Deep ka Blog

Great music, great director, pretty good actors.. and you start expecting a lot from the movie. Specially, when the same director had given a fantastic film like Rang De Basanti. You go for the movie with high hopes but as the story moves ahead, you start realizing that the grapes are sour..

To be frank, I seriously have no idea what was the story about.. till the last 5 minutes, I could not understand the purpose of the movie… was it about life of people in Delhi 6, was it about a grandson bringing his  ailing(?)grandmother to Delhi (from US), so that she can die in peace? or it was about a guy from US falling in love with girl from Delhi 6, or it was about Hindu – Muslims or it was about Kala Bandar (Monkey Man)

I am sorry guys, but this time, I failed to understand the story..actually failed to understand the purpose of whole movie…

The movie was like a bumpy ride, it was smooth for sometime, again became unstable.. we suddenly get lost and it comes back again to the track but again loses track.. and this continues till the end..

The first half started pretty well but few songs were stuffed in without reason.. though the songs were superb but I felt there was no reason for those songs to be added.. (e.g. Arziyan, Dil Gira Dafatan) also, I felt, some of the scenes were badly handled.. e.g. the scene where Roshan’s (Abhishek Bachchan) grandmother (Waheeda Rahman) gets unconscious.. they tried to make serious scene bit funny but it didn’t work for me..

2nd half was pretty much bad.. though there were no flaws as such but I was just waiting for the story to start, I wasn’t expecting Delhi darshan like 1st half, in the 2nd half too there were many silly things happening, actually in some of the scenes you feel like screaming “WTF is happening??”

On the acting front, I felt, there was royal waste of good actors.. Waheeda Rahman was very good, so were Abhishek Bachchan and Sonam Kapoor. But Rishi Kapoor was royally wasted, why he was needed? What did he do? He just appeared for around 10 minutes total? Wasted..

Apart from these actors, few other actors did very well in their small role.. the list includes, Atul Kulkarni as Gobar, Deepak Dobriyal as Mamdu, Vijay Raaz as Inspector Ranvijay Thakur, Cyrus Sahukar as Suresh, Pavan Malhotra as Jai Gopal and Om Puri as Madangopal.

To sum it up, I felt, the director was really confused about the movie, may be he got too deep into the movie and just got lost.. I think the movie needed Aamir Khan.. he could have turned this to another good movie… Aamir is perfectionist… but again, sadly, the role wouldn’t have suited him.. so, there was no other way..

Music was superb.. masterpiece.. A R Rahman knows how to make people dance on song like Genda Phool and Kala Bandar.. he is real genius..

So, overall, the movie wasn’t something which impressed me.. I would rate it Rating: Really disappointed  with this time..

These days I have been listening to old songs most of the time.. I don’t know, I find those oldies very pure, very true and very meaningful lyrics…

So, here is one of my favorite song from one of my favorite movies.. Golmaal, starring Amol Palekar..

Aanewala Pal Jaanewala Hai
Ho Sake To Iss Mein Zindagi Bitaado Pal Jo Yeh
Jaanewala Hai Ho Ho

Aanewala Pal Jaanewala Hai
Ho Sake To Iss Mein Zindagi Bitaado Pal Jo Yeh
Jaanewala Hai

Ek Baar Yoon Mili Maasoom Si Kali
Ho Khilte Hue Kahaan Pushpaash Mein Chali
Dekha To Yahin Hai Dhundha To Nahin Hai Pal Jo Yeh
Jaanewala Hai Ho Ho

Aanewala Pal Jaanewala Hai
Ho Sake To Iss Mein Zindagi Bitaado Pal Jo Yeh
Jaanewala Hai

Ek Baar Waqt Se Lamha Gira Kahin
Wahaan Dastan Mili Lamha Kahin Nahin
Thoda Sa Hasaake Thoda Sa Rulaake Pal Ye Bhi Jaanewala
Hai Ho Ho

Aanewala Pal Jaanewala Hai
Ho Sake To Iss Mein Zindagi Bitaado Pal Jo Yeh
Jaanewala Hai Ho Ho
Aanewala Pal Jaanewala Hai

You can watch the song on YouTube

Amazing song..

Well.. after No Smoking, I had almost lost the hopes from Anurag Kashyap movies.. Yeah.. yeah.. I know.. there were few who loved No Smoking and loved his style of film making.. but I was not one of them.. I am a common man, who loves to watch movies and enjoy them..

Okay, so coming back to Dev D, The music was what excited me most.. and 2nd one was Abhay Deol, this guy never acts in crap movies.. (Till now, he hasn’t), so I was kind of sure, if Abhay Deol is in it, the movie has to be something good.. I had basic idea about the plot, i.e. based on Devdas..

And yea, it is actually based on Devdas… it is Devdas but a modern version of it, told in different style.. wicked, weird style.. but at the same time, very interesting too.. I have no idea why, Taran Adarsh was expecting this movie to be faithful to the novel, Devdas. He even tried to compare with other old Devdas movies.. I mean, dude.. grow up.. new generation? Not typical love story movie?

Okay, not going to waste much of the time, the story is very simple.. A guy, in love with his childhood friend but could not get married due to misunderstandings or ego or whatever reasons you may call it.. the guy goes deep into drugs, alcohol and prostitutes.. and there comes our Chanda.. but is he in love with Chanda or still in love with his childhood friend Paro? Well.. no prizes for guessing but still, you have to watch the movie for that.. haha

So, what’s the deal with the movie? It’s a crazy movie with super funny dialogues but at the same time, the movie does not become a comedy movie.. it balances out well between comedy, drama, love and masala..

I remember, when I had gone for Sivaji, people started whistling and cheering for Rajnikanth and this was my 2nd experience after that.. here comes Abhay Deol and few guys from behind started whistling.. I have no idea if they were straights or not.. haha but 2nd shock was the claps for those funny dialogues.. and then people started singing Emotional Atyachar (when it was played).. damn, it was crazy.. this same parade continued till the end.. I mean, come on, you get to hear these kind of things in SRK movies or say Akshay Kumar to some extent but, here, the whole scenario is changed.. nor the movie is big budget.. nor it has big stars.. only one kind of well know guy and that’s it.. but it had rocking music and great masala content.. that’s it… and people got what they wanted..

It was time when, people used to stay away from these kind of movies.. but now, the shows are jam packed.. really impressive..

I guess, I should stop praising the movie and concentrate more on the review..

Okay, back to the review now..

First half of the movie was very well done.. the whole Paro – Dev story was superb.. it explored all the characters very well.. the 2nd half started pretty well, 2nd phase of Dev’s character was explored very well, in many scenes you will feel like “&%#% off dude, get back to your life…” liked the Chanda’s character..

But somewhere in the middle of the 2nd half, I felt, things slowed down a bit (after the accident thing – the ones who have watched the movie will be aware about it –), at this stage, I felt, the movie is being dragged unnecessarily.. but it wasn’t like, you start yawing.. but yea, it was slow..

The movie, had many bizarre things.. I have no idea if these kind of things happen in real or not though.. mostly in 2nd half.. the 3 guys coming on the screen all the time, singing songs, dancing, Chanda applying some funny makeup on Dev etc.. it was very weird but good, different..

On the acting front, Abhay Deol rocked.. no words.. he simply rocked.. Mahi Gill as Paro, was good at her part.. Kalki as Chanda was impressive.. but it is Abhay Deol who steals the show…

Amit Trivedi’s music was very impressive.. (had liked his music in Aamir too), few notable songs include, Emotional Atyachar (Rock version too), Paayaliya, Nayan Tarse, Pardesi & Aankh Micholi.

Anurag Kashyap rocked this time, though 2nd half needed some re-work but I really loved his different style of directing the movie.. this time he did not go too far (like he did in No Smoking).

In short, a very good movie.. though it might not be liked by people in single screens but definitely a worth watch.. I would give it Rating: . Go book the tickets.. (I am going for it for the 2nd time on Sunday)

I was working on a theme and wanted to display multiple link widgets (with options like display links from specific categories etc..) in the sidebar, since there was no option in Wordpress to do so, I was looking around on the net to display multiple links and luckily found this article on Twitter by SmashingMagazine.com and got to know about Wordpress Shortcodes. It was kind of heaven for me, as it was exactly what I wanted..

I started around playing with it and wrote a small piece of code to display multiple links in the widgets.

Here is how I did it…

First of all, add following code in the functions.php file of your theme

add_filter('widget_text', 'do_shortcode');

Above code will allow, Wordpress shortcodes to be called from the Widgets.

Now, you need to create a function which will contain the code for the links.

function show_links($atts) {
$show_links = "<ul>".wp_list_bookmarks($atts)."</ul>";
return $show_links;
}

add_shortcode('links', 'show_links');

Here, I have made a call to wp_list_bookmarks function and added shortcode called “links” for the same. I have customized the code according to my need. I am basically wrapping the list in <ul>. (Adding UL’s HTML code in the widget bar doesn’t seem to be working fine)

Once this is done, save the file, logon to your Wordpress admin panel, click on Widgets under themes, add a text widget and call your recently created shortcode:

[links title_li="" categorize="0" category="2" echo="0"]

In above shortcode, I am setting the title as blank, calling the links from the category ID 2 and setting the echo to 0, so that my wp_list_bookmarks does not echo the data (The data will be echoed from the variable show_links)

I guess, that’s about it.. I am sure, there might be better way to achieve the same results but at this point of time, I found this pretty simple, so implemented it.

I hope it helps

Also, do let me know, if you feel the code can be improved using different methods.

Okay, I admit, I was fedup with my blog’s old design.. I used to hate visiting my site, the text was not at all readable.. the font size was way too tiny..

So in short.. I badly needed a new theme.. but again, I didn’t want to use a free or paid theme (basically wanted a unique design), so designed the new version of the blog.. but due to work load, I am yet to finish the coding part…

So, for the time being, I bought this new theme and put it up.. much more readable theme.. loved the colors and simplicity..

Bought it from ThemeForest.net, name of the theme is Design Blog

Okay, that’s about it I guess.. going off to sleep now, Sunday is going to be work day this time..