Dhobi Ghaat

I went to watch the movie Dhobi Ghaat on the very first day of it's release. Although in Delhi, I used to go for movies on the very first day of it's release, in Bombay I do not do it very often. There are two reasons: the ticket prices are very high in Bombay (specially on the 1st day of release) and its hectic to go out of the institute campus for me. But somehow I managed to do it on Friday. I went with an open mind to watch the movie and I guess that was a good attitude. This movie is certainly not like Aamir Khan's earlier movies. In fact, this is not a one man leading movie, every character has got equal importance: Munna (the Dhobi), Shai (the NRI banker), The newly married woman (I forgot the name of her character) as well as Aamir Khan. The movie is not like a story which begins somewhere and ends somewhere. There is no beginning and there is no end I think. Its a 90 minutes snapshots of typical Bombay life. It shows how different people from very different backgrounds come to this city and how their lives affect each other. Let me not tell you how the story goes since that you can find anywhere now. But I found this movie very different from any bollywood movies I have seen so far. The background music (Mostly acoustic guitar) by Gustavo Santaolalla was cool as well and reminds me of movies like Brokeback Mountain, the Motorcycle Diaries etc. And when my friend asked me whether I liked it or not (just after the movie was over), I was not being able to give a very straightforward answer, I had to think for sometime to realize that yes, I liked it :) I know this movie won't be a big hit in India where people like unrealistic movies with too many songs and dancing, but it's good to see that some people at least are trying to make a difference without worrying too much about their earnings. Hope it continues...

Aakrosh and Knock Out back to back!

Last night I watched the two recently released Bollywood movies Aakrosh and Knock Out back to back. As I was not feeling like doing anything after coming back from home, naturally watching any types of movies was the best idea to kill time. Fortunately these two movies did not disappoint me like typical Bollywood hit movies like Dabangg etc. These two movies are based on two very serious issues Indians must pay attention to in recent times: first the increasing honor killing incidents across the country (specially northern India) and the corruption in each and every department of our system. Aakrosh has shown the picture of rural India in a very realistic way. Killing each other in the name of caste, how the dalits have been suffering in those areas for a long time are shown in the movie. Ajay Devagan and Akshay Khanna have done a great job in the movie. Paresh Rawal, who is playing the role of a villain here, has also done appreciable job. I do not know the newspaper ratings for this movie, and I hardly care about ratings nowadays. They always give good ratings to crappy movies like Dabangg and almost overlook many good movies like Aakrosh. I will give this movie 4 star out of five. Talking about Knock Out, it tries to create an awareness among the Indians how a huge amount of public fund money is going every year to Swiss Bank accounts of various corrupted politicians as well as bureaucrats. Irrfan Khan and Snjay Dutt are in the leading role here. Both looked decent in their roles. However the plot of the movie is a direct copy of the Collin Farrel starer Phone Booth. Nevertheless, this movie deserves 3 star out of 5.

Rajneeti @Saturday 10 AM show

Today we (22 people from the hostel :P) went for Rajneeti, Prakash Jha's latest movie starring many versatile actors. As I expected based on Jha's earlier movies, this movie turned out to be a good one. I found it better than Jha's last movie Apaharan. Although Gangajal was perhaps better than this one. Like many other people I also thought that this movie will be based on Sonia Gandhi's life. But it turned out to be a mixture of many flavors. Among them are the Mahabharata, Godfather and a little bit of Gandhi (Sonia) family. The role of Nana Patekar ( who played a similar role like Krishna of Mahabharata) was mind-blowing. Arjun Rampal, Manoj Bajpai, Ajay Devgan were also amazing. Although Ranbeer Kapoor plays the main role in the movie (Arjun of Mahabharata), I did not find him extra-ordinary. Katrina was doing a good job if you compare her to Sonia Gandhi in the movie, her Hindi was perfectly matching with that of Sonia's ;). Although the movie was a bit long, there were no typical bollywood songs or item numbers to bore the audience, the songs were being played in the background only. However there were some scenes which are not much necessary, if omitted could have made the movie a little shorter. Anyway overall, it was a good entertainer and definitely worth sixty bucks ;)

Kites@Saturday 9 AM show

We went for Kites in the morning today. It got released yesterday. Although it got lots of hype but I was not having any expectation from it. I just went to spent 3 hours in an air conditioned theater away from Ahmedabad heat which has claimed couple of lives so far. And the best thing is it costs just forty bucks. Well the movie was neither too good nor too bad. The storyline of course was very weak, but the music, the cast, the choreography, the cinematography was very cool. Some of the locations in the movie were much much better than most of the hollywood movies. And the bollywood debutant Barbara Mori also did a much better job than many famous bollywood actresses without speaking a single Hindi word. Hrithik also did a great job which showed his dedications. If the story line had been strong, this could be the best movie of the year.

Oscar winners!

I watched Hurt Locker two days back. Never heard of it before it got the best motion picture award. Avatar got so much hype this time that all other movies remained quite unknown till the Oscar night. I have a copy of Avatar with me for last 3 months but haven't yet watched it. Hurt Locker was a nice movie based on the life of American soldiers in terror and war hit Iraq. Although the story is not so great but the movie has a good flow, I did not feel bored at any point. Unlike masala movies like Slumdog Millionaire which I still cant believe to be the best motion picture last year, movies like Hurt Locker never get much media attention. I also watched Inglourious Basterds day on Friday night. Christoph Waltz truly deserves the best supporting role award he got. The movie was also good, I just wish Hitler were killed in real life like the way those basterds kill him in the movie along with all senior nazi officers inside a cinema hall in Paris, it would have saved thousands lives. I am planning to watch Crazy Heart today which got the best male actor award, planning to get a copy of The Blind State for which Sandra Bullock got the best female actor award.

A very unusual weekend indeed!

This weekend has started in a very unusual way for me. I used to sleep till 12 or 1 pm during weekends, but today I got up at 7:20 am and went to watch the 8:45 am show of Love, Sex and Dhoka (a hindi movie released yesterday) in a multiplex nearby. It sounds odd, but the reason behind this compromise with good sleep is to save hundred rupees. The morning show tickets cost just 45 bucks. The movie is a low budget one with no known actors in it. But still it was a good entertainer. The movie is based on three different stories with a very tiny link in between, the first one was not so great and has a very sad and brutal end, however the second and third one were funny. The details can be found in standard movie reviews which I don't need to repeat here. However, I wont recommend anyone to spend 150 bucks on it, but it does worth 45 at least :P

Not so boring weekend!

To get rid of the sever boredom during weekend, I tried FarmVille in Facebook. I was never used to such stuffs like farmville, mafia, cafe world etc in facebook. But this weekend I joined farmville just to keep myself busy in something. Farming is not interesting at all, but at least I could spend the day by doing various things there. The most boring part of farmville is that it takes a long time for the crops to grow. Strawberry takes least time which is four hours. I don't think would be playing this on weekdays, but will return to the farm on weekends for sure when I don't have much options left.

Last night I watched Invictus by Clint Eastwood starring Morgan Freeman, Matt Damon. It was really nice. Although Matt Damon did a good job, I would give all the credits to Mr Freeman. He played the role of Nelson Mandela in the best way one can think of. It was nice to see how a simple rugby match brought a unbelievable and much needed change to the entire nation., ending the tension between black and white to a great extent. I would always recall one scene from the movie: while the final match of rugby world cup between South Africa and New Zealand was going on, some cops(white people) were listening to live updates in radio outside the stadium. One black kid (who looked like a beggar) came near them to listen to the radio, initially the cops scolded him asking him to go away. But as the match became more interesting with South Africa playing in a level much above the expectations, the cops hardly paid attention from the black kid. During the latter part of the match, the kid was sitting on the bonnet of the cops car and both the cops and the kid were cheering together. In the end when South Africa won the match, the cops were lifting and hugging the kid...it was really amazing. It seems Mandela could foresee this happening, that's why he gave so much importance to rugby during the time when the country needed much more attention from the president towards some other areas like law and order, poverty etc.

APKGK is a good timepass..

After watching most of the hollywood blockbusters which tops the IMDB best movie list, nowadays I have been trying my luck on some bollywood commercial movies. You can never trust newspaper reviews about bollywood commercial movies, the only way to know about the movie is to try it. I know it's quite tough, you can't go on trying all the movies since most of them are pathetic. You need to be very very lucky to find a good movie as the first one to pick up. I am lucky in that sense as I have picked up two good (better call them average) movies, Wake up Sid(WUS) and Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani (APKGK). I posted sometime back regarding my opinions on Wake up Sid. Yesterday I watched the second one. Surprisingly both of them have Ranbir Kapoor in the lead role and I found the character played by him in both the movies somewhat similar. An immature, careless guy discovering life and love which have made him matured, serious about life and all. APKGK is more like a comedy than WUS having some really funny and somewhat stupid scenes in between. Katrina is looking cute as always, Ranbeer looking stupid, confused as he always is. Although it is not a very good movie, at least I was not upset after watching it. I am dying to watch some good English or Hindi movie for a long time. The best movie I have watched in the last couple of months is a German one called "Der Untergang" (The Downfall) with English subtitles. It is a really good movie and worth watching at least once. Hope to see some good English/Hindi releases during the Christmas time.

Wake Up Sid

Yesterday I watched the movie called "Wake Up Sid" released recently starring Ranbeer Kapoor and Konkona Sen Sharma. Well, I won't say it is a good movie, but an average one. The story was all about Sid, son of a famous industrialist in Bombay and Ayesha, a struggling, hard-working young lady who has come from Calcutta to Bombay in search of work. When they first met, they were just on two opposite poles. Sid was very childish, immatured whereas Ayesha was well focused on her dream of getting established in Bombay. The story basically shows the transition of Sid from a stupid boy into a self-established hard working man. It has a happy ending where Sid becomes quite matured, hard-working and independent young man to make himself upto Ayesha's mark and live together. As it is obvious by now, the story has not much depth as we expect in a movie starring Konkona. I have no idea if I would have even bothered to write about the movie if Konkona were not there...:P. But I would obviously rate this movie thousand times better than movies like KANK, another Karan Johar film. The movie reminded me of a news which I saw in Times of India few days back which said Karan Johar had to apologise for using the word "Bombay" instead of "Mumbai" in this movie. I don't see what is wrong in it, after all so many people are still used to Bombay instead of Mumbai, Victoria Terminus instead of Chattrapati Shivaji Terminus etc and Karan might have just picked up two such real persons in his movie.