Khosla Ka Ghosla! - don´t mess with the Khoslas

What happens when your average middleclass Delhi family gets cheated out of their lifes savings and with it the plot of land they planned to build the house they always wished for?









They fight back. Not without initial difficulties though. Son Cherry (Parvin Dabas) has designs to move to the USA for a job in software engineering and has his mind anywhere but with his family´s problems. Older brother Bunty (Ranir Shorey) is a hot-head and and his ideas lead to more trouble then help. And dad (Anupam Kher) after getting no help from neither the police nor any other institution, resigns. It´s only after Cherry meets Asif Iqbal a former "business" partner of the evil K. Khurana (Boman Irani) that they start to develop the will and a plan to cheat the land right back from the mafiose constractor.









Enlisting the assistance of Cheetus girlfriend Meghna (Tara Sharma) and the theatre company she works for, they set up a charade that would do proud to the Bluffmaster.









2006 brought out some wonderful small movies off the beaten Blockbuster track. Dor, Pyaar Ke Side Effects, Ahista Ahista, Kabul Express. And Khosla Ka Gholsa is another example that a simple well rounded story, endearing characters and great actors do make an entertaining loveable movie. Especially if you have a caliber like Boman Irani playing the bad guy with a panache you love to hate.

Bollywoodbloggers. I´ve got good news and bad news.

For all those who felt a disturbance in the force on monday (15:00 GMT+1) -- that was me. Sorry. Isn´t it cool how when you get real angry all those curse words in any language you´ve ever learned come back?

So now let me give you the bad news. Bloody iDream moved the release date of the Bommarillo DVD from Feb 28th to March 7th and I am pretty sure that even with UPS it won´t reach Vienna in time. So we need a new movie to watch. Suggestions?

I know we will find a movie that we all will be happy with. So the bad news is not that bad. And the good news is really really good:

We will unveil the results of Marcos 4th ACEBA at a small and for sure funny awards ceremony during the evening event on the 10th. So anybody joining us will be able to get the result first. The rest of the world will have to wait until the 11th. No worries. There shall be pictures.

4th Annual Central European Bollywood Awards

Yay, it´s award season.

Marco the Swiss Bollywood guruji of the german-speaking BW-community has just opened the polls for the 4th annual central european bollywood awards. So if you´re located in Central Europe and can read German you´re eligible to participate.

Just go there. Register. And vote!

All you other wonderful people. Sorry. But you still can get to the nomination list here. And if you like, give a prediction here.

PS: Nana Patekar is nominated for Taxi 9211 in the best lead actor category. Shabash Marco, shabash.

Jamai Raja - how to not waste your time

Prospective mothers-in-law be warned. "Whenever mothers-in-law turn extremely cruel, then sons-in-law like...











...me will take birth". (I´m not being pathetic here, that is the movie´s actual last sentence)

Very pigheaded and greedy woman (Hema Malini) with 2 spineless sons and one khoobsurat daughter picked the wrong girls family to be mean at. Girls brother (Anil Kapoor) met the daughter (Madhuri Dixit) before and the had already fallen in love,










and now decides to marry her and teach mommy dearest some of her own medicine. Mom khuch nahin hai. And spends her further existence to fight the guy. Clash of will ensues. No mean means are left out on both sides.










Warfare gets difficult for guy since his wife is plain stupid and tends to stick by mom. But the truth prevails. And as announced by guy, all kids leave mean mom. Still not seeing the light we finally get the long overdue divine intervention and a totally over the top, completely inapplicable climax fight to make mom get a grip on the true values in life at last. Film khatm.












Kya bakvas hai!

Bollywoodbloggers. Now we´re getting somewhere.

Don´t think that only because the last update concerning the First Pan-European/International Bollywoodbloggers Meeting in Vienna is from a week ago, there was no planning work going on behind the scenes.

So here is the first draft of the schedule for Saturday March 10th 2007.

First rule of the 1st PEIBBM. It´s all about having fun. So timetables are approximate values only!

Since some of you will arrive in Vienna on Saturday morning I will have an open house with lots of coffee for those poor red-eye-flight gals like Maini and whoever wants to join. Around noon the idea is to grab some lunch and since it´s so nice there we´ll head to the Naschmarkt.

At 14.00 we´ll get into serious business and meet to watch Bommarillo. The place we´ll be doing that has WLAN so expect some heavy live-blogging.

Next point on the agenda is 18.00 where we´ll meet (at an until now undisclosed) Indian restaurant and at 20.00 we´ll have some cool stuff coming up (again undisclosed as of now *wavesatmarco*)

So hang in there. It is only a few days until I will be able to come up with more details.

PS: Participants get in shape. There might be press coverage too....

Update 02/12/2007: Oh I almost forgot. I even went so far as to fill my spare iPod (yes I have more then one) with a background score for the 10th. If you have any suggestions on songs that I missed out, fire away. Here is what´s on the playlist so far.

Kabul Express - Stockholm Syndrome

I´ve been waiting for a long time to get my hands on this one. An off-mainstream movie about the post 9/11 Afganistan, shot entirely in Afganistan coming out of the Yash Raj camp. Sounds like a challenge.









One cameraman/journalist Indian TV team (Arshad and John) heads to Afghanistan in November 2001 to get a story on the situation there with the goal of interviewing at least one member of the overthrown and now hunted Taliban.










And get stuck in a roadmovie-like adventure when they, along with their Afghani driver Khyber (Hanif Hum Ghum) and a female American photojournalist (Linda Arsenio), are kidnapped by a Pakistani Taliban (Salman Shahid) who wants to escape home to Pakistan. In the course of 48 hours we accompany this very diverse group as they drive through the rough battered countryside and encounter various obstacles on their way to the Pakistan border, from shrewd donkeys to lynch mobs, from Army roadblocks to dangerous Mujahideen tribes. And due to varying opinions on Cricket and war originators life inside the "Kabul Express" is as well not short of critical situations.









It´s a Yash Raj film, produced by Aditya Chopra. So don´t expect a grim doku-drama. It is more shallow-ish. But hell, sirf movie hai, documentary bhi nahin. I like the route they took. Our five characters in the movie form for a short while their own small microcosmos which only grazes the outside world.









Deep political or sociological problems are sidelined. Quotes like "America wants to suck out our oil and pump in Coke and Papsi" are a bit to tabloid. And it might be that we´re all so used to and fed up with the ongoings there, that only few of the beautiful shot pictures make an impact.
So even if I´m not 100% sure as to what Kabir Khan wanted to transport in Kabul Express, for me it served a purpose. I liked it, I had a very good time watching it and I´m now going to read up on Afghan history and politics. And that´s not too bad an outcome, hai naa?










Ad Stockholm syndrome. My favorite character was indeed the Taliban. How can you not like a battle weary character with a soft spot for Hindi film songs who says stuff like "Madhuri Dixit do, Kashmir lo" (Give us Madhuri and take Kashmir).

Dor

Let´s do this the other way round this time and start with my conclusion:
I love Dor. Bas. Go and watch it. It will make you laugh, smile, feel good, feel sad, feel angry, fall in love with its some of its characters, hate others genuinly. Oh, I love Dor. Bas.

Finally a movie about women. Average, no better make that - real, young women. Modern but still living in sync with their traditions and strong enough to challenge them if the need arises.

Like a lot of young men in India, the husbands of Meera (Ayesha Takia) the young wife of a destitute rajput family and Zeenat (Gul Panag) a newly wed muslim woman from Himachal Pradesh leave India to work in Saudi Arabia for some months.










Both couples are young, very much in love and genuinly likeable. About 6 months after their departure a tragedy strikes. Shekar, the rajastani husband, is killed by Aamir, Zenaat´s husband. Supposedly in an accident but since there are no witnesses Amir is sentenced to death. Back in India both families are devastated. Meera living in a very traditional Rajastani society has to bear the terrible faith of being a widow there. Sentenced to a life of grief and now treated like an worthless prisoner. In Himachal Pradesh Aamir´s shocked family learns that there is only one option left to save him. According to Saudi law Aamir´s life will be spared if the victims widow signs a mercy petition stating that she has forgiven him. And Zenaat being a very strong-willed woman is taking that chance and leaves her home in search for Meera.










She travels to Rajastan and finds unexpected help Behroopiya (Shreyas Talpade), an endearing wannabe Actor and parttime conartist who decides to help her locating the family. But finding the widow and convincing her to sign are two very different pair of shoes.










What should be a dark and emotional draining story is in fact a statement for dignity, friendship and courage laced with wonderful scenes that are full of life and hope. The Kajra Re sequence in the dunes made me fall in love with this song all over again. The disarming, funny entrance scene of Shreyas Talpade made me giggle.










Apart from the wonderful story that is based on the Malayalam movie Perumazhakkalam, the acting trio of Ayesha Takia, Gul Panag and Shreyas Talpade created the magic of Dor for me. And the cinematography. And the music. And the scenery. Nagesh Kukunoor managed to make a movie that is an arthouse movie with a mainstream feel. Or a mainstream movie with an arthouse feel. Take your pick.










Its been a long time that a movie sucked in me from the get-go like Dor did. So let me repeat my statement from the beginning of this post. I love Dor. Bas. Watch it.

And now for something completely different - I´ve been tagged

Up to now I´ve been lucky. No tagging for me yet. And still it had to happen one day. Filmiholic wants me to tell Five Secrets you, my lovely readers, don´t know about me yet. Let´s see.

1. I got married in Las Vegas at the little Chapel of the Flowers in 2000. Thats the same place Dennis Rodman and Carmen Elektra tied the knot. Well MY marriage still works.

2. I´ve been paying my Gym membership for the last 4 years without ever going ONCE. I really should cancel it. But then again. I might go again. One day. Or not.

3. I´m a huge Rick Springfield fan. So huge that we scheduled all of our USA vacations so far around his concert dates. He´s soooo sexy and nice. Sigh.

4. I´ve been a candidate at the austrian version of KBC - Who wants to be a millionaire. But I didn´t make it into the hot seat. I lost out by ONE bloody hundredth of a second. Grrr. But then our host here is only a former skiing champ. How uncool.

5. I have huge feet for a woman. Euro size 42/ USA size 11. You want to see my usual happy-go-lucky self turn into a world-hating mean Mrs. Hyde in the shortest possible time? Drag me into a shoestore. Sirf 5 minutes aur meri mood bahut kharab hai. Why does the shoemaking industry believe that woman with my size only want shoes fit for ladies age 75 and up. I want Pradas and Manolo Blahniks. Bleh.

So, that was that. The real saucy secrets still hidden and some of your curiosity satisfied. Now who am I going to tag. How about Aparna, Maja, Sanni and by calling Kaddele and Maria move this tag to the germanspeaking Bloggosphere.

Keemat - hehe *giggle*

I´ve been dying to get my hands on this one. I´ve read so much about the 90ies Saif/akshay movies and reading this brilliant post killed me. Thanks to my dear fellow BW fanatic Ruksi I now am the proud owner of Keemat and Mein Khiladi Tu Ananri (which has to wait for some other time to be watched). But now for Keemat.











Not much to say about the story. Two brothers. Smalltime crooks. But good at heart. A terrible accident. A village in need. Some evil guys in fake beards and wigs. And our two crooks pushed into hero mode. Oh and there are some ladies for decoration somewhere too.











But what makes it special is the lead pair. Akshay Kumar and Sail Ali Khan. Sakshay. Now thats a Filmi Jodi. You´ve got to love´em. Even in a frightful terrible song like that:



Apart from Rajesh Roshans very weird concept of "borrowing" songs and other cineatic highlights at about 5:50 min and 6:15 min into this song, Keemat has a Sholay-ish story (very ok for me), Akshay with varying hair-length (funny), Saif with a mullet (me likes), some cool fights (nice),











some instant healing (clichee) and Saif in black leather (yummy).











Conclusion: Its as bad-ish as I hoped and way cooler then I could expect it to be. Dekho naa.

Bollywoodbloggers. A suggestion for the meeting.

Hiya there. We´ve been brainstorming quite a bit as to what to do with all you Bollywoodbloggers in Vienna. Today I have a suggestion I´d love to read/hear your opinion about.

One to me very important issue is that I want to/must watch a movie together with all of you. Problem hai, the possibility of a BW movies being screened in cinemas here at that date are slim to none. (Thanx Eros International.) I also think that it would be great if we could do a sort of simultaneous/live blogging while watching it. That is something that can easily be done if we´d watched a DVD in one of the classrooms in my school. Beamer hai, DVD player hai, sound hai aur Broadband Wlan bhi hai. I can even come up with a couple of Macbooks (for those who don´t want to/can bring theirs to Vienna).

Which leads us to the question of what movie to watch. Preferably one that nobody of us knows yet. That is a problem especially if you have Marco on the panel (no kiddin´see for yourself) So my suggestion today would be Bommarillo. Nobody attending has seen it yet. The DVD will come out Feb 28th, I already pre-ordered it and it will be sent via UPS. So we should get it right on time. I know it´s not precisely Bollywood, but it has Siddarth in it. Siddarth. And Genelia.

Any objections? Or other movies you can think of?

blogger problem solved

I just found out, that it is not possible to connect to/read/view this blogs single posts/archives at this moment (and from the posts on bloggers help group I´ve seen I´m not the only one with that problem) . No worries I´m on it. We can´t have you not being able to read such literate gems like my Suryavanshi review...
Update: it sometimes works but I have no idea why or when, just keep reloading if your are stuck on an errorpage. blogger has not commented yet, but I´m used to negligence by webproviders....

And another Update: We´re working just fine again :-) And the weekend is coming up and I have Keemat and Gajini lined up for viewing. So, Babasko khuch hua. Oh, and Dor !!!