7aum Arivu – My take

Posted on October 29, 2011 by bach

Shruti Haasan and Suriya hire a rickshaw in Chennai and driver does a “meter down”!!. Please read it again, .. no hold it, let me type it again (it

feels good) Auto driver turns meter ON!!! There. That should’ve been my first clue!

As you already might have guessed, I hated 7aum Arivu. Disappointing. Although I am glad I chose this movie over Ra.one. That would have been a suicide. (BTW, Shahrukh Khan came to my bathroom, while I was bathing, asking me to watch his Ra.One. !!! Did that happen with you or is it just me?)

Back to “the seventh sense”, I promised my friends that I would list 10 negative about this movie, against 5 of the good ones. So here you go.

Shruti Haasan: she is an excellent actor in a world where Rahul Gandhi is an excellent statesman. Kapish?

Direction: Ghajini had memento as reference. This one had nothing to inspire from. So, no wonder movie derailed after first 20 minutes. This director stretched one hour story like a chewing gum, threw common sense out of window and on top of it – he took my money!

Stunts: I can’t believe why our directors don’t have any idea on what Kung Fu is. They simply had to pick up any Chinese/Thai movie, except “crouching tiger..”. But looks like they checked only that movie, so kung fu now is surfing on bamboo trees.

SCI-FI: Flying objects without any explanation does not make any movie a sci-fi (nor historic), as this proudly claims. Bunch of kids just out of their diapers, tweak a guy’s a DNA to make him a superhuman, and you want me to believe it!?!

We laugh at Kyapten Vijaykanth typing on Windows media player, but we are OK with Sruthi compares two DNA in microscope! We laugh when Balayya diffuses a bomb with On/Off button, but we are Okay with Dong lee placing a Jammer on top of the car for public display (BTW which says “Jammer switched On”).

As usual, unbelievably stupid “science”.

Hypnotism: Really! Are you kidding me? Does anyone know what is it? Somebody please explain this director what it is, I think he believes it to be something similar to “statue” game we played in 4^th grade.

Romance: 90 minutes with 3 songs. I turned believer for a moment and asked “God, what have I ever done to get this kind of treatment!”. There is absolutely no justification for wasting 90 minutes on pointless romance when you claim movie is action/sci-fi or whatever it is.

Flaws: Millions of them, for naming one – Shruthi&co don’t have money to hire a monkey, but she conducts DNA test for an entire village in Kanchipuram! That’s smart economics.

Bio war: Its basically conspired by 6 Chinese officials plotted in broken English, even though they know mandarin very fluently. Basically they want to attack India through a virus in a month so. It’s the same paranoid theory few Pakistanis think Indians plotting it (or Palestinians thinking Israelites, and so on )

Songs & dance: Below average pointless and they were “inserted”

Historic Accuracy: Is Bhodhidharma father of Chinese medicine and Kung fu? Movie says I should be ashamed if I don’t know this, Now I am back at my desk and I can’t find reference to this. Can you please help me out?

Comedy: Alright! Are we banking on retarded and dwarfs?

To name some good things:

Suriya.
Cinematography for first 20 min
Hmm.. still can’t think of anything else.

Review: 7 Khoon Maaf

Posted on February 22, 2011February 24, 2011 by bach

Saat Khoon Maaf has been underperforming at the box office! What did you expect? You should have anticipated it when you brought that plot for Europe, which does not fit in our “Indian culture”,. I mean, a woman with 7 husbands!, and she kills all of them – what a slut!. Did you not know that we Indian cinemagoers are bunch of fourteen year olds who would like to giggle for PJs and miniskirts? Let me remind you again, we can’t bare the thoughts of serious thoughts of homosexuality, pre (or extra) marital sex, female polygamy (male is fine) etc, even though they all are stacked up in the closet.

It’s so frustrating to see such artwork does not get the attention, recognition and popularity it deserves. Almost a century now of history of Bollywood and its audience still did not reach puberty.

Back to the movie, it’s brilliant, just what Vishal Bhardwaj promises, every time! I am a Vishal fan, ever since Omkara. This again, based on a book, “Susanna’s Seven Husbands” – a Ruskin Bond novel. Story of a woman constantly in search of eternal love (read: overrated love) and she ends up marrying (and killing) all of them. As it was done for Omkara, story was customised to the Indian context. Susanna, of course, is retained as a westernised Christian woman; otherwise it is not possible to tell a story of seven husbands. Remember that Indian cultural thing – once a widow always a widow (Manu wrote this, not me).

Movie is collectively almost a masterpiece – fine acting, great direction, brilliant storytelling and nice choice of character. Priyanka Chopra did a great job, but I am still not a fan. Annu Kapoor was the best part of the movie, other husbands did well. Songs were good; “Daaarlinggg” was worth the applause.

Only departments that fail in the movie are graphics and make up. Black panther was totally a cartoon, and the burning house looked like a gif image from a mail forward. Bollywood has a long way to go make the graphics look real. While fixing that, for the next movie, Vishal can fire his Make-up artists. Plot reads Susanna ageing from 20 to 65 along the storyline, but she always looked like age 28 to 28.5, with several bad disguises!

Review: Dhobi Ghat

Posted on January 25, 2011January 25, 2011 by bach

An art film, to me, falls into either of two categories. One kind strikes audience with a brilliant sigh, making us wonder how a complex thought can be so simply put (E.g. Black Swan). The other kind is a folder of scribbles thrown at you, which does not make any sense even if you arrange in any order. Dhobi Ghat belongs to second category. It’s a high profile, big banner, “star” cast, much anticipated commercial-art movie which makes you feel you are reading few torn pages of someone else’s dairy. Probably, that’s the reason wise say you shouldn’t read someone else’s dairy. It’s so freaking boring!

Dhobi Ghat is not a traditional Bollywood commercial-art movie; hence my comments are also not regular ones. Movie is attributed with fine acting and brilliant direction. Bummer – it is pointless and boring. It neither does the justice to the time spent in cinema nor to the pop-corn bought. (Just a thought: Movie like this is the reason why Akshay Kumar in industry, to bring pointless but not boring movies). Dhobi Ghat revolves around a modern art painter Arun (Amir Khan) obsessed with video letters of Yasmin. At the same time NRI investment banker Shai (Monika Dogra) stalks him while successfully manage to get herself obsessed by Munna (Prateik) the Dhobi, whom she meets on her clichéd poverty trip. Arun changes houses! That’s all – I dint miss anything to explain on the plot!

All newcomers (all of them except Amir) have done nice job, justice to their roles, while Amir still struggles with “new age” acting – the natural one. Amir acting still stuck in mid 90s standard of great acting, I feel he was weakest link in acting department. Kiran Rao’s direction is great, even without considering this is her first presentation. Actually this is a relief! Since for a long time now Farah Khan was taking all the sympathy votes for being the only female Bollywood mainstream director. Now Farah can retire and Kiran can take her place with an understanding that her first movie is a mistake and she won’t be making a pointless movie again.

After Dhobi Ghat, I went into depression for a while and was actually looking for an Akshay Kumar kind of movie to undo this effect. We don’t run out of options do we? I chose Vijay’s Kaavalan over “Yamla Pagla Diwana”. As anticipated it was crapy one and boom! I am back to this world again, Thanks to Vadivelu!. Anyways, here are some options; if you would like undo the hangover after watching Dhobi Ghat (I used all three):

Kaavalan: Vijay is a kick boxer, student, body guard, dancer, comedian, singer, honest but innocent, most eligible bachelor as usual! Basically he is almost all the things I dreamed I would become when I was 12.

Black Swan: Amazingly brilliant movie. Watch it yourself, I am running out of words to explain it.

127 Hours: Another brilliant masterpiece by Danny Boyle. It surely will bring you goose bumps (as “The way back” did). Again, I am running out of words to explain the movie. One note on AR Rahman though! One more evidence to show he copies tunes, from his own work! Or, do we call it reuse? Some part of this movie has background tune of Raavan (Behene De to be specific.). Probably he thought the crowd that watched Raavan and watching 127 Hours are mutually exclusive. He is obviously wrong isn’t it?

Tees Maar Khan (aka Sheela Ki Jawani)

Posted on December 25, 2010 by bach

If Farah Khan thinks she can make a stupid movie with a fantastic item number and make it a biggest blockbuster, she probably is right. It works for Indian audience, and me. Tees Maar Khan was a houseful show in the middle of the week; probably it will remain so for rest of the holidays, unless a miracle happens. Her logic was simple, it’s feeling freezing out here and all we need is a racy raunchy number for this winter! 😉

Sheela Ki Jawani is totally fantastic! It has the same effect as some of the legendary items songs we had in this industry. I remember boys hostels going crazy over Babuji zara Dheere chalo, because there was a Bijli standing there, now it must be crazier since it is matter of Sheela’s Jawani! Whole movie can be tolerated to see this dance number. One more thing – the lyrics – semi-X rated “What’s my name…Ooh… Say my name”. 😉

The rest of the movie is plain simple stupid, it made little sense as any other Akshay Kumar movie and this can be easily counted as worst movie of 2010. It’s almost obvious that the movie was made for a bunch of 8 year olds, who giggle for anything jumping and running on the screen. They don’t need much explanation, do they? It’s like any cartoon network show; Tom loses his face for something Jerry does, and in the next scene Tom is alright and chasing Jerry again! There is little or no explanation why things are happening in the way they are happening. Those three stooges resemble penguins in the movie in Madagascar. I can go on, but in summary movie is a complete cartoon show – a bad one!

Plot was lifted from a disastrous Hollywood movie “After the Fox”. An international criminal plotting to rob a train filled with antiques, and does it by fooling an entire village. From an international thief, who apparently escaped every time he was caught; you would expect a lot of wit and skills. You would expect to see another Ocean’s eleven or Italian job, but no! There is nothing more than a Govinda from early 90s. Nothing in a Genius thief film leaves anything to your imagination – nothing smart.

Movie moves with a millions of technical mistakes, but there is no point complaining about it. It’s like any other holy book, filled with impossible stuff which cannot be questioned. If you need one example, the whole village scene was shot in a single camera – 200 actors in close up! And superstar Athish Kapoor does not find this odd!

Director Farah Khan is up against all those Indian or western movies with Indians those wanting to earn an Oscar (references to Amir Khan and Anil Kapoor). This movie looks like a campaign against them, like someone attending a social cause, in facebook. Every part of the movie tries to humiliate Oscar wannabes, or those who already got them. One more thing is, Bollywood’s idea of Oscar is to show poor villagers story (slumdog, Peepli) plus historical story (Lagaan). At end of the movie some European girls (new obsession of Bollywood) distribute fake Oscars to all camera-shy crew of this movie, including spot boys and light boys. Finally Farah arrives on stage and gets a real one and rubs it on buttock! BTW, have you heard the story about Fox and sour grapes?

Akshay Kumar is at his usual worst. I beg these directors to give him action role which he hasn’t done in decades. He is over used as henpecked coward, wetting his pants and running away from a headless ghost (Yes, you guessed it right – Sleepy Hollow.) Akshay Khanna with his usual irritating over acting, natural choice I would say. Only tolerable actor was Katrina Kaif, but her role itself was to overact! She is a wannabe-actor and a foxy bimbette, also Tees Mar Khan’s (aka Tabrez Mirza Khan) love interest. There is nothing much to discuss on acting department.

Good

Sheela ki Jawani
Just two hours of non-sense, not three.

Bad

All departments.
All the technical mistakes (a million of them)

And Ugly

Director’s of Idea of Oscars.
Cheep humour. Taking crap behind the bushes (literally) etc.

Talking about references, there is a guest appearance by Chunky Pandey who is presented as irresponsible narcissist, which I heard about him in real life as well. There is one more scene where Anil Kapoor dances on stage like a child, which also seems to be true. Come to Salman Khan, who gives a guest appearance in Tees Mar Khan’s (international criminal) Mohalla for a dance on a casual invite over a phone call, Now does this have any relevance in real life ? Just looking for some significance, symbolism etc. that’s all.

My advice – Please avoid. Watch Sheela ki Jawani on YouTube.

My take on Guzarish

Posted on November 23, 2010November 23, 2010 by bach

Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s movies are like epic poems. “Khamoshi” was a poem, “Hum dil de chuke sanam” was a masterpiece, “Devdas” was an epic and “Black” was all of them. Then, he got tired of presenting poems. Now he presents only drafts – unfinished ones. Guzarish is one among them; it seems that he dint put too many thoughts into it to make it perfect. Started well though!

Quick question, does “major milestone” translate to “bada meel ka paththar” in Hindi? I dint keep myself updated with Hindi, then! Anyways, back to review.

Guzarish falls short of telling a convincing story, tries to give a wrong message in between, then turns weird and finally ends like a Karan Johar movie – making everyone in the hall cry. Fortunately there are several clues in the movie shows it had a great idea behind it before while it was written and Bhansali lost it later point.

Plot is very simple. Flashback is picked from (Oh, sorry… inspired by) a Hollywood flick – “The Prestige”. A jealous illusionist (in Bollywood a magician) gets the apparatuses bugged and boom! Mr. Ethan Mascarenhas (Hrithik Roshan) is crippled for rest of his life. Ethan takes this as a challenge and starts a radio show from his bedroom, and he becomes popular once again. After a decade of doing this, he decides give up his life and files a petition against Union of India for an approval on mercy killing, which gets rejected as it is unconstitutional.

This is how Goan maids look like., any questions ?

Guzarish

The movie ends with an indication that his maid (Aishwarya Rai) will assist him to do when court rejected. Now, this story went wrong for two major reasons

Movie does not attend the reason why Ethan wants a mercy killing. Nowhere in three hours Bhansali shows Ethan is suffering or it is getting worse. Finally it looks like Ethan is asking for mercy killing Euthanasia (Referred as Ethanasia) because he got bored!!
Court does not attend the argument “Why grant Euthanasia only to him?”. They start to discuss it, but later they forget! I really don’t think “Because he chooses for himself” is a justifiable reason. This shakes the foundation of the movie.

All other areas (direction, acting etc) were comparatively good; they are in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s standards. I acknowledge that he is one of very few directors who don’t believe in overacting to bring drama, nor Masala. While I am thankful for that, it is frustrating to see some of the details are missed out.

Hrithik was good; BTW, did I mention that I brought him out of my “No watch list” after Kites? This movie could look good in his resume. Sofia (Aishwarya Rai) simply exists in this movie which any actor could have filled in. If you read the plot again, you see Sofia the maid (Aishwarya) does not have anything significant to contribute to the story. In-fact, she is one of the week points of the movie. If I were Bhansali I would have filled someone not so famous, like he did for that doctor or lawyer.

Now, list of flaws:

Why the movie gives old feeling? I initially thought the story itself is picturised in old age, at least 40 years. But no, they talk about SMS etc. Confusing! Is there a place in Goa where people live just like they did in colonial era?
The maid seems to be a financially poor girl with drunken husband, but appearance makes her look like a princess – couple of centuries of old. She has an heir style of German village girl and wears veils like a secret cult. Total confusion.
You can observe the difference between how Hollywood and Bollywood takes on exact same things differently. In Prestige he is an illusionist and here Ethan is Magician! In 90 minutes movie Hollywood does not forget to show a glimpse of magic apparatuses – they ensure whatever audience see is a result of smart equipment and quick movement. But Bollywood does not care – It just happens like any paranormal activity! They had 180 minute, just to remind you.
Konkani was dubious. In Hum dil de chuke sanam, there was some Guajarati and in Devdas, Bengali. In Guzarish Bhansali forgot about Konkani. There were couple of words here and there; they sounded more like Marathi than Konkani.
Songs weren’t great! There was one dance – A Goan would have been nice. Instead it was a Spanish..ish dance! Aishwarya treats it as metal rock! My point is Sofia does not look like a person who does mock rock in a pub, she is a serious character – If you observe she talks less than Man Mohan Singh.
Ash wears longest skirts in the world (already in Guinness records!) and she rides bicycle back home! It’s long since I’ve been to Goa, but it is hard to believe skirts keep getting longer there as days go. Nothing wrong with the concept, just that it is funny to imagine a 15^th century European skirt driving early 20^th century Hero bicycle.
What’s about Karan Johar ending please? For 15 minutes Ethan says thank you note. “Last but not least” and “Thank you one and all”.

Looks like Bollywood is rearranging its resources. Best chocolate hero Vivek Oberoy (remember Sathiya?) does action super hero roles (Remember Prince?), Martial art specialist Akshay Kumar does henpecked roles and now Best dancer in Bollywood plays handicapped! Salman and Shah Rukh..err what are they good at again ?