Filmi weekend

Dil Dosti etc

I watched this Prakash Jha production last weekend for 2 reasons. One It has Shreyas Talpade and two it was the debut movie of Imaad Shah, son of Naseeruddin Shah. The story revolves around these two protagonists. Imaad plays the quintessential cosmopolitan guy with loads of money. He has no particular aim in life but to go after the women (with no strings attached of course) he fancies (he doesn't have much of a problem going after a prostitute and a school girl at the same time.) Shreyas on the other hand plays this very middle class (complete with you fall in love only once attitude) with big political ambitions typical of Delhi University. He's a bihari boy who doesn't mind flaunting his "bihari buddhi." The film plays out the chilled out and at the very same time exciting student life as it is with almost no dramatisation. The film is essentially the juxtaposition of liberal vs conservative. It certainly lacks the cinematic feel but then one cannot tell a story like this with too much drama either. There are three very strong female characters as well. Smirti Mishra is the no nonsense prostitute, Ishhita Sharma , the very sweet but conniving school girl and Nikita Anand is the very ambitious model who falls for Shreyas. These three support the story quiet ably.

There are many telling scenes in the movie.

1) When Imaad takes up the challenge of "doing" three girls in 24 hours when Shreyas was only kidding.
2) When Smriti finally falls for the sweet gentlemanly Imaad much against her beliefs.
3) When Shreyas tells Imaad that his girl friend will not be participating in any fashion show. "Dheere dheere raaste par laa rahe hain" he says.
4) When Nikita tells Imaad she's taking off to London for a fashion show without telling Shreyas but confesses she still loves him.

I liked the movie. It's a welcome change from all the no-brainers that flood cinema halls week after week. Though strictly not for action craving or mush mooning types. It is a very straight forward movie. Oh yeah I loved Shreyas Talpade all over again. As for Imaad there wasn't much for him to do except look ultra laid back and have fun with women and he pulled it off very well. I am looking out for him...good genes cannot just not show up :)

Johnny Gaddar

Oh how I loved this film :D It is a very quirky film and I hope Sriram Raghavan (he also made Ek Hasina thi) makes more films like this. Right from the way title rolls in true 70s style to the references to Vijay Anand and James Hadley chase I loved it all! It is shot very stylishly . I loved the way the main character Vikram played by Niel Mukesh lifts the whole plan from an Amitabh Bacchan movie (I've forgotten which) and gets inventive as the film progresses. I don't want to tell you anything about the story line as it is a suspense thriller except that it is a very cleverly done film. The music is good and the editing even better. Niel Mukesh is a good find. He's the grandson of the legendary singer Mukesh. Playback's loss is silver screen's gain shall we say? The rest of the cast Dharmendra, Vinay Pathak, Zakir Hussain, Ashwini Kalsekar are good. Vinay Pathak especially proves that he can deliver EVERY SINGLE time and Rimi Sen (some one please find her another profession) is ok. The other character which is important for the plot but vanishes quickly is Shiva played by Daya Shetty of the ridiculous yet ridiculously popular TV show CID. And oh the other thing I liked in the movie is the appearance of Kannada and Tamil dialogues. They are delivered stilted but nevertheless not thrust in there for comical (!!) relief so :)

I also watched "Great expectations" and "Breaking the entering" will write about that later.

Postscript: In case anyone's wondering - I've been down with fever and confined to home for almost a week now and hence all the movie mania.