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Showing posts with label Movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Movies. Show all posts

Friday, 23 September 2016

PARCHED HURTS RABARI PRIDE

By On September 23, 2016 In
Parched, a bittersweet tale of four women rebelling against the age-old traditions of Rabari community, landed in a legal tangle on Thursday, a day before its release. A 26-yearold BJP leader from Anjar taluka, approached Gujarat High Court seeking a ban on the film saying it hurt his community's pride by portraying it as crude and assassinating the character of its women. Masarubhai Rabari, general secretary of BJP, Anjar taluka (Kutch), said, "The characters are showing in our traditional attire and as leading our lifestyle. But the dialogues portray our community in a bad light.

The women are shown as having loose morals and questions have also been raised on our traditions. If the movie is screened, it will give out a wrong impression of our community and that is unacceptable." Rabari said that after he saw the trailer, which released on September 9, he felt that the film would bring disrepute to his community. "Parched is presented in a highly destructive, improper, inappropriate and offensive manner against the sentiments of the petitioner's community. It shows a particular community as vulgar, rude, offensive and crude and creates wrong image of it in the society," says Rabari's petition.

After hearing the case on Thursday, the court issued notices to the central government's Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Censor Board and Leena Yadav, the director of the movie. "We have sought a stay on the movie's release but the court just issued notices to the respondents, citing late filing of the plea as the reason. We will demand a stay on the exhibition of the movie in the hearing on September 27," said Vijay Nangesh, counsel for the petitioner. Parched revolves around the plight of four rural women leading an oppressed life in the north-western region of the country.

They are shown as struggling against family, social customs, and physically and emotionally abusive husbands. The film was showcased at Toronto Film Festival last year. The film has already triggered controversy before its release after two clips were leaked on social media. The screen grabs of the trailer and clips were also annexed with the PIL. Director Leena Yadav nor actress Radhika Yadav responded to Mirror's phone calls and text messages till the time of going to the press.
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Friday, 19 February 2016

Neerja Movie Review : Sonam Kapoor Shines In The Best Film Of 2016

By On February 19, 2016 In
You've got to feel a little bit sorry for a film that's relying on Sonam Kapoor and Shabana Azmi to draw audiences to theatres. As crowd-pullers go, these two ladies aren't precisely on top of the pile. But for you all you know, if she's lucky, Neerja could do for Sonam Kapoor what Queen did for Kangana Ranaut.
Based on a real-life hijacking — four armed Palestinian men took Pan Am Flight 73 hostage on September 5, 1986, when the flight was in Karachi — Neerja is the first truly good film of 2016. It's the story of a woman whose name you probably didn't know of until publicity for this film started doing the rounds. Yet, she's been given bravery awards and commendations by the Indian, Pakistani and American governments. How often does that happen? 
Neerja Bhanot (Kapoor) was seemingly an everyday 20-something who worked as an air hostess with Pan Am. Her parents raised her to be a good girl — keep your eyes lowered, dress decently, don't get into trouble. Then the flight she was on got hijacked and it turned out that Neerja was a hero under all that normalcy. 



Sonam Kapoor plays Neerja Bhanot convincingly 

For 17 hours, while gun-toting terrorists patrolled the plane, Neerja protected passengers, took care of them and handled the bad guys. 20 people died in this incident and had it not been for Neerja's quick thinking and courage, this hijacking could have been infinitely worse. 
Even if you've checked out Neerja's Wikipedia page and know how her story ends, the film will hold your attention. The script doesn't waste any time and with the very first shot, we're neck deep in the middle of a terrorist plot. Within the first 30 minutes, Neerja is on her way to the airport and the dynamic between her and her family is so tender, you almost wish the film had dragged its feet in the beginning. 
Technically, Neerja's family has nothing to do but wait for news of their daughter once the plane is hijacked, but thanks to some clever scripting, they become a small but important part of the film (instead of being recognised as padding that will make the central story of the hijack more time-consuming).



Sonam Kapoor and Shabana Azmi are in fine form in the film 

Director Ram Madhvani and writer Saiwyn Qadras respect history and remain mostly true to it (unlike Airlift). The casting and production design of the film are superb. Neerja could easily have felt claustrophobic. All the action happens inside the plane and the monotony of those interiors are broken by occasional visits to the Bhanot home and to Neerja's father's office. All these spaces are designed to look realistic and cleverly have different colour palettes so that the film doesn't feel visually boring. 
Every face in Neerja, right down to the terrorists, is credibly real and un-filmi. As the camera shows you row after row of passengers, it's easy to believe each of them have their own little stories, rather than being bored extras. 
Kapoor is charming as Neerja and this is a career-best performance for the actress. She's ably supported by a cast of minor characters who do wonders for the film because they're so realistic in both their looks and their behaviour. 



Sonam Kapoor in a still from the film 

The least fleshed-out characters in Neerja are the terrorists, predictably. One of them, for instance, is established as a hothead, but suddenly turns into a psychopath. However, expecting a Bollywood film to accord a character arc to terrorists is expecting entirely too much. 
True to tradition, Neerja loses a little of its steam after interval, but it continues to be tense until the climax. After that, it seems as though Qadras couldn't figure out how to end the film and so, Neerja makes some concerted attempts at pulling the heartstrings and stretching the film's runtime to two hours. Azmi has one monologue near the end that exists only to reduce the audience to tears and as expected, the veteran actress delivers. 
Moving as the film is, one of the most poignant bits of Neerja are the end credits, which are accompanied by photos of Bhanot. She was a gorgeous, vivacious young woman and as you see all the happy, smiling photos of hers — some candid, some from modelling assignments — you can't help but feel awe and disbelief that there was so much grit and valour in her. 
Go watch Neerja, and carry tissues with you.  From: www.scoopwoohp.com
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Friday, 29 January 2016

‘Mastizaade' And ‘Kyaa Kool Hain Hum 3' Review Or: How NOT To Make ASex Comedy, Ever

By On January 29, 2016 In

Last Friday, I dragged myself to a press screening of Umesh Ghadge’s “porn-com” Kyaa Kool Hain Hum 3 — starring Tusshar Kapoor, Mandana Karimi, and Aftab Shivdasani — at a multiplex in Juhu. It was a morning show and there happened to be a few college students (i.e. not members of the press) at the show as well. They were part of the minority that was chuckling, almost out of politeness, at some of the “jokes”. As the “movie” progressed, however, the chuckles reduced in frequency and eventually fell silent. It all became one relentless audio-visual assault: a puke-inducing soufflé of female objectification, juvenile wordplay, and appalling misogyny. 
On Thursday, against better judgement, I showed up for the press screening of Milap Zaveri’s Mastizaade, starring Sunny Leone, Kapoor again, and comedian Vir Das. Roughly two hours later, having bolted for the exit as soon as the “movie” ended, I was dry heaving, physically sick from having endured what felt like an even worse assault on my entire being.
Perhaps I’m being ridiculously dramatic and over-sensitive, but surely I cannot be the only one who felt this way. I heard the college students at the first screening — part of the purported target audience for both these crimes against cinema — grumbling as we all shuffled out of the theatre. At another regular show of the same “movie”, a critic friend informs me that a guy used the interval to berate his friends — again, all members of the target demographic — loudly for not having heeded his suggestion to watch Airlift instead.
There is very little to choose between Mastizaade and Kyaa Kool Hain Hum 3, as they come largely from the same two pre-pubescent minds: those belonging to Mushtaq Sheikh and Zaveri. Both are seasoned Bollywood writers. The former has written films such as Om Shanti Om(2007) and Ra.One (2011); the latter has written dialogues and screenplays for several films since the early ‘00s, most notably Kaante (2002), Masti (2006), Housefull (2010), Grand Masti (2013), and Ek Villain (2014).

A file photo of Mushtaq Sheikh

A file photo of Milap Zaveri
It’s almost as though they’re the same “film” (and from what I hear, they actually were). In Kyaa Kool…, Kapoor and Shivdasani play two young men who become porn stars in Thailand. In Mastizaade, Kapoor and Das play sex addicts. The former features Iranian model and recent Bigg Boss participant Mandana Karimi, making her objectification debut, while the latter offers current social media darling Sunny Leone in a double role. In both movies, the plots have nearly the same set-up: two horny young men have lots of sex with several unnamed, often Caucasian women (because foreigners have no sanskaar, duh) before they meet “the one” (because she looks like a foreigner but speaks Hindi and isn’t that the dream?) and want to settle down.
There are no words to accurately describe the inanity that Zaveri and Sheikh have tried to pass off as comedy here. In Kyaa Kool…, they find humour in a grandmother dying of a heart attack at the age of 69 and a horse letting loose an exothermic fart on Karimi’s face, which chars it black. In Mastizaade, a gay character (played by comedian Suresh Menon) is portrayed as an unbelievably over-the-top predator who all but molests Tusshar Kapoor in a fit of horniness (this is fiction, after all) and this is supposed to be hilarious because, in Milapverse, homosexuality is a punch line, as opposed to an experience that can be a grim reality for many gay people. In another scene, Das bites a disabled guy’s crotch whilst punching him on his testicles because, well, I don’t know; perhaps one of the writers won a coin toss or something.
Women in these films aren’t even treated as flesh-and-blood characters — they’re vehicles of tits-and-ass whose sole purpose is to provide titillation and amusement for the audience and motivation for the male characters. In Kya Kool…, Claudia Ciesla and Gizelle Thakral play two porn stars in permanent states of arousal. They cannot, it seems, utter a line without touching some part of their bodies, heaving their bosoms, and moaning in the most ridiculous manner possible. Either a) the writers have no idea what female orgasms looks like or b) they think the audience doesn’t — I’m leaning towards a), frankly. In Mastizaade, Leone plays twin sisters Laila and Lily Lele: one, a saucy seductress, and the other apparently demure and geeky (never mind that her necklines are just as low as her sister’s; it’s just that she’s draped either a palluor a dupatta over herself). 

A screen-grab from the 'Mastizaade' trailer featuring Sunny Leone
Sheikh and Zaveri are presumably adults, but their understanding of the female anatomy seems to be decidedly juvenile. In Mastizaade, a woman, subtly named Titli Bubna (Thakral again — how did they even keep track of which set they were on?), appears as a bank manager who seems to have no idea that she has breasts on her person. Thankfully, Das and Kapoor are there to helpfully inform her that the fries she ordered along with her burger are hidden from view under her ample bosom — a part of her own goddamn body. She giggles and thanks them profusely: “Oh my god, I’m so silly!” They nod their heads in agreement and giggle modestly, all the while still staring at her silicone-enhanced cleavage. The soundtrack dutifully adds honking sounds every time we see Thakral’s assets, reminding young men everywhere that women’s bodies are but playthings for their enjoyment. Phew, good thing there’s none of this ‘patriarchy’ and ‘rape culture’ nonsense in India otherwise these annoying feminist-types might have begun their caterwauling again.
What is particularly surreal about these pieces of trash masquerading as films is the way they’ve been promoted as daring, paradigm-shifting mainstream releases. In an interview to Scroll.in, Mastizaade producer Rangita Pritish Nandy insisted that they had not objectified Leone. She said, “Strip a man, nobody notices. Put a willing woman in a bikini and everybody screams murder,” implying that the problem lies in our perception. Zaveri has frequently cited the example of Marathi film producer Dada Kondke’sraunchy brand of cinema in the ‘70s and ‘80s as justification. In all likelihood, the criticism of these films will be dismissed by them and their ilk as language-based elitism and hypocrisy, especially when compared to the raunchiness of American comedies such as American Pie (1999), The Hangover (2009), and 21 Jump Street (2012).
However, juxtapose these films against the aforementioned examples and one realises that there’s a massive difference in what Zaveri and co. are doing as opposed to what they think they’re doing. It’s incorrect to assume that what Hollywood and even Kondke have done in the past would or should be kosher by today’s standards. We do, after all, live in a world that is a lot more sensitive to such things than ever before, thanks to the Internet. The drubbing that films like Entourage (2015) received recently is proof of that. 
There is nothing wrong, per se, with the idea of depicting sexuality and nudity on screen. There never has been. Take Kolkata-based filmmaker Q, who has shocked audiences with his daring, explicit Bengali film Gandu (2010) and is currently in Sundance with the sex comedy Brahman Naman — he pushes boundaries, yes, but with visual panache, sophistication, and an acknowledgement of real-world sexual politics. Take Harshavardhan Kulkarni’s Hunterrr (2015), which took the troubleto create relatable female characters and derive its humour from situations, not crude wordplay. This is also “our cinema” and it is doing the same thing, only better.
Herein lies the key difference: in good sex comedies, the jokes can get uncomfortably raunchy but are frequently smarter and usually punch up(i.e. humour is not derived at the expense of groups or communities that have a lower amount of power, such as women, homosexuals, the differently-abled etc.). That aside, many films considered to be good are also inventive with craft and often benefit from good acting. The latter was true, to a certain extent, of Kondke’s films as well.
Kyaa Kool… and Mastizaade go out of their way to shock and offend, but never in a good way. All the jokes are stale and terrible, the kind you may have laughed at if you were 12 years old, enveloped in regressive ideas that ultimately strengthen the status quo: boys will be boys and everyone will just have to deal with that. It’s called adulthumour for a reason, for heaven’s sake. And let’s not even talk about craft or acting. Yeesh, is anyone even expecting good acting from the likes of Kapoor, Shivdasani, Karimi, Das, and Leone?
At the end of the day, after all the excuses have been made and the hype-dust has settled, it’s quite apparent that these films have been made for one and one reason only: money. It’s obvious that the extreme lack of nuance and subtlety that these films possess serve only one purpose: to appeal to what the makers think the lowest common denominator’s sensibilities are and emulate or better the success of predecessors such as Grand Masti(2013), a similarly awful “sex comedy” that raked in Rs 100 crore two years ago.
In other words, dear potential audience members (if any of you are reading this), you’re being played. You’re being played by the makers of these films — many of whom are well-educated, well-traveled, English-speaking sophisticates; some of whom would probably never watch such films for leisure (I’m looking at you, Vir Das) — into parting with your hard-earned money to watch this tripe so that theyget richer.
There has never been a better time to call ‘bullshit’ on this whole charade. Do it. Do it now
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Monday, 29 December 2014

Bigg Boss 8 Breaking: Salman Khan Saves Sonali Raut From Getting Evicted

By On December 29, 2014 In

 Saturday night brought some fun and happy moments for the Bigg Boss 8 contestants. AsComedy Nights With Kapil team entered the house to entertain the housemates. The housemates seemed very energetic on Saturday, while Salman Khan took off, as it was his Birthday. (Bigg Boss 8 With Kapil Sharma: Sonali, Karishma And Dimpy’s Hot Item Number)
On Sunday for the Weekend ka Vaar Salman was back for the eviction. But there have been some changes in the eviction.
We Businessofcinema.com confirm you that even after Sonali Raut was to be evicted on Sunday according to the votes, but Salman Khan saved her saying it is his birthday week and he doesn’t want anyone to be evicted.
With on going confusions between channel producer Endemol and Salman Khan, Endemol decided that Salman would enter the Bigg Boss house on Monday and celebrate his belated birthday with the housemates. After the cake cutting, Salman was asked to get Sonali Raut out with her and complete the eviction process, which was going to happen on Sunday.
Salman Khan’s Bigg Boss Season 8 house : Click Here For Breaking Updates, Photos 
On Sunday for Weekend Ka Vaar housemates wished Salman Happy Birthday by dancing in front of the TV that made him happy and he thanked them all.

The Show started with Salman’s question that who would be evicted tonight?
Majority of them named Sonali and Dimpy including these two ladies who took their own names. According to the contestants votes Sonali was made to sit on danger Aasan. Salman asked how her reign as a captain was? She responded saying that was pretty smooth and she enjoyed being captian.
In fact Salman questioned Dimpy, Karishma and Upen that how did they take her name to be a captain when they didn’t like her? The trio had their own sweet reasons and they claimed saying they felt she deserved to become the captain when everyone else got one fair chance.
But with all the Confusion, channel has thought to fulfill Salman’s wish, as it was his birthday and save Sonali Raut from getting evicted. So there has been no eviction this week all thanks to the Dabangg Khan.
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