To Baat Pakki Review (2010)

  

 

 Cast and Crew:

Producer : Ramesh S. Taurani, Kumar S. Taurani
Executive Producer : Rahila Mirza, Jay Shewakramani
Co-Producer : Paul Reynolds, Jay Shewakramani
Director : Kedar Shinde

Cast : Sharman Joshi, Tabu, Yuvika Chaudary, Vatsal Seth, Ayub Khan
Music Director : Pritam Chakraborty
Lyricist : Sayeed Quadri, Mayur Puri, Shabbir Ahmed
Dialogue Writer : Vibha Singh
Screenplay Writer : Vibha Singh
Editor : V. N. Mayekar
Art Director : Shailesh Mahadik, Sheetal Kanvinde
Choreographer : Ahmed Khan

 

When one of India's and I presume Asia's most versatile actress makes a sort of comeback to the silverscreen, there is a category of filmdom that is abuzz with anticipation and activity. A few weeks ago, when the rushes of Toh Baat Pakki were released, it was understood that Tabu would be the star of the movie, with the rest of the cast being quite supporting, except for Sharman Joshi. So basically, this movie was a battleground for the acting chops of Sharman Joshi (Rang De Basanti) and Tabu (Chandni Bar, Hu Tu Tu) etc. 

Plot:

Tabu plays the role of the common housewife, whose husband has a government job and a old car that is almost a family heirloom.  She has an eligible sister, who she is looking to get married to 'the one who has the most money'. Now, like every Indian housewife, it is Tabu who has to look for the rightful groom for her sister. 

As luck would have it, Tabu meets not one, but two eligible bachelors, both of whom fall for her sister almost immediately.  While Tabu arranges the marriage with Rahul (Sharman Joshi,) she meets  Yuvraj Saxena (Vatsal Seth), another eligible bachelor whom she thinks will fit well for her sister, Nisha (Yuvita Chaudrary), simply because he has a permanent job at Godrej, will be getting a bungalow at the end of the year, and has a good salary. The rest of the movie works on how Tabu undoes what she has set with Sharman Joshi and his sister.

Of course, Sharman Joshi is not someone who would just let his bride to be go off with someone else, and he tries to sabotage the wedding in his unique ways. The antics that he carries out trying to sabotage the wedding are quite cute, and you remember (just remember) the antics of the old school movies like Priyadarshan or Hrishikesh Mukherjee.

To Baat Pakki Review:

The movie comes across as a fresh breath in the view of the movies that are becoming staple Bollywood fare. However, debutante director Kedar Shinde falls short of what a Priyadarshan or Hrishikesh Mukherjee movie would be. 

Sharman Joshi acts well, but he still does not have the screen presence of an Amol Palekar, Amitabh Bachchan or even Akshay Kumar. Of course, his enthusiasm is quite visible, but he still does not have the chops to become 'the protagonist'.

The movie itself has a fabulous flaw, which basically makes the movie difficult to digest, the very fact that no Indian family would allow a person who was actually supposed to marry the woman to be even in the part of the wedding, leave alone the wedding preparations, if there have been some problems that have brought about a change of plan. 

Also, something that  stands as a sore thumb is the dialogue, where people normally regard kids as 'balak' with the common 'Hum' and 'Tum' for 'you' and 'me'. The movie is saccharine sweet, but neither does it warm your heart, nor does it come across as a thought provoking fare - it's just a movie that does not touch you.

My Name is Khan Review (2010)

Friday Freak's Note.

My Name is Khan has generated quite some controversy and news ever since it was first announced. When the movie was first named, it seemed like Karan Johar was trying to create a comedy rifraff with Shah Rukh Khan in as the protagonist. Later, it was announced that it is a thriller that had to do something with an assassination attempt on the President.

As time progressed, the movie became the center of controversy because Shah Rukh Khan was arrested at an international airport, and was detained and maybe given the 'pat down' treatment. These aspects kept the movie in the media limelight, and the final blow, or incident came a week before the release of the movie, when Shah Rukh Khan was targeted by some groups for his comments about the inclusion of some cricketers in the IPL, a national cricket tournament in India.

Conspiracy Theorists will say that all this was done for the publicity of the movie, and that everyone had a fair share in whatever incidents came up while the world waited for the release of the movie. Does the movie live to it's hype, or is it another case of a Bollywood movie growing big because of a superstar being in there, and not because of the script or the storyline. here's the review.

My Name is Khan Review:

Cast:

Shah Rukh Khan: Rizwan Khan

Kajol Devgan: Mandira Rathore Khan.

And many more in Cameos

Plot:

Rizwan Khan is an average Muslim who meets Mandira, a divorcee with a child and falls in love with her. The both marry and have a very happy life, until September 9/11 strikes and their world changes. Like everyone else in the world, Rizwan Khan and his family face ostracism, humiliation and illogical attacks, which they take in their stride, until one attack changes their life forever. It is now upto Rizwan Khan to piece his personal and family life together.

Review:

The movie has a very strong storyline and that is supported by career best roles by both Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol. Come to think of it, except Dulha Mil Gaya, everytime we see Shah Rukh Khan in a role, we think that it is his career best role. The main thing is that this guy is so malleable into any role, that it is simply impossible to find flaws in his method of acting.  And with the kind of roles that he is taking on, it is evident that he no longer wants to take on light issues like patriarchal  families, or the underdog employee, and he has a star stature that can allow him to take on issues like global terrorism and women's emancipation.

The movie has a very strong plot, but is something that threatens to fall apart every now and then, and this is where the acting chops of almost every character in the movie come to play. Right from Shah Rukh Khan to Vinay Pathak, everyone seems to have decided to make their role memorable in this movie. 

While the plot is strong, it suffers from the same thing that movies like Rambo 4 suffered. In the '80s, we could believe that one man can save the whole of the world, and we had a innocent, distant information that things were not as bad as they were shown on the screen. But with the advent of the internet, globalization, user generated news and the penetration of media, we have see much, much worse scenarios than any movie can show us, and we know those guys have gone unpunished.  

When I read about Shah Rukh Khan as the guy who is undergoing injustice, I remember Aung San Suu Kyi, (If you do not know who Aung San Suu Kyi is, please get lost from my blog, I can do without the traffic) and I know that her life is not a movie thats' gonna be over in three hours. So, more or less, this is escapist fare for a well read, internet savvy individual living in 2010. 

There are several highpoints in the movie, in fact, every scene is a high point in the movie. The main reason for this is that the movie tackles many aspects, right from the government inaction over the floods, to racial bias, to even ragging, to a large extent. 

The canvas of the movie is so large that one wouldn't go into the details as to whether Shah Rukh Khan has acted the Asperger's right, or whether it is plausible enough for him to be able to run away from a room full of terrorists, or whether the racial attack was getting almost justifiable after the second attack.  This is a movie that works well if you agree to something that I read a long time back:

God Looks after Drunkards and the Mentally Incompetent, and you take the same track for a person with a medical ailment and bearing the brunt of  a racial attack to his own family.

Veer Review (2010)

Though India is known to have one of the greatest cultures and histories all over the world, it is sad to note that there is not a single movie in recent times that has even tried show a mirror to one of the greatest histories in mankind that have been written in blood. There have been some movies, yes, like Asoka, Jodha Akbar, and of course Razia Sultana and Mugal E Azam of yore, but its find to find that 'One' movie that tells us about India's heritage.

One of the main reasons that most period and historical pieces have fallen on their faces is that either the movie makers become too passionate about their subject, or that they begin to concentrate more on the love stories - any love story that would work with the storyline.

Veer, which was supposed to be one of the most anticipated movies of 2010, and the fact that the hunk of a hero Salman Khan was to play the titular role based on a legendary character, was a option to change all that. But sadly, it goes down the same garden path that the previous movies have gone to.

Cast:

• Salman Khan as Veer
• Mithun Chakraborty as Prithvi Singh, Veer's father
• Sohail Khan as Punya, Veer's brother
• Jackie Shroff as the king of Madhavgarh and father of Yashodhara
• Zarine Khan as Princess Yashodhara, Veer's love
• Lisa Lazarus as Angelina

Storyline:

This period piece is set during British ruled India, and is based in the world of the Pindharis, who were once betrayed by the Prince of Madhavgarh. The story tells us about Prithvi Singh, who basically hones his son to exact revenge to the 4500 people who had died due to the betrayal of the Prince. How the son exacts revenge, and ends up falling in love with the daughter of the enemy forms the rest of the story.

Review:

When you look at the possibilities that Veer could become, and you look at what the makers have come up with, you feel that the movie is a big let down. They story itself had everything, right from That One Sequence that sets up the story, the hunk of a hero who is perfect for franchises, an assortment of stony faced, masculine characters and faces enough to fill up the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai, and of course, a budget that surpassed most other movies in recent times.

While Veer starts off as a sort of revenge movie (which would be fine, if it were like that), it then meanders into a longish story arc about Veer falling in love with the daughter, killing her brother, teaching a teacher in London that India is great, etc. The middle of the movie is so boring that you might just walk off the theater without waiting for the climax.

And that does not mean that the climax is anything to write home about. After what seemed like hours of this guy courting the princess, all we have is the rag tag team barging into a castle and killing the main villain, the King of Madhavgarh, a scene which again does not deliver, because it just has the three guys crossing swords into the camera and the King withering and dying. Now, comparing it to the medieval movies would be quite ridiculous, and not because the makers did not have the resource - it was simply because they did not know what to do with the resource.

For a movie that was touted to be one of the greatest action entertainers in a while,. the action scenes seem soulless and directionless. The scenes seems like they have been added as an afterthought to the entire movie. Of course, the makers do try to put some 300 style sequences, but while they succeed in technically creating the scene, the scenes lack the soul that a medieval revenge movie would possess.

Striker Review (2010)

 Cast:

Siddharth, 

Aditya Pancholi,

Padmapriya,

Vidya Malvade, 

Ankur Vikal and Anupam Kher

Director:

Chandan Arora

Plot and Storyline:

Striker is a film that is made for the Indian audiences, or at least for the Indian who would want some resource material to make a foreigner understand what the urban culture of India is all about. The main protagonist of the movie is a board game called Carrom, which has never really been quite popular in the mainstream world. But, in India, Carrom was a game back in the seventies and eighties that could be compared to the Monopolys, and the first handheld video games. 

The film is set in Malvani, which is quite near Malad, again a little place in Mumbai. So small is this place that there are no trains directly going to Malvani  (If Mumbai is a City, there are various areas, known as 'Stations' which have trains travel to and fro) and it is normally referred to as 'Malad Malvani'. 

The movie tells the story of a young boy who lives in Malvani and as most individuals of that age and time, have dreams of going to Dubai. The boy pays some people who do not come true on their words, and it is this singular incident that makes him a pawn in the hands of fate. 

As time progresses, the boy has just one friend of his, who is a drug addict and has been dealing with some antisocial elements but only as a small fry. The movie is quite exhaustive and the scriptwriter has done a good thing by connecting this mass of a story into small bulleted points of the boy trying to reach home during the '92 riots. 

Review:

Very surprisingly, the movie is quite refreshing and even will have a retro aspect to the person who has been living in India in the 80s -90s. The makers have done a very good job of bringing to life the Malad Malvani area of the eighties and nineties, and one almost feels gawkish when they are transferred to a time when the biggest weapon a 'goonda' had was a chopper or a sword, and mobiles were still something that they would dream up of in a drug induced haze. 

The game of carrom is not well known and therefore the carrom centric scenes will not hold the interest of people who are not well versed with either carrom or the culture that they are being introduced to. But we can safely say that carrom was very much a part of the culture and as shown, was the place for the underworld to experiment with the greed of the common man. 

Another good aspect of the movie is that there are fresh faces for almost all the characters Aditya Panscholi has got a meaty role after a long long time and he has done a good job out of it. His characteristic as the younger 'Bhai' are quite realistic to a small time gangster in the '80s. 

However, one negative aspect of the movie is that it lags somewhere in between, and while you know what is happening, you wonder as to why it's happening and whether the protagonist will ever take any action to avenge this or not.  Also, the fact that a movie has been named after a phrase used to describe a  Carrom player gives us the viewer the idea that Carrom would play a  more integral and active role in the movie. However, there is no special plot track that is related to the actual game of Carrom,  just the activity of playing Carrom.

Watch this movie if you want to get a glimpse of urban India before the gory blasts changed everything.

1920 Review (2008)

Think of a Hollywood 'ghost and vengeance movie'. Well, most probably it will be about someone wronged who dies and then comes back to kill those who wronged him or her. 

Think of a Bollywood 'ghost and vengeance movie'. Well, this would be about two lovers who were not allowed to marry, or a woman who was assaulted and molested and finally committed suicide, and then comes back in the afterlife to avenge her death.

Both these concepts have one thing in common - the soul is always the tortured one, and the people are ones at fault. Well, if I tell you that there is a Bollywood movie that actually is different, what would you say? - I'd say 1920. 

 Cast:

• Rajneesh Duggal as Arjun Singh Rathod
• Adah Sharma as Lisa Singh Rathod
• Anjori Alagh as Gayatri Devi
• Raj Zutshi as the Priest
• Indraneil Sengupta as Mohan Kant, the British Indian armyman who betrayed his revolting pro-independence military regiment.
• Dilip Thadeshwar
• Amita Bishnoi
• Vipin Sharma as the caretaker of the haunted palace
• Sri Vallabh Vyas as the Doctor
• Amin Hajee as M.K., the head of the haunted palace
• Ashish Pradhan
• Rushitaa Pandya
• Smita Hai
• Rakhi Sawant in an item song Bichua

Plot:

1920 tells us the story of two lovers from different religions breaking the caste barrier and living in the Bombay of 1920. After some happy times together, the husband, who is an architect, is sent to a village in India, Palanpur for the reconstruction of a old castle into a grand hotel. Their life takes a turn for the worse in the castle, with the woman soon beginning to have weird experiences and is finally bed ridden one day, forcing the man to embark on a truth searching journey and winning his lady love back.

Review:

1920 cannot be considered to be a fresh concept from any angle, but it is interesting to see that the story writer has tried his level best to bring some spice to the common cut and dry 'good soul dies and has to take revenge' formula that has been prevalent in Bollywood since the times of Madhumati and Ramsay Brothers. 

Simply put, the movie is old wine in new bottle, but the new bottle is quite classy, as well as the companion food is very novel and exciting. The two actors have do not much to write home about, but both show promise and can become actors in their own right if they make the right choices.

Adah Sharma as Lisa Singh Rathod of course gets the meatier of the roles and she performs it with elan. She is positively spooky in the horror sequences, but of course, that also depends a lot on the direction.

As a viewer, the highpoints of the movie are that the movie makers actually take an effort to say that a person getting possessed is not completely impossible, and that even mainstream religion has experienced possessions and exorcisms. It was refreshing to see a Catholic priest coming to the aid and not some "Nirankari Baba'. 

Another interesting aspect was the inclusion of the Baphomet, which says that the film maker has actually done some research in the world of the occult. All in all, the movie did not look kiddish and made one actually think that something is amiss.

One another important scene is the one where the priest and the doctor argue and both come up with perfectly logical reasons for the behavior of the girl. It was very good that the director did not go overboard to oversimplify the fact that the protagonist stands between two choices - one of religion and the other of medical science.

The movie has one scene which you would find revolting, horrific or amusing, whichever trail your train takes - the scene where Lisa is eating a live animal, hunched like a cat. Of course, there is no explanation to this, but it'd be good if the story tellers had made an endeavor to tell us why a possessed soul would eat or eats dead animals. 

The movie still depends on creaky furniture and impossible camera angles to give you the freaks, but one advantage that the movie has above all is that the castle is so huge that it is indeed spooky even in broad daylight, let alone the night time.

All in all, 1920 has given Bollywood its first badass soul. Let's see where it goes from here.

Rocket Singh Review (2009)

Mark my words Ranbir Kapoor is going to be the next superstar in the next ten years. That said, we review Ranbir Kapoor's latest movie, 'Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year'.

Cast:

    * Ranbir Kapoor as Harpreet Singh Bedi
    * Shazahn Padamsee as Sherena
    * D. Santosh as Girish Reddy
    * Gauhar Khan as Koena
    * Manish Chodhary as Puri
    * Prem Chopra as P.S. Bedi
    * Mukesh Bhatt as Chhotelal Mishra
    * Naveen Kaushik as Nitin Rathore
    * Mokshad Dodwani as Taxi ( Tanmay )
    * Amol Parashar as Sai

Crew:

    * Production Designer: T.P.Abid
    * Costume Designer: Niharika Khan
    * Chief Assistant Director: Vicky Vijay
    * Sound Designer: Manas Choudhury

All of us have small movies in our lives. Those movies may be a romantic movie, or a action movie, or even a thriller, and all of us feel very, very happy and enthralled when the type of adventure that we had in our real life comes onto the big screen. Profession movies are always interesting. People who are in that profile can take some time to laugh at themselves and the others get an insight into their lives. And when the profile that is being shown is the thankless, frustrating and very abused salesmanship, one should be ready for a interesting fare.

Plot:

The movie tells us about Harpeet Singh Bedi, who is basically a person who just scrapes past his examinations and finally lands a job in a computer selling agency.While the premise of the movie is a computer selling agency, it is more closer towards the atmosphere and environment in a DSA - A direct selling agency. Direct selling agencies can be considered to be mercenaries who are sent by the company to go where they don't want to caught dead, doing deeds that they do not want any liability for, and basically some fall guys who can go down and get dirty.

Well, to put it mildly, consciences and morals are lampooned away somewhere in the thirst for monthly budgets, monthly targets and other aspects that take more importance. Put a morally upright like Harpeet Singh Bedi in such a scenario and all you have to do is to wait for the volcano to explode.

The script and the storyline may seem a bit weak, and the incidents in the movie may feel to be completely implausible. But take it from a person who has worked in the sales line for two years and in a DSA for eight months, what is shown in the movie is just the tip of the iceberg.

Ranbir Kapoor continues his  romance with the camera for the benefit of the audience. Everything about this guy is star material, the way he emotes, the way he acts, the way he reacts, his timing, comic timing, everything. Ranir Kapoor is the full package. The highpoint of course is the reaction that Harpeet Singh gives when he comes across a situation that he is not comfortable with, or something that he did not believe would be happening to him. That expression is worth a thousand words.

The Yash Raj Camp has succeeded in introducing an array of new, excellent actors to the mainstream cinema, and that can he taken into consideration to forgive them for Dil Bole Hadippa.

The climax of the movie may seem a bit stale and tame for for the front seaters. But look at the movie in perspective and you will understand that you liked this climax better than any over the top climax that is so common in Bollywood movies. Get this movie for Ranbir Kapoor, if nobody else.

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Rann Review (2010)

With Ram Gopal Varma facing a lot of flak about his earlier movies, some considered this movie to be his make or break movie. Of course, much was expected from a person who has given us movies like 'Shiva', 'Satya' and 'Bhoot'. Read this quick review to find out whether RGV won in this "Rann'.

Cast:

* Amitabh Bachchan as Vijay Harshwardhan Malik
* Sudeep as Jai Malik
* Ritesh Deshmukh as Purab Shastri
* Paresh Rawal as Mohan Pandey
* Mohnish Behl as Amrish Kakkar
* Rajat Kapoor as Naveen Shankalya
* Rajpal Yadav as Anand Prakash Trivedi
* Gul Panag as Nandita Sharma
* Suchitra Krishnamurthy as Nalini Kashyap
* Neetu Chandra as Yasmin Hussain

Crew:

Producer : Sheetal Vinod Talwar, Madhu Mantena
Executive Producer / Co-Producer : Gautam Vaze
Director : Ram Gopal Varma
Story / Writer : Rohit Banawlikar

Plot

Rann is basically a story of several people who are at war, with themselves, with others, with their morals and their ethics. It is the story of what is described as the last bastion of moral broad and newscasting, Vijay Harshavardhan Malik, and the story of Jai Malik, his son who has definitely seen better times but now sees his darling papa's news channel losing the ever important TRPs.

It is also the story of the battle of the new journalist Purab Shashtri, who has joined Malik's tv channel because he still believes that the channel is what can save the world.

It all takes a murky turn when the younger Malik meets one of their competitors, once an employee, whose channel is fast moving in the TRP race. Facing a closedown, and baying for personal vengeance, Jai Malik takes a step that would change the world of Indian Broadcasting forever.

Review

There are very few movies that will actually keep you glued to the screen, even keep you from eating the popcorn. Rann is one of them. The movie can be considered to be one of RGV's finest works, because the first five minutes are sheer boredom, and one would think that this would be one of RGV's movies which are not going anywhere.

But within the first twelve or so minutes, right after Amitabh breaks onto the screen, the movie runs at such a fast pace that you end up being dizzy when the screen screams the Interval - damn, you need one.

RGV has tried to experiment with his directorial aspects and above all, he has won the fight of a director - to present the audience with a story, in a novel way. And he succeeds in that, supported by a cast that gives the most gritting performances in recent times.

Some might not accept the climax, some might, after all, the climax is too much for the Friday evening Indian audience. They still would have the 'aisa thodi na hota hein' aspect to the entire climax, but I think that the climax was one of the most realistic climaxes in recent times. In fact, by the end of it all, I was waiting for the Senior Malik to commit suicide on mainstream television - and don't tell me that it has not happened.

Ishqiya Review (2010)

Cast:

* Naseeruddin Shah as Khalujan/Khalu.
* Arshad Warsi as Babban Hussain.
* Vidya Balan as Krishna Verma.
* Salman Shahid as Mushtaq
* Anupama Kumar as Manju
* Gauri Malla as Mamta (Nepali actress)

Crew:

* Production Design: Nitin Chandrakant Desai
* Costume Design: Payal Saluja
* Associate director - Ajit Ahuja
* Assistant director - Sujata Venkateswaran
* Sound designer - Sajith Koyeri, P.M. Satheesh

Plot:

The movie tells the story of three people who are live in the innards of Uttar Pradesh, the only thing that is common amongst them is their fate's trait to put them in a tricky situation.

Khallujan and Babban Hussain are two conmen who have been given the ultimatum by their boss, after they were found out to have stolen a certain amount of money. Though they give him the snook once, they now have to look for a place to live, or as Babban says, 'Burkhe mein rehna padega'.

So what does this have to do with Krishna Verma, one of the most earthy, worldly wise woman you will ever meet? What does the rascal called fate have in store for them? Watch the movie to experience what happens when some of Bollywood's finest artistes come together to enact one of the most rollicking, shocking and sensual script that has ever been put together.

Review:

Vishal Bharadwaj is not new at killing people on screen, or showing off the India that we keep carefully under wraps, or exploit and explore it shamelessly, whatever the situation may be.

The movie makes no bones about the three titular characters, and almost everyone else you are introduced to having ulterior motives, hidden agendas, and of course, the lust to achieve them.

Each of the characters are a joy to watch, may it be the surprisingly understated boss of the two con men, who finally confesses that he just likes to play a cat and mouse game with the two con men, or the young child man who would do anything to join the army.

What keeps this unfit group of characters together is one of the most crackling, surprising and finally satisfying script that I have seen since decades.

And the script is sprinkled with high point scenes that you just wait to begin and dread their end. Yes, this is Bollywood's finest on show. Be it the scene when the two conmen come rushing to save the woman who has essentially duped them all along, or the scene where the younger conman and the older conman come to fisticuffs right on the road.

This movie is ample proof that Bollywood has finally grown out of its G and U/A rating. Watch this movie for one of the most realistic, beautiful and sensual kissing scenes you will ever get in Indian Cinema. No more of the choreographed kissing scenes for Bharadwaj. This is the asli entertainer.