Wednesday 5 September 2007

Watched a Movie!

Chak De!

You never thought you would hear me talk about this, did you? The fact of the matter is that my husband loves going to the movies, and for a brief honeymoon period we used to watch a movie every weekend, even if I fell asleep through half of it. He loves those action & drama things that Hollywood churns out so routinely. Denzel Washington, Harrison Ford, and what not. Perhaps that shows you that for the past five years or so I am a little out of touch, considering how old these guys that I am talking about are! He would always manage to talk me out of chick-flicks, and since I rarely had enough enthusiasm to go without him, the only real chick-flick I managed to see in the past billion years is Romy & Michelle’s High School Reunion (I strongly recommend this one, it rocks). Anyway I would go to all these movies with him but I would insist that they were all exactly the same, like there is a whole series of them based on American Presidents, starring Gene Hackman & so on, which are identical. It infuriates him to hear me say this, the man who has watched A Few Good Men about a million times and can quote word for word all the dialogues, and still, when it plays on the Idiot Box on a Sunday, will abandon everything else and glue his eyes to it.

Well, that’s him, don’t tell him I said all that about him here, OK buddy. In a coup of sorts I convinced him to watch Chak De! I reminded him incessantly that the only sort of movies that we watched in our hey-days that we both enjoyed were Sports Movies. The Mighty Ducks, The Air Up There, anything to do with any Basketball Player ever made, that stuff. Also we go so very rarely to watch movies these days (last one being Sivaji), that he was almost excited to go along. Despite SRK & Bollywood’s general tendency to break into song & dance (which is another place we completely bifurcate at; he switches away from songs, I flip channels to find them), and generally cry randomly. You know, nothing clever about them, no coherent mention of the IRA or Bad Russians. No particular statements that catch you, no ‘You want the truth, you can’t handle the truth’ type stuff. Plus he is still reeling from Kal Ho Na Ho where SRK did his ‘Mera DIL to kamzor hai’ dialogue & cried and generally irritated everyone mightily even when he died. So, you may say, coup it was. Plus we had to take the child along.

I would say, in all, that it was good fun. I did not feel miserable and irritated when I emerged out. I was feeling all enthusiastic about going for a game of something, soccer, basketball, squash, whatever. The girls were great, I think you are supposed to say that, it’s the politically correct thing to say. But really, not all of them, but the Punjabi girl was real cute, and while the short one was irritating (despite or because of the fact that she reminded me of myself), she had some good dialogues. Some of the ladies looked a little too made up to be real sports people, but then maybe I could give them the benefit of doubt based on the fact that my connection to reality is poor. And SRK, well, several things about him: (a) He looked real nice, that ginger-ish beard thing was good, also very fit (b) He did not cry, or dance, or laugh maniacally (c) He runs well, not in the usual manner of Bollywood. I am willing to forgive his poor basketball dribbling skills exhibited in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai now (d) Did not sing in the middle of the stadium or appalling things of that nature.

So, yeah, good movie. I was feeling so good at the end of it and almost as if SRK was a friend I would go drinking with on a Saturday night that later in the evening when I had some very very rarely achieved alone time, I decided to watch Veer Zaara. Which was really a bad move on my part, it took forever to finish thanks to advertisements every three seconds, he cried and recited random poetry and made his hands shake and acted all vague and old and rubbishy most of the time, and though I kept telling myself that I believe in true love, felt like crap at the end of it. So despite Chak De, I will restrict myself to song videos & if I ever meet Shah Rukh Khan on the streets (ha ha!), tell him honestly that I like his beard.

PS: Must avoid Om Shanti Om, viewed from any angle, this one will be painful.

4 comments:

SrgntPepper said...

I am a self avowed SRK basher, so had no intention of watching this movie. But a coupla factors intervened, have played a bit of field hockey myself, and a fair bit of it in a mostly girls league in the USofA, where, ahem, it is a sport for girls, and ageing indian and pakistani men. The american men beat each other up in ice hockey. The second of course was my recent acquisition of a significant other, who like all true blue members of the girl gender love SRK. Having said this, I liked movie too, it is wonderful to see women running down a hockey field, and atleast some of the cast had definitely handled a stick before. Of course, the lack of a love interest for SRK was the real clincher.

And since you brought up movies that you know backwards but want to see one more time, a coupla submarine movies come to mind, The Hunt for Red October, Crimson Tide, Al P's speech in Scent of a Woman.. In the chick flick category, Out of Sight is very good, I find myself enraptured by it.

Preeti Aghalayam aka kbpm said...

srgntpepper - are you saying i am not a true blue member of my gender. HMPH. i dont like SRK's movies but i do think he is great in, say, talk shows with Karan Johar. and now i think he can run well, good action, does not remind one of Ameesha Patel, at any rate.

and Puh-leej dont even say these Hunt for Red October and so on in my presence. I am glad to have lived that one out. if you even remind him he will quote what he thinks are wonderful dialogues from those. see that is true love for you, watching those horrendous movies just because he likes them. thats the kind of team spirit i have. but it stops there, i DO NOT want to see any of that stuff again.

eff this, hows this, let us run past Mannat and yell out for SRK to join us in our run. we could do that couldn't we? and i could tell him about how i liked his beard.

Airspy said...

hey kbpm, you couldnt have missed out the DON could you? If you have, then watch it pronto. I know you belong to the tribe who believes the BigB cannot be remade. But so did I, and of course my spouse who grew up (and is curently ageing) watching all the 'vijay' movies and memorising them. Over the past 24 hours he has watched this SRK Don thrice, on various channels of the IBox.
Ya, the villager role and the 'moriya moriya' ness gets to you, but the rest is cool.

I take your word and am gonna watch chak de

Preeti Aghalayam aka kbpm said...

AirSpy-
Sometime ago, on a bus, they tried to play the new Don. Thankfully, we reached destination right around the time he meets up with Chunky Pandey, so I missed it that time. Recently, being more hardened to such things, I managed to watch it during my ramblings on TV. Could manage to see it. Would not, of course, recommend, re-viewings to the weak hearted. Which means, your spouse is one strong cookie, god bless.
God! I am watching too much TV, that is too much TV too little Sudoku. Must change immediately. Thanks for the inspiration.