Ghajini Hindi Review

Ghajini, played ferociously by Pradeep Singh Rawat, is the kind of villain who wears thick gold chains and rings on every finger. He is defiantly brutal - he runs a pharmaceutical company but for reasons never explained, he likes to smash iron rods into human heads and forces young girls into both prostitution and organ trade. He has one gold tooth, wears shiny white shoes and keeps a posse of henchmen so ugly that they look like they were airlifted from Ram Gopal Varma's last film. And of course Ghajini routinely drops lines like: aise marenge ki uska nakhun bhi nahi milega and my personal favourite: short-term memory loss patient mujhe kya yaad dilaayega. Ghajini, director A R Murugadoss's remake of his Tamil blockbuster, is a throw back to what Hindi films used to be: a three hour extravaganza of romance, comedy, action, set-piece songs and drama. It's a standard revenge film given a fresh twist with a dash of Christopher Nolan's critically acclaimed Memento. Like that film, the protagonist here, Sanjay Singhania played by Aamir Khan, is hit on the head and suffers from short-term memory loss. He cannot remember anything for more than 15 minutes.So, he tattoos his body with instructions: the most important one being that his girlfriend Kalpana was murdered, and he must find the murderer and kill him. The film is riddled with logical loopholes but Murugadoss, who also wrote it, doesn't give you enough time to think about them. So, you never ask how Sanjay, the fabulously wealthy owner of a cellphone company, conducts a lengthy romance with Kalpana, played by debutant Asin, pretending to be an ordinary man? Or why Ghajini, a master-thug and expert killer, doesn't have a gun when he needs it the most? Or why the key conflict, which leads to Kalpana's death, is such a random imposition on the script?Instead, you are caught up in the mystery of how a superbly stylish businessman becomes a killing machine who routinely cracks necks and in his introduction scene, plunges a broken tap into a man's stomach. Ghajini isn't for the faint-hearted. The violence is gory and elemental. The climax is pure man-on-man combat with lots of crunching bones. For Aamir, Ghajini is a 360 degree turn from the sensitive teacher he played in Taare Zameen Par. With a buffed up, eight-pack body, here he is a brutal killer in a murderous rage. Watch him as he explodes with grief and then just as quickly forgets it. It's a memorable performance indeed. Thankfully Asin is less animated than she was in the Tamil version. Some of their romantic scenes, and particularly her death are nicely done. Ghajini isn't a great film or even a very good one but I recommend that you see it. It is, as we used to say in the old days, paisa vasool.

Kungfu Panda Review

The movie has used hp animations.

Date seen: 22/6/08

Rating 4/5

THE GENERAL IDEA
The synopsis for Kung Fu Panda looks something like this: “A clumsy panda bear becomes an unlikely kung fu hero when a treacherous enemy spreads chaos throughout the countryside in this animated martial arts adventure featuring the voices of Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, and Jackie Chan. On the surface, Po (voice of Black) may look like just another portly panda bear, but beneath his fur he bears the mark of the chosen one. By day, Po works faithfully in his family’s noodle shop, but by night he dreams of becoming a true master of the martial arts. Now an ancient prophecy has come to pass, and Po realizes that he is the only one who can save his people from certain destruction. With time running short and malevolent snow leopard Tai Lung (Ian McShane ) closing in, Furious Five legends Tigress (Jolie), Crane (David Cross ), Mantis (Seth Rogen), Viper (Lucy Liu), Monkey (Chan), and their wise sensei, Master Shifu (Hoffman), all draw on their vast knowledge of fighting skills in order to transform a lumbering panda bear into a lethal fighting machine. Now, if the noble Po can master the martial arts and somehow transform his greatest weaknesses into his greatest strengths, he will fulfill his destiny as the hero who saved his people during their darkest hour.”
THE GOOD
“The most important element” in any film will vary according to its genre. For a film like Kung Fu Panda clearly the most important element it needed to pull off was comedy. If a film like this one doesn’t make you laugh… then there isn’t much left to fall back on. Thankfully the movie succeeds quite well on this level. I can’t recall any more than 1 hard belly laugh (usually a decent comedy needs much more than that), but it felt like it at least always had me smiling or giggling through the run time. Almost none of the joke were home runs… but then did all work. The end result was I found myself entertained almost all the way through.
Coming up with a good villain in a kids film is no easy task. The character has to be menacing, but at the same time you can’t give kids nightmarish visions and make them crap themselves. I mean come on… it’s Kung Fu Panda… you can’t exactly have Violator (from the Spawn comics) showing up can causing kids across the nation to spontaneously crap themselves in their theater seats… then requiring therapy for the next 3 years to make the nightmares go away! It is a fine and delicate balance… and the villain in Kung Fu Panda, Tai Lung, was PERFECT. He was certainly menacing… but at the same time easy enough for the kids to handle without needing pampers. I think the presence of such a villain really helped the film work.
Doing good action in an animated film is also no easy task. I mean, it’s easy enough to DO… just not so easy to do WELL. However, Kung Fu Panda and the folks at Dreamworks really did pull of some BEAUTIFUL animation with complex yet extremely smooth kung fu fighting that was a treat to watch. It was also a lot of fun seeing how each character had a totally different fighting style in keeping with which animal they were. I mean come on… how on earth do you animate a snake doing Kung Fu and have it look cool? Well… they found a way!
THE BAD
There isn’t a lot to complain about in this movie, but I will raise a couple of issues. First of all, some of the voice casting felt completely wrong. I worship the ground Dustin Hoffman walks on… but him as the voice of the sage Chinese Kung Fu master that trains the furious 5 and Po??? It just didn’t fit. Seth Rogen as one of the furious 5? I hope I’m not just being picky… but whenever these guys spoke (especially Rogen) it just kinda pulled me out of the movie. It was just really conspicuous.
I would have liked to have seen more about the furious 5 characters (the tiger, crane, monkey, viper and the mantis. I think Jackie Chan had like 2 lines… but I mean more in the sense of seeing even just a 2 minute segment of where they each came from and how they ended up at the temple in the first place. Not a major complaint… but it did keep popping into my head as I was watching it.
OVERALL
Contrary to my initial impressions, Kung Fu Panda ends up being a funny (not outright hilarious), exciting, well animated and beautiful to look at movie that both kids and yes, even adults will enjoy. Some poor voice casting and a few character left without being fleshed out much didn’t become major distractions to enjoying the movie. Could have taken or left Jack Black as the lead voice… but he didn’t detract from the film in anyway

shawshank redemption review

Starring: Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman
Directed by: Frank Darabont

Date Seen : 21/11/2008

Rating 4.5/5

If you think that's a turnoff title, remember all the smartass things people said before Forrest Gump happened. Shawshank -- the name refers to a maximum-security prison in Maine -- is already being touted to join Gump in the Oscar race. Why not? The academy regularly drops its drawers for films that celebrate the triumph of the human spirit. And this baby strums that theme hard as inmate Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), a Shawshank newcomer in 1946, strikes up a 20-year friendship with a lifer named Red (Morgan Freeman). They're both in jail for the Big One: murder.
Robbins and Freeman have the juice as actors to make figuring out whether Andy and Red really did it a riveting guessing game, especially if you're a sucker for prison melodramas. Writer Frank Darabont (The Fly II), in his feature-directing debut, doesn't skimp on the caged-bird cliches, sadistic and sentimental, but he plays enough hardball with the formula to evoke memories of such goodies as Cool Hand Luke, Birdman of Alcatraz and Riot in Cell Block II.
Stephen King wrote the novella Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, on which the film is based. (Andy's cell is bedecked with a poster of Hayworth in all her Gilda glory.) You can find the novella in a 1982 King collection, Different Seasons, along with a story, "The Body," that became the, basis for the 1986 Rob Reiner smash Stand by Me. Both tales are said to represent the gentler side of King, meaning the side that doesn't sell as well, though the torture, rape and killing in Shawshank qualify as horror in my book.
Darabont stays mostly true to the source, except for shooting in Ohio instead of Maine, expanding a few scenes and characters and casting the always welcome Freeman as a prisoner King described as a red-headed Irishman. King is a master at creating a whole world out of small details. Darabont tries to match him visually. The everyday agonies of prison life are meticulously laid out by cinematographer Roger Deakins (Barton Fink). You can almost feel the frustration and rage seeping into the skin of the inmates.
There is humor, too, as Red brings the painfully introverted Andy out of his shell. Andy, a respected banker before being convicted of murdering his wife and her lover, wins favor and permission to expand the prison library by offering financial advice to the Shawshank elite. That includes Hadley (Clancy Brown), the cruel captain of the guards, and Norton (Bob Gunton), the fanatically religious warden. We've seen these types before. There are also cobwebs on Brooks Hatlen (James Whitmore), the aged parolee who can't adjust to the outside, and Tommy Williams (Gil Bellows, in a role once earmarked for Brad Pitt), the young thief who can't live inside.
It's the no-bull performances that hold back the flood of banalities. Robbins and Freeman connect with the bruised souls of Andy and Red to create something undeniably powerful and moving. Instead of selling bromides, as lesser actors would do, they show the wrenching struggle required by any human being in a trap simply to keep hope alive.

Movie review: Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi

Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Anushka Sharma, Vinay Pathak
Director: Aditya Chopra

Love is a yellow tiffin stuffed with ‘garma garam khana’, balanced between the knees of that scooter rider going down a small-town road, on his way to his public sector office, and fellows called Sharma ji, Varma ji, and Sahni ji.

Or that’s what Aditya Chopra would have us believe. His new film has Shah Rukh Khan playing Surinder Sahni, a small cog in a big ‘sarkaari’ wheel, living an ordinary 9 to 5 existence. He has a best friend who revels in the name of Bobby aka Balwinder (Vinay). And he’s just acquired a new wife, Taani (Anushka), who’s mourning the untimely exit of an old love.

Tiny three-membered cast, instead of the standard full-scale Yashraj ‘baraat’. Middle-class homes and offices, instead of ornate palaces and Swiss chalets.

A hero who wears a thick moustache, black-framed spectacles, and pants which don’t fit. And a simple, unmade-up heroine, dressed, for the most part, in ‘salwaar kameez’ and ‘phulkari dupattas’. No, gulp, pastel chiffons. Could this really be Yashraj turning over a welcome new leaf ? Uh huh : the outlines of the characters are new, but the brush-strokes that fill in the whole, aren’t. In its telling, the few fresh touches in ‘Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi’ are overpowered by those that are all too familiar.

It opens with one of the oldest tricks in the book – dying dad asking hero to wed heroine. You’re still getting over that when the film whisks you off to Amritsar, where Surinder and Taani’s love story is destined to unfold. It begins well—they sleep sweetly in separate rooms, and swap such winsome exchanges as her saying ‘aap lucky ho ji, ki aap ko kabhi pyaar nahin hua’, with him replying, a tad poetically, ‘isse zyada pyar ki na toh mujhe aadat hai na zaroorat’.

Whenever SRK plays an average joe, he scores. Surinder Sahni is all set to be one of his most loved parts—his Punjabi ‘leheja’ and his quiet bashfulnesss is pitch-perfect. But superstars can’t be made to appear ill-dressed wimps who don’t know how to keep their women in the kitchen, when, of course, they are not being meek and pliant in the bedroom.

SRK’s double role arrives in the guise of Raj, and this version is very up to the Amritsar minute—skintight tee, ripped jeans, spiked hair. And there you have it, another creaky nostrum—dull office-going Surinder, or boisterous, brash Raj, what’s a Taani to do?

Oye Lucky, Lucky Oye

Oye Lucky, Lucky Oye brings you the ultimate media-savvy thief – the one who stole at nights, and wanted to be famous for it by day! And all of it in action-packed, fun-filled, two hours with a happy happy ending.
In Oye Lucky, Lucky Oye you’ll see Lucky, a gawky 15-year-old lower middle-class kid from the inner city ghetto of West Delhi rise to become one of the most wanted master thieves of India with crores of cash, a glamorous lifestyle, cars, women, a fan following, with fame and notoriety - and yet looking for something more. In this film, you'll take a ride with Lucky as he escapes his suffocating childhood and a bullying father to glide into crime – petty thieving in this case. Lucky meets Gogi Bhai - his surrogate father-to-be – who’s a wedding singer by profession and a stolen goods receiver by vocation. He befriends the thoroughly- respectable Dr. Handa, who could fund his business enterprise. Through Handa, Lucky enters the respectable, club-going, picnic-packing, English-speaking world of upmarket, urban India. Why all this trouble? Can’t he just steal and leave us alone? This is the story of the rise of Lucky – and his search.
This story was inspired by various real events and characters and through the memories of my childhood and adolescence where I met characters who've left a lasting impression on me. It's also inspired by crime reportage in the new shining India. Lucky wants everything that you and I want - name, fame, wealth, arm candy, and those everlasting fifteen minutes under the spotlights. But that’s where the resemblance ends. Most of us go to work at day, suck up to our bosses and make a respectful, decent life of it. Lucky steals from your or my home at night. And yet, he sees no difference between him and us – he wants to go the same parties, drink at the same five-star pubs, court the same networked people, and feature at the same page three do’s. I also made the film to find out why someone who had five crores in cash and goods, a few apartments, a dozen cars and a good TRP rating on TV would end up stealing a greeting card, a teddy bear and a framed photo of a family playing in the snow

Sorry Bhai

Starring: Sharman Joshi, Sanjay Suri, Chitrangada Singh, Shabana Azmi and Boman Irani; Director: Onir;

Rating 2out of 5

Date Seen: 01/12/2008

Geeky scientist Siddharth Mathur (Sharman) is given their mother’s ’swear’ by elder brother Harsh (Suri) to bring her along for his wedding to be held in Mauritius. Their mom, (Shabana) is least interested in attending the wedding because Harsh has planned to marry against her wishes. Siddharth succeeds in bring along mom and jovial dad (Boman) to Mauritius. Since Harsh is pre-occupied with lots of work he lives it to his fiancée Aaliyah (Chitrangada) to show them around make them feel comfortable. Herein starts the trouble as since their mom doesn’t really like Aaliyah, Siddharth ends up spending most of the time with Aaliyah. At the same time Aaliyah starts feeling neglected because of Harsh’s workaholic ways and starts getting drawn towards the very loveable yet shy, Siddharth. What happens after they both end up falling in love with each other forms the rest of the film.
Sanjay Suri is as easy going as usual but despite being the co-producer of the film, his character appears neglected in the second half. Sharman puts up a convincing act and perfectly fits the part. Shabana has a wonderful knack of doing some really difficult parts that look easy on paper. She succeeds yet again. Boman as the forever leg pulling father is back in form after some hamming acts in films like Yuvvraaj, Love Story 2050 and Dostana. Chitrangada Singh not only looks extremely sensuous throughout but also puts up a nice natural act.
Onir fails to hold your attention for two hours. The biggest blame for the same goes for the poor scripting. The film is predictable from the word go and the dull pace literally puts you off to sleep. The whole ‘Maa Kasam’ thing ends up being unintentionally hilarious. Imagine, Shabana giving a mother’s swear to younger son (Sharman) to let go of the forbidden love so that her elder’s son upcoming marriage is saved from trouble! Also, though Shabana and Boman appear almost like a real life couple, the whole attempt appears like the maker is keen to recreate the couple’s magic from their last film together, Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd. The music too isn’t something that has immediate recall value. Agreed there a few funny moments but barring them, the bold themed film with so many minuses going against the film, it appears little chance that it will appeal to its target – the multiplex audience.
Final Verdict The film would have been an okay one time watch had the writing been little more imaginative, but alas!

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