If you are an English film buff, you would have probably realized that the title of this post :"We've Got Company!!" is one of the most abused dialogs in Hollywood films..as frequently as our own "agar maa ka doodh piya hain toh..." types. I mean take any Hollywood flick which has the military, special forces, cops, ops-teams, air force, etc. dealing with some supernatural calamity, creature or war like situation and some low-level officer seems ready with these 3 words. Let me enlighten you with an example -

eg.  -  Some military officer seems to notice something happening out there on his radar or whatever and the first thing he says is: "Sir! I think you should see this" and gets a hassled senior officer on the scene. Then using a slew of the latest technology they find out that they are screwed big time..then they would probably discuss this in an emergency meeting with the "Mr. President" from the White House.... (u get the picture!) >>>FFWD to the scene where a team of special forces are tracking down a lost Godzilla/an angry dinosaur/inhospitable alien or whatever. The person-in charge is generally a jerk and that's why doesn't become the hero. So another junior level officer realizes that they have been followed by the concerned antagonist and then voila! he hits pay-dirt  - turning on his walkie-talkie or headset he says the 3 magical words "We've got company".

Gimme a break!! Don't think just because English films look good they are good. WE Indians are not inferior in any way when it comes to films. Reallllllleeee.. My patriotic self will make you realize the shallowness of these 'gora' film-makers!!

Do you know why James Cameron's Avatar didn't get the Oscars for best film..coz he wasn't very original. I mean look down here.





See what I mean!! I got this in my mail a few days back and then I realized the inevitable truth behind it all. No wonder Avatar (the JC one) got 'hurt' by his own ex-wife's 'locker'. But like all things in India from yoga to ayurveda to Mumbai slums don't have value until its branded as 'Made in India' out there in Christopher Columbus' discovery!
                 I mean look at us. We are the land of discovering everything from 'zero' to 'kamasutra' (wow! what a range!) Surely we would have done justice to even the film crop harvest here. In fact we did but never realized that we were the forefathers of modern martial arts. I mean two decades before the Matrix trilogy, Charlie's Angels and John Woo's physics defying stunts, we already had our own films with Mithun and the great Rajnikant. Mind it! For the truly patriotic here's Mithun Da's inimitable fight doing break dance from Waqt Ki Awaaz (priceless!!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7l93sHapmN8

Rajni and Mithun Da were way ahead of their times. They did not need all these FX, green screens and hanging from cables in their times. There were no strings attached...it was pure, unadulterated entertainment with a tamacha on all Newtonian laws.  They must've been the 'inspiration' for the Wachowski brothers to make the Matrix, I am sure.
The great legendary directors like T. Prakash Rao, K. Bapaiyah etc (these initials are important to be really creative) went beyond the frontiers of science and showed us the extreme possibilities of human endurance (I mean for the viewers!) We should be thankful to YouTube and MoserBaer for discovering these hidden gems for us.

So next time you watch any of these Hollywoody hi-tech, ultra-secure action thrillers like I mentioned earlier, just understand that its stylized crap - poop with a red ribbon! I mean take this situation from any Hollywood action  film nowadays. Some techie hacks into the mainframe and he actually gets a 3D blueprint/map of the entire complex. He just punches the keyboard 'ffft fft  fffft' looking very important and clever and he brings up the entire building rotating in an arc right in front of your eyes. Apparently this guy has a access to any kind of file anywhere in the world and God only knows which plan he uses for his broadband connection. (I mean it took me two full minutes to upload those pics above on my connectivity!) Imagine this kind of a hacker in Indian films - has he ever tried to open any government site? Forget the impressive 3D blueprints of the Mantralaya, he would probably finish his coffee before the 2D homepage opens!!
And all those masked, special-ops team with night-vision/infra-red/ heat tracking goggles and kevlar vests with smart guns at eye level breaking in with these kinda dialogs:

"move! move! move!"
"Delta one secure perimeter"
"Roger that Bravo one"
" Sector 7 secured!"
"Roger that Delta One"

Now imagine our desi pandus raiding a dance bar beyond permissible timings in the same scenario
"Chala! Chala! Chala"
"Havaldar Gawande secure perimeter"
"Roger that Kadam saaheb"
"Apsara Bar secured"
"Roger that Gawande"

See? It just doesn't work for our desi palate! And still our Mumbai police is probably the 3rd most effective agencies in the world without all that paraphernalia. Occasionally we lose our important people because the bullet-proof vests aren't bullet proof enough which is pretty unfortunate in reality. But I guess we don't just look techno-savvy enough for ourselves. We never seem to see our own geeky reflection in the mirror of  Indian cinema which is ironically really larger than life otherwise. I guess that's one reason why conventional sci-fi films in Hindi never get made.
 But till then we have our very own Sanjay Guptas & Vikram Bhatts who can get 'inspired' from one Hollywood flick and make 4 films out of that. How they manage to pull this off is a raaz which remains unsolved. The mystery continues..   ;-)

               People often tell me that its so nice not to do the same things over and over again in my kind of job. Well they may not be totally wrong. Especially considering that I left a nice stable, well paying career in IT and jumped into the 'creative' realm of the television industry. Though one always dwells on the grass being greener in other pastures we have our own ups and downs too. But that's not what I'm getting down to here.
              We are the people behind the camera. The people who toil day and night with blood, sweat and tears (well sweat anyway!) in the battles of TRPs, deadlines and creative changes to bring you all those shows on television which you keep flicking with the malevolent remote! We are termed as the unethical bastions of TVdom whose only mission in life is to suck the viewer into the cortex of that Idiot box! Umm..so how far are we from the truth? Let's leave it at that..
                Not to delve into media ethics, let me just talk about some funny incidents that seem to happen with all of us when we are part of a 'Crew'. The Crew is really the magical group of people who bring about the seemingly impossible miracle of the creation- of a film, or a show, an ad or whatever. Unlike a painting or a book, this piece of art is a supreme work of team-art. Everyone contributes in his/her own way to actually bring about something conceived as a simple basic idea. And that applies even to B-grade films. A lot of people have actually slogged to 'create' that visual delight!! So be a bit thoughtful for the 'crew' next time you slam a film! No seriously!

I mean look below -