Merry Christmas! Went to a dinner tonite, had fun!

Continued watching Aitraaz, I watched about 1/3 a few days back and the rest today. I read a lot of reviews of Veer-Zaara When it was a new release. A lot of them described it as a pathetic movie and instead recommended Aitraaz. This prompted me to watch Veer-Zaara, so that I can know how bad it was. I found out that Veer-Zaara wasn’t that pathetic, but was waiting for Aitraaz’s DVD as a few of my friends also told me that its a good movie. I postponed watching the movie because

1. It had Kareena in it, am not a great fan of hers.
2. I had heard/read that the story had to do something with Pati Patni Aur Woh (not the old movie, but the phrase.) I heard that Priyanka Chopra files a case against Akshay and then his wife helps him….(more like general crap…. + flesh exposure + Uncomfortable Dialogues)

Today I finally finished watching the movie and would say that Veer-Zaara is a good movie, but first go and watch Aitraaz, if you haven’t seen it or both (Aitraaz n V-Z)

It feels really good to get a movie like this from the directors of Tarzan – The Wonder Car, Abbas-Mastan. Before watching the movie, I had an impression that they would have 2-3 “bold” scenes where Priyanka would use them to her benefit and would try to get the 2004 Mera Badan award. But fortunately that was not the case, the movie has 1 or may be 2 so called “bold scenes” but they are fully justified and their is no fijul ka skin show. The dialogues used in the movie are bold at times, but they are required.

Raj Malhotra: Yet another amazing performance by Rajiv Bhatia (Akshay Kumar’s real name.) He has a great sense of timing and gets into the role. The role required a young handsome executive kind of guy and Akshay was ideal for the role.

Soniya Roy: PC who was 3rd wife of a 1500 crore ke empire ka malik Mr. Roy played by Amrish Puri put a lot of effort. The role required a young, modern, not so decent female, who was more into her career, money, fame, power than her family life. Priyanka was good in the role and acted sincerely.

Priya Malhotra: KK has done well, she did look like a housewife. The role becomes important at the end. We get to see Kareena’s non glamrous side in the movie.

Misc: Amrish Puri, Vivek Shauq, Annu Kapoor and the lady who plays a punjaban in Tammana House (series by ZeeTelefilms) were all great.

Pros: The movie from the starting was interweaved. There were things shown which were very much related to situation at that time…..and also those things were used in different context….such as Kareena’s would be interview with Annu Kapoor.

The movie seemed to be a well organized piece of work. It sticks to the story line and doesn’t divert off it.

One of the more important things depicted in the movie is that sexual harrasment, where female is a victim, is too common but males being harrased is not that common in our society. So its the male who is blamed everytime anything happens. It also shows how a wife trusts her husband and leads him away from problems.

Cons: Might be many small ones. One of them is, why the hell Kareena has to do so much research, when she went to talk to Priyanka, she should have taken a audio recorder and should have had recorded what ever PC said.

Overall – 8/10 and its a must watch. Get your DVD here.

It was a different movie. Different in a good sense.

Yesterday, while flipping through channels, we turned Sony (SET – Sony Entertainment Television) on and the movie “Rules – Pyar Ka Superhit Formula” was on. I had read good about it on Orkut so decided to go with it.

The basic idea was that a simple not so glamorus girl (Meera Vasudevan) loved a supermodel Vikram (Milind Soman) since she was 14 years old (they emphasis that a lot). She has a dadi (Tanuja – 4 young gen. Kajol’s mummy.) Radha, the girl wants to be a photographer so that she can meet Vikram someday. Her dream comes true when her company has to do a photo shoot session with Vikram and his girlfriend Maggie (2 minutes!!). Maggie is a modern girl, looking for opportunities and being possesive and being a b****, which is played well by the actress Namrata Barua.

Radha, all excited tells her grandmother that she has got an opportunity to work with Vikram (Grandma knows about her love and isn’t khusat.) Dadi tells her that there are 5 rules for attracting a man towards you…..Then the story continues…..

The movie periodically shows some random people of different ages, societies, sex and sexual orientation, who talk about the issues currently going on in the movie such as what is love? What does one get off love?…etc. The best part of it is that those random people are related to the main characters in some way or the other and the director doesn’t tell this untill almost the end. I really liked that concept, it was very imaginative and creative.

The movie also has dry humor in it. Its not that they have assigned 1 or 2 people to crack useless jokes and then laugh themselves but some situations are humorous. The character of Maggie is sometimes pretty humorous.

The songs are good (not too many though) and melodious.

Cons – The end part about last 20 minutes or so gets slow and boring.

Overall a must watch.

8/10

Watched the movie last week. It was a ok, timepass movie. I think the type of marketing this movie had wasn’t fair and in a sense fooled the viewer.

The Trailers emphasized a lot on the fact that it was from the makers of Hera-Pheri and Hungama. This movie didn’t have much of similiarity with the other 2 movies (except for that the title starts with an H.)

Hera-Pheri a pure comedy is a delight, Hungama can not be compared to Hera-Pheri but still it was good. Hulchul was a failed attempt of making a comical drama film.

The comedy part of the movie is good. The story revolves around Amrish Puri and an array of his sons [Jackie Shroff, Paresh Rawal, Arbaz Khan and Akshaye Khanna]. It shows the old Khaandan stuff. The movie also reflects QSQT.

If it would have been a pure comedy, then it would have been better, but when Priyadarshan thought of wooing the romance/drama audience too, things got messed up. He should have had stuck with “comedy only” theme.

Another shortcoming in the movie is that it has too many big chars. Amrish Puri, Jackie Shroff, Paresh Rawal, Arbaaz Khan, Akshaye Khanna, Kareena Kapoor, Arshad Warsi, Suniel Shetty, Shakti Kapoor and Farah apart from some small roles, such as Israni. With 10 main artists and 3 hours of screen time gives 18 minutes on average for each artist, which divides the attention of the viewer. Similar was the case with Hum Saath Saath Hain.

Yes, there good things too. Arshad Warsi, Akshaye’s(main lead) friend and got almost as much screen time as Akshaye himself. He was great. Munnabhai MBBS’ peroformance was continued here. Some scenes were really comical. Paresh Rawal was great (as ususal) and so was Suniel Shetty.

On the whole a total timepass movie which can only be watched once.

6/10