Category: Movies

The Kannada film industry lost its biggest ever star.

Its unfortunate to hear and read all about the rioting in Karnataka. Thankfully, no other Kannada star comes anywhere close, so rioting of this nature is unlikely to happen anytime soon in Karnataka!

I haven’t seen a whole lot of Rajkumar films. Of what little I have seen I must admit its a complete mystery to me as to why he is so popular. Actually, I think he is a better singer than an actor!

He was different from other south indian megastars in that he never dabbled in politics, though he stood up for issues that he thought were important to Kannadigas.

Its a story of two sisters, one of whom is a lawyer, career oriented type while the other (played by Cameron Diaz) is quite “vela”. Weaved around this backdrop is a story revolving around these two and their grandmom (played by Shirley McCaline) who lives in Florida in old age home. The Mom is is dead while the Dad and mother-in-law (grandma) don’t get along. The daughters eventually find their way to the grandma and then the family is brought together with a marriage of the elder daughter. The relationship between the sisters is well portrayed and both actresses do a fine job of their respective roles. Overall, its a nice film with a different theme that has been handled well. If you are looking for an action film, this is certainly not it. On the other hand if you are open to a “light” movie with ample humor and “sento”, with the pace and storyline similar to malayalam films, this one is a safe bet. By default, I think this movie is likely to appeal naturally to women more than men.

If you are in the mood for a masala film this is a perfect one. This is a film with a lot of technical pizzaz, innovative direction, good photography and excellent acting, especially by Vikram, the hero of the film. The songs are nothing great but blend reasonably with the film. The Director seems to be very much in tune with the times — there is refence to Internet, IP address (!!), Cappauchino Coffee and all the latest “in things”. Prakash Raj who plays the role of a cop is brilliant especially the scenes where his own brother is murdered. Vivek plays the hero’s friend (as usual) and does the comedy piece with ease.

The sub-titles are very poor. There are typos and plenty of dialogues that have been completely ignored. A number reviews have been written about this film so I am going to avoid repeating the story line. Just like another recent Tamil blockbuster hit (Chandramukhi), this movie also deals with split personalities. This gives the hero plenty of opportunity for histrionics and he makes full use of it.

An out and out entertainer which is different and enjoyable.

I was pretty dissappointed with the film. Its a pity that Amir chose this as his come back film after a long break. I found too many things wrong with the film that I am not going to spend time talking about the actual story (you’ll find plenty of this on the web). Here are a few of my peeves…

• What was the point of Amir Khan’s long hair? There were a number of people around with short hair in film. So it was not like long hair was the trend in those days. Besides as a soldier in the British army there is no way he could have grown his hair so long. It just didn’t fit in, not to mention that Amir looked pretty odd wth his long hair!
• What was Amisha Patel’s character doing in the film? A complete waste and not needed for the film.
• Most of the songs were uneccessary and were nothing great. The producers could have saved some money by hiring someone other than AR Rehman.
• The British guys in the film kept speaking hindi. It was annoying to say the least because it wasn’t easy to follow either.

A few positives of the film: Amir Khan’s acting as Mangal Pandey was impressive. Toby Stephens, the British officer was excellent. Rani Mukherjee handled her small role perfectly. The sets and background score were very impressive as well.

Salman Khan the hindi film star has been sentenced to a one year jail term. Sanjay Dutt has already been to jail. Salman is headed there. Monica Bedi is already there. The Hindi film industry in particular seems to be in a constant battle with the law and law makers. Thankfully, the regional film industry has stayed clear of this kind of mess. Well, at least so far…

Didn’t cricketer Pataudi have a similar case against him? What came of that?

The movie Bubble is being released on the HD Network the same day as the movie is released in the theatres. The DVD is being released 4 days later. Its quite a new way of aproaching film distrbution. I am sure its been done before, but with the growth of the Internet this approach is pretty significant.

I guess its only a matter of time before selling movies on Google becomes more mainstream. You don’t need all the middlemen to sell your movies. Make it and sell it through Google. The entire planet is your potential customer (provided they have Internet access and a broadband connection). Remember to give a few good interviews 🙂

While you are at it, enjoy a couple of freebies from Google video:

Kumble’s 10 wickets:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8182091342582596264&q=Kumble

Sachin in 1996 world cup:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4332247053575109902&q=Sachin

A complete “topo” of a Hugh Grant film, “Nine months”. The basic theme of the story is a little bit of a stretch for the Indian audience. To counter this fundamental issue, the director conveniently set the story in Melbourne in Australia! The hero is an architect turned cook! The heroine is a radio jockey (RJ)! A bunch of highly contrived circumstances result in the two in a live in arrangement as room mates. As always, one thing leads to another, they fall in love, and the heroine gets pregnant! The standard drama follows until the two come together in the end. A bunch of songs (nn of them really catchy) are thrown in as well.

Saif Ali Khan plays the hero and Preiti Zinta plays the heroine. After the success of Hum Tum, the Director attempts a movie with a similar look and feel but failed to come up with anything noteworthy. Saif does a decent job as he seems to do lately. Preity is too hysterical as the RJ. Her acting in this film reminded me of her poor show in Armaan. She seems be an actress who needs a good director to bring the bes out of her.

The movie makers show their ignorance about southern Indian states by introducing a “Nair” character (supposedly for comedy purposes!) who talks like a Tamilian!

If you haven’t seen the original, you might be able to survive this movie. Else, I would recomemed you pass on it.

This is a story of a fisherman’s family. The grandma in the family is longing for a female grandchild to be born because all the grandchildren are males! Unfortunately, she ends up with another grandson. Frustrated, she ends up bringing him (named Radhakrishnan) up like a girl — long hair, painted nails, make-up, bindi etc. Despite being a boy, he talks like a girl, walks like a girl and hangs out with the girls. However, he falls for one of the girls. There is some historic family rivalry courtesy of which a villain (a fine performance from Inderjit, son of the late mallu movie star Sukumaran), is introduced. As expected after some twists and turns the lead pair comes together (as if you didn’t guess!). This is a family story with plenty of masala, but some of it like the basic theme of the film is pretty creative, though not necessarily remotely realistic. There is some truly enjoyable hilarious comedy as a part of the main story itself as opposed to the deliberately inserted plug and play comedy that you see in most films.

Hats off to Dileep for a fantastic performance as Radhakrishnan. Gopika does justice to her role as the heroine. The movie is running to packed houses despite having crossed the 100-day mark. After a long time, I saw the movie in a jam-packed theatre in India! Overall, a very enjoyable film.

I am pretty certain that remakes of the film in other languages will soon start to appear. But the hero’s role is a very challenging one and not may heros might be willing to take this on.