Abhinav Agarwal: bollywood

Showing posts with label bollywood. Show all posts

Friday, February 17, 2017

Aamir Khan's Games and a Management Lesson on Celebrity Brand Endorsements

Movie poster of Dangal
[image credit: Disney]

N
ow that it is becoming clear that Aamir Khan's latest movie, "Dangal", is going to be a blockbuster hit (it's already recorded the second-highest opening of any movie in 2016), and with significant financial contributions in the form of ticket sales from the so-called right-wing brigade, it is time to go back in time a little bit and look at lessons learned and not learned. Lessons on brand management, lessons on social boycotts and boycott-fatigue, and lessons on adaptability.

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Saturday, August 3, 2013

Mohammed Rafi - My Abba - A Memoir

Mohammed Rafi My Abba - a Memoir, by Yasmin Khalid Rafi

One-line review: a daughter-in-law's honest and loving tribute to a legend.
Short review: That Mohd Rafi was a genius at his craft is well-known. That he was also a genuinely good human in an industry known for its cut-throat and back-stabbing competition is what makes him an awe-inspiring legend, even thirty three years after his death. This book collects together his daughter-in-law's reminiscences of Mohd Rafi - her idol, her father-in-law, interspersed with her life before and after marriage, in Indore and later in London. A brief index of songs referenced in the book and twelve pages of black-and-white photographs add to the appeal of this short book.

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Saturday, February 7, 2009

Romancing With Life

Romancing With Life by Dev Anand

Format : Hardback
ISBN: 9780670081240
Size : 153 x 234mm
Pages : 448
Published : 28 Aug 2008
Publisher : Viking Adult

Dev Anand, Dilip Kumar, and Raj Kapoor, were the first three superstars of Hindi cinema, before there were superstars. Each was born within a couple of years of each other (Dev Anand in 1923, Raj Kapoor in 1924, and Dilip Kumar in 1922), each started his career around the same time (Dev Anand in 1946, Raj Kapoor in 1943, Dilip Kumar in 1946), and while Raj Kapoor died in 1988, and Dilip Kumar has been in retirement for more than a decade (his last movie if I remember was Qila in 1998 or thereabouts), Dev Anand continues to go strong, acting in and directing a movie every few years for over six decades now, the latest one released in 2005. Dev Anand had the screen persona of a dashing, evergreen, ever youthful happy-go-lucky city chap, with a legion of a mostly female fan following. Even in real life he has carried himself with the same elan, and at 85 years is an inspiration for many people.

The book is a celebration of Dev Anand's (Dharam Dev Anand is his full name, as he informs us in the book) life and times, and his romance with life. It proceeds in pretty much a chronological fashion, starting with his childhood and ending with the year 2007, when the last chapter was written. It is written in breezy and mostly frank and honest style. Whether it is his sexual education, on the upper berth of a train, and then while shooting for his first movie, whether his struggles to find a footing in the Hindi movie industry, or his encounters with the censor authorities, or his crush for Zeenat Aman, or his first love with Suraiya, and the heartbreaking end to the affair, or his visit to communist Soviet Union, he comes across as refreshingly honest.

The book is divided into numbered chapters, each small. Sometimes only a couple of pages, but rarely more than 4-5 pages. Each chapter covers a specific episode. So you get one chapter each for Guru Dutt, Kisore Kumar, his brother Vijay Anand, Indira Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Nehru, Rajiv Gandhi... with a brief reminiscence by Dev.

The language is quite decent in the book, the prose is fairly engaging, perhaps a result of Dev Anand's Lahore Government College education (then one of the most prestigious educational institutions in the country in the then undivided India, pre-Aug 14/15 1947), or maybe Dev Anand got a ghost writer to spruce up the text.

Surprisingly, and refreshingly so, the book has a fairly comprehensive 12 page index, something you would not expect from a movie star's autobio.

However... while the book 400+ page book makes for quick and easy reading, it has shortcomings too.

You will learn nothing of the craft of film making from reading this book. You will learn nothing about the great movies that Dev Anand starred in. Whether Dev Anand's collaboration with the great director and actor and close friend Guru Dutt (Jaal and Baazi), nor the fantastic musical collaboration with SD Burman, nor the immense contributions of Chetan Anand and Vijay Anand (both brothers of Dev Anand) in such movies as 'Tere Ghar Ke Samne', 'Guide', 'Johny Mera Naam', 'Jewel Thief', 'Kala Bazar', 'Nau Do Gyarah'. You have to go through Dev Anand's filmography at the end of the book to realize that Raj Khosla had directed Dev Anand in some past greats like 'Bombai Ka Babu', 'Kala Pani', 'CID', and 'Solva Saal'. What made the great movies that Dev Anand starred in great? Why is it that Dev Anand did not have a single truly commercial or artistically acclaimed hit after he started directing his movies? Consider these truly unremarkable ventures like 'Ishq Ishq Ishq', 'Sau Crore ', 'Awwal Number', 'Gangster', 'Mr Prime Minister', 'Censor', 'Lootmaar' that Dev Anand directed and starred in? What were the lessons that Dev Anand learn from these disasters? Introspection? No. He acknowledges that 'Ishq Ishq Ishq' was one of the biggest disasters of his career. Why? You don't know.

Perhaps the style of his book can be summed up with a line from his movie, Hum Dono: "barbadiyon ka shog manana fizool tha, barbadiyon ka jashn manata chala gaya" (loosely and inarticulately translated as 'lamenting disasters was a waste, I celebrated disasters').

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Sunday, December 21, 2008

Bollywood Melodies

Bollywood Melodies: A History of Hindi Film Songs, Flipkart.com link)
This is a book written by someone who is in love with Hindi soundtrack music, and it shows in this short but very readable book.
There are several good things in the book. Firstly, it is short enough that it can be read from start to finish in one sitting. Given that a book on such a topic could well become an encyclopedic work, it is a commendable effort that the author is able to keep it to under three hundred pages, which included some 26 pages or so of song listings, and (I think) an eight page index. Second, there are enough pages devoted to most of the major figures in the world of Hindi soundtrack music, composers, lyricists, and singers included. Inordinate material is not devoted to any single artiste at the expense of some others. Where material on some of the early singers, composers, and lyricists is either not available or easily accessible, this cannot be helped. Thirdly, there are interviews with Pyarelal (of the Laxmikant-Pyarelal composer duo), Gulzar, Lata Mangeshkar, and Manna Dey. The interview with Gulzar for example is a refreshing change from most of the interviews you would have read on Gulzar, where the man is asked endless times to speak on his association with the legendary composer RD Burman. In the book, he speaks on the other composers like Sahir, Shailendra (who he considers the greatet lyricist of the Hindi music industry), and others. He does also speak on his partnership with RD Burman. Fourthly, the book is neatly divided to make it easy to read thematically, or even chronologically. There is a section on composers, which itself is divided into four sub-sections, the second on lyricists, and the third on singers. Each artiste is devoted roughly two to eight pages.
Expectedly, there are drawbacks and negatives also in this book. There are opinions in the book, that the author acknowledges as much, so that's a minor complaint with the book. Second, the book skims the surface of each artiste, but this again, considering the breadth of the book and the number of artistes considered, can probably overlooked. Thirdly, it is difficult to get a sense of any of the periods considered because the narrative is artiste focused. You would have to actually read the entire book and then collate the writing in separate chapters on different artistes to stitch some form of a sense of each of the periods, the decades, covered in the book. Fourthly, and deliberately so, controversies are neatly skirted. They are only alluded to briefly, but not covered in detail at all, nor their impact on the Hindi music industry analyzed. For example, the three year period when Rafi and Lata did not sing together in the early sixties, or when Raj Kapoor and Shankar-Jaikishan fell out for a brief period, or when SD Burman and Lata had a tiff and the former did not record any song with Lata for several years, and so on all had an impact on the Hindi movie music industry in some way or the other. These probably belong in another book.
Read this book all at once, or in snippets, or skim through the book as you please. A good book for someone looking to get more acquainted with the Hindi music industry's history.

This is the book blurb:

Bollywood Melodies traces the evolution of the Hindi film song to its present status as the cultural barometer of the country, through an evaluation of the work of over fifty outstanding composers, singers and lyricists—from K.L. Saigal to Sonu Nigam, Naushad to A.R. Rahman, Sahir Ludhianvi to Javed Akhtar. Placing the song in the social context of the times, Ganesh Anantharaman looks at the influences that shaped it in each era: Rabindra Sangeet in the 1930s, the folk-inspired 1940s, the classical strains of the following decade and the advent of Western beats in the late 1960s. The author also chronicles the decline of music in Hindi films over the next twenty years before a new crop of musicians and singers gave the film song a new lease of life.

Erudite yet lively, and including insightful interviews with icons like Lata Mangeshkar, Dev Anand, Gulzar, Manna Dey and Pyarelal, Bollywood Melodies is not only a treasure trove of information for music lovers but also an invaluable guide to understanding the nation’s enduring love affair with the Hindi film song.

The book got a fair number of reviews in the Indian press:

This is the Penguin Books India page on the book: http://www.penguinbooksindia.com/Bookdetail.aspx?bookId=7063

These are some books that turn up when you do a search on Amazon on this area. There are likely many more books, better and more comprehensive, that are out there. If buying in India, the prices are likely to be much cheaper. This book, 'Bollywood Melodies', for instance lists for $13.42 on Amazon, but its list price is Rs 295 (US$6.15 at Rs 48 to the dollar), and you can pick it up at a 10-20% discount from some stores.