Meri Padosan
Meri Padosan This is the story of those men who can go any length to achieve their ambition. The story starts with a couple who come from a small town to realize their dreams. Viju (Sanjay Mishra) is a clerk while Kavita(Sadhika Randhawa) is a housewife. They are living happily but their life becomes very hectic when a struggling director Shyam Gopal Verma comes to stay with two friends Prem (who is a media promoter) and Aslam (who is working in private bank). Every night they fight for some or the other thing and this gives problem to Viju and Kavita. Sometime Prem gets a chance to see Viju and Kavita's romance and he goes into flash forward mode.
One day Shyam sees a vacancy in Live India channel for a director. Live India is going to make a film based on a real life story and anyone can submit their proposal. Shyam is very happy to know all the details. Next day Shyam and his friend Prem reach Live India office and come to know that more than five hundred struggling directors have already applied for the film. Shyam fills the form and submits it on the counter. Now Shyam starts thinking what kind of story should he shoot and how is it going to be possible.One fine day Shyam is looking outside the window when he sees Viju coming from office and his wife Kavita lovingly waiting for him. As Viju enters the house, Kavita hugs him tightly. Viju becomes happy and starts kissing her. Shyam notices that there is a lovely chemistry going on between them and thinks that this can be a really nice story.He decides to shoot their entire romance without telling anyone. But he has no money so he sells his stuff and hires a camera for ten days. He starts to shoot their funny moments. What will happen in the end? Is he going to get the big break in films with this story? To find out more you need to check out Meri Padosan.
Heaven on Earth
The promos of Deepa Mehta's VIDESH - HEAVEN ON EARTH bring back memories of Jag Mundhra's PROVOKED, which also spoke of domestic violence. Sure, VIDESH - HEAVEN ON EARTH also looks at domestic violence, it's also about a Punjabi woman who continues to take the beatings silently on a foreign land, but the similarities end there. There's a twist in the tale in VIDESH - HEAVEN ON EARTH and that makes this film different from films of its ilk.
Partly based on Girish Karnad's play NAAG MANDALA and perhaps inspired by several true stories, Deepa tries to inject myth into the main story and that's one of the prime reasons why you don't take to the film completely.VIDESH - HEAVEN ON EARTH is an unconventional subject, but the moment a reptile slides into the story, it robs the film of realism. Your heart breaks every time the woman is subjected to physical abuse. You do relate to the character since you've either heard or watched tales of domestic abuse. But the sheshnaag part in the film is difficult to digest.Besides, there's a major flaw in the writing. The husband continues to indulge in physical abuse, but it's not clear why he comes across as a frustrated man. Not once does the director spell out the reasons why the husband behaves like a monster and keeps harming his wife, right under the nose of his family members.Yet, despite the hiccups, you can't deny the fact that Deepa has handled the material with sensitivity. Even the end -- you can predict the conclusion is well executed.Chand [Preity Zinta] is a young bride leaving her home in Ludhiana, India, for the cavernous landscape of Brampton, Ontario, where her husband Rocky [Vansh Bhardwaj] and his very traditional family await her arrival.Everything is new to Chand, everything is unfamiliar including the quiet and shy Rocky, who she meets for the first time. Chand approaches her new life and her new land with equanimity and grace. But soon optimism turns to isolation as the family she has inherited struggles beneath the weight of unspoken words, their collective frustration becoming palpable.Trapped in a world she cannot comprehend and unable to please her husband, Chand is desperate. Hope comes in the form of Rosa, a tough and savvy Jamaican woman who works alongside Chand in a factory where immigrant women from all over the world clean and press dirty hotel laundry.Rosa gives her a magical root advising her to put it in the drink. The root is supposed to seduce the one who takes it, making them fall hopelessly in love with the person who gives it to them. Chand's attempts with the magic root lead to surreal incidents.Deepa gets it right till the snake transforms into her husband and that makes the entire aspect so hard to believe. You can't relate to it anymore. The cinematography is dark at times. If the intention was to impart a gloomy and depressing tint, it doesn't work. And why this need for a B & W look at several places? Doesn't work!Preity delivers her finest performance to date. She displays the helplessness and pain that this character demands with gusto. It's at par with any powerful act by any international actor. Newcomer Vansh Bhardwaj is striking. Very rarely do first-timers enact their parts with such precision. Amongst supporting actors, Preity's mother-in-law and sister-in-law are believable.On the whole, VIDESH - HEAVEN ON EARTH works in parts, but it's not enough. At the box-office, the Indian market may not be too receptive to the film. It will have to look internationally to recoup the investment.
Ek - The Power Of One
This is the story if ache, sorry ek poker-faced killer and one horny cop who play a cat and mouse game as a chaotic spill over of characters from Imtiaz Ali's Jab We Met try hard to look like they are convinced they aren't in the wrong movie.But everything that can go wrong in a film does in Ek- The Power Of One.Decades ago, Raj Khosla had made Bambai Ka Babu about a man who replaces the missing son of a simple rustic family and learns a few lessons on humanism.Many years later Manmohan Desai reworked the same theme in a film called Roti where Rajesh hanna played the impostor son who takes over an impoverished son's life.Now in Ek it's the ceaselessly-stoic Bobby Deol who takes on the role of an impostor in a large joint family in Chandigarh bursting at the seams with caricature Punjabis who seem to specialize in making fools of themselves. The only members of this extended joint family to conduct themselves with dignity are Kulbhushan Kharbanda (superb as usual) and Zarina Wahab (utterly wasted).
What gives this high-velocity action flick a cutting edge is the fight sequences. Bobby Deol seems to replicate his bade bhaiyya Sunny's muscle power. When he hits the earth moves.The goon is done to soon when the Deol gets into the mood. Interesting Deol's character is shown to be a killer from adolescence. In the interestingly-conceived prelude the child pulls a gun out on a gangster in a car and fires at him with the aim to kill.Yup, this one learns young.
Ek- The Power Of One A subsequent attempt to just hurt a wily politician (Sachin Khedekar) goes horribly wrong (quite like this action-drama's outdated script). And Bobby daring ends up hiding in the bustle of a boorish household in Punjab where he's chased down by a trying-hard-to-be-cool-and -leery Nana Patekar.There are some arresting moments between the fugitive and the cop. The material is occasionally edited with speedy care (by Chirag Jain) to bring together various strands of the action in a pantomime of cohesiveness.Alas, the lose ends shriek out their protest. For Bobby Deol after Bichhoo and Badal playing the cold-blooded assassin comes naturally. He could sleepwalk through such a role.Nana Patekar is a livewire. But in the wrong character. The role of the randy cop shooting bullets and making lewd passes at the speed of a gun seems to be a corny carryover of Amitabh Bachchan's 'Sexy Sam' on Kabhie Alvida Na Kehna.Sam was sexy because the movie supported his ladies' man image. Nothing in Ek suggests even a remote connection with sophistication. This one causes a head-Ek.
Barah Aana
A mellow, mirthful at times moving tale of three North Indian migrants, this tale of tantalizing possibilities may not be Mr. Raj Thackeray's idea of an evening out. Dammit , it may not be ANYONE's idea of an entertainer. But for a discerning audience, Barah Aana brings in a sense of un-visited surprise.There are three main characters, a quiet driver Shukla (Naseeruddin Shah), a watchman Yadav (Vijay Raaz) and a waiter Aman (Arjun Mathur) all driven to the doors of despair but stopped in time by a self-directed sense of humour that saves them from self-destruction. The 3-way interactive story gathers momentum when the trio hits on an age-old formula for survival: crime.Superbly scripted by Raj Kumar Gupta who recently directed the riveting Aamir, Barah Aana derives its strength from the frailties and vulnerabilities of the three migrant characters who seem to be drawn into the dark side of life without knowing where they're heading. Debutant director Raja Menon seems to view the people in his plot with a reasonable degree of detachment. There's a sense of riveting finesse in the way these unsophisticated characters chart their course without self pity.Of course the film would've never worked without the cast. What does one say about Naseeruddin Shah without sounding completely like a fan? He's seen in two totally different avatars this week. Naseer's bullied embittered silently-seething driver's part in this film is as distant from his disoriented classical maestro's role in Firaaq as only Naseer can make them .Vijay Raaz, always in top form when given to play a man who has seen life without rose-tinted glasses , gives a sly snarling spin to his role. His performance has both bark and bite. Watch Vijay play the watchman.The youngest and most inexperienced member of the trio Arjun Mathur seen in sensitive parts in Farhan Akhtar's AIDS film Positive and Zoya Akhtar's Luck By Chance has a tough time holding his own against Naseer and Vijay Raaz and also holding his Bihari accent in place. But Mathur leaves a positive impression. Another riveting performance comes from Tannishtha Chatterjee as the flamboyant Rani who shocks you after her quiet performance in Brick Lane. She should be seen more often.
With the message on migrant's plight Barah Aana would hardly appeal to multiplex audiences. Films on lives of migrants whether it's Muzaffar Ali's Daman or Sudhir Mishra's Dharavi score high as cinematic works but low on mass appeal.See Barah Aana for its terrific cast, first-rate production values (Preeti Sethi's camera goes through Mumbai's lanes with the least fuss) and the director's firm grip on the grammar of grass-root politics
Lottery
Ever solved a jigsaw puzzle? The plot of LOTTERY is tougher to crack. This one pretends to be a thriller, a love triangle next, a whodunit later, a musical in between and ends up as something else altogether. Can't figure out what this film is all about, seriously.Besides, LOTTERY is meant to be the launch pad of singer Abhijeet Sawant. The sad news is, Abhijeet has chosen the wrong script to launch himself as an actor.Rohit [Abhijeet Sawant] is an accountant working in an ad agency. An anonymous message asks him to accept a challenge. He does so and he wins Rs. 3 lacs. The wheels of fortune are set in motion. There are more challenges and bigger rewards. In reality, there's no stopping now. The story takes a turn when Rohit is accused of murder. His life goes upside down The film fails on the script level itself. It leaves so many questions unanswered, you actually wonder what was the writer/director thinking when he wrote this script? Direction [Hemant Prabhu] is amateurish. The music is no great shakes either.Abhijeet needs to groom himself completely before he faces the camera next. The two leading ladies, Rucha Gujrathi and Manisha Kelkar, are decent. Sanjay Narvekar has a Nana Patekar hang-up. Mukesh Tiwari is wasted.On the whole, this lottery ticket is best avoided!
Selengkapnya.
