Veer Zaara Unplugged!

.....Its been months since the talk started.
Talk about plot of a movie involving the age-old cross-border romantic angle, which many authors & producers have used to earn fame, leaving the monetary part a bit away.

.....Its been few lesser months since the music became available.
Music of the movie, that a great legend created & left on his heavenly abode. Music that is creating waves, lyrics that are creating just thunders & dialogues that are bound to shake everyone, as claimed by the presenters.

.....Its been even lesser months since mails & SMSes started floating.
Hearing about the different story-line of the upcoming Yash Raj Productions' new release, and reading a bit about the same in the various publications, mails & SMSes starting floating-some to enlighten the readers about the expected ; some to panic the readers with why this publication (mostly SMS) was sent as they revealed the storyline of the movie - which no movie buff would like to do before he himself is an audience to that experience, specially with the case one of the biggest movie houses of the country presenting their creation.

So when was the gestation period going to get over? The producers had chosen to deliver at the time when the Indian crowd could no longer wait and have enough time to throng the cinema halls....to be precise the day of Diwali(November 12,2004), which is indeed one of the biggest festival in India....but to the producers' not such a pleasant surprise, a edited version of a classic was being released on the same day! When the director was asked to comment on the same, came the reply (and is indeed a great one!!) "After 44 years, I still feel emotional about Mughal-E-Azam like everyone else of my generation. But to expect that just because one’s favourite vintage car is going to be on the road, no other car should drive on the highway is not fair. " (as told to Bhawana of Screen)

By now (& of course, the title of blog says), its obvious that the movie in the context is Yash Chopra's Veer-Zaara.....the much awaited love-legend.

After lots of hustle & tussle in the Bangalore region, with the cinema owners defying the KFCC's (Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce) decision of not allowing non-Kannada films to be screened, Veer Zaara continued to be screened, but with the hype created for the movie creating shortage of available tickets, me & my room-mates (Rajat & Vinodh) finally settled to have the show screened on the very own mini-cinema version--Vinodh's computer. After curious checks about the quality of the print (err...sound was secondary and was indeed when we played the movie), we settled for the uncensored but yet shortened camera print CD version of the movie (movies that come on CD are usually of shorter duration than they are in cinema halls).

....in went the CD

....Windows Media Player zindabaad!

....File..Open..Browse.........CDROM......MPEGAV......ah! found the video file!

....get! set! the show starts!!!!

"Music's superb man!!" (Kanuj)

"Yes! i love this sequence" (Rajat)

"Who's done it? " (Kanuj)

"I suppose its Madan Mohan, the great legend" (Rajat)

"Oh! Heard the name for the first time" (Kanuj, poor general knowledge man! gotta work out on that!...start listening to some old numbers also!!)

"He's dead now!" (Rajat)

"Ok! But a great job indeed" (Kanuj)

"Can't you both watch the movie in silence" (Vinodh)

.....and the movie went on...till dialogues in Pakistani Punjabi were used by actors, specially by Preeti's maid servant, played by Divya Dutta.

"Yeh kya bol rahi hai, mujhe kuch samajh nahi aa raha!" (translated : what is she speaking, i am not getting a word of it!) (Vinodh)

"This is Pakistani Punjabi & she means to say that the bridegroom side just looked at your face & agreed for the marriage, if they happen to know about your ways of life, God alone knows what will happen", (Kanuj, translating)

"Ok! man, but its better if she just keeps her mouth shut" (Vinodh)

.....and Divya Dutta kept on speaking in Punjabi, perfect to her role, but to fume Vinodh more....while Rajat enjoyed peacefully, getting what all he could.

"Great scenic beauty man! Thats my land, Punjab! Do you know that this movie has been shot in a place near to my home town and the interesting part is that no one got to know that the shooting is taking place" (as usual , Kanuj)...adding more to this, about Lohri too, but to others' interest?

"Hey yeh to DDLJ style ja rahi hai!!" (translation : hey its going on the same lines of the old movie Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, DDLJ for short)(Vinodh, pointing to the turn the movie was taking)

"Are sa ek jaisa hi hai" (translation : everything is the same)(Rajat)

"Sssshh! Be quiet man! I am already not getting this lady's language" (Vinodh, troubled by Divya Dutta's punjabi)

"In DDLJ, Shahrukh came from ..." (Kanuj)

"..England..." (Rajat)

"Yes, England to India to get his beloved & here he's going from India to Pakistan! Its all the same man..same story re-cooked in a new dish" (Kanuj)

......(after some more scenes)...."no no its bit different man! But the music is superb. I'll try getting the polyphonic ringtone of this one man! will sound great!" (Kanuj)

"hmm " (Rajat)

..the movie continued...now the critical time came...i started predicting the storyline, like everytime.....

"I am 90% sure that......"

but Aditya Chopra gave me a checkmate this time!!! The next few scenes proved me to be wrong! What was being predicted, was proving that the story has been well-spun to keep the audience guessing!!!

"Superb twist man!" (Kanuj)

(Vinodh by this time was fast asleep, tired by the Punjabi used in the movie)

Now came the climax, the last 15 minutes of the movie were left...the movie was taking great turns....

Grrrrr

Grrrrr

Grrrrr................................the CD has got stuck!

"Try again" (Rajat)

"hmm, trying" ( Kanuj)

"Use Super Decoder" (Rajat) (Super Decoder is a video player, which plays even Cds in worst condition)

"Are Cd chale to sahi" (translated : let the Cd run atleast) (Kanuj)

"Use Roxio only..if it works" (Rajat) (Roxio is another video player, which comes bundled with Video Cds for computer play)

"Nup! Nothing working! I'll try Logging out and then logging in and then trying againg! " (Kanuj)

.....there continued attempts...all possible ones...2 brains storming to try and make the Cd work somehow....just the last 15 minutes...please.....

.....................

"No Luck" (Kanuj)

"We'll watch the rest tomorrow then,as there's nothing we can do!" (Rajat)

"But the Cd's in perfect condition, its a new one" (Kanuj)

"Maybe there's error in the CD-ROM" (Rajat) (CD-ROM is used for playing CDs in a computer)

.............and so went the lights off

.............Why does it has to happen to us only? Why?

.............Why can't the CD get stuck 5 minutes of play before?

.............Why at this position only when something had come up and the movie had taken such a turn which would make every movie buff to be uneasy in his seat?

With this questions in head & a hope to complete the movie tomorrow evening...me & Rajat too slept...


(Original Blog @ http://veer-zaara.blogspot.com/)

The Blog was listed on the Sify's homepage with a tagline-"Its not easy to watch a blockbuster at home-Kanuj tells you why"