A big comic con
+ 10 FOR CREATING A NEW DRINKINGgame. Is this movie Inception meets Shutter Island meets The Baby-Sitters Club? Or is it The Baby-Sitters Club meetsShowgirls? Or is it Baz Luhrmann’s Matrix meets Afro Samurai? So many lovely ways to lose consciousness while watching this movie and you will want to. - 10 FOR THE MOST...
The Marilyn Monroe in Shah Rukh Khan
To know why Shah Rukh Khan is a superstar, all you have to do is rent Dulha Mil Gaya (Trinidad, Fardeen Khan, enough said). His 15-minute cameo lifts the 2010 movie out of purgatory and gives it one of the most romantic gestures in Bollywood history, a middle-aged millionaire who gets up early so when...
A belly full of gags
The PlotTashi (Imran Khan) lives in a grimy room with friends Nitin and Arup. His girlfriend Sonia (Shenaz Treasurywala) accidentally becomes a mule for diamond smugglers. Through a series of unfortunate events, the smugglers (Vijay Raaz and others) get Nitin’s stool sample instead. The boys are now on the run. Tashi’s risk-loving new pal Menaka...
Seven Course Meal
+9 TO RANJAN PALIT’S cinematography that makes every frame full of tactile textures. +9 TO PRIYANKA CHOPRA FOR AVOIDING playing ‘adorable’. Plus 10 points for showing us she is capable of more than her usual competent but lightweight self in the Russian roulette scene. +10 FOR THE MOST hilariously fake CGI-generated panther that we were...
Is the nailpaint on my little toe chipped?
TAM-BRAM GIRLS of Vidya Balan’s generation were brought up to be neat but not vain, to be presentable but obsess about work. It is only incidental that Vidya, 31, unlike other girls of bilingual Palakkad descent, is not conquering the world of statistical modelling or dreaming miles of code. It is incidental that her adolescent...
‘Dear Mr. Subhash Ghai, my name is Kiran Rao’
Kiran Rao, 36, is a week away from the release of her first film Dhobi Ghat. The Mumbai office she shares with husband Aamir Khan is in a state of silent, controlled mania building towards the promotion of the film. Rao enters the room, a slight, composed person and almost immediately leaps upon a side-table...
I Like to Watch
YOU CAN go watch Love, Sex Aur Dhokha, Dibakar Banerjee’s set of three short interconnected films, and get excited about sex and video cameras. Surveillance and voyeurism have been hotbutton themes in the art world for a while. And it may seem like popular culture is now following in sweaty excitement. Or you could ignore...
Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani
YOU MAY ASSUME that Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani‘s hill station sets are so patently fake that irony is intended. But once you get past that, the film is for most part easy viewing, if rather overlong. From its comic strip opening credits to the last frame in which Prem (Ranbir Kapoor) chastely pecks Jenny (Katrina Kaif) on...
Outing the closet romantics
This weekend offered competing images of Big Love. A sepia-tinted runaway couple who had never had a conversation with each other but were ready to be battered for the sake of the irrational thunderbolt that had hit them; a sensible couple unprepared for the violence that love wreaks on them and their plans; a bad...
Sita’s House of Blues
GODDESS LAKSHMI appears bejewelled, curvy and sloe-eyed out of a watercolour sea on a pink lotus. A peacock gramophone appears next to her and she begins dancing to the sound of 1920s blues singer Annette Hanshaw’s Moaning Low. Nineteen seconds later, the record gets stuck at the phrase ‘a woman like me, a woman like...
The Lightening Rod Strikes Twice
A week ago, a beautiful young woman dining in a small Versova restaurant asked, “Who is Anurag Kashyap? Is he the director of Fashion?” Gasps rose from the crowded table. It was an exceptionally bad place to ask this question since Kashyap was sitting at the same table and all around were the fanatic Passion...
Why Anurag Kashyap needs to make friends and influence people
It is quite something to sit in a South Delhi cinema and watch Dev ask Paro whether she touches herself. This is 15 minutes into the movie and not one person in the audience is breathing. Paro (gorgeous Mahi Gill) whimpers in response and her toes curl tight. Next Paro is on a mission because...