Movie week
My movie-watching has come down quite a bit in the past few months. [Now, that's a good excuse for not writing often on PFC!] After almost a drought-like situation, a couple of weeks ago, it seemed like the glory days were back — I watched 5 movies in the span of 6 days. They had quite a bit of variety in subjects and treatment and not all were new too. So, I thought it would be to good to write about them.
Ta Ra Rum Pum started it all. I was not interested despite the banner, Saif and Rani, especially after reading the thumbs-down reviews (a must, before venturing to any Hindi movie). Anyway, due to domestic compulsions, I went to the theatre straight from work. My main complaint about the movie at the end was that it was boring. Forget and forgive all the unbelievable situations; I just didn’t find anything interesting in the movie. Even the songs were nowhere near the YRF-average.
In the next couple of days, I had to test out a new DVD player and TV. So, I picked the best DVD I had — Rang De Basanti. I wasn’t thrilled by the movie on first watch, but liked it more this time around. Though the second half still leaves me disinterested, I appreciated the work that had gone into the movie — the script, the acting and the music especially. The Bhagat Singh portions weren’t exciting possibly because we had an overdose of it a few years earlier.
Now that my entertainment setup was all done, there had to be more DVDs for the weekend. First it was Phir Milenge, a movie I had avoided earlier due to its inspiration from Philadelphia. Nevertheless, I was curious about what Revathy and Shilpa Shetty had done. Revathy has ideas, but probably lacks in story-telling capabilities. The end was forced and exaggerated. In any case, her intentions are not to be doubted. Shilpa was the best we have seen, not powerful enough in certain scenes though. Salman, a guy whom I love to hate, was surprisingly effective. Abhishek was good too.
Filhaal is another movie with noble intentions. A glossy feel to sugar-coat a hard subject, Meghna Gulzar came good on debut. Tabu and Sushmita Sen were fantastic and worked well together. The songs are memorable too. Were the subject and treatment still too much for the audience to digest? Sad.
After an overdose of Bollywood, I ended the week with an off-beat, historical Tamil movie — Periyar. The controversial political figure and the director’s earlier masterpiece of a movie (Bharathi) were reasons enough to go for it. Despite the honest efforts, the movie was a bit of a let-down. It never really reached the level of Bharathi. At times, it seemed like a documentary that had to emphasise on key events. In a few other places, it seemed to satisfy the political bosses who had funded the movie — especially Chief Minister Karunanidhi who had sanctioned 95 lakhs of government money. It was worth watching ultimately, to know the man behind the myths. Sathyaraj, in the lead role, superbly underplayed it. Songs were quite bad.
Overall, the week was not really satisfying beyond the number of movies I had watched in a short span of time.
Tags: Tamil
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Overall, the week was not really satisfying -:
u have only urself to blame…except rdb..there wasn’t single entertaining or inspiring movie in that list…
Phir Milenge & Filhaal are not bad choices at all for home viewing. agree with you on Revathy, something lacking somewhere-consistency, flow/hold over the language, comfort levels. I dont know if i am watching a TV soap, a mini series or a feature film…
Filhaal- great music, good performances by Tabu and Sanjay Suri, Sushmita was annoying as usual trying to prove how good an actress she is. Palash Sen? well, i love the singer, but still cant forget how we guys used to laugh at the scene in the car with Sanjay Suri, he is annoyed and hilarious to watch!
amazing songs and lyrics though- dil ke sannate, ye lamha filhaal jee lene do.
the film was good, its not the concept that didnt work, its just few loopholes here and there, i had great expectations after Filhaal, but didnt even feel like trying ‘Just Married’ like many others.
In the same boat with respect to Just Married. Just from the promos, I felt Meghna Gulzar was playing it safe after a debut failure and didn’t feel like watching it.
but did any one who actually saw it tell us HOW WAS IT! i have hardly met anyone who saw this one 8-|
Tushar:
Re: Just Married,
Directionwise, its a better film than Honeymoon Travel Pvt Ltd. Story(stories) factor was not that good in HTPL and its not good here either. But direction of Meghna Gulzar is better than the Reema Kagti.
Meghna has tried to enter in to the territory where her father Gulzar saab is the master. We may find shades of Gulzar in scenes between Fardeen and Esha Deol.
She has tried to walk on symbolic things as Gulzar saab used to do.
scene like, where Esha rubs her thumb of feet on the ground, suggest the small but romantic things Meghna has tried to incorporate in her film.
So, is it worth a watch, RK? And is it a climb-down from Filhaal as I had wondered?
Randrable:
I think almost every film is worth a single watch, (if we have time and opportunity):)
JM, has contradictory factors in the story, and that continuosuly strikes our mind. Somehow Meghna brought shades of charcater of Rajini Sharma in old Biraj Bahu to Esha’s charcter. Though surely she might have thought to present the angle where in arranged marriage, bride needs time from Groom, before settling down properly but somehow story lacks here and Esha’s character becomes different and bit diffident type which shd not be the case. we dont know why she is shying away.
But on other hand, Parizad brings so modern angle in the story.
As a director Meghna certainly has got more growth since her first film Filhal. and that shd happen with any new film maker. Thats the positive sign. Its not downwards graph of Farhan Akhtar who is going downside with every succesive film.:(
randramble… I love how you put it.. u didnt want to watch TRP, but had to
“…due to domestic compulsions…”
LOL!
RK: good info on JM. Will try to catch it on DVD some time.
On Farhan, I don’t think he’s on a downward slide. Lakshya was good, though Don was popcorn stuff.
randramble: Its good if Farhan Akhtar is on a journey of upward progress. We will have better films from a talented film maker:)