Kung Fu Panda

Kung fu Panda, a pandemonium

The whole of the last week whichever news channel I was tuning, two faces kept on appearing every where. The faces were those of Amar Singh and Karat. The face of Karat was that of fuming communist and that of Amar Singh was of one cunning cookie. Well these two faces drove me to see a cinema on Sunday and the film I chose was Kung Fu Panda an animated movie by Dream Work. Animation. I was kind of frustrated by the guiles of human being so wanted to get lost in the animated world of imagination.

After watching the movie Kung Fu Panda I congratulated myself for making the right choice.

One may wonder that I might have found some similarity between the Panda, Po and our own ubiquitous Amar Singh but not in all of the formers characteristics but yes may be the rise from a humble existence to the high exulted seat of power. In the film Po is a waiter in his goose father Mr. Ping’s noodle shop and Amar Singh has been an errand boy of Mulayam Singh’s Samajwadi party. Well for the time being that is all on Amar Singh and back to the movie.

Po is a roly poly panda with a secret dream of becoming a Kung fu warrior just like Amar wanted to be near the power..sorry again the Amar factor is  taking over my finger on the key board…..Mr.Ping the goose father was blissfully ignorant about it.

Then the movie goes on with the story of how Po accidentally lands in the arena of selecting the Kung Fu warrior who has to fight the dreaded Snow Leopard Tai Lung. Though there are 5 warriors trained by Master Shifu were there and one of them otherwise would have been selected to fight the leopard and those five were Tigress, Monkey, Viper, Mantis and the Crane.

Oogway the sage, a tortoise who has journeyed for 1000 years and visited all countries and finally settled down in China to establish this land of peace. He decided that the accidental arrival of Po is no accident it is the destiny and Po is the chosen one so he advises Master Shifu to train Po. The movie then goes on with training and at the end how Po defeats the snow leopard. Oogway advises Shifu that he must make sure that Po starts believing in self and then only he can master the art of kung fu. Po realizes this at the end there is no secret recipe as promised by his goose father but it is the belief of own that one can excel does the trick. A great piece of wisdom from Oogway to all of us including Amar Singh.

One must admit that lot of research has been done to make this movie.

                             It took about 4 years to make this movie. The designer Raymond Zibach and the Art Director Tang Heng went to China and did research of Chinese painting, sculpture, architecture and Kung fu moves to bring authenticity in the movie. They have been immensely successful in merging hand painting and computer generated graphics seamlessly. The opening scene of the movie has used Chinese shadow puppetry effectively. The voice over of Master Shifu is by Dustin Hoffman and that of Po is by Jack Black. Tigress is Angelina Jolie and Jackie Chan is the monkey. The voice over and the script are so effectively done that during the course of the movie I forgot that I was watching an animated movie. The snow clad hills of China has been brought out beautifully with lively background music. It was worth spending my Sunday in watching this movie.

I must thank Amar Singh for forcing me to watch this movie. In the movie Po wins over the five warriors and ultimately defeats the Snow leopard here our own Amar Singh has woe over Sonia, Man Mohan and group. Let us see now if he can defeat the snow leopard in the form of Karat, Advani and Mayawati. As it looks now it is a toss up, well left is already itching to call a bandh.