Madhuri Dixit: Bollywood’s dancing queen

Madhuri Dixit: Bollywood’s dancing queen

Madhuri Dixit is back in the city to judge a popular dance reality show. In a two part series, we pick some of the ‘Dhak Dhak’ diva’s sizzler performances…One of her most recent contributions to Hindi cinema, Madhuri Dixit’s portrayal of Chandramukhi dancing to the lilting tunes of ‘Dola Re’ sent the entire nation crazy after the dancing diva. While the dance number set off comparisons between Madhuri and co-star Aishwarya Rai Bachchan’s performances, it is undoubtedly one of the former’s best dance performances on-screen.

Read more

Kandahar trailer & images (updated)

Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Se trailers (updated)

How to stop worrying and lose your moustache (Interesting blog piece on Mukherjee’s Golmaal and Jurmana)

thanks to Saket..
LINK


Here’s a trivia question. (Don’t scroll down too quickly.) This popular director helmed two films – call them Movie A and Movie B – in the same year. A sequence in Movie A has the central character visiting a studio where a big star is shooting a nightclub scene. As it happens, this is an actual scene from Movie B, which will be released a couple of months later. Name the director and the two films.

****

Answer: Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Gol Maal and Jurmana (both 1979).

Quick note on DEVIL (English, 2010)

M.Night Shyamalan has been going through a tough phase. Some would argue that he crashed and burnt with his first 3 films (THE SIXTH SENSE, UNBREAKABLE and SIGNS). His subsequent films never quite achieved that kind of success whether it’s THE VILLAGE, LADY IN THE WATER, THE HAPPENING or his last film as a director THE LAST AIRBENDER. I personally didn’t mind any of those films and felt people were too harsh on him, though THE LAST AIRBENDER even I couldn’t sit through.

Read the rest from HERE

Rakta Charitra (Rattha Charitram) trailers (updated)

Johnny Depp to play Tonto in Lone Ranger movie

LINK

Johnny Depp and Pirates Of The Caribbean director Gore Verbinski are reuniting to create a movie update of The Lone Ranger. Rumours that such a movie was to be made have been circulating since 2007, when it was first announced that Jerry Bruckheimer, the producer of the three Pirates Of The Caribbean movies that followed the original, wanted to make the film with Verbinski.

36 Hours later.. and apologies..

I have inadvertently discovered how nuclear war might be triggered on this planet. It takes less than Kim Jong-Il’s level of madness or malice to do so. Late Thu night I tried to hotlink an image for a new post only to discover to my horror that the blog had been deactivated. Many anxious hours later (and as I had half-suspected at the time) I was told that the site I’d referenced was on the wordpress state terror sponsor list and hence the suspension was automatic. We do not realize how thoroughly we have become dependent on technology, how completely unable to breathe without it until something of this sort happens! I felt as if I was trapped in a crevice of my own and with little hope of getting out (36 hrs is an eternity in cyberspace!). Luckily I was able to do so today without loss of limb. I wish to praise God as I miss him in this age of cyberspace anarchy. Apologies to all members and visitors who were inconvenienced..

My thoughts on FAIR GAME (English, 2010)

The initial promos for this instantly reminded me of the Sean Penn-Nicole Kidman starrer THE INTERPRETER which was again a political thriller however FAIR GAME ends up being very different to that film, and a much better one at that (also don’t get it confused with the William Baldwin-Cindy Crawford thriller of the same name).

Read the rest from HERE

Koffee with Karan (Farah Khan, Raju Hirani, Imtiaz Ali)

Rahman’s latest Airtel ad ‘Street Dancer’ & older ones

Break Ke Baad & Allah Ke Banday, Guzaarish (ongoing), the rest of the box office

last week’s thread

The Thunderous Silence

thanks to Saket..
LINK


Indian journalism stinks right now.

A few weeks ago, a plagiarism controversy broke over at India Today. Content theft is alarmingly common in Indian publications, but this was different because it involved the editor. Aroon Purie’s bylined editorial had lifted a few sentences, verbatim, off a piece written on Rajnikanth by Slate journalist Grady Hendrix. In Twitterverse and the Blogosphere, parallel universes that mainstream mediawallahs generally manage to ignore, poop hit the fan. Eventually, Purie came out with an explanation that was at once shameful and shameless: he was jet-lagged, he said, and someone else had written the piece for him. Hendrix duly ridiculed the explanation (scroll down to his comment here).– it couldn’t have been very hard to mine it for humour.

for more follow the link..

Break ke Baad trailers (updated)

Abhishek confirms Hera Pheri sequel with Dutt and Nana Patekar

thanks to Tyler…
LINK

This is one movie that seems to draw laughs with every sequel. Hera Pheri started out with Akshay Kumar, Suniel Shetty and Paresh Rawal. Now, in its latest avatar, Abhishek Bachchan, Sanjay Dutt and Nana Patekar will be seen essaying the lead roles. Hera Pheri 4 is on the anvil and it will be directed by Anees Bazmee. The film will go on floors next month. Confirming the news Abhishek Bachchan said, “Yes, I have signed the film and we will start shooting next month.”

Koffee with Karan (Deepika and Sonam)

Beautiful People with Deepika

Mankada Ravi Varma passes away…

thanks to CG..
LINK

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Mankada Ravi Varma, one of the best photographers in Malayalam cinema, passed away in Chennai on Monday. He was 85 years old. Ravi Varma had shot into international acclaim working with directors such as G. Aravindan, Adoor Gopalakrishnan and P.N. Menon; turning their insight into human situations to tones of black and white. The State government had honoured him with the J.C. Daniel award for life-time achievement.

Guzaarish and the mixed virtues of restraint

[SPOILERS GALORE!]

In a way Bhansali over-learnt the Saawariya box office lesson in Guzaarish. The operatic instincts this director has struggled with throughout his career have resulted in a fairly uneven set of films where the blend of linear narrative and hyper-stylized visual form has usually been a work in progress. These efforts have seemed overwrought, featuring the atmospherics of grand opera without necessarily the passions associated with the genre. From his earliest Khamoshi through his transitional Devdas his meandering narratives often undid his signature strengths, with Black he perhaps found what is to date his best marriage between intent and form (though Bachchan’s triumphant and really over-powering presence here can scarcely be overlooked.. a star who could provide Bhansali’s operatic vehicle with grand presence and grand passion at one and the same time) but it is with Saawariya that the director really came closest to realizing the ‘logic’ of his concerns than anywhere else. The overt theatricality and ‘staging’ of the film’s dreamscape coupled with its Broadway musical time-scheme offers the best index of Bhansali’s vision despite its somewhat insipid narrative. Possibly the hysterically negative reaction the latter received in every sense forced Bhansali to back track quite a bit. Guzaarish is his most even narrative with the exception of Black, a film where the classic Bhansali tension is far less apparent. Regrettably, and ironically, the strengths of this work are also achieved at the cost of Bhansali’s usual formal elan. By his standards the director has made a quieter, much more restrained work but it is also one that seems starved of oxygen sometimes. Almost as if the director were constantly looking over his shoulder at Saawariya. Inasmuch as he perhaps tried to avoid the latter he should also have cast fresher eyes on Black. This in effect was the kind of film Guzaarish could have been but is not.

Wanderer in Bewitching, Fractious Land [NY Times on 'Between Two Worlds' (Ahasin Wetei)]

LINK

Riven with violence and haunted by the dead and the missing, “Between Two Worlds” is a hallucinatory experience. The worlds in question could be a number of things — heaven and hell, peace and war, past and present; but in a film this vivid and this oblique, the cumulative thrust of the images is what pulls us through.