Tashan Teaser. Ok. Ek aur chance.

Sanni, high-priestess of the cult of Sakshay, over at ..so they dance! already did a preview. But since the best thing on the Aaja Nachle DVD was the Teaser for Tashan I though that I don´t want to keep from you what might come to a cinema near you in April 2008

There´s this gal..






and that guy..







but the thing that puts my mind into overdrive is the highly explosive combo of this guy..









and that guy..









back together in one movie. Yeehaaaa!
Finally. The reunion I´ve been waiting for soooo long. Please. Please. Please. Please give them 90% of shared screen time. I know the chances are high that YRF blows even a surefire instant classic like that one. But its the debut of Vijay Krishna Acharya (the writer for such elaborate films as Dhoom and D:2) as a director. So there is a ray of hope. Sure, I don´t believe we will be getting anything along the immortal ranks of Keemat..









..but a girl can hope. Hain Naa?
So YRF. Aapke paas ek aur chance hai. Malum hai ki chance kam hai, lekin hai.

And just because they are there and I cant let two nice screenshots like that go to waste, here, two more:

Bollwoodbloggers. Humare paas Logo hai.

And we thought since with this years location we´re entering Paint it Pink´s realm, we better put in a little of that pink..










Khubsoorat, hai naa?

Aacha Nachle. A tall order.

If you love the kind of Hindi movies I do, you can´t help but to developing a sort of system/defence mechanism for the handling of logic-defying storylines, movie goofs and continuity errors. Bollywood bettered itself in that area during the last few years, fortunately, which now makes it is all the more annoying when a big honcho studio like YashRaj falls back onto its evil 90ish ways.









(You have no ideas how much I wanted to love Aaja Nachle. Not that I had too high hopes for it knowing the latest films coming out of YRFChak de excepted). But even despite all odds. Even with all the not so flattering reviews. Even though I still hoped for something. I mean c´mon. Madhuri. And Konkona, Kunal, Ranbir, Vinay, Akshaye and Irrfan.

And then the movie opens with Madhuri doing a really bad Michael-Jackson-meets-Flashdance-meets-MiamiSoundMachine tap-dance/aerobics routine (with tap-dance sounds) wearing sneakers (apart from very unflattering spandex). For heaven´s sake. [self-defense mechanism kicks in] Maybe YR wants us to feel as if Mads was never away and DTPH released only a few months back? [ok. that might work. sort of. pretty far fetched but possible] Next she gets the call that her former Guru is dying and that she should come to India as fast a s possible. And the next time we see her she´s on the plane and she´s done a complete hair-makeover. [wft is that??] "Oh my. Guruji is dying. Lets get a plane ticket and since I´m in such a hurry, why don´t I get a haircut first?" [Bas. Goodwill khatm. And dont´get me started on the whole Ajanta set decoration and background dancer thing]









These days YashRaj don´t make it easy for the Bollywoodfan to love their films. Most of their movies come without a proper story. And what really makes me mad is that for the umpteenth time I get the feeling that they think their audience is too stupid to breathe. [Anyone recall the "magnetic" cola-can in D:2?]

So I did not have high hopes for Aaja Nachle. But that they would piss me of within the first 2 seconds of the film was something even I did not expect. Thankfully it got better once the title track comes on (at about 30min into the film) but by that time I already had stopped watching on the first night. I only gave it another chance the next day because I wanted to see Madhuri dancing.









And then Akshaye saved the day. The little verbal dispute that follows right after Madhuri danced my favorite song of the film, Aaja Nachle, made my little heart go pitter-patter "Who are you?""I´m the bad guy" As sunny wrote over at Marco´s forum: "I´d love to have a Raja like that. Sigh. All those problems I could come up with every day, so he could solve them for me..."

So no, not all is bad in Aaja Nachle. Madhuri looks great [even if her hair-length changes from scene to scene... but lets just take that as a nostalgic flashback to the good ol´90ies] her smile still chases away the rainclouds and she is still my favorite dancer. Plus there are some sweet side-characters. My favorite is the adorable Mr. Chojar played by Vinay Pathak.









But he as well as the rest of the supporting cast was painfully underemployed. Especially the big calibers like Irrfan Khan and Ranvir Shorey. What a waste. Only Konkona had some space to work with. And Kunal Kapoor got away with the most romantic sentence in the movie [Which I wont tell because I can´t tell you all the good parts]

So. The story [Dancer elopes with American photographer only to divorce him soon thereafter. Whole town hates her for that - the eloping. not the divorce. they don´t know that yet - 11 sal ke baat she comes back to safe her hometown´s theater that is to be replaced by a shopping mall by putting up a stage-play with a cast of villagers against the more or less hostile reluctance of same villagers] is lame-ish. The execution sloppy in many parts. But I liked the cast. I liked the songs. I liked Laila-Manju.
If you love Madhuri as I do, you have to watch it. Just be sure to "leave logic behind" and bring an extra big helping of "instant-movie-goofs-forgiveness" and once you´re settled you´ll have yourself a nice timepass and you will finally have Madhuri back.

Bollywoodbloggers. Let´s met again. This time in Munich.

Hah. I´ve just re-read my posts about the 1st PEIBBM last March and it all came back. How super-duper fun it was. Even back then we were talking about a repeat-performance. And that's why today I´m bahut khuchi to announce the 2nd Pan-European/International Bollywood Blogger Meeting.

Get ready to join the fun from March 7th to March 9th 2008 and this time in Munich!

The preliminary rough schedule, conceived by Michael, Kaddele, Beth, Marco, Maini, Maria, me and a whole lot of other helping spirits shows that the program will be pretty similar to last year:

We meet on Friday March 7th, this time already during the afternoon, hang out, blog, chat, do silly stuff, eat, drink. One idea is to catch a Bollywood flick in a Munich cinema (which might be a problem since Munich isn´t as lucky as Vienna and we still have to convince one of the local distributors of playing an Indian film. But no fear, we still have some aces up our kurta sleeves..) in the evening.

The "Big Day" like last year will be Saturday March 8th. Matlab typical Bavarian "Weisswurst" breakfast, the Liveblogging during the afternoon and in the evening we will start with the award ceremony of the 5th Central European Bollywood Awards (voting will start early February) and lead right into an open end paaaaarty.

Sunday will see another joint breakfast and then its already time to leave for home.

We also have a lot (and I mean a whole lot) of surprises in store. So this year is going to be even bigger and better than the last. Just keep watching this space for updates.

We would love to have you all there. And if you make it to Munich we will, like last year, make sure to find you a cheap place to stay. And you will have a filmitastic time! Kasam se!

Happy New Year!

What a night. What a party.














And since MK was feigning a hangover, I parked him in front of the TV to watch the Neujahrskonzert and did the cleanup decontamination restoration all by myself.


















But nonetheless, let me wish all of you a wonderful, happy 2008!

PS: My New Year´s resolution for 2008 is to blog more and especially write more reviews than during the last 6 months. And I´ll see that through. MiniKhan ki kasam.