Darna Marna Hai - don´t tell me what to do, I´ll get scared when I want to

I´m such a chicken. I don´t like horror movies. Even knowing that Darna Marna Hai is not really scary I had this DVD lying around unwatched for months now. But since I went beserk last week at the 5$ Nehaflix sale and there is a huge shipping of DVD´s on its way to me, I decided it is time to get a couple of those "unattractive" films out of the way.

Darna Marna Hai is a RGV Factory Production from 2003 and its basicly 6 short scary stories embedded into a often used (at least in Hollywood films) frame of some teenagers being stranded somewhere in the night in some wilderness, who to pass time start telling each other scary stories. So far, so unspectacular.










I wont tell you what those 6 stories are about but limit myself to short comments on each one. In liveblogging style:
- Here we go, pahli kahani: Sohail Khan. Nice. Long time no see. Antara Mali bhi. Bahut acchaa. The hand. Bhoot! Bhoot!
- Framework story makes one of the group go back to their car. Alone. In the dark. Raat ki jungle me. Very good idea. Duh!
- Dusra story. Boman Irani. Saif Ali Khan. *Wheeee* And now I´m off for a cigarette. Just in spite. Story not totally new but Boman is very twisted person.









- Aaaand we loose another one of the happy unvoluntary campers.
- Tisra story. Not scary. His school friends ghost haunts him. So?
- And there goes another one. Short interlude. Why is it that in stories like that the group of "friends" is actually a bunch of spoilt brats who constantly make fun of each other and in real life would not even change one word with each other?
- Back to story number char: Apples. Beautiful fresh bad apples. I just knew why they are among my least favorite fruit.
- Meanwhile back at the bonfire. One more down. Two to go.
- Paanchva story: Ohh. Vive(i)k and Nana *whoohoo* Nana *shorthappydance* And I really did not see that coming. Yup that´s the story I liked most. Accha twist. And Nana *Whoohoo*









- Oh, come now. I was expecting another kid to "expire". And now there´s a new guy coming in. Let me take a wild guess. The killer?
- Akhiri story: Nice. Aaftab Shivdasani. Would somebody out there please give him more roles in watchable movies? And. No. You. Don´t. Mess. With. Gifts. From. Gods. That´s just not a healthy idea.









Yes and frame story is at an end too. Here comes the spoiler. None survives. Whatever.

Lakshya - Well, I love it. Bas.

Fahran Akhtar has a pretty good track record with me. Not that there is too much to track yet. But I can wholeheartedly say that so far I really love all he has done. That´s an easy to do statement with Dil Chahta Hai. I´ve yet to come up to a person (apart from my husband) who does not love it. And I haven´t had a chance to watch Don yet.
But there is also Lakshya. And I really love that one. In fact I believe it is the one movie I watched the most so far. That often, I don´t even need the subtitles anymore.









Karan (Hritihik Roshan) is the younger son of a rich Delhi family. He lives a happy go lucky life doing actually nothing. He has a great girlfriend come fiancée in Romi (Preity Zinta). He has lots of other friends. But while just drifting along he´s mostly bored to death. One day one of his friends comes up with the idea of joining the army and since Karan has no better plan (in fact he has no plan of what to do with his life at all) he enrols as well at the Indian Military Academy in Dehradun.









Not that he has any idea as to what could await him there but then Arnold Schwarzenegger looks cool in Comando. Why not? Then his dad outright forbids him to go there, so what does a spoilt rich kid do? Join the army of course. Not that its going the way he supposed it would be there. Of course he messes everything up and after being humiliated in front of everybody he decides to split. But returning home turns out to be a let-down. Romi is so disappointed with him she breaks up the engagement and his father sees his assumption of his son confirmed.










And Karan runs again. This time back to the army and for good. After his graduation Karan gets located in a Kargil regiment. Its 1999 and during a leave where he plans to meet Romi again, he finds out that she is now engaged to another man and during the same night he is called back to his unit as we are right in the early stages of the Kargil war. Karan´s regiment gets the order to recapture Peak 5179 to regain the control over "National Highway No.1".
During these events he meets Romi again. She is in the area covering the war as a correspondent for the TV station she works for.









I probably lower myself in the eyes of many a reader here, but I won´t waver. It is a cool film. Why? Let me give you some reasons:

a) Take the Cinematography by Christopher Popp. Its brilliant. The opening credits part in Leh. Or the song visualisation in Agar Main Kahoon.









b) Hrithik Roshan. His acting is top notch. He is so very much believable in the Delhi parts. And I so can really relate to his aimlessness.

c) Hrithik. Dance god. Not only the "Main Aisa Kyun Hoon" insanity. Its so great to watch the ease he moves himself in "Agar Main Kahoon"









d) Boman Irani. He´s simply great as a father who has no connection to his "good for nothing" son.

e) The characters: Karan himself. Extremely well mannered. I love it that he raises from the couch when Romis mother comes into the room. The way he has so absolutely no own visions. When his friend says that instead of joining the army he will do an MBA in the U.S.A. Karan´s anger is gone in 30 seconds and he is already contemplaiting about doing the MBA himself.









f) Great oneliners. E.g. Karan tells Romy that he intends to join the army. Romy meets that statement with disbelief and Karan conters "I feel my country needs me" in a perfectly pathetic voice. Before that in the gym with his dad: Karan asks him why he is not at the office and to his fathers reply that he never goes to his office on Sundays, Karan replies: "Oh, it´s Sunday?"









g) Now for the problematic part. The join-the-army-become-a-man thing. Well, here´s my take.
That Karan joins it in the first place is just a coincidence and even if he denies it, pure defiance. I think he could have ended anywhere.
His later return to Dehradun happens due to mere circumstances. He, feeling like a failure anyway for running, has his fiancée breaking up with him and finally hears what his fathers thinks about him. And so he breaks down. The IMA, in that moment, is the only place left for him. Now he completely brakes with his former life, and since he is in fact a nice, intelligent guy and who has now also shed his cocky ego, he is able to fit in perfectly.
The way I see it Karan already becomes a man when his life breaks down around him. And when he gathers himself after his breakdown he takes the adult decision to finish his army training. Since that´s all he has got now.









I admit, not everything is perfect in Lakshya and during the war scenes there are some pathetic patriotic statements. Magar I have suffered through L.O.C Kargil (all of it!!) so I´m thankful for every inch of improvement above that one in the depiction of the Pakistan/India conflicts. And the good parts outweigh the "groan" ones here by far.

Lakshya is not everybody´s piece of cake. But I do sincerely believe that you should give it a chance and try to look over the obvious interpretation of the army parts. Especially if the army parts look that good..









Btw. I have lakhs of screenshots from Lakshya but I can only put so much of them in a post, so for additional eyecandy, I uploaded more on to flickr

Dharmputra - I´m in dire need to see that climax.

Argghh can anybody pleeease tell me what happened in this movie from the time when Dilip charges into Bano´s house and his adoptive parents try to stop him from setting it on fire? The bloody Yashraj Forever Classics DVD is broken from that point on. Right when the climax starts! Oh I hate that. Main bahut naaraaz hoon.

But I´m getting ahead of myself.

Dharmputra is a cool film. Yash Chopra´s second direction. And Shashi´s first adult role. And epecially for 1961 a pretty courageous story.

Husn Bano (Mala Sinha) is pregnant from a man her father (Ashok Kumar) does not approve of. With the help of Amrit the son of her fathers late friend she goes to Simla to give birth to a son which is adopted by Amrit and his wife.














So this by birth Muslim boy grows up in a Hindu family only to become an Hindu extremist giving fiery speeches and as the liner note on the DVD state "takes his religion to be his national identity" His political stance hits home when during the communal riots of 1947 he starts to agitate against his muslim neighbours, unaware to the fact that they are in fact his biological parents (Bano was able to get married to the father of her child after all).















What I really liked about the script is that Yash Chopra gave made his characters deliver some bold statements. They are all of course in a lecturing manner, directed at the films audience but Yash Chopra managed to incorporate most of them very smoothly into the storyline. E.g. the dispute between Dilip and his adoptive mother about the need for religions to advance themselves continuously.















I am totally unexperienced with Hindi movies of the early 60ies, so I don´t have any idea if Dharmputra is something special in that concern. But what I know is that I really liked the fashion in which Yash Chopa told the story, its pace, most of the ten songs, and obviously Shashi Kapoor.
All reasons why I´m very much displeased with my not being able to watch tha freakin´ climax!

Batchao. Pretty please?

Anthony Kaun Hai? - Flashback. Interesting.*

Arshad Warsi´s character has some serious problems in this movie. He for one thinks this hairstyle is cool:










He also gets to spend some time in a Thai prison. And later on he even gets a visit from hitman Sanjay Dutt and is left hanging head first from the 33rd floor.









But first things first.
Professional hitman Master Madan gets the job to kill a guy called Anthony Gonsalves (!). Problem is, said Anthony insists on not being the one he´s looking for. So as Madan has some time to kill (bad pun intended) anyway Champ/Anthony/Arshad gets the chance to tell the tale on how he ended up in this apartment calling himself Anthony Gonzalves.
It is a story containing stolen diamonds, carrier pigeons, nakhli beards and wigs, beautiful Thai beaches, a singing cop (Gulshan Grover), some smaller and bigger cons, an ill-advised ID fraud aur kuch acchi ladki.










I never heard of the Hollywood original "Who is Cletis Tout?" so the story was new to me and even if not the most exciting one, pretty neat. But who am I kidding, I of course watched the movie for Arshad and Sanjay. And their joint scenes in the frame-plot are especially cool.









Sanjay gets the chance to deliver some great one-liners*, be a cool cat and drive a red Ferrari convertible and Arshad is actually sweet and, well, I just counted and Anthony Kaun Hai is my tenth movie with him in it, the third as main lead and it´s the best of those three. Just be prepared for a very non-Circuit performance.

Om Jai Jagadish - family first

There is this great old villa on Juhu beach. Gulmohar Villa. Its is owned by the Batra family. Mom (Waheeda Rehman) and her three sons live there.










Om (Anil Kapoor) the eldest has taken over the role of the caretaker ever since is father died and brought up his younger brothers. Jai (Fardeen Khan) does actually not live in the house since he is in the States studying to become a car designer with the goal to build the "fastest car in the world". And then there is chota bhai, Jagdish (Abhishek Bachchan) still in college, terrific in sports and computers, always short in cash but a real nice guy. Om works at a record company and takes loans on the house from his boss to finance Jai education. Not wise. As bad boss will take said loan one day to really send family in trouble. But first sab teek hai.









Om finds very nice biwi (Mahima Chaudhry) and has very sweet son. Jai finds NRI girl (Urmila Matondkar) in Atlanta and they move back to Mumbai to get married. That´s when the trouble start. The new bahu doesn´t get along with the conservative values of her in-laws and to add to their woes, Jagadish lands himself into a big mess at the college. So the happy days are gone in Gulmohar Villa. And the brothers go their own ways. And then it gets even worse.










Om Jai Jagadish was Anupam Khers directoral debut. And he dishes up some highly emotional drama. With endearing characters. In my quest to watch all AB 2.0 films I stumbled upon this small gem more then a year ago and I still love it. Whenever I need a healthy dose of family values, a soaking wet AB 2.0 walking out of the surf and some tear jerking drama I pop it into the DVD player and just feel good watching it. And I dream of living in Gulmohar Villa.

Umrao Jaan - guest post

Right after watching surviving Umrao Jaan on sunday, I wanted to write a real witty sharp post. Then I went over to Katrins (of mission BAS fame) Blog and read her review. She said it all. So I took her permission to translate the review into English and post it here for your reading pleasure.



















Umrao Lame

Last friday Umrao Jaan played in Munich and ever since I´m trying to decide whether I liked it at all. The answer is and remains: Uhmm. In parts. Now and then. Whenever nobody is talking. Especially when Aish is dancing. That´s something she is divine at and thank god does quite often here. So you´re at least left with something to watch, instead of fighting sleep. Unfortunatly something went considerably wrong on the dramaturical side of Umrao Jaan.














But first the positive: I already brought up Aishs drop to your knees worthy dances, they are so awesome, you can´t mention that often enough. What is more, she looks fantastic. Most notably in her breathtaking costumes, which I this minute want to have in my wardrobe. All of them. Abhishek is yummi without end, even though his acting is not on a par. The casting of the side characters is posh - I, as usual, did not get myself informed before the film so I sat in the cinema and had to crow internally, Aruna!!
The only real weak point in the cast is Sun(e)i(e)l Shetty, who is pretty much flagging and also got to wear that stupid Aladdin dress. The costumes and sets otherwise are wonderfully sumptuous. Every corner shines and sparkles. In short: A feast for the eyes that needs to be seen on the big screen. If. If you are prepared to ignore the fact that Umrao Jaan is crap damatization wise.
(Actually most of the time I think it is pretty stupid to see a remake only in comparison to the original, but I can´t refrain from a few comparative comments) Even the 1981 adaption is not really an action thriller, it´s more a very quiet, partly almost hypnotic film. A good deal only gets hinted at, only few things are explained - sometimes as a viewer you almost feel left alone, as a lot is left to your own interpretation (Especially if you are dependent on the subtitles that are supposedly not that good)

The screenwriters of the new film supposedly were asked to much of - the makers in any case decided that everything needs to be explained so that even the last mobilephone user in the audience got what was told. And then a bit more. Since it might be that somebody did not pay attention for the last 10 minutes. So everything is retold. In fact every spoken word and everything that has been narrated. More then once. Often. And just to be on the safe side. Once more.













And as if that wasn´t enough, the dialogs are staged in a way that is visually appealing but still leading to aggression after 10 minutes. The actors - first of all Aish and Abhishek - are almost not allowed to act. The have to declaim their dialogues in aesthetically draped poses, perfect for beautiful screenshots, but drop dead boring if you are forced to watch for 3 hours.

That´s especially true for the 2 days hours before the intermission. After it you get quite a lot of plot strung together and parts one expected more of in fast succession. Frustration almost garanteed.
By the way. The story line has been through quite some changes in comparison to the 1981 film. Which e.g. leads to some characters being depicted in a more negative way in the new version. I thought these changes to be quite interesting (something had to keep me from falling asleep..) and now I´m pretty curious about the novel, which I have to get soon. I´m dying to know which picturization is closer to the novel. I had the impression that the new one was more novel like then the Rekha one, especially because of the "literary" frame plot in which an old Umrao Jaan narrates her life´s story to Mirza Ruswa (that was meant to be him, wasn´t it?) - but I can also be totally wrong.

Conclusion desired? If you don´t have anything better to do and want to treat your eyes to some eyecandy go and preferably watch it on the big screen. On the other hand you could also go and clean your bathroom or do your taxes, that´s for sure more fun but not that beautiful. Although. If you have a bath like the one in the movie....














Vah. Vah. I can pretty much second every word. Except maybe for the Suniel part. The scene in Umraos chamber where he, overwhelmed by passion/emotion/whatever takes off his turban led to a collective sigh in the female audience.

Run - and running Maddy does

This is the original to the 2004 Hindi version of Run with AB2.0. And somewhere deep down there is just a plain (and rather short) boy-meets-girl-girls-brother-doesn´t-approve story.










It´s just a tiny tiny bit on the violent side. And has an very very annoying comedy side track. I know, Vivek is a huge comedy star doing some sort of Jonny Lever routine here. I really can´t tell if he is more or less funny/annoying/unnecessary. Because I made heavy use of the FFW button whenever he came up here. Actually if somebody can tell me, what relevance he had to the storyline apart from interupting the narration, I would be very glad.
The main story: Arjun (Madhavan) comes to Chennai to study and on the first day sees/meets a girl that he head over heals falls in love with.










Its just a bit difficult to persuade her, as she tries to constantly disuade him. We find out that her brother, a Don (Atul Kolkarni *wohooooo*), is not very comfortable with her having any suitors. So its healthier for the male population of Chennai and especially to the functionality of their limbs to keep their distance to her. Its just that Arjun does not care. He wants her and after a while she wants him right back.









So he gets thrashed and keeps on thrashing the guys that are sent after him, even if his family has to bear some of the wrath of the Don. He keeps on until the final confrontation. Film khatm.









Not much of a story and not really a highlight of Maddys hoeuvre. But he is kinda cool. As is Atul. Meera Jasmine does not have too much to do but is sweet. And then there is Vivek. But I seem to have mentioned him before.

Amar Akbar Anthony or why I love 70ies movies

Where else do you have so much happening storywise before the opening credits even run?

In those 23 minutes we learn how dad (Pran) went to prison for his boss and how this scumbag did not, like he promised, take care of the now fatherless 3 sons and their mom. So dad returns after his release to find his wife striken with tuberculosis, the boys on the verge of starving and after confronting evil boss














he has to flee, while doing that steals (and carries ! ) a box filled with gold bars, finds his wifes suicide note (that she couldn´t follow through as she was knocked down by a tree and lost her eyesight) On top of that the boys are separated during these events, and found and brought up by 3 different men.
Amar (Vinnod Khanna) is raised by a policewala and becomes a policeman as well, Akhbar (Rishi Kapoor) saved by a muslim tailor, grows up to be a qawali singer and Anthony found by a catholic priest is now a small time crook and bar owner.

The three meet (but don´t recognise each other) while donating blood for their blind mother after she has an accident (of course she also does not make them out as her sons). And finally the opening credits are running.














Btw. if you want to know who is who in this screencap, just look out of the windows...

The main part of the film is "just" how the sons meet and get some girls, encounter some evil people and get to know that they are all infact still alive.
The evil boss (now a pauper thanks to now also evil dad) tries to become wealthy again.
On the boys and their girls front things also get going. As chance will have it, Akhbar´s girl is moms doctor (Neetu Singh), Anthony´s ladki (Parveen Babi) is the daughter of the evil boss who was kidnapped by Pran as a child and sent to boarding school as revenge for the loss of his sons. The third girl (Shabana Azmi) gets rescued by Amar from her criminal evil family (and very flowery dresses stepmom)














Since the human brain can take in only so much before overloading it gets pretty tough to follow through the rest but after another batch of hair-raising conincidences the family finally reunites. Mom regains her eyesight. Dad sees the err in his semi-evil ways of revenge and the boys get together to free two of the girls from evil boss/pauper/now again wealthy evil crime lord in a very slick manner.















Two factoids that I can´t let pass.

- One of the actors (not characters) who plays a baddie is called Hercules.
- Divine Helen gets to say two sentences in her cameo. And she does NOT dance.















If you haven´t seen it so far, it´s the perfect movie for watching with a crowd.

Oh I Love it. Love it. Love it.

Paheli - khoobsurat, lekin...

During a long phone chat with a friend yesterday we started to talk about Rani and tried to find a movie that had her looking more beautiful then she did in Paheli. And came up empty handed. Talking about it made me realise that it has been ages that I last watched it. So guess what yours truly did last night?










Paheli somehow never made it to my top ten movies list. Mostly because of the giant climax screwup. I´ve seen it about 5 times yet and still the "dekh meri jaan, I´m back because all that happend during the last 15 minutes was fake" solution just does not work for me. Another thing that always bothers me is the fate of Kishanlal (the real son). Yeah I know, he´s spineless and inherited some of his dad´s greedyness but he seems to love his wife, missed his family terribly and now for the rest of his sad life he´ll be possessed by a ghost? Not fair, even for a fairy tale.










Still it´s a pity that I have not watched Paheli for so long. There is a lot to like in this movie. I love the visuals, the costumes. Oh and the baubles. There are some necklaces worth killing for. Also the music or Farah Khan´s choreography. And in fact even the story as such.

Some moments still enchant me. Like the rose petal scene.










Or the puppet song. So sweet.










I don´t even mind SRK´s facial hair.










On the whole the movie has a cool concept - story and execution wise. What spoils it is the ending. I know SRK always says in interviews that he thinks indian movies are to long for a global audience. And producing Paheli he might have opted for a more western-oriented length. But another 5-10 minutes to explain or hint at how the ghost gets into Kishans body would have turned a nice film into an truly Oscar nomination worthy one...

PS: The Eros cardboard box DVD that I have is really really crappily encoded. Any tiny move and picture gets grainy and blury. Grrr.

EDIT: Maria suggests in her Paheli review that maybe Kishanlal´s soul did not vanish when the ghost took possesion of his body. Whats more, the ghost once states that he is in fact simply the love Lachchi longs for. And as such can live in Kishans body forever without destroying the original Kishan. Especially since Kishan loves her anyway.
Hmm, now thats a thought worth thinking through.

Four down one to go

I love this commercial and as of today there is only Sarfarosh missing and then I have watched all its characters movies.

Ghulam - I knew why boxing just wasn´t for me

First things first. The Bhatts had Rani Mukherjees voice dubbed in this movie? Pagal hain?











Ok, now what do we have here:

Orphaned mid-twenties boy lives in neighbourhood where Sharat Saxena is the big honcho. Aamirs elder brother is bookkeeper for Honcho and Aamir himself just hangs with his friends and does a little boxing. One day he encounters biker gang and khoobsurat ladki who hangs out with them. After "rebel without a cause" game Aamir gets the girl and all looks quite ok for him.











Then he meets social worker who tries to help people in neighbourhood to get rid of big evil Honcho but instead is himself getting rid of, permanently. Aamir, being partly involved with that is very shaken and now struggles to find the right path which would also mean that his brother would go to prison. So quite a conflict of interest for Aamir as killed social worker turns out to be girls brother too.











Being a movie from 1998 Ghulam still has that early nintyish feeling to it. Lots of fights. Revenge parts. Terrible clothes. Songs that don´t fit into the movie most of the time. The movie should be bad, but having Aamir playing mighty fine it still works somehow - especially if you are into shots of a sweaty bloodied Aamir Khan.











And you get him singing "Aati Kya Kandala"

Peralagan - Surya. Wow.

Isn´t it convenient that I stocked up on tissues for KANK because while watching Peralagan or Perazhalagan (imdb says one, my DVD the other title) they came in quite handy.









Chinnan (Surya) is witty, sharp, headstrong and courageous - in a nutshell he´s a great guy. But being physically handicapped by having a hunchback and deformed legs, he faces difficulties on the marriage mart. Apart from looking for the girl of his dreams to marry he is also the owner of an telephone booth and helps the people around him. Two of them being Kartik (also Surya) and Priya (Jyothika), lovebirds who use Chinnans shop to meet secretly.









Then Chinnan gets to know blind Shenbagam (also played by Jyothika) and in her the girl of his dreams. All looks well when he is drawn into trouble in the Kartik/Priya camp and all four lives take some dramatic turns.









Usually I´m not big a fan of double roles since most of the times its done really cheesy. But with these actors and a really cool makeup and SFX department it works great here. I think Surya is slowly becoming one of my favorite Kollywood actors. He has that very attractive Umphh-factor of being a cool actor with intense eyes and a killer smile.

Happy birthday, SRK

My grandma loves him, my Ma starts to giggle when we talk about him, my 20 year old former assistent could not do any work without SRK smiling from her computer screen and half of my non-regular Bollywood watching friends or co-worker start drooling at the mention of his name.








And me? Being a die-hard Sanjay Dutt Fan and the fact that I try to branch out a lot watching all kinds of Indian Movies, its sometimes months that I don´t get to see any Shahrukh Khan.









So it happens that I sort of forget what makes me like him so much. And then WHAAMM! One of his films is being played on TV or stuff like KANK arrives and I have to kick myself out of the SRK induced trance-like state that I fall into immediately. He just does that everytime. No matter how good or bad, over-the-top or low-key he acts. The guy just oozes charisma. Beth named it right: Resistance is futile.









So, birthday boy. Happy, happy birthday. Keep on mesmerizing me. Many happy returns. I am by far not done with loving to watching you on the big screen.