By Bollywood Hungama News Network

When love is not madness, it is not love…

Haal-e-Dil is about the same neurotic madness that one suffers from when stuck in the maze called love. It’s a young love story of people who’d go any lengths to loose themselves as smoke loses itself to the sky. They’d go any lengths to fuse that they’d not know where one ended and another began.

It’s the story of Sanjana for whom love is chaste and sacred. For her love is not part of life but life itself. It’s the story of Shekhar who keeps tripping for every second girl and loves to be in the perennial state of love not realizing that soon he is going to meet a girl who’ll change his existence. It’s the story of Rohit who would fall so deep in love that resurfacing would be not possible and he will stop at no barrier and boundary from achieving the love of his life

Sanjana suddenly discovers herself in the crossroad of life where she has to choose between her perfect love and a perfect stranger. What will you do when you find yourself falling for a man who is completely wrong for you and what if you are already in love with someone else?

Haal-e-Dil is about ordinary people about to do extraordinary deeds in the name of love.

By Taran Adarsh, IndiaFM

Some rules you need to follow before you embark on a journey called FOOL & FINAL? One, don’t wear your thinking caps. Here’s why: The film defies logic. Two, don’t ask questions. Here’s why: It’s all about entertainment, not enlightenment. Three, don’t look for answers. Here’s why: The motive is to keep you in splits.

FOOL & FINAL is all about transporting you to a world of make- believe. The sole intention is to offer you loads of entertainment in those 17 reels / 2.20 hours.

But, wait, there’s a hitch!

The execution of the material is done most stylishly, it’s akin to watching a comic book on screen. But the effort falls flat since there’s no script in the first place. The film packs in too many characters and too many incidents in those 17 reels. No issues with that, but director Ahmed Khan and his team of writers [Umesh Shukla, Abbas Hierapurwala] should’ve mixed, merged and unified the assorted characters and incidents skillfully so that the entire experience would be worth cherishing. Unfortunately, what happens here is that you root for a few individualistic sequences only, not the film in entirety.

What redeems FOOL & FINAL are the portions between Johny Lever and Paresh Rawal and a few splendid stunts in the narrative — Shahid’s bike chase at the start or Sunny’s fight to finish combat in the finale. But as you walk out of the auditorium, you strongly feel that Ahmed hasn’t utilized the golden opportunity of creating a paisa vasool entertainer.

To sum up, FOOL & FINAL disappoints!

FOOL & FINAL is all about a diamond that’s robbed by Chunkey Pandey in Mumbai and smuggled to Dubai. Chunkey’s uncle [Gulshan Grover], a don based in London, asks Chunkey to sell the diamond to his accomplice in Dubai, Asrani.

Arbaaz Khan, a don based in Dubai, gets to know of the diamond and also of Chunkey’s weaknesses — guns and gambling. Arbaaz asks Paresh Rawal to get on to the job. Paresh plans to carry out the robbery with his niece [Ayesha Takia], her boyfriend [Shahid Kapoor] and a cabbie [Johny Lever].

Viek Oberoi owes money to a don [Zakir Hussain], who conducts illegal boxing matches in Dubai. Meanwhile, Chunkey cannot resist the urge for guns and calls Arbaaz, who in turn asks Chunkey for a favor: Chunkey should bet on his behalf at Zakir’s illegal den. On Arbaaz’s instructions, Paresh, Shahid, Ayesha and Johny decide to kidnap Chunkey.

Sunny Deol has an altercation with Vivek’s fighter. Zakir asks Vivek to bring Sunny for the big fight. Sunny knocks down Zakir’s fighter. Zakir is seething with anger. In the meanwhile, Arbaaz walks away with the diamond. Subsequently, Zakir walks in and demands the diamond from Paresh and gang. Gulshan and Asrani also land up at Paresh’s place with Jackie Shroff and ask for the diamond.

FOOL & FINAL is meant to be a laughathon, but it excites in bits and spurts. The first half offers rich visuals and a few interesting gags, but the entertainment quotient isn’t high enough. It’s only when Johny Lever enters the frame that things intensify. The sequence in the car, with Ayesha’s dog swallowing the mobile, is hilarious and every time Paresh and Johny interact with one another, the smile on your face only widens.

But too many cooks spoil the broth. In this case, with so many characters around and so many stories running concurrently, the writer duo hasn’t been able to do justice to each of them. As a result, the viewer feels dejected because every sub-plot isn’t as interesting as the Paresh – Johny track.

Director Ahmed Khan tries to pack just about everything in those 2.20 hours. His fundas may be, let’s give the viewer a dash of everything that they expect from a masala movie. It’s like offering twenty well-garnished dishes to a foodie, but [a] most of the dishes [read, sub-plots] aren’t delicious and [b] the appetite doesn’t permit you to relish each and every dish in your plate.

Himesh Reshammiya’s music is in sync with the mood of the film. ‘Yeh Dooriyaan’ and ‘Tere Layee’ are visually enticing as well as superb in terms of choreography. Cinematography [Johny Lal] is excellent. The D.O.P. does complete justice to the eye-filling, glamorous locales of Dubai. Dialogues are witty at places.

FOOL & FINAL has a host of actors, but the ones who stand out are Johny Lever and Paresh Rawal. No two opinions on that! Johny is in form after a long, long time and the funster is the soul of the enterprise. The masses will simply love him. Paresh is excellent yet again and together with Johny, elevates the film to a major extent.

Shahid Kapoor is noticeable because he’s with Johny and Paresh all through. Even otherwise, he leaves a strong mark in dances. Ayesha Takia pairs off well with Shahid, but doesn’t have much to do really. Sunny Deol is okay, although his mukka will be liked by the hoi polloi. Vivek Oberoi hams in the little role that he has.

Sameera Reddy has no role either. Sharmila Tagore is wasted. Om Puri deserved a better deal. Jackie Shroff is hardly there. Chunky Pandey is passable. Ditto for Arbaaz Khan. Zakir Hussain does well. Gulshan Grover, Asrani, Vijay Raaz, Razzak Khan and Suresh Menon are mere gap fillers.

On the whole, FOOL & FINAL is all gloss, no substance. At the box -office, given the hype for the film as also the fantabulous promotion embarked by the magnanimous producer [Firoz A. Nadiadwala], the film will attract footfalls in the initial days, but the weak content will tell on the business in the initial weekend itself. Its sustaining power at the ticket window, therefore, is doubtful.

BollywoodEntertainment.com.au Rating: 2

Write your own review on this movie! Comment Below!

By Taran Adarsh, IndiaFMTill the ‘multiplex culture’ came to India, a majority of Hindi movies packed multiple stories in those three hours. The stories were connected to one another and would culminate into one climax. But, of late, diverse stories are packed in those two hours. These stories run parallel, but have one common end.

In 2007 itself, SALAAM-E-ISHQ and HONEYMOON TRAVELS PVT. LTD. tackled six stories at one go. Director Milan Luthria treads a similar path as he handles three parallel stories in HATTRICK, using cricket as the setting.

HATTRICK is pretty much like the sensex. The graph of the film is erratic. It goes up and down at regular intervals. There are interesting moments in the film, especially in the first hour, but the film stagnates just when you think everything is going fine.

The dilemma of the characters is well depicted. Nana’s khadus nature [no smile, no emotion, he’s completely detached from the simple pleasures of life], Danny’s cricket addiction [it’s cricket and only cricket for him], Kunal and Rimi’s rocky relationship [since the wife is attracted to cricketer Dhoni] and Paresh Rawal’s stubborn attitude [dreams of acquiring the British citizenship] seems straight out of life. All this is fine till the intermission card flashes on screen.

By Taran Adarsh, IndiaFMNever judge a book by its cover. That holds true for films as well. A stylish promo or a fascinating billboard could raise your expectations and compel you to rush to a nearby movieplex to watch the film. But, alas! All that glitters is not gold.

RED – THE DARK SIDE has generated tremendous hype over the weeks due to its eye-catching promotional teasers. Unfortunately, watching the film is akin to flying in an aircraft that’s run out of fuel midway. It starts off well, you are hooked to the goings-on, the game begins… But the fizz settles down sooner than expected.

What’s wrong with RED – THE DARK SIDE? Plenty of things! Most importantly, the writing [story-screenplay: Manoj Tyagi] is outright tacky. It vacillates between komsi-komsa to amateurish to confused.

But the reason why RED – THE DARK SIDE falls like a pack of cards is because you know that the lady is playing games. You know that she has a hidden agenda. You know that she’s out to use Mr. Millionaire. You realize all this because you’ve witnessed similar themes in the past.

So when the cat is out of the bag, you aren’t shocked. On the contrary, you break into a big yawn. Also, the way the writer rushes up things — demystifying the shadyantra — you wonder if he knows the basics of screenplay writing. The climax is the lifeline of any thriller, but in RED – THE DARK SIDE, the culmination to the story acts as a spoilsport.

By Taran Adarsh, IndiaFMTake a bow, Deepa Mehta.

Deepa Mehta’s body of work includes several noteworthy films, notable among them being EARTH and FIRE. But she reaches the pinnacle with WATER, her most accomplished work so far. Okay, WATER didn’t really win the coveted Academy Award, but film aficionados have given their mandate, showering it with accolades. That, to put it bluntly, is a far bigger achievement than winning the coveted statuette.

In the past, reputed names such as Shakti Samanta [KATI PATANG, ARADHANA], Yash Chopra [DAAG], Ramesh Sippy [SHOLAY], Raj Kapoor [PREM ROG], Rituparno Ghosh [CHOKHER BALI] and Ravi Chopra [BAABUL] depicted the plight of widows. Sometime back, SHWET – WHITE RAINBOW [Sonali Kulkarni] also revolved around widows and their journey to overcome the societal stigma.

WATER is an exquisite drama that works because it encompasses so much in those 2 hours — life, laughter, tenderness and tragedy. Despite its simplistic plotline, it manages to stir your soul, grip your heart and transport you to an era which many of us haven’t experienced. Also, not once does the film meander into sub-plots or take you away from the core issue. At the same time, it’s not preachy, nor does it get melodramatic.

To sum up, WATER is a remarkable piece of cinema. It’s a must-see for all those who appreciate qualitative and refined cinema. Without doubt, the final chapter in Deepa Mehta’s trilogy [FIRE, EARTH] is her best!

By IndiaFM News BureauAKSHAY KUMAR as ARJUN

Akshay Kumar is Arjun, whose joy knows no bounds when he marries the beautiful and sophisticated Jazz. But the joy soon turns to despair when he realizes this marriage means nothing to her and she is determined to marry her British boyfriend. As a man who is forced to watch his wife romancing another, as the determined lover who will go to any lengths to make his beloved happy, Akshay’s sensitive but strong; helpless but determined Arjun will win everybody’s hearts. Will stubborn Jazz be the exception?

By IndiaFM News BureauThe subject of ‘Apne’ is born out of the most important aspect of Indian life – Family. Indian men have time and again sacrificed their dreams of winning the world over to keep their families intact.

An ex-boxer Baldev Choudhary (Dharmendra) has had a stain in his boxing career. He wanted to wash it with his son Angad’s (Sunny Deol) success, but times were hard and a financial crunch kept him from achieving this dream. Though Angad pulled through fine, Baldev never forgot who ruined his chance to wash the stain.

An opportunity strikes Baldev in the form of a T.V. Show. He trains a local boy to get into this media hyped boxing show, but is ditched for a better coach at the last minute. Baldev’s younger son Karan (Bobby Deol) has just launched his first music album. Realizing his father is in crises of his life, he gives up his dream of a musical career to get into the game of boxing.

Karan works hard and wins all through thinking that his victory will bring the two pillars of his family together. After winning within the nation, he wins all over the world. The final match is with the current world heavy champion. The match goes fine, but Karan is tricked and he ends up paralyzed in a hospital bed.

Baldev, who wanted to wash a stigma is now about to loose his son. He feels like killing himself. Angad steps in to turn the game upside down and bring his father the happiness of a lifetime.

By Subhash K. Jha, Indo-Asian News ServiceFilm: “Eklavya: The Royal Guard”; Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Saif Ali Khan, Vidya Balan, Sharmila Tagore, Boman Irani, Jackie Shroff, Jimmy Shergil; Director: Vidhu Vinod Chopra; Rating: ** 1/2

Can form, no matter how glorious, be a substitute for content? In “Eklavya”, lack of content isn’t a problem. It’s the tense and dark nature of the content that proves to be a dismaying impediment to enjoying the virility of Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s storytelling.

How do we define the plot of “Eklavya”? It partly borrows the dark, indefinable pathos of Shakespeare’s tragedy and partly reverts to the palatial pathos of the Mughal Empire where patricide frequently collided with complex Oedipal equations. “Eklavya” takes us into a territory totally unexplored and designed to create an ethos of infinite resonances.

By Taran Adarsh, IndiaFMSometimes, interesting concepts evaporate into thin air thanks to inept writing. That’s one of the prime reasons why KUDIYON KA HAI ZAMAANA suffers!

The premise — borrowed from the popular TV series SEX AND THE CITY — can easily be redesigned into an interesting cinematic experience, but the writing is so excruciatingly weak that you want to ask debutante writer-director Amar Butala, Yeh kya ho raha hain?

Sure, KUDIYON KA HAI ZAMAANA boasts of some entertaining moments, but the lows outnumber the highs in those 16 reels. The writing lacks the power to keep your attention arrested, to put it bluntly.

Director Amar Butala could’ve explored newer horizons with a chick flick. Unfortunately, what comes across is neither inventive nor engaging. A terrible waste of a terrific opportunity!

KUDIYON KA HAI ZAMAANA revolves around four friends — Mayuri [Rekha], Natasha [Vasundhara Das], Kanika [Kim Sharma] and Anjali [Mahima Chaudhary]. Even though they aren’t of the same age, they have grown to be the best of friends. They keep meeting at a beauty salon where they go to pamper themselves. In between the facials, manicures and pedicures, they have become the best of friends.

Anjali is the cause of much envy for the remaining three. Carefree and fancy-free, Anjali dates men all the time and has a lot of fun. Another habit of Anjali that really annoys her friends is that she always bets with them, on almost anything and everything under the sun. And she always wins! The three want to beat her just once.

Anjali had once bet that she would never marry till she’s 25 and so Mayuri, Natasha and Kanika decide to find a man for her and win this one bet. But things go topsy-turvy when each of them decide to outdo the other and find a man for Anjali. Meanwhile, Anjali meets Amar [Ashmit Patel] and falls in love with him.

Anjali now has not one, two but four men wooing her. A dramatic confrontation tears the friends apart when Anjali realizes the game plan.

With an innovative concept on hand, debutante director Amar Butala could’ve worked wonders by balancing the hilarious and emotional moments beautifully. Sadly, barring a handful of scenes, neither do the light moments evoke mirth nor do the emotional moments make you moist eyed or tug at your heart strings.

The light moments are far from funny. Right from the start — the three ladies [Rekha, Kim, Vasundhara] zeroing on guys of their choice [Sanjit Bedi, Nikhil Chinappa and Ashwin Mushran, respectively] and the method adopted by the three bachelors to woo Mahima — looks completely farcical. If the intention was to make you laugh, sorry, it doesn’t!

The second hour goes on an altogether different track. Ideally, the film should’ve ended when Rekha realizes her folly and sorts out the problems. Instead, the narrative starts focusing on Rekha’s failed relationship with her fourth husband [Sachin Khedekar] and what follows is one lengthy scene and an unwanted ‘Din Dhal Jaye’ song [rendered by Rekha herself], which adds to the boredom.

Even the surrogate advertising [Lays Wafers] is crudely handled. Whether Vasundhara is having her pedicure done in a beauty parlour or having dinner with Mahima in a restaurant or being rushed to a maternity home [she's pregnant], she seems to be clutching on to the wafer packet all the while, holding the wafer packet right into the camera. Irritates big time!

Climax too is weak. In fact, Ashmit’s idea of bringing in the baraat at the dot of 12 so that Mahima wins the bet is very filmy.

Amar Butala’s direction is passable, but it’s the writing that spoils the show. Iqbal Darbar and Yasin Darbar’s music is truly melodious. Besides the catchy title track, the two romantic songs [Ashmit-Mahima] are easy on your ears. A.K.N. Sebastian’s cinematography is inconsistent. Dialogues are witty and at times, saucy and spicy. But why this generous dose of English at several places?

Rekha does an okay job, but goes over the top in the second hour. Mahima Chaudhary’s outfits are only getting skimpier and outrageous with each passing year. Dressed in skimpy outfits and indulging in a passionate lip-to-lip kiss with Ashmit is what you remember most of Mahima in this flick. Kim Sharma needs to take lessons in acting. Vasundhara Das is equally wooden.

Ashmit Patel is strictly functional. Sachin Khedekar is natural. Nikhil Chinappa, Gaurav Kapoor, Sanjit Bedi, Kabir Sadanand and Ashwin Mushran are mere gap fillers. Upasana Singh screams her lungs out in the lone hospital scene.

On the whole, KUDIYON KA HAI ZAMAANA is a poor show with a lame script as its main handicap. At the box-office, this one’s a non-starter!

BollywoodEntertainment.com.au Rating: 1

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By Taran Adarsh, IndiaFMCinema- going experiences, like culinary encounters, can either stimulate you or put you off completely. When you enter a cineplex to watch Arjun Rampal’s first outing as a producer, I SEE YOU, you expect to watch a soft-on-your-senses, feel-good multiplex movie since the promotions have been very specific, very direct on that front.

I SEE YOU, directed by debutante Vivek Agrawal, is targeted at the multiplex junta, but right intentions don’t necessarily translate into right films. The problem with I SEE YOU is that it works in bits and spurts, not in entirety.

It’s not blasphemous to be inspired by a Hollywood film [JUST LIKE HEAVEN; starring Reese Witherspoon, Mark Ruffalo], but writer Suresh Nair and director Vivek Agrawal should’ve ensured that the desi adaptation appeals to Indian sensibilities and is captivating enough from start to end. Sure, I SEE YOU has its share of interesting moments, but the recipe [screenplay] used for cooking this dish lacks a few vital ingredients.

To sum up, I SEE YOU is the kind of film that works best on the tube or DVD circuit. As far as its theatrical business is concerned, it might find its share of advocates in a handful of multiplexes of Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Bangalore mainly, but even that segment of viewers would be minimal.

By Taran Adarsh, IndiaFMPriyadarshan has attempted varied genres over the years. His body of work includes some thought-provoking films as well as films that defy logic but nonetheless cater to the hoi polloi. Of late, the supremely talented storyteller has trained his sights on one particular genre — comedy.

BHAGAM BHAG, his new outing, charters a similar path. At least that’s the impression you get when you look at its qualitative promos. After a breezy first half, you realize that there’s more to BHAGAM BHAG. It’s not just a comic fare. It transforms into a murder mystery.

Nothing wrong if Priyan packs two diverse genres in one film, but the problem is that the comedy works and the whodunit doesn’t!

Let’s examine the two halves of BHAGAM BHAG minutely. Analysis of Part 1 first:

* Lock your brains and throw the key in the sea as the curtains go up and BHAGAM BHAG unfolds. Remember, don’t look for logic, don’t ask questions.

* The escapades of Akshay-Govinda-Paresh are truly entertaining. In fact, howlarious at times. A number of comic scenes are the mainstay of the enterprise. The first half, to put it rightly, is paisa vasool entertainment!

By Taran Adarsh, IndiaFMMore than a decade ago, Sohail Khan was planning to turn director with a script that would star Jeetendra’s nephew Abhishek Kapoor in the lead. The project didn’t materialize; Sohail made his directorial debut with AUZAAR [Salman Khan, Sanjay Kapoor], Abhishek too got launched as an actor by someone else. Now, Sohail and Abhishek team up in different roles: Sohail is the actor, Abhishek the director.

Let’s face it! On face value, ARYAN doesn’t generate curiosity, like one of those biggies around the corner. But the film, starring Sohail Khan in the lead and directed by actor turned director Abhishek Kapoor, takes you by complete surprise as the reels unfold.

If the promos of ARYAN give an impression that the film is all about boxing, you’re partly right. Boxing is an integral part of the storyline, but the film has much more to offer. It’s also about the relationship between a husband-wife and the ups and downs in their relationship.

In most cases, you do notice some raw edges when you watch a film directed by a first-timer. But Abhishek Kapoor seems to have done his homework pretty well and the deft handling of the subject matter deserves highest praise. In fact, his handling of the emotional, tense and thrilling moments in the film will leave you spellbound.

By Taran Adarsh, IndiaFMLet’s clear the myth pertaining to KABUL EXPRESS within the film industry!

Nasty naysayers have been text-messaging that KABUL EXPRESS is a documentary, a dry film that talks of post-Taliban days in the battered Afghanistan. Also, those looking for some cheap naach-gaana kind of entertainment in this Yashraj enterprise are bound to be disappointed since KABUL EXPRESS may star known names in its cast, but debutante director Kabir Khan, a known documentary maker, believes in enlightenment, not entertainment!

After having watched KABUL EXPRESS, all you want to do is hit the blokes hard for spreading malicious stories about the film. Agreed, KABUL EXPRESS traverses a different path and Kabir Khan is a documentary maker, but KABUL EXPRESS is not a documentary at all. It’s a ‘proper’ Hindi film — a thriller to be precise — that dares to tackle a difficult and different theme.

Besides the subject matter that’s its USP, the film takes you to Afghanistan — a country most of us haven’t visited, as tourists or as moviegoers. Yes, DHARMATMA and KHUDA GAWAH did visit Afghanistan, but the post-Taliban Afghanistan hasn’t been witnessed on the Hindi screen. That makes KABUL EXPRESS a novel experience indeed!

Films depicting social themes were extremely popular in the 1960s and later, in the 1980s. But, of late, paarivarik themes are relegated to the small screen and even if a film-maker dares to tackle such a theme for the big screen in this era of urbane themes and multiplex films, a section of moviegoers [read critics] are quick to label the efforts as ‘outdated’ and ‘regressive’.But VIVAH, four weeks ago, and BAABUL, this week, prove the detractors wrong!

BAABUL tackles the issue of widow re-marriage, an issue the late Raj Kapoor successfully raised in PREM ROG [Rishi Kapoor, Padmini Kolhapure]. But comparisons between PREM ROG and BAABUL wouldn’t be right, except that both talk about the rehabilitation of a young widow.

In terms of genre, BAABUL tackles a purely Hindustani issue, like the recent VIVAH. But let’s quickly add that Sooraj R. Barjatya and Ravi Chopra’s storytelling techniques are as diverse as chalk and cheese. While Barjatya adopts a desi approach for just about everything, Chopra takes a desi theme and gives the film an urbane feel. But the commonality is that both Barjatya and Chopra cater to the same set of viewers: Families.

By Taran Adarsh, IndiaFMCut the crap… Cut the gyan… Let’s come to the point straightway: Is DHOOM 2 as big as its hype? Does it meet the monumental expectations? Or is it a gas balloon with a leak?

Yes, DHOOM 2 works big time and here’s why…

* Very rarely do you come across Hindi films that marry form and content so beautifully. DHOOM 2 is cool, but beneath the sheen there’s substance too.

* Mounted on an extravagant scale, the film is a visual delight. The film travels from one breath-taking locale to another in those 16 reels, often making your jaw drop to your knees thanks to the sweeping impact it makes.

* For any sequel to score high marks, it ought to be embellished with pulse-pounding moments. DHOOM 2 is a hi-octane thriller and the thrills, stunts and pace — vital for any thriller to strike a chord — are sure to keep you on the edge from Scene A to Z.

* Most importantly, DHOOM 2 delivers what it promises: Escapist cinema at its best!

Any hiccups? Not really, but the music could’ve been better. That’s about it!

Renowned heart specialist Dr. Viren Goenka (Rajit Kapoor), his wife Sanjana (Konkona Sen Sharma) and their seven year old daughter Anishka (Jhanak Shukla) are a happy family in Mumbai. Their joys have just multiplied with Viren being honoured with a prestigious award for his contribution to the medical world.Viren is all set to visit New Delhi to receive this award in a grand function. He promises his daughter to take her for a fabulous family vacation once he returns. But fate had something else planned for Viren and his family.

Destiny strikes hard against them and Anishka is kidnapped under Sanjana’s nose. She is startled with the presence of a creepy man named Krish in her house. Krish tells her that Anishka will be fine as long as Sanjana and Dr. Goenka follow his instructions.

While Krish keeps Sanjana in the house, his partner Roohi keeps Viren confined in his hotel room and their third associate Kabir holds Anishka at a remote location. The kidnappers keep strict half-hour checks with each other by cell phones, and if all goes as planned, the whole act would take only 24 hours. The kidnappers set the ransom to a whopping amount of Rs 3 Crore.

It doesn’t take much for Viren and Sanjana to realize that abiding by the kidnappers’ rules is the best thing that they could do to save their daughter’s life. Viren mortgages everything possible, including his dream hospital project and his house and somehow manages to collect Rs 3 Crore in just 24 hours, an act next to impossible being trapped at one place.

Bhagam Bhag is produced by Shree Ashtavinayak Cinevision Ltd and Popkorn Motion Pictures Private Limited, and is directed by Humor king Priyadarshan. The story goes as follows.Paresh Rawal has a theatre group in India and he performs shows all over the country. Akshay and Govinda along with others are actors in the group. Both are very naughty natured guys who never miss any chance to flirt with girls, even the girls in the group. At the completion of one show, an organizer offers Paresh’s group to perform 30 shows in England. They all get very excited but as per the contract they need to leave for England on the same day. Unfortunately the heroine of the play opts out due to Akshay’s misbehavior.

They reach London and through Rajpal, a taxi driver, Govinda and Akshay try to find out a girl for their play but it leads to many misunderstandings and a series of funny sequences. In this process, Govinda and Akshay fall into trouble involving a drug baron and other mishaps.

Thereafter, the trio discovers a girl (Lara Dutta), who suffers from amnesia to act in their drama and just as Akshay and Lara fall in love, her memory returns and it brings chaos into their lives, including a murdered husband!

From here the story leads to its climax in which a major conspiracy gets exposed.

Risk is a story of an honest and upright cop Suryakant (Randeep Hooda), who is struggling through a dilemma. One risk can change his life. But he realizes his job is full of risks and doing his duty honestly is the toughest job. He is standing at the crossroad of a dilemma of serving his duty or be committed to his family or his love Shradha (Tanushree Datta), as they pay a heavy price for his honesty.

“Risk” is the other side of the cop’s life. It’s the jeopardy his family faces for standing by him and his commitment to his uniform. His victory has a heavy price attached to it. This thriller with family backdrop is shot in various locations like Bangkok, Dubai, Austria and Mumbai.

Randeep Hooda plays the righteous and courageous ‘Khaki bearer’. Carving a strong, confident and gutsy police officer that stands by his commitments to his uniform. Tanushree Dutta plays opposite Randeep, a dancer in the movie and veteran actor Vinod Khanna plays the lion in the den, with a new, stylized avtar as a don.

This movie is the other side of the story, an honest cop standing of a crossroad of a dilemma to take a risk. His job itself is a tough risk and doing it honestly a tougher job. It’s a movie with a very strong character and hard-hitting story, which conveys a message and not the motives. Risk salutes the courage of those honest officers who are strangled in this system and still doing their duty in true sense not for the name or fame.

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By Taran Adarsh, IndiaFMLock your brains in the cupboard, throw your thinking caps out of the window, fasten your seat belts, hold your breath…

Sangeet Sivan, the man behind the thoroughly enjoyable madcap entertainer KYAA KOOL HAI HUM, is ready to unleash his new masaledaar entertainer on money and diamonds. His new outing, APNA SAPNA MONEY MONEY, belongs to the same family as K2H2, but the difference is, there’re eleven characters this time around. Oh yes, there’s a dog too this time!

Years ago, Brij Sadanah made a rib-tickling comedy with Ashok Kumar and Pran called VICTORIA NO. 203. It was all about the precious diamonds being hidden in a horse carriage [Victoria]. APNA SAPNA MONEY MONEY also charters a similar path. A gangster’s moll hides the booty in her sandal and the assorted eleven characters, not remotely connected to one another, come lusting for it [diamonds] in the end.

Sivan’s fundas are evident at the very outset. APNA SAPNA MONEY MONEY is not for those looking for path-breaking cinema. APNA SAPNA MONEY MONEY is not for the pseudo critics. APNA SAPNA MONEY MONEY is not for the hi-gentry that loves to pop champagne at Page 3 events.

It’s for the aam junta that looks for non-stop entertainment.

APNA SAPNA MONEY MONEY rests on a waferthin plot, but is loaded with nonsensical [and juvenile] humor that makes you laugh at regular intervals. Sure, this comic caper has too many characters and Sivan and writer Pankaj Trivedi’s narrative goes on and on in the second hour. Also, the climax loses its sheen for this very reason [all eleven characters need to have a conclusion after all]. But you overlook the flaws since APNA SAPNA MONEY MONEY was never in the race for the Oscars!

To sum up, APNA SAPNA MONEY MONEY is a decent time pass flick that delivers what it promises: Tadka [glamour], jhatka [skin show], masti [jokes], mazaak [laughter]… most importantly, the escapism form of entertainment that appeals to the hoi polloi.

APNA SAPNA MONEY MONEY revolves around a bunch of madcap characters that eat, drink, sleep and worship money. The story revolves around a mechanic [Shreyas Talpande], a conman [Ritesh Deshmukh], a dancer [Koena Mitra], an upright cop [Suniel Shetty], an obsessed father [Anupam Kher] and his homely daughter [Riya Sen], a tabela owner [Rajpal Yadav], a ruthless gangster [Chunkey Pandey], a deadly don [Jackie Shroff] and his moll [Celina Jaitley] and an unpredictable dog [Casper].

If one runs after money, the other runs after love and the one who runs after love eventually runs after money. A dramatic turn evolves when all the characters start looking for hidden diamonds that are worth Rs. 50 crores.

APNA SAPNA MONEY MONEY defies logic from start to end. Writer Pankaj Trivedi borrows characters and incidents from real and reel life to make a funny film. A few jokes are indeed amusing, but there are times when the gags fail to evoke mirth.

Ritesh and Anupam’s scenes are hilarious. So is the Rajpal Yadav track [he does a takeoff on Big B from SARKAR]. Chunkey’s portions also make you flex your facial muscles. But the love story [Shreyas-Riya] looks lifeless, the Ritesh-Koena prem kahani is equally listless, the don [Jackie] is reduced to a caricature and the climax, which should’ve been thoroughly enjoyable, falls flat.

What also goes against the film is that the narrative lacks the consistent wit-n-humor of KYAA KOOL HAI HUM. Sivan’s execution of the subject is perfect and the idea to make Ritesh change into various get-ups is indeed brilliant. In fact, Ritesh’s final get-up [of Shreyas’ aunt] is the best part of the enterprise. But how one wishes Sivan would’ve [i] Opted for fewer characters, [ii] Utilized the dog in some way or the other, [iii] Opted for a better climax.

Pritam’s music is strictly komsi-komsa. Barring the title track, the film lacks the hit tunes one associates with Mukta Arts’ productions. Ramji’s cinematography is eye-filling. Dialogues are enjoyable at times, but corny at places.

APNA SAPNA MONEY MONEY has so many characters that it’s difficult to carry each one home after the show has concluded. But if there’s one actor who’s bound to make heads turn with a smash performance, it’s Ritesh Deshmukh. It’s a challenge for any actor to portray multiple roles in one film, but Ritesh gets to portray four here and he takes to each role with relish, enjoying every bit of it. He works the best as Shreyas’ aunt who flirts with Anupam Kher.

Anupam Kher is in terrific form yet again. In fact, Anupam is so good here, you actually wonder if anyone else would’ve been able to carry off the part with as much flourish. Chunkey Pandey is fantastic. After watching him in APNA SAPNA MONEY MONEY, all you want to ask him is, Where were you hiding all this while? Rajpal Yadav delivers yet another knockout performance that’s sure to be talked about. Suniel Shetty is lovable as the honest cop.

Amongst ladies, Celina Jaitley is the best of the lot. She looks gorgeous and enacts her role with rare confidence. The girl is gradually evolving into a fine actor. Koena Mitra is alright. But the writer hasn’t done justice to her part. Even Riya Sen is relegated to the backseat.

Jackie Shroff doesn’t work. Shreyas Talpade’s role is oh-so-clean, which looks fake in a film of this genre. However, he enacts his part well. Sanjay Mishra is competent. Vrajesh Hirjee, Vijay Patkar, Bobby Darling and Avtar Gill lend decent support.

On the whole, APNA SAPNA MONEY MONEY is a time pass entertainer targeted at the aam junta. Don’t look for logic in the film and chances are you wouldn’t be disappointed. At the box-office, the patronage by its target audience [masses and youth] as also a favorable opening response should help this medium-budget film make decent profits in the final tally.

BollywoodEntertainment.com.au Rating: 2.5

By Taran Adarsh, IndiaFMUrban themes with style and attitude are the order of the day. And with the multiplex junta in India as also NRIs zealously giving their mandate to these movies, metro-centric themes/issues are being dished out by dream merchants relentlessly. The tide tilts towards contemporary themes concerning the urban Indian, while paarivaarik issues are consigned to television soaps. That’s the trend of late!

Sooraj R. Barjatya’s VIVAH does a complete about-turn. It is reminiscent of the cinema of yore. It re-introduces you to a world many of us may have forgotten thanks to the barrage of modern themes. It re-introduces you to the traditional side, without getting orthodox.

VIVAH is very desi, very Indian at heart, seeped in Hindustani emotions. It talks of familial bonding. It packs in loads of desi sentiments in those 2.48 hours. It faithfully follows the tradition of Rajshri movies of providing unadulterated entertainment. But VIVAH is not without its share of blemishes. And since this is a Sooraj R. Barjatya film, you just can’t overlook the flaws: Its slow narrative [in the first half especially] and sub-standard music [Ravindra Jain].

Like all Sooraj R. Barjatya films, the best is reserved for the penultimate reels and VIVAH is no exception. Deep inside, you know that a storm is brewing and it explodes in the second hour. You have a nagging feeling that one of the characters might create problems. But the twist in the tale is completely unexpected. It’s unconventional, yes, and therein lies its strength.

To sum up, VIVAH is not in the league of Sooraj’s first two films [MAINE PYAR KIYA and HUM AAPKE HAIN KOUN] in terms of content and music. Nonetheless, it has a strong second half and an equally strong emotional quotient to appeal to the Indian junta that tilts towards paarivaarik films, especially the family audiences.

Prem [Shahid Kapoor] may be an eligible bachelor, but he is not yet ready for marriage. He agrees to meet Poonam [Amrita Rao] just to please his dad [Anupam Kher] and finds a woman he can really grow to love.

An awkward, formal exchange of words grows into a deep, meaningful conversation as Prem and Poonam soon discover that they are soul mates. Poonam, an orphan, has grown up in a small town, where her Chacha [Alok Nath] has brought her up. Chachi [Seema Biswas], however, is jealous of Poonam’s beauty, simplicity and charm, as her own daughter Chothi [Amrita Prakash] is overshadowed.

Gentle, soft-spoken Prem, the scion of one of Delhi’s most prosperous business houses, may have studied abroad, but retains his respect for family traditions and values. Prem and Poonam are engaged and the marriage is scheduled to take place after six months.

Prem and Poonam now enter the most magical and romantic time of their lives. Just when everything is set for the wedding, a crisis puts their love through a trial by fire.

In terms of scripting, VIVAH is structured on the lines of HUM AAPKE HAIN KOUN. The first hour as well as the start of the second hour focuses on light moments and songs. But the film changes gears twenty minutes after the second half begins. While the light moments as also the songs of H.A.H.K. were magnetic, that’s not the case with VIVAH.

Sure, VIVAH starts off very well and the bonding between Alok Nath and the baby [Amrita Rao’s childhood] is indeed emotional. Everything is fine till Shahid and Amrita get engaged. Surprisingly, there’s no movement in the story thereafter. It wouldn’t be erroneous to state that the story comes to a grinding halt as the lovers indulge in romantic talk for the next 35 odd minutes. Besides, the songs are a complete distraction here. Not only are the tunes lifeless and belong to the fast-forward variety, even the placement of a couple of songs is inappropriate.

Thankfully, VIVAH strikes back in the post-interval portions. The twist in the tale is the highpoint of the enterprise and the dramatic events take the graph of the film to its peak. The emphasis is on emotions and the twists and turns in the concluding reels are sure to make you moist eyed. The sequence between Shahid and Amrita in the hospital is brilliantly executed. Note the dialogue that follows thereafter [delivered by Mohnish Bahl] — that’s another clapworthy moment.

Sooraj R. Barjatya is back to his style of narrating simple stories, with emphasis on emotions. As pointed above, this may not be Sooraj’s finest effort, but the assets outnumber the liabilities this time. However, the film needs to be trimmed by at least 20/25 minutes and a few songs should be deleted instantaneously for a better, stronger impact.

Ravindra Jain’s music is archaic. Barring the ‘Mujhe Haque Hain’ and to an extent ‘Do Anjaane Ajnabi’, the remaining tracks are listless. Cinematography [Harish Joshi] is plain mediocre. Dialogues [Aash Karan Atal] are wonderful and the emotional lines do tug at your heart strings.

Shahid Kapoor performs like never before. If he was super-cool in ISHQ VISHK and showed flashes of brilliance in FIDA, you’ve to watch him in VIVAH to see his growth as a tremendous actor. He is exceptional in emotional sequences. Amrita Rao also gets a new lease of life with VIVAH. She looks the character and is splendid all through.

VIVAH has a host of characters, but the ones that stand out are Alok Nath [terrific], Seema Biswas [excellent], Anupam Kher [very good], Amrita Prakash [confident] and Master Ameya Pandya [first-rate]. Sameer Soni, Lataa Saberwal, Manoj Joshi and Dinesh Lamba are adequate. Mohnish Bahl [sp. app.] does well.

On the whole, VIVAH has an ordinary/routine first half, but the post-interval portions, notably the climax, compensate for the shortcomings. At the box-office, the rich emotional quotient [last 40 minutes] should appeal to ladies/families and help the film gather momentum slowly, but surely. The film may start on a slow note, but a strong word of mouth should help it consolidate its status in the traditional markets. Business may not be strong at multiplexes as much as in single screens, where the weekly run will compensate for the number of shows at multiplexes.

BollywoodEntertainment.com.au Rating: 2.5

By Subhash K. Jha, Indo-Asian News ServiceFilm: Umrao Jaan; Cast: Shabana Azmi, Aishwarya Rai, Abhishek Bachchan, Puru Raj Kumar, Suniel Shetty; Director: J.P. Dutta; Rating: ***1/2

In one of the countless visuals of stunning resonance, Aishwarya, playing the doomed and poetic tawaif (courtesan) Umrao Jaan Adaa, travels through a burning field of crops. “The crops have been reaped, now the fields are being burnt for good luck next year,” explains a co -passenger.

That one gloriously revealing moment captures the sublime pathos that coloured the life and times of 19th century Lucknow’s famed courtesan, who in her words is a “badnasibi ki misaal” (the classic example of misfortune).

We’ve seen Lucknow and Uttar Pradesh in several Hindi films ranging from Muzaffar Ali’s “Umrao Jaan” to Chandan Arora’s “Main Meri Patni Aur Woh”. But the city and its surrounding topography have never looked more vivid.

By Taran Adarsh, IndiaFMRemaking a yesteryear hit can be an arduous task. Especially if it happens to be the Amitabh Bachchan starrer DON. One film people remember vividly for various reasons, right from Big B’s towering performance to the popular tracks to its gripping story and sharp execution.

A remake comes with its share of plusses and minuses, advantages and disadvantages. The advantages first…

* Perhaps, the new generation might not have watched the classic starring Bachchan. That makes the 2006 adaptation a novel cinematic experience. The present version also arouses tremendous interest since SRK steps into Bachchan’s shoes.

* DON was made in the 1970s and a new version, with appropriate updates, is always welcome.

* Most importantly, every director has his/her style of interpreting a story. Chandra Barot had his way of narrating a story, Farhan Akhtar has his own unique style.

Now, the sole disadvantage…

* Since the Bachchan starrer remains etched in the memory of a section of moviegoers, the SRK starrer carries a massive responsibility on its shoulders. The comparisons, therefore, are inevitable. Every character, song and the impact of several vital portions will be viewed minutely.

Unfortunately, the new DON fails on several counts…

* The original script [Salim-Javed] had the power to keep you involved and mesmerized for the next 2.30 hours. The new version lacks it.

* The sequence of events in the earlier DON unraveled at a feverish pace, which the entertainment-hungry viewer lapped up with glee and excitement. The new version moves at a sluggish pace at regular intervals and that indeed is bad news for a thriller. In fact, boredom sets in after a point and it also gets difficult to comprehend what’s going on. Things could have been simpler for sure.

* Every character in the earlier DON was well etched out. That’s not the case with the new version. Barring SRK and to an extent Priyanka, the remaining characters appear as mere caricatures.

* The songs in the first version were merged beautifully with the script. Somehow, in the new version, barring the Kareena track, the songs don’t take the story forward. Even the terrific ‘Khaike Paan Banaraswala’ comes across as an unwanted guest.

Any area where the new version works? Of course, it’s far more glossy, far more stylish and far more visually appealing. Let’s just say, the new DON is body beautiful, minus soul. The original version had simplistic execution, but it hit you like a ton of bricks. The new version is a hundred times more stylish, but how about a riveting script, Mr. Director?

The one question you want to ask Farhan Akhtar is, What happened? His directorial debut DIL CHAHTA HAI told a novel story. His second attempt, LAKSHYA, stood on a slippery wicket. But DON, his new endeavor, is his weakest attempt as a storyteller. Agreed, Farhan has climbed the ladder as far as craftsmanship is concerned [every frame is well decorated and makes a spellbinding impact], but, despite a readymade classic at his disposal, the storyteller just doesn’t get it right this time.

Farhan makes a sincere effort to shock the viewer in the end and you are startled for a minute, but the moment the focus shifts to the flashback and how he managed to pull a fast one, the impact evaporates into thin air. Farhan also ends the film with some scope for a sequel. Nothing wrong with that, but how one wishes Farhan had a hit a boundary in this interpretation of the classic first.

Now, the storyline:

The drug trade is booming. Trafficking between Asia and Europe is at an all-time high. There are rumors that a dreaded gang has moved their operational headquarters to Kuala Lumpur. The cartel is headed by Singhania [Rajesh Khattar], but the business is managed by his lieutenant Don [Shah Rukh Khan].

An Indian officer Desilva [Boman Irani] has sworn to put an end to the nexus. He knows that in capturing Don lies the key to unlock this puzzle. And he succeeds one day. Don is captured and Desilva puts his plan into action. Unknown to even his own department, Desilva recruits and trains a man who is a splitting image of Don. His name is Vijay.

Vijay infiltrates the cartel and manages to give Desilva all the information he needs to bring it down. But in a bizarre twist of fate, Desilva is killed during a raid and the secret that Don is in fact Vijay is buried with him. The only people who realize that he’s an imposter are the members of Don’s cartel [Pawan Malhotra and Shakeel Khan] and they want their revenge.

Vijay manages to escape and is now on the lookout for the one last piece of evidence that can get him out of the mess. Helping him on this quest are two people: Roma [Priyanka Chopra] and Jasjit [Arjun Rampal].

There are glaring loopholes in the screenplay and you just can’t overlook them. Like, for instance, how does SRK kill Kareena when the fact remains that he himself admits that there aren’t any bullets in his gun? Here’s another one: SRK, the Don, arrives in India for a major drug deal, but why isn’t he arrested by Boman Irani and his team of cops when he must’ve presumably boarded an aircraft from KL? Why chase him on a secluded beach somewhere near Mumbai?

In the second hour, the murder of Rajesh Khattar [Don's boss] gives an impression that it’s child’s play to eliminate a drug baron. Moreover, what happens to Don’s gang, also being held captive and being chartered to another destination [just before Don escapes from the aircraft]? Also, Arjun Rampal’s exit from the story could’ve been properly defined. Also, where does his kid disappear suddenly? And what is Om Puri doing in this film? A junior police officer [aiding Boman Irani] has a meatier role than Puri here. It’s a screenplay of convenience. Frankly, this looks like a desi James Bond saga, with the protagonist behaving like one mighty guy who can outsmart just about anyone and everyone.

Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy’s music is strictly functional. The only track that’s worth a mention is ‘Ye Mera Dil Pyaar Ka Diwana’ and S-E-L cannot get credit for it because it’s not their composition. Mohanan’s cinematography is of international quality. The opulent look and sets are well captured by the lensman and so are the eye-catching locations of Malaysia.

Action scenes are superb. Take the fight between SRK and Chunkey Pandey at the very start of the film or the chase on a secluded beach and the lanes of a town before Don is captured by the cops — it’s jaw -dropping. The sync sound is not coherent at times and this will pose a major problem, especially at single screens where the sound system isn’t of standard.

SRK carries a massive responsibility on his shoulders since direct comparisons with Bachchan are foreseeable. SRK does very well as Don. He enacts the evil character with flourish. But he fails to carry off the other role [Vijay] with conviction. It looks made up, it doesn’t come natural to him at all. Priyanka Chopra carries off her part with élan. The stunt [when she rescues SRK] is bound to win her laurels.

Arjun Rampal’s character could’ve been better developed. Despite the shortcomings, he makes a sincere attempt. Kareena Kapoor looks alluring in a miniscule role. Isha Koppikar is alright. Boman Irani is fantastic yet again. He enacts the conniving and calculating villain with gusto. A remarkable actor like Om Puri is completely wasted here. Pawan Malhotra does very well. Why doesn’t one see more of his talented actor in films?

Diwakar Pundir [as Kareena's fiancé], Shakeel Khan and Rajesh Khattar are adequate.

On the whole, DON does not meet the expectations as a film. BUT the film will be a different story altogether at the box-office. The tremendous craze for the film, the fabulous hype of the film, the presence of SRK in the central role and also the credibility of its makers [Farhan Akhtar] will ensure a fabulous start at the ticket window. The Diwali and Idd period will only give a big boost to the business, making its distributors jump with joy.

In short, sometimes a weak film weaves magic at the box-office. DON is one of those!

BollywoodEntertainment.com.au Rating: 2.5

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By Taran Adarsh, IndiaFMLet’s clear a myth before we get into the analyzing mode…

JAAN-E-MANN is about two guys loving the same girl. Her first relationship doesn’t work for certain reasons. Opportunity comes knocking again. The second guy rides into her heart. Sounds familiar?

From SANGAM to KABHI KABHIE to CHANDNI to SAAJAN, the concept of two men falling head over heals in love with the same woman has been done to death in Bollywood. Is there anything else left to explore? What novelty does JAAN-E-MANN offer then? Is it old wine packaged in a new bottle?

Sure, JAAN-E-MANN is a love story. But it explores new grounds, in terms of story as well as execution. It’s an unconventional film. Yet, innovative at the same time. It doesn’t follow the path most love stories charter. It’s a fresh concept and the twists and turns in the screenplay only ensure that it doesn’t stagnate.

To be brutally honest, it takes time to absorb a new format of storytelling. As moviegoers, we are used to following one particular format, which rarely changes. In JAAN-E-MANN, the story begins where most end. At the very outset, you’re told that the first relationship has already fallen apart. Knowing that it’s over between the two, the first guy encourages [and actually assists/trains/spoon-feeds] the second guy to get close to the woman both love. The second guy faithfully follows the instructions, till a twist in the tale brings about an awakening. Just when you think that it’s going to be a conventional climax, there’s a twist again…

Nope, JAAN-E-MANN isn’t purani bottle par naya label. Definitely not!

It’s said that [most] editors make fantastic directors. After all, the biggest of dreams take final shape on the editing table. Editor Shirish Kunder wears many hats in his first attempt: Director, story-screenplay-dialogues’ writer, background music composer, TV and theatrical promo maker and of course, editor. And yes, he makes a terrific impact in his maiden attempt as a storyteller.

The marriage of realism with escapism as also form and content is evident in JAAN-E-MANN. There are moments that offer tremendous entertainment. There are times when Shirish borrows incidents straight from life; you’ve seen it happening to someone or perhaps, it’s happened to you.

All the same, the execution of the film and the shot compositions are masterly. If you understand cinema or if you’re an avid moviegoer, you’d notice that JAAN-E-MANN is shades apart from Yash Chopra or Mani Ratnam or Priyadarshan or RGV or Rakesh Roshan’s movies. It stands out for its individuality. The technique leaves you wondering, is this Hindi cinema or are you watching a fairytale?

Most importantly, JAAN-E-MANN has its heart in the right place. Like this reviewer pointed out at the outset, it takes time to get used to Shirish’s style of narrating a story. The initial reels may give you the feeling that it’s all gloss, no soul and perhaps, the director has lost his marbles and experimented at the expense of an uncompromising producer [Sajid Nadiadwala], but JAAN-E-MANN catches you slowly, but firmly and doesn’t leave you till the end.

Wait, this doesn’t imply that JAAN-E-MANN is a flawless product. There are blemishes that stand out in the narrative. If Shirish deserves distinction marks as a storyteller, you need to deduct his points as an editor. Perhaps, Shirish fell in love with his product and didn’t realize that this 19 reeler tends to get lengthy and at times, slow paced.

Also, Shirish’s style of storytelling — very novel and refreshingly different — caters more to the multiplex crowd/elite/big city junta/Overseas audience rather than the aam public/hoi polloi/masses/frontbenchers. The generous usage of English will also restrict its appeal to urban centres. Yes, there are mass appealing moments, but JAAN-E-MANN is a big gamble. The first section of moviegoers would love the film and if it catches on with the masses [thanks to the strong emotional quotient in the second hour], there’s no stopping the film then.

Now to the story: JAAN-E-MANN begins with Suhan [Salman Khan] receiving a notice to pay the alimony. He has to shell out Rs. 50 lacs to his estranged wife Piya [Preity Zinta], now settled in the U.S. Suhan’s ‘Chachu’ Boney [Anupam Kher], a lawyer, thinks of ways to wriggle out of the situation.

It’s at this juncture that Champu aka Agastya [Akshay Kumar] walks in, looking for Piya. He was in love with her during the college days, he tells Suhan and Chachu, but she was in love with someone else [Agastya is unaware that Suhan is the guy]. Piya had ignored Agastya then, a nerd, and even broke his heart by courting another guy. A heartbroken Agastya had left the college for this reason.

Back to the present: Agastya is now at NASA. His outwardly appearance may’ve undergone a change, but he still doesn’t know how to communicate with a girl, forget dating her. Suhan and Chachu hatch the plan to get Agastya and Piya together, so that Suhan is out of the mess.

Agastya flies to New York, so does Suhan. They hire an apartment right opposite Piya’s residence and monitor each and every move of her through binoculars and telescope. Suhan helps Agastya to woo Piya. A reluctant Piya eventually gives in. But the story changes when Suhan gets to know of a certain reality and that changes his life completely. He feels responsible towards Piya.

Suhan realizes his folly and wants to make amends. But oblivious to Suhan’s presence, Piya is now preparing for a life with Agastya. One wouldn’t like to reveal the climax, since that would take the sheen away from the enterprise. We wouldn’t be able to reveal the finale either, which is sure to bring a smile on your face.

JAAN-E-MANN balances humor and emotions beautifully. In fact, a film on relationships ought to rest on a solid emotional ground and JAAN-E-MANN has those scenes in abundance, especially in the second hour. Salman’s journey from a mere spectator of Akshay-Preity’s courtship to being a part of the love story is beautifully depicted. What prompts Salman to have a change of heart and feel more responsible [the reason is withheld by the reviewer] is again a brilliant stroke from the writing, execution and performance point of view.

All the same, the humor is just perfect. It’s not the crass or mindless kind, but simple and at the same time, sure to bring a smile on your face or force you to break into laughter.

JAAN-E-MANN has more aces, starting with Farah Khan’s choreography. Every song in immaculately choreographed and comes across as a remarkable piece of art. Anu Malik’s music is soothing and soft, in sync with the mood of the film. ‘Jaane Ke Jaane Na’ is undoubtedly the best track of the enterprise. ‘Ajnabee Shaher’ and ‘Humko Maloom Hai’ are two compositions that also stand out for sheer melody. Sudeep Chatterjee’s cinematography is remarkable. Right from Sabu Cyril’s delightfully colorful sets to the skyline of New York, the D.O.P. captures every moment with dexterity and flourish on celluloid. Surily Goel’s costumes are classy and well-synchronized with the upmarket feel.

Now to the performances! The one question that you want to ask Salman is, why had you hidden the sensitive performer in you all these years? Agreed, the actor has delivered fine performances in the past, right from Sooraj Barjatya’s films to TERE NAAM to NO ENTRY [aimed at the masses]. But this is an altogether different Salman you see in JAAN-E-MANN. In fact, it wouldn’t be erroneous to state that if asked to choose one performance from the three pivotal ones in JAAN-E-MANN, it has to be Salman without doubt. He wins hands down completely. The role is a reflection of what Salman can handle in real life: Loads of attitude, the mischievous dude with a naughty streak and most importantly, a sensitive and soft-hearted man who can weep, if affected. Simply remarkable!

Akshay is first-rate. The actor plays a simpleton, a far cry from the roles he’s now famous for [DEEWANE HUYE PAAGAL, GARAM MASALA, PHIR HERA PHERI] and proves his versatility yet again. There’s a marked growth in Akshay’s performances and the one in JAAN-E-MANN only endorses the statement.

Preity is wonderful. Not only does she look like a woman who is the cynosure of two men, but also emotes her part with amazing grace. There’s a surprise in store in the end and Preity’s fans are sure to love her in that look as well.

Anupam Kher is fantastic as Chachu, but has an ill-defined role as the look-alike in New York. Jawed Sheikh and Soni Razdan [Preity's parents] are appropriate in brief roles. Nawaab [Preity's brother] and Aman Verma are decent.

On the whole, JAAN-E-MANN balances humor and emotions beautifully. In fact, it’s a BIG film in all respects — right from its cast to the extravagant sets to the lavish making, besides, of course, unadulterated entertainment it has to offer. At the box-office, the Diwali and Idd holidays will prove bountiful for the film and add to the big returns. Business-wise, JAAN-E-MANN should fare best at multiplexes and also at major centres, besides Overseas. But its business at comparatively smaller centres, where masala films dominate, is bound to be affected by DON’s presence. However, if the strong word of mouth catches on, the business at smaller centres will add to its booty.

BollywoodEntertainment.com.au Rating: 2.5

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By Taran Adarsh, IndiaFMNewer stories are being unfurled on the Hindi screen…

In the recent past, Madhur Bhandarkar chose to narrate the war between two soft drink giants in CORPORATE. In GAFLA, debutante director Sameer Hanchate tells the story of one of the biggest scamsters of the stock market and even makes him a hero in the climax of the film.

The problem with GAFLA is that it comes across more as a biography of a scamster than a film that makes a statement against the big sharks of the stock market. Moreover, since the plotline unravels at a lethargic pace, the impact of a couple of well executed sequences also evaporates into thin air.

GAFLA is a story about ordinary people or rather an ordinary young man, Subodh [Vinod Sharawat], in ordinary circumstances. Subodh starts out like any middle class guy, with limited opportunities to survive and go ahead. Perhaps, he has a little bit more drive than the others, more energy and bigger dreams.

Subodh’s intentions are good and understandable in terms of ordinary ambitions. Subodh wants to make money, to be successful and enters the stock market. His brilliance makes him successful, but he is at the mercy of big players.

By IndiaFM News Bureau“Maati Maay” (A Grave-keeper’s Tale) is based on a short story ‘Baayen’ by the well-known writer Mahasweta Devi. It is the heart-rending tale of a young mother who is trapped between her instincts and needs, and the compulsions of her ancestral duty as dictated by the social system.

Chandi (Nandita Das) is a beautiful young woman from a lower caste, whose family has traditionally been in charge of a children’s graveyard. When her father dies, there being no other male in the family, Chandi inherits the job and performs it with great pride as her sacred duty. But after she gives birth to her son Bhagirath, things start to change. Being a nursing mother, Chandi now begins to get deeply affected by children’s deaths. Handling tiny corpses takes a toll on her body and mind. Getting more and more distressed while performing their funeral rites, she wishes she could be relieved of that duty. But then, who will protect the graves from wild animals…? Won’t the ancestors be angered…? Is it not wrong to give up a sacred trust…?

Chandi’s husband Narsu (Atul Kulkarni) fails to understand her turmoil. Her moral dilemmas, her growing anxieties are simply beyond him. The community forces her to continue with her work. And when she finally rebels, the villagers, steeped in ignorance and superstition, become extremely hostile and punish her in the harshest possible manner.

Film: “Mera Dil Leke Dekkho”; Cast: Jackie Shroff, Archana Puran Singh, Koel Purie, Punit Tejwani; Director: Rohit Kaushik; Rating: **Debutant director Rohit Kaushik’s “Mera Dil Leke Dekkho” is a humorous but unimpressive take on gays in society. The film has too many slip-ups to be termed an entertaining film.

Produced by Shatrughan Sinha’s Shotgun Movies, the content and execution of the story are not quite up to the mark. The worst part is that this so-called comedy just drags on and after a certain point it becomes extremely dull and boring.

London-born Punjabi girl Archie (Koel Purie) is desperately looking for an eligible man. She meets Rahul (Punit Tejwani) in London and falls in love with him. But Rahul is not at all serious about her.

Film: “Zindaggi Rocks”; Starring: Sushmita Sen, Shiney Ahuja, Moushumi Chatterjee; Director: Tanuja Chandra; Rating: ***”Zindaggi Rocks” is a film that surely rocks! Tanuja Chandra’s “Dushman” and to some extent “Sangharsh” and “Sur” were incredibly sensitive films. After a long hiatus, the director returns to form with a film that’s heartbreakingly real.

Packed with a cluster of believable characters, “Zindaggi Rocks” showcases Sushmita Sen’s awesome personality in the tailor-made role of the fabulous rockstar Kriya.

A stage performer and a single mother, the role acquires a tangy flavour and an abiding character that only Sushmita knows to create.

“But have no fear,” her 13-year old utterly endearing son Dhruv (Julian Burkhadt) mischievously tells the doctor who’s interested in her. The mom isn’t married … nor is she an unwed mother.

Kriya adopted Dhruv when he was all of two years. Dhruv’s family comprises only of wacky women – mom Kriya, Kriya’s mom (Moushumi Chatterjee) and her twin sister (Moushumi in a double role), a squeaky secretary (Kim Sharma) and an assistant (Ravi Gossain) who believes he’s a cowboy.

Into this mad house comes the hesitant Suraj Rihan (Shiney Ahuja), a doctor.

Character SketchZulfi Syed as Lucky Lucky a very smart and kool guy wants to have a girl whom he can love and keep for life, tries various things to get a girl but unsuccessful untill he meets his ladylove Dolly.

Yash Pandit as Pat Aka Prem Amar Tripathi PAT smart and hot but liar. He also wants to have girls but does not want to keep them for life just wants to have fun but unsuccessful untill he meets his ladylove Puja.

Samiksha as Dolly Dolly a kool girl with kool attitude very emotional wants a boy who is kool like her and respect her.

Priya as Pooja Puja a hot girl with a hot attitude and carefree girl of the new generation yet very loving and strong.

Character SketchRitiesh Deshmukh as Kishan Devsaxena Common extraordinaire who listens to his heart and is ruled by his desires. He can’t be trapped, he can’t be stopped and he is a master of disguise.

Celina Jaitley as Sania Badnam Young and sexy, one who exploits her sexuality to entrap men, the only thing that matters to her is power and money.

Shreyas Talpade as Arjun Fernandez Pride & substance are in his veins. His world revolves around his garage, his dog and his love interest.

Jackie Shroff as Danny Carlos A ruthless underworld don based in Bangkok. In India, he operates through Sania, his most trusted aid.

Chunky Pandey as Ranaji Furious that he and his group have been conned, he is on a mad hunt to find the man who conned him.

If there is an acid test for Anu Malik this season or in fact this decade, it has to be with ‘Umrao Jaan’. The man has seen enough highs and lows in his decades old career so far but the music of ‘Umrao Jaan’ is something that would be scrutinized by one and all. And why not? After all the tracks from Khayyam’s ‘Umrao Jaan’ are still being appreciated by the connoisseurs of classical Indian music and it is certainly no mean feat to match. Hence when J.P. Dutta picks up the baton to narrate the story while roping in Anu Malik and Javed Akhtar saab, one can’t help but look at each and every track with keen interest. Also with Aishwarya Rai being the central protagonist along with Abhishek Bachchan, Shabana Azmi and Suneil Shetty, one can’t help but have mammoth expectations from the film and its music.So does the team deliver? Does it come close to the classic score from the yesteryears or at least form an identity of its own without worrying about the past? Will Anu Malik have another successful score after ‘Jaan-E-Mann’? The answer to each of the questions is yes!

Before one starts hearing the tracks, first thing that strikes on looking at the CD cover is the name of Alka Yagnik. She is practically there for each of the tracks except for a couple and bags a biggie as the voice of legendary Umrao Jaan.

Film: “Woh Lamhe”; Cast: Shiney Ahuja, Kangana Ranaut, Purab Kohli and Shaad Randhwa; Director: Mohit Suri; Ratings: ***Mahesh Bhatt, one of the most prolific and daring filmmakers in Bollywood, has churned out quite a few emotionally charged films like “Arth” and “Zakhm” inspired by his own life.

The latest to join Bhatt’s cinematic biographical list is “Woh Lamhe” – an interesting and engrossing tale, which unfolds disconcerting facts about his tumultuous affair with Parveen Babi, one of the most glamorous actresses of the 70s.

Director Mohit Suri, who impressed critics with “Zeher” and “Kalyug”, has treated the complicated love story deftly, and it is sure to appeal to those who are looking for a different kind of emotional drama. However, Suri has taken some cinematic liberties in the Mahesh Bhatt-produced film.

Kangana Ranaut, who plays Sana Azeem (Parveen Babi), easily slips under the skin of her character and convincingly brings forth the trials and tribulations of Praveen.

She had shown her potential in “Gangster – A Love Story” and lives up to that expectation with this film.

Shiney Ahuja, who proved his mettle with “Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi” and “Gangster”, seems to be slightly overshadowed by Kangana’s powerful performance.

Film: “Dor”; Starring: Gul Panag, Ayesha Takia, Shreyas Talpade; Director: Nagesh Kukunoor; Rating: **** 1/2How far would you go for love? That’s the question the narrative of “Dor” softly raises.

How far would you go to see this film? That’s the question every movie-enthusiast should ask loudly.

Very frankly, “Dor” takes you by complete surprise. Of course you expect a certain aesthetic and technical finesse in a Nagesh Kukunoor creation. But nothing he has done so far – neither the under-rated “Teen Deewarein” nor the hugely-feted “Iqbal” – prepares us for the luminous spiritual depths and the exhilarating emotional heights of “Dor”.

The stunningly original screenplay sweeps in a caressing arc, over the separate yet bonded lives of two women – Zeenat (Gul Panag) in the snowscapes of Himachal Pradesh and Meera (Ayesha Takia) in the parched deserts of Rajasthan.

The picaresque pilgrimage of one woman into the life of another is charted in the resplendent rhythms of a rather zingy symphony played at an octave that’s at once subdued and persuasive.

“Dor” could any time lapse into being one of those tedious works on women’s emancipation. Kukunoor controls the emotional tide with hands that know when to exercise restrain and when to let go.

“Dor” flies high and effortlessly in an azure sky, creating elating dips and curves in the skyline without ever letting go of the thematic thrusts that take the director as far into the realm of realism as cinematically possible. He never loses out on that wonderful quality of cinematic splendour that separates poetry from sermons.

Join Zeenat then on her bizarre impossible quest to find a young newly widowed woman whom Zeenat has never seen, met or even heard of until her husband’s sudden tryst with crisis.

The way Kukunoor weaves the two unconnected lives in contrasting hinterlands is not short of magical.

The eye for detail is so keen that you tend to stare not at the screen, but at feelings and emotions that aren’t visible. Sudeep Chatterjee, Munish Sappal, Sanjeev Dutta and Salim-Suleiman have done a marvellous job through their cinematography, art direction, editing and music.

By Subhash K. Jha, Indo-Asian News ServiceFilm: “Khosla Ka Ghosla”; Starring: Anupam Kher, Boman Irani, Parveen Dabas, Tara Sharma, Ranveer Shorey; Director: Dibakar Banerjee; Rating: ****

“Khosla Ka Ghosla” tells you that sometimes you need to lose the plot to gain it.

When Kamal Kishore Khurana (Anupam Kher) loses his precious plot of land in Delhi’s rapidly degenerating concrete jungle, he gains a son who was about to leave for greener pastures (US).

Lucky Khosla! But we, the viewers, are even luckier. In Khurana’s loss and gain, there lurks a hugely rewarding morality tale for us.

If “Lage Raho Munnabhai” goes Gandhian with a vengeance (no pun intended), “Khosla Ka Ghosla” tells us, through delicious tongue-in- cheek satire, that it’s okay to use unfair means to get what’s rightfully yours.

“Khosla Ka Ghosla” is a very rare, tender and life-giving plant that needs careful nurturing for it to yield its optimum fruits. The film is straightforward in its depiction of the working-class stress (done earlier in works as varied as Mahesh Bhatt’s “Saaransh” and Raj Kumar Santoshi’s “Ghaatak”).

It is done so simply that you tend to miss the immeasurable amounts of unassuming talent that underline almost every scene of this remarkable film.

Jaideep Sahni’s writing talent is put to exceptional use. The narrative captures the muddle and poignancy, irony and humour of Delhi’s middleclass through a storytelling device where less is always more. A delectable understatement underlines almost every character’s propulsion in this film about how to lose the plot to gain a much larger plot.

By Joginder Tuteja, IndiaFMIn an age where different subjects are being tried out practically every passing week, there are some film makers who are opting to remake the yesteryear hits, albeit in a contemporary manner. While the world is aware about Farhan Akhtar remaking ‘Don’ and Ram Gopal Verma going ahead with his version of ‘Sholay’, not many are aware that Percept Picture Company and director Ahmed Siddiqui have gone ahead and wrapped up ‘Jai Santoshi Maa’, remake of the 1970s superhit, and are all set to release it this festive season. Starring Rakesh Bapat and Nushrat Bharucha in the lead, the film has music by Anu Malik [who sees a third straight musical release after 'Zindaggi Rocks' and 'Jaan-E-Mann'] with lyrics by Swanand Kirkire, whose songs in ‘Lagey Rahe Munnabhai’ are now making waves.

There are umpteenth devotional albums that arrive at the stands [especially in the interiors of India] every week. Will the music of ‘Jai Santoshi Maa’ turn out to be a cut above them? Not really, though it does sail through well!

Pair of Sonu Nigam and Alka Yagnik, who have been heard together in dozens of romantic numbers, are heard in a different avtar when the title song ‘Jai Santoshi Maa’ begins. Elaborately choreographed with good picturisation, this devotional song is about the appreciation of ‘maa’ by the lead pair of the film. Paced on a slower note with ‘dandiya ‘ beats forming its musical base, the result is just about alright though it starts playing on your mind after repeated hearings. As expected, both the singers are good in their rendition while singing at a low pitch.

Film: “Pyaar Ke Side Effects”; Starring: Rahul Bose, Mallika Sherawat, Ranveer Shorey; Director: Saket Chaudhary; Rating: ** 1/2Once in a while, a film makes you smile. Not because of what it strives to be. But for its sheer sassiness and temerity.

Going into the new-age movie mantra of urban relationships, “Pyaar Ke Side Effects” (PKSE) comes up with a winsome twosome who love some, lose some…and emerge from the battle of the sexes healed and….quite wholesome!

Sid, that’s Rahul Bose, meets Trisha aka Mallika Sherawat, in extremely trying circumstances. She’s trying to escape an undesirable marriage (to a stuffed shirt played by Jas Arora). Sid is trying…just trying. Being a DJ at 30 is like being a teenager at 40.

A bit bewildering yet constantly engaging in its blizzard of bacchanalia thanks to dialogue writer Victor Acharya for words that ring true and still sound like catch lines on the bumper sticker of sports car. “PKSE” is possibly that one Hindi romantic comedy, which could equal Hollywood’s ‘Harry-meets-Sally’ formula portraying the man-sharp-woman-sharper gender skirmish.

Debutant director Saket Chaudhary sees the battle of the sexes entirely from the male viewpoint. Whether it’s Sid with Trisha, or Sid’s brother-in-law (Aamir Bashir) struggling to keep his moody wife from swooping down on him at the smallest pretext, this slick flick knows the rope-trick of keeping relationships afloat in today’s times of stress and competitiveness.

Some of the sequences, designed to elicit laughter, get there bang-on. It’s been a while since a romantic liaison got you giggling, and not just because the repartees are so sassy but because the love pair is so endearing in their state of despair.

Check out the fluster and bluster of Sid’s first love-making sequence when she leaves him in a state of cute coitus interruptus…or that hilarious narration by Sid’s brother-in-law where the poor guy tells Sid about his spousal fight the night before.

Like Sujoy Ghosh’s “Jhankar Beats”, a film to which “PKSE” bears a moody resemblance, the narrative weaves in and out of suburban mores without getting judgemental about the people who move in and out of relationships, not knowing why they got into it or out of it.

Sid’s encounter with his fiancée’s tyrannical father (Sharat Saxena) may outwardly remind you of “Meet The Parents”. But seen within the larger picture, Saket Choudhary has scripted an urban legend that is slave to no ready reference point.

The narrative is manoeuvred by a vivacious impulse, navigating the destiny of the central couple’s affair through a series of funny and intelligent encounters.

Finally the effectuality of the romantic comedy depends on the chemistry between the lead pair. The tried-and-tested Rahul Bose re-invents his considerable comic talents to play a man more cornered than conned by love. Sid would rather watch a cricket match than discuss love with his girlfriend. But shhhhh!

Rahul Bose is delectably in tune with his character’s befuddlement, often capturing the game-show spirit of the man-woman battle with an intuitive insouciance.

Mallika is a delightful surprise. Fully clothed (thank god!), she’s a temptress and a virgin, a tease and an ingénue all at once. Where was this side of the actress hidden so far?

The supporting cast, especially Ranveer Shorey, adds considerably to the fluid charm of the central romance.

Manoj Soni’s camera lets the lovers be on Omang Kumar’s ritzy but credible sets. Editor Hemal Kothari cuts into the guffaws with a tongue-in-cheek flourish. Specially effective is Rahul’s constant talking into the camera, a Brechtian device recently used by Akshaye Khanna in “Aap Ki Khatir”. Has Bollywood rediscovered Brecht?

Or are we reading too much into the psycho-babble of a man who needs to share his fears about the fair sex with us?

Film: “Shiva”; Starring: Mohit Ahlawat, Nisha Kothari; Director: Ram Gopal Varma Rating: * 1/2Fifteen years ago, the one-man-army theme used to be much in vogue. By recreating the ‘expected’ experience from the past, “Shiva” comes up with a reasonably unexpected thrill of what used to be the expected not so long ago.

Remember Amitabh Bachchan making long strides into the villain’s den in “Zanjeer” to reduce his adversaries to pulp?

Welcome to the world of ‘pulp friction’. The stakes are high. Saving the country, no less. Each time our super-cop walks into the feverish frames, the soundtrack comes alive chanting his oath for induction into the police force. Ilayaraja’s background music is flush with ominous chants and wails.

Even blood-curdling at times. Mostly, just creating a specific ambience for the hero’s leonine leaps over time and space.

This police story has plenty of force, most of it generated from the way Varma cuts the old-as-the-hills material into a newly-rejuvenated shape.

The editing by Nipun Gupta and Amit Parmar is first…rather, ‘fist-rate’. Sound of slapping cheeks and cracking bones rent the soundtrack creating a reverberating sensation of retaliatory violence meant to combat malignant violence.

The action is swiftly and smoothly vindictive… Shiva in the den, Shiva in the departmental store, Shiva on a construction site, Shiva in a middle class food-joint (run by cine-buff Ninad Kamath who does corny take-offs on Sanjay Dutt, and Rajnikanth).

The one-man-show-off idea gets its definition mainly from the fist.

Interestingly, you seldom see Shiva combating evil with the gun. Bare hands are used to slap his adversaries to a grovelling mass of terror…that’s the way it works. The quieter moments shared with the journalist-girlfriend Sandhya (Nisha Kothari) are relatively less effective.

Each time the courtship begins, you wait with an indulgent smile to let the high-octane action begin.

The encounters with the main villain Bappu (gangster-turned politician inspired by Arun Gawli) played by Upendra Limaye are all done-to-bludgeoning death, revivified by Varma’s excellent command over the language of seething implosive rage (seen earlier to great advantage in his “Satya”, “Company” and “Sarkar”).

Mohit Ahlawat speaks little and fights frequently. His forte is reticent retribution. The real heroes are the action directors (twin brothers Ram Lakshman who also play climactic parts in the film). The stunts are purely from the 1980s, with loads of new-millennium attitude thrown in.

You won’t think much of the world-weary story. But there’s a kind of old-world charm about this street-smart bone-cruncher, which hits you with its message of a cleansing chemical.

At the end of it, you aren’t looking at Shiva bringing down the crime graph in the city. You’re looking instead at Varma’s clenched narrative that sweeps across the concrete jungle in overt gestures of ruthless vindication.

The performers include Ramu’s usual suspects like Zakir Husain (corrupt cop), and Shereveer Vakil (ruthless goon). Dilip Prabhavalkar, lately a hit as Gandhiji in “Lage Raho Munnabhai”, will shock you as a corrupt home minister. Actors often do that. They change characters.

But the real shocker is the old-fashioned narrative. You’ve seen the cop doing his deadly justice act to death. That doesn’t stop Ram Gopal Varma from socking it in our face one more time.

Film: “Bas Ek Pal”; Cast: Urmila Matondkar, Sanjay Suri, Juhi Chawla, Rehaan Engineer and Jimmy Shergill; Director: Onir; Rating: ***Funny, this thing called life. It never fails to take you by surprise. Director Onir’s chamber piece, telescoping five intertwined lives in a lethal yet lyrical passion-play, is an original slice of art.

The voice of Onir’s reason is not incumbent on conventions of Indian cinema. Rather, this courageous filmmaker forges ahead with much the same convictions that manoeuvred his vision in that elegiac post-card from the edge of the conscience called “My Brother Nikhil”.

“Bas Ek Pal” opens and closes in a pub where the first of the many passionate encounters occur between the restless, violent and doomed characters looking for a place to rest their uncertain hearts.

When after years abroad Nikhil (Sanjay Suri) walks into the crowded place of pleasure, his life changes. He meets the mercurial Anamika (Urmila Matondkar) who teases, flirts and reduces Nikhil to a lifetime of slavery.

The passion underlining Nikhil’s undying love for Anamika also purports to underline the theme’s spectral content. But the swelling emotions don’t always make it into the frames. We often feel rather than see the acutely pained quintet of characters reaching out to one another across an immense gulf of pride and hurt.

All the characters are in one way or another linked with one another. Even the men, Nikhil and Rahul (Jimmy Shergill), share complex, ambiguous relationships.

In one notable moment of tormented confession, Nikhil tears off his shirt in front of the paraplegic Rahul and confesses he was raped in jail.

But the crime for which Nikhil went to jail is deflected to another even darker character, the spouse-beating Steve (Rehaan Engineer) whose heartbreakingly fragile wife Ira (Juhi Chawla) wants to leave him but can only be liberated in death (“Till death do us part”).

Guilt runs through the criss-cross of wounded relationships in this film of unstated recriminations.

Even the ostensibly free-willed Anamika opts for compassion (the crippled Rahul) over passion (the incarcerated Nikhil).

She silently suffers Rahul’s bitter taunts, just like Preity Zinta in Karan Johar’s “Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna”, though the relationship here is done in far darker tones.

One of the more absorbing side-shows in this drama of muted feelings is the dark undertones that are applied to every character’s conscience. None of the five protagonists is a happy person. None of them finds solace, comfort, let alone love, in his or her partner. They all seem to be driven more by desire per se than its fruition.

We often wonder what these characters would do if they actually found love! So driven are they by the search for love that they’ve forgotten where they’re heading.

The tone gets a shade darker with every sequence. In the later scenes, Nikhil becomes a stalker in Anamika’s life – he even does a kind of bizarre pantomime of a ‘b’ grade Hollywood slasher movie by describing every move of his object of desire on the phone.

The distinctly Shakespearean finale leaves three of the five protagonists dead.

We finally see Anamika and Rahul looking pensively into the great wide open. The contrast between human desire and nature is quaintly created in the end. But we never see the characters from close up. In their arching self-pity they all seem to be replicas of modern martyrs rather than those pragmatic metrocentric creatures, who treat the man-woman relationship as a means of keeping tabs on their heats and libidos rather than the conscience.

The swelling of a Shakespearean passion for Anamika in Nikhil’s soul needed to be mapped more meticulously. Tragically, the narrative is as restless as the characters. The quiet more thoughtful moments mostly emanated from Juhi.

You suspect the tranquillity around this battered character comes more from the actress than the editor (Irene Dhar Malik) who cuts across these disembodied lives with ruthless celerity.

Sachin Kumar’s camera captures the conflicts of the characters in striking silhouettes and dark contours. The hints and whispers created through the lens go a long way in detailing the inner world of the pain-lashed characters.

All five actors penetrate the heart of their characters. Urmila has never looked more tranquil in her torment, and Juhi uses her ability to portray hurt and guilt with minimum effort.

Among the male actor Sanjay’s eyes follow the course of his character’s destiny with pained transparency.

But finally we know little about them or their motivations. Conceptualised completely from the outside, the people who house Onir’s second film are driven down to damnation by their own desire. Their voyage into disillusionment has some wonderful interludes of introspection.

Check out Suri’s reunion with Urmila in the pub called Anti-Clockwork where they first met or the sequence where Jimmy tells Urmila he can’t make love to her.

To make love and to love, the physical and spiritual aspects of human passion propel the people in “Bas Ek Pal” to a rather macabre nemesis.

Starting off as an authentic take on urbane mores — the pub shootout where Rahul loses his legs and Nikhil his everything, echoes the Jessica Lal incident — the narrative gets progressively Shakespearean in tone.

The film is shot mostly in the night and towards the end, in the lashing rains, to create an aura of doom and pain.

Film: “Dil Diya Hai”; Cast: Emraan Hashmi, Ashmit Patel, Geeta Basra, Mithun Chakraborty and Kittu Gidwani; Director Aaditya Datt; Rating: * 1/2In Aaditya Datt’s latest venture, the pimp is supposed to look at his intended prey with a mixture of lust and passion. Since, he is played by Ashmit Patel all he can manage is a look of aloof disdain.

And all “Dil Diya Hai” can manage is a warning to parents who take their daughters on European sojourns. Beware of the Londonwalla “Raja Hindustani” tourist guide. He’ll first take your daughter into confidence and then sell her to the nearest brothelwalla, who will promptly fall in love with the intended flesh-seller and battle it out with Raja Englishtani for the kidnapped girl’s hand.

At the end of a bloodied shootout, the girl opts for the tourist guide. But can a girl ever trust a man who sells her to a bar brothel?

This is a question that could haunt you after watching this mediocre and yet brave film about a man who needs money and a girl who needs to be spanked right here right now.

Geeta Basra as the headstrong, fun-loving and giggly tourist lets her nose-ring and war paint do all acting. The girl focuses all her attention on trying to look pained and bewildered after she’s kidnapped – an easy task considering what embarrassing situations the plot creates for the debutante.

Still she looks more sinned against than sinned.

Somewhere in this road movie that takes “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge” to the pit of a psychedelic hell, Mithun Chakbraborty and the lovely Kittu Gidwani appear as a kind of aging Laila-Majnu in the wilderness.

Mithun strums the gentle guitar and wields a mean gun to protect the young lovers from ruining their love.

But who protects poor Datt from making a hash albeit a well-intended hash in this Aditya Chopra-meets-Sanjay Gupta concoction?

Hashmi, in an author-backed role (he’s there in almost frame), is required to go through a gamut of expressions — from grimace to turmoil. He passes muster.

But please don’t expect him to pull off a story of guilt and redemption, a la Dilip Kumar in “Devdas” or even Rajesh Khanna in “Aap Ki Kasam”.

Yes, London and its surroundings still look fetching more so than the actors, who sometimes look like they are pretexts for the luscious locations.

As for the debutant leading lady, could she go easy on her makeup?

Hearts won’t melt at her predicament. But the war paint threatens to melt under the weight of overstatement.

Film: Naqsha; Starring: Sunny Deol, Viveik Oberoi, Sameera Reddy, Jackie Shroff; Director: Sachin Bajaj; Rating: *A lot of actors here ham through this adventurous muddle that looks like Steven’s Spielberg’s “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”.

Admittedly, Sunny Deol in his comeback vehicle makes an endearing Indiana Jones. Hat in place, grin in sight, Deol is gloriously goofy bringing in references to his legendary dad Dharmendra in a sizzled (but ear-unfriendly) number, playing against Viveik Oberoi’s earnest but strained step-sibling.

Alas, the duo never complement each other.

Remember Milan Luthria’s “Kachche Dhaage” where Ajay Devgan and Saif Ali Khan went on a rugged adventure and discovered a brotherly bonding?

That sense of growing closeness completely eludes Deol and Oberoi…or for that matter Oberoi and his romantic lead Sameera Reddy who’s on for a rugged jaunt for no seeming reason except to add oomph to the bulging macho quotient.

The screenplay by Milap Zaveri and Tushar Hiranandani apportions witticisms like plastic fruits on real trees.

The eye-catching outdoor locations are used to inviting effect by cinematographer Vijay Arora who spans through the panoramic locales with fruity relish.

But the characters are as over-the-top and uni-dimensional as electronic toys in an upmarket departmental store where the best items have been swept away at a summer bonanza sale.

What remains are the remnants of a dreadful day. And there are continuity lapses like Oberoi’s off-and-on stubble that brings shame to the film’s claims of being a true adventure story.

And the humour is often of the most dreadful variety. There’s a particularly obnoxious queer-funny sequence where handcuffed chotte- bhai Oberoi wants his brother Sunny Deol to help him pee in the wilderness.

Forget the ecological desecration. The absolute lack of good taste stymies the flow of adventure, like the scene where the villain’s moll stands speechlessly in semi-naked splendour only to burst into a song about “nashaa nashaa”…or was it naqsha naqsha?

Too numbed to react to the film’s self-conscious paciness, you still applaud the debutant director for his enterprising spirit.

When was the last time you saw a children’s adventure story told with loads of sporty chutzpah?

This isn’t quite the ultimate adventure story that Spielberg would have made. But “Naqsha” has an interesting look and feel too it. The feel however is not even skin-deep. It’s just stilted and shallow.

Indo-Asian News ServiceNew Delhi, (IANS) The wait is over. The lovable duo of Sanjay Dutt and Arshad Warsi are back this Friday with the comic caper “Lage Raho Munna Bhai”, a sequel to their 2004 superhit “Munnabhai M.B.B.S.”.

If “Munnabhai M.B.B.S.” saw Munna creating an upheaval in a medical institution, part two will see him running around a radio station because this time he falls in love with a radio jockey played by Vidya Balan.

Director Rajkumar Hirani moves into the realm of the philosophical as well. Through the film, Hirani makes an attempt to prove that Gandhian philosophy continues to be relevant today.

The story goes something like this:

Munna (Sanjay Dutt) is a tough goon with a heart of gold. He confronts every situation with his unique streetwise attitude and humour. But even Munna’s successful ‘dadagiri’ methods are tested when love takes him for an unexpected historical tour.

Munna falls in love with the voice of popular radio jockey Jhanvi. Her effervescent “Good Morrrrning Mumbai” makes Munna’s heart skip many beats. While listening to her shows, he dreams of marrying her.

Jhanvi is also bowled over by Munna’s rustic charm. The only problem in this perfect love story is that Jahnvi mistakes Munna for a professor of history and invites him to give a lecture on history to her family. And that is where all the trouble starts.

Munna doesn’t know how to sort out this entanglement. His trusted buddy Circuit (Arshad Warsi) comes up with a bright solution. And then, the most unusual thing occurs in Munna’s life – he encounters a figure from history.

What happens when the present meets the past?

There is another problem in Munna’s life and his name is Lucky Singh (Boman Irani), a contractor hankering after money. But Lucky Singh’s daughter, Simran (Dia Mirza) challenges traditional ideas with her independent views and shows her father that there is more to life than money.

Produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra, the film is expected to have a bumper opening.

By Subhash K. Jha, Indo-Asian News ServiceFilm: “Aap Ki Khatir”; Starring Akshaye Khanna, Priyanka Chopra, Dino Morea, Ameesha Patel, Suniel Shetty, Anupam Kher, Lilette Dubey; Director: Dharmesh Darshan; Rating: *

Jane Austen comes to Lokhandwala in this strange, sporadically interesting take on the quirky ways of the heart.

The trouble is that old-fashioned raconteur Dharmesh Darshan doesn’t know which way to take his giddy plot – Austen’s austerely satirical territory or the brassy full-on hardcore drama that cyclically emanates from north Mumbai.

“Aap Ki Khatir” is like the joke that you want to smile at because your favourite aunt tells it with a lot of enthusiasm.

The film does fake the vivacity with much gusto. But at the end of one wedding, half a dozen songs and no funeral, you are left wondering…whose laugh is it anyway?

Everyone talks loudly, as though they just saw the unedited version of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” …or is it a soul-less version of “Monsoon Wedding”? Darshan’s makeover attempt is distinctly derivative.

Countryside London (well photographed by W.B Rao at times) is populated by boisterous Punjabi and Gujarati characters who either speak too loudly or crack jokes.

At times Darshan overdoes his ambitions. He uses Brechtian direct-into-camera monologues by the characters, as though the masala needed to be garnished with moments of cerebrality.

To his credit, Akshaye Khanna says Sunil Munshi’s words with a lot of heartfelt emotions. He imbues his character of the charlatan from Lokhandawala who agrees to pose as Priyanka’s lover-boy in London, with plenty of perky humour. Alas, the script and direction don’t support Akshaye’s attempts to rise above the chronic silliness that colonises the inner world of the constantly festive characters.

You aren’t even sure whether these dancing-singing-eating-laughing characters have an inner life!

Suffering from ingrained shallowness, the characters from the parents played Anupam and Lilette to sisters Ameesha and Priyanka (with a strange cousin played by newcomer Bhoomika Singh to complete the Austenian ambience) seem very wooden when it comes to expressing themselves.

The ‘punjabiyat’ (Punjabi culture) that the narration stresses begins to get on your nerves in the second half. But yes, you do enjoy Raju Khan and Bosco-Caesar’s party-all-night swaying hips and other dance moves.

But the pointless prattle grows unbearable in the second-half when the celebrations stop short for bouts of Bergmanesque heart-to-hearts between sisters Ameesha and Priyanka.

Ameesha hams. Priyanka, careening between effervescence and wistfulness tries hard to look like she’s having fun.

Indo-Asian News Service

New Delhi, (IANS) After “Ahista Ahista”, another love story “Aap Ki Khatir” starring Akshaye Khanna, Priyanka Chopra and Amisha Patel heads for the theatres this Friday.

If “Ahista Ahista” was a serious love story, this one is a romantic comedy.

London-based Anu (Priyanka Chopra) has only one dream – the handsome charmer Danny (Dino Morea). Their relationship dies an untimely death. The break-up is heartbreaking for Anu, but she doesn’t give up. She is confident that she will get him one day and makes one last attempt to win him back.

Stepsister Shirani’s (Amisha Patel) wedding provides her the ideal opportunity to fulfil her dreams.

Shirani, who is ready to tie the knot with Kunal Shah (Suneil Shetty), was also involved with Danny at some point in her life, but is now looking forward to a great life ahead.

So where does Aman (Akshaye Khanna) fit in their scheme of things?

Since Danny, too, is attending the wedding as Kunal’s best friend, Anu tries to make him feel jealous by flirting with Aman.

Instead, she finds herself involved in destiny’s game and realises that she is no more in the control of the situation.

A triangular love story has been director Dharmesh Darshan’s favourite recipe. This time, however, this time he tells the tale of five individuals setting out to find true love for themselves.

By Lamat R. Hasan, Indo-Asian News ServiceNew Delhi, Aug 24 (IANS) The notion of infidelity in marriages – a hitherto taboo subject in India – is being deconstructed like never before after Bollywood director Karan Johar’s three-hour film “Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna” (KANK) opened to full houses earlier this month.

News channels are going live with shows that explode the hypocrisies of relationships gone wrong and newspapers are dedicating the sacred edit space to debate if marriage is a dead institution.

We have Bollywood heartthrob Shah Rukh Khan saying “marriage and infidelity are the same” and “sometimes it is fun to flirt with somebody’s wife or husband”; author Shobhaa Dé defending the institution of marriage, but claiming that infidelity is a “non-issue” for today’s generation; and the very eligible Karan Johar saying “marriage is not for me”.

Shah Rukh-speak is endorsed by his fans on the web: “I totally agree with Shah Rukh. Sometimes it is fun to flirt with somebody’s wife or husband. This brings some kind of freshness,” says G. Shobhana. Another comment by Manish reads: “Marriage is an outdated institution. It is on its way out in India too. The intelligent youth can see that it does not suit this age.”

In this sea of contradictions the only clear message we get is: Every one cheats. And infidelity after all is not a big enough reason to walk out of a marriage/relationship.

Neshat Kaiser, a senior sociologist, who patiently sat through a KANK show says, “I think infidelity in marriages is an interesting theme; that’s why the channels are treating it as an issue of national importance. Who knows if the shows are manufactured?”

By Swati R. Chaudhary, Indo-Asian News Service

Mumbai, Aug 24 (IANS) Director Sachin Bajaj is confident that Sunny Deol and Viveik Oberoi’s on-screen chemistry will make his directorial debut “Naksha” a hit.

“This film has something fresh to offer. It’s an out-and-out adventure film, a genre not explored for some time. The storyline and the larger-than-life look make it special.

“Besides, the unique chemistry between Sunny and Viveik make ‘Naksha’ even more exciting,” said Bajaj who worked as an assistant director in Aamir Khan-starrer “Mann”.

As the film is nearing release, the director is going through a gamut of emotions, reports Bollywood Trade.

“Since this is my first film, I’m bound to feel nervous. It’s like a mixed bag of emotions. I am happy with the way it has shaped up but am also feeling jittery.

“It’s an action adventure with lots of thrills and emotions. As the tagline says unlock the mystery, it’s about a secret and the secret to that mystery lies in a map.”

Sunny and Viveik play stepbrothers in “Naksha”.

“Sunny is a forest officer and Viveik is a carefree guy who has finished his higher education. They happen to meet in the most unusual circumstances and encounter something that changes their lives.”

The film also has Sameera Reddy and Jackie Shroff, who plays a negative role.

Naksha opens on the September 8th

Official website: www.nakshathefilm.com

By Subhash K. Jha, Indo-Asian News Service

Film: “Ahista Ahista”; Cast: Abhay Deol, Soha Ali Khan, Shayan Munshi; Director: Shivam Nair; Ranking: **

What if Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s favourite actress Sharmila Tagore was cast with Basu Chatterjee’s favourite actor Amol Palekar in one of those easy winsome breezy romantic comedies of the 1970s?

The result would’ve been something like “Ahista Ahista” – nice and slow yet fluently absorbing. For a large part of the narrative you sincerely want to know what happens to the runaway girl Megha (Soha Ali Khan) and the working-class guy Ankush (Abhay Deol) who comes to her rescue after her groom-to-be deserts her.

A simple story, seemingly original and fresh “Ahista Ahista” sweeps you gently into its arc of mint-flavoured emotions. The characters, minor or major are utterly believable.

Whether it is Ankush’s friends at the marriage registry office (and these include that wonderful child actor Ashwin Chitale from the Marathi film “Shwaas” as the ‘chai-wallah’) or the whole Jama Masjid Muslim locality that defines a major portion of the narrative, the proceedings are kept subdued and stress-free.

The art and camera-work are unostentatious yet eye-catching.

Somehow you feel things are going to work out just fine for these two seeming losers who discover love, togetherness and finally a wretchedly unhappy ending to their short-lived relationship.

The happy ending is denied to this utterly unaffected couple. But the brief, finally grief encounter is sweet-timbered and endearing while it lasts.

Both Abhay Deol and Soha Ali Khan add considerably to the plot’s plausibility. They are natural, sincere and endearing though Deol needs to improve his dialogue delivery and gauche body language.

Soha has been shot (by cinematographer Prakash Kutty) like her mother Sharmila Tagore. She is heartbreakingly expressive and fragile. Among the peripheral characters Shakeel Khan as Deol’s Muslim buddy is surprisingly effective.

A sweet sincere tender film with enough heart to tell it apart from the pretenders which try to sweep you off your feet, “Ahista Ahista” keeps you rooted to reality most of the way. Even when the kind and generous hero decides to keep his sweetheart’s fiance’s return a secret, you don’t really hate him for that bit of deception.

How can you, when the couple is so absorbed in the task of living with dignity in a society that makes the middle-class answerable for all its aspirations and dreams.

Writer Imtiaz Ali and debutant director Shivam Nair deserve high praise for delving into those quiet shared moments of anguished togetherness between a couple which is too busy surviving today to dare to dream about tomorrow.

Indo-Asian News Service

New Delhi, (IANS) An angry young man trying to change society… that not very new storyline forms the premise of the Zayed Khan starrer “Rocky – The Rebel” that releases Friday.

It is a story of today’s youth, fighting to make this world an ideal place to live in.

The film revolves around Rocky (Zayed Khan), a rebel who can’t stand injustice, social discrimination and so on.

While fighting corruption, something as old as history books, Rocky has to face opposition from his father who tells him to stay clear of matters that don’t concern him.

But Rocky turns a deaf ear to his father’s advice, arguing that this kind of irresponsible attitude was destroying society.

Rocky’s family manages to accept their son’s ideology. But destiny has something else in store for him and he finds himself in murky waters waging a battle for survival.

What does the ultimate battle in Rocky’s life hold for him?

Zayed has yet to establish himself as a bankable actor. So far, no film with him as a solo hero has worked.

The track record of Suresh Krissna, director of “Rocky”, is not impressive either. He made duds like “Love” with Salman Khan and Revathi, “Jagruti”, which also had Salman with Karisma Kapoor, and the Kamal Hassan starrer “Abhay”.

“Rocky” might go that same way.

Indo-Asian News Service

New Delhi, Aug 15 (IANS) There is no dearth of love story manufacturers in Bollywood, and the latest to join this already crowded list is Shivam Nair with his directorial debut “Ahista Ahista” starring Abhay Deol and Soha Ali Khan that releases Friday.

The film is about a small town girl standing at the crossroads of life, clueless about her future, spotted by a young man who unconsciously starts putting her life back on track.

The so-called atypical love story revolves around Ankush (Abhay Deol) and Megha (Soha Ali Khan), two complete strangers ignorant about each other’s existence till destiny throws them together.

The only common thing in their lives is that all the changes take place ahista ahista (slowly).

Megha, who lives in Nainital, is head over heels in love with Dheeraj (Shayan Munshi). Ankush is a simple young man earning a few bucks by standing up as a witness for young couples getting married at a marriage registrar’s office in Delhi. It is here that the two meet.

Dheeraj promises marriage and Megha runs away from home, but he ditches her because he was not serious about her in the first place.

It is too late for Megha to retrace her steps. Shattered and disillusioned, she is spotted by Ankush who tries to support her in every possible way.

By Subhash K. Jha, Indo-Asian News Service

Film: “Kabhi Alvidaa Na Kehna”; Starring: Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Rani Mukherji, Abhishek Bachchan, Preity Zinta, Kirron Kher; Director: Karan Johar; Rating: ****

Sometimes you hold a film close to your heart not because the characters embrace you, but for the opposite reason.

The four protagonists who colonise Karan Johar’s marital romance are so distanced from their spouses and their dormant desires, you wonder why they got married!

Or, why any two people decide to opt for what many would say is an obsolete institution in the first place!!

“Kabhi Alvidaa Na Kehna” (KANK) is indeed a definite sign of Karan Johar’s maturation as an artiste and a filmmaker. This is a film that derives its inspiration energy from Karan’s favourite filmmaker Yash Chopra’s interesting but abortive “Silsila”.

Even more interesting is the casting… the role of the unfaithful husband played in Chopra’s film by Amitabh Bachchan has gone to Shah Rukh Khan. A cranky bitter failed footballer Shah Rukh uses his wounded ego as a battering ram to destroy his marriage to the career-driven and yet domesticated Preity Zinta.

So far so cool! It’s Abhishek Bachchan playing the utterly devoted husband’s role done by the dependable Sanjeev Kumar in “Silsila” who hits the most honest notes.

KANK showcases the biggest Bollywood stars in roles of fatally flawed spouses that normally would shake up the egoistic equilibrium of our stars.

Hats off to Shah Rukh Khan for moving away from his Peter Pan image to play a husband and father who’s churlish and unreasonable – believably so. Shah Rukh imbues the tough role with his inherent charm, playing off his character’s bitter sarcasm against the two female protagonist’s supple femininity.

Rani playing Abhishek’s cold cleanliness-obsessed wife who comes alive in Shah Rukh’s company is the toughest character to play. A lot of eyebrows are going to go up at her unpredictable and often cruel rejection of a caring doting sensitive (etc, etc) husband for an embittered sharp-tongued man who projects his frustrations on his wife and timid 10-year-old son.

Walking the tightrope of caprice and unreasonableness, Rani plays the most challenging role of the film with a calm conviction that collects the scattered lives in this New York-based drama, into a clasp of classy emotions.

But why is her relationship with her husband dead when he’s equally good in the head and the bed?

Some of the comic moments among the principal actors are evoked in a borrowed giggle… The sequence where Rani barges into her home with an eye mask determined to try some rough-and-tough stuff on her husband, is straight from the serial “Sex & The City’.

But the emotions remain largely and gently indigenous. KANK is a triumph of star-driven opulence. If at heart it’s a clever take on infidelity, on the surface level it remains to the end a very good- looking film. Every technician from Anil Mehta (cinematography) to Sharmishta Roy (production design) to (Niranjan Iyenger (dialogues) and Javed Akhtar (lyrics) has striven passionately to furnish Karan Johar’s mellow-drama with a bedrock of aesthetic believability. The film looks glossy and glamorous and yet believable.

Some episodes (for example the prelude where the bride Rani Mukherji sits chatting with a complete stranger Shah Rukh while her groom-to-be waits inside for the wedding) acquires unintentionally surrealistic overtones.

The search for true love (an ongoing obsession in the cinema of Yash Chopra) takes the characters of KANK into self-destructive areas of self-indulgence. Fortunately Karan Johar’s journey into forbidden territory is far more smooth and satisfying than his characters’ unattainable yearnings.

Karan Johar redeems and sublimates them through deft fingers that knit the pastiche of pain and passion into palatable episodes of varying sensitivity. Finally, the film moves the adulterous couple into the ‘safe’ zone of self-sacrifice and martyrdom where they’d have remained were it not for the couple’s respective spouses (Abhishek and Preity) getting together to encourage the ‘forbidden’ union.

It’s hugely interesting to see how Karan Johar bends the rules and reverses conventions. While Abhishek plays the devoted sincere husband and son, his wife Rani and father Amitabh Bachchan are cold and raunchy, respectively. Indeed Bachchan Sr’s spirited performance as ‘Sexy Sam’ brings the house down.

But junior Bachchan in his anguished vulnerable moments with his screen wife Rani steals the show.

A shimmering showcase for exceptional talent, KANK reveals the truth about marital disharmony through vibrant and vital vignettes. Not all the pieces of the trendy jig-saw add up. But who said the age-old problem of marriage had easy solutions?

In his latest creation Karan Johar goes into a taboo territory. But we don’t come away after looking at fantasy creatures. Each of the characters, from the chic magazine editor Rhea Saran (played with endearing equanimity by Preity Zinta) to her earthy and practical mom- in-law (Kirron Kher, who shares a wonderful platonic relationship with ‘Sexy Sam’)… the criss-cross of relationships formed among a clutch of anguished Indians in New Yorkers besieged by domestic trouble, refuse to leave your mind.

Love them or hate them. You can’t easily forget these capricious and full-blooded characters looking for love in a cold but non-judgemental city of New York.

Love never seemed more desirable… and unobtainable. There’s only one death in KANK, besides, of course, two dead relationships.

Film: “Shaadi Karke Phas Gaya Yaar”; Cast: Salman Khan and Shilpa Shetty; Director: K.S. Adhiyaman; Rating: **

You might want to check this week’s late-riser for the crackling and hissing chemistry between the lead pair.

As a couple that finds its dreams of romantic togetherness ruptured by the demands of a joint family, Salman Khan and Shilpa Shetty put up a spirited show. Shilpa is especially effectual in putting across the dilemma of a newly married woman who must adjust to her husband’s joint family.

The characters, though garish, do provide some moments of unbridled entertainment. The dialogues are sometimes crisp and cutting.

Watch the sequence where Salman quietly explains to his obstinate wife why she mustn’t come down in the family hall in her nightclothes. “Because the doodhwala and the servant have only one thing in mind – sex,” Salman drawls.

The moments between the couple frequently ring true. And when Shilpa flashes her eyes in domestic defiance, she even does a drunken song at a party to humiliate her husband and his family, you know this woman means business.

The theme of the pampered bride’s coming-of-rage in her in-laws’ family isn’t novel. We’ve seen Jaya Bhaduri do it in “Kora Kagaz” and we’ve seen Shilpa attempt the role in “Dhadkan”.

At the end of day, however, “Shaadi Karke Phas Gaya Yaar” suffers a congenital fatigue induced by a huge time lapse between launch and release.

To his credit, director Adhiyaman does have his own take on marriage, trust and joint-family problems. We saw him do the domestic-skirmish theme with pulpy élan in “Hum Tumhare Hain Sanam”.

Things don’t fall apart in this marital drama. But they barely hold together. And there’s no reason to see this film unless you are a diehard fan of the lead pair who instil a shred of believability into their dangerously unidimensional characters.

The supporting cast is strictly cardboard — from the heroine’s ultra-snobbish mother (Supriya Karnik) and henpecked husband (Shakti kapoor) to the woman’s divorcee friend (Kunika) and the unintentionally hilarious judge (Shoma Anand), who gives the divorcing couple some reprieve.

Since the wife is pregnant during divorce, the husband is allowed to be with her until the baby is born.

Stork value.

Film: “Anthony Kaun Hai?”; Cast: Sanjay Dutt, Arshad Warsi, Minissha Lamba, Raghuvir Yadav, Gulshan Grover; Director: Raj Kaushal; Rating: **

First questions first – is this an original film? If it is, then this is one of the finest, sassiest and most sparkling scripts one has encountered in recent months.

A fine central performance by the ever-competent actor Arshad Warsi playing a victim of destiny’s high-handedness, gives that extra edge and simmering sparkle to what could have been a precariously stylish pretext to film Thailand like never before.

Hemant Chaturvedi’s cinematography is top-notch. Use of sepia and brown shades in the first half and more flamboyant colours in the second half gives director Raj Kaushal’s film that certain edge of delicious irony and under-stated ecstasy, generally denied to Hindi commercial cinema.

Indeed one of the films USPs is the subversion of cinematic conventions. The device of the victim Champak Chaudhauri, aka Champ (Arshad) narrating his story to a child-like gangster (Sanjay Dutt, and how many times has he played the gangster to perfection!) gives the narrative a chance to repeatedly jump the grin and the gun to give us a dollop of devilish delight that seems original and intelligent.

A sort of Sanjay Gupta flick where a gentle quality replaces the savagery that usually attends celluloid treatises on gangsterism.

Sanjay as Arshad’s sounding board reminds us how much Hindi cinema can benefit from its traditions, if it only stops being slavish to convention.

Sanjay often “corrects” Arshad’s narrative about his life. Watch that wickedly funny moment where Sanjay slaps his story-telling hostage and tells him to woo his girl in the way they do in Yash Chopra’s films.

Yup, the hit-man is a movie buff. Predictably, he falls for his intended victim’s love story. Why not? The romantic scenes between Arshad and Minissha Lamba, who has vastly improved from her earlier outings, are done up in a believable warm and endearing style.

Watch Arshad in the airport-located climax (gosh, how many filmy lovers have been united at this location in the last ten years!) where Minissha asks him to prove his love by breaking into song in full public view.

Arshad is priceless. Whether trying to dig diamonds out of a prison backyard or wooing Minissha with song and poetry – this guy has got just what ticks. Arshad has shaped into one of our more watchable performers, almost a new-age Kamal Haasan.

But it is the movie references that sustain our interest. From the film’s title (a homage to Amitabh Bachchan’s Anthony Gonzalves in Manmohan Desai’s “Amar Akbar Anthony”), Kaushal never fails to remind you that the more things change the more they remain the same – the trick is to do a shimmy with that sameness.

“Anthony Kaun Hai” does just that. And comes up with an endearing and engaging yarn which works when it’s not being too clever for its own good.

More than the chemistry between Warsi and Lamba and earlier in the narrative, Warsi and Anusha Dandekar, who exposes so much skin you wonder if under-dressing is mandatory in parts of ‘Thigh-land’, it’s the Arshad-Sanjay combo that crackles and hisses with a livewire intensity.

If Arshad is obedient and reverent, Sanjay is cool and casual. Together they embody this watchable film’s spirit. It is both respectful and tongue-in-cheek about what makes Hindi cinema tick.

But the question persists – is it an original?

Film: “Darwaza Band Rakho”; Cast: Aftab Shivdasani, Chunky Pandey, Manisha Koirala, Isha Sharvani, Snehal Dabhi, Divya Dutta, Ishrat Ali and Smita Jayakar; Director: Chekravarthy; Rating: *1/2

With a cast that reads like the who’s hoot of Bollywood, this has got to be the noisiest and most ambitious comedy of the season, if not of all seasons.

The chaos of errors starts with four desperados – Aftab Shivdasani, Zakir Husain, Snehal Dabhi and Chunky Pandey – barging into a house colonised by a Gujarati family which seems to exist on the precipice.

From there, the claustrophobic mood builds up with rapid-fire momentum, leaving no room for the characters and their relationships to grow. The narrative suffocates the characters and their motives, narrows them down to a burlesque of bankruptcy. Nonetheless, for about half of the film director Chekravarthy keeps the goings-on moderately interesting.

After a while the house chosen for the anarchic comedy of anxieties, creaks and groans under the weight of characters who know why they are there, but are clueless about why they need to be put in the bizarre situation they have inherited from a scriptwriter who probably likes crowds much more than the average member if the audience.

This has got to be the most crowded canvas since the screen adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Everyone seems to treat grim issues of crime, kidnapping, extortion and perjury as a kind of extended gag.

Indeed “Darwaza Bandh Rakho” is like a soap opera devoted to a malfunctional family where fiscal matters rule the conscience and speed is a substitute for sensitivity.

Writer-director Chekravarthy comes up with some funny moments in the first half. Sadly despite the stretched-out cast he’s unable to sustain the narration beyond the first forty-five minutes. The second leg of the black comedy limps sags and finally heaves to a halt, leaving the proceedings as bereft as a balloon without helium.

What exceeds the rather ludicrous limits set by the chaotic canvas of this heist-hilarity are some of the performances. Though over-the- top, Ishrat Ali as the Gujarati householder grappling with an unexpected houseful situation in his house, comes up with an arresting performance.

Others who get it right in a film that makes a strong pitch for the wrong, are Zakir Husain, Divya Dutta (cute and exceedingly hyper as the house-maid) and to an extent Chunky Pandey. Isha Sharvani so graceful in Subhash Ghai’s Kisna, is embarrassing here. And what’s Manisha Koirala doing in the extended ensemble cast looking as lost as Alice in no-wonderland.

The rest of the vast cast is strictly functional. An interesting blues-and-jazz lined background score by Amar Mohile and a marked tendency to trivialise serious issues that should never be allowed to be held for satire in a society that’s infested with grave maladies, go hand-in-hand in this raucous comedy.

Yes, it’s different from the other comedies. But do we really need a comedy that derives its humour from an indeterminate blank account?

New Delhi, Aug 1 (IANS) Bollywood star Salman Khan returns to the marquee after a long gap with K.S. Adhiyaman’s “Shaadi Karke Phas Gaya Yaar” that releases Friday.

The last time he was on screen was in the dud “Saawan – The Season of Love”. And Salman obviously doesn’t have any high hopes from this film either. “If you ask me, the film’s future is very bleak,” he told reporters.

His argument is that the makers have unnecessarily delayed the release of the film that has been ready for more than a year, which would have a negative impact on its box office performance.

The premise of the film is simple – it is a family drama interspersed with romance, humour and emotions.

It revolves around Ayaan (Salman Khan), a young man from an upper middle class family who falls in love with a beautiful model Ahana (Shilpa Shetty) who belongs to an ultra rich family.

Eventually, they get married. They are looking forward to a blissful and happily married life, but troubles soon crop up when Ahana discovers the vast cultural difference between her upbringing and Ayaan’s. Small differences eventually lead to major confrontation between the two.

The film also stars Reema Lagoo, Shakti Kapoor, Mohnish Behl and Asif Sheikh. The music is by Sajid-Wajid.

Though “Shaadi Karke Phas Gaya Yaar” has been stalled, its south remake was made and released in a jiffy and has done a major business.

To make things worse, the Salman starrer has tough competition at the ticket window with Arshad Warsi and Sanjay Dutt’s “Anthony Kaun Hai” releasing the same day.

Film: “Omkara”; Starring: Ajay Devgan, Kareena Kapoor, Saif Ali Khan, Konkona SenSharma, Viveik Oberoi, Bipasha Basu, Naseeruddin Shah; Script based on William Shakespeare’s “Othello” by Vishal Bharadwaj, Robin Bhatt, Abhishek Choubey; Directed by: Vishal Bharadwaj; Rating: ****

In the brutal heartland of Uttar Pradesh lives a Shakespearean anti -hero called Omkara. He’s the desi re-incarnation of Shakespeare’e “Othello”.

And he’s everything that Shakespeare couldn’t make him… not his fault, really. When the immortal playwright wrote his best-known tragedy he had no idea of the graver tragedy that awaited India’s political heartland.

Delving deep into the bowels of north Indian politics, Vishal Bharadwaj comes up with a gallery of virile characters who jump out of their literary antecedents and do a dance of crime-driven dynamics on the nozzle of their country-made guns.

Omkara looks, feels and smells authentic. When gang wars break out on the rusty roads of a small town in Uttar Pradesh among Omkara, his mentor Bhaisaab (Naseeruddin Shah) and Omkara’s two favourite disciples Kesu (Viveik Oberoi) and Langda Tyagi (Saif Ali Khan) and their opponents, you’re no longer watching the characters, you’re looking at a world where Shakespeare must sound like a spear that shakes.

Besides the fact that he has cast superstars as characters, Vishal’s biggest achievement is the irony that underlines the murky goings-on in the hellish political cauldron of the cow-belt: these are boorish guys driven by a literary background of which they are clueless.

Shakespeare is as alien to Vishal’s characters as a creative compromise would be to this filmmaker.

Vishal hits you hard and long with his political parable. The most interesting exchanges among the characters are the ones that describe the dynamics of gender and politics in a world where laws are made to be broken.

Into this anarchic wilderness, a tender love story creeps in. Omkara’s uncharacteristic lapse into tenderness when he meets the fragile Dolly (Kareena Kapoor) is a subtle sly Desdemonian touch that makes us want to crave for much more.

Vishal delivers. This is a film that is as picturesque as it is sensuous. If the scenes of gang war are in-your-face, the love scenes don’t flinch away from the truth about these carnal creatures of the night who love and hate in equal measures.

The ‘Iago’ factor from “Othello” is tapped to elicit a kind of de- frozen sentimentality in a milieu that shuns sentimentality and yet wallows in theatrical emotions.

The characters live for the moment and die for a cause that no one really cares to study in depth. That’s what makes the political dynamics of contemporary India so deliciously ironical.

“Omkara” milks that irony to Shakespearean advantage. The dialogues (written by the director) add sizeably to the grotesque but nonetheless grand stature of characters ensnared in their own web of crime, deceit and little or no punishment from any man-made law.

The Omkara-Langda relationship is the film’s pivot. Iago’s Machiavellian jealousy in “Othello” is transposed into a state of stunning bedroom politics. Saif Ali Khan as the ruthlessly scheming cow-belt Iago is so authentic you wonder where all that evil comes from!

The sweet urban dude is here transformed into a foul-tongued diabolic vermin with not a shred of shame or remorse.

Have we seen a more vivid depiction of humanised evil? I can’t recall a more loathsome creature of self-interest than Saif’s Langda Tyagi.

Ajay Devgan’s Omkara is suitably subdued and malleable. He offsets Saif’s evil with a kind of gullible machismo that goes well in his romantic overtures with Dolly (Kareena), or even his lovely moments of sibling bonding with Langda’s wife Indu (Konkona).

Devgan’s Omkara is supple and obstinate at the same time. By the time Langda takes over his mind completely, his undying passion for his beloved is turned into a poisonous mass of self-destructive jealousy and tragedy.

Bharadwaj controls the inter-relations with enormous skill. Every character exists through his or her bonding with his immediate surroundings. Every relationship is full-blooded and passionate. Every friendship and enmity crackles and hisses with serpentine intensity. Every roar of the gun is a battle-call.

“Omkara” is no ordinary work of art. It’s a full-blown treatise on the politics of the human heart. Male and female bonding is paramount to Bharadwaj’s plot. In his amazing understanding of both Shakespeare’s tragic resonance and Uttar Pradesh’s ruinous politics, the director is next to none.

The cast and crew pitch in their might with pliable strength. The cinematography (Tassaduq Hussain) capturing the fading rusty browns of the state’s alleys, the editing (Meghna Manchanda) cutting the shots with an arresting alacrity, and the sound (songs and background score by Vishal) mixing the pain and passion of hearts in fright… all add up to a film of remarkable fertility.

Most of all, it’s the stars who are caught in a light never seen before. From the newcomer Deepak Dobriyal who plays Kareena’s jilted bridegroom to Naseeruddin Shah as Devgan’s mentor… the actors are almost unrecognisable in their verbal and visual transformation. The plot simmers with the dynamic discontent generated by actors who know what they’re doing.

Devgan and Oberoi are first rate. But Khan in an author-backed role not just steals but also seals the show.

Among the ladies Kareena’s Desdemonia/Dolly is a bang-on epitome of inviolable innocence. Konkona’s waif-life exuberance reminds you of the early Jaya Bhaduri. Bipasha Basu’s two saucy item songs crackle and hiss with a hypnotic blend of the earthy and the unattainable.

Nothing in this film is a prop. Except of course life, which stands mute testimony to the dance of death that these characters perform on a no-man’s-land… or, shall we say, a know-man’s land, since the director seems to know Shakespeare and Uttar Pradesh politics equally well.

Film: “The Killer”; Cast: Irrfan Khan, Emran Hashmi, Nisha Kothari; Director: Hasnain S. Hyderabadwala and Raksha Mistry; Rating: * 1/2

Hollywood remakes are most of the time only an occasion for the adapted version to be ridiculed and “The Killer” just about escapes this fate.

If you haven’t seen Michael Mann’s “Collateral”, you wouldn’t know that nearly every moment in “The Killer” is inspired by the original. And what has not been derived from it is not worth the script’s while.

The two unlikely partners in the confused collaboration between a cabbie and his criminal passenger are played by actors who seem oblivious of what Jamie Foxx and Tom Cruise did in the original.

There are some interesting moments of shared camaraderie between Irrfan Khan and Emran Hashmi and they have been given some crisp lines to mouth. The words allow them to explore with audacity the chasm between crime and morality.

Dark in tone, the interface between the two actors is often broken by songs featuring the exuberant romantic lead (Nisha Kothari) who walks in with a confident swagger that could have damaged the film’s taut equilibrium.

She manages to intrude without disrupting the main drama, which involves just two characters and a series of brutal murders. The cops on the killer’s trail are so caricatural that crime often gets glorified.

The narration has a certain momentum that the co-directors don’t allow to be lost till the feverish finale when the inexperienced cabbie finally takes on the ruthless assassin.

The incidental characters are kept at a hand’s distance from the revved-up plot. But finally, you aren’t really interested in the body count. You just want to know why a section of Bollywood chooses to remake American flicks that have no cultural roots in Hindi cinema.

Realising this, the location is shifted to Dubai. The crowded airport, over-loaded highways and sleek malls lend themselves well to the sense of impending doom.

For the rest, the film is largely a pointless take on what constitutes the anatomy of crime.

As the simple-hearted cabbie interacts with the crime-lord we don’t really get to know why criminals behave in a particular way.

All we see are two differently-profiled actors holding up the film for all it’s worth.

Film: “Yun Hota Toh Kya Hota”; Cast: Paresh Rawal, Ratna Pathak Shah, Konkona SenSharma, Irrfan Khan, Jimmy Shergill, Suhasini Mulay; Director: Naseeruddin Shah; Rating: ***

Veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah’s directorial debut “Yun Hota Toh Kya Hota” (YHTKH) focuses on the large section of Indian society obsessed with America.

In the film, four stories run simultaneously giving glimpses of the realities of the social order. But there is a common thread running through them – in all the four stories people are trying to escape to the US to get rid of their problems.

Naseer’s narration is simple and there isn’t any confusion or overlapping but yes, he could have worked little more on the linking of the stories. Having said that, it won’t be easy for Naseer’s fan to dismiss this ensemble-piece.

The film is a mix of everything – drama, thrill, romance and crime.

The first story is about Tilottima Das Punj (Konkana Sen) – a Bengali girl married to US-based Hemant (Jimmy Shergill). They meet through the Internet and tie the knot. But Hemant heads off to the US immediately after the wedding reception, leaving Tilottima to cope with her crazy in-laws.

Tilottima’s mother-in-law, an American married to an Indian, doesn’t like her one bit and makes her life miserable. The only solution for Tilottima is to escape to the US.

The second story revolves around Salim Rajabali (Irrfan Khan) – a stockbroker who is in love with an older woman Namrata (Suhasini Mulay), a failed dancer who seems to be making the best of her sexuality to lure young men.

Salim soon discovers she has been cheating on him, but before he can sort out matters, he finds himself involved in a murder case. And his mother, a powerful godmother-like woman (Saroj Khan), advises him to move to the US before he is arrested for the alleged murder of a police commissioner (Boman Irani).

Rahul Bhinde (Ankur Khanna) is the protagonist of the fourth tale. Rahul is a medical student who gets admission into a prestigious US university but he can’t grab this golden opportunity because of his ailing bed-ridden father.

However, his father dies a day before his visa interview and his girlfriend Khushbooo (Ayesha Takia) irons out all the financial hurdles in his way and makes arrangements for his trip abroad.

The fourth and final story is about Rajubhai Patel (Paresh Rawal) who conducts stage shows abroad and illegally smuggles Indians to the ‘land of opportunities’. He is money minded and doesn’t give a chance to anybody until they pay a hefty sum of money. But when his ex-lover Tara (Ratna Pathak Shah) approaches him for her daughter, he eventually bends all his rules.

Whether it is Tilottima, Salim, Rahul or Rajubhai – each of them have a valid reason to travel to America. But does this really solve their problems?

The performance by each of the artists is great but it is Suhasini who is the surprise package of the film. She bowls over viewers with her new avatar, which is very different to her established on-screen persona. The love scenes between her and Irrfan are real screen scorchers.

Naseer has also cast his son Immauddin in the film as a character whose main pastime is to find fault with America, it people and their way of life. However small the role may be, he does come across as a spontaneous actor.

Compared to the narration and performances, the music of the film is nothing much to talk about.

With YHTKH, Naseer proves that he is not only a versatile actor but also a great storyteller and uses his skills in building up a fascinating climax, which is predictable yet enjoyable.

By Subhash K. Jha, Indo-Asian News Service

Film: “Gol Maal”; Starring: Ajay Devgan, Arshad Warsi, Tusshar Kapoor, Sharman Joshi, Rimi Sen, Paresh Rawal, Sushmita Mukherjee, Mukesh Tiwari; Directed by: Rohit Shetty; Rating: **

Watching actor Sharman Joshi whooping it up with his irreverent friends in “Gol Maal” reminds one instantly of Rakeysh Mehra’s neo-classic “Rang De Basanti” where Sharman and co. told us that there is a life beyond the fun and frivolity of the gen-x.

“Gol Maal”, however, goes for the opposite thesis. Nothing matters, nothing makes a difference, so who cares?

Rohit Shetty has a blast in store as “Gol Maal” is yet another comic caper at a time when laughter is considered the best medicine.

2006 is indeed a watershed year for Bollywood comedies. Two earlier ones – Priyadarshan’s “Malaamal Weekly” and Neeraj Vora’s “Phir Hera Pheri” have done exceedingly well at the box office.

“Gol Maal” is a well-timed, well-orchestrated swipe at every sacred institute in the country. There are no pauses for stocktaking, no space for anything but pace in this breathless farce, surprisingly bereft of that embarrassing lewd content in “Masti” and “Kya Kool Hain Hum” that irritated family audiences.

Clean but stupid fun, with characters who subvert the aimless youth’s angst into a parody of slothfulness. “Gol Maal” casts Devgan, Warsi, Kapoor and Joshi as a quartet of wise-cracking wastrels who spare no one from their net of terrifying asininity.

A college teacher with a neck collar hollers so hard in the film that you fear for his throat and sanity. Everyone screams and rants hard.

The inspiration for such an iconoclastic farce comes from the “Dumb & Dumber” genre of cinema that has not always worked in Bollywood (it didn’t in “Deewane Huey Paagal” and “Pyare Mohan”). But there’s a very thin line dividing the farce from a climate of comic chaos that reigns in such weather-beaten but nonetheless diverting nonsense.

This time the brunt of risible wrath is an old blind couple, who seem to be doing impromptu take-offs on Amitabh Bachchan and Rani Mukherjee in Sanjay Bhansali’s classic “Black”.

Like “Tom Dick & Harry” and some other farce fests, “Gol Maal” happily exploits physical impairment for laughter. Tusshar Kapoor’s character is mute (if not entirely dumb), Paresh Rawal and his screen wife Sushmita Mukherjee (she gives hamming a new definition) are blind and there’s a clumsy gangster who cannot hear.

Got the picture? Now chuckle away as sequence after sequence piles on the parody until we are staring at a pyramid of preposterous pranks played at the often-disabled characters’ expenses. Paresh Rawal and Sushmita Mukherjee harbour Sharman Joshi in their house, thinking him to be their estranged grand-son. And Joshi talks to the blind couple in Ajay Devgan’s voice.

Rawal and Mukherjee’s takeoff on Dilip Kumar and Vyajanthimala from “Madhumati” is a master-stroke, well-timed and robustly tongue-in-cheek. But you wonder if irreverence for the past is actually a signal for creativity in the present, or just an excuse to be blissfully mediocre.

The feisty foursome court the headstrong girl next-door (Rimi Sen) and fight off various notorious elements who want to break into their breathless binge of burlesque.

The question is – does the audience have as much fun as the characters on screen seem to be having?

Yes, and no. Though the film’s neatly structured ambit of asinine anarchy tickles the funny-bone, it finally says nothing about the quality of modern life that we haven’t already heard in all those blasts from the past that have come in recent weeks trying to create a ripple across our sense of humour.

If “Gol Maal” works better than other recent farce fests, it is because the boys get it right. Not just Devgan (devilishly deadpan), Warsi (as usual farce-rate) and Sharman Joshi (marvellously accomplished in his comic timing). And, even Tusshar Kapoor gets it right.

Film: “Corporate”; Starring: Bipasha Basu, Kay Kay Menon, Sammir Dattani, Minissha Lamba, Rajat Kapoor, Harsh Chhaya, Sandeep Mehta, Achint Kaur, Raj Babbar, Lillete Dubey; Directed by: Madhur Bhandarkar; Rating: ***

So finally it’s about the conscience. All of Madhur Bhandarkar’s best works, including his latest “Corporate”, certainly qualify as fine progressive pieces of cinema – which finally boils down to the question of the conscience and the individual.

Kay Kay Menon, who plays the ambitious but conscientious corporate wheeler-dealer in a company run by an unscrupulous tycoon (Rajat Kapoor) who would go to any length climb his way up the corporate ladder, is so adept at showing his troubled conscience that you wonder which came first – the conscience or movies crystallising its dilemma.

The corporate world, which is so much a part of television serials, has never been exposed on the large screen since Shyam Benegal’s “Kalyug”. To his credit, Bhandarkar, with considerable help from his editor, slices through these ambition-driven personalities with the urgent hiss of a car negotiating a craggy highway.

The bumps and jerks in these snarled lives are seldom detrimental to Bhandarkar’s tremendous knack for storytelling.

This is a director who packs in a precious punch in the plot. The screenplay that Bhandarkar has co-written with Manoj Tyagi has enough twists and turns to make the corporate jargon decodable to a layman.

Like “Chandni Bar” and “Page 3″, “Corporate” sets its feet firmly in a culture-specific work-oriented milieu. It then finds an emotional bedrock in its innumerable characters, portrays them as people trapped in ambitions and desires over which they have no control after a point.

Though Bhandarkar forms an amazing criss-cross of undercurrents in the two rival families headed by Rajat Kapoor and Raj Babbar (even the peons are shown making nudge-nudge-wink-wink remarks about their bosses), the narrative finally narrows down to being a burnished love story between two colleagues, played with rhythmic restrain by Kay Kay and Bipasha.

While they both work on the same side of the fence, yet they drift away due to their inability to control the swing of destiny.

As the morally upright Nishigandha who steals her rival’s project only to pay an unimaginable price for her indiscretion, Bipasha Basu pulls out all stops to deliver a performance that avoids artifice.

This one is straight from the heart.

Though this is all about agile entrepreneurship, it is the heart that eventually triumphs over the head in this smartly told drama of doom and redemption.

Bhandarkar moves quickly and surely through the corporate labyrinth. His well-researched plot finds its level within the characters’ conscience.

We’re finally watching them with their souls naked to the camera.

Every performance from Bipasha Basu to Sammir Dattani (who plays a brief but bright role of a young executive in her office) is credible and often compelling. Rajat Kapoor and Lillete Dubey (also in a brief role) are front-runners in the performing sweepstakes.

Yes, the film’s industrial mood and language may be impenetrable to those who think tycoons wear expensive suits and have meetings in five -star hotels.

One look at the lies beneath, and the gloss vanishes, the grime bubbles to the surface. His plot is wide and often deep, giving incidental characters a sudden but sure sweep of self-expression. Rajat Kapoor’s domestic life or the beginnings of a romance between new recruit Minissha Lamba and Sammir Dattani are dealt with in just one sequence each.

Bhandarkar is a past master wielding the whip over his plot until the characters sing in a language of pain hurt and atonement. The larger picture brings out some startling comments on morality in a ruthless profession.

To begin with, “Corporate” may lack the dramatic intensity of the director’s earlier works. But once Bhandarkar takes you in, he turns the screw hard, reminding us of how far away ambition has driven us from our dreams.

Film: “Krrish”; Starring: Hrithik Roshan, Priyanka Chopra, Rekha, Naseeruddin Shah; Directed by: Rakesh Roshan; Rating: ***

Is it a bird, it is a plane? No it’s Hrithik Roshan!!!

It’s not enough to say that Hrithik is one of the best actors of the country. Extraordinary is the word for the measured manner in which he glides through the air to the beat of Rajesh Roshan’s rather-vapid songs… or cuts through the breeze to the stunning special effects created with a verve so-far unknown to Indian cinema.

“Krrish” takes us into the world of masked fantasy where the stakes are incredibly high… as high as the computer-generated leaps that the super-hero takes as he tries to save the world from the clutches of a megalomaniacal villain with a glint in his eyes that can only belong to Naseeruddin Shah.

Though there’s a sense of slackening in the earlier portions of the lengthy narrative, the last lap of this luscious voyage into comic-book fantasy is undertaken in a spirit of complete conviction and credibility.

You can’t miss the sign posts. We’ve seen so many Bollywood heroes doing heart-in-the-mouth stunts. But never in an Indian film have we seen a hero look so elegant and relaxed as he glides over water and mountains to vanquish the power-crazy villain.

Though the scripting in the first half reveals signs of formulistic fatigue (scenes where the village-bred Hrithik tries to spook the globe-trotting journalist Priyanka Chopra are straight out of a Joy Mukherjee-Asha Parekh musical from the 1960s), the second half revs up proceeds to an exceeding high, precipitating the kind of action and thrills that have so far been alien to Hindi cinema.

The scripting in the second half, specially the portions that show Krrish’s father (Hrithik doing a double role) and the villain reading the future to see their own impending deaths, are masterstrokes of plotting invention.

Quaintly Rakesh Roshan mixes old formulistic conventions with sights and sounds never seen before. The synthesis is not just inviting but also enticing in ways that re-define the cult of kitsch and escapism in our cinema.

It’s not enough to get technicians from abroad to do the action. Other Hindi films have tried it before. But none with the élan of Hrithik Roshan as he glides across the frames in strides that replicate the measured might of a panther.

Make no mistake, “Krrish” belongs to Hrithik Roshan. He again displays his skills at dancing, fighting, emoting and just being comfortable with the camera without once letting the sweat of the toil trickle into the frames. Here’s an actor who stubbornly re-defines the concept of screen heroism with every performance.

In “Krrish”, Hrithik is required to make the transition from a simpleton in the village with superpowers to a masked crusader in Bangkok. He brings to the film’s fantasy element a kind of innocence underlined by a subtle swagger that furnishes the duality of the masked character the musk of masculinity and vulnerability. His initial romantic sequences in a designer-dhoti with Priyanka Chopra are endearing. The two make a believable pair. However, Priyanka is unnaturally subdued, the fire doused by the overall dynamics of the goings-on.

Hrithik’s scenes with his screen-grandmom Rekha exude warmth, though it’s hard to accept Rekha as a grand-mom.

Naseeruddin Shah as Hrithik’s opponent is so cool you wish there was more of him. Priyanka Chopra’s character represents the reluctant forces of cut-throat ambition that threaten all the heroic innocence of the supernaturally blessed hero.

We’ve seen it before in “Superman”, “Batman” and “King Kong”. But our “Krrish” has something extra-special those films didn’t. Hrithik Roshan.