Review of Bengali movie “Chander Pahar”

Making a movie adapting a classic novel is not a new thing for Bengali movies, but to adapt a novel like “Chander Pahar” on the big screen need guts from the whole film unit. The backdrop of the story is so much larger than life that it was really a challenge for the whole team to recreate the same adventure which the readers can feel while reading the novel by the great author Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay.

Hats off to the production house Venkatesh films for investing around 15 Crore to make the movie in such a large scale which no other Bengali movie has dared ever.

From the time the movie was announced everyone have two doubts, first one whether it will be actually possible to recreate the incidents mentioned in the movie and second whether Dev will be able to carry off the role of Shankar which is totally out of his comfort zone. Let’s try to find the answers for these doubts.

The story has not been literally followed, some minor changes has been made to wrap up the story in 150 minutes time, but the soul of the story has been kept unchanged. The main story is almost similar where Shankar the adventurous young guy from Bengal goes to South Africa for employment and also to fulfil his adventurous dreams. There he meets Dieogo Alvarez who accompanies him in the search of diamond mine at Chander Pahar, the mountain of Moon. In his journey Shankar not only discovers the hidden dangers of the outer world rather he also discovers his inner world emotions.

The screenplay has been written with doing some necessary changes but the good thing is that the story has never been twisted to present the lead actor Dev as a commercial film hero. Only one negative point is that the movie looks so lengthy especially in the first half it takes too much time to build the plot for the main story. In the second half also some more emotional equation could have been added between Shankar and Diego Alvarez’s friendly relation, otherwise the journey of the two guys seems little monotonous until the death of Alvarez. But still there are some sequences which are breathtaking like Shankar’s encounter with the lion and the black Mamba, the rock climbing scene by Diego and Shankar, the sequences when Shankar is trapped in a cage and the sequences in the Kalahari Desert before the climax.

As a director it is the best work of Kamaleswar Mukherjee. He has performed the huge responsibility of recreating the adventurous journey on screen brilliantly. From choosing appropriate locations to taking good performance from his entire cast and technical team, Kamaleswar has done everything with 100% perfection.

There may have lots of questions about selecting Dev as Shankar but when you will see the movie you will not doubt on the selection made by the production house and the director. When you have to invest a lot of money to a movie then it becomes necessary to take a popular actor to create the required pre release buzz for the movie so that the budget can be recovered. Probably that was the reason for which the production house chooses Dev over some other probable options like Indraneil Sengupta or Abir Chatterjee. No matter whatever the reason is to take Dev, the good thing is that the story has never been compromised to add commercial movie elements keeping Dev in mind. For Dev it is the toughest role for his whole career. So far his ability to fight and dance well in commercial movies was considered as his strong point, doing good acting was never his strength. But here he has to act and only act without any dancing or fighting. For the maximum part of the movie he has to act alone without many dialogues. In such cases the actor has to emote through his expressions and Dev has tried his best to look convincing for most of the part of the movie. Although it is true that there is scope of improvement for Dev’s acting but there is no doubt that it is his best work so far.

Another important character Diego Alvarez has been played by Gerard Rudolf, who looks perfect for the role. He has done very natural acting. Here the actor has to talk some of his dialogues in an accented Bengali as he has been shown as hailing from Portuguese Chinsurah and he has spoken Bengali quite well.

The rest of the cast has provided able support. But the main character of the film is the backdrop of the story, South Africa. The whole technical team has done their best to present South Africa and the wildlife journey as real as possible. The cinematographer Soumik halder and Subhankar Bhar has captured South Africa through their lenses superbly. When there is very few dialogues and there are only two actors on the screen then the sound design becomes very important and full credit goes to Biswadeep Chatterjee for capturing the sound so well that it gives you the feeling to accompany Shankar in his journey. The background and music done by Indradeep Dasgupta and Debojyoti Mishra has influences of South African music which goes well with mood of the movie. Editor Rabiranjann Moitra has done a good job except for the sequences in the beginning when the narration of Shankar’s story started. The transition between the sequences showing the past and present of Shankar in not very clear in the beginning. The visual effects have been done extremely well considering the limited budget, except for the volcano eruption sequence which could have been shown in a better way.

On a whole Chader Pahar is a milestone in the history of Bengali movies. A whole film unit has dared to see a dream taking a lot of risk and giving their 100% for it and now it’s the audiences turn to give them the support and courage in return so that more such movies can be made in future.

Review of "Dhoom 3"

From the day, when the surprising news has came that Aamir perfectionist Khan has been casted as the new villain for Dhoom 3, everyone is waiting with a high expectation to see what will be the impact of Aaamir’s entry to this successful franchise which is always popular for more than its style and look than the story and logic. Yes the new addition to the third instalment is an emotional background; unlike the other two Dhoom movies this time the thief has a solid emotional reason to do the robberies.

The Dhoom movies are never made for the audiences who like to find logic in the story, this time also there is no exception. This is a story of a magician Shahir Khan (Aamir Khan), who

robs the branches of a particular bank in Chicago as his father had committed suicide for the pressure of the loan that he had taken from the bank. Inspector Jai Dixit (Abhishek Bachchan) and Ali Akbar (Uday Chopra) are called from Mumbai to solve this case just because the thief lefts messages in Hindi at the crime scene after every robbery (don’t try to find any logic here). Then begins the usual chase between the thief and cop in true Dhoom style where the inspector knows who the thief is but he only wants to catch him red handed. The chase sequences are better this time and the bikes are also more advanced but some of the main attraction of Dhoom franchise are missing here like the supercool attitude of the villain, the mastermind plans (copied from Hollywood movies) to execute the robberies. Without these qualities it does not look like a part of the Dhoom series rather it looks like a movie which is inspired from earlier Dhoom movies only.

In the first half though it looks like a Dhoom movie but in the second half for around one hour the thief and cop story takes a backseat and it becomes an emotional story which tries to showcase only Aamir Khan. Yes there are twists and turns in the story and some of them are interesting. The best among them is of course the closely guarded secret which is revealed just before the interval point. But if you have seen the Hollywood movie “The Prestige” then it won’t appear as surprising to you also it will be easier for you to predict the story after that point. The problem with the screenplay is that this shocking twist has been used to create more emotional drama rather than to add more thrill to the story.

The screenplay is engaging but in parts and the lack of romance and comedy is also a weak point for it. Another negative point for Vijay Krishna Acharya as a screenplay writer is that he was so engaged to showcase the character played by Aamir Khan that he forgets to give enough scope to the other characters and this way the movie has became a one man show only. Which may look exciting to Aamir fans but Dhoom series fans will not feel the same. As a director Vijay Krishna Acharya is better than his last outing “Tashan” but he cannot meet the expectations set up by the director of last two Dhoom movies Sanjay Gadhvi. The dialogues written by the director himself is just okay only the funny lines written for Ali’s character are interesting.

Aamir Khan is saying on every interview that this is the toughest role of his 25 years career. With due respect to his personal opinion, this is not the best of his acting career. He had a good scope to show his skills especially in the second half but unfortunately it feels bad to see that he is giving an extra effort to make his emotions believable. Such an over acting is unexpected from you Aamir, this is not a bad performance but we expect more from you.

Abhishek Bachchan has nothing much to do. The length and importance of his character of the cop is getting reduced with every Dhoom movie with more importance going to the thief’s character. Abhishek looked fit in comparison to Dhoom 2, but he needs to think seriously to change his hair stylist as he has been given two disastrous disguise looks in the second half.

Uday Chopra has again proved that no one can do a better act as Ali, than him. He has the best comic lines and he delivers them superbly. Wish he would have been given more screen time and more dialogues.

Here one thing needs to be mentioned that in last ten years not much development has been done to the characters of Jai and Ali. Now we know these two characters very well and we would like to discover the newer sides of these characters, so the writers in Yashraj camp please think on this before you plan the next Dhoom.

There is Katrina Kaif too who is playing the character of Aliya the leading performer in the circus run by Shahir. She is also the love interest of the character played by Aamir Khan. Katrina has only two scenes and four songs to her credit and she managed to look gorgeous in that small part. She has shown her dancing skills brilliantly in all the songs. It is tough to take your eyes off from her when she is dancing on the screen. She is truly described in the movie as “Asian goddess who can dance and sing liquid electricity”.

Apart from the leading cast the other actor who deserves special mention is the child artist Siddharth Nigam. He has given a heart warming performance as the younger Aamir Khan.

The music by Pritam Chakraborty is not so popular till now comparing to the other Dhoom movies, but still the songs “Malang” and “Kamli” are good and have the potential to be a hit with the movies success. The background music by Julius Packiam is brilliant and it has been used perfectly in the movie especially in the chase sequences.

The technical team has given enough support to the director. The cinematography by Sudeep Chatterjee is superb. The way he has shot the chase sequences in the streets of Chicago is breathtaking. Editing by Ritesh Soni is crisp in the first half but he loses his grip a bit in the second half. The romantic song featuring Aamir and Katrina in the second half could have been easily edited out. Choreographer Vaibhabi Merchant has utilised the budget provided for the song picturization and make the songs a visual treat. The dance moves in the songs

“Dhoom Machale”, “Malang” and “Kamli” is awesome and the areal acts are very much new for any Bollywood movie. Same thing cannot be said for the Tap dance featuring Aamir Khan in the title credits. The hard work done by both Aamir and the choreographer Dien Perry is showing but one month time is not enough to learn this Tap dance for Aamir especially when the background dancers are perfect in this particular dance form. Instead of that a simple Bollywood dance would have been a better alternate. The action sequences are always a highlight of dhoom movies and this time also it has been designed brilliantly by Conard Palmisano and Sham kaushal, but the fight sequence in the introduction scene of jai and Ali is a letdown considering the standard of Dhoom franchise.

There is no doubt that Dhoom 3 will surely create history at the box office and entertain the masala movie lovers but it will disappoint the diehard fans of Dhoom series.

Music Review of Dhoom 3

There is no doubt that the music of Dhoom franchise movies is always a superhit and stylish. It always has a high impact on the success of the movie.

So let’s check out how much interesting is the soundtrack of Dhoom 3, the third instalment of the most popular franchise of Hindi movies.

It has total five songs and one Arabic version of the original Hindi track and there are two instrumentals.

Dhoom Machale (Hindi)

There is no doubt every time the main highlight of Dhoom albums is its title track. Every

time Music composer Pritam has to perform this tough task to recreate the Dhoom magic using the same signature tune but still making it little different from the earlier versions. This time the singer has been changed, it has been sung by Aditi Singh Sharma. She is not much popular till now but no doubt this song will make a boom in her singing career. Although she has just done an okay job but when the tune is so much popular who cares about the wordings or the singing. Specially after the movie will be released and people will see sensational Katrina Kaif dancing to the tune of this song, this song will be a major hit. But if you only listen to the song without watching the video you will surely remember Tata young’s version of the same song from Dhoom (1) as the rhythm has some similarities.

Dhoom Machale (Arabic)

It has nothing new except for the Arabic wordings and the Lebanese singer Naya, otherwise it is just same with the Hindi version. The funny thing is that if it would not have been a part of the album then people could have claim that this is the original track from where Pritam has taken inspirations to copy the tune for the Hindi version. The songs sounds good for the unknown language only but the mystery is why the song is there in the album and will it be used in the movie too, well for that we have to wait till the release.

Malang

Even before its release, this song has created a buzz not because of the tune or singing rather

for its lavish picturisation which costs around 5 Crore. So there is no doubt that visually the song is looking good but this song sounds good too. The music is superb which has some interesting mix of Sufi and Rock. Don’t miss the semi classical aalap in between that too in the signature tune of Dhoom. After the superhit track “Zinda” in “Bhaag Milkha Bhaag”, Siddharth Mahadevan has sung this song well too, but the female singer Shilpa Rao is just brilliant. She sounds similar like her own song “Ishq Shava” from “Jab Tak Hai Jaan”, but still her voice is enjoyable.

Kamli

This is a nice song with Punjabi lyrics. It grows in your mind from the first time you listen to it. The tune of the song is very familiar especially in the lines “Mere Mahiya Sanam Janam” , there is no doubt that Pritam has been inspired once again but no matter from where it is inspired it sounds good. In every Dhoom soundtrack Sunidhi Chauhan gets an opportunity and she utilises it very well. Her energetic and sensuous voice suits very much with the feel of the song. If you still don’t like the song then you have wait to watch sexy Katrina Kaif dancing superbly on this song.

Tu Hi Junoon

It is a romantic track where a guy is praising his lady love. Unfortunately the wording is very much ordinary and the music by Pritam is just average. Mohit Chauhan tries too hard to sound different but he actually sounds like a bad version of Kunal Ganjawala. Over all this song is just an average song. Maybe if the song will be picturised on Aamir and Katrina then their fire crackling chemistry can work for the song.

Bande Hai Hum Uske

This is a song composed by Julius packiam and sung by child artistes Shivam Mahadevan and Anisha Sharma. It sounds like a prayer sung by children in school campuses. Maybe it will be a situational song in the movie. When you will listen to it carefully you can easily find out that it is heavily inspired by the Anu Malik composed song “Dil Me Sanam Ki Surat”, in fact it is just a slower version of the old song. One can easily pass this song without hearing it for more than one time. But one must admit that the lyrics of the song are good and inspirational.

Dhoom Tap Instrumental

It is an instrumental track with appropriate beats for Tap dancing. Thanks to Aaamir Khan’s over promotion about his Tap dancing learning sessions that everyone is looking forward to see him doing Tap dance on this tune. But in audio track it does not sound so much interesting. It is engaging only in the parts where the signature tune of Dhoom is there. Also this track sounds too long as there is no variety in the tune.

Dhoom 3 Overture

It is another instrumental track composed by Julius Packiam. This track is engaging and sounds perfect as the background score for the larger than life and stylish thriller.

The best of this album – Malang , Kamli and Dhoom Overture(instrumental)

Review of Bengali Movie - Hanuman.Com

From the title of the movie it was quite obvious to assume that this movie has some connection with the cyber world and when you start watching this movie, the title credit itself will confirm your assumption, where it shows two people doing a very dirty video chat over Skype.

The story starts with Anjaniputra Sensharma(Prosenjit Chatterjee), a math teacher in a village nearby Basirhat where he lives with his wife Tanushree(Mausumi Bhattacharya). His

life is limited to his home, his school, his co-workers and his villagers. He has no connection with the outer world as much, for him the cable connection on TV is the only way to connect with the outer world. Suddenly one day enters a computer along with an internet connection, in his life. In the beginning it was just a TV with a type-writer for Anjaniputra, but gradually he enters in the world of World Wide Web and started understanding that the knowledge of whole world ranging from the facts about the cockroach to Albert Einstein is there in the computer. He used to become so much involved with web world that he started  

de-touching with the real world around him. Then a girl Maria came in his web world and becomes his online friend very soon, but something happened in this relationship which forced Anjaniputra to go to Iceland leaving his own familiar world.

The screenplay is good in the first half till the point the story is in India. The way the small details have been shown of the life on an ordinary man is commendable. The way the story unfolds in first half it keeps you engaged especially the turning point sometime before the interval is totally a surprise. But when the ordinary man starts his extraordinary journey to Iceland the story keeps going to a totally different track. All of sudden it tries to became a crime thriller which is unfortunately not smart enough. It seems the director has not permission to shoot in Iceland for more days so he wanted to wrap up the story in a hurry, everything is placed properly to help our protagonist. The mystery solving part in the climax is just childish. While watching this childish part every audience will have too many questions to ask to the Director and Story writer Gaurav Pandey. Gaurav do you really believe that it is so simple to enter in the house of a Mayor of a city or to hack his computer? Grow up Gaurav and show some maturity next time because the audience expects something mature from you. 

Now a days , Prosenjit Chatterjee has become a brand associated with the movies made for multiplex going urban audiences and he is doing well too with such movies in the recent years. Here too it has no exception. He acts very well in both the parts. The scenes where he witnessed an unwanted incident on computer and then the reaction in his feelings are very good; it is a mix emotion of sadness and fear in his face and it looks so real.

Mausumi Bhattacharya who played Tanushree, wife of Anjaniputra does a good job. The innocence in her face is very nice. The portions where she is feeling deprived of her husband’s love has been enacted by her very well.

There is a very good thing about Bengali movie industry and that is its huge army of good character actors who can give enough support to the lead actors. Here too there is no exception. Kaushik Sen is wonderful as the geography teacher Mithilesh Babu, who is ready with a dirty joke every time. While Rudranil as the cable service provider Panchu is brilliant, his comic timing is awesome. Both Kaushik and Rudranil have proved once again that for them the length of the role does not matter.There is Kharaj Mukherjee too but he has not been given enough opportunity to connect with the audiences.

But in the second half of the movie when the story shifts to Iceland two new character artistes have been introduced to the Bengali movie. One is the director Gaurav Pandey himself and another is his daughter Saloni Pandey. This real life father and daughter duo has played on screen father and daughter too who lives in Iceland but actually are from Bangladesh. Saloni as nerd Nury shines very well as a computer savvy teenager, she looks good on screen. But it is her father Gaurav Pandey, who steals the show with his fabulous performance. Gaurav’s character Hassan is little inspired from a character with the same name from the Anjun Dutta directed movie “The Bong Connection”, but this Dirty-mouthed Hassan is more enjoyable than the earlier.

Apart from that, there are two foreign actors too in main characters, Saskia ranwig as Maria, the online friend of Anjaniputra and Oli Bigalke as the Mayor of Reykjavik, Iceland. Both of them have done an average job.

No matter how good Gaurav Pandey as an actor is, but as a director he fails to impress the audiences this time. Though he had managed to build the film well in the first half but god knows why suddenly he changed the track of a simple tale of relationship and emotion to a silly crime thriller. Hope to see something better from you next time.

Technically this film is good in parts. The cinematography by Madhusudan Shi and Oliver Koeppel is good. Sanjib Dutt does very average job as the editor, there are so many moments in the movie which looks like junk and could have been easily edited out. The moment before the interval when Anjaniputra’s mind is travelling from real to surreal while sitting outside a temple is totally bizarre. Then the dreams like situations which keep coming in the movie in a regular interval are totally unwanted. 

The music is not the USP of the film but it is true that the song “Prithivi ta naki” by Gautam Chatterjee has been used very well in this movie. It appears as a very much situational song for the movie. There is a remix version of two Tagore songs too, “Mama chitte” and “Je chhilo amar swapanocharini”. Also there is a remix of “Ikir Mikir ” and an original soundtrack too sung by Arijit singh and composed by Indradeep  Dashgupta which is good. But the only track which will be with you even after coming out of the theatres is “Prithivi”.

On a whole the movie has created a lot of pre release hype thanks to the presence of the extra ordinary man Prasenjit Chatterjee and the movie will do a good business for that buzz. But ultimately after watching the movie you will surely feel cheated. This is an example of how a good story idea can be wasted. This concept had lot of potential and I wish more focus would have been given on the emotional journey of the man rather than his physical journey. The posters of the movie may be selling it saying “An Extraordinary Journey Of An Ordinary Man” but it is actually “An Ordinary Movie Of An Extraordinary Actor”

Review of R....Rajkumar

When you go to watch a film directed by Prabhdeva(director of movies like “Wanted” and “Rowdy Rathode”),what will you expect from it, Romance,Action,Comedy,Song , Dance in a whole , a full package of masala entertainer, with a south Indian touch given to it. And the fact is you will get all this as expected from this movie, but still it does not provide the similar entertainment as of the earlier movies directed by the same director. So what is missing here, the answer is the Super heroism of the leading man is missing here. For such movies the hero needs to have a larger than life image like Salman Khan or Akshay Kumar, but unfortunately it is hard to accept Shahid Kapoor as a Superhero.

The story of the movie is very simple and gives a feel of old 80’s movies. Romeo Rajkumar (Shahid Kapoor) works for a drugs dealer Shivraj (Sonu Sood), in a village. Rajkumar is very

loyal to his boss and even ready to eliminate the rival drug dealers. But the problem arises when Rajkumar and Shivraj both fall in love with the same girl Chanda(Sonakshi Sinha).As predictable in the climax Rajkumar fights alone with the whole gang of Shivraj ,in a 15-20 minutes action sequence to win over his girlfriend.

The story is very much predictable and you have seen all these things earlier in other movies and unfortunately you have seen all this in a better way too in other movies. In the screenplay action, romance, comedy, song and dance everything has been added in a routine way. As expected the humour is very cheap. No respect has been shown for woman characters. For example the hero calls her girlfriend as “lollypop”; the villain is always looking at the curves of the heroine (whom he wants to marry actually) and the height of all- the heroine gives an open challenge to the villain that if he can defeat her boyfriend in fight then she will strip for him.

There is no doubt that Prabhudeva does not direct movies to get any awards, he actually make movies just for the masses with his own trademark style. This time also there is no difference.

Shahid Kapoor is desperately trying to experiment with different type of movies from last few years to get a hit. He has tried his hands in a tragic love story (“Mausam”) to a romantic comedy (“Teri Meri Kahani”) to a comedy (“Phata Poster Nikla Hero”) and now finally to an action masala entertainer. 

But the problem is, he has been unsuccessful with all this experiments. There is no doubt that he is an above average actor and has acted quite well in this movie. His comic timing is good, his dancing is superb even his romantic pairing with Sonakshi is okay, but in the fight sequences , he is not in his comfort zone. It does not look convincing at all when Shahid fights alone with the whole army of goons. It seems Shahid has tried hard to enter in the shoes of Salman or Akhshay , but the shoes are too large for your size Shahid. The best thing about him is in spite of giving so much flops still he gets chance to work with directors like Vishal bhardwaj, please take advantage of this opportunity Shahid. Best of luck to you, Shahid.

There is no point of wasting words in describing the acting of Sonakshi Sinha. She has done

the same type of role with same dialogues, same costumes ,same dance moves in so many movies that perhaps in the shooting floor, she herself forgets for which film she is shooting. Probably the daily soap actresses gets more variety of roles than Sonakshi Sinha. In spite of that the girl was giving solid box office hits but it seems that her luck has left her since last few months. It seems Sonakshi should wait for a “Dabbang 3” to bring back her luck.

Same thing is applicable for Sonu Sood, he also is getting type casted by the south Indian remake makers. It is high time for Sonu, to realise his potential and be little selective about his roles.

The rest of the cast including Ashish Vidyarthi, Mukul Dev,Asrani, it can be said neither the audiences nor the actors themselves are worried about what they are doing in the film.

As for the technical team is concerned , there is nothing much to highlight except for the action and dance sequences which have been choreographed very well, but unfortunately looks too similar with the other movies of same zone.

The music by Pritam is very good, though it may not appeal to the classes especially due to the strange lyrics but it is very much popular with the target audiences of such movies. The songs like “Gandi Baat” and “Saree Ke Fall Sa” are already a hit and will definitely help the movie to get a better opening at the box office. For such movies a hit item number works very well but the item number here (“Kaddu Katega”) deserves a big thumbs down.

On a whole it is just like any other remake of a B-grade south Indian movie and if you like such movies then you can go for it, only you have to adjust a bit with the wrongly casted leading man in the action sequences. Otherwise watching the dubbed version of the south Indian action movies on TV can be a better alternate.

Review of “Bullett Raja”

It has became a trend in last few years in bollywood, first a talented director makes an wonderful film within a limited budget and lesser known actors, then big production houses sign him to direct their films, they provide him superstars, better budget but they added an extra responsibility to make the film commercially successful so that the budget of taking the superstar can be recovered. With this added responsibility the director cannot make the film in his own way and fails to deliver a solid film as good as his earlier works.

Recently such incidents have happened with Kabeer Khan in “Ek Tha Tiger”, Neeraj Pandey in “Special Chhabbis” and with “Bullett Raja”, director Tigmangshu Dhulia has added himself in the list of those helpless directors.

“Bullett Raja”, as it was looking from its promos, is based in the small town of UP. It is the story of two friends Raja Mishra (Saif Ali Khan) and Rudra Tripathy(Jimmy Shergil). Destiny bonds them together in friendship and forced them to the world of crime and politics.

They keep growing as gangsters and tried to rule world with their own way but as usual when they become bigger in power their own support system goes against them and try to finish them. In between the intense drama of power and revenge, there is a romantic story too between Raja and Mitali (Sonakshi Sinha). But rather than the love story, it is more about the male bonding of two friends which will remind you of the friendship of Hindi movies of 70s, even in the film the two friends has been compared with Jai and Veeru of “Sholay”.

The story has nothing new; all this has been told earlier in too many movies. Also it is very much violent especially in the second half when Raja is on the mission to take revenge of his personal loss. While watching the movie, audiences will feel the lack of lighter moments.

There is a romantic track but it seems just to make it a complete commercial movie the track has been forced. Even the screenplay has been twisted just to fit songs there like the disco song in Mumbai nightclub “Tamanchey Pe Disco”. In fact in the second half it is visible that the director has pressure to showcase Saif Ali Khan as star giving him more opportunities to show his herogiri.

But there are some moments which will be with you for some time like the instance where Raja wants to shoot a person from 100 meters distance just to break the records of another shooter, or the scene where the kidnapper and hostage is enjoying a comedy show on TV together. The chase sequence between Raja and Bajaj (Gulshan Grover) are also well shot. But such moments are very few and not enough to make up the loop holes in the screenplay.

As director Tigmangshu Dhulia has been successful to create the ambience of UP especially with his well written dialogues. He has extracted good performances from his cast, but he is unable to cover up the lack of the weakness of the story and screenplay. There is no doubt it is his most commercial film so far but he has lost his own style of filmmaking ,in between the pressure to add commercial elements.

Saif Ali Khan has done a good job as Raja Mishra a ganster from UP with his own style

and attitude but it is far away from “Langda Tyagi” from “Omkara”. Sonakshi Sinha has nothing to do except from appearing in two songs and some scenes and saying some Bengali lines in between with a wrong accent.

The supporting cast have done a good job. Gulshan Grover is brilliant as a corrupt businessman. Raj Babbar has done well as a politician. Ravi Kissen has done a good job as a

hit-man who pretends to be crazy and wears women’s dresses just to escape from getting arrested. Vidyut Jamwal has a smaller role and his character is introduced much later in the movie. Anyways it is always a delight to watch him doing his daredevil stunts.

But the show stealer is undoubtedly Jimmy Shergil, he has again proved that he has the talent and because of that Tigmangshu Dhulia gives him chances again and again in almost in his every movie. Wish after this some other movie makers will also notice his potential. Jimmy Shergil has played his character Rudra with honesty. His bonding with Saif Ali Khan is excellent. The audience will surely miss the character of Rudra very much, in the second half of the film.

In technical department the film is average. The dialogues by Tigmangshu Dhulia are superb and will get seeti and taali in small centres. The action scenes conceptualized by Parvez Fazal Khan are good especially the scenes picturised on Vidyut Jamwal. The sets by Dhanajoy Mondal are realistic. Rahul Shivastava’s editing has a lot of scope for improvement. Sajid Wajid’ background score does not go well with the drama on screen.

The music by Sajid Wajid is just okay there is not a single superhit song. Even the item song picturised onMahie Gill(in a special appearance) sounds similar with too many other old item songs. Only the song "Samne hai sawera " is better but the way it has been used in the movie , it does not serve any purpose. The disco is a forced song but will remain popular in party circuits for some time.

Overall “Bullet Raja” is just another story of gangster and politics based in UP. There is nothing new to watch. The first half is still okay with the good bonding between two lead actors Saif Ali Khan and Jimmy Shergil but the second half is too much violent and lacks interesting moment. If you are a fan of Tigmangshu Dhulia’s style of filmmaking then you will be disappointed for sure. Watch it if you like to see the bhaigiri of UP wale Bhaiyajee with solid dialoguebaazi, otherwise please stay away from it.

Review of “Gori Tere Pyaar Mein”

While watching “Gori Tere Pyaar Mein” you may think you are watching two different movies separated by an interval, only the lead actors are same with same screen characters in both halves. The first half’s story is of a young architect Sriram Venkat(Imran Khan) from Bengaluru who falls in love with a north Indian social activist Dia Sharma(Kareena Kapoor Khan), but soon they realized that their motive in life is different so they broke up. In the second half the story shifts to rural India as the social activist has now shifted her base to a village in Gujrat and her ex-boyfriend goes to the village to win her heart again.

Well its quite clear that the story has nothing new to offer it can remind us of so many films like “Dilwale Dulheniya Le Jayenge”, “Maine Pyaar Kiya”, “Pyaar Kiya To Darna Kya”, “Ramaiya Vastavaiya” etc. But the narrative style is refreshing in the first half at least. The way the character of Vasudha has been added in the story, is quite interesting. Vasudha (Shraddha Kapoor) is a south Indian girl whom Sriram’s parents have chosen for him. In the first half Sriram narrates his story to Vasudha and in this way audience comes to know about his relationship with Dia. The breezy romance between Sriram and Dia looks good. The marriage sequence between Sriram and Vasudha is also nice

and funny. Here all credit goes to the screenplay writers Arshad Syed and Punit Malhotra for keeping the story interesting, in spite of the fact that the story has been told on screen so many times earlier. The dialogues written by the duo are also witty and funny and go well with the multiplex audiences. But the problem starts with the second half as it goes to a more serious and dramatic way but cannot capture it properly. In the second half the story tries to highlight serious issues like corruption but it handles the issue in a childish way. In fact there was no need to be so much serious when you can win audiences heart with the fun element. The saviour of the second half is the character of Lateshbhai(Anupam Kher), the collector of the village. This character brings out the lighter moments in the seriousness of the second half.

As a director Puneet Malhotra is very much comfortable in the first half of the movie as it has quite similar setup like his first movie “I Hate Luv Stories”, but in the second half he tries to come out his comfort zone but fails to deliver. It is a good effort by him but everyone cannot make “Lagaan” in a village setup.

Acting wise, Imran Khan has played a young spoilt brat, for whom making relationships and

then breaking up them is nothing new but one day he finds his true love and then does lots ofunexpected things to get his love. Sounds familiar? Yes it is familiar as Imran has playedsuch characters in too many movies; more recently in “I Hate Luv Stories” he had portrayed almost similar character. So it can be said that after doing some experimental roles like “Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola” and “Once Upon Ay Time In Mumbai Dobaara”, Imran is back to his comfort zone and he has done quite a okay job.

Kareena Kapoor looks very good in both urban and rural avatar. She acted well and danced

well too (with shaking her tooh). But the only question comes here why Kareena chose to do such a movie at this stage of her career where she has nothing new to do. Is it her friendship with the producer Karan Johar or she really don’t gets exciting offers after her marriage?

And where is the chemistry between Imran Khan and Kareena Kapoor? Both of them looked quite nice in their last movie together “Ek Main Aur Ek Tu”. Probably the story there was of two friends so there missing chemistry as a romantic pair was not noticed there, but in a romantic movie the

chemistry is required. Here Imran Khan has shown better chemistry with Shraddha Kapoor. There is a possibility that soon the two can be seen opposite each other as lead pairs. Not only with Shraddha Kapoor , Imran Khan looks good with Esha Gupta too in a song sequence.

Apart from the lead pair, Anupam Kher has done a wonderful job as Lateshbhai. Also the actors, who have played parents to Sriram and Dia, have provided good support.

Shraddha Kapoor is in the movie in a guest appearance but she impresses with her talent in the limited screen time she gets.

The technical team is pretty much okay. Mahesh Limaye’s cinematography is eye catching. The sets designed by Shasank Tare are good but in the second half it could have been better. You can find such a neat and clean village only if the producer is Karan Johar. Akiv Ali’s editing is okay, although the length of the film could have been a bit shorter. Background music by Salim-Suleiman goes well with the mood of the film. Choreography of the songs like “Tooh” and “Chingam Chabake” is done well by Remo D’souza.

The music by Vishal-Shekhar is already popular and it will help the movie to get a good

business in its initial days. But just like the film there is no freshness in the music too. It is just like any other Vishal-Shekhar soundtrack, in some of the songs the influence of other Vishal-Shekhar songs are pretty much clear. The lyrics are average. But hats off to the lyricist Anvita Dutt Guptan, for writing the song “Tooh”. No one had ever imagine that there can be such a song which can describe a human body part so directly that too without sounding vulgar by the smart use of Punjabi words.

Overall the movie has nothing new to offer but the same old story has been told in a refreshing way with good actors, funny moments and dialogues, though the second half is not enough interesting. If you want to see a romantic movie and have a good time with your partner in the theatre then you can go for this one, others can wait for the television premier.

Review of Bengali Movie – Ashchorjyo Prodeep

It is true that Ashcorjyo Prodeep is not a sequel to Bhooter Bhabishyat, still everyone will compare it with the later. It is just because of the fact that it is the second movie from Anik Datta as a director, after giving the successful Bhooter Bhabishyat, so that it has got so much pre-release hype. Otherwise this movie might have to wait for the word of mouth publicity after release like Bhooter Bhabishyat.

So before going to the details of Ashcorjyo Prodeep, here are the answers of the FAQ related to all that comparisons. Yes it is also a comedy, but unlike Bhooter Bhabishyat , it’s a black comedy. It is also entertaining but not in the similar way. This time also there is a revolt against modernization by demolishing the age old culture but again in a different cinematic language.

Ashcorjyo Prodeep is based on a short story by Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay. It is a modern day tale of Aladin and his magic lamp. Here Aladin is Anilda or Anilabho Gupto (not Gupta), a typical middle class Bengali who wants to grow in life but not sacrificing his peace of mind. But his wife Jhumur has more aspirations with her life. She has no problem to do overtime at her work as a beautician just to maintain a status of living at par with her sister. One day Anilabho got a magic lamp and a modernized version of Genie appears to fulfil all the wishes of his master. What will be the wishes of Anilabho and will he be able to achieve that with money, that forms the rest of the story.

Making this film was not an easy task for director Anik Datta. He knows there will be the burden of expectations from all his fans as well as critics. It is tough to get success in your first movie as director but it is tougher to fulfil the expectation on the second movie when the first one is well received by both masses and classes. But it has to be admitted that with all this burden of expectations Anik Datta has done a good job as director, though it is not his best work.He had the financial liberty this time to shoot in a Limousine but may be just like the protagonist Anilabho, he too had lost his focus a little bit by getting money and fame surprisingly. Actually his direction is better when he shows the middle class lifestyle in the first half. What a perfect detailing of a typical middle class Bengali culture. The way Anilabho enjoys the adda in office, he saves money by travelling in tram while getting travel allowances of a taxi from office, he don’t hesitates to have some drink in the absence of his wife or to ask for a 2% cut on a deal which he has done for his boss. Every minute detail has been taken care very well. But in the second half the screenplay loses its focus a little bit. It seems that the director wants to show that he has got a better budget by unnecessary show off. The makeover part of Sashwata is simply not entertaining . But in the climax the movie gets back its control. At the end, it is successful to deliver the message it wanted to deliver- “Does money can buy everything or not?”

Sashwata Chatterjee is in the best phase of his career .This year this is his third film where he has been featured as the main lead. He has proved that to be the main lead you don’t need to have good looks, good body or good dancing skills rather if you are only good in acting, roles will be written for you. Here Sashwata has brought life to the character of Anilabho. His body language, his mannerism everything suits the character. The way he has played the character everyone will be able to identify with this. Similarly the other parallel lead Rajatava Datta is at par with Sashwata. Everyone will like his portrayal of a genie in a modernized version. His dialogues in his first scene are very funny. Though he appears in the movie much later but once he appears there is scope to escape from his magic.

Shreelekha Mitra has a comparatively smaller role as Jhumur,the wife of Anilabho. She is very good as the nagging wife in the first half, but in second half she has only one or two scenes. Special mention is deserved for her last scene in the movie where she has no dialogues but still she expresses a lot with her eyes. Mumtaz is playing the role of Miss Mala Mal, an aspiring model and actress of Hindi movies who is actually a Bengali. She has only one scene with dialogues and one item song. But her character is very much there throughout the whole film. Her picture is there in every possible way of print and electronic media, that is used for advertisement. Probably she had given more dates for photo shoot than for actual shooting. Her only scene where she is giving interview to promote her upcoming film is very funny. There is a dialogue where she said “I can’t reveal too much”, but she had actually revealed a lot in the movie being in the limit of censorship.  

Apart from these key players there are some cameos by Paran Bandopadhyaya, Kharaj Mukherjee, Bishwanath Bose,Arindam Shil, Sumit Samaddar and Mir. They have proved that they don’t need a longer screen time rather they can leave their impression in their one or two scene appearances.

Technically the film is very good in some aspects. The screenplay has been written quite well for such a one liner story. But there are some loop holes; there are some unnecessary subplots which have been added just to increase the length of the film. Like the scenes between Anilabho and his friend Pragyan da, who gives him lecture about some strange facts about the American presidents. But there are some really funny sequences too, like the one where Anilabho interacts with the waiter at a multi cuisine restaurant, the first meeting of Anilabho and his Genie, the scenes between Anilabho and his boss. A special mention should be given to the sequence where Anilabho is watching TV and changing TV channels, the way the director had done spoof on the popular Bengali TV channels that is amazing. It seems the director has separately shot for the few seconds video portions on different TV channels.The dialogues are very well written by Anik Datta , it gives enough scope to the audiences to laugh out loud. Unlike Bhooter Bhabishyat here are some dialogues with adult humour too. The locations are very much real and the look of the characters is also well designed. Cinematography by Aveek Mukhopadhyay is nice and simple. Editor Arghya Kamal Mitra has done efficient job.

The music by Raja Narayan Deb is in sync with the movie. Although the songs are not chart toppers, but are very much appropriate as per the demand of the script. The item song “Zyada zyada, dil mange zyada” has the appeal to be popular but the best song is “Sab kichhu badle gechhe” sung by Amit Kumar. This is a revised version of the Kishore Kumar song “Prithivi badle gechhe”, Anik Datta has added very good lyrics to the original song. It is actually a satire on the current mindless consumerism.

Overall it is a good movie with lots of humour added with some serious message too. I will advise you to go and watch the movie. Don’t try to find the lovable ghosts again rather enjoy the company of the interesting genie and his master this time.