Interesting new movie titles

With Manmohan Singh & Amar singh swinging the trust vote, one movie title which has got tremendous recall is Singh is Kingg ! The story is that Akshay Kumar came up with this title on a back of a truck in Punjab. So here are a list of upcoming
movies with interesting titles,

3 Idiots

Rajkumar Hirani's 3 Idiots starring Aamir Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Sharman Joshi, Madhavan and Boman Irani has gone on floors.The film is scheduled to be shot in Ladakh, Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai. Aamir and rest of the cast will begin shooting in early September. Hirani plans to wrap 3 Idiots by December.


Dev D

Anurag Kashyaps modern day take on the classic Devdas , starring Abhay Deol and two new women. Kashyap believes that we Indians love to wallow in misery and celebrate self pity. So, in Dev D, Devdas will no longer be celebrated, while Paaro and Chandramukhi, the two strong-willed women, will be the be the ones who will walk away with the appreciation.

I am 24

Directed by Saurabh Shukla, the movie stars a bald Rajat Kapoor who is 40 but thinks is 24. Ranvir Shourey gives him company and if the poster is any indication expect a wild & witty comedy.

Stoneman ( 2008)

Stone Man will be directed by Manish Gupta and produced by Bobby Bedi. Manish came across an article on serial killers in The Times of India which had a mention of killers like Charles Shobhraj, Raman Raghav, Billa Ranga and the Stone Man. What intrigued Manish was that the police knew the identities of all the serial killers except Stone Man. Starring Kay Kay Menon and Arbaaz Khan this movie is slated for release later this year.


Sankat City (2008)
Directed by : Pankaj Advani
Cast :Anupam Kher, Dilip Prabhavalkar, Rimii Sen, Chunkey Pandey, Kay Kay Menon, Rahul Dev


36-24-36
Meghna Gulzar has planned a unique project for Madhuri Dixit. The film, tentatively and aptly titled ’36-24-36’ will be a unique Bollywood comedy about acquiring the perfect feminine figure, obesity and weight loss. Shooting is scheduled to start later this year.

The Great Indian Butterfly(2008)
The film stars Aamir Bashir, Sandhya Mridul, Koel Purie and Barry John and is directed by Sarthak Dasgupta. The story of The Great Indian Butterfly revolves around a young urban couple takes a trip in search of a mystical butterfly, as they are unable to come to terms with the sacrifices required for success. It brings peace, love, luck and happiness, if found.

Oye Lucky, lucky Oye (2008)
Dibankar Banerjee the man who made Khosla ka Ghosla is back with his next venture. This movie stars Paresh Rawal in a triple role , along with Abhay Deol & Neetu Chandra . Paresh Rawal is doing a triple role with the two characters namely Dr. Brijkishore Handa and Googie Arror and third name kept under wraps.Abhay plays an extremely handsome, charismatic and very talented thief leading a luxurious life. Lucky Oye is expected to release in October.

Offbeat Indian Movies

A compilation of Indian movies which are making waves in the festival circuits internationally . Hopefully these would find a release here in India too .

Kabootar (2008)

The film Kabootar premiered at the 10th Osians-Cinefan Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema and was much appreciated by the audience. Touted as the most violent movie ever made in India , Kabootar traces the life of four misguided youths in the heartland of Madhya Pradesh . This Anubhav Sinha production which elicited a stunned audience response followed by a standing ovation, has debutant Maqbool Khan at the helm of direction. It has also won Govind Namdeo, one of the key protagonists from the film, an award for the Best Actor.

The movie hopefully will not be butchered by censors here in India. Anubhav Sinha now plans to take the movie across to international movie fests before releasing it here in early 2009 .


Frozen (2007)

Credits:
Director/writer/producer: Shivajee Chandrabhushan
Executive producer/Director of photography: Shanker Raman
Music: John P. Varkey
Cast:
Karma: Danny Denzongpa
Lasya: Gauri
Chomo: Skalzang Angchuk Gultuk

The joke is that the officials in the Mumbai airport now recognise Shivajee( director/producer)as he is ofetn seen in the Mumbai airport travelling across the globe with his first film "Frozen ".I first heard about the movie a acouple of years back when it was being shot in the extremely cold and hostile conditions in Ladakh during peak winter. The movie is unique in the sense that it was shot in colour, then converted it to a digital intermediate so that the whole film could be processed in black and white later.

The movie revolves around Lasya, a mixed-race teenager, and her brother and widower father. Their entire life turns yopsy turvy when they need to adjust to a new reality when the army, searching the frontier for terrorists, sets up a base just a few metres from their house. Critcally acclaimed across the world in different festivals , the movie may just get a theatrical release sometime here too

Mumbai Cutting ( 2008)
Directed by 11 Indian directors ,with music by 11 music directors the film unfolds various facets of Mumbai ( " Inspired" by Paris Jet'aime ) With Sudhir Mishra, Rahul Dholakia, Revati, Rituparno Ghosh, Kundan Shah, Anurag Kashyap, Shashanka Ghosh, Ruchi Narain, Jahanu Barua, Manish Jha, Ayush Raina, being the directors, the films star Soha Ali Khan, Jimmy Shergil, Sonali Kulkarni, Ranvir Sheorey, Vinay Pathak, Sushant Singh, Tara Sharma, Tejaswini Kolhapure, Raima Sen, Palash Sen, Shruti Seth, Rahul Dev, Deepak Dobriyal, Dipannita Sharma, Kavita Kaushik, Samrin, Sanjay Narvekar, Mahek Chel.

The music also lends diverse flavours from Euphoria, Indian Ocean, Ali Azmat, Fuzon, Sanjeev Shrivastav, Jeet Ganguly, Amartya and Papon, with vocals by Shreya Goshal, Shafquat Amanat Ali Khan, Sunidhi Chauhan, Nachiketa, Papon and Ali Azmat.

Last Lear ( 2007)

Based on Utpal Dutt's play Aajker Shahjaha and directed by Rituparno Ghosh, The Last Lear features Amitabh , Preity Zinta and Arjun Rampal. The Last Lear premiered at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival in September 2007. Besides being the first full-length English movie in Amitabh's career, it is also the first time that Big B is portraying the character of an actor on screen.

Before the Rains ( 2008)
Director: Santosh Sivan
Cast: Linus Roache, Nandita Das, Rahul Bose, Jennifer Ehle,

Set in 1930s southern India against the backdrop of a growing nationalist movement, BEFORE THE RAINS is the English language debut of Santosh Sivan. An idealistic young Indian man (Rahul Bose) finds himself torn between his ambitions for the future and his loyalty to the past when people in his village learn of an affair between his British boss (Linus Roache) and a village woman (Nandita Das).

Box Office Verdict -2008

Quick Compilation of the top box office hits and misses for the year . These are based on actual figures available based on realized collections . Though Race is leading the chart now , Jane Tu is slated to overtake race as the current figure is based on the first two weeks collections only . Please note that these figures again are only box office collections in India , the positions may slightly vary if we take into account overseas collections as well.

Another point to note is that classifications is based on ROI , and hence a movie like Tashan or Sarkar raj may have grossed over 30 crores but still are flops since their budgets were so high . Meanwhile Jannat is considered the biggest success story of the year since its budget was only 10 crores , compared to Race at 35 crores budget and Jodha Akbar at a budget closer to 50 crores.

Super Hits <
Race 64 crores
Jodha Akbar 63 crores
Jannat 33 crores

Average
Mithya 6 crores
Krazzy 4 24 crores
One Two Three 18 crores

Below Average
Sunday 22 crores
Khuda Ke liye 3 crores
U me aur hum 24 crores
Bhootnath 26 crores
Aamir 3 crores
Mere Baap 23 crores

Flops
Thoda Pyar 23 crores
Sarkar Raj 34 crores
Tashan 32 crores
Halla Bol 16 crores
Shaurya 3 crores

Disasters
Love story 2050
Summer 2007
Woodstock Villa
Jimmy
My Name is Anthony Gonsalves

Whats interesting to note is that all the disastrous movies have new heroes , with skander Kher having 2 movies to his credit . Imran Khan & to a lesser extent rajeev Khandelwal have had decent debuts.

UTV movies is having a dream year with Race , Jodha Akbar and now jane Tu . Yash Raj is again off to a bad start with Tashan and TPTM.

Kismet Konnection (2008)

Warning: This review is going to be half baked, for I walked out of the movie half way through. I hardly walk out of movies, and I have sat through tones of terrible movies and Kismat Konnection is not the worst ive seen, but it’s just so painfully banal and boring! And the worst thing about a boring movie is that u can’t even laugh through it.

The movie starts innocuously enough with SRK's voice over extolling how kismet plays a role in everyone’s life. The movie is based in Canada, where every person (mind you, not every second person) speaks in Hindi and Mehra’s, Gill’s and Batra’s are all over the place. Maybe the director thought he could pass off Canada as Chembur (cinematic liberties at its best.)

The characters are Shahid Kapoor, a jobless architect who has the worst luck of his life every day and speaks to god every other day. His sidekick and partner who is forever stressed and tries hard to provide some comic relief.Miss Righteous Vidya Balan who runs an old age home dressed in the most hideous outfits.(Can she be mandated to dress up only in a saree from now on?) Husna Banu is Juhi Chawla, the crystal ball reader in the most annoying cameo in recent times. Om Puri is the real estate tycoon who enjoys his whisky and a game of billiards. His wife,Himani Shivpuri who wants to build a duplex for her lil doggy! And the villain - a classmate of Shahid who has all the right connections and drinks Cosmopolitan while swimming.

All these characters meet, incidents unfurl, Shahid dances very well to the title song and Vidya holds placards, smiles and wears more hideous clothes. Juhi foretells that a lucky charm will enter Shahids life. After Vidya nudges Shahid to hit a ball in the billiards table (this sequence is the clincher, its excruciatingly long at 15 minutes!), it dawns on Shahid that Vidya is his lucky charm! Shahid gets the contract for designing the mall contract which would come up after razing the old age home run by Vidya. And surprise, Shahid falls in love with Vidya and even bigger surprise Vidya is already engaged! No points for guessing what next, your guess is as good as mine.

This is when I walked out and was happy to step out to a bright Saturday evening!

Kismat Disconnection!