Indian Cinema

Manjhi: Mountain Man – Nawazuddin Siddiqui is amazing as always

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I was at my local library looking for another film (Dookudu!), when I happened to see that Manjhi:  The Mountain Man was in the new release DVD section.  Our local movie theater had shown trailers for Manjhi for months, but it never came to the big screen in our town.

I absolutely love the acting of Nawazuddin Siddiqui.  He is consistently amazing in every movie I’ve seen him in.  Like Irrfan Khan, I’d bet he could make reading the phonebook a dramatic triumph.  Since half the movie has Nawaz acting only with himself and railing at his mountain, you need someone of Nawaz’s talents to pull it off.

Manjhi is based on the real life story of Dashrath Manjhi, who really did carve a road through a mountain with just a hammer and a chisel.  Dashrath’s wife had died from a fall, and died because it took so long to get her to medical care.  After her death Dashrath Manjki vowed to make a road through the mountain to allow for faster medical access for his remote village.  He worked at it for twenty-two years.  It sounds like a story that is so fantastical that it couldn’t even be real, but it is.

My favorite part of the movie was the first half which has the romantic story of Dashrath and his wife Phalguni (Radhika Apte).  Dashrath was born in a caste so low that they were the rat-eaters of the village.  There is a tyranical zamindar and his evil son who rule the village with an iron fist.  Dashrath runs away from home to escape being forced into lifelong bondage to the zamindar.  He returns to the village after some years working in the coal mines.

He falls in love with a village girl, and realizes that she was actually his child bride.  I just loved Nawaz and Radhika Apte and their scenes together.  Life is hard.  The Zamindar and his son are barbaric to the low caste villagers.  But Dhashrath and his wife carve out happiness together.

Tragedy strikes when a pregnant Phalguni falls from the mountain while pregnant with their second child.  Dhashrath carries her miles and miles to the closest hospital, but it isn’t soon enough to save her.  He is left with two children to raise alone, and at this point he goes a bit mad.  He vows to the mountain that he will break it.

The second half of the the film shows his struggles chipping away at the mountain all those years.  The filmmaker tries to insert some drama here, and it gets a bit metaphysical with visions of his wife talking to him, and soliloquy’s with the mountain.  Nawaz tries his best, but the script is not as good here.

Nawaz does not make Dhashrath a saint.  This is a man so obsessed that he leaves his children in the care of his drunk father to work on his mountain path.

The film is definitely worth seeing just for Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s performance.  Seeing him romance Radhika Apte in the first half of the film makes me anticipate the romantic comedy he’s filming right now even more.

Manjhi:  The Mountain Man was not quite as great as I’d hoped it would be, but I give it four stars out of five.

 

Krrish 3 – Super Interesting With the Current Kangana/Hrithik News

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I watched Krrish 3 for the first time, and it it was super interesting with all the recent news about Kangana and Hrithik and the affair they may or may not have had.  At this point you can’t help but examine every scene with Hrithik and Kangana through that prism.

I don’t have a lot to say about Krrish 3.  I enjoyed Krrish and Koi… Mil Gaya was, well, kind of bizarre.

Krrish 3 is really a decent super hero movie.  The CGI was good.  Yes, there is liberal borrowing from Hollywood films like X-Men and Spiderman.  Hmmm.  A villain with a frog tongue, a villain with a rhino horn.  Gee, where have I seen that?  A villain who can change into any other person she touches.  Hmmm.

I am no Vivek Oberoi fan by any means, but I was actually impressed with him in Krrish 3.  His Kaal is sort of a Magneto villain crossed with Professor Xavier in a wheelchair.  He was quite good as a worthy antogonist for Krrish, and I liked that it being an Indian movie, we had family themes with his character.

Absolutely hated his costume, though.  It looked like a kid made it and slapped some tin foil on a football helmet.  Not cool enough.

It’s standard superhero fare, but for Indian cinema, that’s still saying quite something.  Definitely one that kids could enjoy.  Solid three stars out of five.

And, the extra bonus is that we get a great dance number with Priyanka and Hrithik!  Believe me, Batman vs. Superman could have used a nice song and dance to lighten the mood a bit.  (Zach Snyder, take note!

 

 

 

 

Nawaz Siddiqui in a Rom Com!

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I just heard from the BollyFools guys that Nawaz Siddiqui is currently filming a romantic comedy with Amy Jackson called Ali.  Really excited to hear that he’s getting to be a romantic lead.  He is obviously a fantastic dramatic actor, but he really showed his comedic skills in last year’s Bajrangi Bhaijaan.  Ali is directed by Sohail Khan.

Dookudu — Sometimes you just need a Mahesh Babu Telugu hero fix

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Yesterday, I decided I was totally in the mood for another Mahesh Babu movie.  Dookudu had been recommended to me as one of his best, and I tried to find a good copy online.  I ended up running to my local library which had a DVD copy.  (I love living in an area with a sizeable South Asian community!)  My library may not have many Telugu titles, but they have Dookudu!

This poster really shows you what Mahesh in Dookudu is all about.  Dookudu was translated as aggression, but also as daring.  And you can see Mahesh’s cop character is all about attitude.  Mahesh just oozes cool and bravado.  He has amazing presence on film, and looks great in all those slow motion action striding towards danger kind of scenes.

But after watching 1: Nenokkadine, I was hoping with another heroine, I’d get a better romantic subplot, and maybe a sweeter side to Mahesh, too.  And Dookudu gave that to me in spades.  Puppy dog eyed Mahesh!

He’s no Prabhas, who is still my favorite Telugu actor, but he does have that same ability to go from super cool action, to sweetness and comedy.

  

Dookudu is just a super entertaining mass entertainment movie.  The best Telugu films I find really excel at melding together great action, great villains, sweet romance, and comedy all rolled into one.  And while 1:  Nenokkadine felt like theses different parts of the film did not fit together well, here with Dookudu one flows into the other and the comedy gives you a respite from some pretty intense action and drama.

Dookudu at its heart is a revenge flick.  Prakash Raj plays the near saintly politician father of Mahesh (Ajay).  After our short intro to Prakash, we see him struck in a horrific car crash leaving young Ajay alone.  Cut to present day with adult Ajay, now a cop in Mumbai, with a cool introduction fight scene.

Ajay is on the hunt of Don Nayak played with supreme evilness by Sonu Sood.  He’s wearing an ascot for most of the movie, so you know he’s really evil!  One nice thing is that with Sonu Sood being 6’2″, Mahesh is also 6’1″ so their final battle truly feels like a fight of equals.

On a quest to find a weak link to Nayak’s empire, Ajay and his team follow Nayak’s brother to Istanbul.  There one of Ajay’s team tells him his fortune telling grandma says Ajay is about to meet the love of his life.  Ajay mistakes Prashanthi (the adorable Samantha Prabhu) for Nayak’s brother’s girlfriend, so from the beginning we have a hate-to-love romantic subplot.  Which is one of my favorite romantic tropes.

Ajay and his team capture Nayak’s brother which leads to the scene on the rooftops of Istanbul on the poster.  With Ajay’s foot on the gangster’s throat, gun pointed at his head while negotiating on the phone with Nayak.

After some great Turkey scenery (so pretty!) and adorable romantic scenes with Prashanthi where Ajay continually puts his foot in his mouth, Ajay returns to India.  He then gets shocking news.  His father is waking up from a 14 year coma!  His father did NOT die!  Now, here is the part where the film evidently liberally borrows from the German film Goodbye Lenin (which I have not seen).  The doctors tell Ajay that his father should be protected from any bad news or distress so that he doesn’t go back into a coma.

So, Ajay has to get back the family home.  This is where the comedy uncles come in.  Telugu films seem to have a requirement that this guy, Brahmanandam Padma Sri, appear in every single film to provide comic relief.  He’s even shoe-horned into Magadheera for absolutely no reason at all.  (Thank God Rajamouli didn’t have to include him in Baahubali!)

Usually, I find the comedy uncle bits of Telugu films very annoying and totally unfunny.  In films like Darling, you can see Prabhas struggling to not crack up at his antics, and I just don’t get it.

But here, he’s woven into the plot as the current owner of the family mansion, that he rents out as a film set.  Ajay convinces him that they want to film a reality show with hidden cameras.  It’s all an elaborate ruse so that Ajay’s father (Prakash) will think nothing has changed, and that Ajay has taken his MLA seat and followed in his father’s footsteps.  Ajay and his team even produce fake television news shows and newspapers, which is from Goodbye Lenin.  A Telugu is now the prime minister of India, etc.!  Mahesh is great in all these comedy pieces, posing as a film producer, and a participant in a reality show.  His engagement to Prashanthi becomes part of the plan to keep his father happy.

Can you guess who caused his father’s car accident all those years ago?  Yeah, like I said, it’s a revenge flick.  The ways that Ajay crafts revenge on each person who harmed his father are actually quite clever, while keeping his father in the dark that he is now a cop.

I give Dookudu a solid four stars out of five.  Great action, great romance, and great fun.   Mahesh is absolutely fantastic in Dookudu, and Samantha Prabhu is great, too.  They have wonderful chemistry together.  The songs are not exceptional, but pretty good.  This one where the lyrics say “My heart is sacrificed on the altar of love”.  It’s kind of crazy with the faux Aztek costumes or whatever they are, but so colorful!

Yep.  I think I’ve convinced myself writing this up, that I’m going to need to own this one on DVD.  Because Mahesh in many colors of wedding finery!

 

 

 

New Poster for Dulquer Salmaan’s Kammattipaadam

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Dulquer Salmaan just posted this new poster for Kammattipaadam on his Facebook page.

You know what I love about these young Malayalam stars?  They put out a movie every couple of months!!  Just when I’m thinking — Gee, I wish there was a new Dulquer movie, there’s one about to come out!  May 20 is the release date in Kerala.  Hopefully we’ll get it in Chicago.

Here’s another poster with a different look:

 

Kammattipaadam, directed by national-award winner Rajeev Ravi.will evidently be a period drama.

 

 

Innale – a classic Malayalam film gem

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With strong recommendations from my Quora answer, and also Margaret of Don’tCalllItBollywood, I watched the Malayalam 1990 classic film Innale  [Yesterday] this weekend.  It’s available on ErosNow.com.

Margaret promised a cozy movie to watch, and it was.  This classic film gem, by director  P. Padmarajan came out in 1990.  It stars Shobana as the victim of a bus accident in a pouring rain storm.  She is found half dead on a river bank by some villagers who steal her bangles and jewelry before they take her to get help.

When she regains consciousness, she has no memory of her past, or even her name.  Sarath, the son of her doctor, is the hospital administrator and he calls her Maya for expediency.  She is the sole survivor of the accident, and it is presumed her family died in the accident.  She recognizes none of the photographs of the dead.  They post her picture in the paper, but only get imposters trying to claim her.

Sarath gives her the a guest cottage on his family property and a maid servant, and even sets her up with a teaching job at the local school.  And, he’s falling under young Maya’s spell.  At one point, Sarath is driving Maya and the Tracy Chapman song For My Lover was playing on the radio of the car.  It took me right back to that time in the late 80’s/early 90’s when she was so popular, and the song choice was particularly poignant.

T’d climb a mountain if I had to
And risk my life so I could have you
You, you, you…

….

For my lover for my lover

I follow my heart
And leave my head to ponder
Deep in this love
No man can shake

 

Shobana was absolutely luminous in this film.  She was the best actor in the whole film, and I was so impressed with her.  I’m very much looking forward to seeing her film Manichitrathazhu now, which also stars my second favorite actor of Innale – Suresh Gopi.

Jayaram as Sarath, the young man who falls for the amnesia victim Maya was fine, and sweet.  But after the interval we are introduced to Maya’s husband, returned from the US to try to find her.

Suresh Gopi as Dr. Narendran, Maya/Gauri’s bereft husband, had not very much screen time, but he was exceptionally good and has a deep impact.  We see his loneliness and grief, and a glimmer of hope that his wife may have survived the bus crash.  Through several flashbacks we see how happy he and his wife were in their brief marriage.

This is what Indian cinema does so well.  Set up for the audience these dilemmas.  We don’t know who to root for, as our heart is tugged both ways.  Maya is blissfully happy with Sarath, but we see how happy she was with Dr. Narendran in her past.  Suresh Gopi just broke my heart at the end of the film.

It’s like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai with Shahrukh and Salman in that final wedding scene.  So much crying!!

 

Or Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam with Aish, Salman and Ajay.  Team Ajay all the way!

 

I loved Innale, scratchy old film print and all.  Four stars out of five.  Suresh Gopi co-stars with Shobana in Manichitrathazhu , which makes me look forward to it even more.

Song of the Day – Dekho Na

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In Chicagoland, we’ve had a miserable week of cold rainy days.  Just relentlessly wet and dreary.  Rain has a much different connotation in Indian films!

Yet another rainy misty day today, and when Dekho Na played today on shuffle, I was thinking, “Hey, I didn’t even get any sexytimes with mullet-hair Aamir after all this rain!”

This song sequence is one of my all time favorites.

Traffic (2011) Film Review – the start of Malayalam New Wave Cinema

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Rajesh Pillai‘s Malayam film Traffic (2011) is a hyperlink movie.  We get small glimpses into the lives of several characters, and learn over the course of the film how they are all connected to each other.  DontCallitBollywood has a great discussion of what hyperlink movies are, and analysis of this film.  Because of her writeup, I decided to check out this movie, that was also recommended many times on the Quora post.

Traffic was also evidently a seminal movie in the New Wave Cinema or Next Generation movement in Malayalam cinema because of its urban setting, vs. the traditional rural village, and young fresh faces outside of the star system.

Traffic most reminds me of the hyperlink Hollywood film Crash, which also touched on serious urban themes and issues.

 

Traffic, as you can imagine, starts with a traffic accident, and then backs up the narrative a bit to fill us in on the characters involved.  We have a young man who is starting his first day on the job as a journalist off to interview a big movie star.  A young woman being followed by some rowdies on motorbikes.  The victim of the crash goes into a coma, and the doctors bring up a young thirteen year old girl, who desperately needs a heart transplant.  And that’s the hook of the film.  Getting that heart on a two hour drive through various towns and urban populated areas.

We flashback and learn about a police officer who has been disgraced by a bribe.  He volunteers to drive the heart to try to redeem himself in the eyes of his family and neighbors.  There’s the police commander who thinks it just can’t be done, and then coordinates all the road closures necessary from a command center.  And most importantly we learn about a movie star on the day of his premiere — it turns out to be his daughter who is very ill.  The young journalist  is set to interview this star, and he has a romance with a young divorced woman.

It’s quite unusual to see a young divorcee in Indian films, and that is one of the key plot points that signifies this film as New Wave.  The filmmakers set out to make a quite different film.

I loved the glimpses into the life of the Malayalam movie star.  We see flashbacks of him being too busy for his family, and my favorite scene of the whole movie is when he is being interviewed on the radio while his daughter and wife roll their eyes at his answers.  The daughter hands the interviewer a paper with some questions — “What is the name of my daughter’s favorite teacher?  Who is her best friend?”  And so on because she knows that will trip him up.

The second half of the movie is mostly taken up with the action of  driving that police car at 100 kph or whatever it was to get the heart to the girl on time.  And the action scenes were great.  There’s a big twist right at the interval that had me gasp out loud.  It really shocked me what one character did when he heard some awful news.  And what he’s going to do next sets up much of the tension and conflict.

As Margaret points out in her take on Traffic, this is a movie about detours and second chances for many of the characters.  It has a very interesting script, unlike most Indian films, and the action towards the end is very well done.

But my problem with the film is that since there are so many characters, I couldn’t really connect emotionally with any of them.  And I really thought afterwards about why this film seemed to have such a strong reaction in Kerala, but I didn’t feel the same way about it.  And part of it may be that just about every actor in the film I have never seen before.  Only the young journalist, I had seen in Ohm Shanti Oshana.

Hyperlink movies in Hollywood like the silly He’s Just Not That Into You or Valentine’s Day have a bevy of stars and some new actors thrown in.

 

When you have Jennifer Aniston, Ben Affleck and Bradley Cooper in a movie, you know these actors.  There’s a shorthand to their characters, and an instant rapport with the audience.

And I didn’t have that with the actors in the Malayalam Traffic that maybe the Mayali audience did.  So, I give it three and a half stars out of five.  I admire the film, but I didn’t love it.  Rajesh Pillai also directed the Malayalam film Mili, which I also admired for being so female centric, but didn’t love.  Bangalore Days and the Malayalam films that came after Traffic owe a debt to Traffic, but Bangalore Days is the superior film.  Fewer characters, and you get emotionally drawn in to their stories much more.

Interestingly, when I was looking up links for this version of Traffic, I discovered that the same director made a Hindi version of Traffic that is going to be released May 6th!  And here, we have Jimmy Shergill as the police commander and Manoj Bajpayee as the police officer who volunteers to make the drive to redeem himself.  See, I’m instantly in!  Because these actors I already have a relationship with from many, many movies.  The film has the exact same plot, but with action “enhancements” which I’m very curious about.  Same director, Rajesh Pillai, who tragically died earlier this year, so this is his last film.  Instead of driving to Chennai, as in the real life case the movie is based on, the drive is from Pune to Mumbai.

1: Nenokkadine – My first Mahesh Babu Telugu film

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Prior to 1: Nenokkadine, my Telugu film watching has pretty much been limited to everything  starring Prabhas I could get my hands on (post Baahubali!) and anything by S. S. Rajamouli (Eega, Maghadeera, etc.) I could get my hands on.

1:  Nenokkadine (1:  Alone) opens with a young boy running through a forest being chased and shot at by gun-toting goons.  (I learned later the young boy is lead actor Mahesh Babu’s son.) He runs into a road and into the arms of the police but someone explains it away –  “Oh, he has mental problems.  He imagines his parents were killed and he’s being chased by the killers.”  This is the first of many psych outs in this thriller.

1:  Nenokkadine is my first Mahesh Babu film, and from the opening number, I could tell Mahesh is a STAR.   He plays Gautham, a rock star.

Mahesh has charisma.  He has screen presence.  Not the most notable dance talent, at least from what I saw in this movie, but he makes up for that by looking exceptionally cool in all the action scenes.  And this movie has a LOT of action scenes.

After the Who Are You rock number above, Gautham thinks he sees one of the killers from his dreams/visions in the audience and runs after him.  He believes he ends an elaborate motorcycle chase and fist fight by killing the man.  But then – PSYCH – Sameera ( Kriti Sanon, in her debut) has videoed the whole thing, and there wasn’t anyone else there at all!  There is no body because he was fighting air.

WTF?  From this point, you realize nothing you see can you rely on to be real.  Because our hero has mental issues.  Is he schizophrenic and seeing hallucinations?  My subtitles didn’t tell me, but he has missing brain cells or something on a scan, as a doctor tries to explain to the journalist Sameera in the hospital after the imaginary fight.  Why is the doctor telling all this to a journalist?  (I really don’t understand health privacy laws in India, I’m just saying.)

Gautham decides to go to Goa for some R&R, but who appears on his yacht but that dogged journalist, Sameera.  She then proceeds to Gaslight poor Gautham by approaching him multiple times in the same situations so that he isn’t sure what is real and what is not in their relationship.  I read later that this was Kriti’s first film, and I’m sorry, but it shows.  Yes, she’s pretty enough, but I was not buying the instant love between the characters.  And I really couldn’t get past the plot point that she was milking his mental illness for her own ends.  How did Gautham get past that so quickly?  Don’t question, it’s luuuurve.  I didn’t find her funny, and this was the comic relief segment of the movie.  I just didn’t think she had good chemistry with Manesh.  Manesh was also not really that charismatic in the rom com portion.  I reserve judgement if he can pull that off and will try some other movies of his, hopefully where he is paired with a better co-star actress with some sparkle to her.

(Loved Mahesh in the glasses look, though)

So, at this point, the plot becomes very convoluted.  We’re not sure if killers are after Gautham or after Sameera, or both.  Gautham is convinced Sameera is in danger, and unfortunately beats up a bunch of her friends who were planning a surprise birthday party.

The action moves to London, and there are some fantastic action set pieces.  One really intense scene has Gautham killing someone in a public bathroom because he thinks it’s a hallucination that he just wants to go away.  But it was real.  There are so many twists and turns, and because of Gautham’s condition, and his loss of childhood memories, we as the audience never know what to believe.  I’m not sure the logic of the whole movie really works out if you analyze it afterwards, but it’s an exhilarating roller coaster ride of a movie. I was watching most of it on a plane on my iPad with headphones on, and I probably amused my seatmate by gasping out loud at several points.  The ending scenes when Gautham regains his childhood memories were really emotionally touching.

I really liked the catchy soundtrack, too.  Just try to get the London Babu item song out of your head.  I wish I could find this with subs as the lyrics were pretty funny:

I watched this movie becauses it was recommended over and over on my Quora post about why I love Indian cinema as a Telugu movie to try.  Prabhas is still my first love Telugu star, but I will definitely be checking out more Mahesh Babu movies.  This guy just oozes cool, like a much taller Jason Statham kind of action guy.

Four stars out of 5.  Worth a rentMal!  (I rented it on Google Play which had English subs, of a fashion at least.)

Margaret loved this movie!  Check out her review on Don’t Call It Bollywood.  She can thank me for turning her on to Mahesh Babu.

Watch the trailer below with no subs, but it’s mainly action sequences anyway:

Super Interesting Making of Gaurav from Fan – SRK has Brad Pitt’s cheeks!

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YRF released this behind the scenes Making of Gaurav video for the movie Fan.  I had so many questions after watching the film a second time, and really looking at how different Gaurav is from Shahrukh.  Besides the big cheeks, the eyebrows are different, and he just looked slimmer and smaller over all.

(Gifs from KKKG Tumblr)

This 14 minute video answered a lot — it was prosthetics and lots of VFX on top.  This is the same special effects makeup artist who worked with Brad Pitt on Benjamin Button.  So he looked up in his work shop and saw a mold of Brad Pitt’s face, and decided to use those unique cheekbones to make Gaurav’s look.  Fascinating!