Wednesday, July 22, 2009

New York



Movie Review “New York”

Genre: Action, Thriller

Director: Kabir Khan

Producer: Aditya Chopra, Yash Chopra

Banner: Yash Raj Films

Music Director: Pritam Chakraborty, Pankaj Awasthi & Julius Packiam

Lyricist: Sandeep Srivastava & Junaid Wasi

Star Cast: John Abraham, Katrina Kaif, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Irfaan Khan

Release Date: 26th June 2009

“New York” was first big budget / big banner movie to release after the draught at multiplexes due to the disagreements between multiples owners and filmmakers over profit sharing. Kabir Khan who is director of the movie yet again comes up with very sensitive movie after ‘Kabul Express’. Personally I loved ‘Kabul Express’ and this movie is also base on 9/11 attack on world trade centre. So there was no way I was going to miss the movie. Although movie bit longer to release, the producers manage to retain the hype around the movie alive. It was mainly due to John Abraham’s nude posture in the movie.

Movie is a story about three friends Sam (played by John Abrahm), Maya (Katrina Kaif) and Omar (Played by Neil Nitin Mukesh). Omar who is from Delhi, who gets scholarship in New York University, meets Sam and Maya there who are Americans of Indian origin. They become good friends Omar fell for Maya but Maya is in love with Sam; so heartbroken Omar moves away from their life. But at the same time big disaster happen in New York, twin buildings of world trade centre demolished by terrorist attack. And that change the life of these three friends forever. After the terrorist attacks FBI arrest 1200 men on suspect just because of these people was Muslim. One of these 1200 men was Sam. Then we see how FBI humiliates physically and mentally these suspects. Sam has to go through it for 9 months and then FBI release him due to lack of evidence against him. But these 9 months changes Sam upside down. And what he does next, what Maya and Omar do to help him? Is the New York is all about.

The movie has you hooked from the very first scene itself. The movie keeps you on the edge constantly. You want to know what is going to happen in the very next scene. The movie has some excellent scenes. Especially the torture scenes are amazing and surely will send a shiver down your spine. There is hint of humor in the movie. The chemistry between all the lead actors looks fantastic. The climax is as dramatic as any Bollywood Movie.

All the lead actors gave brilliant performances. Katrina Kaif may be first time came out of her glamorous Barbie doll image to give good intense performance. She surely does not disappoint you. John Abrahm came a long way and now certainly knows his art very well. Irfan Khan is as brilliant as ever. But man who walks away with trophy is Neil Nitin Mukesh. He performed exceptionally well. All in all people should watch this movie if not for content then surely for Neil’s performance.

Director Kabir Khan came out with more commercial film after ‘Kabul Express’ and it surely worked for him. I hope he comes up with more sensitive subjects in future. If I have to rate this movie I will give it 8 out of 10. This is a must watch movie .






Thursday, July 2, 2009

Mastar Eke Mastar

“Movie Review: Mastar Eke Mastar”

Director: Sanjay Surkar

Language: Marathi

Genre: Comedy

Cast: Ashok Saraf, Pramod Joshi, Mangesh Desai, Deepali Sayyad, Surekha Kudachi, Vijay Khote and others

Released: 2009

Education is one of the biggest money making business today and it is getting bigger and bigger every passing day. We know many politicians turning into Educationalists or vice versa. There is nothing wrong in making big education empires. It only provides opportunities for students in higher studies in India itself. But trouble is that these so called Educationalists are more interested in making money rather than providing has become a big business. Educationalists are more interested into making money than passing on knowledge to deserving people. This movie ‘Mastar Eke Mastar’ is exactly tells the story of an ordinary Mastar (teacher) who becomes an educationalist with the help of all immoral and illegal ways.


Movie is about the Bappa More, played by Ashok saraf. He is a primary school teacher in government schools. He has all the bad habits of drinking, gambling and scheming mind on top of that. He makes students do his personal work. Just to get benefited from government’s policy to help divorcee women by giving them teacher’s job. He divorces his wife. This is how his story starts and he ends up being a wealthy man with two wives and big education empire.

I really like the core concept. And I was expecting a lot from this movie. As I said idea of the movie was brilliant, movie has Ashok Saraf as lead actor, and Sanjay Surkar as director. But movie failed in all departments. It has weak script and above all weak direction. After movies like ‘Choukat Raja’, ‘Tu Tithe Mi’, ‘Satchya Aat Gharat’ this movie is really a mediocre performance by sanjay Surkar. Without the presence of Ashok Saraf the movie would have been too dull to watch.

Lately the Marathi movies I watched had good subjects, good acting talent, and enough technical support; but they are lacking directorial and script level proficiency. So people making Marathi movie should really buck up. As I am sure they will not want the flow of audience to Marathi movies to dry out again. As for this movie if I have to rate it, I will give it 4 out of 10.




Tuesday, June 2, 2009

"Gallit Gondhal, Dillit Muzara"


“Movie Review: Gallit Gondhal, Dillit Muzara”

Director: Nagesh Bhosale

Language: Marathi

Genre: Comedy

Cast: Makarand Anaraspure, Sayaji Shinde, Nagesh Bhosale and others

Released: 2009

Another Makarand Anaraspure film which had lot of promise but fail to deliver. There were lot of expectation from this movie as it was based on political scenario in a village of Maharashtra. And at this time when election process is going on India, we hope they could have extracted more of this situation. The movie had brilliant concept, it also had formidable cast like Sayaji Shinde, Nagesh Bhosale and Makarand Anaraspure; but the acting talents of the cast totally wasted due to the weak script and weak direction for that matter.

The movie is about corrupt politicians played by Sayaji shinde and Nagesh Bhosale who are fighting aimlessly and ridiculously. In order to gain control in their constituency, they create unreasonable chaos in their village or lane (Gallit Gondhal). But at the same time easily succumb to the high command in Delhi (Dillit Muzara). But while these two fights a small but smart party worker played by Makarand Anaraspure take advantage of the situation. Not only he extracts money from both of them but eventually goes on to become MLA. And in the end we come to knoe he is no different than the other two guys.

The movie was an attempt to comment on the state of politics going on in India or say rural India. It is full of sarcasm. It shows the cut throat rat race for power between politicians, disinterest in election process by voters, change of loyalty of voters and party workers for money or rather to watch “Lavani” played by a fair skinned foreigner.

The concept of the movie and presence of Makarand Anaraspure demands non-stop humor and good dialogues. The movie failed to deliver that. Only saving grace of movie is Makarand Anaraspure who makes us laugh never the less on some gags but whenever he was not present on the screen movie seem to be sluggish and slow. It is not only due to bad script and dialogues but also because of naïve direction as movie does not seem to flow smoothly from one scene to another.

Movie has only one which is also a title song and good enough. For last few years we can see that Marathi films are improving technically also. But in this movie background score was very harsh to ears. People now prefer Marathi movies over Hindi movies; so producers and directors could not lag on any technical aspects at least. As for actors everyone did their job very well. We are watching Makarand Anaraspure in same sort of role from movie “Kay dyach bola”, althoght he is still enjoyable. He is getting little monotonous in every film. He is busiest and most successful actors in Marathi alongwith Bharat Jadhav. They are the comedy kings of Marathi film industry.

As for the film if I have to rate the movie, I will give it 5 out of 10.



www.switch2life.com




Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Must Watch Movies Before You Die - Part 4

31. Jewel Thief – Hindi (1967)


Director: Vijay Anand

Writers: Vijay Anand (dialogue), Vijay Anand (screenplay)

Genre: Mystery, Musical, Thriller

Cast: Ashok Kumar, Dev Anand, Baijayanthimala, Tanuja, Helen, Faryal, Anju Mahendru, Nasir Hussain, Pratima Devi and others…..

The very best Musical mystery made in bollywood….

32. Gumnam - Hindi (1965)


Director: Raja Nawathe

Writers: Dhruva Chatterjee (screenplay), Charandas Shokh (dialogue)
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Thriller, Musical, Suspense

Cast: Nanda, Manoj Kumar, Pran, Helen, Mehmood, Dhumal, Madan Puri,and others

Watch the very best suspense movie in Bollywood.


33. National Treasure – English (2005)


Director: Jon Turteltaub

Writers: Jim Kouf and Oren Aviv

Genre: Action, Adventure, Thriller

Cast: Nicolas Cage, Diane Kruger, Justin Bartha, Sean Bean, John Voight, Harvey Keitel, and others

Hunt the treasure with Nicolas Cage.


34. Dombivali Fast - Marathi (2005)


Director: Nishikant Kamat

Writers: Nishikant Kamat, Sanjay Pawar

Genre: Drama

Cast: Sandeep Kulkarni, Audumber Aphale, Ashwini Apte, Shashank Bawkar, Shrushti Bhoske, Dushyant wagh and others

Story of a common man…


35. Lage Raho Munnabhai – Hindi (2006)


Director: Rajkumar Hirani

Writers: Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Rajkumar Hirani

Genre: Comedy, Drama, History, Musical, Romance

Cast: Sanjay Dutt, Arshad Warsi, Vidya Balan, Boman Irani, Dilip Prabhavalkar, Diya Mirza, Jimmy Shergill, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Saurabh Shukla, Abhishek Bachchan, Rohitash Gaud and others

Munnabhai meets Mahatma Gandhi.

36. Zakhm – Hindi (1998)


Director: Mahesh Bhatt

Writers: Mahesh Bhatt

Genre: Action, Drama

Cast: Ajay Devgan, Pooja Bhatt, Sonali Bendre, Kunal Khemu, Akshay Anand, Avtar Gill, Nagarjuna, Sharat Saxena, Ashutosh Rana, Madan Jain, Saurabh Shukla, Vishwajeet Pradhan and others

This is very sensitive movie, watch this for Kunal Khemu

37. Jurassic Park – English (1993)


Director: Steven Spielberg

Writers: Michael Crichton

Genre: Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Cast: Sam Neil, Laura Dem, Jeff Goldblum, Samuel L. Jackson and others

Watching dinosaurs on big screen was quite a treat


38. Khatta Meetha – Hindi (1978)


Director: Basu Chatterjee

Writer: Basu Chaterjee

Genre: Comedy, Family

Cast: Ashok Kumar, Rakesh Rakesh Roshan, Bindiya Goswami, Raju Shreshtha, Deven Verma, Preeti Ganguli, Ranjit Chowdhry, Devendra Khandelwal, Vimal Sahu, Ravi Raaj, Perl Padamsee, Pradeep Kumar, and others

Light hearted family comedy movie, one of the very few movies made on Parsees.


39. Tingya - Marathi (2007)


Director: Mangesh Hadawale

Writer: Mangesh Hadawale

Director of Photography: Dharam Gulati.

Genre: Drama

Cast: Sharad Goekar, Tarnnum Pathan, Ajit Gawande, Inesh chauhan, Sunil Deo, Madhavi Juvekar, Chitra Nawathe, Vitthal Umap, Kamlesh Sawant, Mansi Lonkar

Much celebrated movie in Marathi.


40. Valu – Marathi (2008)


Director: Umesh Vinayak Kulkarni

Writers: Girish Kulkarni, Umesh Vinayak Kulkarni

Genre: Comedy

Cast: Atul Kulkarni, Bharati Acharekar, Mohan Agashe, Dipak Alegaokar, Vrishasen Dabholkar, Renuka Daftardar, Girish Kulkarni, Sharvari Kulkarni, Veena Jamkar, Amruta Subhash, Dilip Prabhavalkar, Nirmiti Sawant, Jyoti Subhash, Chandrakant Gokhale, Satish Tare and others

A movie made on a Bull…


Video