Saturday, December 10, 2005
Ek Ajnabee + 2
Ek Ajnabee
One wonders what some filmmakers would do if Amitabh Bachchan was unavailable to do their films. Who would then carry the burden of their films, since this one star alone does most of their work for them!
Ek Ajnabee can’t be imagined without Amitabh Bachchan-- since he keeps viewer’s eyes on the screen, while director Apoorva Lakhia goes ballistic with ‘technique’. Almost every scene is over-stylised to the extent that the emotional content goes missing. This jumpy ‘strobe’ editing style can quickly get on the nerves—and Lakhia empties buckets of style on to the viewer. The content, of course, is lifted from Hollywood flick Man on Fire.
Amitabh Bachhan plays former Colonel Suryaveer Singh, who is invited to Bangkok by his protégée Shekhar (Arjun Rampal), to take on the menial job of being a child’s bodyguard. The country is in the grip of a kidnapping epidemic and a rich Indian couple (Vikram Chatwal-Perizaad Zorabian) hire the alcoholic colonel to protect their little daughter Anamika (Richa Vaidya—cute as a button).
At first annoyed at the girl’s attempts at friendship, he soon starts to love her. When she is kidnapped, and he is left grievously wounded, Suryaveer promises Anamika’s mother, that he will kill all those who committed the crime.
The first half of the film, spent in building the relationship between the girl and the bodyguard, gets a bit boring after a while. But then the second half in which he goes after the kidnappers and kills them in horrible ways (putting a bomb up into the body of one and blowing him up), gets too predictable.
Towards the end the plot twists come thick and fast, but by this time, who cares! Because the film is just sporadically engaging, you pass the time wondering how the colonel fitted so many suits into a tiny bag; or why Rampal tries so hard to look and sound ‘cool’; or how come everybody Suryaveer has to deal with in Bangkok, is half Indian and knows Hindi!
Bachchan is the heart and soul of the movie—the scene in which he considers suicide raises goosebumps. Unfortunately, a couple of powerful scenes do not a movie make. Perizaad Zorabian is surprisingly good as the mother, playing her small part with grace and maturity.
Kalyug
After a long time, a film from the Bhatt camp takes up a contemporary issue, and is not a total lift from a foreign film – even if 8mm seems to be the obvious inspiration.
Mohit Suri integrates fact and fiction reasonably well, and though film is unevenly paced and often over-dramatic, it tackles a dark, offbeat theme.
After giving the leading man Kunal (Khemu), a ‘history’--- he is a Kashmiri refugee who has rebuilt his life in Mumbai—the film quickly goes through his romance with a Kashmiri girl (Smilie Suri), marriage, and the beginning of his trauma.
On their honeymoon they are secretly filmed and the footage flashed over a porn site. It’s not clear why Kunal is arrested and tortured by the cops, but he is accused of being a porn peddler. His wife commits suicide, and Kunal goes to Zurich to strike at the roots of the blue film empire.
The lady who runs the illicit site and ordered the filming of honeymoon couples, is Simi (Amrita Singh). Kunal is helped by a reluctant Ali (Emraan Hashmi), a sex toy shop owner, and later by porn star Annie (Deepak Shaw), who was forced into the trade.
There are the usual shots of semi nude women gyrating, but considering that the subject of the film is pornography, Suri does not make the images needlessly vulgar or disturbing. Most of the engrossing action takes place when the film is well into its second half, which is when Deepal Shaw gets her share of the spotlight, after just a fleeting presence in the first half.
Kunal Khemu is a bit gauche, but gives a sincere performance. He is almost upstaged by Emraam Hashmi as the funny helper/sidekick. It’s good to see two confident actresses leaving their mark—Amrita Singh and Deepal Shaw.
Neal ‘N’ Nikki
C’mon, tell us another! Every girl Neal (Uday Chopra) sets his eyes on in Vancouver hits on him! Why? Just because he is the producer’s brother?
Every girl in Canada goes about wearing so little, you wonder why they didn’t either freeze to death or get arrested for indecent exposure—the leading lady Nikki (Tanisha Mukerji) traipses through the film in what looks like underwear!
There is such a desperation about Arjun Sablok’s alleged youth flick, that whatever little charm the story might have had dissipates into silliness and sleaze.
Neal, small town Canadian-Indian, who is desired by every female (ha!) agrees to marry a Miss Sweety from Bhatinda, simply because he trusts his parents’ sense more than his own. But before the wedding, he wants to go to Vancouver and live it up.
His plans are foiled when he bumps into a drunk, sluttishly dressed Nikki, who demands that he take her home and then questions his intensions! Neal is picked up by a succession of women dressed in scantier clothes than Nikki, but she keeps coming in the way. Then, to make it up to him, she takes him to ‘babe heaven’, but actually uses him to make her ex-boyfriend jealous.
If Neal ‘n’ Nikki was meant to be a tongue in cheek look at how rich NRI youngsters live and behave, then it, sort of, insults them. Even the most brainless of them, couldn’t be as demented as these two.
Shot on beautiful Canadian locations, with a couple of good songs, it’s possible this film might appeal to some of the young crowd. But then again, the actors are hopeless—Uday Chopra with a permanent goofy expression and more lipstick than the women; Tanisha with a screechy voice, disheveled hair and ribs sticking out.
One wonders what some filmmakers would do if Amitabh Bachchan was unavailable to do their films. Who would then carry the burden of their films, since this one star alone does most of their work for them!
Ek Ajnabee can’t be imagined without Amitabh Bachchan-- since he keeps viewer’s eyes on the screen, while director Apoorva Lakhia goes ballistic with ‘technique’. Almost every scene is over-stylised to the extent that the emotional content goes missing. This jumpy ‘strobe’ editing style can quickly get on the nerves—and Lakhia empties buckets of style on to the viewer. The content, of course, is lifted from Hollywood flick Man on Fire.
Amitabh Bachhan plays former Colonel Suryaveer Singh, who is invited to Bangkok by his protégée Shekhar (Arjun Rampal), to take on the menial job of being a child’s bodyguard. The country is in the grip of a kidnapping epidemic and a rich Indian couple (Vikram Chatwal-Perizaad Zorabian) hire the alcoholic colonel to protect their little daughter Anamika (Richa Vaidya—cute as a button).
At first annoyed at the girl’s attempts at friendship, he soon starts to love her. When she is kidnapped, and he is left grievously wounded, Suryaveer promises Anamika’s mother, that he will kill all those who committed the crime.
The first half of the film, spent in building the relationship between the girl and the bodyguard, gets a bit boring after a while. But then the second half in which he goes after the kidnappers and kills them in horrible ways (putting a bomb up into the body of one and blowing him up), gets too predictable.
Towards the end the plot twists come thick and fast, but by this time, who cares! Because the film is just sporadically engaging, you pass the time wondering how the colonel fitted so many suits into a tiny bag; or why Rampal tries so hard to look and sound ‘cool’; or how come everybody Suryaveer has to deal with in Bangkok, is half Indian and knows Hindi!
Bachchan is the heart and soul of the movie—the scene in which he considers suicide raises goosebumps. Unfortunately, a couple of powerful scenes do not a movie make. Perizaad Zorabian is surprisingly good as the mother, playing her small part with grace and maturity.
Kalyug
After a long time, a film from the Bhatt camp takes up a contemporary issue, and is not a total lift from a foreign film – even if 8mm seems to be the obvious inspiration.
Mohit Suri integrates fact and fiction reasonably well, and though film is unevenly paced and often over-dramatic, it tackles a dark, offbeat theme.
After giving the leading man Kunal (Khemu), a ‘history’--- he is a Kashmiri refugee who has rebuilt his life in Mumbai—the film quickly goes through his romance with a Kashmiri girl (Smilie Suri), marriage, and the beginning of his trauma.
On their honeymoon they are secretly filmed and the footage flashed over a porn site. It’s not clear why Kunal is arrested and tortured by the cops, but he is accused of being a porn peddler. His wife commits suicide, and Kunal goes to Zurich to strike at the roots of the blue film empire.
The lady who runs the illicit site and ordered the filming of honeymoon couples, is Simi (Amrita Singh). Kunal is helped by a reluctant Ali (Emraan Hashmi), a sex toy shop owner, and later by porn star Annie (Deepak Shaw), who was forced into the trade.
There are the usual shots of semi nude women gyrating, but considering that the subject of the film is pornography, Suri does not make the images needlessly vulgar or disturbing. Most of the engrossing action takes place when the film is well into its second half, which is when Deepal Shaw gets her share of the spotlight, after just a fleeting presence in the first half.
Kunal Khemu is a bit gauche, but gives a sincere performance. He is almost upstaged by Emraam Hashmi as the funny helper/sidekick. It’s good to see two confident actresses leaving their mark—Amrita Singh and Deepal Shaw.
Neal ‘N’ Nikki
C’mon, tell us another! Every girl Neal (Uday Chopra) sets his eyes on in Vancouver hits on him! Why? Just because he is the producer’s brother?
Every girl in Canada goes about wearing so little, you wonder why they didn’t either freeze to death or get arrested for indecent exposure—the leading lady Nikki (Tanisha Mukerji) traipses through the film in what looks like underwear!
There is such a desperation about Arjun Sablok’s alleged youth flick, that whatever little charm the story might have had dissipates into silliness and sleaze.
Neal, small town Canadian-Indian, who is desired by every female (ha!) agrees to marry a Miss Sweety from Bhatinda, simply because he trusts his parents’ sense more than his own. But before the wedding, he wants to go to Vancouver and live it up.
His plans are foiled when he bumps into a drunk, sluttishly dressed Nikki, who demands that he take her home and then questions his intensions! Neal is picked up by a succession of women dressed in scantier clothes than Nikki, but she keeps coming in the way. Then, to make it up to him, she takes him to ‘babe heaven’, but actually uses him to make her ex-boyfriend jealous.
If Neal ‘n’ Nikki was meant to be a tongue in cheek look at how rich NRI youngsters live and behave, then it, sort of, insults them. Even the most brainless of them, couldn’t be as demented as these two.
Shot on beautiful Canadian locations, with a couple of good songs, it’s possible this film might appeal to some of the young crowd. But then again, the actors are hopeless—Uday Chopra with a permanent goofy expression and more lipstick than the women; Tanisha with a screechy voice, disheveled hair and ribs sticking out.
Labels: Cinemaah
Apaharan+ 2
Apaharan
It just so happened that a little before the release of Prakash Jha’s Apaharan (could be seen as a Bihar trilogy with Mrityudand and Gangajaal), the elections in Bihar brought in a hope of change in that dark state. But things could well have gone the other way, and then Jha’s film would have been eerily prescient. (He even has a Chief Minister with a familiar mop of white hair!)
Those who understand the ground realities of Bihar would appreciate Aparahan a lot more for creating an accurate picture of corruption and breakdown of law in the state—where criminals live like nawabs in prison and run their empires with the help of cops and politicians. But even the ignorant viewer would relate to a powerful (very reminiscent of Shakti) story of a young man’s clash with his idealistic father, his going astray and then seeking redemption.
Ajay Shastri (Ajay Devgan) is unable to get a police job without being in any caste quota or having any recommendation, despite being on the merit list. His idealistic, social crusader father Professor Shastri (Mohan Agashe) blocks his only chance, when he does manage to borrow money and pay the required bribe.
Ajay and his friends (why are his friends so slavishly loyal?) are forced to turn to the easiest and most rampant crime in Bihar—kidnapping for ransom. The first job goes wrong, and after many complications Ajay finds himself as the right-hand man of Tabrez Alam (Nana Patekar), a politician, mafia don and self-styled minority leader.
Ajay’s desperation and the development of his relationship with surrogate father figure Tabrez is very well-etched. However, in the second half, the film goes off tangent into many tracks—political horse trading, media sting operations, an honest cop (Mukesh Tiwari) single-handedly trying to fight the system and general chaos, leading to a populist and cop-out climax-- making one man a ‘symbol’ of all crime and corruption and eliminating him. But with so many other crooked men in power – including the home minister, top cops and Tabrez’s silently hostile brother—is it so easy to clean up?
Ajay’s getting into a the world of crime was a conscious choice, he was not forced or conned into it—why should the audience’s sympathy be with him when he starts to repent, and that too because his mentor turns against him? Also, in a film that concentrates on kidnapping as an industry, there is surprisingly little attention paid to the victims—there are reduced to terrified squealing that causes involuntary laughter in the audience.
Anyway, a few flaws can be overlooked in a film that is otherwise authentic, honest, intricately constructed and mostly gripping, with fabulously written dialogue. Each character in the huge ensemble is perfectly cast (except may be Bipasha Basu, who does nothing in her very brief role), and they all perform well, like an orchestra conducted by a master—Mohan Agashe as the ineffectual activist, Chetan Pandit as the sly home minister, Yashpal Sharma as a sleazy criminal, Mukesh Tiwari as the good cop, Mukul Nag as Tabrez’s brother, Ehsaan Khan as a corrupt cop, Ayub Khan as Ajay’s best buddy, and others.
The film is balanced on the shoulders of Ajay Devgan (he could do without the stylish hair colour!) and Nana Patekar, who are both outstanding, giving impressive performances that are bound to be noticed when it’s time for the awards next year.
Home Delivery
There one thing to be said in favour of Sujoy Ghosh—he must be having the gift of the gab, to be able to get a line-up of stars to do walk-on parts (Naseeruddin Shah, Karan Johar, Abhishek Bachchan, Juhi Chawla, Sunil Shetty, Ritesh Deshmukh and many others) in his Home Delivery.
If one were to write the synopsis of the film, then the story of a pizza delivery man teaching a cynical agony uncle the meaning of life and love sounds nice and feel good. But one can’t recall actually feeling good at any point while watching this film – just an overwhelming feeling of irritation at what unfolds on screen and the recurring question – was Jhankar Beats a fluke?
Sunny Chopra (Viveik Annand Oberoi-- hyper) is a famous ‘Gyan Guru’ bunking work and trying to write a script for Karan Johar. He and his girlfriend Jenny (Ayesha Takia— vapid) AKA Nani—repeated so often in the dialogue you will remember it till your dying day—potter around the house for most of the first half, having inane conversations and dealing with insane neighbours like the freeloading Pande (Saurabh Shukla) and ear-splitting singer Gungunani (Tiku Talsania). There’s also Sunny meeting (at a TV show) and fantasizing about a Southern pallu-dropping star Miss Maya (Mahima Chaudhary). If this were not enough there’s a serial killer on the loose, who kills Page 3 people (not in the least bit funny).
After such a mind-battering (cheesy special effects and all) first half you return after the interval, only because one teeny-weeny glimpse of Boman Irani has been offered, and you hope (in vain, as it turns out), that he will somehow save the second half.
He plays Michael, a pizza delivery man, a Santa Claus lookalike, who with his simple-mindedness somehow solves Sunny’s romantic and professional problems. The audience, well, they can pray for their own miracles!
Mr Ya Miss
Hollywood has done it all –men turning into women, women turning into men, children into adults and vice versa. So it’s not as if Antara Mali and Satchit Puranik came up with a wildly brilliant idea for their Mr Ya Miss, which is a straight lift from Blake Edwards’ Switch.
Nearly a decade after that movie, surely there are some changes in the gender landscape – for instance, it is normal for a working woman to get ahead without doling out sexual favours, women can and do wear jeans and flat heels to work, and many wear their hair short or have access to conditioner and clips. But you wouldn’t have guessed as much from Mr Ya Miss, in which being a woman means tottering around on high heels, wearing short skirts, tight tops and having unmanageable bird’s nest hair. The alternative being men’s trousers, shirts and ties, spiky hair and boots!
In this brainless and unfunny enterprise, a chauvinist pig (Aftab Shivdasani), who treats women only as sex objects is killed by his girlfriends and sent back to earth as a woman (Antara Mali) as punishment. The Shiva and Parvati who order this change are right out of tacky TV mythologies!
So Sanjana makes hideous faces, walks in a drunken swagger, wears tarty clothes and goes about socking oglers on the jaw. She even manages to get pregnant with her best friend (Ritesh Deshmukh), a shy sensitive type who, apparently never gets girls, while the Casanova Sanjay had them in droves! Then she ends up being arrested for Sanjay’s murder, and who’d believe she is or was Sanjay?
In the end, when Sanjana says she has understood what it is like being a woman, it comes as a surprise, because she makes it look like an ordeal.
With a bit of intelligence, this film could have been a really funny look at the battle of the sexes in our age. But with Antara Mali in front of and behind the camera, this film is as much a nightmare for the audience as it is for Sanjay/Sanjana falling about in stilettos!
It just so happened that a little before the release of Prakash Jha’s Apaharan (could be seen as a Bihar trilogy with Mrityudand and Gangajaal), the elections in Bihar brought in a hope of change in that dark state. But things could well have gone the other way, and then Jha’s film would have been eerily prescient. (He even has a Chief Minister with a familiar mop of white hair!)
Those who understand the ground realities of Bihar would appreciate Aparahan a lot more for creating an accurate picture of corruption and breakdown of law in the state—where criminals live like nawabs in prison and run their empires with the help of cops and politicians. But even the ignorant viewer would relate to a powerful (very reminiscent of Shakti) story of a young man’s clash with his idealistic father, his going astray and then seeking redemption.
Ajay Shastri (Ajay Devgan) is unable to get a police job without being in any caste quota or having any recommendation, despite being on the merit list. His idealistic, social crusader father Professor Shastri (Mohan Agashe) blocks his only chance, when he does manage to borrow money and pay the required bribe.
Ajay and his friends (why are his friends so slavishly loyal?) are forced to turn to the easiest and most rampant crime in Bihar—kidnapping for ransom. The first job goes wrong, and after many complications Ajay finds himself as the right-hand man of Tabrez Alam (Nana Patekar), a politician, mafia don and self-styled minority leader.
Ajay’s desperation and the development of his relationship with surrogate father figure Tabrez is very well-etched. However, in the second half, the film goes off tangent into many tracks—political horse trading, media sting operations, an honest cop (Mukesh Tiwari) single-handedly trying to fight the system and general chaos, leading to a populist and cop-out climax-- making one man a ‘symbol’ of all crime and corruption and eliminating him. But with so many other crooked men in power – including the home minister, top cops and Tabrez’s silently hostile brother—is it so easy to clean up?
Ajay’s getting into a the world of crime was a conscious choice, he was not forced or conned into it—why should the audience’s sympathy be with him when he starts to repent, and that too because his mentor turns against him? Also, in a film that concentrates on kidnapping as an industry, there is surprisingly little attention paid to the victims—there are reduced to terrified squealing that causes involuntary laughter in the audience.
Anyway, a few flaws can be overlooked in a film that is otherwise authentic, honest, intricately constructed and mostly gripping, with fabulously written dialogue. Each character in the huge ensemble is perfectly cast (except may be Bipasha Basu, who does nothing in her very brief role), and they all perform well, like an orchestra conducted by a master—Mohan Agashe as the ineffectual activist, Chetan Pandit as the sly home minister, Yashpal Sharma as a sleazy criminal, Mukesh Tiwari as the good cop, Mukul Nag as Tabrez’s brother, Ehsaan Khan as a corrupt cop, Ayub Khan as Ajay’s best buddy, and others.
The film is balanced on the shoulders of Ajay Devgan (he could do without the stylish hair colour!) and Nana Patekar, who are both outstanding, giving impressive performances that are bound to be noticed when it’s time for the awards next year.
Home Delivery
There one thing to be said in favour of Sujoy Ghosh—he must be having the gift of the gab, to be able to get a line-up of stars to do walk-on parts (Naseeruddin Shah, Karan Johar, Abhishek Bachchan, Juhi Chawla, Sunil Shetty, Ritesh Deshmukh and many others) in his Home Delivery.
If one were to write the synopsis of the film, then the story of a pizza delivery man teaching a cynical agony uncle the meaning of life and love sounds nice and feel good. But one can’t recall actually feeling good at any point while watching this film – just an overwhelming feeling of irritation at what unfolds on screen and the recurring question – was Jhankar Beats a fluke?
Sunny Chopra (Viveik Annand Oberoi-- hyper) is a famous ‘Gyan Guru’ bunking work and trying to write a script for Karan Johar. He and his girlfriend Jenny (Ayesha Takia— vapid) AKA Nani—repeated so often in the dialogue you will remember it till your dying day—potter around the house for most of the first half, having inane conversations and dealing with insane neighbours like the freeloading Pande (Saurabh Shukla) and ear-splitting singer Gungunani (Tiku Talsania). There’s also Sunny meeting (at a TV show) and fantasizing about a Southern pallu-dropping star Miss Maya (Mahima Chaudhary). If this were not enough there’s a serial killer on the loose, who kills Page 3 people (not in the least bit funny).
After such a mind-battering (cheesy special effects and all) first half you return after the interval, only because one teeny-weeny glimpse of Boman Irani has been offered, and you hope (in vain, as it turns out), that he will somehow save the second half.
He plays Michael, a pizza delivery man, a Santa Claus lookalike, who with his simple-mindedness somehow solves Sunny’s romantic and professional problems. The audience, well, they can pray for their own miracles!
Mr Ya Miss
Hollywood has done it all –men turning into women, women turning into men, children into adults and vice versa. So it’s not as if Antara Mali and Satchit Puranik came up with a wildly brilliant idea for their Mr Ya Miss, which is a straight lift from Blake Edwards’ Switch.
Nearly a decade after that movie, surely there are some changes in the gender landscape – for instance, it is normal for a working woman to get ahead without doling out sexual favours, women can and do wear jeans and flat heels to work, and many wear their hair short or have access to conditioner and clips. But you wouldn’t have guessed as much from Mr Ya Miss, in which being a woman means tottering around on high heels, wearing short skirts, tight tops and having unmanageable bird’s nest hair. The alternative being men’s trousers, shirts and ties, spiky hair and boots!
In this brainless and unfunny enterprise, a chauvinist pig (Aftab Shivdasani), who treats women only as sex objects is killed by his girlfriends and sent back to earth as a woman (Antara Mali) as punishment. The Shiva and Parvati who order this change are right out of tacky TV mythologies!
So Sanjana makes hideous faces, walks in a drunken swagger, wears tarty clothes and goes about socking oglers on the jaw. She even manages to get pregnant with her best friend (Ritesh Deshmukh), a shy sensitive type who, apparently never gets girls, while the Casanova Sanjay had them in droves! Then she ends up being arrested for Sanjay’s murder, and who’d believe she is or was Sanjay?
In the end, when Sanjana says she has understood what it is like being a woman, it comes as a surprise, because she makes it look like an ordeal.
With a bit of intelligence, this film could have been a really funny look at the battle of the sexes in our age. But with Antara Mali in front of and behind the camera, this film is as much a nightmare for the audience as it is for Sanjay/Sanjana falling about in stilettos!
Labels: Cinemaah
DHP & The film
Deewane Huye Paagal
The whole college is crazy about Tanya, a bespectacled nerd informs us. What we see is a half a dozen (give or take a few) men besotted by Rimii Sen, and this is the most unbelievable thing about Deewane Hue Paagal. The girl’s hardly such a knockout!
But since Vikram Bhatt’s film is ‘inspired’ by the Farrelly Brothers’ hit There’s Something About Mary, you have to believe there is something about Tanya, though eyes and ears insist otherwise.
Vivek Oberoi makes for a very irritating ‘sutradhar’ as he introduces the complicated tracks of the film, which include a scientist (Om Puri), his twin who is a don, a formula for eternal youth and a parrot that holds a crucial code.
Shy college kid Karan (Shahid Kapoor) is in love with Tanya (Rimii Sen). She witnesses the scientist’s murder and flees to Dubai. (Bhatt didn’t have the courage to show the zipper disaster, which remains one of the most hilarious scenes of all time!)
Karan hires Rocky (Akshay Kumar) to trace her, but he flips for her himself, and spends most of the movie warding off her other suitors, that include a crippled Sanjay (Sunil Shetty) and Tommy (Paresh Rawal). Karan and Rocky are both given sidekicks – Vijay Raaz and Johny Lever respectively—in case the leading men run out of comic steam.
Sometime after the interval, the director remembers there’s a formula-parrot-gangster sub-plot dangling, so Om Puri and cohorts also land up in Dubai to add some action to the sand dunes. Who gets the girl? Is that so hard to guess?
Deewane Huye Paagal is Akshay Kumar’s film, from getting to dance dirty with scantily clad white babes to bashing a black hunk (totally pointless sequence), to getting the film’s best gags-- he has it all on a platter. The other stars are no better than junior artistes (poor Shahid Kapoor).
Akskay is getting better and better at comedy, but he is still not effortless. He does get a few chuckles (some of the lines are admittedly funny), but by straining every nerve and muscle on his face, and practically turning cartwheels. He just has to turn sideways to see how natural Vijay Raaz is.
Deewane Huye Paagal is not half as entertaining as There’s Something About Mary, whose grossness was covered by Cameron Diaz’s innocent beauty and a fine comedian like Ben Stiller.
This is a season for comedies, and DHP has a good chance at the box-office. Luckily for Bhatt, our audiences are now eager to laugh at anything.
The Film
He calls himself ‘Nirdeshak’, this debut director Junaid Memon, who had an idea that could lend itself to satire or pathos equally well, but he ends up making a movie called The Film, which is painful to sit through.
Seven strugglers live as paying guests in the palatial mansion of Mrs Braganza (Sulabha Deshpande, very hammy). From their healthy appearances and extensive wardrobes, they don’t seem rundown or desperate enough to gain any sympathy. None of them seem to have families or friends, so when they are in a crisis, they run about like headless chickens.
There are the usual scenes of them being humiliated or propositioned as they go about looking for work. They see and hear cases of extortion by an invisible Dubai Don Shamimbhai, and the writer among them (Mahima Chaudhary) gets the bright idea of extorting money out of a diamond merchant.
Amateur criminals that they are, the phone they steal happens to belong to a cop (Nasser Abdullah), and very soon they are on the run from both cops and gangsters, and dropping down dead one by one.
The Film is not a dark comedy, it’s not a thriller and it’s not even a really compelling tale of ambition, failure or how the film industry can force people to sell their souls. Plus it is marred by some really awful acting.
All that can be said in favour of The Film is that Memon has come up with an unusual subject (and there is a bit of a twist at the end)—but made a hash of it.
The whole college is crazy about Tanya, a bespectacled nerd informs us. What we see is a half a dozen (give or take a few) men besotted by Rimii Sen, and this is the most unbelievable thing about Deewane Hue Paagal. The girl’s hardly such a knockout!
But since Vikram Bhatt’s film is ‘inspired’ by the Farrelly Brothers’ hit There’s Something About Mary, you have to believe there is something about Tanya, though eyes and ears insist otherwise.
Vivek Oberoi makes for a very irritating ‘sutradhar’ as he introduces the complicated tracks of the film, which include a scientist (Om Puri), his twin who is a don, a formula for eternal youth and a parrot that holds a crucial code.
Shy college kid Karan (Shahid Kapoor) is in love with Tanya (Rimii Sen). She witnesses the scientist’s murder and flees to Dubai. (Bhatt didn’t have the courage to show the zipper disaster, which remains one of the most hilarious scenes of all time!)
Karan hires Rocky (Akshay Kumar) to trace her, but he flips for her himself, and spends most of the movie warding off her other suitors, that include a crippled Sanjay (Sunil Shetty) and Tommy (Paresh Rawal). Karan and Rocky are both given sidekicks – Vijay Raaz and Johny Lever respectively—in case the leading men run out of comic steam.
Sometime after the interval, the director remembers there’s a formula-parrot-gangster sub-plot dangling, so Om Puri and cohorts also land up in Dubai to add some action to the sand dunes. Who gets the girl? Is that so hard to guess?
Deewane Huye Paagal is Akshay Kumar’s film, from getting to dance dirty with scantily clad white babes to bashing a black hunk (totally pointless sequence), to getting the film’s best gags-- he has it all on a platter. The other stars are no better than junior artistes (poor Shahid Kapoor).
Akskay is getting better and better at comedy, but he is still not effortless. He does get a few chuckles (some of the lines are admittedly funny), but by straining every nerve and muscle on his face, and practically turning cartwheels. He just has to turn sideways to see how natural Vijay Raaz is.
Deewane Huye Paagal is not half as entertaining as There’s Something About Mary, whose grossness was covered by Cameron Diaz’s innocent beauty and a fine comedian like Ben Stiller.
This is a season for comedies, and DHP has a good chance at the box-office. Luckily for Bhatt, our audiences are now eager to laugh at anything.
The Film
He calls himself ‘Nirdeshak’, this debut director Junaid Memon, who had an idea that could lend itself to satire or pathos equally well, but he ends up making a movie called The Film, which is painful to sit through.
Seven strugglers live as paying guests in the palatial mansion of Mrs Braganza (Sulabha Deshpande, very hammy). From their healthy appearances and extensive wardrobes, they don’t seem rundown or desperate enough to gain any sympathy. None of them seem to have families or friends, so when they are in a crisis, they run about like headless chickens.
There are the usual scenes of them being humiliated or propositioned as they go about looking for work. They see and hear cases of extortion by an invisible Dubai Don Shamimbhai, and the writer among them (Mahima Chaudhary) gets the bright idea of extorting money out of a diamond merchant.
Amateur criminals that they are, the phone they steal happens to belong to a cop (Nasser Abdullah), and very soon they are on the run from both cops and gangsters, and dropping down dead one by one.
The Film is not a dark comedy, it’s not a thriller and it’s not even a really compelling tale of ambition, failure or how the film industry can force people to sell their souls. Plus it is marred by some really awful acting.
All that can be said in favour of The Film is that Memon has come up with an unusual subject (and there is a bit of a twist at the end)—but made a hash of it.
Labels: Cinemaah
Taj Mahal & EKEH
Taj Mahal
If Akbar Khan actually spent 12 years on researching Taj Mahal and reportedly spent 75 crores and three years in making it, then he deserves a lot of sympathy and a bit of contempt for this colossal waste of effort and money. Far from being a magnum opus, Taj Mahal is a bloated, garish, overlong history lesson—and not a very interesting one at that.
How can a filmmaker claim authenticity when every female character is made-up in the most loud, and definitely modern make-up? What’s the use of spending all that money, if the cast is made up of actors one worse than the other.
There is an extended prologue in which Aurangzeb (Arbaaz Khan—the only decent performance in the film) kills his brothers and imprisons father Shajehan (Kabir Bedi) along with sister Jehanara (Manisha Koirala). The battle sequences are rather grand (though almost bloodless, considering the number of men gored or dismembered!), but just a bit of filmmaker’s vanity, because they have no direct connection with the Shahjehan-Mumtaz Mahal love story.
The young Shahjehan or Prince Khurram is played by a very wooden Zulfikar Syed and Arjumand (who was later named Mumtaz Mahal) by a bland-looking Sonya Jehan. Their passionate love story is reduced to some dreary scenes, while footage is hogged by the villainous Queen Noorjehan, played by Pooja Batra, who imagines herself as Cleopatra!
Her famed political acumen is downgraded to some internal zenana string-pulling, as she seeks to install her daughter Laadli (Kim Sharma) by her first marriage as the queen.
The story, perhaps to show that their history is sound, goes every which way but towards establishing the classic love story. The making of the Taj Mahal is dispensed with over a song. There is no human back story happening here (the artisans slogged for 22 years, and legend has it that they had their thumbs chopped off when the monument was complete), and absolutely no emotional undercurrents.
In style, Akbar Khan goes for the theatrical Mughal-e-Azam treatment, but when an Arbaaz Ali (as Jehangir) tries to do a regal Prithviraj Kapoor, he evokes giggles instead of fear or awe. Sohrab Modi’s costume dramas are still lessons in historical movie-making, not to mention Hollywood recent fascination for the genre – with such rich fonts of inspiration, Akbar Khan’s effort seem amateurish at best.
Ek Khiladi Ek Haseena
It requires a certain kind of panache to carry off a stylish caper movie. Somehow, our Hollywood copycats can borrow the style, but how can they possibly replicate that ‘cool’ if they don’t have it in them.
Writer Suparn Verma, borrows heavily from Confidence and a bit from House of Games (not such great source material to begin with), and attempts a thriller, which turns out to be a lot of talk and no thrill.
When conman Arjun’s (Fardeen Khan) partner (Rohit Roy) is killed after they steal from a don called Sikander (Gulshan Grover), he plans revenge, that is so intricate that is ends up being tiresome. Sikander, who is the kind of chavanni gangster for whom 25 crores is a big heist, is given such a grand introduction (the man who cannot die, etc) that you’d think Don Corelone had risen from the dead.
Anyway, the con job involves Sikander’s henchman Kaif (Kay Kay Menon), a psychiatrist-turned-criminal Natasha (Koena Mitra) and an assortment of chamchas (one of whom communicates by whistling). The 25 crore swindle involves something as mundane as a bank loan from the bank of Jehangir Khan (Feroz Khan), who, we are told is very powerful; but expect for a scene in which he is delivering veiled threats to the Chief Minister, there is no indication of what this guy’s all about. Or why a small bank fraud would matter so much to him!
In the end, when Arjun explains what he did and how, most of what went before makes even less sense.
Try as they might, none of the actors manage that mix of menace and insouciance that is needed to play street smart crooks. And since when do small time Mumbai tricksters go about dressed in suits? And why that erotic hotel scene with such a build up—just so that it could be used in an MMS publicity stunt? (Koena Mitra tries so hard to look sexy that it has the opposite effect.)
Feroz Khan and Fardeen have no big scene together, except for a casual conversation in an elevator—which is another flaw in an already deeply faulty film.
If Akbar Khan actually spent 12 years on researching Taj Mahal and reportedly spent 75 crores and three years in making it, then he deserves a lot of sympathy and a bit of contempt for this colossal waste of effort and money. Far from being a magnum opus, Taj Mahal is a bloated, garish, overlong history lesson—and not a very interesting one at that.
How can a filmmaker claim authenticity when every female character is made-up in the most loud, and definitely modern make-up? What’s the use of spending all that money, if the cast is made up of actors one worse than the other.
There is an extended prologue in which Aurangzeb (Arbaaz Khan—the only decent performance in the film) kills his brothers and imprisons father Shajehan (Kabir Bedi) along with sister Jehanara (Manisha Koirala). The battle sequences are rather grand (though almost bloodless, considering the number of men gored or dismembered!), but just a bit of filmmaker’s vanity, because they have no direct connection with the Shahjehan-Mumtaz Mahal love story.
The young Shahjehan or Prince Khurram is played by a very wooden Zulfikar Syed and Arjumand (who was later named Mumtaz Mahal) by a bland-looking Sonya Jehan. Their passionate love story is reduced to some dreary scenes, while footage is hogged by the villainous Queen Noorjehan, played by Pooja Batra, who imagines herself as Cleopatra!
Her famed political acumen is downgraded to some internal zenana string-pulling, as she seeks to install her daughter Laadli (Kim Sharma) by her first marriage as the queen.
The story, perhaps to show that their history is sound, goes every which way but towards establishing the classic love story. The making of the Taj Mahal is dispensed with over a song. There is no human back story happening here (the artisans slogged for 22 years, and legend has it that they had their thumbs chopped off when the monument was complete), and absolutely no emotional undercurrents.
In style, Akbar Khan goes for the theatrical Mughal-e-Azam treatment, but when an Arbaaz Ali (as Jehangir) tries to do a regal Prithviraj Kapoor, he evokes giggles instead of fear or awe. Sohrab Modi’s costume dramas are still lessons in historical movie-making, not to mention Hollywood recent fascination for the genre – with such rich fonts of inspiration, Akbar Khan’s effort seem amateurish at best.
Ek Khiladi Ek Haseena
It requires a certain kind of panache to carry off a stylish caper movie. Somehow, our Hollywood copycats can borrow the style, but how can they possibly replicate that ‘cool’ if they don’t have it in them.
Writer Suparn Verma, borrows heavily from Confidence and a bit from House of Games (not such great source material to begin with), and attempts a thriller, which turns out to be a lot of talk and no thrill.
When conman Arjun’s (Fardeen Khan) partner (Rohit Roy) is killed after they steal from a don called Sikander (Gulshan Grover), he plans revenge, that is so intricate that is ends up being tiresome. Sikander, who is the kind of chavanni gangster for whom 25 crores is a big heist, is given such a grand introduction (the man who cannot die, etc) that you’d think Don Corelone had risen from the dead.
Anyway, the con job involves Sikander’s henchman Kaif (Kay Kay Menon), a psychiatrist-turned-criminal Natasha (Koena Mitra) and an assortment of chamchas (one of whom communicates by whistling). The 25 crore swindle involves something as mundane as a bank loan from the bank of Jehangir Khan (Feroz Khan), who, we are told is very powerful; but expect for a scene in which he is delivering veiled threats to the Chief Minister, there is no indication of what this guy’s all about. Or why a small bank fraud would matter so much to him!
In the end, when Arjun explains what he did and how, most of what went before makes even less sense.
Try as they might, none of the actors manage that mix of menace and insouciance that is needed to play street smart crooks. And since when do small time Mumbai tricksters go about dressed in suits? And why that erotic hotel scene with such a build up—just so that it could be used in an MMS publicity stunt? (Koena Mitra tries so hard to look sexy that it has the opposite effect.)
Feroz Khan and Fardeen have no big scene together, except for a casual conversation in an elevator—which is another flaw in an already deeply faulty film.
Labels: Cinemaah
Diwali Haul
Garam Masala
It’s galling how women are seen as disposable commodities in a film—which is, of course, a male fantasy come true.
Priyadarshan, again goes the re-remake route – old Hollywood film Boeing Boeing, made into Malayalam film, warmed up again as Garam Masala.
Even the 1965 original (hopelessly dated now) had a silly, sexist plot about a man, juggling three air-hostesses, with the help of his housekeeper and buddy.
A photographer, Mac (Akshay Kumar), who is already engaged to be married (to Rimii), for no apparent reason but that the writer says so, not only gets engaged to three air-hostesses, he also has them living in his house, his rendezvous planned according to their flight schedules. Seems far-fetched that the women come home only to eat, bathe and sleep, don’t they expect some kind of social life?
Mac’s rival Sam (John Abraham) parks himself in Mac’s house, and helps him con the three women—not clear why, because the two hate each other. Also aiding Mac in his philandering is his stoic housekeeper Mambo (Paresh Rawal), and a neighbourhood mechanic (Rajpal Yadav), whose sole purpose in life seems to be warning Mac of impending glitches in his smooth running romances.
When the two men actually work for a living is not explained, since every waking moment goes in the scheming and plotting.
However, despite the incredible ridiculousness of the plot, parts of it work, because Priyadarshan faithfully follows the structure of a classic farce—entries and exits happening at a furious pace through a profusion of doors in a stage-set like apartment.
The hilarious bits are livened up by the high energy of the three male performers—the girls are interchangeable. Shot in Mauritius, the film looks bright and glossy too, and there’s plenty of skin on show. What more does the ‘tapori’ audience want?
Kyon Ki
Years after watching One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, the memory of it can still evoke terror. How could Priyadarshan make such a tame, emotionally sterile film with that original as an inspiration? It’s unforgivable.
The director had already cannibalised One Flew… for a Malayalam film, Thalavattam, which, reportedly was far superior to this Hindi re-rehash.
Anand (Salman Khan) is brought to a private mental asylum, after a personal trauma has driven him “mad”. The asylum, run with military-like rules by Colonel Khurana (Om Puri doing the Louis Fletcher part, and ineffectually) and is peopled by the oddballs that pass off as “mad” in Hindi films—and hardly any take mental illness seriously, reducing all kinds of mental problems to cute quirks.
Anand is full of rebellion and mischief, and under the care of old friend Sunil (Jackie Shroff), who genuinely cares for him. He goads the solemn and strict Dr Tanvi (Kareena Kapoor) to take personal interest in Anand’s case. She reads his diary—and the film goes into a painfully long and dull flashback, of Anand’s romance with a would-be nun (Rimii), in a Romanian convent (where everybody speaks Hindi!)
The tragic end of the romance had driven him insane, and after reading the account, Tanvi promptly falls in love with her patient and this leads to more tragedy.
Despite so many awful and disturbing things happening in the film, so indifferent is the direction, that not for a minute does the viewer get involved with the troubles of the characters. There is not one emotionally stirring moment, in a film that should have been replete with melancholy. Maybe the actors are not mature enough, or the writing is lifeless—the story simply does not come alive. Except for the picture postcard visuals and a couple of songs, the film is a dud.
Salman Khan cannot but pile on the cuteness when he is playing mentally disturbed character, after a point this beings to annoy. Kareena Kapoor is miscast as the doctor, but if Om Puri can be made to give a bad performance, there is something seriously wrong with the handling of the film.
Shaadi No 1
Obviously made to cash in quickly on the marital comedy (Masti, No Entry) trend before it burns out, this David Dhawan film does not even bother to put together a half way decent plot. Shaadi No 1 is just a series of improbable situations strung out in a haphazard row-and, like a government form, everything seems to happen in triplicate, since there are three friends going through the same experiences.
Raj (Fardeen Khan), Veer (Zayed Khan) and Aryan (Sharman Joshi), married and living in the same studio row house complex, are about to commit suicide because their wives (Ayesha Takia, Esha Deol, Soha Ali Khan) are neglecting them.
They fail in the attempt, but get a strange assignment from their boss (Satish Shah)-- to woo his daughters (named Rekha, Madhuri, Dimple if you please!) and ditch them so they agree to arranged marriages.
The three girls have been chosen for their ability to fill bikinis well and look as dumb as humanly possible. They match the wives in the latter department.
For the three men having two sets of women is a dream life -- the only obstacle in their perfidious plan being an odd creature called Lucky Bhaiya (Sanjay Dutt) who appears to have no other pass time except minding the business of the three guys.
Made with half a mind, stuffed with moronic gags, dialogue slogging too hard be funny and a cast of driftwood, it's really tough to find any merit in Shaadi no 1. Not even Sanjay Dutt – given the most irritating lines—can do anything to make this film watchable.
It’s galling how women are seen as disposable commodities in a film—which is, of course, a male fantasy come true.
Priyadarshan, again goes the re-remake route – old Hollywood film Boeing Boeing, made into Malayalam film, warmed up again as Garam Masala.
Even the 1965 original (hopelessly dated now) had a silly, sexist plot about a man, juggling three air-hostesses, with the help of his housekeeper and buddy.
A photographer, Mac (Akshay Kumar), who is already engaged to be married (to Rimii), for no apparent reason but that the writer says so, not only gets engaged to three air-hostesses, he also has them living in his house, his rendezvous planned according to their flight schedules. Seems far-fetched that the women come home only to eat, bathe and sleep, don’t they expect some kind of social life?
Mac’s rival Sam (John Abraham) parks himself in Mac’s house, and helps him con the three women—not clear why, because the two hate each other. Also aiding Mac in his philandering is his stoic housekeeper Mambo (Paresh Rawal), and a neighbourhood mechanic (Rajpal Yadav), whose sole purpose in life seems to be warning Mac of impending glitches in his smooth running romances.
When the two men actually work for a living is not explained, since every waking moment goes in the scheming and plotting.
However, despite the incredible ridiculousness of the plot, parts of it work, because Priyadarshan faithfully follows the structure of a classic farce—entries and exits happening at a furious pace through a profusion of doors in a stage-set like apartment.
The hilarious bits are livened up by the high energy of the three male performers—the girls are interchangeable. Shot in Mauritius, the film looks bright and glossy too, and there’s plenty of skin on show. What more does the ‘tapori’ audience want?
Kyon Ki
Years after watching One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, the memory of it can still evoke terror. How could Priyadarshan make such a tame, emotionally sterile film with that original as an inspiration? It’s unforgivable.
The director had already cannibalised One Flew… for a Malayalam film, Thalavattam, which, reportedly was far superior to this Hindi re-rehash.
Anand (Salman Khan) is brought to a private mental asylum, after a personal trauma has driven him “mad”. The asylum, run with military-like rules by Colonel Khurana (Om Puri doing the Louis Fletcher part, and ineffectually) and is peopled by the oddballs that pass off as “mad” in Hindi films—and hardly any take mental illness seriously, reducing all kinds of mental problems to cute quirks.
Anand is full of rebellion and mischief, and under the care of old friend Sunil (Jackie Shroff), who genuinely cares for him. He goads the solemn and strict Dr Tanvi (Kareena Kapoor) to take personal interest in Anand’s case. She reads his diary—and the film goes into a painfully long and dull flashback, of Anand’s romance with a would-be nun (Rimii), in a Romanian convent (where everybody speaks Hindi!)
The tragic end of the romance had driven him insane, and after reading the account, Tanvi promptly falls in love with her patient and this leads to more tragedy.
Despite so many awful and disturbing things happening in the film, so indifferent is the direction, that not for a minute does the viewer get involved with the troubles of the characters. There is not one emotionally stirring moment, in a film that should have been replete with melancholy. Maybe the actors are not mature enough, or the writing is lifeless—the story simply does not come alive. Except for the picture postcard visuals and a couple of songs, the film is a dud.
Salman Khan cannot but pile on the cuteness when he is playing mentally disturbed character, after a point this beings to annoy. Kareena Kapoor is miscast as the doctor, but if Om Puri can be made to give a bad performance, there is something seriously wrong with the handling of the film.
Shaadi No 1
Obviously made to cash in quickly on the marital comedy (Masti, No Entry) trend before it burns out, this David Dhawan film does not even bother to put together a half way decent plot. Shaadi No 1 is just a series of improbable situations strung out in a haphazard row-and, like a government form, everything seems to happen in triplicate, since there are three friends going through the same experiences.
Raj (Fardeen Khan), Veer (Zayed Khan) and Aryan (Sharman Joshi), married and living in the same studio row house complex, are about to commit suicide because their wives (Ayesha Takia, Esha Deol, Soha Ali Khan) are neglecting them.
They fail in the attempt, but get a strange assignment from their boss (Satish Shah)-- to woo his daughters (named Rekha, Madhuri, Dimple if you please!) and ditch them so they agree to arranged marriages.
The three girls have been chosen for their ability to fill bikinis well and look as dumb as humanly possible. They match the wives in the latter department.
For the three men having two sets of women is a dream life -- the only obstacle in their perfidious plan being an odd creature called Lucky Bhaiya (Sanjay Dutt) who appears to have no other pass time except minding the business of the three guys.
Made with half a mind, stuffed with moronic gags, dialogue slogging too hard be funny and a cast of driftwood, it's really tough to find any merit in Shaadi no 1. Not even Sanjay Dutt – given the most irritating lines—can do anything to make this film watchable.
Labels: Cinemaah
Antarmahal
Antarmahal
Wonders never cease: one of the producers of Rituparno Ghosh’s Antarmahal (Bengali with English subtitles) is Vashu Bhagnani (with AB Corp), so far associated with purely mainstream offerings.
The sumptuous looking (Abhik Mukhopadhyay is a magician with the camera), slow-moving Antarmahal is more a festival and awards kind of film (and perhaps aimed for that elusive new object of desire—the Oscar entry). It requires patient viewing, for which the reward is a flaccid story told with painterly visuals and some impressive performances.
Ghosh’s obsession with the loneliness and repression (particularly sexual) of women’s lives in the patriarchal culture of feudal Bengal carries on after Chokher Bali (the theme was replayed in a more contemporary setting in Bariwali and Raincoat) in this film.
Based on a short story by Tarashankar Bandopadhyay, and set in mid-19th century Bengal, Antarmahal is seen through the bemused eyes of an English painter, commissioned to do a portrait of Bhubaneshwar (Jackie Shroff), a pompous zamindar, who has two main obsessions – begetting an heir, and winning more prestige than the neighbouring landlord.
His second marriage to young Jashomati (Soha Ali Khan), has produced no results, despite his nocturnal exertions (for several nights in the presence of a chanting priest, who promises that the ritual would work). His first wife Mahomaya (Rupa Ganguly) seethes with anger and sorrow, cast aside in the vast mansion, while the younger wife is bewildered and unhappy.
Before Durga Puja, Bhubaneshwar gets the odd idea of making the goddess’s face look like Queen Victoria’s, that piece of flattery would get him a title, or so he hopes. For this he gets a young Bihari potter Brijbhushan (Abhishek Bachchan), who won’t object to this travesty.
The presence of the bare-bodied stranger ignites an erotic spark, which leads to unexpected consequences.
Ghosh succeeds in building up a claustrophobic atmosphere of sexual desire, jealousy and desperation, but does not make us care enough for any of the characters to wait impatiently for the inevitable conflagration in the end. One is reminded of Sahib, Bibi Aur Ghulam that depicted this culture in a far more watchable fashion. Antarmahal’s satirical elements are too understated to be effective.
Rupa Ganguly is wonderful as the complex first wife, who is the only one with any heroic shades. Jackie Shroff is suitably debauched, and Soha Ali Khan pretty and delicate. Abhishek Bachchan doesn’t have much of a role, but it is still difficult for a contemporary star to get that kind of abjectness in his eyes and bearing—it is definitely a brave performance.
Wonders never cease: one of the producers of Rituparno Ghosh’s Antarmahal (Bengali with English subtitles) is Vashu Bhagnani (with AB Corp), so far associated with purely mainstream offerings.
The sumptuous looking (Abhik Mukhopadhyay is a magician with the camera), slow-moving Antarmahal is more a festival and awards kind of film (and perhaps aimed for that elusive new object of desire—the Oscar entry). It requires patient viewing, for which the reward is a flaccid story told with painterly visuals and some impressive performances.
Ghosh’s obsession with the loneliness and repression (particularly sexual) of women’s lives in the patriarchal culture of feudal Bengal carries on after Chokher Bali (the theme was replayed in a more contemporary setting in Bariwali and Raincoat) in this film.
Based on a short story by Tarashankar Bandopadhyay, and set in mid-19th century Bengal, Antarmahal is seen through the bemused eyes of an English painter, commissioned to do a portrait of Bhubaneshwar (Jackie Shroff), a pompous zamindar, who has two main obsessions – begetting an heir, and winning more prestige than the neighbouring landlord.
His second marriage to young Jashomati (Soha Ali Khan), has produced no results, despite his nocturnal exertions (for several nights in the presence of a chanting priest, who promises that the ritual would work). His first wife Mahomaya (Rupa Ganguly) seethes with anger and sorrow, cast aside in the vast mansion, while the younger wife is bewildered and unhappy.
Before Durga Puja, Bhubaneshwar gets the odd idea of making the goddess’s face look like Queen Victoria’s, that piece of flattery would get him a title, or so he hopes. For this he gets a young Bihari potter Brijbhushan (Abhishek Bachchan), who won’t object to this travesty.
The presence of the bare-bodied stranger ignites an erotic spark, which leads to unexpected consequences.
Ghosh succeeds in building up a claustrophobic atmosphere of sexual desire, jealousy and desperation, but does not make us care enough for any of the characters to wait impatiently for the inevitable conflagration in the end. One is reminded of Sahib, Bibi Aur Ghulam that depicted this culture in a far more watchable fashion. Antarmahal’s satirical elements are too understated to be effective.
Rupa Ganguly is wonderful as the complex first wife, who is the only one with any heroic shades. Jackie Shroff is suitably debauched, and Soha Ali Khan pretty and delicate. Abhishek Bachchan doesn’t have much of a role, but it is still difficult for a contemporary star to get that kind of abjectness in his eyes and bearing—it is definitely a brave performance.
Labels: Cinemaah
Navarasa & Hanuman
Navarasa:
Santosh Sivan’s Navarasa (Tamil with English sub-titles) has obviously been made for the foreign festival circuit. The foreigners want to see exotic India, right? And for them Sivan weaves a flimsy story about a girl going in search of her uncle—the twist being that the uncle is a transvestite.
Swetha (who also acted in Sivan’s Malli when she was younger) is a chatterbox teenager, the pampered only child of a traditional parents living in Chennai. Her ‘puberty’ is celebrated in full ritual splendour—a bit of exotica for the Western market.
She discovers that her beloved “Chittapa” Gautam (Khushbu) is a cross dresser, and intends to attend a ritual in which eunuchs (following a custom dating back to the Mahabharat) marry Arjuna’s son Aravan, who is sacrificed, and the eunuchs then live as widows.
Of course, Sivan mixes up eunuchs, hermaphrodites, transvestites, gays—all are a bunch of garishly dressed freaks participating in a beauty contest, and then going to the marriage and widowhood ceremonies.
Swetha, with a confidence and fearlessless that belies her conservative upbringing (where even a cute little neighbourhood boy is frowned upon), takes advantage of her parents’ absence, and embarks on a journey to find her uncle. Her travelling companion and protector is Bobby Darling, also going to take part in the Miss Koovagam beauty contest.
Wandering around a seedy town overrun by transvestites and strange men, and later among the crowd at the ceremony, Swetha becomes the conduit through whose eyes, the audience sees the strangely innocent world of the ‘third gender’ captured documentary style. She and Bobby Darling (who can’t act to save his/her life) always have last-minute rescues whenever anything untoward happens.
At the end of the film—one is none the wiser about the problems of transvestites. All that remains in the mind are the visuals of the fashion show, a field of broken bangles, white-clad, ghost-like figures and the one scene in which Bobby Darling has a weeping fit in the bathroom and comes out saying calmly, “I have finished crying.”
Hanuman
At the suburban cinema (almost empty) where Hanuman was showing, a handful of grandfathers had dragged along little grandkids, presumably to get a dose of Indian culture. The only thing that kept the restless kids quiet was generous doses of eats.
Since television and video versions of the epics, plus Amar Chitra Katha comics have already given children a vague knowledge of the Ramayan, what they certainly don’t need is a plodding animated version, studded with bhajans. VG Samant’s Hanuman may be meant for kids, but it would do better if it aimed at a much, much older grandparent age group—the kind who frequent religious gatherings and perform ‘aartis’ in front of the TV set when mythological serials are on air.
The animation is passable – garish calendar figures—but even at its compact 90-minute running time, Hanuman is tough to sit through. With an earnest thoroughness, it tells the story of Hanuman from his birth to the return to Ayodhya after the battle against Ravan in Sri Lanka. But if the film intended to attract kids, it should have been more fun to watch, with less of the jo aagya prabhu kind of dialogue. The antics of the very cute child Hanuman could have been funny, the battle scenes could have been more exciting, and the music definitely needed to be peppier.
Animation is a painstaking process, and all that work is wasted, if the end result is a colourful but uninteresting film.
Santosh Sivan’s Navarasa (Tamil with English sub-titles) has obviously been made for the foreign festival circuit. The foreigners want to see exotic India, right? And for them Sivan weaves a flimsy story about a girl going in search of her uncle—the twist being that the uncle is a transvestite.
Swetha (who also acted in Sivan’s Malli when she was younger) is a chatterbox teenager, the pampered only child of a traditional parents living in Chennai. Her ‘puberty’ is celebrated in full ritual splendour—a bit of exotica for the Western market.
She discovers that her beloved “Chittapa” Gautam (Khushbu) is a cross dresser, and intends to attend a ritual in which eunuchs (following a custom dating back to the Mahabharat) marry Arjuna’s son Aravan, who is sacrificed, and the eunuchs then live as widows.
Of course, Sivan mixes up eunuchs, hermaphrodites, transvestites, gays—all are a bunch of garishly dressed freaks participating in a beauty contest, and then going to the marriage and widowhood ceremonies.
Swetha, with a confidence and fearlessless that belies her conservative upbringing (where even a cute little neighbourhood boy is frowned upon), takes advantage of her parents’ absence, and embarks on a journey to find her uncle. Her travelling companion and protector is Bobby Darling, also going to take part in the Miss Koovagam beauty contest.
Wandering around a seedy town overrun by transvestites and strange men, and later among the crowd at the ceremony, Swetha becomes the conduit through whose eyes, the audience sees the strangely innocent world of the ‘third gender’ captured documentary style. She and Bobby Darling (who can’t act to save his/her life) always have last-minute rescues whenever anything untoward happens.
At the end of the film—one is none the wiser about the problems of transvestites. All that remains in the mind are the visuals of the fashion show, a field of broken bangles, white-clad, ghost-like figures and the one scene in which Bobby Darling has a weeping fit in the bathroom and comes out saying calmly, “I have finished crying.”
Hanuman
At the suburban cinema (almost empty) where Hanuman was showing, a handful of grandfathers had dragged along little grandkids, presumably to get a dose of Indian culture. The only thing that kept the restless kids quiet was generous doses of eats.
Since television and video versions of the epics, plus Amar Chitra Katha comics have already given children a vague knowledge of the Ramayan, what they certainly don’t need is a plodding animated version, studded with bhajans. VG Samant’s Hanuman may be meant for kids, but it would do better if it aimed at a much, much older grandparent age group—the kind who frequent religious gatherings and perform ‘aartis’ in front of the TV set when mythological serials are on air.
The animation is passable – garish calendar figures—but even at its compact 90-minute running time, Hanuman is tough to sit through. With an earnest thoroughness, it tells the story of Hanuman from his birth to the return to Ayodhya after the battle against Ravan in Sri Lanka. But if the film intended to attract kids, it should have been more fun to watch, with less of the jo aagya prabhu kind of dialogue. The antics of the very cute child Hanuman could have been funny, the battle scenes could have been more exciting, and the music definitely needed to be peppier.
Animation is a painstaking process, and all that work is wasted, if the end result is a colourful but uninteresting film.
Labels: Cinemaah
Koi Aap Sa & Missed Call
Koi Aap Sa
In Ekta Kapoor’s soaps, rape and illegitimate kids are a recurring plot device, almost as popular with her as accidents, loss of memory and plastic surgery to change actors.
With her latest production Koi Aap Sa, Ekta Kapoor seems to have forgotten that she was making a film and not one of her endless soaps with improbable plot twists. Like she does for her soaps, she picks up bits and pieces from other films, rounds-up actors available in the Balaji stable and slaps up a movie.
Koi Aap Sa is ostensibly about friendship and love – making it sound as though the two have to be mutually exclusive—with a plot so idiotically twisted that it barely makes sense.
Rohan (Aftab Shivdasani) and Simran (Natassha) are college friends, though they seem pretty much like an item. Rohan falls in love with Priti (Dipannita Sharma)—no time wasted on what makes the two tick. Even she starts suspecting there’s something on between Rohan and his “friend” till Simran’s fiancé Vicky (Himanshu Malik) turns up.
On prom night, Vicky’s friend rapes Simran, and very conveniently dies in an accident. As it always happens in films, Simran gets pregnant and can’t have an abortion, because, as the doctor solemnly says, “her uterus is weak.”
Everybody thinks Rohan is the father of the child, Vicky dumps Simran, and to stand by her, the “friend” admits to paternity and agrees to marry her.
Like Balaji soaps, even when there is tension all round, there have to be extravagant engagement rituals –twice in this case—when it would have made sense to get the two married quickly.
By the time the baby is ready to appear, Vicky arrives all apologetic and offers to accept Simran. If she told him to get lost, the film would have ended at a relatively sane point, instead of going on for more melodrama.
In short, Koi Aap Sa, with its supposedly youthful (proms, football and cheerleaders!) storyline, is quite an unbearable mix of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Kya Kehna. Natassha is okay as an actress, despite her major Kajol hangover, but she really should do something about her screechy voice. Aftab Shivdasani and Dipannita Sharma look and act listless.
Missed Call
Have to applaud Mridul Toolsidas and Vinay Subramanian courage—they made a low-budget experimental feature, Missed Call, and managed to take it right up to the release stage, when a lot of such ‘multiplex’ films languish for want of exposure.
The trouble with these little urban ‘indie’ ventures is that they are seldom appeal even to their target audiences—forget reaching the ‘masses’. How many people – even if they are cinephiles—would spend good money to see a dark, grainy, whimsical, mockumentary style film about a guy (Ankur Vikal) dying to make a film.
His spats with his father, encounter with a Bollywood producer, languid relationship with his girlfriend (Heeba Shah)—nothing is really all that ‘different’. Rebellion by itself is hardly a virtue, especially from a guy who shows no particular talent— you are just supposed to believe in his genius!
These is a little humour in the film, but it is mostly a self-indulgent whine— but still far superior to the junk that comes out of Bollywood every week. At least the young directors have something to say, and say it honestly to the best of their ability; they are not wannabe Varmas and Chopras.
In Ekta Kapoor’s soaps, rape and illegitimate kids are a recurring plot device, almost as popular with her as accidents, loss of memory and plastic surgery to change actors.
With her latest production Koi Aap Sa, Ekta Kapoor seems to have forgotten that she was making a film and not one of her endless soaps with improbable plot twists. Like she does for her soaps, she picks up bits and pieces from other films, rounds-up actors available in the Balaji stable and slaps up a movie.
Koi Aap Sa is ostensibly about friendship and love – making it sound as though the two have to be mutually exclusive—with a plot so idiotically twisted that it barely makes sense.
Rohan (Aftab Shivdasani) and Simran (Natassha) are college friends, though they seem pretty much like an item. Rohan falls in love with Priti (Dipannita Sharma)—no time wasted on what makes the two tick. Even she starts suspecting there’s something on between Rohan and his “friend” till Simran’s fiancé Vicky (Himanshu Malik) turns up.
On prom night, Vicky’s friend rapes Simran, and very conveniently dies in an accident. As it always happens in films, Simran gets pregnant and can’t have an abortion, because, as the doctor solemnly says, “her uterus is weak.”
Everybody thinks Rohan is the father of the child, Vicky dumps Simran, and to stand by her, the “friend” admits to paternity and agrees to marry her.
Like Balaji soaps, even when there is tension all round, there have to be extravagant engagement rituals –twice in this case—when it would have made sense to get the two married quickly.
By the time the baby is ready to appear, Vicky arrives all apologetic and offers to accept Simran. If she told him to get lost, the film would have ended at a relatively sane point, instead of going on for more melodrama.
In short, Koi Aap Sa, with its supposedly youthful (proms, football and cheerleaders!) storyline, is quite an unbearable mix of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Kya Kehna. Natassha is okay as an actress, despite her major Kajol hangover, but she really should do something about her screechy voice. Aftab Shivdasani and Dipannita Sharma look and act listless.
Missed Call
Have to applaud Mridul Toolsidas and Vinay Subramanian courage—they made a low-budget experimental feature, Missed Call, and managed to take it right up to the release stage, when a lot of such ‘multiplex’ films languish for want of exposure.
The trouble with these little urban ‘indie’ ventures is that they are seldom appeal even to their target audiences—forget reaching the ‘masses’. How many people – even if they are cinephiles—would spend good money to see a dark, grainy, whimsical, mockumentary style film about a guy (Ankur Vikal) dying to make a film.
His spats with his father, encounter with a Bollywood producer, languid relationship with his girlfriend (Heeba Shah)—nothing is really all that ‘different’. Rebellion by itself is hardly a virtue, especially from a guy who shows no particular talent— you are just supposed to believe in his genius!
These is a little humour in the film, but it is mostly a self-indulgent whine— but still far superior to the junk that comes out of Bollywood every week. At least the young directors have something to say, and say it honestly to the best of their ability; they are not wannabe Varmas and Chopras.
Labels: Cinemaah
