Break Ke Baad: Movie Review

How About Giving The Audience a Break.

BREAK KE BAAD

*ing Imran Khan, Deepika Padukone, Sharmila Tagore

Music: Vishal Shekar

Directed by: Danish Aslam

Lilette Dubey is walking around among racks of clothes with an assistant.

A young girl comes up to her holding a blouse and complains,
"This is too loose.”

With a perfect mix of exasperation and derision in her voice, Lilette deadpans
“Someone get her some bigger boobs.”

Such a terrific line deserves a much better movie.

Break ke Baad is essentially about 2 losers.


Gulati (Imran) who is a sad little clingy puppy and Aaliya (Deepika) who is a lying scheming bitch.

It’s hard therefore to warm to such characters.

Obviously inspired by the Adi Chopra- Karan Johar school of filmmaking, this is a poor imitation with even poorer characters.

During an extended title sequence we see the 2 grow up as children when they shared Mr. India dialogues to their teenage years where they both jump on trampolines (here a young Imran is played by the cute kid from Kuch Kuch and Fanaa who has now grown into an awkward, lanky teen with a surprisingly hairy back).


Then come the lead pair.
Imran as a sentimental romantic who drives a yellow beetle and who ought to grow some balls and Deepika as a deflowered bitch who smokes cigars and calls her mother by her first name.

Changing gender characteristics must have seemed great on paper but is a total misfit when executed on screen.

Deepika has long legs. Seriously long legs. And that’s always an asset to have when our acting isn’t very good. Flaunt your legs to distract from your acting.
Ask Bipasha, she’s been doing it for almost a decade now.

So when Deepika tries to be sassy and comes across as sour-pussy just ignore her and focus on her legs.
If you really like your girls sassy, get a DVD instead and watch Jab We Met.

And which young Indian calls her mother (Sharmila Tagore as Ayesha) by her first name?

That’s not sassy, that’s just bad upbringing.

 The only good part about this mother-daughter story is that their being muslim is never made obvious. Infact till Sharmila talked about her ‘Abbu & Amma’ I hadn’t even thought of them as Mozzys. For a Hindi film this is certainly a big deal. After all isn’t that how we live our lives? Thank god for small mercies.


Imran helps his father run a cinema and seems bored doing so while Deepika wants to be an actress which her mom disapproves of. The mom seems pretty open minded and modern so I was not really sure why she disapproved? Maybe having been a superstar herself, she could see that her daughter’s acting abilities were limited.
Maybe…
Who knows?
Frankly, who cares?

Anyway she goes off to study Mass Comm at the Gold Coast University and puppy dog follows her there when he suspects she maybe be being screwed ‘in queue’.

Initially he drives taxis and even works at some forklift operation inside the airport. Driving License, Security Clearance… what’s that? Bollywood has never heard of these things.

Anyway there he finds his true calling and becomes a chef and opens many restaurants.

She meanwhile walks across a stage at a college play as an Egyptian (but dressed as a Greek) and gets offered an international film because, as the casting director helpfully informs us, they need an Asian character. Never mind the fact that while shooting the film she seems to be dressed more like an African safari than ‘Asian character’.

Once again people this is Bolywood so screw you for looking for reason and plausibility.
Characters here don’t have enough money for rent but get a beachside villa for 100$ a month. They fly business class to and from Australia like they were going from Chandni Chowk to Connaught Place.

 But by this time you are past caring…... About 2 ½ hours into a movie if your nachos have more crunch than the storyline….its usually not a good sign.

At one point when Imran is gloomily sitting after a break up, Lilette sighs at the drama queen and mutters.


“I blame these directors who keep re-making Devdas and turning our youth into such miserable characters”

Maybe she should look at blaming some other movies.

Afterall Devdas has only been remade thrice.

This DDLJ inspired trend however, seems to be never ending.

Kuch Kuch Hota Tha…… Aaj kal…. kuch bhi nahi.

Movie Review: I Hate Luv Storys

A LOVE-HATE MOVIE

I HATE LUV STORYS

* Imran Khan, Sonam Kapoor, Samir Dattani

Music - Vishal Shekhar

Director: Punit Malhotra

In an upcoming film (Once Upon A Time In Mumbai) there is a song where one of the lines goes like this:

“Tere sang chain bhi mujhko, tere sang bekarari hai.” (With you I find contentment and with you restlessness too.)

Watching I Hate Luv Storys I had a similar experience.

For its genre and for what it was promising to be, it was a fair deal. And yet there were moments when my concentration was wandering and I was left thinking of various other things like did i turn off the lights in my flat or should i go for indian or chinese after the movie (food that is in case you are wondering).
And like I’ve always said, whenever that happens at the movies it is never a good sign.

IHLS is not a bad film. Infact it has many things going for it, like a soundtrack that’s both rocking and soulful, lead actors who are photogenic and from the yuppie gen-x, costumes, art direction, cinematography everything is top notch, but all the individual parts somehow don’t come together as a cohesive whole.

Imran Khan playing J or Jay Dhingra looks fairer, prettier and more delicate than Sonam and I suspect the director realized this and in many scenes he’s made to sport a stubble. He is very earnest and can act well too but the guy seriously needs to get two things in control. His Pout and his Eyebrows. In many scenes, his (extremely bushy) eyebrows seem to be acting independently of the rest of his face.

Fascinating? Yes! Interesting ?? NO. Unless you happen to be a hair care specialist.

And then there is the pout. With Imran (and I guess the tween girls must love that very pout) it has always been quite pronounced but more so when he is lip synching to the songs. Watch him in the title track and during ‘Sadka Kiya’. Nemo pouts less than Imran.

Sonam Kapoor plays the filmy Simran (presumably after Kajol’s character in DDLJ). Last year in the Indian version of GQ, the irrepressible Shoobaa De was asked to comment on the current crop of heroines and for Sonam, she had this to say: “Pretty but Very Boring and with Zero Sex Appeal.”

Well, what can I say to top that?

Don’t get me wrong, Sonam is very pretty (and fashionable) but there is something very ‘behenji’ about her that never seems to transcend into a matinee idol status. In the Sadka Kiya song, she is dressed in the obligatory chiffon sarees with blouses that look suspiciously like bikini tops and yet as she reclines on an artistically placed dead-wood she arouses no passion whatsoever. Kajol & Kareena can show more oomph with a glance. For me Sonam is the A-List version of Amrita Rao.

Samir Dattani plays Sonam’s fiancée Raj and his character is again so one dimensional that right from the time he comes on screen with his fugly shirt you know he doesn’t stand a chance in hell. I know he’s the second lead and that J and Simran are meant for each other but when will Bollywood learn that when you begin to flesh out the secondary characters, you make us care more about the turns in the story. Poor Raj here is such a caricature that you never feel for Simran & J’s breakups simply because you know Simran cant possibly love that cardboard cut out that is Raj.

J’s friend. I don’t know his name but the fat friend gets some of the movie’s best lines and rocks them every time. His delivery, timing, expressions are all spot on. When the usually non-sentimental J begins to fall in love and comes rushing into the office asking where’s Simran, Fatty deadpans “Kyun, kya tu uske baache ki maa banne wala hai?” (Why, are you pregnant with her child?) or the time when he shows J his hilarious and yet apt graph about the Hot quotient of girls versus their ‘natak’ and somehow how this is all tied up in Profit and Loss.

TV star Aamir Ali plays the Movie star in IHLS and he is suitably wacky and obnoxious. I don’t know if he was modeled on Salman Khan but he brings the house down when he parades around in tight jeans because the girls allegedly ‘love his tight butt’.

Music: Vishal Shekhar give what is probably their best soundtrack ever. The title song is rocking and Bahara, Bin Tere and Sadka Kiya are all very hummable and memorably picturized. On the album Bahara has a Chill version sung but Rahat Fateh Ali Khan and it’s a surprise this is not used in the movie. Its much better than the Shreya Ghosal one.

The director is Punit Malhotra who’s the nephew of fashion designer Manish Malhotra and so the look of the film is great with tees and skirts snug and fitting but somehow the script seems a little loose.

Great to look at and a not a bad way to pass the time at the cinemas but IHLS leaves you a little ‘bekerar’ for more.

Simran looks pretty, J looks prettier and Raj is Fugly. But Love & Passion?? Naa! Not in this movie.

But can you blame them?

After all the title song HAD warned us…

“Mil gaye jo chora chori,
Hui masti thodi thodi.
Bas Pyar ka naam na lena,
I Hate Luv Storys.”

Movie review: Raavan

THIS 'RAAVAN' IS NOT BAD. BUT SADLY THE MOVIE IS.

RAAVAN

*ing Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, Vikram, Govinda

Directed by: Mani Rathnam

Music: A R Rahman

Lyrics: Gulzar

Mani Rathnam has a problem.

He does not speak Hindi. Nor does he get the subtleties that go with knowing the language and so its just my guess, but I think Raavana (Tamil) is going to be far better than this stilted snooze fest that is Raavan.

I remember while studying in Bangalore we stood in line outside a theatre (this was before the multiplexes came in) and almost got lathi charged just because some friends of mine wanted to watch Bombay: first day first show.

And being a huge Manisha fan I tagged along even though it was in Tamil.

I did watch the hindi version later and even though I don’t understand Tamil, it seemed a far superior version.

In Raavan the characters seem to spew ‘dialogue’ and hardly ever talk.

I have no idea about Vikram’s body of work (he is allegedly a National Award winner) but seeing that this was made for a north Indian audience, a fitter body would have been better. Unlike the south, Bollywood prefers its matinee idols a lil less rotund.

Seeing Vikram running in slow motion with his paunch jiggling (with shirt tucked into jeans no less) was not a pretty sight and no amount of Ray Bans could compensate for it. The worse part was that his role was half baked too. What a start to Bollywood. There's no way he is ever going to make it here.

And Abhishek Bachchan hams away to glory with not a single nod to subtlety. His “Jhig-jhig-jhig” and “Bak Bak Bak” dialogues were comic when they weren’t supposed to be and towards the end in a crucial scene when Ash repeats the same (Bak Bak) back to him the whole theatre was left giggling.

I think when Mani conceived the film, the character Beera was supposed to kidnap Ragini with an intention of killing her and taking revenge on her husband. The evil towards Ragini should have slowly given way to grudging Respect and Confusion followed by a something resembling Love.

AB Jr. makes such a mess of this role that you never fear his character so then finally when love blossoms it is not interesting at all. He seemed to be making eyes at her all along.

Except for the last 5 minutes, he never really becomes Beera.

He is always Abhishek Bachchan. Of the movie’s 2hr 20 min running time, Abhi’s Beera is always a caricature never a character.

For Aishwarya this is possibly her best performance to date. She is consistent and even though the dialogues given to her are mostly screeches and wails she does remain in character throughout even though her makeup seems to do the same too.

Sometimes shot in extreme close-up, its quite distracting to notice fine mascara after 14 days in the jungle in the rain. The villages where Beera takes her, seem to be the poor adivasi type and yet when Ash is given a change of clothes in the jungle she gets a nice Fab-India type of sari. Ethnic chic??

But boy oh boy is she looking fabulous. You cant take your eyes off the screen when she is on and as much as Abhi may try to distract you with his odd eye makeup she is luminous and shot like a dream by Santosh Sivan and V Manikandan.

Talking of which, the cinematography is the only thing about this movie that is world class. Breathtaking is an understatement as the 2 veteran’s cameras captures every detail of the forest and infact some of the shots (if you are interested in photography) will blow your mind. Some of the swooping camera work would definitely not be possible without cranes and seeing the location you wonder where they put them in the first place.

The music however is a major disappointment with the best song (Ranhja Ranhja) used only fleetingly for Beera’s sisters marriage. The other great song Jaare Udd Jaa (not on album) is performed by A.R Rahman himself and comes in parts during the movie and then in its entirety during the end credits (Ab iss shareer ke sirey khol dey / Aur goongi aatma ko bol dey.)

Rahman drops the ball on this one and almost recovers it with the haunting Jaare, but its too little too late.

Govinda (quite aptly) is given the role of Hanuman and unlike the loyal & heroic character of the epic he is more of a comic here. A fat bloated side kick. But he does the best he can with this one.

All in all Raavan is a beautiful and sad film.

Sad because it comes from a director who is india’s most talented and experienced story teller.

What a sad day. Maybe he should just go back to telling his stories in the language he knows best.

Tamil.

Till then we’ll just have to make do with Kaminey’s like Vishal Bhardwaj.

NEW MOON: Movie Review

OLD MOON IN A NEW BOTTLE

Dear Friends,

I was on a short vacation and therefore i could not blog.

Anyway before i come to some blogs on Darjeeling soon, here's a review i have been holding off on for more than a few months now.. Let me know your thoughts.

Luv

Vish

THE TWILIGHT SAGA: NEW MOON
MOVIE REVIEW

I have been holding off on writing the review for New Moon for almost half a year now.

Most of my friends loved it but I just did not go ga-ga over it. I found it stupid and surprisingly over-the-top.

Maybe I was in a bad mood while watching the film. I gave it the benefit of the doubt and didn’t write anything. However last week on my flight back from Delhi I watched it again on the inflight selection. And guess what. It was still bad. Still ridiculous.

In the movie, after it is advertently revealed that Jacob is actually a werewolf, the vampire loving Bella and him walk in the beach and have the following conversation.

Bella: So you are a werewolf.
Jacob: I guess so.
Bella: Isn’t there anything you can do about it.
Jacob: Its not a lifestyle choice Bella.
Bella: Aah OK. I guess so.

Friends of mine in the US who saw this movie reported contrasting reactions during this scene. The tweens were going “aaaahhhh” but most of the adults were laughing at the sheer sight of Bella & Jacob talking about it like it were some minor issue.

So the only real reason for its massive success has to be the teens and the teenagers or “tweens” as they are now known.

Anyway I’m getting ahead of the story here. Lets start at the very beginning because as Ms. Julie Andrews taught us, it a very good place to start.

When Bella (Kristen Stewart) wakes for the first time in The New Moon she’s horrified by the nightmare she’s just had. That is, as she looks out on a flowery field, she sees her future, as Edward’s (Robert Pattinson) beloved who is an old woman. The horror apparently is that she is aging. After all, she suddenly wakes up and remembers, it’s her 18th birthday already.

This ‘tragedy’ is somehow made worse when her dad, Charlie arrives in her bedroom with gifts and jokes that he’s spotted a gray hair amid her glorious thick brown tresses.

Well, it’s just too much.

Bella, being the drama queen who takes herself way to seriously, rushes to the mirror to assure herself that she’s not, in fact, old.

For most of us in our late 20’s and 30’s this is just plain silly. Stupid and Silly.

Feeling Old?? And that too at 18? Come on, its even more silly than having a love triangle between a werewolf, a vampire and a stupid old 18 year old girl.

But for the tweens, this taps into their inner angst where 25 is unimaginably OLD and where anyone over 30 is automatically Uncle or Aunty.

It’s no surprise then that Bella turns this bit of angst into her recurring desire, that Edward turn her into a Vampire i.e. have hot vampirish sex with her (again something the tweens seem to always have on their mind).

Not that it matters. As everyone knows by now, Bella and Edward are all about delaying gratification. They gush, they pant, they touch foreheads and maybe just maybe, kiss sometimes.

But the fact that 3 more films have to come out of this means they need a few more problems. So Edward suddenly and quite inexplicably decides that Bella just doesn’t belong in his world. He doesn’t want her, he says, and in addition, he asserts “You’re not good for me.” Strangely the stupid girl believes him and begins a very long and boring 15 minutes where she longs for him in angst. (Yeah baby its all about the angst in this movie.)

Edward of course is not “gone”. He keeps appearing as a smoke-ish image to warn Bella not to be “reckless,” which of course she (being the stupid girl she is) keeps being in the hope that she will see his smoky image again. Seriously, where is SKYPE when you need it?

Anyway after she finally gets tired of moping around and hitching rides with Hell’s Angels, she decides to visit Jacob (Taylor Lautner) to get him to fix some bikes (??). He falls in love, she gets reckless again, she falls and he does what he was paid to do in the movie. He removes his shirt.

Bella—and every tween in the audience—gasps.

In an example of very bad, corny writing she says breathlessly, “You’re sort of beautiful!” Maybe that white faced wimpy bloodsucking leech isn’t her only option. Maybe. Just Maybe.

But there’s a complication. But of course.

Even as Bella begins to softly caress Jake’s abs (and for the sake of the tweens he is almost always bare-bodied), he reveals that he’s a werewolf. Which leads us to the beginning of the review where I mentioned their ridiculously mundane conversation about something so radical.

“You’re-a-werewolf-OK-Great-Now-lets-get-on-with-it” kinda mundane.

Then for some agonizingly slow 30 min or so of the movie, Bella begins to ponders her future while Jake turns into a wimpy lovesick wolf-boy and Edward prepares for a strip-tease in Italy.

And yet… all this drama leads exactly nowhere.

You don’t have to be an expert in the Twilight series to know that Bella actually has no option. That Edward who’s determined not to have sex with her is always the “one.”
Wolf-boy has no chance of sinking his fangs (or any other part of his) into her.

New Moon then hurtles towards a big flashy climax (no no, not that type of climax) that’s both hilarious and comically camp. During a meeting of the Volturi, Aro (Michael Sheen) tells Edward and Bella that they will have to be killed for breaking vampire laws. Edward has shown himself to the humans. Too bad Aro doesn’t know that Edward’s girlfriend has a wolf waiting as a second suitor. Imagine what he’d have done then.

Anyway during this ‘meeting’, the Volturi are shocked on discovering Bella’s special gift.
Namely that the cocky vampire mind readers can’t read Bella’s mind.

Now it’s not clear whether this is because Bella is really special in some way or because she really has nothing in her brain. I’d personally go with the second option but then what do I know.

I am not a tween.

The sad part of this climax is the waste of 2 great actors; Michael Sheen (having some great fun as he gets to act so over-the-top) and Dakota Fanning (whose power is to make a victim believe she is feeling pain which she does by looking sternly at the victim). Fanning in particular has less than 4 minutes of screen time and yet in those 4 minutes she makes you wonder what wonders she could have done with Bella’s role.

The 3rd installment in this saga, Eclipse, is coming this summer.

Unlike the tweens, I’m not panting in anticipation but then who knows.......

Maybe they’ll finally have sex. Maybe they’ll even have a threesome.

We humans live in hope afterall.

Movie Review: Rocket Singh- Salesman of the Year

RANBIR KAPOOR: Actor Of The Year

Rocket Singh - Salesman Of The Year

* Ranbir Kapoor

Writer : Jaideep Sahni

Director: Shimit Amin

India and its middle class can be quite clearly divided between the pre and post Manmohan Singh days. Everything before that was tinged with a layer of dishonesty & sleaze and while corruption is far from over, the advent of better days seem to have been heralded with his brand of clean and honest politics.



With Rahul Gandhi and the other bright young guns in politics now, with the resurgent media and examples like the Jessica Lal campaign leading to Manu Sharma’s conviction and with the rejection of the BJP’s divisive policies during the last elections, the middle class is slowly but surely beginning to dare to dream of a better India.


To use Obama’s words, the youth of India now have the audacity to hope of a cleaner, better and a more truthful India.

Rocket Singh taps into this brilliantly.

When Harpreet Singh (Ranbir Kapoor) or H.P as he’s called by his friends begins work as a fresh new salesman, his honest way of dealing and refusal to offer or accept bribes seems quaint and naïve. Even as recent as 10 years ago this character would have been seen as a loser.



But then as the movie progresses and HP (who has become Rocket Singh by now) sticks to his principles and succeeds, his boss and his old way of dealing with bribes and kickbacks becomes (to use one of the character’s phrase) ‘history’.

With all due respect to the Ambani brothers and all their high ranking in the richest lists and for all their money, the one thing they sorely lack is solid respectability. The moral authority to stand and call someone like Mamata Banerjee a fool to her face. That is what someone like Ratan Tata can do.


That is why the TATA brand is almost synonymous with quality and trust and it’s no coincidence that the next job Rocket Singh takes on after being fired from his job at AYS computers is at Chroma which is a TATA enterprise.

Maybe in Rocket Singh we can aspire for a model of a citizen that will nudge India from the developing to the developed status. An India whose promise of democracy and transparency triumphs over the oppression and moral ambiguity of China.



Rocket Singh is not without its faults though. It could have been much shorter and frankly a little more entertaining, especially in the first half. At times it tends to plod along but its greatest strengths lies in its writing.

It is as non-filmy as you can possibly get out of Bollywood and some of the characters and spaces are exceptionally well etched. Case in point is the office atmosphere at AYS computers and the dress and body language of the salesmen working there.



You can almost smell the damp sweat as they come back from their sales calls. Infact in each of their faces you can recognize all the hundreds of salesmen who have over the years knocked on your own door selling everything from water filters to encyclopedias.



All the supporting characters are excellent with the best being the tea boy Chotelal Mishra. Watch him wince involuntarily every time he is called “cup-plate”. Even the romance is handled with…what’s the word here…. Aah yes…Normalcy. Its exactly how a budding romance unfolds. No singing no dancing no drama….just plain simple middle class love.

But at the end this movie belongs to one person. That is ofcourse, apart from the director Shimit Amin and writer Jaideep Sahni.




And that person is Ranbir Kapoor.


I have certainly watched Baazigar, Deewana and Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman but have no real recollection of the exact time. But when Darr came out I was in college in Bangalore and like the movie buff I am, I vividly remember watching it twice at a cinema called Rex on Brigade Road.
And as Shah Rukh Khan rolled both his eyes and his K’s in that movie I was acutely aware that we were seeing the emergence of a solid superstar.

After the good husband Sunny Deol punches the hell out of SRK for stalking and harassing his wife, a bloodied and bruised SRK falls at Sunny’s feet and begs for forgiveness. As Sunny hesitates and begins to show some pity, SRK gets up and repeatedly stabs him. Instead of a gasp, I remember the whole theater erupting in cheers.



Tu either Haan Kar, Yah Naa Kar, the fact was that King Khan was born.

A month back as I sat in another theatre (this time in Darjeeling) watching the Ajab/Gajab movie I came to a similar conclusion.

Ranbir Kapoor is the next superstar.

And in Rocket Singh he takes a simple one dimensional role and adds so much subtlety and nuance to it that you cannot help but root for him.


Action, comedy, drama, dancing…. He does everything brilliantly and more importantly he does it absolutely naturally. And he seems to be choosing his roles also very well. Just 5 films old and look at the range....Saawariya, Bachna Aye Haseeno, Wake Up Sid, Ajab Prem Ki...., Rocket Singh and then he has Rajniti coming up.
There is really no stopping him now. Shahid Kapur eat your heart out.

This movie is a bit slow and has no item numbers and big showdowns etc but if you like intelligent films then Rocket Singh is the movie to watch.

Enjoy



Luv


Vishal

Movie Review: Paa

THIS Paa NEEDS A Maa

PAA

*ing Amitabh Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan & Vidya Balan

Lyrics: Swanand Kirkire

Music: Illiyaraja

Writer & Director: R Balki

There are 2 great performances in Paa and no, it is not Amitabh or Abhishek I’m talking about here. But more on that later.

As most of you may already know this movie is about Progeria, which after dyslexia & tsunami should be the new word for eager middle class Indians to drop at parties with that familiar propensity to be a Mr. know-it-all.

Anyway the director Balki in only his second film (after the underrated Cheeni Kum) shows that he is a very very good writer above all else. The wit and humour he is able to extract from everyday conversation in very reminiscent of Cheeni Kum. Remember the scene where after being wooed by an older man, Tabu asks him to run across a park and run back. And when a panting Amitabh asks the reason behind it she smilingly says “I just wanted to be sure you still have the energy for sex.”

And sex (pre-marital and un-protected) is what the couple in Paa have, which leads to a demand for an abortion + anger = single motherhood and all that jazz...

Anyway Paa also has some very funny lines which are woven so well into the conversation that you can only wish directors like Priyadarshan and David Dhawan would pay attention and pick up a few tips. Comedy without being silly or corny or slap-stick or crude. What a bloody relief.

But then Balki does have his drawbacks too. There is a completely unnecessary and high-pitched rant at the media involving Abhishek as the yuppie M.P. with a segment at Doordarshan that looks so amateur and silly that you wonder how this fool ever got elected in the first place. His look seems to have been modeled on Rahul Gandhi but his maturity and behaviour on Laloo Yadav. Such a waste.

Performance wise, Abhishek doesn’t have much to do in the movie and what little is required of him he delivers.

Now while the Indian media have been going gaga over Amitabh’s performance it should be worth noting that while it is certainly very very good, it isn’t great by any standard. In Bollywood we are cursed with so much of crap that Mediocrity sometimes gets mistaken for Genius.

The boy, Auro is supposed to be about 12 and while he acts like one, he sometimes talks like a much older man. It maybe to get the story moving or to inject some humour but clearly some things he says and does are not what a normal 12 year old would say or do. Progeria I checked (googled) accelerates the physical ageing of the person but certainly not his mental maturity.

But like always we do tend to favour any kind of work which involves a physical handicap. Hollywood stars have known it for years and Bollywood seems to be catching up too. It’s to Amitabh’s credit that Auro stops just short of being gimmicky but as far as portrayals of children go, I’d give higher marks to Hrithik in Koi Mil Gaya.

Now coming to the 2 best performances I spoke about in the beginning.

First of all its Vidya Balan in what must be her best performance since Parineeta. Infact I’d rate it even higher coz there the script was tailor made for her. Here her character graph is sketchy at best. She essentially has a 2 dimensional role to play. Jilted Lover & Doting Mother.
So it is to her entire credit that she fleshes out the character so well that instead of the Father-Son movie that this movie’s tag line suggests it is, it instead becomes more of a warm and touching mother-son story. Whenever she is with Auro you can literally feel the maternal love coming out of every pore. And she is supported here by the very touchingly real portrayal of an adoring grandmother by the lady called BUM (I didn’t get her name) who I last remember seeing in Dil Se.

The other great performance is by Jaya Bachchan. Clearly a doting mother and for Abhishek’s first movie as producer, she comes on screen for about 2 minutes and does nothing but sit down and read out the credits. So it’s like..... “Costume Designer. Sabyasachi Mukherjee. Music Director. Illayaraja. Lyrics. Swanand Kirkire”..... and so on but then again it is to her immense talent as an actress that she makes that interesting with just that little smile here and a nod there. What a great actress.

And just for her and Vidya, this movie would have been so much better off being call Maa instead.

The Paa is a bumbling fool. But Maa, as always is all heart.

Afterall, Tujhe Sab Hai Pata Hai Na Maa…..

Certainly worth a watch.


Luv

Vishal

Kurbaan: Movie Review

WOULD YOU SACRIFICE YOUR LIFE IF YOU WERE IN DOUBT?



I watched 2 movies in the last 2 days.

The first one was a multiple Oscar nominee DOUBT starring 2 of the best actors of this generation in Hollywood, Phillip Seymour Hoffman & Meryl Streep.

This evening I watched Kurbaan, the directorial debut of Rensil De Silva, who had previously written Rang De Basanti.

And strangely enough both are very very similar.

In Doubt, Sister Aloysius (Streep) is convinced beyond Doubt that Fr. Flynn (Hoffman) has committed some act of impropriety with a young boy even though she has no definite proof. He is equally adamant he hasn’t.

And as the audience all we have is evidence that can at best be called circumstantial.

And the movie gives us no resolutions. It actually leaves us in Doubt.

Now the important question is if that is a bad thing. Is Doubt bad?

Think about it. What’s the opposite of Doubt?

Certainty!

And what does absolute certainty lead to? Infallibility!

It's one of life's bitter ironies that one of the first things lost to moral certainty is the capacity for compassion. Righteousness is a cold, hard position, and an unshakeable one. It allows no room for one of the most basic tenants of human existence: doubt.

Faith exists not in counterpoint to certainty but to doubt. Few of us have the capacity to defend a position of uncompromising certainty. Unless we are fanatics.

And isn’t the certainty of the superiority of one’s faith over all others that leads to fanaticism?
The inability to entertain even an iota of Doubt.

That all Muslims may NOT be terrorists. That all Americans are not like Bush.

Where ever and when ever there is no space for Doubt you risk becoming a fanatic.

And that is a question Kurbaan makes you ponder.

But enough about my sermonizing.

Kurbaan is a very thought provoking movie and one of the best of its genre that has come out of Bollywood. KJo is its producer but if you are expecting fluff forget about it. Be prepared to be engaged mentally.

The movie is filled with so many twists and turns that giving even a synopsis will be fraught with spoilers so I’ll let you enjoy the movie for yourself.

Just a word about the performances.

Saif Ali Khan. When he won the National Award some years back most of the protests were directed at the movie he won for (Hum Tum) and not really because there was doubt about his acting ability. And here he shows you why. In a role that could have been so showy and clichéd (think Aamir Khan in Fanaa) Saif here underplays his role so beautifully that you almost seem to forget its Saif. You are left only with Ehsaan.

Kareena Kapoor: She is not only one of the best among the current generation of actresses but also possesses such blinding charisma that when she is on screen there is not much you can do but stare. And boy can she act. The only one who can match her in both charisma and acting chops is her cousin Ranbir Kapoor (if you don’t believe me watch the outrageous Ajab/Gazab movie being rescued by him alone)

Vivek Oberoi: Before Salman, before Aishwarya and before all the stardom went to his head Vivek has debuted with a searingly honest performance in Company. Now with the Khan & Rai distractions behind him he is back in his element playing a moderate Muslim. Certainly one of his best in years.

Special mention must be made of his spot on american accent whenever he talks in English. Exactly how someone brought up in the US would speak. Infact Vivek's 'pal' Abhishek Bachchan could take a few pointers from him. Remember Dilli 6???

Rensil De Silva: He brings such a fresh perspective to the bollywood scene that you sometimes forget it’s a mainstream movie. Right at the end Kareena asks Saif his real name.

It’s a simple question but something you would have never thought of at such a moment and yet when she does, you realize there was nothing that could have been more appropriate.

If you’ve ever had your heart broken you’ll understand. Trust me.


Worth a Watch. Without a DOUBT.

Luv

Vish

Movie Review: London Dreams

LONDON DREAMS

*ing Salman Khan, Ajay Devgn, Asin.

Music: Shankar Ehsaan Loy

Lyrics: Prasoon Joshi

Director: Vipul A Shah

London Dreams is from the new genre of movies I like to call WTFWTT or

“What The Fcuk Were They Thinking?”

Seriously… there is so much in this movie (if you can call it a movie) that doesn’t work and all I can do is list them for you.

a) Ajay Devgn. He started out as an action star and then did some pretty good work as a dramatic actor (Company, Zakhm), some good romantic films (Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam) and even did some comedy which may not have been his forte but which did make money (Golmaal, All The Best). And he is a pretty decent actor too. But there is one thing that he is NOT, and that is a Rock Star. The poor guy is hopelessly miscast as an international rock star.

Mr. Devgn does not look like one and certainly doesn’t move like one. And it’s nothing to do with his age. After all Bon Jovi is around 40, Bono around 50, Paul McCartney is about 6o and Keith Richards’ age is probably about all the 3 put together. So no it’s not that.

Ajay is just not built to be a rockstar. NO. Not even with his name now spelt as Devgn.

b) Salman Khan whose buffoonery was what propelled Wanted into the super hit status can’t expect to do the same in serious movies. Till the time that he’s playing the village idiot he’s ok but the moment he’s expected to perform during dramatic scenes he continues to act like a buffoon and that is certainly a problem. And he seems to have shot for this movie either during or just before his hair transplant and he looks bad. He may have been the ‘Handsomest Man In The World’ and all that jazz, but at 45+ he is beginning to look haggard.

c) The Setting. Why London? Why couldn’t it have been Bombay? Why Wembley when Brabourne stadium would have been just fine. Or better. That way the songs would have worked. The audience rocking to the songs would have been plausible. The whole damn movie would have been more believable. There was absolutely no reason to set it in London and the movie suffers for it. Globalization maybe the catchphrase nowadays but there is no way I am going to believe young London girls rocking, raving and going crazy about an ageing Indian band. Who by the way, sing in Hindi. And whose songs are sometimes Raga based. No fcuking way. Then they go on to rock Paris & Rome too. Seriously???

How do u say “What The Fcuk?” in Italian?

d) Asin. I was one of the few who did not like her in Ghajini. However compared to this movie, Ghajini is like a bloody masterpiece. To be fair you can’t blame her. It’s her character which has been written so badly. She is a bharatnatyam dancer from a conservative British-Tamilian family who secretly wants to dance like a ‘pop star’. After much fake tension with the father who subsequently gets a dramatic lecture from Ajay Devgn about following dreams and all that jazz, what does she do??? She becomes a glorified background dancer in the band.

The only person who benefited from such a career is Britney’s former background dancer and husband, Kevin Federline. Maybe that’s who her character was modeled on.

e) Music. On its own the music by S-E-L is great. But in the movie it doesn’t gel. Not a single song stays with you after the movie.

f) Credibility. Bhatinda may be a small town in rural Punjab but does it mean it is cut off from reality. The ‘biggest Indian band in the world’ self destructs spectacularly while on stage in Wembley and yet the idiots in Bhatinda are so busy dancing at weddings and running around fields that they don’t have a clue. And those losers are their own ‘puttars’ I may add.

g) Logic: Why can’t you love and concentrate on your career at the same time. Does passion and dedication have to be enemies? Mr. Devgn falls in love with Asin but the crazy man that he is, he begins to whip himself with his belt. Maybe he should have just pleasured himself and saved us all the fake heartbreak. Apna Haath Jaggannath anyone?

h) The Climax. Ok ok... i know its not right to speak about climax just after the previous sentence but dont worry, in this movie it is actually an anti climax. The showdown, the repentance, the penance, the forgiveness..... nothing works.... nothing.

And as you all know, with out a good climax, an orgasm if you may, the whole act is useless.

But what do you do when the whole act is a dissapointment and the climax too is a downer.

I could go on but I am exhausted.

And trust me, you will be too once you watch this mockery of a movie.

See you soon.

Luv

Vish

BLUE: Movie Review

HOW THEY 'BLUE' 100 CRORES

BLUE

*ing Sanjay Dutt, Akshay Kumar, Zayed Khan, Lara Dutta

Music: A R Rehman

Sound Design: Resul Pookutty

Hindi movies usually don’t give much thought to actual character build up or proper characterization.
Instead they try to cover that up by giving the characters some kind of odd traits like a stammer (SRK in Darr) a limp (Sanjay Dutt in Saajan) or mannerism (think Gulshan Grover in all his movies) or some one-liners like Amrish Puri (Mogambo khus hua), Anil Kapoor (Jhakaas) or failing which, they are dressed in some trademark style like stylish shades (almost all of Sanjay Gupta films) or skimpy clothes (almost all of Ram Gopal Verma’s heroines).

Similarly in Blue most of the characters keep talking about things they want to BLOW up while Akshay’s character is the only one who talks in the past tense and says BLEW.

I presumed this to be another crazy trait sketched for his character by the dumb director until I realized that all the while Akshay was actually saying Blue.

And in the dark of the theatre I managed to squeeze out a small grin.
But that, i’m afraid, is the only entertaining bit in this 100 crore movie.

To be fair, there are a few things worth noticing like Lara Dutta looking like.... well lets just say 100 crores, the underwater cinematography by Peter Zuccharini of Pirates of the Caribbean, Lara in stunning swimwear, the very un-hindi background score and did I mention Lara Dutta? But only when she is not speaking though. And not to forget the stunning Bond-ish song Rehnuma.

However the negatives far outweigh the positives.

1) Sanjay Dutt looking haggard with a paunch and two things, which for wont of a better word can only be described as man-boobs.
2) Zayed Khan who has about 25 scenes in the movie which unfortunately is about 24 scenes too many.
3) Zayed Khan who has only 1 expression for every scene and every emotion.
4) The sharks who are so docile they seem almost pet-able.
5) Some truly God-awful dialogues.
6) Kylie wasted in what must certainly rate as AR Rehman’s worst song: Jiggy Wiggy
7) Lara Dutta being asked to speak.
8) The title “Blue” being pronounced in a hundred different ways.

By the way, apart from denoting a colour, the word BLUE can also be used as an adjective to describe a feeling of sadness or melancholy and I have a feeling that if you spend your hard earned money on this movie, that’s exactly how you’ll end up feeling.

But maybe that's not so bad.... after all you could also end up feeling Blew.

Phew.

Till next time

Luv or should i say Loue

Vish