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Post by Ally Kumari on Mar 3, 2014 18:42:09 GMT
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Xas
Guest appearance
Posts: 185
Favorite actor: Kunal Kapoor, Ranbir, Prabhudheva
Favorite actress: Madhuri, Rani, Vidya, Huma Qureshi, Divya Dutta, Nutan, Asha Parekh, Helen, Mumtaz
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Post by Xas on Mar 3, 2014 21:14:22 GMT
Just want to say that I always enjoy reading your reviews, Ally. And we're in total agreement over Ishqiya.
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Post by Ally Kumari on Mar 3, 2014 21:36:27 GMT
Thank you! I am always happy to know people actually read those scribbings of mine!
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Post by ShantiSal on Mar 3, 2014 22:27:26 GMT
Dulha Mil Gaya - I wasn't expecting much after a low rating on IMDB but it wasn't too bad although I thought the Shimmer character a little overacted at times. Not taken with Fardeen Khan as the lead male character - a little flabby around the jawline, lol - and he is overshadowed by SRK (in a small role). OK songs but their sound quality wasn't good - distortion - but that might have been a technical thing, the sound is OK in YouTube clips. Probably wouldn't watch it again.
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odadune
Star of the item number
not around much due to stuff in my personal life.
Posts: 1,494
Favorite actor: Currently a certain Kumar, but I like most of them
Favorite actress: whoever's in films I'm interested in this week
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Post by odadune on Mar 4, 2014 3:21:46 GMT
Ally, I agree with Xas-it's always good to read what you have to say, even when I don't necessarily 100% agree with it, but in this case you point up a lot of the issues I had with the first Ishqiya while still enjoying it and praising its good traits. Rewatched over the past couple weeks: Dil Bole Hadippa, with MCF. This might have been the first or second time we rewatched since entering the Very Large TV era, and I think it was the first time I understood why people have a problem with Rani as a boy. Her mannerisms are pretty consistent with Bollywood's idea of a hyperactive teenaged boy, the husky voice works for someone who's voice is just breaking, the face looks remarkably like Captain Jack Sparrow with less kohl on, but there's just not enough effort to disguise the physique. Something that impressed me this time was that the film really does make it feel like the last stretch of the big game really is Shahid's and Rani's characters repairing their relationship by working together as a team professionally. Boss, by myself. No comment, except that like the old Sanjeev/Jeetendra vehicle Takkar (also a South-to-North remake about a longlost elder brother rejoining his family), the Token Family Horse's Butt (That would be Mithun here, and Jeetendra in Takkar) is just too much of a horse's butt for us to quite care about the Big Reconciliation. Also, I've decided to pretend that we're *supposed* to look on Party All Night as a bad idea that blows up in the protagonist's face. Newly watched: Chalo Ishq Ladaaye. Basically it inspired the same kind of detached amusement in me that Duplicate did. Govinda is very likable and funny, and one helluva dancer, but I don't think there's an actor born of woman in any country who could make me like the character he plays here (well okay, maybe the late Cary Grant), and Rani although very cute and sweet just doesn't have enough to do here. Johnny Lever's a shade less annoying than usual and Gulshan Grover is really cool, but ultimately this is a better vehicle for Zohra Sehgal than anyone else involved. Grandma-fu for the win!
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Post by Ally Kumari on Mar 4, 2014 16:43:40 GMT
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ranranbolly
Guest appearance
Posts: 108
Favorite actor: Ravi Teja
Favorite actress: Deepika Padukone
Upcoming release you're most excited about: Bengal Tiger
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Post by ranranbolly on Mar 4, 2014 19:08:43 GMT
Got my grandmother to watch Naya Daur with me, and I gotta say...that movie still has a pretty strong message today about the dangers of making people obsolete.
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Post by newauntie on Mar 7, 2014 5:17:25 GMT
Highway - I loved it. Atmospheric and beautiful to look at, it made me want to drop everything and go to North India again.. Alia Bhatt was really terrific and she's showing a lot of promise in a rather mature role. Randeep Hooda was slightly less convincing but he grew on me.
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Post by jabimetbollywood on Mar 7, 2014 19:04:48 GMT
Phata Poster Nikhla Hero--I really enjoyed this. Now, I'm such a fan that I'm afraid you'll all think it's just my affection for Shahid speaking here, but I think I'm able to recognize when he's being mediocre, or doing his best in a mediocre film. This one I found to be well-done silly, goofy, campy fun. Basically, if you liked the look of the trailers and promos at all, you should watch it! It is as-advertised. Quite a heart-warming core story, too (speaking as a mother of sons . I'm surprised it flopped, actually, but the ways of the Indian box office remain a mystery to me. Ishqiya--
I expected to love this, but instead managed only to appreciate it. Very beautifully done, with stellar performances... and yet. It didn't quite grab me. I'm glad I watched it, and I'm definitely still looking forward to Dedh Ishqiya. And my viewing was probably hampered by the fact that I started watching it with my mom, who didn't like how it was shaping up with the criminals and all , so I ended up taking it out after about 20 minutes and showing her RNBDJ instead (that one she liked). Then I watched more by myself another day, but was interrupted again, and watched the final bit yet another day. So it probably lost some impact because of the fits and starts. Ghulam-- Ah, late 90s Bollywood. It had been awhile since I visited you. The hilarious-when-trying-to-be-serious sound effects! The surge of overwrought instrumentals at points of high drama! The post-filming studio dubbing that makes every little grunt and sigh the same volume as loud declarations! (I'm curious, actually, has all Bollywood gone sync-sound now or is studio dubbing just so much better?) All that aside, I liked it! Aamir strikes me as really earnest rather than really talented, but he did a good job. It was weird for Rani to be dubbed with someone else's speaking voice, but both she and her voice performed well. Oh, one thing I didn't like-- the embarrassing rapping in the Tujh ko kya song. It was mercifully brief, luckily. Other than that, I found it a satisfying piece of Bollywood entertainment. LOVE Aati kya Khandala. Also rewatched RNBDJ (as mentioned above) and English Vinglish with my mom. She liked them. I still like them. My husband wandered in during one of the English class scenes in EV and rolled his eyes hard (he has a Master's in TESOL, i.e. Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, and much classroom experience, although it's not what he does now). But Mom and I enjoyed!
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odadune
Star of the item number
not around much due to stuff in my personal life.
Posts: 1,494
Favorite actor: Currently a certain Kumar, but I like most of them
Favorite actress: whoever's in films I'm interested in this week
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Post by odadune on Mar 9, 2014 1:09:04 GMT
Jab, that's actually surprisingly alot like the way I originally viewed Ishqiya-I wasn't trying to accomodate other people's viewing preferences particularly, but it just ended up being a "pick-it-up-and-put-it-down" kind of movie.
Just watched the new Agneepath. I fastforwarded a fair amount of it, and wasn't quite sure what to make of what I did see. I felt like nobody except the actors really cared that much about the story and characters as such; Kjo was apparently producing this remake as a way of vindicating the original and honoring his father, who produced it; director Karan Malhotra expended a lot of skill and technique on delivering the film his producer and mentor wanted without seeming all that interested in the emotional content. I'm curious to see how Shuddhi turns out, if it goes forward, because Karan M. does seem to have talent and it would be interesting to see what he does with a story he actually cares about. I liked Hrithik in the lead role for the most part-he can be kind of stagey and melodramatic, but it works for stylized, vaguely operatic movies like this, and he has an earnestness and vulnerability that offsets the nastiness of the anti-hero's deeds somewhat. The guy playing his dad was very sweet-like someone managed to distill the nicer parts of Rajesh Khanna's and Jeetendra's screen personas and leave the smarm and the tics behind. Of the five zillion baddies, only Sanjay Dutt made much of an impression: he was suitably creepy and unpleasant. I don't have any good theories as to what's going on with his religious and philosophical cant, unless it's another reference to Ravana, who in some versions is supposed to be very learned in religious matters. Not impressed with Rishi in baddie mode here; frankly he's scarier in Patiala House, and Agneepath is far too dignified and self-consciously "serious" of a movie to get away with anything as stupid as him getting into a fistfight with HRITHIK FREAKING ROSHAN. Priyanka was delightful in her one major dance scene but seemed weird and overwrought in most of her scenes-admittedly, it's been a while since I watched her play ditz, but I don't recall her being like this. Might be Kjo's influence-he's pretty relentlessly awful when it comes to directing women, and he was a very hands-on producer with this project. Did not care for the ending; Karan M. belongs to the Ramesh Sippy school of action direction (ie, rub the audience's noses in just how awful and painful all this stuff would be in reality, for 10-15 minutes at a time) and I didn't buy the implication that the nice, gentle schoolteacher from the beginning would be all that okay with how his son turned out, especially in a film that otherwise did a fair job of pointing out that vengeance is a messy, nasty business. I've seen the violence against women in this film commented on elsewhere; my problem is that, when a well-executed spaghetti western or masala film goes there, it emphasizes that kind of thing just enough to to make the point about how nasty the villains are and then moves on to other things,* while the kind of movie that really rubs your your face in the ugliness at great length is either extremely exploitative or is trying to make a broader thematic point. Agneepath seemed to want to be the latter, but couldn't quite pull it off; the only valid point it had was the threat Vijay's lifestyle of crime and vengeance represented to the women in his life, and it backpeddled annoyingly from that at the end.
*I'm not saying it's okay to make violence against women a plot maguffin, but there are degrees of obnoxiousness in the way films handle it, and what I'm calling "well-executed" are films that find less obnoxious ways of doing it.
ETA also finished watching Khiladi 420. (This is not technically a first viewing, but a first time with subtitles). There's alot wrong with this movie, notably the incoherent plot (okay, par for the course with a Khiladi movie), the awkward and disinterested dialogue dubbing, the amount of time Mahima Chaudhary spends screaming and sobbing, the sight of Akshay Kumar in the world's scariest clown makeup, and the hideous cinematography-full of harshly lit closeups that are determined to show you every zit and rash and pockmark the male members of the cast possess, and the five hundred pounds of makeup the women are wearing to avoid the same treatment. The first half is pretty tedious, because it is mostly spent following around evil twin Dev (Akshay) and his machinations against Alok Nath and Alok's daughter Mahima, and also contains some mechanically sleazy fanservice scenes with Antara Mali as Dev's girlfriend. This part is slow and talky, and Dev is a weaselly small-time operator hoping for a big score to clear his gambling debts with the local mafia, so it's hard to be impressed with him as a bad guy. The film picks up with the confrontation between him and Mahima on their wedding night, followed by the entry of good twin Anand. Anand turns out to be a pretty nice bloke with a sideline in extravagant action scenes, and between that and the rather sweet if idiotic love story between him and Mahima's character, K420 became at least entertaining if still a long ways from good. When I first started watching this sometime back I was moderately convinced that I would end up culling it out of the herd, but the ending left me in a good enough frame of mind to keep it...for now. I was also pleasantly surprised to see Akki try his hand at dancing in one of the song picturizations (he didn't seem to do alot of that in the late 90s, after his back injury) and being halfway decent at it-certainly he compared favorably to Katrina in Chikni Chameli, which for me was a case of, love the song and the visuals and even like the actress somewhat but what on earth does that girl think she's doing?
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odadune
Star of the item number
not around much due to stuff in my personal life.
Posts: 1,494
Favorite actor: Currently a certain Kumar, but I like most of them
Favorite actress: whoever's in films I'm interested in this week
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Post by odadune on Mar 10, 2014 3:38:16 GMT
Arrambam, unsubbed. There's alot to like here-Tapsee being funny, Ajith Kumar being bada$$, Arya being a bit of both, Nayantara getting to be among other things, kind of a femme fatale. The songs are decent (I loved the almost magic-realism like vibe of the picturization where Arya sprouts wings), the gunfights appear to have been choreographed by someone who's at least heard of "suppressing fire", and the plot twists, to the extent I could follow them, were actually pretty clever. This is a true multi-starrer of a kind we don't see very often anymore, with both male leads and both love interests being fairly important to the plot; you couldn't really slash it down to a 1.5-hero/0.3-heroine film in the remake process, as was done with Pokkiri Raja/Boss. That being said, the third act, including the flashback sequence, is overly long and I really could have dispensed with at least 75% of the violence/threatened violence against women. Also did not especially need to see paunchy, dignified Ajith Kumar (Tabu's boyfriend in Kandukondain!) threaten a baby with a hot iron in order to terrorize its presumably-evil father, or get slathered up in holi dyes and cavort awkwardly with Nayantara and Very Special Bromantic Guest Star Rana Daggubati.
Salman and Akshay were both interested in the film rights, last I heard. It's a good movie on its own terms (imagine the illegitimate love child of Wanted, Special 26, and Swordfish) and allowing for its failings, but I don't need to see either of those guys do half the things Ajith does here (although they'd probably be more aesthetically tolerable in the holi song) and I don't think either of them have the sense to get someone really good for Nayantara's character or Arya's.
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Post by oldsaratogaguy on Mar 12, 2014 3:40:49 GMT
Pride & Prejudice, 1995, Firth & Ehle, Blu-Ray. IMHO the best period drama ever produced by/for BBC (and yes, I'm watching Downton Abbey). Gurinder Chada's Bride & Prejudice gets, maybe, a B+, but maybe it's time for another Bollywood style attempt at that plot line. Sense & Sensibility and Emma have been done, but I'd also like to see BW adaptations of Persuasion, Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park. Austen is pretty much timeless. Next up is Raj Kapoor and Nargis in Aah.
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Post by patapin on Mar 14, 2014 10:43:25 GMT
Bommarillu (2006) : I was expecting some lovestory like KKHH, but was really disappointed. I don't like the young boy (Siddu, played by Siddharth), selfish, quick-temepered and stupid : so I can't love the movie ! Luckily, Genelia D'Souza is brilliant, so fresh and funny : adorable ! She saves what can be saved. And I still don't like the telugu way of speaking. 8/20
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Post by dariya on Mar 15, 2014 2:18:14 GMT
Ram Leela (2013) This one must have been amazing on a big screen. I unintentionally converted some roommates to the Ranveer Singh fanclub (can't blame them what with that introductory song)! Went in knowing that it was pretty much a vehicle for its two charismatic leads (they're both wonderful, I haven't seen Cocktail but this is by far my favorite performance of Deepika now), as well as for SLB to engage in what he knows best, gorgeous costumes and dance numbers. There's not much to the writing and directing but that was fine with me because these other factors made up for it. P.S. Wowza, that kiss! YOU know the one. ;P
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abhifan
Dancing in the chorus
Posts: 11
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Post by abhifan on Mar 15, 2014 4:16:15 GMT
As a newly, very newly, fan of Shahid Kapoor and Sonam Kapoor I just watched Mausam. It wasn't a perfect movie, but it was a good movie. They both have great chemistry and the movie shows them at puppy love to romantic love to heartbreak and at the end unconditional love. There was one misunderstanding segment that I initially didn't like, but it tied end pretty well at the end. And it does have a great soundtrack. I would love to see them in another movie together.
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