which one will you watch first? how about… neither?
so the biggest filmi debate right now seems to be “jaaneman or don?”… with both big releases coming up next week, the question on everyone’s mind seems to be which one to watch first. Rediff already seems to be setting the stage with its special column a week ahead of d-day..
my say… neither. (in the theater, anyway). by now i’m wise enough to know that just as two wrongs don’t make a right, hype and SRK in a remake of one of Hindi’s cinema’s most iconic characters ever don’t make a right film. and neither does a pedestrian-running, black-buck shooting Sallu with a tired-looking Preity, geeky-looking Akshay (as awesome of an actor as he is), and a dwarf-sized Anupamji (and yes, I do have a tremendous amount of respect for this man). for those who might think i’m shying away from Jaaneman for Sallu’s wrongdoings (since I did point ‘em out), I’m really not. in addition to those, i also think he’s a horrible actor. (let’s leave tere naam out of this, and give vikram in “sethu” his due credit instead). what the hell happened to the guy from MPK or andaz apna apna?? this is CLEARLY not the same guy!! is it me, or ever since his body muscles increased in size, his acting chops started suffering some major atrophy?? i honestly can’t remember the last sallu movie i saw in a theater.. i’m not even sure i’ve seen one, come to think of it. and i plan to keep it that way. i never did get to watch many movies in a theater growing up (watching “hum” in chanakya in delhi does come to mind however).
now, what does Don have going for it besides the remake hype and SRK? good music? hardly. “aaj ki raat” is pretty decent, but i cringe at the new khaike paan, and cringe even more when i see priyanka shaking that beautiful kundi of hers in the song. almost feels like a catch-22 torture.. on the one hand, if i look, i have to see her dancing to a song that she should just not be dancing to.. and on the other, if i don’t look… i don’t see her shakin it. (not that she’s a great dancer or anything). anyway.. back to the point. are we expecting stellar, “ohmygodwowwww” performances? n-o. no. but do we know SRK is gonna get a nomination for best actor, and probably even the award? hell yes. dammit filmfare, just give it to him now and save yourselves all that money for setting up the event.
as far as i see it, the only real curiosity factor for me, is the fact that farhan akhtar is directing the film. after a “one of my favorite films” DCH, he gave us a SUPERB lakshya, which at the time was under scrutiny simply because “would he live upto expectations?” i personally believe he surpassed them. and i even told him that (we played volleyball together at bandra gymkhana). super nice guy too btw.. but with Don.. i’ve noticed that farhan isn’t getting ANY attention. none of the “will he live upto his previous films?” questions. gee. i wonder why. i guess when you have SRK in a remake, all questions go out the khidki to the kooda-daan below, eh?
what’s jaaneman got that don doesn’t? a different story and cast. sure. how about the marketing? the promos seem slow and boring. preity dances with salman. then she dances with akshay. then she dances with salman, then akshay. repeat. WTF? new york skyline. um. what? ok, let’s move on to the next. songs. um. what? ok, let’s move on…
in conclusion.. i don’t care much to watch either one in the theater, but don for me, does have that edge thanks to farhan. and that’s who i’ll be watching this movie for. sorry jaaneman, you’ll be left out of my queue. find someone else.
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
- Jaan-e-man hasn’t excited me so far. But in Don, there’s this curiosity factor. I have no expectations, but I may just end up going for Don… it’s releasing next week when I’ll be in San Jose celebrating Diwali. Not sure if I’ll be able to see it there or on my return back to OC
Jaan-e-man naaah.. It has so much of an hangover of Dharmesh Darshan moies. But, if the word of mouth is good.. i might watch it on DVD.. Don …hell yeah i wanna watch Don.. Lets give SRK and Farhan a shot at re-making.. I guess most of the remakes in Film INdustry(indian) would depend on the fate of Don, Umrao Jaan. If they fail miserably(which i doubt in Don’s case), then all of a sudden we have out very own “bollywood” saying a collective “NO” to remakes
Same here … will give farhaan a shot at Don … and give SRK the chance to play the suave don with the ‘gay’ touch ….
There are other actors too, to watch out for – Om puri, Boman irani (they are looking good as D’silva and Mallik).
But then cldn’t farhaan find a better replacement for pran than a wooden Arju rampal !!!
Perhaps the film will tell …
Jaaneman … seems like a an american teen romance flick !!!
That is if i get the tickets to Don in the first week. All his (SRK’s) female fans have apparently bought the cinema theaters already for one week advance booking !!!!
More Importantly i wanna see if SRK’s character is Vijay or Rahul..lol
- Ummm… I would love to share what happens in the movie (Don) courtesy a good guy I spoke to earlier this week. But Nah… I’ll let you watch it and find out.
@ OZ is it something we talked on the radio sometime back? About Don.. not…
–spoiler regarding don’s real name ahead–
looks like boman answered that question for us on rediff…
“You like to delve deep into the characters you play. How would you describe DCP D’Silva?
It’s a straight role. He’s got a single-minded approach — to track down Don.
Whether he gets Vijay, a country bumpkin who resembles the Don (Shah Rukh in a double role) to the job or pose as Don, the DCP has to do it in a clever, cunning, but humane way. And he gets more and more desperate, because he is chasing him, breathing down his neck all the time, and yet, the guy escapes. The DCP is really desperate to crack the gang.”
http://in.rediff.com/movies/2006/oct/12boman.htm
Yeah striker i too read that interview yesterday. But the strange part is/was that about 20-25 days ago imdb guys had SRK play DON/Rahul. Now when i checked it they have him play DON/Vijay. Even then i seriously doubted Farhan would resort to naming the character as Rahul. Rahul would have been cheesy… Damn us how much more can we dissect Don. I have developed a pity for Farhan now… But, as Osho once said
” Dare to swim against the tides”
Jaan-e-man looks very cheesy, but still I would want to give Sirish an unbaised chance for he is directing first time and definetly for Akshay.
Don, huh…the magic of the old one is still hanging on my head. If not for SRK, I would watch it for Frahan (this guy managed to impress me both the times).
Flip a coin..one in Theater one on DVD:d
i never liked old version Don – I saw it first only a year ago. If I was to play the DVD now – I would finish the movie in half an hour i.e fast forwarding some of the scenes.
As every one know Jaan-E-Man is going to me cheesy, lame and unfunny – so that’s no, again. However, I do like ‘Ajnabi Sehar’ and ‘Sau Dard’ song from the movie, but I am not the one who watches movies cos of songs.
So firework it is on Diwali..
From the Horse’s mouth.
http://www.donthefilm.com/base.htm
It says Vijay over there.
It’s going to be DON for me as well. I haven’t been impressed with Jaaneman yet..the story sounds too cliche…
neither ..i wud say..i wud rather invest my time and money to do better things in life (lyk write a anti-srk piece on PFC or sumtin)
I thought Jann-e-maan was a okayish movie, it wasn’t as bad as I anticipated that’s for sure. It entertained and i don’t think you could ask for more. Don was a total disaster in my opinion.