balaji's angel

Celina Jaitley, who will always be known for the remarkable method acting employed in faking it at playing a violin in a bikini, has finally answered her true calling by appearing in her first item number. Who better to showcase her talents that the grocer of serial saponification, Ekta Kapoor. The film, which, as mandated by the Kapoor Klan Kasting Klause stars little brother Tus[s]har K, is called C Kkompany (why not just K Kkompany? creativity, perhaps) and revolves around three best friends and a harmless prank, which turns their lives topsy turvy. Sounds like Khel Khel Mein. While Ms. Jaitley attempts to meet or surpass the expectations set by RGV's uninhibited screen kitten Nisha Kothari, we can rest assured that the film's going to be a piece of Krap.

bored in the light

The premise of Red: The Dark Side smells like a lift: a guy falls for the widow of the donor of his heart. What can you expect from the director of such once-agains as Yakeen, Aetbaar, Footpath and Awara Paagal Deewana? By the time the end credits begin to roll, you're left wondering how such promising material met with such undeserving wretched execution. The film essentially represents another of Vikram Bhatt's poorly executed maudlin buckets of ennui (see also Inteha) besides being another vehicle featuring his on-screen alter ego Aftab Shivdasani. Aftab is not alone; he has Amrita Arora (Girlfriend, the dillii kii sardii item song in Zameen) and Celina Jaitley (made her début in Khel, spoofed Vanessa Mae in Janasheen, was one of the zombies in Zinda and contributed 50% of the wood falling for the hirsute Hashmi in Jawani Diwani).

At this point it must be noted that it is a carnal (no pun intended) sin to encourage the acting aspirations of such fine pieces of wide-eyed bambi-brained silconeans as Arora and Jaitley. Ladies, you have been specially chosen to be eye candy, to load the screen with oomph, to sashay and sway in various family-friendly stages of undress. You were not designed to -- shudder! -- act. It behooves the producers of cinematic enterprises featuring you to encourage you to answer your calling and to nip any aberrant strains of ambition in the nascent bud.

You miss a tribute to Dan Brown and his trademark opening sentences, when the credits are followed by an inter-title that says "A few months back." A change in the colour palette is denied any subtlety by the annoying and expected inter-title "Now" several shots later. Need one also note that the colour employed in these inter-titles is ... duh! ... Red?

A tribute to the penchant of directing duo Abbas-Mustan to have a misspelled sign in their movies (I remember Khiladi and Baazigar) comes in the form of the Hindustan Times headline "the greiving widow."

A tribute to Bollywood's refusal to worship the details is evident in the sequence when a cop holding an iron rod from the scene of a crime is asked to send it for fingerprints. The tendency of going overboard with technical devices is evident when a nice narrative technique of inter-cutting moments in the present and the near past is overused.

If you thought Bhatt was going to reveal an immaculately presented B- forest cake under this icing of quotes and tributes, you picked the wrong tree to hug. Given a trio that seems to have found a font to educate a wretched pleasure in wallowing with dour faces and sour lines, you can only try and seek solace in the occasional pearls that the dialogue track coughs up. Sushant Singh hams away with glee and lends an eerie depth of sincerity to his part as the investigating officer. There is a calm confidence when he notes the three reasons for a crime (zar, joruu, zamiin) or when he riffs on nahii.n jaanataa. It's a pity that he has to share footage with the murderers of choice lines like you've not only given me a life; you've also given me a reason to live, you used me in bed and I used you out of it, tumane merii zi.ndagii me.n zahar milaayaa, aur mai.nne use champagne me.n and I'm ready to die in love, I'm ready to kill in love, but I'm not ready to be a fool in love. The only ray of hope emerges when a manager at Sea View offers his reason for thinking that a now deceased guest was an honest man: wo hameshaa ek hii la.Dakii ke saath aate the. Oh! If only that had come with an accompanying subtitle that read he was singularly unfaithful.

When The Nose was chosen to deliver chart-busting songs for the soundtrack, he churned out a standard set of sneezes laced with infectious riffs, thumps (consider aafariin) and ridiculous lines (loneliness is killing everyone). These also meet a dire fate at the chopping block of ennui.

The previews throve in mendacity. Skin-hungry viewers were duped by the visuals into expecting a G-rated ménage à trois, but only got the trademark Bollywood sniffing and a shot of Celina Jaitley standing like a man in the gym ready to do some sets with dumbbells. This epidermal treachery seemed very much in keeping with flicks like Girlfriend and Paap.

One is only left in the vermeil darkness contemplating all the promise that this flick held.

stark bathing Red

aka: aao snaan kare.n

what if you indulged your every desire
what if your desires unlocked hidden secrets
paradise found
innocence lost
how much would you risk
to protect what you love
{from the trailer}

He unlawfully entered our viewing lives with Fareb. He ran railway track races like a raging bull on the waterfront with Ghulam. He dulled the jagged edge with Kasoor. He exposed the Raaz of what lay beneath (something that even Sir Paul McCartney was supposed to have enjoyed). He produced the acronymicomical AMALL. He went the whole nine yards with Awara Paagal Deewana. He transplanted a Mahesh Bhatt rip-off in a state of grace with Footpath into a film set that should have been named PepsiTown. He implemented yet another Mahesh Bhatt design featuring the pet themes of multi-offspring yielding bigamy (known, in some really uncomplimentary circles, as RSS, the Ravi Shankar Syndrome) with Inteha. He fearlessly notched up another filmographic entry for the Big B operating in "I will work with anyone now" mode with Aetbaar. He shattered your senses and revealed himself to be a closet Puru Raj Kumar fan when he scripted Girish Dhamija's directorial début Yakeen. The man who gave us one of Pritam's best soundtrack efforts with Ankahee now returns an incarnadine cure for insomniac B-movie watchers called Red: The Dark Side (I wonder if the sequel's going to be called Blue: The Backside). Aftab Shivdasani, the pallbearer of Bhatt's cinematic alter ego, decided that an attempt at a tonsure was the best way to convey the passionate intensity of his character. Since Bhatt's films are marked with a sense of ennui strong enough for them to qualify as novocaine commercials, he's employed lassies with boulderados to entice audiences. That he's employed not one but two sets of flopdoodles here must be a warning about how much the script competes with the Leaning Tower of Pisa. One of them is Celina Jaitley, who, since her début in Khel, is known best for her Vanessa Mae impersonation in Janasheen and the lifeless #me kiss-fest Jawani Diwani. The other is Amrita Arora, who, despite having a good thing going by trying to combat the cold of Delhi in Zameen, ventured into a lesbian laugh-a-thon called Girlfriend.

While Bhatt insists (yet again) that the film comes from within him, the premise seems like a misguided revisionist take on elements in Clint Eastwood's Blood Work. There's also a TV movie called Donor Unknown that looks promising. Only time will tell.

at the crossroads of fear and passion lie seduction and betrayal
what lies beneath friendship could be mystery and deception
{from the CD sleeve}

The Capitulating Critic is markedly eloquent in his review of the cardinal catarrh for the film. The predictably catchy aafariin (whose video, he insists was picturised imaginatively in a volatile manner) features a downtempo ambient house rhythm and represents the strongest contribution to the album's 77.78% snot factor.

A motif ailing the film even before its release is one of colour. Consider the title itself. Red: The Dark Side, with its English-English scheme represents the new wave in Bollywood's experiments in titulation ^[1]. The last improvisation had moved on from the saprophytic allegiance to the Hindi-English scheme to a marginal improvement represented by a reversal of roles. The CD art (click on the second image here) indulges in a red and grey exercise confirming Amrita Arora's assertion about going grey for the film. The magnificent pontoons of love will be on display once again for those interested in the true merits of the film.

In a stunning sop for trivamongers, the filmmakers roped in former wimpy-weepy-faced Bollywood B-star Sumeet Saigal[2] to direct a promotional video for the film. The sensuous undertone of the song dil ne na jaanaa and the emotional element that The Nose had given it inspired Saigal to shoot a bathtub sequence featuring the three principals. One look at the video will confirm that it's all smoke and no fire; the usual family-friendly sniffing abounds; however, one must note that Aftab's efforts in the gym to tone his body have empowered him to offer some competition to Jaitley's jahoobies and Arora's amortisseurs. It would be facetious to say that a million petals were harmed during the making of this video. Lovers of Bollywood film physics will also relish the shots from the car/truck collision where the creative mind wins over trivial matter.

Any note on this erythraean would be incomplete without recognising the arid genius behind the movie's tagline:

somewhere a fear of love ...
somewhere a love of fear ...

Be afraid. Be very afraid. I love it. Give me red. I'm waiting.

---

[1] it must be noted that the word is merely a punny product of a film-viewing salacious mind

[2] perhaps best known for Bahaar Aane Tak, where he flirted with Rupa Ganguly in kaalii terii choTii hai, slipped her a mickey and made family-rated love to her in a car

the sanjay gupta rip-off of the year award for 2005 goes to ... [december 25/31, 2005]

Ex-Rediff staffer and Screenwriter Suparn Verma's directorial début Ek Khiladi Ek Haseena.

If you thought Sanjay Gupta had walked away with the eponymous trophy for his lively[sic] tale of an Old Boy, you owe yourself a chance to view this masterpiece. For his directorial début, ekalavya SV decides to pay Drona Gupta his due without slicing off his thumb (unless, of course, he decides not to direct another movie). His "tribute to con movies" is a mash-up of Confidence (primarily), Matchstick Men (the lottery ticket swindle), David Mamet's House of Games (most of the Koena Mitra sub-plot) and Memento (aah, that coin). Oh, and there's even this club called Sin City, but that might just be a double-edged reference to Vegas.

duniyaa me.n ikasaTh kisam ke zahar hai.n jin me.n saaTh kaa mujhapar koii asar nahii.n hotaa
(sika.ndar / gulshan grover)

Clearly, a lot of goodwill was involved as far as Feroz and Fardeen Khan reappearing for a Verma script [see also: Janasheen]. If you regarded the whole movie as a hamfest, Feroz Khan easily steals the show just as he did in Janasheen. He even manages to do competent Manoj Kumar impression at one point! That patent-pending bald-pated dialogue delivery already received its due with Javed Jaffrey did his Crocodile Dundee take in Salaam Namaste.

you know the saying: drive like hell and you get there
(jahaa.ngiir khaan / feroz khan)

Suparn Verma's towering achievement with this movie is a notorious one. He gives Kay Kay Menon what could easily the worst role of his film career. Although the actor infuses his ill-written (weren't they all?) specious character with some nuances, the miasma of the proceedings is too hard to rise above. KKM gets the dubious honour of being in one of the most glaring examples of bad editing, writing and continuity in Bollywood.

pyaar se mat dekh, ##diabetes## ho jaayegii
(qaif / kay kay menon)

Koena Mitra tries in vain to convince audiences that she's in all this for the acting. However, there is enough evidence that the only things people will remember from this flick are her figure, her jiggling samba-friendly booty and her bamboochas.

##you know##, mai.n ##guilty## bhii ##feel## kar rahii thii lekin mazaa bhii aa rahaa thaa
(nataashaa / koena mitra)

The less said about the rest of the cast the better. Anupama Verma pops in for a cameo during the father-son scene that everyone[sic] was waiting for:

(Anupama Verma enters the elevator, drops a scarf, which Fardeen lifts up for her)
Anupama Verma: Thank You
Feroz Khan   : I love the scent of a woman. Chanel?
Anupama Verma: I'm impressed
(She later leaves with a "Bye boys" call)
Fardeen Khan : How do you do it?
Feroz Khan   : Experience, son. Practice, practice and more practice.

SV decides to assert his directorial smarts by quashing any respect we might have for his writing acumen. The film is inundated with badly written and acted (aren't they all?) scenes that will leave you cringing, whimpering like an idiot, diving for cover, laughing your guts out, ... you get the idea. A few examples follow.

Let's start with a simple pearl from the oyster of non sequitur:

Koena Mitra:  tumhe.n ##bastard## bolanaa bhii aurat ko gaalii denaa hogaa arjun
Fardeen Khan: sticks and stones, sweetheart, sticks and stones

Next up is a scene that owes a lot to The Usual Suspects. This is where Mukul Deo gives Fardeen Khan the lowdown about Sikandar. There's a personal computer on the desk in the background, but it has no role to play in all this. Cigarettes are lit. And Mukul Deo begins his nonsense ( log kahate hai.n sika.ndar vo inasaan hai jo kabhii mar nahii.n sakataa bachapan me.n usake father ne mill strike se pareshaan hokar apane aap ko aur apane puure khaanadaan ko zahar de diyaa ... sab mar gaye ... par sika.ndar 10 din tak aspataal me.n apanii maut se la.Dataa rahaa) which also includes a note that sika.ndar (Gulshan Grover) also killed his wife and kids [There's Keyser Söze for you]. He then talks about some other victims including the Khan brothers and gaNapat (fear not, no one knows who they are) and drops a reference to Sin City. At this point, there's a dead pause, and then Fardeen Khan looks at MD and asks tumhaaraa ##point## kyaa hai?. MD replies kuchh nahii.n yaar meraa ##point## ye hai ki usane tujhe naashte pe bulaayaa hai tuu kuchh khaanaa piinaa mat aur kyaa?.

Riffing on the "pointless" motif, we have another clunker later on in the film. This time it's a scene between Sharad Kapoor (Inspector Sardesai) and Fardeen Khan (who gets to utter the classic line again):

sharad kapoor: ek baar ek aadamii ja.ngal me.n gum ho jaataa hai; aur usake saamane ek sher aa jaataa hai; aur vo chillaakar kahataa hai 'he bhagawaan; mai.n barabaad ho gayaa'; us din bhagawaan mood me.n the; bhagawaan kii aawaaz aatii hai: e beTaa, tere paa.Nv ke saamane ek patthar rakhaa huaa hai, use uThaa aur sher ke sar pe de maar'; phir bhagawaan kii aawaaz aatii hai: 'beTaa, tu ab barabaad huaa hai'
fardeen khan: teraa ##point## kyaa?
sharad kapoor: ##point## ye hai ki ab tujhe koii nahii.n bachaa sakataa

{One would think that two such explicit hints would have prompted SV to run his script through a few rewrites and an enema or two}

Then there's the scene between Fardeen Khan and Gulshan Grover.

Gulshan Grover: tum kisase Darate ho?
Fardeen Khan:   (beat) bhagawaan se
Gulshan Grover: (looks at wristwatch) bhagawaan tumhaare liye kyaa hai?
Fardeen Khan:   taaqat; ##total and complete power## [pronounced: paa-wa]
Gulshan Grover: tum duusare inasaan ho jisakaa ye jawaab hai
Fardeen Khan:   kyo.n? pahale waalaa mar gayaa kyaa?
Gulshan Grover: [approaches] (beat) pahale waalaa mai.n huu.N; mere liye bhii bhagawaan wahii hai jis me.n ##total and complete power## [pronounced: paa-war] hai (beat) ##i like that##
Fardeen Khan:   kyaa?
Gulshan Grover: tumhaarii aa.Nkho.n me.n mere liye Dar hai; jo Galat nahii.n hai

Finally, there's this scene where Sharma (Dayashankar Pandey) and D'Souza (Rajesh Vivek) are in a car waiting for a junkie dealer to show up (the scene's a completely pulverised version of a scene in Confidence):

D'Souza:  mere beTe ko ##Baywatch university## me.n pa.Dhane jaanaa hai
Sharma :  tuu ##sure## hai maal vo roz yahii.n se nikaalataa hai?
D'Souza:  har din aataa hai; aur weekend me.n to zaruur aayegaa; har ##junkie weekend## pe maal khariidate hai.n
Sharma :  ek baar ye maal haath aa jaaye na to zi.ndagii me.n ##sex## aa jaaye
D'Souza:  are usake liye to mujhe apanii saas ko maaranaa pa.Degaa
Sharma :  maar do
D'Souza:  kyaa maar do ...
{and then they rush out to get the dealer}

The songs:

Pritam continues to filch tunes and riffs and blend them with catchy electronic arrangements on the soundtrack. He's getting so prolific that Karthik's dedicated a page to the man. jal jal ke dhuuaa.N begins with a riff that came straight out of Sting's Fragile, but the song's a merry lift of most of Arabiyon Ana by Yuri Markadi; then there's a.Nkhiyaa.N na maar merii (not addressed to someone named a.Nkhiyaa.N, in case you were wondering) that cogs the catchy eight-note riff from Usher's Yeah; and jhuum, which cogged from a Britney Spears commercial for Pepsi.

Given all the effort that went into making each song video a standalone non sequitur wonder, the makers of this sorry flick could've easily created a release of said videos with a minor theme connecting them. Why subject us to this 2-hour-plus lard? The film's opening titles are graced by a dame in a suit cavorting around to jhuum. Let's also not forget the irritating CG coin floating about. The second song yaaro.n is dedicated to the "friends celebrating together" cliché and some Jack Daniels. It also gets chopped to fit the video, which means that if you're musical bone's going to get rattled. As if it wasn't bad enough that a.Nkhiyaa.N na maar merii owed its existence to a filch, they decided to attempt a desii take on the video for Christina Aguilera's Dirty. In keeping with the trend to include one ear-and-neck-sniffing, soft-core, family-friendly porn sequence, the makers have Fardeen and Koena getting PG-jiggy in a hotel room while jal jal ke dhuaa.N plays in the foreground. The makers even circulated an MMS of this scene in an attempt to build up some publicity. There's lots of sniffing, kissy-kissy, PG-rated disrobing, pinning to the wall, fondling of bare knees, a collaborative shower and suggested fellatio, all culminating in a scene where the two are in bed, well-showered, deflowered and covered in green sheets and backdrop. Some of the most howlarious subtitles are on display here:

lyric:    ehasaas pasiine se hai nam
subtitle: beads of sweat, moist all feelings ...
lyric:    sholo.n se Tapakatii hai shabanam ... zaraa ...
subtitle: in raging flames, we find the calmness of dewdrops ...

Just when you thought the songs were over, the filmmakers decide to try and tempt you to sit through the end credits, which run over a video of Fardeen and a gang of extras living a video game dressed in faux Kevlar and shooting guns and blowing things up. Somehow the lyrics of nashaa nashaa weren't begging for these visuals.

##Shetty## ke pass jaanaa; vo ##graduate## hai ##spelling mistake## nahii.n karegaa
(arjun / fardeen khan)

Other subtitular niceties: laal chii.nTiyaa.N are man-eating ants; the subtitling department continues to exhibit poor-to-non-existent English comprehension skills by streaming it's your time when the girl on screen's saying it's showtime!; the trend of subtitles to be more offensive than the spoken words is evident when an innuendo-laden question bachche to ho.nge naa? gets subtitled as I hope you've got 2 left!; sirf arjun chaahiye? usakaa to ham shaam ko hii ##encounter## kar dete hai.n becomes why don't we kill his friend Shyam?. Man! I pity the people whose understanding of flicks like these hinges only on the subtitles -- now you know why I'm a bit warier about watching foreign flicks: their subtitlers may be in incompetent cahoots with our brood here.

vo registaan ke us uu.NTh kii tarah hai jisane saalo.n se paanii nahii.n dekhaa;
to agar paanii bhii usake saamane chalakar aaye to use vo kiicha.D hii lagegaa
(arjun / fardeen khan)

Product placement: All this, and we have irritating product placement for Red Bull (wait for that scene where Koena Mitra asks for a Red Bull and Fardeen Khan enters with two. Whoa! That's Red Bull not Bisleri water.

---

Suparn Verma first came to my attention with Chhal (and then some more trivia), a movie that retroactively became my favourite Hindi film of 2002. Then the promising team went on to make a dismal remake of American Pie called Yeh Kya Ho Raha Hai (yeah, I know, that title should've said it all!). While Hansal Mehta vanished from the scene, SV, meanwhile, got some more screenwriting feathers: Qayamat (that would be The Rock in Hindi), Zameen (jingoistic vacuous Bollywood action masala mix fuelled by an interesting premise that derived from the 1999 Flight IC-814 hijack), Janasheen (the father/son Khan-fest that scored really high JaDe points), Karam (the directorial début of cinematographer Sanjay F Gupta that deserved to have been so much better ... more on that if I ever get around to going down the long road of pending posts). There was also this other film called Shaadi.com starring Fardeen Khan and Celina Jaitley, but I don't think that took off (what took off instead was a film just mentioned that featured CJ doing her own stunts by standing in a body of water dressed in a bikini and playing[sic] a violin). Only time will tell if Chhal represented a flash in the pan or was a portend of latent talent (aah, anagrams!). Meanwhile, it's time to applaud the winner.

Incidentally, a Hansal Mehta/Suparn Verma collaboration called Anjaan was supposed to hit the marquee in November last year, shortly after this rip-off. Does anyone know more?

the future of savvy

First seen in the dismal ode to Pepsi called Footpath, yet another wasted assembly-line song-drama-high-drama contribution from the Bhatt camp, Emran Hashmi surprisingly, in a manner reminiscent of Suniel Shetty's success, managed to make it big. Truth be told, he has never really been cited for his acting merits but more for his rigorously orbicularis oris muscles. This beefcake looks as gariib and clueless as your neighbourhood kaamawaalii, talks like a blubbering mass of jelly, and makes enough attempts at being cool to split your sides asunder. Despite (or because of) his complete lack of ability in any important department in the acting arena, he has managed to become a hit. And it's all because of his kissing, it would seem.

So you're not surprised to see an interview titled I am not kissing Hrishita. Note that this is not a variant of I am not Rappaport or mii nathuraam goDase bolatoy, but something along the lines of a denial of attributed action. The context is his latest film Jawani Diwani (which also qualifies for the defilement-of-established-movie-name category). This box-office nosedive features Kit Ply himself along with two mixes of cellulose and cellulite named Hrishita Bhatt (the recipient of said action referenced in the title) and Celina "bikini" Jaitley (star of such tanks of turd as Janasheen and Khel). On display in the interview are (a) the interviewer's ability to ask pertinent[sic] questions and (b) the interviewee's (our friend The Toad Who Talks) inability to utter anything of consequence. Some excerpts:

Tell us something about Jawani Diwani.
Well, the title itself suggests the youthful joyride and it's a young film with the young people. Lot of comedy and lot of fun moments! There is [sic] lot [sic] of chaos, confusion and funny moments shown in the film.

Tell us something about your character.
I am playing a role of a struggling singer called Mann Kapoor. The guy is very ambitious and loves women as well. It's overall a crazy character. The whole dilemma of his life comes in when he has to take care of his career and the woman he is in love with. There is a lot of chaos, confusion and funny moments.

There are lot of steamy scenes between you and Celina
Yes, there are bold scenes in the film. Intimacy was always a part of my films. It has been shown the way it is. But that is not the focus point of the movie.

buDDhaa mil gayaa [ack: amogh for knocking this tidbit my way ahead of all other unread newsitems]

After being abducted and imprisoned for years without tangible reason, a man is set free with a few days to find out why all this happened

If you're not into world cinema, if you didn't know about the Grand Jury Prize winner at Cannes 2004, you would think this was the latest Sanjay Gupta flick (no pun intended) Zinda featuring Sanjay Dutt as Dae-su Oh and John Abraham as Woo-jin Lee. Also in the mix, you would toss Lara Dutta, Celina Jaitley and Mahesh Manjrekar (again).

It's a worthy response to another successful plagiarist called Priyadarshan. After all, Gupta himself has had a rich legacy of filches from Ram Shastra ("India's first film with Dolby Spectral Recording," they claimed) which did the "bad acting, songs and dances, mellow mush" on Hard to Kill to Musafir, which did Oliver Stone's U Turn. To distinguish himself from the monolithic style that Priyadarshan and most Bollywood "filmmakers" adopt, Gupta aspires to be a blender. This means that a lot of his films derive from more than one source. Aatish stole its guts from A Better Tomorrow and whipped in the torch-this-place-and-run male bonding sequence from State of Grace; and Kaante started off with adroitly mixing The Usual Suspects (one of us is a traitor) with Reservoir Dogs (one of us is ... you get the idea), and tossed in some stuff from Heat, because he was itching to present some footage of the actual bank robbery; Jung took Desperate Measures and embellishments from Face/Off; and Khauff topped its cake from The Juror with cinnamon from The Replacement Killers. Even when he only "wrote" and produced and delegated direction to his lackey Hriday Shetty, he came up with the DOA blend called Plan, which chose to use Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels for the premise and first half and Suicide Kings for the post-interval exercise in yawns.

After the mindlessly slick idiotically howlarious romp that was Musafir, Gupta's back with another slick etc etc. He's also been maintaining silence about the details of the film, and apparently has even asked the cast to sign an agreement of non-disclosure. But you know, given his track record, that this has to be a filch.

And then the promo {real media video file} got out. All you now had to do was check the promo {Quicktime video file} for Oldboy. Any denial that this was the original that was shoved into a cheap desii copying machine would be preposterous.

Consider the taglines appearing in the promos. taken without warning (check), held without reason (check), locked up for 15 years (check; except that Gupta picks a number that is more faithful to Indian tradition -- 14), then set free (check; well, suddenly instead of then), now he has 5 days (Gupta chooses 4; budget constraints?; blind search-and-replace in the text?; a general desire to be "different"?), to find out why (ditto). Gupta's preview is much shorter. With due respect to the tradition of dumbing it down for audiences, his preview has dialogue (and a lot of redundant words at that).

Shameful. And people are going gaga over the slickness of this trailer. Seems like hoping for some brain cells at work in the skulls of our audience is becoming a lost cause. Slick packaging is all that is needed these days. Watch Sanju baba eat food with chopsticks (Axiom: to torture someone, you make them eat Chinese food). Watch him imprisoned in that oh-so-cool outfit (Axiom: when someone is held captive in wretched surroundings, they are given good clothes to wear). And Dutt's also warbled again for a Gupta soundtrack (the last time was Musafir's tez dhaar). This means that the usual song-and-dance interludes ain't goin' nowhere. And we have two airheads (Dutta, Jaitley) about to essay roles of substance[sic] that demand a fair level of acting[sic] smarts[sic]. Be prepared to watch them act[sic] in various stages of undress.

What should worry you, if you've seen Park Chan-wook's original, is how Gupta could've chosen something that defines new levels of violence and mayhem on screen. And what about the twisted [literally] dénouement?

Only time will tell. In the meantime, learn how to use chopsticks.

hackers, hyderabad, nana poirot, australasian undress and chinese ghosts

After a great opening where the Warners Bros logo is presented with CGI as a flickering computer screen, Swordfish opens with John Travolta saying "You know what the problem with Hollywood is? They make shit. Unbelievable unimaginative shit". That's usually asking for trouble, but mercifully this film does not tank. Instead we open in a fragmented narrative with a cool coffee shop sequence that could easily fit other Travolta ventures like Get Shorty or even Pulp Fiction. Employing swing-and-tilt lenses, Sena sends portions of the frame in and out of focus, directing our attention to the stuff we are required to see. And then drawing on his advertising background, Sena renders a slow-time explosion that is worth every moment of it. Along with the flashback begins the formulaic spiral of the film. As always, real hackers will chuckle at some of the terminology (note the references to the infamous Carnivore program) thrown about. Sena works hard at keeping the adrenaline high, and succeeds for the most part. And there are nice colour tones applied to the print. But the promise of the opening sequence tops. The ending doesn't cop out either (the alternative endings underscore a tough decision). Halle Berry, the famous non-actress, continues to not-act. She was paid an obscene sum of money for performing topless in a scene. Saying that her mammilae are better performers than she is should suffice as an opinion on her acting skills[sic]. Jackman, Travolta and Cheadle take honours. The special features include a commentary by Sena, which offers some insight into the techniques used in filming -- and that leaves us with the true essence of the film: all tech, no soul.

Finally, I get to watch Hyderabad Blues uncut. I still remember a friend at the hostel in COEP telling me he had passes to a preview screening of some movie called Hyderabad Blues. Yes, I declined. Later I kicked myself. Sometimes friends helped. This movie rocks. The ease at which each character seems to talk (and the awkwardness and unpolished delivery work here), the infectious slang, and the catchy riff playing in the background score. Wonder why the ABCD-infestation of sad flicks can't muster enough honesty like this. I must also note the great extent to which I got to see traditional practices in this film: quite surprising and heartening at the same time. Kukunoor has been floundering since this film, but his last film Teen Deewarein restored my hopes.

Tarkieb has Nana Patekar playing a sher-spouting smartass version of Hercule Poirot surrounded by a gala of stars playing red herrings and Tabu playing the murder victim. The plot and the raison da qatl are too terrible for words. You could guess the identity of the killer before NP's character (Jasraj Patel) does. Too many songs. Some cool cult moments: a scene where a suspect is tortured by watching NP play chess with a vicious bug tied to his wrist, before NP ties the bug box around the suspect's neck; NP accepting his assignment and walking out after spouting a couplet (hamaare baad mahaphil me.n afasos bayaa.N hogaa / bahaare.n ham ko Dhuu.NDe.ngii na jaane ham kahaa.N ho.nge); a comedy[sic] sequence mentioning viagra; the existence of the phone number 345678; Tiku Talsania (the desi Captain Hastings) referring to a blind stall owner called Nainsukh(!) as chirkuT; and lines like zyaadaa ra.ng thop doge apane aap par to ##cartoon## lagoge. Priceless. For everything else, there's ...

Janasheen is a load of crap. Some fellow members of the Jaani Dushman Apprecation Society have proposed this as a worthy ally. I would have to disagree. This film is too polished, and has its meritorious moments. JD lacked both. Feroz Khan is the best thing in this film -- which says a lot. The themes are similar to those that FK tried to address (packaged with skimpy belles, songs, bad ostentatious acting, and locales) in his previous flicks. There are promising elements in the narrative, but there are troubling elements all around: way too many pointless songs (all of them are pointless by the way), unabashed display of skin, skimpy moves and random beachery, a karate instructor called Johnny (Chan) who romances a chimp called Champaakalii. The list is endless. Celina Jaitley continues her climb up the list of non-acting bimbettes (see also: Khel).

A Chinese Ghost Story was a great way to end the weekend (Sunday, actually). Chinese action. Chinese pop songs meshed into the narrative. Wuxia stunts. Chinese ghosts. Evil spirits. Trapped spirits. Hapless clueless heroes. Fast paced sequences. Funny dialogue. And a book of spells written in Sanskrit. My favourite sequence is when the Taoist ghost hunter drinks, sings and dances out his theme song. Priceless. {another review}

news and goodies

Why haven't I read about Larki Punjaban elsewhere?

Coming out tomorrow is the Alien Quadrilogy DVD box set. Despite the cheat that was part IV, this is definitely on my list of "things to devote an entire day to".

Here's an image from the publicity snaps for Feroz Khan's Janasheen (which reportedly crashed into and out of the theatres within a snap). The lady in the snap doing a skimpy version of Vanessa Mae is the vastly untalented ghastly Celina Jaitley (who débuted in Khel). The plot synopsis (for those eager to track down sources) is up on B4UTV. Incidentally, janasheen means "heir".

KHEL: a game of wits (the lack thereof)/ JUNG: a war against time and an exemplar of multivariate wobbling

Ajay Jadeja and Celina Jaitley make their débuts in Khel (music review). The former plays what could have been an even more interesting character (essentially a soul who believes in and lives the spirit of human trust and kindness). The latter plays the obligatory female interest, and does what most switchovers from the modelling world do in films: provide expressions and cleavage for oglefests, pout, attempt to act (and ham as a consequence) and generally walk about being an embarassment to acting. Ajay might do well to stick to cricket for a while, unless he radically changes his choice of film. This one is a big pretentious front-bench dud made by and with people who are full of themselves and false notions about their abilities. The key culprit here is Suniel Shetty. Cavorting about in faux cool and adding shameless plugs for his fashion chain (notice the Mischief bag containing a dress he hands to Celina at one point in the film), exhibiting bad cellphone usability (held in the right hand against the left ear/held in the left hand against the right ear), wiggling a cigarette in his left hand in pseudo-rad, displaying a cover of India Today with his photograph on it, the list goes on and on. Take away all the sheen, and SS still can't act for squat. Aah, the sheen. The storyline is old hat and rendered unbelievably long. The only time the film really picks up is when Sunny Deol makes his "entry" (second-half; in a tradition that he established with Damini). He beats people up at a discotheque (and you get some X-Ray shots of the skeletons of people he bashes up). He dodges a bullet in true Matrix fashion (he is the ONE!). And then even gets to speak some solid Punjabi with Gulshan Grover. Thus, he achieves all the objectives set up to please the front-benchers and get this dull film some business.

Jung must go down in the history books for Ajay Devgan sparring with Mithun Chakraborty for screen space; for Ajay Devgan's sequences in drag; for bad bad bad dialogue; for another use of the double role that screams deus ex machina. Most of all this film must stand tall as an exemplar for the multivariate wobbling that Rambha indulges in. She reminds you of Sridevi: fatty; thunder thighs; a squeaky voice; egregious facial expressions; deafening acting. And when she begins to dance to a song, she swings the scale effortlessly from playfully seductive to a garishly horrifying image of a multithreaded boulder hurtling down at you on an incline -- and all you can do is wonder how she isn't falling apart to pieces yet!