HUMPTY SHARMA KI DULHANIA : Alia-Varun's tribute to Kajol-Srk's DDLJ !!

A spoof of the mega blockbuster DDLJ, you might have seen stories equivalent to this countless times in flicks like Maine pyar kiya, Pyar kiya to darna kya or Bommarillu, but the best part here is the unique screenplay, the director sets a completely different take everytime the scenes gets into that 'oh! we ve seen that before' zone. 

Remember the scene from DDLJ, when Simran wakes up in Raj's bed & asks him what had happened between them the previous night? here, when Humpty does a similar rip off of Raj, Kavya cuts him short saying 'maine daaru pee thi raat ko, mujhe sab pata hai, mera memory loss nahi huwa thha!', hence, u start enjoying the film as the story unfolds, though it drags a lot in the second half. Unlike the two dumb friends Shahrukh had to tag along in DDLJ (one of them being the producer Karan Johar himself!), Humpty's buddies (Poplu & Shonty) are a delight to watch! Also, after a long time, bollywood comes up with a strict but sensible father (Ashutosh Rana) who doesn't comes across as way too disciplinarian! But the film primarily works because of the couple Alia-Varun, they just set the score right with their small town act and charming screen presence. What doesn't work however is, the same stale caricaturish depiction of gay cliches and Kavya's obsession with a Manish Malhotra designed pink sequined lehenga for her wedding which drives her to Delhi!! Tch Tch!!

Meera-Krsna !!

We know that two of the classic bollywood songs on Krishna are sung by the well renowned courtesans. Their emotions are so similar, its almost like both of them singing the same lines/cueing the other to speak her heart out to Krishna! Merge the two of them and how beautiful it turns out..see... 

Anarkali : Mohe panghat pe nandlal chhed gayo re! (Krishna teased me on the river bank)
Chandramaukhi : Kaahe chhed chhed mohe garwaa lagaye! (Why does he tease me so?)

Anarkali : Mori Najuk Kalaiyaa Marod Gayo Re! (He came and twisted my delicate wrists!)
Chandramukhi : Kar pakadat chhuriya sab karki karki karki.. (He caught me and all my bangles broke!)

Chandramukhi : Daddh ki bhar matki layi jaat rahi dagar bich, aahat suun jiyara gayo dhadak dhadak dhadak! ( I was taking a pot full of yogurt down the road, hearing his footsteps my heart began to pound!)

Anarkali :Kankari Mohe Maari Gagariya Phod Daali,Mori Saree Anari Bhigoyi Gayo Re (....and alas! throwing a pebble, he broke my pot! That novice, made my sari drenched..on the river bank!)

Chandramukhi : Sar se mori chunar gayi sarak sarak sarak ( My scarf went slipping from my head)
Anarkali : Mora ghoonghat najariya se tod gayo re! ( lifting my veil, he exposed me to his gaze!)

Ang laga de.... from 'Goliyon ki Raasleela : Raam-Leela'

Bhansali's fascination with the Shringar (Erotic) Raas continues...!! 

But here, Bhansali’s Leela is no coy damsel like Paro (of Devdas). The smouldering look Leela (Deepika) holds,the passion play through her eyes, the purposeful grace with which she gyrates towards Ram (Ranveer) and the seductive writhing on the bed, its enough to stir the shringar raas! ‘Ang Laga De’ is pure lovemaking sans any sleaze.

The brand new song 'Ang laga de' though dramatised in the shringara rasa evoked in the joyous, love sick anticipation of a girl pining for a physical intimacy with her lover, the lyrics highlight the pain of craving for the lover and pining for conjugal bliss.. thus evoking a feeling of pity!

The song opens to Deepika breathtaking in a creamy white lehenga and an itsy bitsy choli, holding on to an earthen diya emitting sensuous smoke. But thankfully, Bhansali has not overdone the lovemaking act and handled it very aesthetically.

And then the camera pans on to Ranveer. His rippled muscles gleam in the soft light, his low waist dhoti rides dangerously low, and then you know – this Ram is the perfect match to our dangerous, seductive Leela!

Adieu Zulfi Saab (aka Farookh Sheikh) !!

Zulfi is dead!! What will happen to Amrita Nigam now????

It was Amrita's 8th birthday,when she penned down her first letter to the 10 yr old Zulfi. Amrita and Zulfi were the quintessential tragedy of lovers, torn apart by destiny,a relationship between two articulate individuals who were engaged in constantly shifting priorities. Amrita and Zulfi... two people from very opposite backgrounds, they never met, their paths never crossed..but they had an unrequited love story told through the exchange of love letters to each other spanning 35 years! But now, Zulfi is no more, on 27 December 2013 he died of a cardiac arrest! Will Amrita ever come to know the fact that Zulfi is no more? She spend 35 years of her life with those letters from Zulfi!! She won't receive any more letters from him now.............................

TUMHARI AMRITA........... bas, ye safar yahi tak thha !

Farewell Mrs. Sen !!

Mrs.Sen's death didn't made much of a difference to me in the morning when i received the news of her demise from my sister. She was 82,aging,ailing, fragile,bed ridden! But, It was much much later, in the evening when i was watching 'DEEP JWELE JAI' (one of my personal favorite),i couldn't stop my tears! Towards the film's climax, there is this scene where Sen is being escorted by few nurses admitting her to the same ward where she herself used to be a nurse previously. She is a patient now, and she whispers out "I wasn't acting, I couldn't" indicating that she indeed fell in love with her patient, and she just breaks down uncontrollably... i couldn't control my tears at that point, weeping hysterically for sometime! 

We have lived decades watching,loving,discussing,cherishing her as Romola, as Paro, as Pannabai/Suparna, as Atashi, as Aarati, as Sagarika, as Indrani, as Dr. Roma Banerjee, as Reena Brown, as Radha, as Kamallata, as Sarat Chandra's Rajlakshmi, Bijoya, Achala... as Bankim Chandra's Prafulla and we shall continue doing the same.

Mrs. Sen... i won't miss your presence, because i have known you only through your filmography,through your onscreen charisma, your breath taking screen presence,i had never ever waited for any of your forthcoming film,nor waited in the long queue at a nearby theater waiting for the first day first show of any of your flick, but you have always remained a personal favorite. So like always..i shall keep watching your films and cherish the aura of an iconic legendary superstar!! Rest in Peace Mrs. Sen!

AUGUST OSAGE COUNTY : Too bland !!

This American black comedy-drama film written by Tracy Letts and based on his Pulitzer Prize–winning play follows the lives of Beverly Weston (Sam Shepard), a once-noted, alcoholic poet, who interviews and hires a young native American woman Johnna (Misty Upham) as a live-in cook and caregiver for his strong-willed and contentious wife Violet (Meryl Streep), who is suffering from mouth cancer and addiction to narcotics. Shortly after this, he disappears from the house, and Violet calls her sister and daughters for support. Her sister Mattie Fae (Margo Martindale) arrives with husband Charles Aiken (Chris Cooper). Her youngest daughter Ivy (Julianne Nicholson) is single and the only one living locally; Barbara (Julia Roberts), her oldest, who has inherited her mother's strong will, arrives from Colorado with her husband Bill (Ewan McGregor) and 14-year-old daughter Jean (Abigail Breslin). Barbara and Bill are separated and having marriage difficulties, but they put up a united front for Violet. Finally, middle daughter Karen (Juliette Lewis) arrives with the latest in a string of boyfriends, Steve Heidebrecht (Dermot Mulroney), a sleazy Florida businessman whom she introduces as her fiancé and what follows in the next 5 days is.......chaos!!

HAIL TO THE FAIRER SEX !!

'And she was raped and brutally killed in front of my eyes' / 'OMG! Dahling! My hubby's brought a pair of Manolo Blahnik Mary Janes for me! chuckles'/

'Mera pati parmeshwar hai' / 'Babes! men are like drugs.Sometimes they bring you down and sometimes, they get you so high'/ 'My daughter's got her exams tomorow, and i don't know how to sleep through the night' / 'I need to take my in- laws out fortheir tour, they just can't stop gushing about their choti bahu's salary hike' / 'I am a woman and i am happily single because i want to be' / 'Behenji, kal karva chauth hai, aap bhul gayi kya?' / 'I don't care if my son's homosexual,as long as he's happy and 'gay'/ 'Mujhe ek aisi bahu chahiye jo mere beta ka pura khayal rakh sakhe' / 'Women are for friendship. Men are for fucking' / 'Pichle ek mahine se hame hamare majdoori ka ek sikka paisa tak nahi mila, hum bhuke pet so rahe hai' /
/'Ok ladies, let's raise our glasses-to the fairer sex, to womahood'/...............

TAXI DRIVER : Robert De Niro at his charming best !!

Making famous one of the cult dialogue in the history of Cinema : 'You talkin to me???' , its my favourite Scorsese film, more so beacuse of the charming, Mc Dreamy, my favourite Robert DeNiro. Its engaging, impressive and truly deserves all the accolades it had garnered post its release in 1976 culiminating into an all time classic of world cinema. 

It might come across as a terribly disturbing film at the first watch but after watching it again & again as i have been every single time I've seen it, struck by just how perfect this movie is! Travis Bickle's (Robert De Niro) loneliness is a hyper representation of the same loneliness most of us have experienced at different times in different measures. It is always associated with a nightmare and Martin Scorsese delivers it like a nightmare.
The screenplay develops like a diary, the diary of a very ordinary guy who gets hired as a night taxi driver back from Vietnam, because he can't sleep at night. A very ordinary guy who tries to break his isolation,loneliness.. but can't, while violence accumulates inside him. One of those unnoticed people with dark things on their mind, one of those who break up the news one day with some extraordinary outburst of rage,falling back immediately into anonymity.The opening & closing credits are beautifully captured with the blazing lights of the yellow taxi cab moving slowly in the dark rainy streets. A kaleidoscope of neonlight appears through the dripping windows as the driver's eyes blink in the front mirror.The long nights in the city, the night environment full of whores, junkies, pimps and thieves are the main elements of the world in which Travis Bickle lives.

EK VILLAIN (Not too much to be scary about !!)

Ritesh Deshmukh comes up with a competent menacing act, but he is totally let down by some lame dialogues & wafer-thin murder sequences. How i wish the director has given some more time to shape up his character into a more horrifying, spine chilling one, which alas! isn't the case! 

PLOT : A ripoff of the Korean film 'I Saw The Devil', Mohit Suri's flick is about an utterly annoying Ms Mary Poppins, chirpily sitting and hovering around filling up her journal / dear diary with some 'before-i-die-lemme-go-on-a-mission' agendas and polaroids,lame at her own pathetic jokes (that are used precisely quite very often over a distributed period of time), turns a psycopath guy into a decent chap, in return gets murdered for no rhyme or reason by yet another psycopath, leaving the two psychopaths fighting with each other untill one becomes a hero and the other, a villain !!
Shraddha Kapoor needs lot of acting workshops to attend, she isn't effortless. Siddharth Malhotra emotes well and what always works in his favour is obviously his screen presence, but there's no chemistry between the couple here, unlike this year's 'Hasee to Phasee'. Expected a lot from Amna Shariff (she had a scope to perform though!) and Remo Fernandez as the don is terrible!
With thriller as a genre, you expect more thrill,more suspense,and obviously more drama filled with brutal gore which sadly is missing here!

KISSES (Dir : Lance Daly)

The cutest love story i have seen in a long time. Set in Ireland, the film is about a boy, Dylan (12 yrs old) and a girl, Kylie (11 yrs old), together, they run away to the big city (Dublin) after they are further unable to tolerate their abusive & violent home situations. 

They speak very coarse language, peppered with all kinds of offbeat expletives and fascinating slang. The beginning of the film when the children are at home is shot in black and white, highlighting the bleakness of their family lives full of constant bickering, violence & a repressive atmosphere they live in. But once the children flee to Dublin, the shots slowly turns into vibrant colors, connoting their freedom from their environment.
Within a running time of 75mins, the film brilliantly holds your attention throughout, thanks to the wonderfully charismatic performances by the child actors Shane Curry and Kelly O'Neill, especially the latter as the vulnerable yet spunky Kylie who's more street smart than the dazed Dylan, and its indeed a wonder how she can actually fall for him.
One of my personal favourite scene is the part where Dylan saves Kylies (almost 'hero' like!) when she is kidnapped by two pedophiles, who snatch her off the street and drive off in a car.
The film closes with a very beautiful shot where they return back to their homes,the parents relieved but then turning vindictive. Dylan and Kylie exchange trusting glances as they are separated from one another, but they smile at each other and in their silence they knew they are meant for each other henceforth.