Flashback to 1976. (I am more or less sure it was 1976).
Mrinal Sen's release for that year featured a tall, lanky new male lead, with raggedly chopped shoulder length hair, eyes that could fleetingly flit between servitude, helplessness and raging anger accompanied by a gracefulness in his entire emoting in front of the camera. Needless to say, that brilliant debut won him the National Award for Best Actor that year.
He followed it up with Two more National Awards in 1993 and 1996.
A brilliant career that spans three decades and still going strong, also gave him Two Filmfare awards, (the one in 1995 was for Best Villian in Jallad) and a huge armful of others, and is still one of the most respected artistes of the Indian Film Industry.
He also managed to make your legs stand up and dance (along with your beer belly, two left feet and all), as he came on screen, ably assisted by the pumping disco beats of Bappi Da.
Disco has only one translation in India - Mithun Chakraborty.
Quite a feat, when you think about it, straddling the worlds of commercial ketchup and deeply meaningful dark art and earning adulations aplenty for both.
Mithun had this uncanny knack of being a valuable asset to both forms of Indian Cinema at the same time.
Three decades into that wholesome and invaluable career, you wouldn't think less of the progeny that was planning his debut into the same silver arc lights, perchance to even outshine his illustrious father.
It wasn't meant to be.
A jarring and painful cut to the present, circa 2008.
MithunDa's son Mimoh debuted in a movie called Jimmy on May 9th, 2008.
The rest, as they say, is a journey into Exquisite Torture Country. I am pretty much convinced that Raj Sippy dug up this script when he was cleaning out his attic, getting rid of his 80's and 90's assorted trash.
Maybe he must have glanced through the first page, patted himself on the shoulder for 'discovering a classic script' to launch the dream career of Mimoh.
(Alas, at this rate it would remain exactly that, a dream!)
I wouldn't have been surprised even if there were a couple of pages missing in between , Mr.Director being so confident about this 'dug-up' script.
Well, to rub it in, the story is about Jimmy, a young mechanic (Mimoh in the 'dream' role of his career), passionate about vehicles by day and vinyls by night.
(err..that is a DJ, buddy, he is a DJ by night).
Pardon me if I'm two-stepping on your toes, dear Director, but isn't a DJ supposed to play music, rather than dance to it?
So, Jimmy owns up to a murder committed by the villian to repay the huge debt incurred by his father, and somewhere in between he also comes to know he has a brain tumor (so sad.)
Jimmy is sentenced to hang till death. (So sad, again). And then the doctor pronounces that the tumor is benign, and he will live a good life, (though he is sentenced to die.).
Excuse me, dear Director, but , should I go in for a brain transplant, or is it just my imagination?
The rest is not worth mentioning.
Not because, it calls to be written, but it is more like being hung by your left nostril with an extremely tensile piano wire in the Desert Sun.
Every single cliche of the 70's, 80's, 90's are put on life support and desperately paraded through every scene.
(God, why am I still here?)
A request to Mimoh:
Please change your gym instructor, watch all your Dad's movies, learn every single nuance of diction, tone and delivery from that living encyclopedia on emoting and most importantly, its good to let people know that you can dance, but its not good to let people know that its all that you know in this business of acting.
Nomore, Mimoh, Nomore. Please!
Flashback to 1976. (I am more or less sure it was 1976).
Mrinal Sen's release for that year featured a tall, lanky new male lead, with raggedly chopped shoulder length hair, eyes that could fleetingly flit between servitude, helplessness and raging anger accompanied by a gracefulness in his entire emoting in front of the camera. Needless to say, that brilliant debut won him the National Award for Best Actor that year.
He followed it up with Two more National Awards in 1993 and 1996.
A brilliant career that spans three decades and still going strong, also gave him Two Filmfare awards, (the one in 1995 was for Best Villian in Jallad) and a huge armful of others, and is still one of the most respected artistes of the Indian Film Industry.
He also managed to make your legs stand up and dance (along with your beer belly, two left feet and all), as he came on screen, ably assisted by the pumping disco beats of Bappi Da.
Disco has only one translation in India - Mithun Chakraborty.
Quite a feat, when you think about it, straddling the worlds of commercial ketchup and deeply meaningful dark art and earning adulations aplenty for both.
Mithun had this uncanny knack of being a valuable asset to both forms of Indian Cinema at the same time.
Three decades into that wholesome and invaluable career, you wouldn't think less of the progeny that was planning his debut into the same silver arc lights, perchance to even outshine his illustrious father.
It wasn't meant to be.
A jarring and painful cut to the present, circa 2008.
MithunDa's son Mimoh debuted in a movie called Jimmy on May 9th, 2008.
The rest, as they say, is a journey into Exquisite Torture Country. I am pretty much convinced that Raj Sippy dug up this script when he was cleaning out his attic, getting rid of his 80's and 90's assorted trash.
Maybe he must have glanced through the first page, patted himself on the shoulder for 'discovering a classic script' to launch the dream career of Mimoh.
(Alas, at this rate it would remain exactly that, a dream!)
I wouldn't have been surprised even if there were a couple of pages missing in between , Mr.Director being so confident about this 'dug-up' script.
Well, to rub it in, the story is about Jimmy, a young mechanic (Mimoh in the 'dream' role of his career), passionate about vehicles by day and vinyls by night.
(err..that is a DJ, buddy, he is a DJ by night).
Pardon me if I'm two-stepping on your toes, dear Director, but isn't a DJ supposed to play music, rather than dance to it?
So, Jimmy owns up to a murder committed by the villian to repay the huge debt incurred by his father, and somewhere in between he also comes to know he has a brain tumor (so sad.)
Jimmy is sentenced to hang till death. (So sad, again). And then the doctor pronounces that the tumor is benign, and he will live a good life, (though he is sentenced to die.).
Excuse me, dear Director, but , should I go in for a brain transplant, or is it just my imagination?
The rest is not worth mentioning.
Not because, it calls to be written, but it is more like being hung by your left nostril with an extremely tensile piano wire in the Desert Sun.
Every single cliche of the 70's, 80's, 90's are put on life support and desperately paraded through every scene.
(God, why am I still here?)
A request to Mimoh:
Please change your gym instructor, watch all your Dad's movies, learn every single nuance of diction, tone and delivery from that living encyclopedia on emoting and most importantly, its good to let people know that you can dance, but its not good to let people know that its all that you know in this business of acting.
