The Farhan Akhtar starrer is now out on DVD, and it’s even more entertaining.
Until recently, most DVD releases of Hindi films didn’t care about providing value addition. However, this has changed in the hands of the more enterprising or “with it” filmmakers, who have begun including special features on their discs. It’s a welcome step, particularly well-suited to movies that have a limited theatrical life but which subsequently develop cult status — recent examples being Johnny Gaddaar, No Smoking and Manorama Six Feet Under, all of which have had impressive DVD packages.
Rock On! is more mainstream than the above titles, one of the most popular releases of the year, in fact, and you can argue that it’s a film best experienced in a large hall with a cheering audience. But now, just three months after its commercial release, it’s available on DVD, and a very well-packaged and thoughtfully put together two-disc set at that — one that does justice to this solid film.
Disc One has the movie, along with a feature-length audio commentary option. The commentary is by writer-director Abhishek Kapoor, lead actor (and producer) Farhan Akhtar and director of photography Jason West (a good choice, because one of this film’s most underrated strengths is its superb camerawork). On some DVDs, commentary tracks are shoddily put together afterthoughts comprising isolated sound-bytes. Not here. Kapoor, Akhtar and West watch the film together from beginning to end and share their insights on scenes as they unfold. It’s professionally done, yet there’s a lot of camaraderie on display too — listening to them, you get the sense that shooting Rock On! must have been a lot of fun. Their spontaneous laughter when the popular “dandiya” scene comes on mirrors the viewer’s reaction.
Disc Two has goodly extras, including an hour-long “making of” documentary that provides glimpses of Farhan Akhtar’s initial singing audition (he performs U2’s “One”, among other songs) as well as notes on costume and styling, and bytes from Arjun Rampal, Javed Akhtar and others. The “deleted scenes” section is barely 10 minutes long and doesn’t quite register, but the amusing, MTV-style music video for “Pichle saat dinon mein” is a good inclusion. There’s also a Karaoke section that plays each of the songs with the vocals volume turned down, and with the lyrics appearing onscreen, so you can croak along.
The one minor problem with this DVD is that when you pick an option from the scene-selection menu, the disc plays only that single chapter, after which it freezes, makes an unpleasant whirring sound and returns to the menu instead of allowing the film to continue. This sort of thing is understandable when you use the songs menu (because songs are usually standalone elements in Hindi films), but not when it comes to regular scenes. It means that if you interrupt a viewing midway and return to the film afterwards, you have to play the disc from the start and then either fast-forward manually (which is a plebeian thing to do on a DVD) or repeatedly click on the “next scene” button to get to the point where you left off. It’s also jarring to have a scene abruptly end in this manner: the first couple of times it happened, I thought my player was skipping.
But this is a tiny quibble. On the whole, the Rock On! disc-set is well worth the price. It helps, of course, that the film itself is a definite keeper.
(Two-DVD pack, Rs 399, BIG Home Video)
