You don’t mess with Zohan (2008)

Who is Zohan?
An Israeli super commando turned hairdresser

Current Alias : Scrappy Coco

Current Nationality : Coco Australian

His Dream : Fed up of the never-ending Middle East conflict, he just wants to live in peace in New York, where he can enjoy hummus and Fizzy Bubbly, and make every one's hair silky smooth

Vital Statistics : A libido that ensures that he can bang women aged over 70 till they die coming. A well displayed ass which he regularly smacks. Uses it to fish, catch cats and stack dollars.

Key strength : His super bushy crotch. Gyratable endlessly, uses it to scratch records while deejaying, discusses its dimensions at length , rests it on people's shoulders, can withstand frosty fish bites and even taps it twice as a sign of respect.

Weakness : His current love interest a Palestine babe and salon owner Emmanuelle Chiriquí (Dale). Zohan has to save her salon from the loan sharks and ensure that her salon becomes the most popular one in NYC.

Nemesis : The Phantom (John Tuttoro), a Palestine whose illusion that he had killed Zohan is busted by a cabbie played by Rob Schneider (Has a score to settle with Zohan for stealing his goat)

Villain : Real Estate mall mogul, William Buffer and his girl friend with the perfect ass to breast ratio.

Key Secrets : Bangable quotient of Michelle Obama, Laura Bush and Hilary.

Cameos : John McEnroe, Chris Rock, Mariah Carey

Biggest Crime : Zohan bangs only women over 70 and super hot Emmanuelle Chiriquí is wasted in tossing glances which leaves Zohan stifffff.

Conclusion : The warring Middle East factions live happily ever after in New York while bringing down the real villain

Bottom Line : You don’t laugh with Zohan. You waste two hours with Zohan. You wish you could more than mess with Zohan!


PS: The movie has just made over 100 Million $ in US and is considered as one of the better Adam Sandler comedies in recent times. How dare we crib that Race and Singh is King are the two biggest hits of the year in India!

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!

Doubles, Triples and Quadruples (2008)

I admire Evam, even envy them. Karthik Kumar and Sunil Vishnu decided to quit their cushy corporate jobs to pursue their dream of a career in theatre .For the last four years they have been doing a very good job of regularly bringing in quality theatre. Thanks to my friends, I have had a chance to meet them and really like what they do and how they go about it.

Over the weekend at Rangashankara, Evam premiered their newest production -Doubles, Triples and Quadruples- a collection of short plays. The choice of plays was eclectic ranging from comical, to new found/ long lost loves, bizarre and portrayal of urban angst.Nothing wrong in that, but to convincingly shift from one mood/ setting to another, everything about the play needed to be absolutely top notch.

The lighting was haphazard, dialogue delivery not comprehensible at places and some of the performances left a lot to be desired. The acts that did work, included the newly married couple (Karthik and Kalyani) effectively bringing out their trepidations and doubts at the threshold.Albert & Sue (Sunil & Kalyani) “meeting “outside their counselor’s office having spent weeks observing each other seemed real and the foursome on the phone had the entire audience in splits. The rest were amateur in their portrayal and it almost seemed like an attempt to pack in as many emotions as one could in the 2 odd hours.

However Shakila Arun was an exception as she shone through all her performances. A truly versatile artiste who morphed effortlessly as she portrayed a 13 year old, a prostitute, a counselor and one scorned in love.

The interludes, which had the actors coming on stage to do a monologue was an interesting break between the plays which gave an insight to the actor’s personalities. Karthik Srinivisan’s confession of his first love and why it remained unfulfilled was truly endearing.

The collection of plays was compared to a wine drinking experience, packing in several emotions and culminating with a high. Definitely that didn’t happen for me, but sincerely hope like the wines, they do get better with age and more shows. Karthik and Sunil do need to live up to the high standards they have so wonderfully set for themselves.

Aamir(2008)

The reviews raved about the movie, was more than effusive in their praise, and was touted to be the best debut in ages for both the director and the lead actor. If only they hadn’t!

Aamir is a different film, with a very interesting premise. It covers a day in the life of the main protagonist Aamir, who is manipulated completely by a man on the other side of the phone. It realistically portrays Mumbai's underbellies and the helplessness of the man is brought out aptly by the well known TV actor Rajeev Khandelwal. However the movie takes way too long to make its point and the leaves too many key questions unanswered. Why is Aamir the chosen one? Why do things pan out the way they do?

The reviews made my expectations sky rocket. Yeah a decent attempt for sure, a masterpiece, not really.

And do try and get hold of the soundtrack, stays long in your mind after the movie is over

Sarkar Raj ( 2008)

http://www.sarkarrajthefilm.com/

Let me set the context right. My previous Hindi movie was Tashan, I was one of the few really unfortunate ones who endured RGV Ki Aag on day 1 and thought Sarkar was highly overrated. So obviously I walked into Sarkar Raj with low expectations.

The film like the first part is swamped in sepia tones, odd camera angles, and a loud background score. Every character spouts ‘profound’ lines like: “You cannot make an omelette without breaking an egg" and some not so profound ones about the thin line of difference between betrayal and misplaced loyalty.

The movie despite all this worked for me. The script was brave enough to keep the unpredictability factor high, the coming together of the jigsaw puzzle and the individual motivations of the characters made it an interesting watch. With extreme close ups dominating the frames, the performances had to match them. The A family or is it the B family is competent with the father proving again that he is the bigger B.

And finally RGV. Post his obituary being virtually written all over town , he is back delivering what he knows best and while the reviews have not been unanimously favorable again , the initial box office trends show that he has a hit on his hands .Watch out for Contract & Phoonk . The RGV factory has started churning again.