They can't all be masterpieces

I don't want to dwell too much on the hot mess that is MF Husain's Gaja Gamini.  I have not spared the movie in my new review on Filmi Geek, and you can go read it over there.

Here at Sounds Like Power, the focus is on Shabana Azmi.  I can only guess that it is respect for MF Husain that led her (and other actors of similar stature) to sign on to this project.  I wonder if she had seen the script or understood Husain's so-called vision.  The movie is regressive, objectifying claptrap masquerading unconvincingly as feminist empowerment.  It's utter nonsense. 

However, it is only two hours long, is full of Madhuri Dixit looking gorgeous, has some very nice music, and is probably worth sitting through for the Shabana Azmi completist (if there happens to be another such in the world, besides myself).  After all, Shabana ca. 2000 may be the most gorgeous Shabana there is.

 

Sigh.  Shabana ji gets to carry a lantern and look fierce with Farida Jalal.

And, she gets to display some delightfully WTFish costuming while delivering the film's torturous final speech.

So, all right.  It's not as painful as Son of the Pink Panther, which this devoted fan also sat through in the name of Shabana-pyaar.  But it comes with stern, graphic warnings:  This film may induce the flinging of items at the screen accompanied by plaintive wails of "Why, Shabana ji, why?"

Birthday wishes

I have not forgotten Shabana Azmi's birthday.



Warmest birthday wishes to the great lady, who turns 58 today.

I have not forgotten you, either, the readers of SLP. I've just been very, very tired and have had to cut back on the extracurriculars for a while as I work through some things. I would like to keep up with the news of Shabana ji and keep you all posted as well. But for the last couple of months the energy to do that simply hasn't been there. I will try to get back to a more regular posting schedule soon. In the meantime, please bear with me, accept my apologies, and read my comments on Loins of Punjab Presents, which I finally got to see last weekend.

Loins of Punjab Presents finally on U.S. screens

It's been a long, long wait - nearly a year - but Manish Vij over at Ultrabrown reports that Manish Acharya's Loins of Punjab Presents ... is finally seeing a (limited) U.S. theatrical release.

Manish says the film, a screwball and very original comedy about a small-time desi talent contest in New Jersey starring Shabana Azmi, Ajay Naidu, and a bunch of other talented folks, will open September 12th on two screens in New York, and will later show in the San Francisco bay area, Chicago, and a few other cities.

I hope that if it does well it can be picked up for an even wider distribution. There are at least two art houses in metro Boston where it would fit right in to the usual program. But I am not going to wait to find out; I think I'll be heading to New York for that opening weekend. It's absurd that I have still not seen this movie.

Video interview "Cover Story"

Great thanks to reader Mihiri who left me this fabulous link in a comment a couple of weeks ago; it slipped off my radar screen somehow (Blogger handles comments somewhat inelegantly) and I missed it until quite recently.

What it is: a lovely video interview of Shabana Azmi from about four years ago, by Vir Sanghvi for (what I presume is) a television show called Cover Story. In the twenty-minute interview Shabana ji sings a Carnatic swaram, and discusses the difference between commercial acting and art-cinema acting, the Stanislavski method, why she became a film actor, being afraid to smile, why she decided to join a hunger strike for the rights of displaced slum-dwellers, and why she has refused to join any political party, among other things.

My favorite part of the interview is a story that is both about Shabana ji and about her parents. In 1986, Shabana Azmi joined her famous first hunger strike for Nivara Haq, an organization devoted to fighting for slum-dwellers whose homes are destroyed by government and private development, because she felt it was useless for her to lend her voice to the organization if she was not also prepared to go the distance demonstrating with them. It was a decision she made from the heart, quite risky for her career and her public perception, but she believed it was the right thing to do. Government officials tried to convince her mother, Shaukat Kaifi, to stop her, but Shaukat would not. Still, Shaukat was concerned for her daughter's well-being, and when Shabana ji's hunger strike was five days old, she sent a telegram to Shabana's father, Kaifi Azmi, who was then away in Patna. She's getting sick, Shaukat said, what can I do? Please talk some sense into her. Kaifi's response: "Best of luck, comrade."

You can watch the video here. (A note: I was only able to play the video in Internet Explorer; the player interacted poorly with my ad-blocker in Firefox.) And thanks again to Mihiri!

First look at Sorry Bhai

Glamsham has a little piece about Onir's Sorry Bhai, in which Shabana Azmi is again paired with Boman Irani. It includes the first still I've seen from the film, reproduced above. There is still no release date, though the article says "next year." I was hoping for a fall 2008 release.

"Rice Plate" from Dus kahaniyaan

I missed Dus kahaniyaan in the theaters, but when I noticed recently that someone had snuck parts of it up on YouTube, I couldn't resist taking a look at Rice Plate, Rohit Roy's segment starring Shabana Azmi and Naseeruddin Shah.

It was worth it.

Rice Plate is a fantastic piece of Shabaniana that every reader of this blog should take 10 minutes to watch. (What I've linked up there lacks subtitles, but I think you'll be able to follow what's going on even if you have no Hindi at all.) It's ten minutes of Shabana Azmi doing what she does best - a vibrant, physical performance in which she just transforms into an entirely different human being. In Rice Plate Shabana wears the skin of a cranky, bitter Tamilian grandma having a very, very bad day. Even though her character is dour, bigoted, and mean, I smiled through the whole thing, because her performance was a total delight. Do watch it.

AIDS JaaGo available at Jaman.com

Just a quick note to let you all know that all four AIDS JaaGo films are available from Jaman.com, the fun movie website that I worked for last year. The films are watchable on-line - no download required - and are subtitled.

Gratuitous screencap: Dus kahaniyaan

Even plainly dressed, wearing almost no makeup, and scowling, Shabana Azmi is gorgeous. I cannot stop looking at this picture.

Witchy woman

I recently had the pleasure to watch Vishal Bharadwaj's outstanding 2002 film Makdee. You can read my review of it at Filmi Geek.

Shabana Azmi plays a nasty witch who lurks in a spooky castle on the outskirts of a village. Even the sensible adults of the village are sufficiently frightened by her that they stop short at the gates of her sprawling property, hesistant even to set foot on her grounds. Word has it that anyone who darkens her doorstep will be turned into an animal. And when she turns a little girl named Munni into a chicken, Munni's feisty, mischievous twin sister Chunni enters a bargain with the witch to try to save her. Chunni must screw up her courage and face the scary witch on her own.

Shabana ji's writhing, snarling, scene-chewing performance in this film is an utter delight. Here's what I said about it on Filmi Geek:

She plays the witch with absolute relish, throwing herself into it with a broad physicality that is utterly delightful. From her creepy gyrations as she performs the magic to turn children into animals, to the growly snarl with which she delivers every line, to her punching-and-kicking fight scene at the film's climax, she transforms into the villain, completely. There is no dignity in this performance - just out-and-out entertainment.

What I mean by no dignity is that she holds nothing back, neither in portraying the most repulsive and terrifying aspects of the witch, nor in taking the witch's comeuppance. As she terrorizes Chunni she smacks her lips, rolls her eyes, and sucks down a bowl full of blood. In the film's climax, she punches, kicks, and falls ass over tea-kettle into a muddy pit. This performance makes her work in Umrao Jaan seem restrained by comparison. It's just magnificent.

For much of the film, Shabana ji is under heavy makeup; creepy and ugly, she is at times almost unrecognizable.









Everyone once in a while though, she'll put on a certain expression, and suddenly it's quite clearly Shabana ji, there under all that makeup:





Toward the end of the film, the witchy makeup comes off, but the manic insanity remains in her eyes and the snarl on her lips:









And, when she's close to defeat, a look of pure fear:



Despite her unusual look, the witch's voice is always unmistakably Shabana ji's, though she delivers her lines in a lower register than usual and adds a creepy complement of guttural growls to every line.

I didn't have any expectations for Makdee, but I absolutely loved it - it's a terrific piece of children's filmmaking, gripping, scary, creepy, gross, fun, thrilling, and engaging from beginning to end. All that and Shabana ji too, in a role that may be completely unlike any other on her lengthy resume. A total treat! I can't recommend it highly enough.

So pretty!

"Sajnaji vaari vaari", Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd. (2007)

After Shabana-gaana posts from the 70s and 80s, I wanted to show you something much more recent - "Sajnaji vaari vaari" from Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd. The clips of this song that are available on YouTube are really poor quality. I'm posting this link, but it really doesn't do this adorable song any justice.

(ETA: The clip I linked has been removed from YouTube, as sometimes happens. I found another one - even worse quality - but no guarantees it will be up for long. Sorry! )

Click here to watch.

I'm running out of decent YouTube clips and I'm only up to the third installment of shabana-gaana. I may have to take matters into my own hands ...

More on Loins of Punjab Presents

When I posted on Loins of Punjab Presents the other day I forgot to mention the film's official website, which has some lovely stuff. There are some stills, character sketches, and bios of members of the cast. Of relevance here at SLP, a few screencaps of Shabana Azmi (click the pictures for bigger versions):







Just gorgeous!

There's also a nifty little bio that lists just a few of Shabana ji's accomplishments.

Smoking hot

My Umrao Jaan post earlier today, combined with a re-watch of Shatranj ke khilari this evening, reminded me of this fact: smoking a houkah is smoking hot.






This is as true today as it was thirty years ago.

Does anyone know of any other films in which Shabana ji takes up the houkah?

Gratuitous screencaps: Umrao Jaan (2006)

Here are some lovely screencaps from my stash. I thought I'd start with something recent: last year's Umrao Jaan, in which Shabana ji took over the role her mother had played in the 1981 classic version of the story.

I found the film as a whole fairly weak, but Shabana ji was flawless, and it was a different kind of performance than she ordinarily gives; very broad, playing to the back of the house - even scenery-chewing. And it was completely delicious.