Ishqiya: Review

When Ishqiya‘s trailer came out in October last year, I got hooked, just in one go. It was clearly one the best trailers I’d seen in a long time! So today was the D-Day, the star studded premier of the movie, and I was lucky enough to get the passes.

Well, I’ll try to keep it simple and write what was my opinion. First of all, I thought it was a great ensemble of artists, from Naseeruddin Shah Sahab (Khalujaan) to Vidya Balan (Krishna Verma), Arshad Warsi (Babban Hussain) and of course, Vishal Bharadwaj, even though he wasn’t the director, yet you could make out it was his writing, it had his “essence”. This was Abhishek Chaubey‘s debut movie as a director, before this he wrote screenplay for Vishal Bharadwaj‘s earlier movies like Kaminey, Omakara etc. so probably that too justifies the “essence” I mentioned above.

Even though it was an ensemble of one of my all time favorite artists, unfortunately the movie didn’t work for me, and I’m all heartbroken writing this. I really had high expectations from it, but the whole storytelling went haywire. Half way through the movie I was looking for pieces of puzzle to put together, just so it could justify what was happening on the screen. First half was somewhat an intro, with hilarious dialogues, which is how most movies are. But, the main story and confusion began in the second half when things started to converge. Instead of converging at one point, the stories started to overlap each other. What could have been a great story, became complex for no apparent reason, plus there were some glitches in the movie, the kind of glitches I didn’t expect this movie to have. After the movie, there was small session with the entire cast of the movie, where Vishal Bharadwaj mentioned that this project was being worked on for over 2 years. Well whenever that happens, either we a get Great story or a Confused story. That’s probably what happened with Ishqiya, and when the movie was about to end, in my mind an episode of Entourage was running, because of the similarities. The one where Meddellin premiers at Cannes Film Festival and people walk in with big expectations post all the hype, and come out disappointed, but here people seemed to like it, or at least they said so. The freaky part: Abhishek Chaubey does resemble Billy Walsh (Character in Entourage, played director of the movie Meddellin) .

Anyway, back to the story, movie has been set in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, which happens to have the perfect small town feel to it. Like Vishal Bharadwaj‘s previous movies this too has the raw earthy feel to it, be it the accent, locations, dialogues, everything. Other than the story, what did work perfectly, were the performances, the three in lead were undoubtedly brilliant, but special mention to Alok Kumar, the kid who played Nandu, and Rajesh Sharma, owner of the KK Steel Co. (You might remember him as Munjal from Khosla Ka Ghosla), even though small roles they did deliver perfectly. However, it was really hard to catch Salman Shahid‘s dialogues (Mushtaq – Brother in law of Khalujaan), because of the accent he had in the movie.

-Tiny spoiler-

Apart from great performances, do look out for a passionate kiss between Arshad Warsi and Vidya Balan, well I’m mentioning this because I have NEVER seen such a kiss before in ANY Indian movie. I don’t know how elder people watching the movie took it, but I certainly found it as a sign that Filmmakers have started showing intimate scenes like they happen in real life, but not throw in just for the sake of showing it. Also, make sure you watch the movie without any distractions, because there are some really hilarious dialogues and strong language (read curses) in the movie which you might miss out if you don’t pay attention, and yeah, super songs as well.

Even though the movie fails in storytelling, watch it for the performances and dialogues, sheer brilliant. I still feel sorry, had so wished for the movie to be great. But yeah, one thing is certain; director Abhishek Chaubey has great potential.

P.S. Special thanks to my good friend Priya Mishra, for the passes.

Rating: 2.5/5

Year: 2010

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1345777

UP: Review by Abhishek Gurbani

Take by Guest Author Abhishek Gurbani

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Up is the first movie to be presented in Disney Digital 3-D, produced by Pixar Animation Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. So the expectations had to be high as always. Unfortunately, I was not able to catch the movie in theatres so what i saw was not the 3D version but thankfully it wasn’t a movie just about the 3D effects (as many of you would have thought after reading the first line of this review) This movie is one of the most entertaining and finest animated movie I have ever seen (and i mean it!) not just because of the superb animation quality which Disney Pixar is renowned for but also the content and the story. The story revolves around Carl, an old man who since childhood wanted to be an explorer and go on an adventure and in the pursuit of his dream he meets Ellie a tomboy girl who shares the same dream. As you expect Carl falls in love with Ellie and they get married; the sequence which follows is a classic example how the story can be made compact and short sequences can be made meaningful. Time passes by Ellie bids goodbye to the world and Carl without fulfilling her wish. What follows is the struggle and zest of an old man to fulfil his dead wife’s dream which is touching. The story is well supported by characters like Russell, a kid who is an explorer; Dug, a talking golden retriever and Kevin a large, flightless tropical bird. The movie in the initial minutes might seem like a cliché but wait till the beginning of adventure and you would get so indulged in the movie that you actually end up in tears in some of those emotional scenes. Hats off to the director Pete Docter whose first movie ‘Monster’s Inc.’ was an equally engrossing affair. To sum it “UP!’ this is one animated movie that you cannot afford to miss.

Ratings: 4/5

Year: 2009

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1049413

3 Idiots: Review

First of all, apologies for not posting anything for almost 2 months, blame: Exams. A lot happened during this time. Will post all that stuff, soon!

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This post has nothing on the controversy between the makers of the 3 Idiots and Chetan Bhagat, pure my take on the movie. Interested in reading that? Check out these posts on PFC and moifightclub.

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Now, again I’m too late for posting a review on 3 Idiots, much has been said already, from being the best movie of 2009 to “it’s better than Rang De Basanti“, to what not! Here’s my take, I’ll quote what I read on another blog, moifightclub, because that’s exactly what I thought after watching it last night: “RajKumar Hirani lied to all of us and made the same film again. Its Munnabhai B Tech.”.

People have been talking about how the movie is based on Chetan Bhagat‘s novel Five Point Someone and not, but I don’t know how many of you noticed how the movie is very similar to Munnabhai MBBS! Raju Hirani and Aamir Khan continue to make movies on social issues, which of course is not a bad thing. In 3 Idiots, issue that they tried to raise is the glitch in Indian Education system. As for the movie, to make things easier for you, what the movie is actually about, I came up with this small equation:

3 Idiots = FPS(Book) + Munnabhai MBBS + With a hint of Taare Zameen Par + Lots of Emotional moments + A superbly graphed script.

But does that mean it’s a bad movie? Not all! It’s the kinda movie you go to laugh, laugh and apparently learn a thing or two about life. Rajkumar Hirani and Amir Khan made sure to tickle the emotional and the comic balls of the audience at the same time! Which seems to be the new trend in all the Comedy movies these days, which I mentioned in the Ice Age 3 post as well.

3 Idiots is a good watch, but definitely not the best of 2009. You are sure to walk out the theater repeating some of the dialogs, laughing and remembering the some of the moments, like:

-Where students pray to God before their results are about to come out.

-The Silencer‘s “Balatkar speech”.

-One where Joy sings “Give me some sunshine“. The emotion and situation shown was brilliant! (That actually gave me goosebumps)

Being an Engineering student, I could relate to certain parts in the movie. But having said this, there ARE moments where the makers went overboard with “intelligence” of the IIT students or was it I.C.E., you’ll know what I’m talking about once you watch the movie.

As for performances, Aamir Khan (Rancho), R. Madhavan (Farhan Qureshi) and Sharman Joshi (Raju Rastogi), did complete justice to their characters, except for not “looking” their age. You cannot possibly make a 40 year old play 18, oh come on! Boman Irani did go a little over the top playing Veeru Sahasrabuddhe, whereas Kareena Kapoor (Pia) didn’t have any significant role in the movie, any other “pretty” looking actress would have been just fine. The surprise packages of the movie were Omi Vaidya, the actor who played Chatur Ramalingam (Silencer), Mona Singh (Pia’s sister), and Rahul Kumar (Millimeter), what smooth performances!

Despite all the humor and comic moments, movie failed to leave a mark on me, probably because using the same formula with a different wrapping paper doesn’t always work, but you are sure to have a good time watching it.

Rating: 3/5

Year: 2009

Director: Rajkumar Hirani

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1187043

Michael Jackson’s THIS IS IT

This was it! Finally it came out, with World wide release.

THIS IS IT, was nothing as I’d expected, but does that mean it was bad, NO! It is all about what the final curtain call show would have been (that was scheduled in London), had MJ not died.

As most of thought that this movie would be about “life” of MJ or probably something relating to his untimely death or his childhood or.. I think you get the drift, it didn’t have even a bit of all that.

THIS IS IT was made during the rehearsals for the show, and was to be kept in MJ‘s personal video archive. The 111 minutes long video shows some really jaw dropping dance moves and the themes for the show, nothing more nothing less.

You get to see how MJ used to be backstage and with the colleagues, real humble and perfectionist!

It was great to watch some of MJ rehearsing on some of his all time hits on the big screen,

like Thriller, Smooth Criminal, Black or White, Beat it.. and many more!

If you’re an MJ fan, like me, I bet you must have already seen it, in case you haven’t do watch it, for 1. It’s final tribute to MJ 2. It’s history in the making!

Rating: N/A

Year: 2009

Imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1477715/

Acid Factory

No, I wasn’t waiting for this movie, nor did I spend a penny on it. [Thanks to people at PVR, they invited me for Premier].

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Just when you thought the era of “inspired” movies was over, along came Acid Factory! Oh, what waste this movie was. Even though I haven’t seen the Unknown (The movie Acid Factory is inspired from) but just by reading the Plot, you can tell it is an exact copy, even the duration is same [95 mins (Acid Factory) 98 mins (Unknown)].With a cast like Fardeen Khan, Dia Mirza, Aftab Shivdasani and Dino Morea in the lead, I bet no had any expectations from it, but just to compensate that it had Manoj Bajpai, Danny Denzongpa and Irrfan Khan, but their presence really didn’t help. Former 4 actors had a same expressions on their face, or should I say no expression on their face. The “suspense” can easily be decrypted just half way though the movie, which makes seating for the second half unbearable. Anyway, other than the movie I have a constant thing running in my mind, how does the Censor Board work in India? I recently saw an interview of Madhur Bhandarkar who said, he had to edit out the movie in order to get it passed by the Board, even the nude scenes by Neil Nitin Mukesh, which were in total relevance of the story [Unreleased Movie: Jail]. Whereas we have Board passing insanely inappropriate half naked girls dancing around in an “Item Number” (Yeh Jism), which of course we all know, have no relevance in a movie moreover they give the U/A certificate! Major glitch in the system.

Getting back to Acid Factory, avoid it! With a little humor thrown in and no story present, this movie so not worth catching it. I wonder how did they manage to get producers.

Rating: 0.5/5 (Very generous)

Year: 2009

Imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1201557