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    Reviews

    “A cerebral joyride”
    Karan Johar, filmmaker on REDIFF

    “Among the most charming and creative Indian independent films”
    J Hurtado, TWITCH

    ★★★★✩
    “You don’t really need a big star cast… you don’t even need a big budget to get the techniques of filmmaking bang on…”
    Allen O Brien, TIMES OF INDIA

    ★★★★✩
    “An outstanding experience that doesn’t come by too often out of Indian cinema!”
    Shakti Salgaokar, DNA

    ★★★
    “This film can reach out the young, urban, upwardly mobile, but lonely, disconnected souls living anywhere in the world, not just India.”
    Namrata Joshi, OUTLOOK

    “I was blown away!”
    Aseem Chhabra, MUMBAI MIRROR

    “Good Night Good Morning is brilliant!”
    Rohit Vats, IBN-LIVE

    ★★★✩✩
    “Watch it because it’s a smart film.”
    Shubha Shetty Saha, MIDDAY

    ★★★✩✩
    “A small gem of a movie.”
    Sonia Chopra, SIFY

    ★★★✩✩
    “A charming flirtation to watch.”
    Shalini Langer, INDIAN EXPRESS

    “Interesting, intelligent & innovative”
    Pragya Tiwari, TEHELKA

    “Beyond good. Original, engrossing and entertaining”
    Roshni Mulchandani, BOLLYSPICE

    * * * * *
    Synopsis

    ‘Good Night Good Morning’ is a black and white, split-screen, conversation film about two strangers sharing an all-night phone call on New Year's night.

    Writer-Director Sudhish Kamath attempts to discover good old-fashioned romance in a technology-driven mobile world as the boy Turiya, driving from New York to Philadelphia with buddies, calls the enigmatic girl staying alone in her hotel room, after a brief encounter at the bar earlier in the night.

    The boy has his baggage of an eight-year-old failed relationship and the girl has her own demons to fight. Scarred by unpleasant memories, she prefers to travel on New Year's Eve.

    Anonymity could be comforting and such a situation could lead to an almost romance as two strangers go through the eight stages of a relationship – The Icebreaker, The Honeymoon, The Reality Check, The Break-up, The Patch-up, The Confiding, The Great Friendship, The Killing Confusion - all over one phone conversation.

    As they get closer to each other over the phone, they find themselves miles apart geographically when the film ends and it is time for her to board her flight. Will they just let it be a night they would cherish for the rest of their lives or do they want more?

    Good Night | Good Morning, starring Manu Narayan (Bombay Dreams, The Love Guru, Quarter Life Crisis) and Seema Rahmani (Loins of Punjab, Sins and Missed Call) also features New York based theatre actor Vasanth Santosham (Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain), screenwriter and film critic Raja Sen and adman Abhishek D Shah.

    Shot in black and white as a tribute to the era of talkies of the fifties, the film set to a jazzy score by musicians from UK (Jazz composer Ray Guntrip and singer Tina May collaborated for the song ‘Out of the Blue), the US (Manu Narayan and his creative partner Radovan scored two songs for the film – All That’s Beautiful Must Die and Fire while Gregory Generet provided his versions of two popular jazz standards – Once You’ve Been In Love and Moon Dance) and India (Sudeep and Jerry came up with a new live version of Strangers in the Night) was met with rave reviews from leading film critics.

    The film was released under the PVR Director’s Rare banner on January 20, 2012.

    Festivals & Screenings

    Mumbai Film Festival (MAMI), Mumbai 2010 World Premiere
    South Asian Intl Film Festival, New York, 2010 Intl Premiere
    Goa Film Alliance-IFFI, Goa, 2010 Spl Screening
    Chennai Intl Film Festival, Chennai, 2010 Official Selection
    Habitat Film Festival, New Delhi, 2011 Official Selection
    Transilvania Intl Film Festival, Cluj, 2011 Official Selection, 3.97/5 Audience Barometer
    International Film Festival, Delhi, 2011 Official Selection
    Noordelijk Film Festival, Netherlands, 2011 Official Selection, 7.11/10 Audience Barometer
    Mumbai Film Mart, Mumbai 2011, Market Screening
    Film Bazaar, IFFI-Goa, 2011, Market Screening
    Saarang Film Festival, IIT-Madras, 2012, Official Selection, 7.7/10 Audience Barometer

    Theatrical Release, January 20, 2012 through PVR

    Mumbai
    Delhi
    Gurgaon
    Ahmedabad
    Bangalore
    Chennai
    Hyderabad (January 27)

    * * * * *

    More information: IMDB | Facebook | Youtube | Wikipedia | Website

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Posts By sudhishkamath

Kung Fu Panda: Enjoy the Panda-monium

July 11, 2008 · by sudhishkamath

Genre: Animation/Comedy
Director: Mark Osborne, John Stevenson
Cast: Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan, Lucy Liu, Seth Rogen
Storyline: Chosen to fight the evil Tai Lung, a flabby panda called Po must train under a reluctant master Shifu.
Bottomline: Go, Panda. Po, kick some ass!

Martial arts fans are going to love this. So will children. And, adults.

This cheeky tribute to the ‘Please teach me kung fu, master’ genre films will make you laugh out loud and like most animation films for kids, also teaches young ones a thing or two about belief, confidence and chasing their dreams.

Morals aside, Kung Fu Panda works at various levels. It not only combines celebratory tribute (say, like ‘Kill Bill’) with spoof like ‘Kung Fu Hustle,’ sometimes goes all out to poke fun at the genre like ‘Kung Pow’ and at times, is dead serious about sticking to the martial arts formula like ‘The Forbidden Kingdom.’

Like in all martial arts movies, a Chosen One has to train under a reluctant master to defeat the super-skilled villain who has betrayed the master.

Sounds cheesy but only until you find out who’s playing these roles. First, there’s good fat Po, the panda (voice by Jack Black) who spends his time dreaming about becoming a martial arts hero some day (a nicely done anime-inspired 2D sequence gets us straight into the movie) and join the league of his idols – the Furious Five played by a tigress (Angelina Jolie), a monkey (Jackie Chan), a viper (Lucy Liu), a mantis (Seth Rogen) and a crane (David Cross).

To top it all, there’s Dustin Hoffman lending his voice to the adorable Shifu (the diminutive raccoon-like red panda), the master of the Furious Five, who has to train the lazy, flabby, gluttonous panda simply because Oogway (a tortoise and the leader of animals) has chosen Po to be the Dragon Warrior and fight the notorious snow leopard Tai Lung.

You can’t help but fall in love with these charming little creatures that come with incredibly funny lines. Like the bit when Po rescues the damsels in distress with his kung fu moves and the pretty one asks him ‘How can we ever repay you,’ Po quips: “There is no charge for awesomeness. Or attractiveness.” How can you not go ‘Awwww’?

After a point, you forget all about the medium, it’s all about these lovable characters. Thank God for quality 3D animation.

How else would we get to see animals do all that they do in the films and NOT feel like eating them?

Jaane Tu… Ya Jaane Na: The Next Gen Khan arrives

July 11, 2008 · by sudhishkamath

Genre: Romance
Director: Abbas Tyrewala
Cast: Imran Khan, Genelia D’Souza, Naseeruddin Shah, Ratna Pathak Shah
Storyline: Best friends Jai and Aditi don’t know they love each other. Until…
Bottomline: Fall in love with the magic of movies

Every generation cherishes a coming-of-age film they grew up watching.

Two decades ago, Aamir entered the Bollywood Khan-daan with one of the most definitive films of that generation. Remember how Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak captured the angst of the young in love, that time when the boys took what Papa Kehte Hai quite seriously? Or how a few years later, another generation of youth got into slacker/rebel mode and struggled to express their love for family, temporarily suspended in the Pehla Nasha of romance (lust at first sight and later falling for the best friend next door) with Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander or Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa?

A few years later, a new generation then discovered a few things about love and friendship on their own with nothing to prove to the parents, celebrating life with Dil Chahta Hai.

The new generation has ‘Jaane Tu… Ya Jaane Na,’ a film that will live on for years as another Khan born to rule arrives in style.

Despite its inspired origins (a structure borrowed from Forget Paris, Celeste and Estrela and also employed earlier in Chalte Chalte) and derived from the Hollywood school of romantic comedies, Jaane Tu is one of those movies that instantly connects to the youth simply because of the world it is set in and the characters who inhabit it.

This world where Pappu can’t dance is about a bunch of friends who are as ordinary as they get in the real world, leading perfectly normal lives with friends who sing out of tune… a world where a boy and girl can be the best of friends and yet had somehow never really given a serious thought to going out with each other. A world where it’s no big deal for people dealing with unrequited love to settle for love where it is available. A world where people are never sure of their feelings. And also, a world where compatibility is the necessity for romance.

Jai and Aditi are exact opposites, he’s a Rajput lion who’s been bred as sheep and she’s a wild cat waiting for a fight. They are great friends. To quote from a song he sings to cheer her up: Rotey Hai Hum Bhi Agar Tere Aankhon Main Aasoon Aatey Hai (I cry if there are tears in your eyes). Yet, he has no clue that he loves her.

The rest of the story can be completed by any amateur wannabe rom-com writer but what’s interesting about Abbas Tyrewala’s storytelling is how relatable he makes this simple story by exploiting the age-old unwritten law of machismo buried in our films.

For the uninitiated, Hindi film tradition demands that a boy needs to fulfill three basic requirements to become a man… Or a Bollywood hero. He has to beat up people, he has to have some royal blood in him and he should break the law. Also, Hollywood tradition of romantic comedies requires a chase to the airport in the end. Nothing else can make it larger than life. Nothing else can make life look like a movie.

So Tyrewala gives us exactly this, but in his own style and terms, employing some delightful larger-than-life cameos (clearly the funniest parts of the film) and extremely believable support characters, whether it is the circle of friends or the family… Rathna Pathak Shah has to be one of the best onscreen Moms in recent times.

The ensemble is an example of flawless casting. Prateik Babbar’s cameo as Genelia’s reclusive, introverted artist brother, for instance. The detail, sub-plots and back stories to every support character is exemplary.

What makes us like Imran Khan instantly is that right from the start, he’s just the quiet boy next door who never tries to impress (no fancy bikes or complicated dance steps other star-sons use to launch themselves), always doing exactly what the character demands him to do. Watch the scene where he first feels hurt seeing his best friend with another guy and the young man lets his eyes say it all. He makes his Uncle proud and is clearly here to stay. Genelia’s Aditi is easily excitable and hence, those who hate her may still hate her and those who love her would love her more.

Right from the jazzy opening credits, A.R. Rahman seems to have a blast with a fitting genre tribute to Harry Connick Jr’s ‘Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off’ (from the When Harry Met Sarry OST) with ‘Tu Bole’… The album is a must-buy.

Yes, it may not be a wholly original film, it may force you to suspend your disbelief quite unabashedly, it may have characters sing your favourite song out of tune endlessly just to remind you it’s the title of the film but sometimes, films transcend all these inherent flaws with magic that only cinema can produce. And those magical moments… make you forget everything else.

Love Story 2050: When Harry Puttar met Darth Vader

July 8, 2008 · by sudhishkamath

Genre: Fantasy
Director: Harry Baweja
Cast: Harman Baweja, Priyanka Chopra, Boman Irani, Darth Vader, the Dasavatharam Butterfly
Storyline: A Hrithik Roshan look-alike has to use his uncle’s time machine to go into the future and bring his reincarnated lover back to the present.
Bottomline: If this is what love/story/2050 looks like, kill me now… I want to be reincarnated.

Of course, an epic love story of this magnitude cannot be condensed in to 200-paltry-odd minutes. Here are some of the deleted scenes:

a. Two hundred years later when he goes back to the future again because Priyanka has been hit by a bout of lightning for bad acting (when the usual trucks fail, God has to try harder) Harman finally meets the mysterious bald man… Darth Vader removes the mask and announces: “Look, I am your father.” It’s Rakesh Roshan himself. A light-saber fight between Harry Baweja and Rakesh Roshan will be held in public view to promote the sequel Love Saga 2250 ahead of its release.

b. Priyanka Chopra as Zeisha comes back to 2008 and on the suhaag raat, Harman finds out: It’s a boy! Like all the other surprises he had faced in 2050, Harman realises that this too doesn’t change the fact that he still loves Zeisha. God shakes his head (a Rishi Kapoor-look-alike maybe) in a final bid to end the film, sends down that bolt of lightning blissfully unaware that He was going to pave the way for the sequel.

c. The folks at South Australian Tourism board originally wanted more shots of the Aussie hospitality. When Harman knocks down a packet of chips and is chased by a bunch of vengeful guys, remember one of them was wearing T-shirt that said ‘Angry’? A sub-plot involving his pal wearing a T-shirt that says: ‘I cannot climb walls’ was deleted for pace and also to suggest that the hero here was smarter than the average Australian because he could climb and escape. To showcase Aussie hospitality further, Harry retained the scene where Harman dares Priyanka to shoplift and she does so successfully. Another scene effectively highlights the hi-tech butterfly-aided Aussie transport system that shows stalkers stranded on the railway platform which exact station their victim would disembark.

d. There’s a Hrithik Roshan look-alike contest in Sydney where the real Hrithik Roshan decides to show-up for a crowd-pleasing cameo. He loses to Harman because the Harry’s Puttar is more Hrithik than Hrithik himself. After all, he has five perfectly normal fingers to show and at no point does Harman let his I’m-a-seriously-sincere-actor-forever-conscious-of-the-camera guard down. And, these critics say Harman is bad. He’s not a bad actor at all, just an obsessed petty thief… By the way, Hrithik still wants the clothes and accessories from his wardrobe back.

e. The visual effects department has come up with an Academy-award-worthy job. They’ve not only made Harman look like Hrithik, they’ve also created equally gay robots QT (E.T’s distant lesbian cousin) and teddy bear Boo (a sexually confused teddy that finds itself attracted to QT and often does things that make Priyanka spank her or something like that). The endorsement of same-sex attraction is the kind of stuff children’s films of the future are made up of. There’s also a close-up shot of Harman’s delightfully gay admirer during the ‘It’s Magic, It’s Magic’ song. Because of copyright hassles, this song had to be reshot and further de-composed.

f. The dialogue ‘I don’t need luck, I have love’ was deleted after the tenth time. It originally appeared 2040 more times but Harry decided it would be too much of a good thing and has saved it for the sequels. The scripting team has received a bonus after 2050’s cool lingo… ‘Eat Ice,’ ‘You need an upgrade,’ ‘Stop your verbal schabang’ and ‘Snip it’ caught on right from the first show. With critics heaping lavish praise on the ‘Your life is a hot dog without the sausage’ line, more gems like “A hungry mouth needs a banana” and “When you are not engaged and getting any, put your phone on vibrate” have been saved for the sequel.

Because of further space constraints, the rest will be made available on a 2050-disc special edition. This fascinating, charming little film is exactly the kind you should feed your friends to. What are friends for, if not to share such joy.. When time stood still for a film on time travel.

Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic: Kya Aap Panchvi-Fail Hai?

July 5, 2008 · by sudhishkamath

Genre: Fantasy
Director: Kunal Kohli
Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Rani Mukerji, Ameesha
Storyline: A man who kills a couple in a car accident has to take care of their kids as God sends an angel to help them reconcile.
Bottomline: Four psycho kids, a fat angel/aunty, God with a goatie and a Mac-loving businessman who seems put off by his super hot girlfriend’s underwater swimming abilities and some visual effects.

What could possibly be worse than being told right at the beginning through Lata Mangeshkar’s vocal cue that you are about to watch a Yash Raj Film? Having Shaan’s borderline-Kumar Sanu-like nasal hum from ‘Fanaa’ remind you that this is also a Kunal Kohli film.

Which means you will not only be subjected to a world of candy floss set to tune with the recurring motif of a song cue, but you will also have to endure kids trying to act cute along the way. Four of them psycho-brats, in this case. No exaggeration.

Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic will make you clench your butt muscles.

If your kid is all set to take a shot at the ball kept on the mouth of a child forcibly pinned down, with a golf club, you know he has a problem that requires medical attention.

Unfortunately, Thoda Pyaar is not about mental health though all characters seem to need a little help in that department.

First, a never-smiling bitter killer businessman (Saif) who alternates his free time between astronomy and heavenly bodies such as Ameesha (in the role of her career, asked to do only what she is capable of – act cheerfully dumb and wear a swimsuit that plays peek-a-boo with you).

Then, we learn these four compulsively destructive kids are also into organised crime (they buy walkie talkies to sabotage Saif’s potty-routine and occupy all four bathrooms during the rush hour).

Until tech-savvy God decides to dispatch the fattest of his fairies (Rani Mukerji) to help these mentally unstable people find their peace but only after she finishes her ‘Sound of Music’ How-do-you-solve-a-problem-like-Maria routine.

But this fairy seems to have problems of her own. She cannot cry because she’s borrowed from the ‘City of Angels’. Like ‘Mary Poppins,’ she goes down the rainbow on a cycle to meet her ‘Sound of Music’ charges and takes them out for a ‘Night at the Museum.’

Kunal Kohli, who ripped off all the best bits from Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and When Harry Met Sally to piece together his best work till date, Hum Tum, says it like a matter of right when he employs visual effects to morph the Hollywood sign from Hollywood Hills, LA, California, replacing the H with a B.

Now that’s not just emblematic, it is definitive of his work. Take an English DVD, scratch out the Hollywood elements and replace them with the B-movie elements.

Seriously, it’s time to shove the Tribute word up the place where it’s coming from and actually contribute, Mr. Kohli. Otherwise, you are just a repeat offender like Sanjay Gupta.

Surprisingly for a Yash Raj-Kunal Kohli film, the young actors aren’t too bad. Rachit Sidana (the Sikh kid) is a natural, Shriya Sharma is a little over-enthusiastic but likeable as always, Ayushi Berman, the quiet sweet one, has little to do but Akshat Chopra (playing Vashisht, the leader of the pack) who seems like a decent actor, is a victim of half-baked characterisation.

Poor Saif seems cluelessly lost and Mac fans would understand his rage when one of those brats does unmentionable things to the desktop. Rani ought to consider VLCC.

Overall, though derived and inspired from a bunch of Hollywood films, ‘Thoda Pyaar’ is passable fare, especially if you haven’t passed out of Paanchvi yet. Kids being the innocent, unsuspecting customers they are, may not find much to complain.

Though the parents might when Ameesha starts cavorting around in a dripping wet bikini during Lazy Lamhe, the singularly riveting portion of the film. The rest of the film is a lot of work for those butt muscles. Clench them hard, grin and bear – like Saif does it – to survive this film.

The Incredible Hulk: Cut and Cheated

July 4, 2008 · by sudhishkamath

Genre: Action
Director: Louis Leterrier
Cast: Edward Norton, Liv Tyler, Tim Roth, William Hurt
Storyline: Nearly six months after the ‘incident,’ Bruce is traced to Brazil and the Hulk is wanted dead by the military.
Bottomline: Credible. Incredible. Marvel-ous. Except fraudulently edited by local distributors.

If you’re watching this film in Chennai or Tamil Nadu, you are likely to go green. Angry.

The conmen distributing The Incredible Hulk in this part of the world, Thennandal Films, have chopped down 20 per cent of the 114-minute PG-13 Marvel Studios film. The distributor’s cut is not just stupidly tasteless, it is so random and merciless about dialogue portions that whoever chopped this film down for the distributor needs a kick in the behind from The Hulk himself.

Anyone interested in taking the distributors to court have a willing witness here.

After all, you paid to watch the entire film that Louis Leterrier made for Marvel Studios, not to watch 25 minutes less. Also, Marvel did not make ‘Hulk Part 2,’ as this film is being falsely advertised.

Thenandal Films may not know this but Hulk fans are still quite angry about Ang Lee’s take on the superhero, so passing off a reboot to the franchise as a sequel is not just legally and factually wrong, it is also blasphemous.

We are not sure if the distributors are literate enough to understand because if they were, they wouldn’t brutally cut down a much-awaited superhero film to save Rs.10,000 per print. When you’ve paid 120 bucks, you deserve the full movie. Rental libraries give it for much lesser. The internet gives it for free.

All cinema halls screening the clipped down 90-minute version are party to fraud.

The Incredible Hulk emerges out of the shadows after a nice teasing little build-up with an elaborate long chase across the rooftops and bylanes of Brazil early on in the film, unlike the 2003 version where The Hulk made an appearance 45 minutes later.

Though it maybe unfair to review a film that has been so badly mutilated by the incompetent annachis, one thing we can say about the reboot is that the heart-pounding action sequences will make that destructively childish devil in you grin with glee.

With the intense Edward Norton as Bruce, the gorgeously sensuous Liv Tyler (Marvel seems to have a thing for drenching their superhero girlfriends in transparent clothing in rain) as Betty Ross, an ever reliable William Hurt (as Gen. Ross) and the adequately irritating Tim Roth (Blonsky), the casting seems quite interesting but without having seen 25-minutes of the talking portions of the film, it is difficult to compare it with the complexity that Ang Lee brought to the troubled comic book hero.

The spectacular visual effects in the climax where Hulk takes on Abomination ought to be seen on the big screen.

It won’t be too much fun on DVD. Which is why it is all the more important for the distributors to be honest and give us the whole film on the big screen.

21: Chemistry works better than math

June 29, 2008 · by sudhishkamath

Genre: Thriller
Director: Robert Luketic
Cast: Jim Sturgess, Kate Bosworth, Kevin Spacey, Laurence Fishburne
Storyline: A bunch of kids from MIT are trained by their math professor to count cards (cheat systematically) and make millions in Vegas casinos.
Bottomline: Worth the gamble even if you don’t know the game

If you know how Blackjack is played, you are in to learn a few cool ways to cheat, applying a little mathematics.

Unlike the casino heists that Danny Ocean and Co would pull off, this one is more believable because Robert Luketic’s 21 is inspired from ‘Bringing down the house,’ the bestseller that documented real life stories of students who made millions employing math-based techniques.

Here, a phenomenally talented geeky good-looker Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess) needs $3,00,000 to pay for his medical school fees at Harvard, especially since he only has a long shot at the scholarship reserved for the one student who can jump out of the page and dazzle the jury. Heading a team of nerds who are building a car that can drive by itself isn’t going to cut it. Nor is a promotion that pays eight dollars per hour.

Prof. Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey) finds the young man to have the perfect temperament for cheating at Blackjack and makes him join the team that usually scores at the casinos at Vegas.

But what gets the movie really going, in the middle of all that inspired con, is the sexual tension and volatile chemistry between Jim Sturgess (Jude from Across The Universe) and the incredible attractive Kate Bosworth, who plays that girl every guy in college wants to date and one of the team-members.

21 hardly deviates from the regular campus movie formula. There are socially ill-equipped geeks and there is the circle of ‘cool,’ the hero of the story jumps camp and gets the girl, becomes so cool that he forgets his fat beer buddies until life reminds him all about friends, love and who he really is… Yet, to director Robert Luketic’s credit, it feels like a hardcore heist flick – the music, cinematography and editing constantly providing the tension and a sense of adventure.

With the veteran Kevin Spacey and the menacing Lawrence Fishburne around to intimidate them, you know the kids are only puppets and thankfully, the film at no point tries to make the pros look like fools. So even if you don’t understand how Blackjack is played, you still have a lot to character equations to keep you hooked.

In the end, though it is quite entertaining, you are left wondering what 21 could’ve been had this material been given to the guys who made Knocked Up or Superbad.

The Happening: And ‘Night’ falls

June 20, 2008 · by sudhishkamath

Genre: Thriller
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel
Storyline: A mysterious air-borne toxin forces people to kill themselves
Bottomline: Happening. Not.

After Lady in the Water, M. Night Shyamalan probably had a nightmare.

He could see people walk out of the cinema halls halfway into his film and kill themselves because they couldn’t take it any more.

He woke up and wrote and wrote and wrote… Different ways how people could kill themselves… They could jump off the roof, shoot themselves, lie down in front of a lawn-mower, bang their heads into glass windows, cut off their veins if car-crashing doesn’t work…

He didn’t have a plot as such, so he looked back at his films – he’s shown the living dead, a superhuman born on earth, aliens from outer space, a village that lived in the past, nymphs and scrunts from water – and realised that logical progression demanded paranormal activity out of thin air.

So he finished his script in a line: A mysterious air-borne toxin (which will remain mysterious till the end of the film) is making people kill themselves all along the West Coast of America. Coming up next in the order could be a film about weirdos from the future.

Now, we already know that Shyamalan has the knack of stretching short story scripts to a feature-length thriller and we’ve never had a problem with that because he manages to weave in a conflict (both for the protagonist of the film and the larger community) and resolve it with a little bit of logical reasoning.

Here, you are let down from the story department because he sticks to the most convenient of horror film explanations – that some things are just an act of nature and cannot be explained. Zombie films offer better reasoning.

There is one genuinely funny scene in the film. Mark Wahlberg, wasted thoroughly in this let’s-run-away-from-air misadventure, after figuring out that plants and trees are causing the plague that causes people to kill themselves, decides to apologise because he heard they respond to human stimulus… only to realise he was barking up the wrong tree made of plastic.

There are some truly spooky shots of trees in the wind but that’s where the horror quotient ends.

Most shots of people killing themselves look straight out of like a laugh out loud spoof. And since this starts happening right from scene one, at no point do you take this film seriously. But then, as long as you are laughing and being entertained, who cares what’s happening.

Dasavatharam: Say Cheese

June 13, 2008 · by sudhishkamath

I’ll review the film after a second watch because I missed the first few minutes tonight. But here are a few thoughts:

Dasavatharam is the most entertaining B-movie made in recent times with a classy, intelligent subtext for those who care. I couldn’t help wonder if such an intelligent script needed to be made with a spelling-it-out-for-the-mass sort of sensibility. But then, budgets dictate sensibility, I guess. He hasn’t made this for the Oscars. He made it for Aascar Ravichandran who needs lakhs of people to watch the film to recover the crores he spent.

With not a single dull moment, Kamal Hassan’s screenplay moves at breakneck speed, with some of the best action scenes we’ve seen in Indian cinema. It is extra-ordinary effort as Kamal Haasan brings alive every single of the ten characters from under all that prosthetic make-up.

The accents may be a little unsettling and difficult to follow if you’re watching it in Rohini complex and it is tough to keep up with the Tamil subtitles… but the man’s face speaks volumes.

The film plays out through a series of adventures and like any good chase movie, the story is told and the conflicts unfold while the characters are on the run… with each character representing a type. There’s Govind Ramasamy who is a man of science while Andal (Asin) is the face of faith. Then, there’s the peace-loving Afghani, a daft American President, an old school Jap who could’ve been a Samurai, an ex-CIA agent who’s a meticulous killing machine, a contrastingly tame RAW agent, an entertaining Sardar, a senile Paati, a dark-skinned son of the soil and the Vaishnavite priest. Through these types, science meets religion, biological warfare meets martial arts, action meets comedy, conspiracy meets destiny and good meets evil… all seamlessly and at a scale that will make Indian cinema proud.

Most of the parallel-running narratives are tied up quite neatly towards the end while some are just tied up conveniently for the sake of the statement – that everything happens for a reason.

Yes, it’s a little cheesy but that’s the way we like it, don’t we?

Watch it with a bag of NaCl, minus all that hype and you are sure to have one hell of a ride. Get yourself a darshan of the demi-god’s dashavatar, at the price of a movie ticket.

Aamir: Don’t miss this call

June 11, 2008 · by sudhishkamath

Genre: Thriller
Director: Raj Kumar Gupta
Cast: Rajeev Khandelwal, Gajraj Rao, Shashanka Ghosh
Storyline: Homecoming turns into a nightmare for Aamir after he finds his family missing and a phone tossed into his hand on arrival.
Bottomline: Blows your mind

You can sense an original film two minutes into it.
Aamir is fresh right from the introductory montage of Mumbai waking up to ‘It’s a good day.’ We see everyday sights, like it would be cut for a documentary on one of the greatest cities in the world.
The common man and the general public are no extras in the film. They are the fabric the film is made of.
They are there all through the film, never letting you suspend your disbelief and that’s what makes Aamir one of the most engaging films ever made in recent times. That’s why the climax keeps you riveted and your heart pounding.
Debutant director Raj Kumar Gupta knows his craft. He knows the best way to make you buy his constructed reality is if he plants his character into a reality you are so familiar with – the reality of Mumbai with its dirty patli-galis and people so engrossed in their lives that they have stopped caring about others.
Screenwriting textbooks would tell you that if the scene does not take the story forward, it shouldn’t be in the film. Aamir works exactly because it does not follow these rules.
There are scenes that have nothing to do with the story as such but they portray reality of life. Haven’t you often got into the cab often hoping the driver knows the route?
Aamir is great storytelling because it employs moments like that to give its surreal narrative oodles of credibility and makes what’s an unreal situation extremely plausible.
Not only does in sparkle in form, Aamir is high on content too with its layering. At one level, it’s just the story of a helpless man trying to save his family, reduced to being a puppet at the hands of the people who’ve kidnapped his loved ones and is told that man does not write his own destiny.

At another level (*spoiler alert till end of the paragraph, select text to highlight*), it’s about the Muslim identity post 9/11 and takes you deep into the mind of the terrorist. Aamir, after being searched thoroughly by the Customs on arrival, is first sent to the lesser-developed pockets of the city. His first stop is at a National Restaurant where he sees a middle class family contemplating ordering cola, his second stop is a Gulistan building which is in ruins, all he has to do after that is make a call to Karachi to get into the bad books of the cops and little later, he’s walking through a slaughter-house and asked to halt at the Indo-Gulf lodge where he gets in touch with the men who provide the money which after a few scenes is traded for a bomb.

Yes, a few stereotypes do find their way into the film but then, the filmmaker does his best to debunk some of them. Like the bit where he casually shows us his fundamentalist villain sip MNC branded cola. It’s these casual cues that work better than the obvious metaphors like the slaughter-house or the monkey toy that is hit on the head when it stops dancing after being given the key.

Rajeev Khandelwal is such a terrific actor that it is impossible to believe he’s from the soap opera circuit. The support cast is fresh and raw, and all that adds to the fabric of realism as captured by cinematographer Alphonse Roy.

The score, though a little inspired from the ‘Requiem for a Dream’ theme, haunts you long after the film’s over.

Creative producer Anurag Kashyap once again proves that he is the best thing to happen to independent filmmaking of our times.

Overall, Aamir is one film you don’t want to miss, more so if you are a movie-buff.

Sarkar Raj: Welcome back, Mr. Varma

June 11, 2008 · by sudhishkamath

Genre: Drama
Director: Ram Gopal Varma
Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan
Storyline: The Nagre family has to pay the price for power.
Bottomline: Way too much talking but a return to form nonetheless

First, the good news.

If there was an award for the best lit film, this may be nominated for the awards next year. But then, if lighting is the first thing that you feel like talking about after watching the film… Ah yes, the good news…
RGV hasn’t entirely lost his touch after Aag.

We see glimpses of genius all through Sarkar Raj, it even has a better premise than the original. Though Sarkar had a great start and a brilliant finish, the middle was quite muddled up for want of a conflict and it ended up a decent film with a few great moments.

Here, the middle is solid – it is probably the best part of the film, the Bachchans impress again and how. But that’s where all the good bits end.

The bad news: As a whole, Sarkar Raj falls a few notches below Sarkar because of all that talking, over-excited cinematography and a climax that seems like an after-thought. There is some interesting framing but half the time it doesn’t mean anything more than an intriguing composition and play of light.
Not that the writing is bad (it’s quite smart by Hindi film standards) but man, can they talk prose!

Villains continue to be the weakest link of the franchise. Barring one, the rest of them are caricatures. There’s even the mandatory B-movie scene where all the bad guys sit plotting against the good guys and one of them does the evil plan laugh. Only that here, when asked about what the brilliant idea is, he adds: I haven’t thought fully yet. Now Mr.Varma, there is no place for the cheesy if you’re aiming at making a classy film.

And, how seriously do you want us to take a film with villains with funny names and stupid mannerisms?

A political thriller needs villains who will send a chill up your spine with what they are capable of. A powerful family needs equally powerful adversaries. There is a hint of that when a powerful kingmaker is introduced when the camera looks up to his feet from the floor below and in the background, we see the Nagre family stand respectfully in front of him. But then, we don’t see much of this guy – the one man who can actually give the Nagre family sleepless nights.

The father-son interaction scenes are the best part of the film. That’s where the meaty chunk of drama comes from and the Bachchans deliver. Together, they can make the prose come alive. RGV overdoses on the Bachchans not knowing when to stop. Spoiler alert, highlight to read: The man takes five bullets on his chest. For the sake of cinema, he better be dead, right? The last thing we want is a hospital scene where he’s admitted alive. RGV feels compelled to keep him alive for one more scene just to make way for a final father-son dialogue. Characters don’t always need to get time to say their Goodbyes. If you are aiming for Sudden Death, it has got to be sudden without any time for Goodbyes. A brilliant performance nonetheless.

We can’t say the same about the latest Bachchan though. She sends glycerin flowing down her make-up in one straight line so that it doesn’t mess with the way she looks – how self-conscious can one get?
The rest of her dialogue delivery is so flat and with the quirky camerawork, that last scene actually looks like one of those freaky twist-endings.

RGV continues paying tribute to The Godfather, by incorporating all those significant subplot points he had missed out in the first part. So though it maybe a fun exercise for RGV fans to see how he’s recreated these scenes within the context of Indian politics, it just makes the film all the more predictable.

But coming after Aag, Sarkar Raj is a great improvement that reminds us, in spurts, the magic that RGV is capable of.

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