Review – London Dreams(2009)

Cast – Ajay Devgn, Salman Khan, Asin, Om Puri

Direction – Vipul Amrutlal Shah

Vipul Shah’s latest film London Dreams like his previous films (Waqt, Namastey London) has a predictable story with a treatment that has all ingredients of a masala film in it. Except the fight sequences .

London Dreams is very similar to Abhimaan (1973) directed by the one of the greatest director of all time – Hrishikesh Mukherjee. Ego problems, jealousy on seeing a person close to your heart rise up after an opportunity given by your to him/her, and music as a background, basically sums up both the films. And in all departments, be it music, acting, directing – Abhimaan wins.

Review – Haasil(2003)

Cast – Irrfan Khan, Jimmy Shergill, Hrishitaa Bhatt, Tinnu Anand, Murad Ali, Ashutosh Rana

Direction – Tigmanshu Dhalia

The game of politics begins when you thought it all ended. And by the time you understand what’s going on, your life has already been consigned to HELL.

Haasil is a story of politics played by different student level parties whose leaders plan to make it big by joining national politics later on in their life. The power of a student leader is well shown in the opening moments of the film when we see the students wish their leader while the vice-chancellor is giving a speech, thus showing the power of a student leader is more than the power of teachers or vice-chancellors of a university.

Between all these games of politics we have Annriudha (Jimmy Shergill), a theater artist who is in love with one of his co-actors, Niharika. (Hrishitaa Bhatt). But slowly even Annirudha starts falling into the trap of political scheming after making friends with Ranvijay Singh (Irrfan), leader of one of the parties. Very similar to Dileep Singh’s story in Gulaal, before he could visualize all this, his life is already in a mess.

Review – Blue(2009)

Cast – Sanjay Dutt, Akshay Kumar, Lara Dutta, Zayed Khan, Rahul Dev, Katrina Kaif

Director – Anthony D’ Souza

‘Duniya Ka Sabse Bada Nasha – Risk.’ This is a dialog in the film Blue, and if you take out how much of the producers’ money was risked in the film, there is no other risk taken. With that kind of a theme, Blue could have easily been made into a great underwater adventure film with some risks (and of course some thought too). The people involved in the film were only interested in money whether it is earning it or spending it. After watching Blue, one can say that the dialog written above is wrong and Duniya ka sabse bada nasha isn’t risk but paisa.

Anybody hearing the narration of this story would know instantly that the soul of the film is the TREASURE HUNT, and thus the film should focus on that portion more. But the problem with an underwater adventure is while you are under the sea you can’t say anything. So the film has to be dialog-less for that period of the film. Thus it is a risk to make the hunt the focus of the film, if at all the audience loses interest in the hunt, the entire film loses out then and there. But how good is to sacrifice the soul of the film for not taking a risk!!!!! Anthony D’ Souza prefers not to take the risk and instead of concentrating on the hunt, he concentrated on the bare tattooed body of Akshay Kumar, stunts, bikinis, vulgar humor and Kylie Minogue!!!!!! BAD OPTION Mr. D’ Souza. You ruined the entire film just to avoid the risk and thereby killed the soul of the film.

Kaminey – References and Metaphors

References in Kaminey –

Apart from belonging mostly in the genre of films like Pulp Fiction, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and Manmohan Desai film films which Vishal Bhardwaj openly says he admires, I found two other films that may have referenced Kaminey –

1. PARASH PATHAR(1958) -  The scene in Kaminey towards the end of the film when the little boy trades chocolate with Amole Gupte for keeping quiet is a reference to Parash Pathar directed by Satyajit Ray.

The Batserds’ view on WW II

Cast – Brad Pitt, Christopher Waltz, Mélanie Laurent, Eli Roth, Diane Kruger, Daniel Brühl, Martin Wuttke.

Genre – Tarantino

Director – Quentin Tarantino

Smacking people with a baseball bat, scalping the dead, slow motion firing of machine guns, sudden loud music, twist in the end. Ahhhh – I love all that. I know Tarantino was thinking of me all time while making this film.

Quentin Tarantino is not merely a director now. He has become a ‘GENRE’. He can make any story in the ‘Tarantino’ genre. Else how could one imagine a story that is set during the World War been made in Tarantino style? The use of loud music, the references to old films and filmmakers and the twist in the end – is all this an appropriate fit with the tragedy of a World War? OF COURSE, said Tarantino. He completely changed the look of a war film. As a line in the trailer puts it – “You haven’t seen war if you haven’t seen it through the eyes of Tarantino”.