If you’ve seen Godfather and Kalyug and read the Mahabharat or seen the original one as a serial, you have pretty much covered Rajneeti in sum total.
Interesting in parts, predictable in most, pacy in parts, tedious in most, with hackneyed dialogues and characterization.  The positive is clearly fine acting. Arjun Ramphal enact his parts well. The direction is crisp, the story per se is weak.
It confuses itself between attempting to say something fresh, then gets lost in the “woman waiting for her eternal love of the 60’s and 70’s.”
Having said that it does attempt to tell a story of the current state of politics in India, but given that there were not many budget constraints, the constant scenes of telling as opposed to showing or giving layers to the character as opposed to making a smart and shrewd cookie, like Manoj Bajpai’s character, suddenly behave in a very irrational and almost stupid manner, example, hitting the bottle at every instance or going unarmed and Devgan’s character also showing up unarmed to protect him and then just surrendering arm in the end, make for a convenient story telling as opposed to an intelligent one.
Clearly the scriptwriter here, needs a lot of work, cause otherwise the characterization had a lot of scope and potential for some very interesting storytelling.
From the audience perspective the sub titling leaves a lot to be desired. Case in point is the number “thees saal, or thirty years” appears on the subtitle screen as 27.
Also all the women getting universally pregnant, the unnecessary scripting of the minorities holding on to their value system when voting, as opposed to everyone else selling out, again takes a very mundane turn to a very interesting start.
The positive in this is that it is not attempting to run away from some of the truths in the political system of a party being it’s own worst enemy, and that of a political family being a divided family.
Nana Patekar also is surprisingly underplayed and not the ususal Nana. The music and visuals suit the film. See this if you have 2 hours and 58 minutes to kill, else await the DVD and fastforward in parts. Till it comes on DVD watch Godfather, Kalyug and Mahabharat. That way you would have not seen the film, yet seen it.

The hype of Kites, gets to it. What we are promised, by the Bollywood machinery, we don’t get. This one plays out like a Mahesh Bhatt film, set on the scale of a Rakesh Roshan production.  There seems to be some confusion as Bollywood tries hard, a bit too much, to reach out to Hollywood, and gets somewhat jarred in between.
Firstly the strengths and there are many. The direction is of top notch order. The initial character build up and story, that of the chance taking immigrant with not much to loose, set in the backdrop of Sin City, Las Vegas, promises a lot of excitement. The pace is crisp and fine outdoor locations make it visually appealing.
What bothers the viewer is half baked characters, story that almost becomes reminiscent of the Bollywood of the 80’s as opposed to the current trends, a constant flashback reference when a straight flow of events would have been just fine and finally an unreasonable intention to keep the film to within two hours, when honestly, the traditional three would have done just fine. It appears rushed to meet the deadline, that of co mingling with Hollywood.
Some actors are wasted and some very unaccomplished actors are given huge screen time. One gets the impression that Kangana must have done this film either to earn a trip to Las Vegas or get a 10 year multiple entry visa to the US. A fine actress has been wasted. Her brother, played by unnamed antagonist is given a powerful part, which he enacts extremely weakly. Hrithik and Barbara are competent, but a vulnerable Hrithik would have been great, a total lover boy Hrithik, somewhat not totally there.
The usual Mahesh Bhatt influences of the Hero’s friend, the doomed hero, etc are there in abundance.
Is it entertaining, is it worth a watch, most definitely, but do so without hoping to see an all time classic enacting itself in front of you and you will not be disappointed. Hoping to see a life changing Bollywood film, will leave you unfulfilled.
The background score is solid as is the authenticity of the Mexican accent. Giving sudden words like “Yeda” to Hrithik, or mentioning that there is a “Beach front party,” in what the whole world knows as being a desert (Las Vegas), give away that confusion that exists in the developers of the film and that comes across to the audience of the film too.
The biggest positive from this film is the fact that with it, director Anurag Basu, manages to overcome all genres thrown at him with aplomb, whether it is a remake of a West film (Murder), or an intense drama (Gangster) or an Urban (Metro) classic and now a Masala Bollywood fare.

Prince represents a cut and paste of most of the action packed films of Tom Cruise and Mat Damon. The makers seem to run it like a video game. Plenty of action, some fine sequences which are lifted straight from Hollywood and no story or at the very least, a lame one of the hero trying to find who he really is and the audience trying to find, what the film is really all about.

It is best seen and enjoyed, and yes it does have it’s entertaining moments, if one goes into the theater with a mentality of entering a video game parlor. It keeps you distracted from the mundane tasks, but the absurdity of the action sequences and the lack of story, make it a quasi game experience, as opposed to a real movie, one.

The action sequences, especially from, Aruna Shields, are classy. When women actors do action sequences well, it is like watching a gymnast and let’s face it, women gymnast appear more graceful, as opposed to the men counterpart and one often wonders, why Bollywood does not make women oriented action films.

The music and background score are engaging. From an acting perspective, Vivek is competent, Nandana and Neetu are not and Sanjay Kapoor attempts to get into Anil Kapoor of RACE’s, character. However, what is really weak is the story telling and the direction. While not a BLUE or a TASHAN, this is another attempt at Bollywood using the money at it’s disposal to blindly ape Hollywood in all special effect sequences, but forgetting about telling a real story in the process. It makes it also painful since the thrill and suspense element is missing from the soul, but is visible to the eye.

While escapism and fantasy is the very core of the film entertainment business, have some basic intelligence and flow to the make believe, as opposed to putting in twists, then explaining to the audience, time and again, makes the narrative extremely jarred.

Overall an average watch, if the stress of living is getting to you and your family.

Watching Teen Patti is like going to the restaurant with the best reputation and being served food with the finest ingredients, that has been very badly cooked, because the cook does not know what to do with the raw materials and the resources at her disposal.

Take Ben Kingsley, Amitabh, along with fine individual performances by Madhavan, Shraddha Kapoor, Dhruv Ganesh and Siddharth Kher and you have potential, to make the potential even more promising is a fine underlying concept, now throw in a director and a storyteller, who have taken it upon themselves to bore the audience with going deep into unnecesary details, suddenly realizing that they are getting monotonous, fast forwarding to an action sequence, which seems forced, having characters go through inconsistencies in who they are, and if that is not confusing enough, take the traditional Bollywood like Ajay Devgan, Jackie Shroff and Mahesh Manjrekar. To complete the “excess casting” also throw in Saira Mohan and Shakti Kapoor and waste a talent like Barry John and you have Teen Patti.

Haven’t seen such a desperation to win the audience and lack of clarity in a movie in some time. Ironically none of that was required.  Ben and Amitabh have actually performed very well, but given that the whole story around which they have to act, is all over the place, there isn’t much they can do.

The item number is unnecessary as are half the characters in the film and you wonder what they are doing in it, in the first place. It is like building an argument when the conclusion is a given, but you cannot reconstruct what got you there in the first place. What is described as Mathematics appears to be all about intuition and the logic is never clearly defined, other than “it is somewhere in the cloud.”  Clearly this film is not for lesser mortals like the audience, but seems more to be a mind play of some of the lowest IQ pretending to be, super intelligent. The whole experience is like going to a Page 3 party and seeing right through everyone.

If there is a positive, it is that something different is being attempted, although that too is a pav bhaji of a couple of Hollywood films, being dished in and dished out and then some Bollywood coming into play, then London.

Watch this taking your Ipod, cellphone, videogame, food, etc along, you’ll need that.

Rann goes into a different and interesting subject matter territory…that of the Media, both it’s explosive influence on the Indian way of life, it’s pressures and also the it’s evolution from the medium of information and preservation of a democracy, to becoming a full fledged business operation.
By it’s very subject matter, by the wonderful performances by Rajat Kapoor, Suchitra Krishnamurty and Rajpal Yadav, along with Amitabh and Paresh being their competent self, the film keeps you engaged as an audience, and, also makes you think after the curtains have been drawn.
The predictability though, is only too predictable. The acting by Sudeep and Neetu Chandra is almost a noticeable let down and actually distracts from the narrative unfolding. The other major distractions are the background sound  and constant camera movement, which becomes more dramatic than the scenes unfolding in the first half and then when the actual onscreen dramatics start, the sound is needed a lot more, but appears to be missing.
Also as an audience one feels there is a lot of “tell” as opposed to “show the unfolding,” and Amitabh’s speech towards the end is a classic case of, “less would have been way more engaging and open to interpretation.” Some of the characters are extremely well etched, and some, way too Black and White and lacking the layering, which goes against the caliber of the actors and the subject.
The fact that it keeps you on our seats is beyond a doubt. The fact that you yearn for the “what –if’s, is also beyond a doubt.”
What if the female characters (Gul Panag, Simone Singh, Neetu Chandra, etc) had been made more stronger, as opposed to being the mere supporters for the male presence, what if the ending had been more open ended, what if the character of the protagonist had been more “grey,” as opposed to “experienced yet naïve, almost a contradiction.”  What if, not everything had been explained at length.
Ritesh Deshmukh having the author backed role, does well and whether or not you belong to the Media industry in India, this film will make you take notice of the all encompassing aspects of the  phenomena, that is the new media in India….in your face, thought provoking, providing dramatic answers as opposed to the news and when the news itself becomes the news, you know that you are in for an interesting treat.

I am sure each one of us has been through situations which we want to forget and just move on with life. Here is a movie which does exactly that; it reminds you that nobody is perfect and that we are all mortals and can and will make mistakes; we all have skeletons, be it big or small in nature, buried in our closet.
Raat Gayi, Baat Gayi is a story about people and relationships. The movie begins with Sophia (Neha Dhupia) trying to seduce Rahul (Rajat Kapoor) to go to bed with her and cuts straight to Rahul having a terrible hangover, where he cannot recollect the happenings of the previous night. His wife Mitali is in an ‘incommunicado mood’ which further complicates matters and Rahul keeps thinking it has something to do with the party he attended the night before. Thus begins his quest to find out what happened the previous night. Fast forward to a few funny moments between Vinay Pathak and Rajat Kapoor and some very predictable events; the movie manages to hold your attention only in parts.
While the writing is infused with some clever one-liners ably executed by the superb Vinay Pathak, some of the double meaning jokes could have been done away with.  Among the cast, Rajat Kapoor as the guilty-conscious husband and Vinay Pathak as his friend who likes watching porn are very good but their chemistry is nowhere close to what one saw in “Bheja Fry”. Neha Dhupia does tempt but only with her looks and not with her acting.
The movie is a bit of a drag although it does provide some really funny moments where you are not forced to laugh, but the script does not do enough to really make you think, Raat gayi, kya baat sach me gayi? It leaves a few questions unanswered; should people really move on with their lives and continue living in denial or should they confront the situation and think before they act.
Watch it if you are a Rajat Kapoor or a Vinay Pathak fan, but please do not go expecting a bheja fry laugh riot.

2009, an otherwise dismal year for Bollywood, ends on a positive note with 3 Idiots. The film is an entertaining watch and also has an underlying message of following one’s dreams and on a side note, that innovation are something the Indian education system, rarely promotes, if anything, it negates the imaginative mind.
The film is about campus life, albeit, not in the traditional Bollywood way, but one which highlights the pressures of the education system, hence a professional college life, as opposed to a fun college life is profiled.
The film is also very Indian in location and spirit, but has a universal theme of coping with real world pressures that we all face, at almost every stage and wake in life.
A visual treat ensues in the latter half, as some fine locations are captured on the lens, leading credence to the view that there are enough wonderful locations in India, provided there is an eye to capture them on camera.
Pace, of the story is crisp and although it moves between the past and the present, the viewer is rarely confused. The director and the story teller, do enough to keep us engaged to the narrative unfolding on the screen.
While the onscreen romance between the leading pair, has a touch of realism to it, make no mistake that at heart this is a full on commercial Hindi cinema, with all it’s melodrama and high octane emotions, which are wound around a present day situation. Hence a film which has a positive and feel good note to it, complete with all the songs, the good guys and the not so good one’s.
The individual performances give way to the package of the film as a whole, although Sharman Joshi, Boman Irani and Kareena Kapoor, rise above their normal Bollywood self.  Madhavan  and Javed Jaffery are somewhat wasted and Aamir is his competent self. American Indian Omi Vaidya, is a treat.
Overall definitely an entertaining, masala, watch for the whole family. It will bring back those memories of campus life and also make one reflect on where we are today and where we need to be, not so much materially, as in from within.

For starters ‘Kurbaan’ definitely has it’s heart in the right place, kudos to Karan Johar for attempting something out of his comfort zone of feel good mushy NRI oriented love stories. The film deals with Islamic fundamentalism and the stance of the moderate Muslim on the subject. It doesn’t glorify nor does it empathize with either side, which works in favour of the film.

What could have been a very good film unfortunately holds your attention only in parts thanks largely to a flimsy script and an even weaker screenplay. Set in post 9/11 New York, Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor star as newly married professors Ehsaan and Avantika. They move into an Indian neighbourhood and seem fairly settled when things begin to happen after a dinner visit to their orthodox Muslim neighbours. Kareena soon discovers her husband is part of an Islamic sleeper cell planning a series of bombings on the New York subway. She is then kept under house arrest and the only way she can escape is with the help of  Vivek Oberoi

The film gathers momentum with the entrance of Vivek Oberoi, a daredevil war journalist Riyaaz who is out to seek revenge for his girlfriend’s death in a terrorist attack and manages to infiltrate the terror cell in an attempt to foil their plans.

The film has its few moments like the scene where Vivek Oberoi argues with an ignorant American student on terrorism thereby indicating the film’s neutral stance on the subject, or the very realistic scene where Kareena’s father tells Saif that he would never want his daughter to marry a Muslim boy. The climax is extremely long and predictable with no surprises and one wishes the director had made the film shorter by 35-40 minutes.

My biggest problem with Kurbaan is the confusion in the stance the director is trying to take. Is this film addressing a serious issue like terrorism or does it want to be a commercial potboiler catering to the masses?

The film is definitely watchable thanks to credible performances from its leads. Saif Ali Khan is good and does display shades of his suave cold bloodedness similar to his character in ‘Ek Hasina thi’. Kareena Kapoor once again displays that she is a versatile actor and emotes very well through her eyes. It is Vivek Oberoi who impresses the most and should walk away with all the accolades even though his character has a weaker graph. He is first rate and comes up with a spontaneous performance inspite of a rickety accent. One wishes his character had a better role to play in the climax scenes.

To sum it up ‘Kurbaan’ is a respectable debut from Rensil D’Silva and far more compelling watch than ‘New York’ but not inspiring enough to be a thought provoking film.

ALADIN- alittle more talk, a little less magic

In an ideal scenario, if you had a magic lamp and three wishes, you would be very careful and wise in your choice. Unfortunately, in our bollywood take on this age old tale, Aladin wishes for Jasmine (Jacqueline Fernandez), Jasmine and you have guessed right: Jasmine again; couldn’t get more predictable.

Set in the fantastical ‘Khwaish City’,the first 10 minutes don’t need much intelligence to fathom as to what’s going on,especiallyif you have already read the tale.Aladin (Ritesh Deshmukh) is a regular kid in college, who is constantly bullied by his classmates, thanks to his name. Enter Jasmine-an exchange student from the US who soon becomes Aladin’s obsession. Fast-forward to some boring clichés and hackneyed dialogues.

The movie gathers some momentum with the entry of genius (Amitabh Bachchan) the genie, when Aladin accidently rubs a lamp gifted to him at a party. What follows is a series of funny interludes between the genie and Aladin, who eventually realizes that his real purpose is to protect the world and the lamp from the reach of the supposedly evilringmaster (Sanjay Dutt) but who comes across more as a laughing assassin.

The director Sujoy Ghosh has definitely got his casting right; one wishes he had worked a lot harder on the script.Amitabh Bacchan as genius is the heart and soul of the movie. In addition, he is in great dancing form too. Ritesh as the confused Aladin, fits the character to the T and doesn’tdisappoint. His chemistry with Bachchan is superb and he comes into his own eventually. This performance just proves what an underrated actor he is. Jacqueline as Jasmine has good screen presence but doesn’t have much of a role to impress.Sanjay Dutt is the only disappointment in the casting as his character lacks depth and development.

The problem with Aladin is that it is not a bad film but at the same time it is neither a good film; thanks to a very weak script.Aladin could have been a far more scintillating film with better special effects, and a superior script.

Altogether the movie is wortha watch once specifically for kids; but I warn you don’t expect any magic.

INTERVIEW WITH ACTOR- NEETU CHANDRA

Tell me about your role in 13 B?

Play a shy coy girl, who is a regular simple housewife, who thinks the television is a danger to her family and life. 13 B is a supernatural thriller. The effects and the production was of the highest order and really cool. It was fun working with a team which has suc

h technical finesses

Was Traffic Signal your first movie?

No that was Garam Masala. Traffic Signal, One Two Three and Oye Lucky, Lucky Oye, were the other films in subsequent order.

What are your upcoming films?

I have five ready for release. With directors like Vipul Shah, Gary Grewal, movies like Mumbai Cutting, so a full slate. Have signed a few more which are under production.

About your life outside of acting?

I am a black belt in Taekwondo and have played basketball at an inter college level. I still play basketball in a club here, where I am the only girl in an all boy team.

On your journey from Bihar to Mumbai?

Nothing spectacular about it, the usual things one experiences in a move from a small town, to the big city. What I want to mention is that all along this journey, my mother has been totally with me and I would not have been where I am, were it not for her. She is the main reason I am where I am.

On doing different genres?

I enjoy doing different genres and have been fortunate to get that many, in my short stint here till date. Each genre brings it’s own challenges and opportunities.

Did you ever get spooked, while shooting for 13B?

There was one such incident, where I was shooting in this one long scene in a house and a character is supposed to be there in one corner and I did not know which corner and it was pitch dark and all that was there was a electronic candle, shining straight on my face and when the shot ended, I logically figured that people would surface (I was all alone till then, save for this one shadow of the character I am looking for). When nobody surfaced for a few minutes, thanks to the pranksters on the set, I was all but ready to have a heart stoppage. Later on I was joking with the unit that this came about as close to my teeny-wheeny heart stopping to beat and if they ever did that again, they would have to find a new heroine, when 80% of the film was done, cause this one (me) was about to get a heart failure!!

INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR VIKRAM KUMAR

Vikram, a little about yourself?

I won a national award for my short film ‘Silent Screen’ and have been an assistant director to filmmaker Priyadarshan. I have also directed a Telugu film ‘Ishtam’ and a Tamil film ‘Alai.’

Tell us a little about your debut film 13B?

13B is a supernatural thriller. It took me almost two years to write this script I can proudly say it will be considered amongst the best supernatural thriller so far. The finished product has exceeded my expectations. It is a bilingual film in both Hindi and Tamil.

Talk to us about your cast?

I got my dream cast. It was great working with Madhavan, Neetu Chandra and after a while, the veteran, Poonam Dhillon, makes her super comeback. The music is my Shankar-Ehsan-Loy and they have composed for both versions.

Why a supernatural thriller?

You can see these Hollywood super natural’s being dubbed in Indian languages and working out really well. Horror is not a niche genre and even my film is an out an out commercial film made for all, even kids would enjoy it as it’s not over the top scary.

What’s next on the plate?

Right now it is off to some relaxing cooking at home. After that, there are seven to eight stories that I already have in my hand which are ready to be taken to the next step. I love experimenting so for me by the time I am 60 years, I would want to have made everything, some Masala flicks, couple of action packed films, few comedies and a handful of children films.

Posted by SHYLA LOPEZ and Vivek