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Three characters, a wild bull, a reluctant forest officer and a village deep in the interior of Maharahstra. The wild bull goes on a rampage destroying a lot in the village and to stop it, a forest officer is called to catch the bull. The Marathi film “Valu” directed by debutant director Umesh Kulkarni has this one line story which forms the skeleton of a interesting two hour movie.

Valu is a village tradition in Maharahstra where a bull is let loose in the village in god’s name. The bull is free to roam anywhere in the small village of Kusavade until it goes berserk and starts destroying crops and the village. To counter the menace, a forest officer is called from the government forest department. What happens after that is what the story about.

Valu is not as much of a story as in having a start or a …

For three years in Amsterdam, I watched many movies on my computer. Movies I had never heard about. For the first one and half year, the only movie I saw in the theatres was Spiderman 2. Then one and half year later everything changed.

Amsterdam is rich in terms of art. It has many music halls, small theatres and huge multiplex. The biggest multiplex group is Pathe. It has 4 multiplex in Amsterdam alone with almost more than 35 screens between them but most of them running to absent audience. A ticket to a show costs 9 Euros, 4:50 Euros on a Saturday morning and 6:25 Euros for all Tuesday shows.

So if I watched 4 movies a month, my spending on movies would be 36 euros a month. If I wait a couple of months, renting the DVD for the same movie would cost me 3:50 Euros per …

Warning: Possible Spoilers ahead

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Have you felt a sense of deja vu while watching a movie? I guess many remakes give the feeling. But how do you feel when you watch the same movie with a different name, a different language and different actors.

Priyadarshan’s “Bhool Bhulaiya” is a exact copy of “Manichithrathazhu”. When I say exact copy it is almost 99% ’same-to-same’. except for some scenes which could not be replicated from Malayalam, it does not change at all. The dialogs, acting, story, expressions, everything is same. Even the furniture is same. I don’t think the chair which Akshay Kumar sits during the first night in the palace is available in Rajasthan. I think it is typical Kerala furniture but I could be wrong. Although I think the furniture is a wrong reason to criticize any movie.

So when I had a choice between the weepy “Laga Chunri Main …

An old man walks into a palatial mansion/palace calling someone’s name. From the look of things, the building is undergoing renovation. He is shouting the name of the painter shouting instructions to complete the work. There is no answer from the painter and the man walks to the first floor. Suddenly he stops on the first floor lobby when he realizes that the person he is searching for is not present in the palace. At the same time, a big broom kept against the wall falls down. Nobody has touched it but the position was such that it could have fallen by itself. The man panics and is scared. He start to walks out of the house only to find the rocking chair near the door is rocking on its own. The man is terrified and he runs out of the house.

On watching the scene again, as the man …

When I was a child, I would like reading books. As I was not the intelligent kind, I never read classic literature. I read thrillers and detective novels. The beauty of thrillers and detective novels was to read as the mystery unravels, as the story twist and turns and ends to a perfect climax. I would be so excited reading that I wanted to finish the novel in one go without jumping to the end. After all the fun was as much as in the journey as it was in the climax.

As I watched “Johnny Gaddar” (JG), I felt the same rush, the same excitement and the same fun of reading a thriller novel and this ends in less than three hours. JG is a fast paced thriller. The question here is not about who did it but about, he did it, now what?

It about a gang of 5 …

I convinced my friend to watch “Manorama - Six Feet Under” (M-SFU) but not without a warning that it would be different. I even tried explaining what Film-noir mean reading everything about it wikipedia as I do not understand the concept myself too. He in turn convinced his wife to join him. They rush from Thane to join me at the 8:00 PM show in Malad.

They make it 20 minutes into the film.

M-SFU is not a normal bollywood film. With all the reviews in Rediff and PFC, I had a vague idea about how it would go. I was looking forward to it and hoped I enjoy it the same way I enjoyed “Ek Challis ki Last local”

M-SFU starts in a sleepy town in Rajasthan. The dessert, the heat and a writer whose first book is a big failure that he himself does not have a copy of …

During our school days, Doordarshan would show a serial called “Johnny Sakko and his Flying robot”. Big robots would fight for supremacy of Earth. Building would fall like they were made of boards (actually they were made of boards). But it was fun. Then you would re-enact all those moments again after the show. The show’s details were talked with such interest that it felt like it was the biggest event of our life.

Michael Bay directed “Transformer” brings back the same excitement. Ekdum dhisum dhisum aur mast.

Transformer is the story of two robot group, the good Autobots and the evil Decepticons. A talisman or the cube controlling the power of a distant planet finds its way to Earth. The Decepticons lead by the powerful Megatron robot comes to Earth to find the cube. However he crashes into Arctic circle and is frozen. He is found by Captain Archibald …

It was the summer vacation of 1989-1990. We children would contribute one rupee and would rent those old big video cassette. The choice was clear. We wanted English action movies or new Hindi movies. An occasional ghost movie would do but the most we had was Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jackie Chan and Jean-Claude Van Damme. We had no idea what was going in Hollywood and the movies we rented were on the recommendations of the Video library owner.

One day somebody rented “Die Hard” and we were mesmerized. Action, shooting, fighting, explosion, it had everything we wanted. We cheered and laughed as John McClaine went on knocking off the bad guys. That day I was introduced to Bruce Willis.

“Die Hard” is one of my favorite Action movie. Another one was “Speed”. Both movies had action-a-minute with a good story. Few years later, when Die Hard 2 came, it had action …

The only regret I have while watching “Cheeni Kum” was that I did not have my dinner before watching the film. Every time Amitabh Bachchan said “Hyderabadi Zafarani Pulao” my stomach drooled. But then “Cheeni Kum” is more about food. Its about love, its above logical reasoning, its about need to be loved and then its nothing about the above. Contrary to the name, “Cheeni Kum” (CK) is sweet.

Amitabh Bachchan and Tabu make the movie sweet with their onscreen chemistry almost getting the recipe just right and yet the film remains incomplete. something is missing or is it some Ingredient is missing or is it too sweet?

CK is a love story between chef, Buddhadev Gupta in an Indian restaurant in London. He is arrogant, egoistic and very proud of his cooking. Tabu is a software engineer. He is 64 and she is 34. He is old enough to be …

Heavy rains and people traveling through the city of Mumbai and the credit roll on. “Metro” takes on a wonderful start. The characters are introduced during the credits. I was quite skeptic about watching Anurag Basu’s “Metro” but I have to admit that I enjoyed it.

The story of Metro is of different people and their relations, running parallel and linking to each other.

Ranjeet and Shikha live a loveless marriage. Ranjeet finds pleasure but not love in his colleague, Neha. Neha’s colleague, Rahul loves her and has big aspirations. He lends his flat to his bosses to carry on their sexual escapades and extra marital affairs. Shikha’s Sister, Shruti works in a radio station and is desperate to get married. She is searching for her love through matrimony sites and meets Debu. She is also falling for the RJ at the radio station. Shikha meanwhile finds solace and emotional …

Human beings always like to categorize, segregate other people in a particular group or category. It is always US against THEM. This groupism can be based on religion, region, sex, caste and many more categories. Its always those Bengalis, Marathis, Tamils, Europeans, Muslims, Americans, Indians, Dalits, Brahmins, Nerds, Yuppies, blacks, whites, brown and a number of groups. If a person can be categorized in a group, he/she will be. This groupism a lot of times leads to alienation of that group which can have a negative impact on the society.

The Marathi movie “Dahavi Pha” (10th Standard division F) explores this very concept without going into too much preaching. Dahavi Pha is a story of group of student studying in the 10th Standard of a school in the “F” division. The students in the school are grouped according to their …

Warning: Contain Spoilers

A lower-middle age house in the Mumbai Suburb of Dombivli, an alarm rings in the morning, the household goes into a frenzy of activities where the man of the house, Madhav Shreedhar Apte gets ready for work, goes to work travelling in the Mumbai Locals, works and then comes back in the evening, feeds his young daughter and then goes to sleep. The next morning the same routine starts again, and the next morning.

The Marathi movie “Dombivli Fast” (DF)starts with the above routine scene about a middle class home but ends with the most under-rated climax of all, simple yet hard-hitting.

Madhav Apte is a common man with strong principles. He has strong values and he does not believe in bending any rules for anybody, even when the future of his children is involved. He fights with people around when he sees injustice and corruption, which include his …

The towering figure of Amitabh Bachchan stands in front of the setting sun and ancient ruins. The big fort looks grand in front of red sky. Amitabh Bachchan standing in his room, his room is totally dark and from the open window he is looking at the big fort against the setting sun. A herd of camel run along side a train in the opposite direction.

The 107 minutes “Eklavya” is made of many such spectacular scenes. Whatever the movie is, its a spectacularly shot movie. Watching it on the big screen makes it look so beautiful that for once you forget that the story is so weak that a few scenes will not make it suitable for a second viewing.

Amitabh Bachchan is Eklavya, the guard of a dynasty whose forefathers have guarded the royalty from generation. The royalty, the King, Rana Jaywardhan is sitting by the dying queen, Rani …

The hero and the heroine gets married and live happily ever after. Most of the old Indian movies ended with the hero and heroine getting married in the end. The other alternative to the end would be the song from the movie shown again with “The End” shown. The marriage end would have the title as “The beginning”

Kedar Shinde’s Marathi movie “Yanda Kartavya aahe” (YKA) starts from the point where the above movies had ended. The days after the marriage. The only difference is that the marriage is an arranged marriage, not the typical love marriage. The term “Yanda Kartavya Aahe” literally translated means Taking responsibility this year and actually means that the person is ready for marriage.

YKA is a sweet funny story about two people thrown into matrimony and discovering each other. It could be called a realistic version of Sooraj Barjatja movies without the overly candy floss treatment. …

The first major release of the year, Mani Ratnam’s Guru is, well is a major film. Guru is grand and big like its protagonist. It describes the life of a common man who dares to dreams and achieves his dream by whichever way possible. Mani Ratnam is known for making film on real life character. The character of Gurukant Desai has a strong resemblance to Dhirubhai Amban but that only in terms of the story. All resemblance ends after that.

Gurukant Desai is a larger than life figure, an enigma. A person above law, power and people, who lives for his dream. The dream is not to earn money but to be big, big in what he does. Be it by becoming a major player in his business or starting from scratch against all odds. He lives for his success.

The film tracks his ups and downs from his childhood to his …

My colleague saw “Borat” this weekend. I saw “Babel”. Borat is still on the list along with the documentary “Inconvenient Truth”. I need to complete all my quotas before going back to India. The good thing about Amsterdam is you get to watch unlimited movies in the theatre for just 17.50 Euros a month. The bad thing is not many movies get released here. At one time, I had exhausted all the movies in the theatres. Now for the next two weeks, it will be fun again with “Casino Royale” and “Dhoom 2″ releasing next week.

Back to “Borat”, my colleague did not like the way the Kazakhstan was portrayed in the movie. She feels it was very insulting. Actually “Borat” is highly criticized because the fun it poked on the country of Kazakhstan.

The actor who played “Borat”, Sacha Baron Cohen was also criticized and sued.
In his defense he says
“The …

The Marathi film industry started the same time as the Hindi film industry. In fact many Indian regional film industries started at the same time. The Marathi film industry competed with Hindi film industry to a large extent. Around the mid-90s, the Marathi film industry started churning out mindless stuff, mostly insane comedies. The audience started declining. At one time when having a Marathi movie poster shown predominantly in billboards, it was reduced to a mere 1 -2 release a year. The Marathi actors started working in Bollywood.

The government then introduced schemes and incentives for the film industry. Although still not producing that many movies, the Marathi movie industry has recovered a lot. A “Shwaas” even made it to the Oscar. A “Bhook” was a contender for Oscars this year. The movies were released in rest of Maharahstra instead of Mumbai where the crowd was metropolitan and more diverse. Marathi …

I don’t understand Malayalam. It is to me as any other foreign language as Japanese, Spanish or any African language for that matter. But I have heard a lot of things about Malayalam cinema. Mathew is a malu. Sometimes when I went to his house, I would find the whole family watching Malayalam movies on Malayalam channels. Everybody would be so engrossed in the movie that I felt like a foreigner there. The worst were the comedies. They would be laughing loudly but I would never understand the joke. I then started translating the movie for them, interpreting it in my own way unless someone would either shout at me or kick me out.
I asked him to teach me Malayalam but he only knew how to speak Malayalam and did not know how to teach me Malayalam. I have watched a couple of Malayalam movies here thanks to a …

I would really really not like to compare the 78’s Don and 2006 Don- The chase begins again but then the movie was promoted as a remake and comparission between the two was obvious. While Chandra Barot directed the 78’s Don based on the screenplay by Salim-Javed, 2006’s Don is directed by Farhan Akhtar re-written but based on Salim-Javed’s original screenplay.

The story is almost the same. Singhania is a top drug smuggler. Don is the chief henchman working for Singhania. He sets up his base in Malaysia. A police Officer D’Silva is working to destroy Singhania’s empire. To do that he has to catch Don. During a chase, he is able to kill Don but then to catch the rest of his gang, he plants a look-alike, Vijay in the smuggler’s gang. Vijay spies for D’Silva and helps him catch the whole gang but in the raid, D’Silva …

A 30+ man in a relationship afraid to commit to the relationship and then his girl friend proposes to him. He has to say yes and what follows is the hilarious journey to marriage. “Pyar ka Side Effect (PKSE) takes you on a journey through the trials and tribulation from love to marriage. It is surprisingly good movie. There may be some side effects but on the whole it good entertainment.Rahul Bose plays Sidhartha or Sid who is a 30+ DJ in love with Trisha played by Mallika Sherawat, an event organizer. Right in the middle of a cricket match, which India is winning, Trisha proposes. Sid is caught off guard and has no choice but to accept. The acceptance was just the start. Next comes the shopping for ring, house accessories etc and the worst, meeting the parents and handling the ex. The rest of the movie is about …