PlanetBollywood
7 Khoon Maaf - in need of forgiveness
20/02/11 13:28 Filed in: Filmi
I emerged from semi-hibernation while finishing
my book to review Vishal Bhardwaj’s newest film,
7 Khoon Maaf. Visit my words at http://bit.ly/126_Min.
What happened here? He’s directed stunning visual films and generated compelling soundtracks, and this film fell flat for me. Priyanka Chopra gave a lot, and the film needed more people pulling the wagon.
“I did all that acting and
the story still has big gaps? You gotta be
kidding me!”
What happened here? He’s directed stunning visual films and generated compelling soundtracks, and this film fell flat for me. Priyanka Chopra gave a lot, and the film needed more people pulling the wagon.
“I did all that acting and
the story still has big gaps? You gotta be
kidding me!”
Workin' Hard for the Money - Dulha Mil Gaya
09/01/10 20:41 Filed in: Filmi
I've been traveling in India for about 3 weeks
and made a little time while I'm in Mumbai to
catch the release of "Dulha Mil Gaya."
Result? http://www.planetbollywood.com/displayReview.php?id=f010910023508
Caught the Apsara Awards rehearsal here too - the show should have some surprises (and a lot of bad jokes). Preity did her best to cut some of the worst ones.
Result? http://www.planetbollywood.com/displayReview.php?id=f010910023508
Caught the Apsara Awards rehearsal here too - the show should have some surprises (and a lot of bad jokes). Preity did her best to cut some of the worst ones.
"What’s Your Raashee?" a big Mercury retrograde.
26/09/09 18:37 Filed in: Filmi
While it wasn't the WORST masala film
I've ever seen, it was the worst in a while (I am
a little selective). I had higher hopes, but it
was not to be.
Three and a half hours can be very long under those conditions.
My review is at: http://www.planetbollywood.com/displayReview.php?id=f092609053712
I'll see about posting the rest of my analysis soon.
Doctor in the house!
A couple other reviews on the same page:
http://www.desipundit.com/baradwajrangan/2009/09/26/review-whats-your-raashee/ : "What does Harman Baweja (playing an NRI from Chicago) feel as he contrives to run into each of the twelve women corresponding to the twelve signs of the Zodiac? ... Baweja’s performance leaves you with very little clue, and Gowariker doesn’t appear too interested, either."
Three and a half hours can be very long under those conditions.
My review is at: http://www.planetbollywood.com/displayReview.php?id=f092609053712
I'll see about posting the rest of my analysis soon.
Doctor in the house!
A couple other reviews on the same page:
http://www.desipundit.com/baradwajrangan/2009/09/26/review-whats-your-raashee/ : "What does Harman Baweja (playing an NRI from Chicago) feel as he contrives to run into each of the twelve women corresponding to the twelve signs of the Zodiac? ... Baweja’s performance leaves you with very little clue, and Gowariker doesn’t appear too interested, either."
Dil Bole Hadippa!
18/09/09 13:32 Filed in: Filmi
My film review of the new Yash Raj film with Rani
Mukherjee & Shahid Kapoor. Dil Bole Hadippa!!
http://www.planetbollywood.com/displayReview.php?id=f091909035816
Truth be told, I liked this film better than the review sings it. I generally enjoy Yash Raj films, even the crappy ones. In writing a review, I spend a lot of time considering the audience, and that's who this is for. I'll add an entry here later with more on my thoughts. Maybe I'll have seen it again by then.
9/12/09 - Godkids watching Namaste America after TV autotuned. During "Hai Guzarish" video: "Why doesn't he button his shirt?" Mouths of babes.
http://www.planetbollywood.com/displayReview.php?id=f091909035816
Truth be told, I liked this film better than the review sings it. I generally enjoy Yash Raj films, even the crappy ones. In writing a review, I spend a lot of time considering the audience, and that's who this is for. I'll add an entry here later with more on my thoughts. Maybe I'll have seen it again by then.
9/12/09 - Godkids watching Namaste America after TV autotuned. During "Hai Guzarish" video: "Why doesn't he button his shirt?" Mouths of babes.
We are you, Khan
21/08/09 08:30 Filed in: Filmi
! Culture
Ruminations
With a little asking, I agreed to write a more
extended editorial about some of the insights
that are suggested by Shah Rukh Khan's detention
by Customs and Border Patrol in New Jersey.
http://planetbollywood.com/displayArticle.php?id=s082009113752
http://planetbollywood.com/displayArticle.php?id=s082009113752
Kaminey
19/08/09 23:12 Filed in: Filmi
My film review of the new Vishal Bhardwaj film
with Shahid Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra.
http://www.planetbollywood.com/displayReview.php?id=f081709113129
and Charlie - is he or isn't he gay? Someone out there wants to know.
and is this better or worse than an A Certificate?
http://in.news.yahoo.com/43/20090827/914/ten-puri-seer-demands-ban-on-kaminey.html
http://www.planetbollywood.com/displayReview.php?id=f081709113129
and Charlie - is he or isn't he gay? Someone out there wants to know.
and is this better or worse than an A Certificate?
http://in.news.yahoo.com/43/20090827/914/ten-puri-seer-demands-ban-on-kaminey.html
Connecting aaj and kal with aajkal (Love Aaj Kal)
31/07/09 22:34 Filed in: Filmi
The title of Imtiaz Ali’s latest film, Love
Aaj Kal, highlights 3 stages in time:
अाज
(aaj - today), कल (kal -
tomorrow) and अाजकल (aajkal -
these days). His story weaves the three together
so that their relation to each other shows them
as both distinct and interrelated.
Trains and their metaphor of spiritual movement loomed large in his earlier Jab We Met. The train here suggests the parallel tracks connecting Harleen Kaur and Veer Singh in India 40 years ago, and Meera Pandit and Jai Vardhan Singh in London and India, present day. Travel and journeys here are both outside by tube, train, car, bike and plane, and inside the mind and heart.
As the story opens we meet Meera (Deepika Padukone) and Jai, who live in London and have been a couple for two years. Underscoring just how modern and unattached to conventions of the past they are, we see them kiss on the lips within 12 minutes into the film, which is sill a rare occurrence in Hindi films. They like each other, a lot, and they still decide that since Meera will soon move to India and Jay’s angling for a San Francisco career, the best thing to do is break up. Who needs the tedium of a LDR, with its inevitable emotional and physical distance? They’ll be in touch, but the logical thing is no commitments, right?
They throw a breakup party, and to show how sure they are about their plan, Meera gives her blessing as a guest asks Jai if he’s now single. The friends (perhaps standing in for the audience) are confused about how to react, but it seems like Meera and Jai are happy with this “logical” ending.
But after Meera leaves at the end of the night Jai’s not looking so good, and Veer, who owns the pub hosting the party, steps in and asks a few too many personal questions about what’s going on. Jai, initially bristling at the intrusion, opens up and Veer decides that Jai reminds him of when he was younger. As Veer tells the story of his own pursuit of true love, the setting switches between the two couples in 1965 and 2009, who do have things in common. It’s also clear that Veer’s storytelling motive is to give Jai relationship advice he may or may not be ready to hear.
Love Aaj Kal suggests that love aaj has lessons to learn from love kal if you’re willing to pay attention. A puzzled Veer could be relating countless film plots about separated lovers as he asks why they chose to break up: “Was the family against it? Didn’t you like her?” He doesn’t buy the idea of logical decisions, complaining that “your lives are filled by science.” For Veer, emotion is missing from modern relationships; people hook up casually aaj kal, sleeping together before they know each other’s names.
Jai, on the other hand, laughs at the seriousness when the young Veer pledged that his love for Harleen was eternal. He asks the older man how he could follow her on intuition when he hadn’t even properly met or talked with her. It’s like Jai hasn’t seen any Hindi films ever – isn’t instant and fated love the stock in trade of so many plots from the past?
The disjunct between their points of view is summed up in the difference between Veer’s old-school Dilli or Jai’s Delhi. Jai asserts that he’s going to have many girlfriends from here on out. Veer counters that “You only fall in love once.”
Although they put up brave and “mature” fronts to each other when they talk or write (and they seem to update each other constantly), they’re still entwined, and also committed to this breakup, at least on paper. Actually, even paper would be too much commitment for these two. Jai has to remind himself that these decisions are right because they’re logical, even as he devolves onscreen after reaching what was his ultimate dream job in San Francisco.
We know they’re kidding themselves, even before the interval, and so does Veer (in his older avatar played by Rishi Kapoor). Like the grandfather in Jab We Met, he knows the inside of the couple’s hearts long before they do.
I also wrote a LAK film review here:
http://www.planetbollywood.com/displayReview.php?id=f080309021944
Awesome blogger Beth Loves Bollywood has a fantastic write-up as well:
http://bethlovesbollywood.blogspot.com/2009/08/love-aaj-kal.html
Trains and their metaphor of spiritual movement loomed large in his earlier Jab We Met. The train here suggests the parallel tracks connecting Harleen Kaur and Veer Singh in India 40 years ago, and Meera Pandit and Jai Vardhan Singh in London and India, present day. Travel and journeys here are both outside by tube, train, car, bike and plane, and inside the mind and heart.
As the story opens we meet Meera (Deepika Padukone) and Jai, who live in London and have been a couple for two years. Underscoring just how modern and unattached to conventions of the past they are, we see them kiss on the lips within 12 minutes into the film, which is sill a rare occurrence in Hindi films. They like each other, a lot, and they still decide that since Meera will soon move to India and Jay’s angling for a San Francisco career, the best thing to do is break up. Who needs the tedium of a LDR, with its inevitable emotional and physical distance? They’ll be in touch, but the logical thing is no commitments, right?
They throw a breakup party, and to show how sure they are about their plan, Meera gives her blessing as a guest asks Jai if he’s now single. The friends (perhaps standing in for the audience) are confused about how to react, but it seems like Meera and Jai are happy with this “logical” ending.
But after Meera leaves at the end of the night Jai’s not looking so good, and Veer, who owns the pub hosting the party, steps in and asks a few too many personal questions about what’s going on. Jai, initially bristling at the intrusion, opens up and Veer decides that Jai reminds him of when he was younger. As Veer tells the story of his own pursuit of true love, the setting switches between the two couples in 1965 and 2009, who do have things in common. It’s also clear that Veer’s storytelling motive is to give Jai relationship advice he may or may not be ready to hear.
Love Aaj Kal suggests that love aaj has lessons to learn from love kal if you’re willing to pay attention. A puzzled Veer could be relating countless film plots about separated lovers as he asks why they chose to break up: “Was the family against it? Didn’t you like her?” He doesn’t buy the idea of logical decisions, complaining that “your lives are filled by science.” For Veer, emotion is missing from modern relationships; people hook up casually aaj kal, sleeping together before they know each other’s names.
Jai, on the other hand, laughs at the seriousness when the young Veer pledged that his love for Harleen was eternal. He asks the older man how he could follow her on intuition when he hadn’t even properly met or talked with her. It’s like Jai hasn’t seen any Hindi films ever – isn’t instant and fated love the stock in trade of so many plots from the past?
The disjunct between their points of view is summed up in the difference between Veer’s old-school Dilli or Jai’s Delhi. Jai asserts that he’s going to have many girlfriends from here on out. Veer counters that “You only fall in love once.”
Although they put up brave and “mature” fronts to each other when they talk or write (and they seem to update each other constantly), they’re still entwined, and also committed to this breakup, at least on paper. Actually, even paper would be too much commitment for these two. Jai has to remind himself that these decisions are right because they’re logical, even as he devolves onscreen after reaching what was his ultimate dream job in San Francisco.
We know they’re kidding themselves, even before the interval, and so does Veer (in his older avatar played by Rishi Kapoor). Like the grandfather in Jab We Met, he knows the inside of the couple’s hearts long before they do.
I also wrote a LAK film review here:
http://www.planetbollywood.com/displayReview.php?id=f080309021944
Awesome blogger Beth Loves Bollywood has a fantastic write-up as well:
http://bethlovesbollywood.blogspot.com/2009/08/love-aaj-kal.html
Getting Lucky on the web
24/07/09 22:29 Filed in: Filmi
I've begun to add film reviews on
PlanetBollywood.com. Here's a link to Soham
Shah's latest, a little ditty called
Luck.
http://www.planetbollywood.com/displayReview.php?id=f072909035126
http://www.planetbollywood.com/displayReview.php?id=f072909035126