Bollywood Review -Koi Aap Sa

Director : Partho Mitra
Music : Himesh Reshammiya
Lyrics : Sameer
Starring : Aftab Shivdasani, Natassha, Dipannita Sharma, Himanshu Malik
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Can a man and a woman remain friends without turning into lovers? Yes, said "When Harry Met Sally" ... Maybe, says "Koi Aap Sa", producer Ekta Kapoor's heart-warming though inconsistent homage to the cinema of Karan Johar.
Sure enough, "Koi Aap Sa" has bits of "Kal Ho Na Ho", specially in Himesh Reshammiya's music score, bits of "Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham" - the protagonist weeps copiously into his popcorn while watching K3G - and loads and loads of "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai".
In fact "Koi Aap Sa", by far the most valid film Kapoor has produced, is a contemporary version of "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai" with Aftab Shivdasani, Natassha and Dipannita playing the man, the tomboy and the femme fatale on the kaleidoscopic college campus.
While the ladies replicate Kajol and Rani Mukherjee's characters even in incidental details (Aftab pleads with Natassha not to abandon college, a la Shah Rukh's famous train sequence with Kajol), the metro-centric male protagonist in "Koi Aap Sa" is quite a departure from the self-centred cool dude Shah Rukh Khan played.

Aftab's Rohan is cool but committed, sporty but sensitive, precocious but poetic. He flirts with the campus siren Dipannita Sharma but stands steadfast by his best friend Natassha when she's raped.
This bit of gruesome plot construction serves a dual purpose. It gives the film an edge of social relevance (unwed motherhood in a stress-free campus romance is quite something) and it gives our hero a chance to play several deeply sensitive shades of manhood.
Hats off to Aftab for playing a man of today with both a feminine and masculine side to his character with such effortless charm.
Partly naïve and partly a man-of-the-world, Aftab's Rohit is a consummate hero embodying the best aspects of romantic comedy. The actor has overcome his earlier gawkiness to communicate an endearing spectrum of urban emotions related to love, friendship and commitment.
It's a polished performance, more so than portions of the narrative, which tend to veer into screechy self-parody. The sweaty pub dances and football games seem to be from a zillion Hollywood blues-chasers, and the supporting cast of friends, foes and relatives are straight out of Ekta Kapoor's trillion soaps.
But the film has a surface and slight charm of its own...It manoeuvres its way through a plethora of cute situations.
Cleverly packaged and edited to accentuate the sweaty curves in the jukebox triangle, the film leaves you with a smile for projecting an aura of positivity and for venturing into a young theme without getting callow shallow and crude.

Bollywood Review --James

James :----
Cast : Mohit Ahlawat, Nisha Kothari, Zakir Husain, Mohan Agashe, Rajpal Yadav
Director: Rohit Jugraj
Producers: Ram Gopal Varma, Parag SanghaviMusic

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Some films launch a star. In other cases a star launches a film. Ram Gopal Varma's latest discovery Mohit Ahlawat, arguably his most worth watching male discovery to date, lifts the routine masala action flick to the level of a spiced-up sizzler.
Ahlawat with his well-toned physique and an underplayed but persuasive personality could comfortably be designated the Blast Action Hero. His smouldering silences, those slanted silently accusing eyes, and raised eyebrows (one of them pierced and adorned with a ring) have the power to rip the screen apart.
Yup. Mohit Ahlawat is here to stay. But what about the film? Does it go beyond a star-launch vehicle?
Stylishly put together, every cliché in the book of formulistic filmmaking is brought into play... The high-octane action gets going right away, as the Goan loner in Mumbai encounters red-hot goondaism on a train.
The hero's introductory sequence, a traditional whammy that Hindi films have served up since time-immemorial, is surprisingly tame here. Maybe it's the cramped confines of the speeding locomotive that localises director Rohit Jugraj's style initially.
For the rest of the film the debutant director brings his debutant hero out on the streets to fight hooliganism like never before, as Ram Gopal Varma's usual suspects - scruffy, unwashed, repulsive villains with beards and hair that appear to be an anti-dandruff shampoo's delight - line up to unleash terror.
Mumbai never looked less inviting and more forbidding. Cinematographer Amal Neerad swoops across the jaded skyline like a hunter on the prowl. Amar Mohile's background score pounds out a pulsating theme-anthem for Ahlawat's dream debut - dream for the debutant but a nightmare for those who come in contact with this comic-book hero many sizes larger than life.
That grim no-nonsense deportment echoes Amitabh Bachchan in "Zanjeer", the anti-establishment cop who fought the system. Today's Angry Young Man needs to be far less unfocussed about his moral ambiguity. Mohit's heroic stance is amazingly old world. He tells the besotted girl Nisha (newcomer Nisha Kothari) that he has never done anything wrong in his life. He warns his evil opponents not to mess around with him before beating them to a pulp, and he never takes off his shirt till the very end.
It's a very understated almost chivalrous kind of machismo, underlined by pounds of pounding music and action sequences.
The material chosen to support Ahlawat's debut is slickly packaged. Regrettably a lot of the supporting cast is already seen repeatedly in Varma's other productions. You can't take their sneering villainy that seriously any longer.
The main antagonist here is newcomer Sherveer Vakil who looks appropriately diabolic but unequal to the task of matching strides with the hero. The climactic one-to-one combat between the two is way too lengthy and tiring.
Watching "James" is a tiring experience. Much of the film is shot in crowded public places and at a breakneck speed with the hero and the girl on the run. The world of the film is utterly anarchic and violent. There are elaborate sequences of sadism, punctuated by unexpected bouts of humour.
Check out the brutal slaying of the hero's funny friend, or the 'comic-relief' appearance of the natural-born scene stealer Rajpal Yadav in the second- half (replete with a sly reference to Sanjay Leela Bhansali's "Devdas").
The film re-defines popular mass-oriented action genre and positions Mohit Ahlawat as the latest action hero in the tradition of Dharmendra and Akshay Kumar.
"I've seen such things happening in films, but not in real life," grins the girl hidden away in the jungle with the fugitive hero.
Real life is as far removed from "James" as cinematically possible. "James" dares to take on the formulistic system of filmmaking and turns it on its head.
Subversive formulism doesn't make a completely riveting film. But it sure leaves us staring at what could possibly be the first new-millennium super-hero in Bollywood who salutes Superman's heroic spirit.

Bollywood -Review - Kasak

Movie :Kasak
Cast : Lucky Ali, Meera, Mukesh Tiwari, Puneet Issar, Vikas Anand, Mukesh Rawal, Anil Nagrath, Mukesh Ahuja, Rana Jung Bahadur
Director: Rajiv Babbar
Producer: Rajeev Babbar
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You have to give this film some credit for guts. No style, no substance and zero star power...And yet it carries a flamboyant flag for that frisky female fantasia known as the wanton woman.
Like Bipasha Basu in "Jism" and Priyanka Chopra in the recent fiasco "Yakeen", Meera cares only about money, honey!
'Honey' Lucky Ali is a male nurse who gets battered mom Vinita Malik's millions after he nurses her back to health from a coma. Wish there was someone to nurse the narration back to health. Alas the scriptwriter seems to have gone on a long holiday after giving the director a skeletal plot line.
But this, you've got to see. Enter Lucky's nursing colleague, Pakistani actress Meera, who seduces him on a set that looks like Karan Johar's nightmare. Writhing desperately to an undeservingly dulcet M.M. Kreem song, Meera gets Lucky.
Alas we don't...not even for a second, as this atrociously packaged film slithers downhill at an alarming rate.
To the writer's credit he has picked up the core of his idea from a foreign source, Krzysztof Kieslowsky's "White", and tried to turn the twisted tale into a musical drama.
Also to Lucky Ali's credit, he plays a very unusual hero - a male nurse who's naïve and completely besotted by a thoroughly undeserving immoral woman who sleeps with any man who can buy her worldly goods, and who publicly accuses her husband of impotency.
"I'm not impotent. I'm just a bit slow," whines Lucky.
"Kasak" is the kind of misfire that leaves you exasperated and angry. Who on earth would want to spend two hours and more watching a loser get back his life.
While the downslide in the first half is a trifle interesting, the protagonist's revival in the second half is so garbled and senseless you want to give the director a crash course in the basic elements of filmmaking, including how to hold the audiences' attention, and how to film a seduction song with a stripped-down starlet.
Sadly director Rajiv Babbar is clueless. He jumps from one level of despair to another leaving the scenes looking like half-baked dishes with not enough garnish to keep the guests from losing their temper.