Friday, August 11, 2006

Wassup, Mr. Moitra?

Going by the first two numbers of "Lage Raho Munna Bhai" one cannot but feel sad as well as confused for Indian film music.

One of the numbers ("Pal Pal") is inspired quite clearly by Cliff Richard's (yeah, the same geriatric undying romantic who used to your mom's favourite) "Theme for a Dream".

And the other ("Lage Raho Munna Bhai") quite incredibly by the ICICI Bank ad jingle !!!! Is this just an unintentionally "inspired" goof-up or is it in-film advertising taken to its depths?

And all this is even more poignant, because its coming from someone who was expected to be the great white hope of the industry .... one Mr. Shantanu Moitra.

You might argue that the signs were visible as recently as Parineeta, whose music is heavily inspired from all the obvious sources including Tagore, pahadi folk tunes and blues.

But I personally was going more by the evidence of the ethereal "Naam Ada Likhna" from Yahaan. A composer coming up with such a beauty resorting to Cliff Richard in his next venture? The mind boggles.

Waiting for the rest of the album. One cannot give up hope.

Update : Figured out some trivia, which might just absolve the composer of the ICICI Bank jingle horror !! One Mr. Vidhu Vinod Chopra happened to direct the first ICICI Bank ad-campaign with that jingle. So is it the invisible hand? This one's worth a watch.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Singer Sonu nigam said that he had seen singers far more talented than himself languishing and then you have somebody like Himesh Reshamya. One never knows the ways of the world.

Diptakirti Chaudhuri said...

Don't get hassled.
Your cousin is walking the thin line between 'paying a tribute' and 'lifting'. Even RD did that and kept people in doubt over his parentage... and then composed "Chingaari koi bhadke" to remove all doubts!

Anonymous said...

heh... even funnier is vishal shekhar lifting frank sinatra's "my way" for pyar ke side effects... and the great pritam lifting the "shire" tune from LOTR for Woh Lamhe... there ought to be stricter laws about this!

Prash

Suri said...

am hanging on to my (luckily, office ) phone since 15 minutes..and am being subjected to the horrible ICICI jingles in loop while waiting to talk to the ICICI bank call centre chap.

so Moitra's the guy who composed that crap? Am ordering an effigy doll of his right away !