Movie Preview: Taxi No. 9211

Producer: Ramesh Sippy
Director: Milan Luthria
Cast: John Abraham, Nana Patekar,
Music: Vishal Shekhar
Lyrics: Dev Kohli

There are two guys in the story and two hours to tell it. It is the story of a day in the life of two diametrically opposite persons.
Raghav Shastri (Nana Patekar), an Insurance Salesman to the world, but a caustic, instinctively witty cabbie in reality. He needs thirty thousand rupees at the end of the day.
Jai Mittal (John Abraham) is equally sharp and belongs to a rich family. He needs something more: three hundred crores. He too wants it by today itself.
Jai has to contest his father’s will in court. He hires Raghu’s cab to get there. Raghu is looking for every rich man he can get as passenger because he wants thirty thousand rupees. ...
Jai Meet Raghu and the cab ride kicks off a roller-coaster journey that could make you keep on laughing.They are two different persons with two different backgrounds. Their natures are very different. Their problems and their approaches towards them too are different.
Their different attitudes, two types of egos, and two distinctive brands of humor come together and give you a non stopping entertainment.You can expect some amazing travel through out the movie. The director is bold enough to create a film based on two main characters.TAXI NO 9211 is a bold attempt by director Milan Luthria and we have to wait till the end of February to see if the attempt meets with success.

Bollywood Preview -Rang De Basanti

Rang De Basanti – Review
26th Jan 2006 21.37 IST
By N. K. Deoshi

Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra ’s movie Rang De Basanti is a well-crafted and beautifully told story that entertains you, makes you think and stirs you deep inside in the end.

The movie stars Aamir Khan , British actress Alice Patten , Madhavan , Soha Ali Khan , Kunal Kapoor , Siddharth , Sharman Joshi , Atul Kulkarni and Kiron Kher .


The plot of the movie straddles two different time periods – first one, the contemporary setting revolving around a group of friends. The second one is in the pre-independence India, revolving around freedom fighters like Chandrashekhar Azad, Bhagat Singh and Ashfak.

Parallels are drawn between the characters in the two time periods and as the story moves towards its conclusion, the barrier of time begins to dissolve and the characters become one in spirit.

Sue (Alice Patten) comes to India to make a documentary on some freedom fighters about whom she gets to know from the diary of her late grandfather who was a British officer in India before 1947.

After having auditioned many in vain for her movie, Sue, aided by Sonia (Soha Ali Khan), meets a group of friends in whom she sees the characters of her documentary. The group consists of DJ (Aamir Khan), Aslam (Kunal Kapoor), Karan (Siddharth) and Sukhi (Sharman Joshi).

Also part of the group is Fl. Lft. Ajay Rathod (Madhavan), the love of Sonia (Soha). He is the only one in the group who has dedication to serve the country.

None of the friends is serious enough to be a part of Sue’s documentary. To them values like patriotism, sacrificing oneself for the sake of country are just beautiful words they cannot relate to.

But Sue can see the characters of her movie in them. In DJ she sees Chandrashekhar Azad. In Karan she sees Bhagat Singh and in Aslam she sees Ashfak.

Even as the five friends agree to be a part of her movie, they still cannot accept the virtues of the characters (of the freedom fighters) they play. But then, Ajay dies in a MiG crash and is labeled as a rookie pilot by the Defence Minister who is unwilling to accept shortcomings in the MiG aircrafts.

DJ and friends decide to bring the truth to light. But they choose a very extreme way to do it.

Rakeysh Mehra deserves full praise for making a movie that certainly raises the bar for filmmakers in Bollywood. There is not a single dull moment in ‘Rang De Basanti’. The movie begins on a light note and there are humourous moments aplenty in the first half. The second half gets serious after the death of the character played by Madhavan. From then on, the story takes a grave turn and ends on a tragic note.

Only Aamir Khan could have enacted the role of DJ, the good-humoured, bike-riding ex-graduate who is afraid to go beyond the life of college campus and friends. Aamir speaks his dialogues with a Punjabi accent, spicing his lines with an expletive here and there.

Alice Patten is perfectly cast. She delivers a flawless performance and even shows that she can swear in Hindi.

Kunal Kapoor, Soha Ali Khan, Atul Kulkarni are up to the mark. Sharman Joshi is a delight to watch. Siddharth gets his moments of acting at the movie’s end.

Bollywood Review -Garam Masala

Cast: Akshay Kumar, John Abraham, Paresh Rawal, Riimi Sen, Daisy, Neetu, Nargis
Direction: Priyadarshan
Music: Pritam
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Garam Masala - Not classic but decent
Exclusive by Joginder Tuteja, IndiaGlitz [Thursday, November 03, 2005]
Finally one gets a chance to watch the most awaited Diwali release - GARAM MASALA. After hundreds of webpage and newsprint being dedicated for this Venus production, there has been extraordinary hype around the movie. Would it be Priyadarshan's hat trick after 'Hungama' and 'Hulchul'? How does Akshay-John chemistry look on screen? Will Paresh Rawal do it again? Would it take the best initial amongst the two other releases? Will it break the 'No Entry' record?

Speculations and even more speculations have been the order of the day and one eagerly enters the theatre to watch the flick. And is the end result worth it? Answer is - 'Yes, it is', but it is not the BEST comedy/entertainer to have come out this year, or for this matter from Priyadarshan. The movie is indeed funny and manages to make you laugh out loud at majority of instances but then call it 'over expectation' factor as one still feels that something somewhere could still have been more exciting!

The storyline of Garam Masala is quite simple. In fact to put it straight, it is more or less non-existent. Mac [Akshay Kumar] and Sam [John Abraham] work as photographers for a publication called 'Garam Masala' in Mauritius. Both of them share a love hate relationship while sharing a company apartment and bike. Both the hunks, especially Mac has an eye for the feminine beauty, inspite of being already engaged to Anjali [Rimmi Sen]. Both men also try their luck on their colleague Maggi [Neha Dhupia].

Things take a turn when Sam's photographs help 'Garam Masala' win a contest and in return he gets a promotion and a trip to America. Lady luck starts smiling on Sam and when Maggi too starts ignoring Mac then he vows to have better girls in his life. While Sam is in USA, Mac with the help of a mechanic [Rajpal Yadav], becomes the caretaker of a neglected designer flat. Now he is all set in his hunt for girls and soon enter Priti [Daisy], Sweety [Neetu] and Puja [Nargis] in his life, who work as air hostesses in different flying companies.

To manage his girls, Mac maintains religiously up-to-date plain timings that help him bring the girls in and out of the flat with ease. In this task he is supported by a high-headed help at home, Mambo [Paresh Rawal], who loves doing every household chore except working! After his holiday even Sam returns back to India and starts staying with Mac. Meanwhile Sam too falls in love with one of the girls while Anjali continues to trust Mac that he would marry her one fine day. From here begin a series of incidents that bring to light the confusions and mayhem that happen with all the three girls coming in and out of the flat at different and sometimes even same timings.......

As stated earlier, if one tries to analyze the basic pretext of the movie, there is nothing much to ponder about. Garam Masala is primarily a movie with multiple gags thrown between scenes that come out of situation than being designed. After all how else could one explain scenes [like Paresh Rawal getting all flustered with cooking different variety of food for the three ladies] coming multiple times in the narrative and you still not being tired about it. Or the girls staying in two different rooms of the same flat and entering the main hall in almost a synchronized manner and still not come face to face?

If treatment by the director is the King here then a patchy screenplay at places is the villain here. The first half of the movie isn't great shakes with things settling down to be average after a good beginning. Just when Sam is promoted, one thought the battle of one upmanship would intensify but nothing of that sort happens with him being packed off to USA. One waits for some justification to all the hype that was created around the movie and that comes from the very beginning of the second half.

Confusion prevails and things continue to become more and more complicated with each passing minute. This is when the narrative becomes wonderful well as the movie reaches its pre-climax. But the climax again ends with a thud that is a little bit of disappointment as one had expected something spectacular. This is what makes 'Garam Masala'a good fare but not mind-blowing.

So what works in the favor of the movie? Undoubtedly its male starcast of Akshay Kumar, John Abraham and Paresh Rawal. Akshay changes his colors like a chameleon as per the scene while Paresh looks flustered all the way. In fact at a point in the movie he rightly says - "I don't know how to name the job I am doing!" While Paresh is good as always, John is likeable in a new persona that he gets to enact. He is sweet, bubbly and delightfully scheming at places and completely looks and plays the part.

Meanwhile Akshay Kumar is the pillar of the movie as the main plot revolves around him and most of the movie features him on every frame. John is back in action only towards the second half and does well in whatever opportunities he gets. Just watch out for his 'Dekho Maine Dekha Hai Ye Ik Sapna' sequence and you would know why?

Neha Dhupia is in the movie for 3 scenes and a song and plays her part well. Rimmi Sen is also for 3 scenes but without any song and looks completely out of synch of the proceedings. Terribly wasted in an inconsequential role, one wonders what prompted her to sign up for it in the first place. Rajpal Yadav has something more than 'Shaadi No. 1' in 'Garam Masala' but still his screen time is not up to expectations from the audience who want to see him more. Manoj Joshi too is so-so. All the three new girls play their parts well and do not really give any reason to complain. Competent in their own rights, none of them appear as if they were doing their first Hindi movie!

Sabu Cyril sets are completely in tune with contemporary tastes and the entire flat has been imaginatively decorative. Ditto for the sets of practically all the songs. Tirru's cinematography is rich and demonstrates the genre of the movie wonderfully well. Background music is patchy as at places it is funky while at others it becomes unnecessarily melodramatic when the need of the moment was to turn the scene into comic. Thats the reason why one is not able to relate to some of the scenes as in the mind you believe it to be comic but the director seems to be trying to make it look dramatic. Neeraj Vora's dialogues, especially the ones mouthed by Akshay Kumar are witty! Pritam's music is fun throughout with all the tracks being lavishly picturised.

So would Garam Masala go down as a classic, just like Priyadarshan's own 'Hera Pheri'? The answer is NO. Overall, as expected, Garam Masala is a fine entertainer and not a single soul could come out after watching the movie and say that it didn't work for him/her! Another plus point around the movie is that there is no vulgarity or double entendre.

Watch it for some hearty laughs!

Rating: ***

Bollywood Review "Kyon Ki"

Director : Priyadarshan
Music : Himesh Reshammiya
Lyrics : Sameer
Starring : Salman Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Jackie Shroff, Om Puri,
Riimi Sen, Mohan Joshi, Suniel Shetty.
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By By Subhash K. Jha

No matter what the film's flaws, the pieces of life's jigsaw fit in beautifully in "Kyon Ki".

Celebrating the conundrum of life, Priyadarshan's bitter sweet take on life and lunacy conveys that peculiarly exaggerated lyricism which is typical of this versatile and virile director.
Thiru's cinematography and Sabu Cyril's artwork sweep across the Ooty outdoors and the hi-tech Hollywood styled indoors representing a mental institution. The film's melodrama suggests a looming link between the theatre of the absurd and the vagaries of life. The crisscross of dramatised relationships provides the director with an opportunity to explore the darker side of love and life.
Priyadarshan has Salman Khan to support his journey into the dark side of the moon. Khan played dark, repressed, outraged characters in "Tere Naam" and "Phir Milenge". His unclothed performance holds up a lot of the improbabilities in "Kyon Ki" and actually makes us overlook them.
Salman is almost as endearingly wacko as Jack Nicholson in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", the film to which Priyadarshan turns more than once for support sustenance and inspiration.
If Milos Foreman had grown up making Malayalam films he would probably have done "Kyon Ki". Very often Priyadarshan pulls out all stops to deliver monstrously exaggerated blows in the storytelling.
Om Puri's turn as the asylum-head is specially scary... stuff that constitutes Hollywood's slasher films. Largely though, the director soft focuses on the delicately drawn spiral of romantic emotions that emerge from the main characters.

Salman's smirky sensitivity and that extraordinary mix of brattiness and eccentricity are used to the hilt. Kareena is silently effective as the doctor on duty. In that one sequence when she gets to know that Anand (Salman) has been cured and will probably now leave the asylum and her attentions (shades of L.V. Prasad's "Khilona"), Kareena's anguished expressions are worth watching.
Riimi Sen as Salman's blast in the past is surprisingly well-presented. The French convent ambience where the romance grows, provides a rhythm of the Riviera to the proceedings.
But the flashback flashes too long. The sequences and episodes overstay their welcome. After a while, the characters seem like nice but unwelcome guests. You really want to pack them off to their happy finale. The morbid endgame (which borrows liberally from "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" and Asit Sen's "Khamoshi") is way too defeatist. It destroys the spirit of optimism that the film seems to uphold throughout.
It's hugely interesting to watch the way Priyadarshan builds a pyramid of relationships within the confines of the asylum. While the inmates and the hospital staff are deliberately caricatural (madness is always a crazy puzzle in our films), the key relations work beyond the immediate rock-video styled bustle of lunacy.

Jackie Shroff as a kindly doctor has never been in more sensitive shape in his recent films. His pain at watching his benefactor's son suffer the wages of lunacy is palpable.
The Shroff subplot has a well-furnished complete look, lacking in some other stranded strands in the storytelling.
Though done in satisfying shades of longing and pain, "Kyon Ki" is ultimately a casualty of an inconsistent vision. Too many thoughts and working styles crowd the narrative. Every mood from Milos Foreman to Asit Sen and L.V. Prasad comes into play. The end-result isn't maddening.
The material could've done with a firmer hand - just like the hero who's allowed to break too many rules of disciplined institutionalisation.

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.