"Yaaram" - Ek Thi Daayan

The first song from "Ek Thi Daayan": I found the English lyrics a little off-putting, but perhaps it'll take time to get used to. Also got a "O Mamma" ("Saat Khoon Maaf") vibe from the song - Vishal has had a few songs featuring a person on a guitar.

Matru ki Bijlee ka Mandola - the first trailer

Where have we been? It's been over a year since this blog posted anything; now it returns with the trailer of Vishal's next directorial film.

Here is the teaser to "Matru ki Bijlee ka Mandola":

From this, we glean the following tidbits:

• The film is slated to release on Jan 11, 2013 (so there's another three months to go)
• We now know how to pronounce "Matru" (it's "मटरू")
• There's Shabana Azmi as well, returning to work with Vishal after playing the eponymous role in his debut film "Makdee"
• No surprises on the musical credits: Gulzar saab, Clinton Cerejo et al.
• The two-seater airplane is almost out of Tintin
• Though perhaps lacking the immediate impact of trailers for Kaminey and even Saat Khoon Maaf, there are enough intriguing elements: just what is the Meena Kumari complex? What's with the pink cow (or is purple? Should we ask Seth Godin)? And will Imran Khan's Haryanvi accent hold?

And to remind you that the origins of this film are in a Haryanvi play recommended by Pankaj Kapur himself.

Update:
A post on the Fight Club blog with some more nuggets.

Barse Barse

"Barse Barse" sees Vishal collaborating not only with Gulzar, but also with Suresh Wadkar, whose association with Vishal has been fruitful but somewhat unheralded. (I have been mulling over a post on this topic for a while.) This is a non-film album (we don't seem to have a proper term for anything outside of a Bollywood soundtrack!). Karthik reviews it here.

Abhishek Chaubey: "Inside the Mind of Vishal Bhardwaj" (OPEN Magazine)

Abhishek Chaubey knows a thing or two about what makes Vishal tick, having assisted him and having directed a film under his production. OPEN magazine has an interview with Chaubey on his mentor.

(Link courtesy Ajay Bhat)

The music of "7 Khoon Maaf": track and credit listing

Posting on behalf of George

1. darling*: usha uthup/rekha bhardwaj
2. bekaraan: vishal bhardwaj (violins: ganesh-kumaresh) (a nice flourish that, if i may add)
3. o mama: kk (rap: clinton cerejo) [vishal does a PAANCH for himself :)]
4. awaara: master saleem (sitar: niladri kumar) [saleem does rahat]
5. tere liye: suresh wadkar (mohan veena: pandit vishwa mohan bhatt) [lucky charm wadkar?]
6. dil dil hai: suraj jagan
7. yeshu: rekha bhardwaj
8. doosri darling*: usha uthup, rekha bhardwaj, clinton cerejo, francois castellino
9. o mama (acoustic): kk

*original russian folk song 'kalinka' composed by ivan larionov (1860); additional russian lyrics: aditi singh sharma

7 Khoon Maaf - the trailer

Earlier today, "VBFan" told us about the official poster of "7 Khoon Maaf" and soon after, Punit Jha posted the link to the first trailer on the Gulzarfans Y! Group. On first viewing, this one is as good as Kaminey's trailer (impressive that Indian film-makers too can cut such trailers):



Striking notes:

* Can't figure out the main voice in the song, but there's Usha Uthup in the mix (she's also acting in the film)

* A cross-dressing John Abraham!

* Nice to see Annu Kapoor in a film after a long hiatus

* Great European lilt to the tune

* Oh, and looks like the official title is "7 Khoon Maaf".

Enjoy.

(Poster from Bollywood Hungama)

Update (25 Dec): Fight Club finds the base folk Russian song on which "Darrrling" is based (a Russian song called Kalinka).

Chandan Arora's "Striker" - music

"Striker", a film directed by Chandan Arora and starring Siddharth (probably the first Hindi film to feature carrom as its central theme?), recently released its music album. Among the many music directors to write songs for the album is Vishal.

The song is called Yun Hua, is penned by Gulzar, and is sung by Vishal himself.

(see the Wikipedia article on 'Striker' for more.)

"dil sa koi kamiinaa nahii"

"dil to bachcha hai jii" is the next song from Ishqiya to be seen and heard, from this "Making of..." video on YouTube:



Once again, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan seems to be used wonderfully and the lines & threadlets are quite Gulzar-esque.

(Via Ajay on the Gulzar fans group)

Ishqiya - Ibn Batuta

Intrepid, unceasing traveller. Travel writer. Scholar. And now finally, Ibn Batuta is referenced in a Hindi film song, thanks to the Gul-czar.

The Abhishek Chaubey directed Ishqiya is likely to release in Jan, which could mean a music release this month. A look at the first song to make it out on the airwaves (like Dhan Te Nan, more onomatopoeia & Sukhwinder - couldn't figure out the other voice)



Found via the 'Fight Club' blog

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And even the trailer seems to have hit censorship roadblocks for Arshad Warsi's killer (and rather tragic) line.

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Is the movie's title to be pronounced as "ishqaa.n" (the way it is said in the trailer)

oil be damned!

Why am I not surprised that someone named Ramnarain Sahu, a Samajwadi party MP, who happens to be the president of the Rashtriya Teli Rathore Chetna Mahasangh, has decided to nurse objections to the use of the word telii in Kaminey's catchiest song. First the naaiis and now the teliis. All Gulzar needs for a hat-trick is to tickle the ire of another occupational sect. I can't resist thinking of maaliis.

Kaminey - track listing

From Bollywood Hungama

1. Dhan Te Nan (Sukhwinder Singh, Vishal Dadlani, Robert Bob Omulo)
2. Fatak (Sukhwinder Singh, Kailash Kher)
3. Go Charlie Go
4. Kaminey (Vishal Bhardwaj)
5. Raat Ke Dhai Baje (Suresh Wadkar, Rekha Bhardwaj, Sunidhi Chauhan, Kunal Ganjawala, Earl D'Souza)
6. Thode Bheege (Mohit Chauhan)

Lyrics by Gulzar of course.

The usual crop of Vishal favourites (even Suresh Wadkar) are here, with a couple of new features: Vishal Dadlani & Mohit Chauhan.

The hard-to-name & boisterous "Dhan Te Nan" is out on radio stations, and an online version can be heard here. It's very catchy and the mukhDaa is very easy to fit into your head. The Big G seems in top form.

Looks like the music will release soon.

{Vishal, Gulzar, Sukhwinder}'s Bajaj Allianz ad

The insurance company Bajaj Allianz has a new ad campaign titled "Jiyo Befikar". The ad features lyrics by Gulzar, music by Vishal Bhardwaj, and is sung by Sukhwinder. I do not know if Vishal has composed music for ads before, so until I'm informed otherwise, this seems to be a first.

Here's one of the commercials:



Courtesy: this post on the Gulzarfans Y!group

How to ask Vishal Bhardwaj a question

Why, you stand up abruptly and shout out in garbled English before he can get away!

Last week, I attended a seminar on Cinema and Literature jointly organised by the Film & Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune and the Film Writers Association. Here's the precursor post about that.

Which brings us back to the titular figure of this post. The last time I'd seen Vishal, he was much less celebrated as a film-maker and chose to remain silent. Here, he began with expressing his trepidation at speaking in front of legends such as Mani Kaul and Prof. U.R.Ananthamurthy, and didn't even want to look in the direction of his 'gardener' Gulzar. He then proceeded to shake off his nervousness with a couple of 'shers' and spoke of how Maqbool came about. He began by describing the days before Maachis in the land where 'mediocrity is worshipped', and how he tried gaining producers' attention by trying to pass of his original songs as copies of Pakistani songs (incredulous laughter sweeps the auditorium).

Heeding Gulzar's prophesy that Vishal would be a film-maker someday, he decided to try his hand at making films, partly with a view to employing himself as a music director (since his career seemed to be ending!). After Makdee (a story that was partly inspired from childhood memories of Enid Blyton), he wanted to make a film on the underworld ("because I like guns, crimes, and chases"), but felt most films ended in a gangwar, and lacked depth. Plus, what do you do that Ram Gopal Varma hadn't? Serendipitously, Anurag Kashyap had pointed him to Kurosawa's "Throne of Blood" and Alaap Mazgaonkar (who plays 'Mughal-e-Azam' in Makdee) had given him a book of stories containing Macbeth. Until then, he subscribed to the common view that 'literature' was high-brow and had no pulp or entertainment to offer. But here was a drama that gripped him.

He then read the full Macbeth ("Shakespeare language ek taraf, English duusri taraf") cover to cover. He and Abbas Tyrewala began to write, not encumbered by convention of what was allowed and what wasn't ("we were blessed with ignorance"). Making the witches into cops or turning Lady Macbeth into Abbaji's mistress happened. Naseeruddin Shah loved the script and gave him the confidence this would work, volunteering to play one of the cops instead of Abbaji as originally intended.

There was also a reference to an earlier FWA seminar where Javed Akhtar said: "In Maqbool, Shakespeare failed you; in Omkara, you failed Shakespeare" (according to this account, JA and others had torn into Omkara). Vishal ended by quoting Prof. U.R.Ananthamurthy's speech on the 1st day where the Jnanpith awardee talked about the difference in adapting just the 'structure' as opposed to 'texture'. Vishal said he had been paying more attention to structure than texture (though this blogger finds texture and ambience to be Vishal's key strength) and now had the confidence to write his own originals.

After reciting a parting couplet, he sat down. Govind Nihalani, chairing the session, said Vishal was off to catch a flight, so may be we had time for just one question. No one stirred (most sessions had gone question-less, a pity), so he was about to wish Vishal goodbye, when I decided to shoot my hand up.

There were many things to ask (that after disregarding Yasho's suggestion to yell "Kaminey!" out loud) but I settled for one on Vishal's other main writing source. "Could you tell us a little about your work with Ruskin Bond, and we've heard you're working with him again". Nihalani was about to brush me off for being a tad too late, but Vishal was kind enough to answer. He spoke of how he liked the story for The Blue Umbrella, but couldn't see how it would make a film of more than 30 minutes. He then hit upon the idea of the red umbrella, met Ruskin Bond who seemed to like the idea, and made the film. And yes, he was working on a few ideas with Bond (he mentioned a couple of names, but sadly, I couldn't quite figure them out - did he say "A Season of Ghosts"?).

And that was that.

A Times of India interview on the sidelines.

Update: 5 Apr 2009
Ajay Bhramatmaj has a transcript of Vishal's speech here (the previous link is in Devanaagarii, here's a Roman script version).

Fa-fever, Double Dose, and The Big G

George has been digging around for Kaminey news for the last week or so and has dug out the juicy tidbit that the other Vishal (Dadlani, do not confuse like IMDB) sings under this Vishal's baton and puts to rest speculation about who the lyricist is (by pointing to Gulzar-saab's oblique confirmation).

And to underftand why he replafes the phoneme "f" by "f" (;-)), you'll juft have to read thif, won't you?

Update
Abhishek Toraskar points to more evidence of Gulzar's association with the film in this link.

Casting the net for Vishal's next and "Ishqiya"

Film websites are almost certain that Vishal Bhardwaj's next directorial venture will feature the likes of Shahid Kapur and Priyanka Chopra. This may raise a few eyebrows among Vishal's fans (), but one will give him the benefit of the doubt, considering the same happened with "Omkara" when the unlikely casting of Saif Ali Khan, Kareena Kapoor, and Ajay Devgan was announced.
Source article: Bollyspice.com

Ishqiya
More certain is that Vishal, in addition to Shantaram, also has another music score being written. This time, it's for long-time associate Abhishek Chaubey, who has been with Vishal since "Makdee" and also co-wrote "Omkara". Billed as a crime-thriller, Vishal is also co-producing the film, while Gulzar will pen the lyrics.
Source article: Mid-Day.