Hindi movies
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One of the little pleasures of Jab We Met is its amazing array of supporting characters. Many of them have no more than a few minutes of screen time, but they manage to leave their mark. No one illustrates this better than the desk clerk at Hotel Decent in Ratlaam, where the couple decide to…
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Let me dispense with the formalities first: Jodhaa Akbar is not a bad movie. However, it does fall distressingly short of being a good one. The movie tells the story of Akbar as a young Mughal king on the way to greatness, and his marriage to the Rajput princess Jodhaa. It was, to be sure,…
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No, I still don’t like Himes-bhai‘s voice. Although I will admit that the occasional Mika number works for me – Mauja Hi Mauja from Jab We Met being an example. This post is mostly about A. R. Rehman. Not his singing voice (which I’m not very fond of but works well for some songs), but…
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I planned to write this one ages ago, soon after watching the movie. However, I found that I had very little to say about the movie. It is a Nana Patekar – Anil Kapoor comedy with assorted extras including Akshay I’m-on-a-roll Kumar, Paresh If-it-involves-comedy-I-have-to-be-present-even-if-I’m-not-funny-in-it Rawal, Katrina Gorgeous-trumps-acting-every-time Kaif and Mallika A-C-cup-trumps-acting-every-time-too Sherawat. When the aforementioned…
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Sunday is one of those movies that works best when it isn’t trying to tell the story. The premise is interesting: a girl goes out partying on Saturday night and wakes up on Monday morning. It takes her ages to find that she has lost an entire day, during which time she is chased by…
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Not the (relatively) new one starring Venkatesh and Karisma Kapoor. I’m referring to the old one with Raj Kapoor, Motilal and Nutan. For the most part, this is just a standard simpleton-in-the-big-bad-city movie, the cinematic equivalent of comfort food. What makes it memorable, however, is a courtroom scene right at the end. Raj (Kapoor) has…
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Honestly, I didn’t like this movie much. It was a calculated sort of script that knew exactly what buttons it was pushing. Not a problem per se — even a lot of good movies do that. But the good ones also manage to convey something genuine in the midst of all that machinery. This one,…
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I remember the first time I heard a remixed song — Bally Sagoo’s version of Chura Liya. In the beginning, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. The original is such a thing of beauty that the idea of adding random extra stuff to it seemed sacriligeous. This one didn’t work, but I could…
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I just came across this chat transcript with Anurag Kashyap, the maker of No Smoking on rediff. A fair number of questions in the chat are from people seeking an explanation for the events in the movie. For those of you who are interested, I have reproduced parts of the Q&A here. Q: I loved…
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Usually, when I review new releases these days, I add a spoiler warning. Thankfully, this time neither movie needs one.. In some ways, these two movies are diametrically opposite each other. Jab We Met is a formulaic rom-com that simply tries to do the best it can within the framework of that genre. No Smoking is an experimental…
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