Brain Fry-Day

I'm proud to be an Indian. Not purely for patriotic reasons but also for some less important ones. One being that India has some of the b...

I’m proud to be an Indian. Not purely for patriotic reasons but also for some less important ones. One being that India has some of the best cinema halls in the world! Okay, okay have you finished laughing? Can I continue… now, let me explain. In the past 12 months I’ve been to the UK, US and Paris, on and off — kya zamana aa gaya hai, mujh jaise aadmi ko visa mil jaata hai — aur in phoren countries mein I was doing nothing but doing what I do best ie watch movies.

I think this rule was started in Rome — as in "Friends, Romans and countrymen lend me your ears." Anyway, this rule can never come into effect in our Bombay film industry because our film industry is ruled by the K(h)ans. Anyway, sorry for the interruption folks. Baat chal rahe thi not-so-loud sounds ki. Not-so-loud I can understand but not clear sound????

Recently, in the US, I saw the Adam Sandler film The Waterboy, Terence Malick’s The Thin Red Line (the Oscar contender for Best picture, Bestdirection and among many other nominations Best Sound?) and The Faculty. The first two movies had not just low volume, even the dialogue was not clear. Aur Faculty ka sound sun ke to mujhe agayee ulti. It’s sad because believe me, all the theatres are equipped with the best sound systems in the world. It’s like giving someone a Porsche 99 and telling them not to exceed 40kmph.

Or like asking someone to read my column and telling them to make sense out of it. Dolby uncle aap sun rahe ho na? In comparison to pardes most our desi theatres are big. They have huge, gigantic 70-mm screens. Over the top, exaggerated loud sound systems, which really live up to the words: BIG SCREEN FILMS.

Now, if only our films were as good.

Sajid Khan says this one is only for the audiophiles, sung to the tune of Teeter ke do aage teeter from Mera Naam Joker: Tweeter ke do aage tweeter, tweeter ke do neeche woofer, aage speaker neeche speaker bolo kitnetweeter.