trailer trash

Department: RGV returns with the Big B, ropes in Sanjay Dutt, tosses in the familiar shots and crazy Dutch angles, drums up the throbbing tropes of background music and gives you a vaguely satisfying dish of interesting elements that, unfortunately, you know too well as broad stereotypes go. It's like Tolkien writing another edition in the LOTR soap. One wonders: can RGV break out of the genre he created or is he a victim of his own sandbox?

Rowdy Rathore: annoying slow motion, cars rising vertically after an explosion has hit their underparts, people rotating in the air after being punched with a feathery touch, top shots zooming into desii Busby Berkeley setups, furiously infectious South Indian percussive music. Despite the annoying presence of Akshay Kumar (was the moustache the only creative element of this enterprise?), this smells like another remake of a South Indian hit. Is it? Check. Did they get a South Indian director to direct this? Check. What's the point? Despite the poster art and credits paying homage to the pulp of yore, there's nothing but noise here. Go watch a Michael Bay film instead.

Shanghai: I've watched Z just once and my memory is dim, except that I remember liking the film a lot and regretting not knowing enough about politics to truly appreciate it. Dibakar Banerjee transplants the source novel by Vassilis Vassilikos to India and this trailer only offers a great portend. It's nicely edited, shows off some great makeup, promises some good character work (imagine not being irritated by Emraan Hashmi!) and some welcome familiar faces of yore (Farooque Sheikh!). Then there's Vishal-Shekhar's first soundtrack for the talented Mr. Banerjee. Where's the credit for the lyrics? Why not include Khosla ka Ghosla in his credits? The red on black titles are strangely familiar. But सोने की चिड़िया / dengue malaria is enough to make me await the soundtrack. Bring it on!