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iView Author: Anand (Chennai,India)

Email: withheld

And the Best Hindi film of 2008 is….!

2008 has nothing more to offer and is coming to an in a couple of days..all awards will start, Filmfare, Screen, Zee, Stardust and what not. I want to analyze the Hindi films that impacted me the most! The list below is in no particular order:

Mithya: If not for Anurag Kashyap’s post, I would not have even recognized that Mithya’s concept is a What if from Don! When the duplicate Don is put in place, faking amnesia, What if he suffers actually from Amnesia?!! The characters were real, believable and the performances were excellent. Mithya was fun all along and completely unpredictable. Great watch!

Jodha Akbar: The scale was huge and so was the ambition of the filmmaker. Jodha Akbar suffered from …

iView Author: crazyrals (Bangalore,India)
Email: crazyrals [at] gmail.com

This post is neither a review nor a comparison between the two movies.
It just so happens that these two ‘D’ movies released in the same week
and on the same day. I am just putting down a few observations and
points of why I watched Dostana in a multiplex and not Dasvidaniya.

Dasvidaniya seems to be a really good movie which will move people to
tears, the trailers show that there are moments of happiness and
sorrow, of unfulfilled dreams and unexpressed emotions. It has a
fantastic ensemble cast and Vinay Pathak is a joy to watch. I have
loved most of his movies in the recent past like KKG, Manorama 6Ft
Under, JGaddar, BFry etc. Inspite of all these I did not want to watch
Dasvidaniya in multiplex/theater.

Dostana has some peppy numbers, smallB and …

Om Puri. Boman Irani. Ranvir Shorey. Vinay Pathak. Vijay Maurya. Javed Jaffrey. In no particular order.
In celebration of my making it through to the next round of Sankalan, I’ve decided to write a nice self-indulgent piece about some of my favourite actors. The reason they’re my favourites is that for every character they play, they go into a lot of detail to create something new. A lot of actors just play themselves over and over again. Not so with these fine folk.

Om Puri

Bollywood Calling: I think I’ve watched and shown this film to others more than any other. “Baalls! Baalls! I want more baalls!” “Bastard I kill you.” “You have to feeeel…lusty.” “…like (y)anything.” What a killer accent! The first time I watched this movie, I forgot that Mr Om Puri isn’t South Indian. Anyone who hasn’t …

Vinay Pathak gives an unassuming yet brilliant performance in a film with a heart of gold.
IMDB

All right, I am not going to do review here and neither am I going to pontificate on the box office prospects of Dasvidaniya. But did you guys see the different ways an “ordinary” story has been presented to us via film? It is a classic approach of the “silent spectator”, always putting across the intimate world of Amar in simple view points.
1.       Amar ( fabulous Vinay Pathak) in the car showroom. The sales girl (impressive Purvi Joshi) is being chatty and generally trying to tell Amar about the car, EMIs and stuff. Notice Purvi here. She is genuinely concerned about this man, Amar. The camera is middle distance away and sort of looking at them from the next table. Gogi (classic Gaurav Gera) arrives. He shouts at the service staff. She looks at him. Camera in same stance. Lingers over the argument. Gogi turns. Eyeballs lock with …

Like the last time when we interviewed Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, this time also Honhaar Goonda was the driving force behind the decision to interview Kailash Kher. And like last time, Sourav Bhuyan followed up for getting an appointment.
Sourav and I met up with Kailash Kher for an interview at his studio at the Kailasa Studios in Mumbai. It was a free wheeling interview in which Kailash shared his experiences about everything from his struggle days to the formation of the band Kailasa to his south Indian movie experience to their latest soundtrack Dasvidaniya.
A small intro about the Kailasa band for those who came in late - Kailasa is a group whose main members are Kailash Kher, Naresh Kamath and Paresh Kamath. Naresh & Paresh are brothers. The music is composed by the trioka and the lyrics …

Dasvidaniya Movie Review
iView Author: Varun Grover (Mumbai, India)

Email: varun.grover26 [at] gmail [dot] com

I do start with the obvious disadvantage to objectivity – of having known all the key people related with the film (Shashant, Arshad, and Vinay) and hence will try my best to calibrate the words accordingly.

But first – three questions. Have you ever walked into a regular doctor’s clinic and been scared or put off by those ugly ‘public service’ posters with the picture of a rotting lung or a beyond-repair ulcer? Do you have a parent (or set of) who is irritating, embarrassing, may be almost senile, and you still love her/him/them. And do you see the subtle humor in such situations, characters, and details of life? It is the keen sense of observations like these that make Dasvidaniya the …

Shashant’s Shah’s Dasvidaniya draws at your heart strings. The story is simple and it is by no means an extraordinary film. It is a simple film, with a simple story line, with simple characters. No out of the world melodrama, no larger than life characters.

And that’s the beauty of it.

Vinay Pathak is as usual brilliant. The more you watch this man, the more you are amazed at his versatility. Thankfully Hindi cinema is growing up enough to give actors like Pathak a chance. Earlier you’s probably have him play the hero’s sidekick - but now he’s carrying an entire film on his shoulders and wonderfully at that!

Other than Vinay, if there is someone who stood out in the film, it is Sarita Joshi, playing the mother. Her smallest moves, expressions, were just so very right. No over the top comedy, no playing up the tragic instances of losing her …

Dasvidaniya Movie Review

I have been praying for her death. Almost everyday. The last time I met her, she could not recognize me or recall my name. I tried hard. But after few minutes, I gave up. Could not see her in that condition any more. She is quite old, completely bed-ridden with a fractured leg, has blood pressure problems and some complex disease that’s killing her brain slowly. Doctors can’t do much. They don’t want to operate as anything can happen. Her only son is also praying for the same.

Death is a strange thing. You don’t think about it unless you face it, some way or other. On my way back to Mumbai, all I saw was old men and women, and kept thinking about the all those days i have spent with her. so many memories. Train, bus, road, restaurants, flight. Everywhere I saw the …

iView Author: Varun Grover (Mumbai, India)

Email: varun.grover26 [at] gmail [dot] com

Dasvidaniya – Life and death of a common man

I know Shashant Shah since the days when he was directing that whacky, irreverent ‘The Great Indian Comedy Show (TGICS)’ (I was one of the writers, while Vinay Pathak, Ranvir Sheorey, Gaurav Gera, Suresh Menon, Purvi and Kiku formed the stellar ensemble) on TV.

He again teamed up with Vinay and Ranvir to direct and produce ‘Ranvir, Vinay aur Kaun’, and that’s why it was a bit of a surprise to see his directorial-debut Dasvidaniya’s songs and promos having a lingering sadness, a slice-of-life feel to it. Though one could spot a similar team as ‘Bheja Fry’ and ‘Mithya’ (Rajat Kapoor, …