

    Gouri Dange: A Random Harvest

    By Gouri Dange

     

    I honestly tried, the other day, to watch a random Hindi soap. I first hid the remote, so that I was not tempted to shout in Marathi “shyaa kay rubbish” and switch channels. So I hung in there. While I watched the crumpled drama unfolding, I also noticed the way they put together a sequence even now, in most soap opera shoots. Which is that most of the actors have no idea what the script is or what episode they’re shooting for. The director or eighth assistant director is put in charge of extracting (yes, like toothpaste from a finished tube) reaction shots from one actor. The seventh assistant director is getting another actor to deliver lines, of course without anyone in front of him/her to give appropriate reactions. “Sab editing mey ho jaygega” is the assurance that is given. And there you are, watching the results – just a series of close-ups and chopped up shots that are supposed to make up a scene.

     

    Anyway, all this is old hat, and the one soap that I used to watch that looked like real people and real situations and real interiors (Ladies Special) and good composite shots with several actors actually in the same frame, was summarily pulled off the air a while ago, reconfirming that I live in a bubble.

     

    So then I took hold of the remote again, and pressed the ‘i’ button on it – i for information about this particular soap. Here is the information provided by the channel, and now you tell me, does this not merit jumping to the next channel:  ‘Vijay stops Jay from being reckless and she realizes that Moniya will eventually hurt Uday’s ego. Uday threatens Moniya into coming for a drive. Moniya is getting bored and is expected to spot Akash.’  (I swear I am not making this up – including the first confusing ‘she’ in reference to said Vijay and Jay.) All I could say was huh? and switch channels.

     

    There was Alfred Hitchcock Presents on FX. I watched a full episode, and I may be committing a big crime here by saying this, but it was rather boring and flat. This is the second one that I watched, and I was disappointed for the second time. There were simpleton-set-ups, trite dialogues, and predictable endings. To top it all, Hitch himself appears at the end, and where earlier he would add a grim note and send more shivers down your spine, in these episodes he further dilutes the effect by making some joke about the episode or the victim. No fun… whatever happened to the episodes that would leave you so frozen in fear that you would not dare put your foot off the sofa to get to your bedroom, when it was done?  But of course I loved the lighting, the B&W faces, the Classic American diction that was different from today’s American mumble.

     

    On I wandered randomly, without much hope, to be rewarded at 7.30 pm by Classic Legends on Z Classic. Javed Akhtar talks about some of the greats of Hindi Cinema (this time it was Bimal Roy). And what a raconteur he is. I am told he speaks from memory and not a written script at all, and I believe it. Firstly it is such a pleasure to hear good Hindi (after a day of listening to the chuckleheads on FM Radio in your car speaking the idiot-version of ‘chat-pata’ Hindi). And then there are his insights, the stories, and those little particular things that he points the viewer towards, before showing a small clip that illustrates his point. It is as if he shows you that one pivot of the entire film that he is talking about, that one crucial well-oiled piece of machinery, on which that film rides. You have been up until then unconscious of it, but what he tells you about it and the clip that he chooses to show – they give you that ‘aha’ moment; you recognize why you have been so involved and moved by that particular part.  For instance, he spoke about the forlon foghorn of the boat scene in Bandini, and when the clip is played, you say to yourself, ‘of course, I know how this sound makes me feel whenever I have seen it!’ A programme like this sets off your own memories and associations, as all legends must and do.

     

    I have only one crib (or perhaps three) about this programme. Why such a generic and vague sounding title ‘Classic Legends’? Why the cold set which looks like Javed Akhtar has been plucked out of his own sitting room and placed in some large desolate half-warehouse  half-disco during off hours?  And lastly, you have to listen to the programme at a fairly high volume (prompting others around you to smirk about you going deaf etc) because the last three words of each sentence are simply not audible, or are severely shortened/eaten up. Given that Javed Akhtar’s every word counts, I feel slightly cheated.