Bollywood Review: "Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Sunday, 13 December 2009 16:14

Written by Frank Lovece

Directed by Shimit Amin
Written by Jaideep Sahni
Starring Ranbir Kapoor, Prem Chopra, Mukesh Bhatt, D. Santosh, Gauahar Khan, Naveen Kaushik, Manish Choudhari, Shazahn Padamsee

The smiling guy offering you a business card while a paper plane glides behind him in the posters for the Bollywood import Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year seems to promise a workplace satire or a lighthearted employee caper – Office Space goes Calcutta. Instead we get a sharply observed drama of an honest man trying to survive in the usual business world where kickbacks, petty politics, office cliques and tell-'em-anything lies to make a sale are all business as usual. In the exploding modern India, it's a very American story: How do you succeed in business without really trying to compromise your ethics?

That's the dilemma facing Harpreet Singh Bedi (Kapoor, the Strasberg-trained scion of the venerable filmmaking family), a Sikh fresh out of college with less than stellar grades. While his classmates head toward MBAs or law firms, H.P., as he's nicknamed, thinks he'll find his future in sales. His devout grandfather (Chopra), with whom he lives, is wary but supportive, going so far as to sink his life savings into a scooter for H.P. to use on his rounds.

Shortly after H.P. lands a trainee position at AYS, a major yet snakeoily computer sales and "service" company, over the objections of smarmy sales manager Nitin Rathore (Kaushik), he gets what could be his big break – making an in-person visit to a major client to finalize a done deal. But when that company's procurement guy seeks his usual bribe, H.P. naively files a complaint with that company's higher-ups – on AYS stationery, no less.

To call what happens next a descent would be to imply going south by degrees. H.P. immediately becomes a pariah of untouchable proportions, the butt of jokes, and given cold-call duty – having to turn over even whatever leads he can get that way. Pretty soon paper rockets – what we call paper airplanes – rain down on him mercilessly. In the entrenched social structures of even 21st-century India, where leaving a job that you're lucky  to have is unheard of – much like the U.S., come to think – H.P. is effectively trapped.

A chance encounter with the veteran owner of a cheap electronics stall alerts H.P. to the realities of computer pricing – and the relatively low costs of computer assembling. He recruits AYS service technician Giri (Santosh) – who in things-are-alike-all-over mode spends most of his day ogling bikini-clad blonds on his computer –  to moonlight. One thing leads to another, and he soon acquires a slew of clients who appreciate Rocket Computer's honesty and integrity –  notwithstanding the fact H.P.'s running it out of AYS' offices, unbeknownst to smiling-cobra company owner Puri (Bhagyaraj). H.P. intends to reimburse AYS for the phone and the printer ink and such. But just as he and company cohorts Koena (Khan), Chotelal (Bhatt) and even Rathore are about to resign to do Rocket fulltime, Puri discovers their now not-so-little scheme.

Not all Bollywood movies are big, colorful musicals, of course, and this one offers only a couple of plot montages set against songs. But with uniformly excellent performances – particularly by Kaushik and Bhagyaraj as the conflicted and not-so-conflicted antagonists, respectively – plus a no-nonsense pace and storytelling sense by director Shimit Amin and a truly universal set of office circumstances (check out one of the most  believable office set designs in recent memory, with ugly carpeting, boxes piled up alongside filing cabinets and fingerprints all over the phones), Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year is instantly accessible to any stateside audience. H.P. may be a prisoner of the system, but he can proudly say, "I am not a number. I am a free market."

For more by Frank Lovece: FrankLovece.com

Selected CD Reviews: Unforgettable Collections

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Saturday, 12 December 2009 21:55

Written by Lloyd Carroll

Michael Jackson
The Definitive Collection
(UME)
Universal Music Group holds the rights to the Motown Records catalog, so the term “definitive” here is a bit deceiving since it does not include any Michael Jackson recordings made after 1975. When Jackson left Berry Gordy’s company to join Epic Records, he went onto record the biggest selling album of all-time, 1983's Thriller. Of course it was at Motown that Jackson’s wondrous talent first discovered, initially singing with his brothers in the Jackson 5, then by slowly branching out to solo recordings.

Jackson’s young exuberant voice was a key reason that the Jackson Five’s first four singles (“I Want You Back,” “ABC,” “The Love You Save” and “I’ll Be There”) went to #1 on the pop charts. Sure, tales of puppy love in Top 40 songs are as old as the hills, but Jackson and his brothers made you forget that it was a pop cliche.

While nearly all of the songs here are old friends, it is fun to hear the tracks that didn’t get that much play at the time of their release or subsequent on oldies stations. You can put the lively “I Wanna Be Where You Are,” Michael’s superb take on Bill Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine,” and “Farewell, My Summer Love,” a tune that Motown kept in their vaults until after “Thriller” came out, in that category.

It is ironic then that Universal Music Enterprises had this CD on their release schedule even before Jackson’s untimely passing last June.

Gary Lewis & The Playboys
The Complete Liberty Singles
(Collectors Choice)
Gary Lewis & The Playboys will never be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. While snooty Rolling Stone critics would scoff at even the idea of including Gary Lewis and his bandmates in the same breath of such artists as the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen and U2, this two-disc collection shows that Lewis and Company made solid contributions to pop and rock.

Yes, Lewis, the son of Jerry Lewis, never possessed a great voice. The liner notes make it clear that his producer, Snuff Garrett, had to overdub his voice numerous times on nearly every recording and that he frequently had singing assistance from an uncredited Ron Hicklin, a well-respected L.A. studio musician. Hicklin was the American equivalent of England’s Tony Burrows who seemed to sing on every British hit not made by a super group in the late 1960s and early ‘70s.

Lewis’ limited vocal abilities actually proved to be an asset as he provided an everyman’s touch to breakup songs as “This Diamond Ring,” “Sure Gonna Miss Her,” “Paint Me A Picture” and “My Heart’s Symphony,” and it made it easier for the listener to identify with him on upbeat fare as “Green Grass,” a song that trumpeted the impending arrival of spring, “Count Me In,” and “She’s Just My Style.”

What is often overlooked by rock music historians is the level of sophistication in the Playboys’ records. Garrett consistently utilized the famous “Wrecking Crew” for his studio musicians who were led by keyboardist Leon Russell, guitarist Tommy Tedesco and legendary drummer Hal Blaine. These are the same folks that Brian Wilson turned to for countless Beach Boys recording sessions. The string, brass and woodwind work on Lewis’s hits were quite sophisticated for the time and could be described as pop symphonies.

Sweet
The Sweet Anthology
(Shout Factory)
A ‘70s quartet that could have been considered the British equivalent of the Grass Roots in that they made catchy hit singles but were considered lightweights by the pop cognoscenti, Sweet turned out a set of rockin' singles that made them more than just that. This 32-song collection basically confirms the general consensus that the band is a guilty pleasure.

Thanks to the work of producers Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn, songs such as “Fox On The Run,” “Ballroom Blitz” (a tune that inspired Forest Hills’ own, the Ramones), and the nonsensical ditty “Little Willy” (which sears your brain with its hooky bass line and hand claps), made Sweet memorable. “Little Willy” was a big hit in both here and the UK but it was bigger there because the term had naughty connotations that it didn’t have on this side of the Atlantic.

Thanks to lead singer Brian Connolly’s cheerful vocals, one Sweet tune that has stood the test of time and has impressed even the band’s detractors is 1978's “Love Is Like Oxygen,” a song that would not sound out of place on an Electric Light Orchestra or Queen album.

A Musing on Miyazaki's "Ponyo on the Cliff"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Saturday, 12 December 2009 15:59

Written by Eric Lurio

Much has been written about the Japanese "cult of the cute" -- ka-waii culture. Large dish-plate eyes and button noses in comics and cartoons are ubiquitous, and whether or not that's good or bad is neither here nor there. But the great animation director Hayao Miyazaki has used this cult's aesthetic to create one of the more disturbing monsters in cinematic history -- a fish-goddess named Brunhilde in Ponyo on the Cliff.

Bruni is being held prisoner by her father Fujimoto, who is the estranged husband of the goddess of the sea. He goes around in his submarine and pours his magic elixirs into the see to do something so horrible that it will destroy humanity and bring the world back into it's pre-civilized balance. He know about Bruni's potential power, so he keeps her in the form of a "goldfish" in a "bowl" located within the submarine, something she and her many sister/servants aren't to happy about.

When Dad isn't looking, B-h sneaks out of the sub and hijacks the nearest jellyfish, where she starts lolling around the seven seas before coming close to shore, where she gets stuck in a bottle, and gets rescued by a five-year-old boy named Sosuke, who lives with his parents somewhere on the Japanese coast.

Now presumably, Miyazaki has made a study of the behavior of five-year old children, but that doesn't seem evident. A real Sosuke wouldn't act in the way he does. The little tyke puts B-h in a bucket and fills it with fresh water. Now, a little kid on vacation at the beach might do that if he had never been to the sea before, but our Sosuke lives there. Mommy and Daddy would have told him that in doing so he would kill the creature. But this doesn't matter, because what he has isn't any ordinary fish but a little goddess who has tasted his blood and fallen deeply in lust.

Now here's where we get into the Japanese Cult of the Cute. B-h, named Ponyo by Sosuke, accidentally escapes, and gets caught by Daddy. She escapes again, and in doing so, cracks the entire space-time continuum which causes hundreds of trillions of yen's worth of damage to the coast of Japan. Supernatural waves crash on the shore, turning into fish that deliberately try to drown Sosuke and his mother's car.

Our hero sees B-h/Ponyo in the form of a little girl, running on top of the water with a happy-go-lucky grin trying to say hello. Isn't that sweet? When I saw this for the first time at San Diego's Comic-Con 2009, the reaction was mostly, "Isn't that special? Isn't that charming?"

Miyazaki's design is perfect, and that's what's so scary here. If Ponyo wasn't cute, we would all be screaming at the screen "bang her on the head with that shovel!!!!" Of course the whole thing ends happily ever after. It has to. What we have is a total deus ex machina in what has to be the most random of Miyazaki's films to date.

The character of Ponyo is closest to the main character in the famous Twilight Zone episode, "It's a Good Life," in which a child, played by Billy Mumy, terrorizes a small town because of his god-like powers. The recently released horror film Orphan, also has a little girl as the villain (spoiler: she's a 35-year old midget), but in that case we know that she's evil.

On the other hand, Miyazaki wants us to love little Ponyo, because she's happy and adorable. His style of anime overcomes the astoundingly insipid plot. The question is: why didn't Miyazaki, who has been a master of plotting in the past, fall so flat here. His previous fantasies have been well thought out stories wit deep characters. This time, it's idiot plotting cardboard figurines. It's sad to see a great man jump the shark like that.