Ranjhana (2013)

This movie feels like Rockstar which came out in 2011. All the elements of the triangle are there - the quietly confident Girl (acting skills not required), the loud and reckless Boy (must be the odd one out) and the stable Man (must speak good English).

The movie shows the same kind of madness for love and the fight between 'stability' and chasing after that half-forgotten dream, as seen in Rockstar. 

In both the movies we see the Boy go from nothing to something chasing after 'love'. That 'love' takes him on a journey, away from his friends and family. Also the success that he achieves along the way means nothing to him because he is pursuing 'love'.

What happens next? In this pursuit of 'love' something has to give. In this case it is predictably the guys in the movie who get hit the hardest.

Overall I liked the movie but it could have been better in terms of continuity (how did Dhanush's family travel from Varanasi to New Delhi in a flash to be at his bed-side before the last scene?). 

Also sometimes it is better to create a compact movie without a meandering story (just to cross the two hour mark) rather than introduce all kinds of complexities.

:)

But still go ahead and watch this. Dhanush fits in perfectly for the role of the common man. At least we don't see SRK acting like a poor junior artist or Salman Khan pretending to be a poor orphan.. 

The Con of Don and Randomness of Ra-One

"Apne aap ko hamare hawale kar do!"

This dialog has been ringing in our ears from Mumbai, 1978 (original Don) to Berlin 2011 (Don 2). But something that added to the suspense yesterday, only made the audience laugh today.

Unfortunately the same has happened to good old Shah Rukh Khan.

Both the movies were over-hyped under-prepared offerings, much like a cake that is burnt from the outside and still raw from the inside.

Both were about Shah Rukh Khan the actor and the ego, definitely not about the story. One had super-glamour of Kareena Kapoor and the needless magic of special effects (some of them really good!). The other had Priyanka Chopra trying her best to give her best in a bit role, playing second fiddle to 'Don' SRK.

Finally both were seeking to bring in a new style of film-making into Bollywood.

But I think they failed badly. In case of Ra-One we were unable to find the common ground between a Hindi family drama about a woman loosing her husband and a sci-fi thriller about the fight between good and evil. Maybe such a common point exists, but definitely finding it would not be aided by all the attention going on a super-star actor playing the lead role.

In Don 2 things are bit more different. There the movie is about one person and everyone else plays second fiddle. There is a lot of forced style injection, most of it at the wrong place. All the 'action' sequences are old by about 3 years (even for Bollywood).

We can go on bashing both the movies but one common factor responsible for the failure of these movies is Shah Rukh Khan. He has grown too large for any role.

So what he needs is to destroy his own reputation and do some meaningful cinema. Which means (to put it simply) stop hyping his movies, concentrate more on the script and NOT his part in it. Something similar to how we cut a rose plant to encourage growth.

Maybe the first thing he needs to do is watch some of his older and more 'honest' works like Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman, Darr and Chak-de India.

Good luck SRK! Hope to see you back at your best in 2012!

:)

Source Code

Guys will know what reaction one can get when you suggest a sci-fi movie to our girlfriends/wives/sisters/female friends. The amount of bribing, begging and pleading required to convince females to watch a sci-fi movie is sometimes amazing. But Source Code is a movie for the masses. It is not a heavy machinegun fire filled sci-fi romp that it sounds like. In fact it is a very smooth movie with both a romantic twist as well as an intelligent storyline (girls how many rom-coms can boast of both?). At the same time, believe it or not, it explores the nature and meaning of 'death' and the quantum nature of reality. So it is a sci-fi rom-com thriller with an intelligent base for the story. The movie starts of at the deep end (like all thrillers should) and the plot is laid out bit by bit in every scene. Watching this movie is kind of like peeling an onion and many people will find it simlar to Vantage point but a whole lot less confusing. The basic storyline is simple: a bomb on the train, hero has to locate the bomb and the bomber. Then comes the first big twist: the hero has just 8 minutes to achieve that. From there on it is just one layer after another. Go watch this movie even if the trailor or the title made you think yaawn not another time-travel sci-fi thriller with explosions and stupid twists. The only complaint I have about this movie is that short-cuts are taken with the location of the bomb and the bomber. This has been done, obviously, to fit the timescale. It would be impossible for the hero to search a double decker commuter train with around 400 passengers in 8 minutes. Thus the reason for taking a short-cut! But all that aside, the movie is quite good and I rate it as a must see! :)

A Perfect Double Bill... Do Dooni Char and Aashayien

It is rarely that I watch two new movies one after another. It is even rarer for me to enjoy both of them. So last week we sat down to watch Do Dooni Char (DDC) not planning to follow it up with any other movie. But the energy of DDC kindled this deep hunger within us to feast on another yummy movie. The movie we selected was Aashayien which lived up to its potential.

DDC is an amazing movie. I rate it a MUST WATCH especially for people who have lived for any length of time in Delhi. The movie feels like a Sunday brunch of aloo parantha and yoghurt (or a dinner of butter chicken and naan). Somehow they have managed to get the best out of Rishi Kapoor - Nitu Singh team and it is amazing to see how you start flowing with them in their day to day life.
It is a movie which combines the engaging story line of a serial like Nukkad with slick Bollywood production values.

Aashayien is another amazing movie. Completely different from the ordinary life of DDC. That is what makes the combination perfect. Imagine a Sunday brunch at home followed by a dinner at your favourite Italian place. Aashayien takes you far far away from the normalcy of daily life shown in DDC to a strange and difficult confrontation with death.
From challenges of daily life to challenges of a different magnitude.
Aashayein does take a bit of an open mind to go along with but it makes it all worth it. The movie tries not to dwell to much on the obvious and shows a new dimension in the struggle between life and death.

Go watch!

Then we saw Guzaarish two days later.
So from Sunday brunch to your favourite Italian to most exotic Central African cuisine.

Guzaarish: watch it at the theatre or forget about it. The story needs to be absorbed at all levels. The visuals/sets, music, atmosphere, acting, expressions are all very well put together. It does get a bit heavy in parts but these are thankfully short. Also you can say certain elements in the story stick out and prevent me from calling the movie a work of art. Kind of like putting up a cell phone tower on top of Taj Mahal.

Aakrosh (2010): Component-based Film Development At Its Best!

What is the most important element in a movie? There are several candidates to choose from including the story, the script, the editing and the acting.
For me it is the story. If the story is entertaining enough it will keep people talking about the film.
I think that Bollywood is either running out of this magic ingredient or is becoming very smart and seeking stories from outside the usual settings we find (e.g. gangsters, young love, family sagas etc.). Such stories promote 're-use' and 'adaptation' and lead to creative new cinema. Kind of like mixing ingredients from different cuisines to come up with exotic flavours. One such example is We Are Family.
Another thing to appreciate is that we have started acknowledging the source of the story and declaring openly when stories have been lifted from other movies/sources instead of just copying and claiming credit for originality.
But there are times when this re-use is stretched beyond reason. It is ok to to re-use or adapt stories but certainly not lift it scene for scene even if you repackage story elements to give it an Indian feel.
Aakrosh is guilty of doing just this. They have lifted Mississippi Burning (1988) scene for scene.
They have cleverly re-packaged story elements to use news-worthy issues which makes the final product easier to sell.
So FBI from Mississippi Burning is the Special Investigation Team of the CBI, segregation in southern state of Mississippi in the 1960s is repackaged as honour killings in Haryana, race issue is repackaged as a religious issue, sheriff of a small town is converted to the local inspector in a small town and so on... I could write a new blog post just to map out the massive repackaging effort that is Aakrosh.
But that is not the end of it. They have actually lifted full scenes from Mississippi Burning (MB) including the camera angles, dialogs and situations. I have not even seen Aakrosh (as it has not been released yet) but I can tell you, from the trailor, what each scene means and what is the general flow of conversation.
Two examples:
1) Bips being beaten by her husband and landing in hospital - the whole scene that follows with the fight between Akshay Khanna and Ajay Devgn which ends in Akshay Khanna pulling out a revolver on Ajay Devgn.
2) The whole sequence where a witness is taken in with his identity hidden using a cardboard box.

So all in all Aakrosh is looking like a pasta dish with 'desi-laal mirch ka tadka'. If they have done it well then the movie would be more than watchable. Trust me I have had pasta dish with desi-tadka. It tastes yummy! But if they have just lifted MB then it is a movie best left unseen.

Oh and Mr Priyadarshan... at least acknowledge the fact that you have lifted the whole concept and entire scenes from MB!

;)