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Those of us who have loved Ramu for Rangeela, Satya, and Company will recall our regret on how film after film the brand RGV’s coffin was getting nailed (Naach, James, Shiva-II, Nishabd, Darling, Aag). With Sarkar Raj he saves himself from certain destruction. But then with Ramu you can never be too sure; he might have this formula working for him: get to produce & direct half-a-dozen odd films, and even if one works, the financiers will commission another adha dozen films. Sarkar Raj is that one ‘hit’ after the ‘six’ misses.

Sarkar Raj is sequel to a Sarkar (2005); the latter was a daft remix of Coppola’s Godfather film series and imagined power politics in Shiv Sena’s Bal Thackeray’s household (nonetheless, Sarkar managed a general positive response from the critics and the audience). Presently, in the sequel, Shankar Nagare (Abhishek Bachchan) finds himself drawn to an NRI-funded power generation project …

Aamir is ‘different’ in the sense that it seems that after eons one sees the streets of Bombay in a film how one might find them in real life. Aamir has its namesake protagonist land in Mumbai from the UK and get trapped in a nightmare situation. As soon as he gets out of the airport, he is put on call with a demanding and menacing gangster who wants Aamir to execute a terrorist plot if he wants to rescue his family that the gangster has taken hostage. Through the film, our man Aamir is sent from pillar to post running errands, collecting information, note slips, money and the bomb. Will he be be able to take control of the situation and prevail (the somewhat puzzling tagline goes, Kaun kehata hai aadmi apni kismet khud likhta hai, or Who says man is master of his destiny)?

Aamir is played honorably by …

[Guys, I am on maternity leave, living in Bihar. Films come in late, often pirated on cable TV and DVDs. I will be trying to write in reviews when I can. For the next 2-3 months, they will be irregular, short and a bit out of focus. Do bear with me. Thank you, Padmaja].

For those few who have cared to follow the release of Shaurya, the end credits roll with ‘101’ definitions of Courage. One is missing. Courage is also being original. Shaurya is ‘inspired’ by Rob Reiner’s A Few Good Men (based on AB Sorkin’s play of the same name). Shaurya is the story of Siddhant (Rahul Bose), a cocky lawyer in the army (Tom Cruise in the original) who is searching for meaning and adventure in life. He is waiting for something that would challenge his spirit. This he finds in defending a soldier Javed Khan (Deepak Dobriyal) …

Up until Ashutosh Gowariker’s Jodha Akbar was released, the defining film on the Mughals was K.Asif’s Mughal-e-Azam (1960) – the passionate tale of a lowly courtesan Anarkali (Madhubala) threatening to become the queen and a son (Dilip Kumar) rising in revolt against his emperor father, Jaluddin Mohammed Akbar (Prithviraj Kapoor in a towering performance). One suspects that however much Ashutosh Gowariker cites secondary research material as basis for his film, Jodha Akbar, it is K.Asif’s majestic work that underpins his latest picture.

Both street protestors and academics alike are harping on how no biography of Akbar, including the official one, Akbarnama mentions Jodha Bai as his wife. Second, it may not be wholly correct that the Mughal king who is known for his secular politics was equally liberal with his wife following Hindu customs (it was Akbar who banned the marriage for Mughal girls), not forgetting the …

In one of his introductions to the film, Rajat Kapoor discussed his inspiration behind Mithya: his film was a take on the mythological story on how Vishnu lets Narad muni change his identity into a common householder and the latter starts believing in it. The experience was to teach him (and us) the difference between illusion and reality.

In Mithya, an out of work actor VK (Ranvir Shorey) is offered to play the role of a real life Mumbai gangster with a promise of one crore rupees as remuneration. The proposition coming from mobsters, VK can’t refuse the offer. Their plan is to bump off the dangerous don Raje Bhai (Ranvir Shorey) and VK to take his place. In the course of the film, VK ends up believing he actually is the don and head of Raje Bhai’s extended family, only to be hit hard by reality.

Kapoor’s story idea …

[While Ronins take a break from the Friday releases and review Dhrohkaal, I wish to post an ol’ review that PFC bloggers may like to read, Deepa Mehta’s Water.]

Water is the third film in Deepa Mehta’s trilogy, after ‘Fire’ and ‘Earth’. The film has been reviewed extremely well internationally and also boasts of an Oscar nomination. It was initially planned to be shot in Banaras (the story is set in that town) but was cancelled amidst stiff and violent protests. Water was eventually filmed in Sri Lanka with a changed cast and a different and a tacky working title, River Moon. The decision to shoot in Sri Lanka, visibly so different from Banaras, could not have been easy. The film avoids mentioning the name of the city or the river, but the setting is supposedly Banaras with a character referring to the popular saying that if you manage to avoid …

Rohit Shetty’s Sunday has all the elements from his previous two films, there is action (Zameen), there is comedy (Golmaal) and there is his regular, Ajay Devgan. In many ways, Sunday is also in keeping with the recently born genre of big-budgeted and thinly-plotted comedies, only with bonus material thrown in – there is Arshad Warsi, one of our best comic actors and there is Irrfan Khan for the ‘multiplex’ audience who take pride in appreciating and patronizing serious actors. This mathematics – a carnival of genre and A-list actors – ensures that the film will not bomb like the way Bombay to Bangkok did.

Sehar (Ayesha Takia) is a dubbing artist for animation films who keeps having these harmless little lapses of memory, forgetting her keys and way to the office. But events take a serious turn when she realizes she has no memory of an entire Sunday, a …

With Iqbal and Dor it indeed looked like Nagesh Kukunoor was finally in form with medium-budget, script-based, performance-oriented cinema. Bombay to Bangkok is, however, not a first-rate start to a year that promises to be Kukunoor’s annus mirabilis (two of his other films are lined up for release in 2008).

Bombay to Bangkok is Kukunoor’s second collaboration with producer Subhash Ghai (after the simple but emotionally tugging tale of Iqbal). One can’t help getting a vague feeling that Ghai was generous with his inputs here: was it the one-line idea of a Mumbai lad falling in love with a Thai masseuse, or, that tagline, ‘same same but different’?

Kukunoor fails to show strength in working out (enough) plots to build up this romantic comedy and keeping the film apace. The basic storyline – a Mumbai chef (Shreyas Talpade) who runs away to Bangkok with money that belongs to a gangster, and …

Rajkumar Santoshi has made several films that address social issues in a certain way. His celebrated films - Ghayal, Damini, Ghatak, Pukar, Lajja – carry strong messages, feisty characters and dialogues that get a good share of so called “front benchers’”claps and whistles. As we are no less eager to champion films with their ‘hearts in the right place’, these films have often found their share of audience and acclaim.

In his latest flick, Halla Bol (possibly returning to safer grounds after the failure of Bachchan-starrer and gangster drama, Family), Santoshi takes on a number of high profile crimes to highlight corruption and public apathy. Enthused by the extraordinary public interest and support in Jessica Lall murder case, he promotes public outcry (Halla Bol) as a panacea for all ills. This is problematic premise to say the least; however, does the film bear out what it has set out for itself? …

Aamir Khan’s directorial debut Taare Zameen Par is an important film in the sense that it refers to the combative environment in which the present generation of children are being prepared to succeed. The film also takes issue with the declining tolerance forfailure amongst both the parents and society in general.

Ishaan Awasthi (Darsheel Safary), who is otherwise a bright child, repeatedly fails his school tests. His teachers believe that he is hopeless and his parents think he is undisciplined and obstinate. Ishaan himself is clueless. When his tentative attempts to describe his problems are met with ridicule and censure, he decides to hide behind lies and aggression. He decides it is better to be a rogue than a weak person. As you wonder, where he has learnt that from, you see his father fuming at the mere suggestion that his son could be dyslexic, a child with special needs.

It’s a …

With year-ends, come lists. Films of 2007 that stick out for honorable and not-so-honorable mention are:

Namesake
Meera Nair’s feted adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri’s book was less than satisfying for me. Devoid of details in the book, the film was a plainer story stitching together the surface stereotypes that NRI families go through. I found Irrfan Khan and Tabu in super form as the Ganguli pair (though wondered if the Bengalis too would agree over their nuances).

Black Friday & No Smoking
Black Friday, on the other hand, was a more satisfying adaptation of the book of the same name. Despite a small production budget, the commentary was able to render pan south Asian feel to the unfolding of the terrorist attacks in Bombay. Whether No Smoking was a good film or a bad film is now a matter of opinion. But it certainly was the most intensely debated – loved and …

Michael Winterbottom’s A Mighty Heart can be an illuminating study of how a director can use his talent to project his worldview and create something subtly different from his source material, and, also how cinema today is dominated by commercial concerns and often gets beaten into flatter and sanitized versions from what was held as its potential.

Michael Winterbottom has made close to thirty films in less than 20 years of his career. His eclectic and often praiseworthy output includes literary adaptations (A Cock and Bull Story), docu-drama (The Road to Guantanamo), biopic (24-hour Party People), war film (Welcome to Sarajevo), thriller (Butterfly Kiss) , sci-fi (Code 46), Western (The Claim) and something close to pornography (9 Songs). He himself has said that his films are largely about ‘people and places’, and where he combines social realism with stylistic experiments.

A Mighty Heart is based on the book with the same …

Dharm’s DVDs are out today and I can’t help but reiterate my disagreement with the many positive reviews that the film got. It’s incredible that this embarrassment of a film actually managed to argue its way also towards India’s nomination for an Oscar (not that Eklavya was any better, but that will be stepping away from the point).

‘Come, question your faith’ cannot be a very inviting tagline, I thought as I went to see Dharm, a film by the debutante Bhavna Talwar. In the film, Pandit Ram Narayan Chaturvedi (Pankaj Kapur), the head priest of a landlord’s family temple in Banaras, is made to take a stand on communal riots happening around him and finally gets to protect a young child that he had adopted as his own but given up on finding that he was born a Muslim.

Chaturvedi is both a scholar of Vedic scriptures and other Hindu texts …

For all those who have watched and admired Dharavi, Is Raat Ki Subah Nahin, or the more recent Hazaaron Khwahishein Aisi…, Sudhir Mishra’s Khoya Khoya Chaand is bound to be a keenly awaited film. This is also his best-budgeted movie, and better-promoted than his earlier films.

Khoya Khoya Chaand is set in the Indian film-making world of the 1950s and 1960s. Nikhat (Soha Ali Khan) starts out as a junior artist and a dancer, and wants to be an actress. Prem Kumar (Rajat Kapoor), a top artiste of the time, notices her and gets her the lead role in one of his films, in exchange for a certain proximity. Nikhat is reconciled to her situation when she meets an Urdu writer Zafar (Shiney Ahuja) who is also trying to find a foothold in the industry, again under the patronage of Prem Kumar. Disillusioned with the exploitative relationship with Prem …

What has an Indian been doing in the 16th century English court? Directing the Queen, no less. In 1998, when Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth I: The Virgin Queen was released, it was touted as one of the two Oscar hopes for Britain – the other one was John Madden’s Shakespeare in Love, a soft romantic comedy that got much of the attention instead. Kapur did not get an Oscar nomination, however, the film and the lead actress Cate Blanchett did. A very similar thing happened at the Europe’s Golden Globe awards. It looked as if the West was not yet ready to stomach the success of an outsider. Now Kapur has directed a sequel, Elizabeth: The Golden Age. The film has opened to mixed reviews,
and that Shekhar Kapur is not able to lay a claim to the best director’s award may, sadly, be justified this time.

It is, however, necessary to discuss …

Choreographer turned director Farah Khan’s first venture Main Hoon Na came out in 2004 and was presented as a tribute to decades of Bollywood cinema. One could watch the film with amusement if one could muster enough forbearance for the director’s very passionate tribute to Bollywood. However, while her first film requested the audience’s indulgence, Farah Khan’s second film Om Shanti Om demands a greater sacrifice – of every bit of reason, intelligence and cinematic taste.

This film is about a junior artist Om (Shahrukh Khan) who along with his friend Pappu Master (Shreyas Talpade) dreams of making it big. He also adores the reigning heartthrob Shanti (Deepika Padukone) and risks his life to save her. But Shanti is secretly married to the villainous producer, Mukesh Mehra (Arjun Rampal) and is expecting his child. She wants to go public with the relationship which does not suit Mehra’s scheme of things, so …

Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Saawariya, promised to be a unique love story. What it actually offers is, however, a frustratingly lifeless narrative with affected acting, artificially created emotions, and clichéd scenes & dialogues. There’s nothing distinctive, either positive or negative to make the film unique.

Saawariya is the story of a young singer Ranvir Raj (Ranbir Kapoor) who on arrival in a new town falls in love with a mysterious, dusky girl, Sakina (Sonam Kapoor), from a Muslim carpet weaving family. As it turns out, Sakina has already given her heart to an equally mysterious man-in-black, Imaan (Salman Khan). She knows nothing about Imaan who has disappeared with a promise to return for her on Eid. So while Raj keeps his hopes alive wooing Sakina, a prostitute Gulab (Rani Mukherjee) pines for Raj. In the end, despite everyone’s misgivings, Imaan returns on Eid and Sakina goes away with him. For love’s sake(!), …

[I thought to start my posting at PFC with a review of No Smoking – Kashyap is a well-known figure here; but also because in a recent post he bemoans how people don’t get his film].
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The protagonist of No Smoking, K (John Abraham, in a namesake role as Franz Kafka’s protagonist in The Trial) is a smoker who refuses to give up. His family and friends try every means to get him off it while he cannot see what the fuss is all about. However, when his wife (Ayesha Takia) threatens to leave him for good, he agrees to get help from one Baba Bengali (Paresh Rawal), referred to him by his best friend (Ranvir Shorey). Baba Bengali runs an underground quit smoking laboratory, and once caught in his scheme of things, life becomes a nightmare for K. K’s surreal journey from there on defies logic, and the world, with …