Now that Big Boss is over, Abhishek Bachchan will be seen on the same channel at the same time from 23rd Jan, hosting a new TV show. BigB will be replace by his son AB Jr. The show is called Satruday Night Bingo and will be played in great leisure. A regular game of “housie” will just become a little more fun with celebrities and of course the common men. Watch out!

the telengana issue has thrown up a new challenge in administration and law & order maintenance. will a new state really solve the problem? someone should try to base their argument on the current status of newly created states like jharkhand, uttarkhand, chhatisgarh etc. did the state creation solve the issues of poverty and unemployment? are the people living a much better life after partition? i dont think so.

before we hastily create telengana, we should ponder over the above questions. one of my concerns in this scenario is the location of hyderabad. which state would not want to get a piece of it? all of them want to grab the IT hub because thats the hand that feeds andhra, and not many have realized that. apart from the historical significance, hyderabad also provides a part of the ancient myth and old world charm of an ancient city dipped in history and architecture.

if hyderabad is split, it will lose the soul. if its wholly given to one state then that would be unfair. what about other jewels of andhra? who is claiming to keep sania mirza, saina nehwal, vvs laxman, pullela gopichand, chiranjeevi etc. the conceited politicians are only thinking of the land, but not the people.

this is the right time for NRI’s to jump in and save andhra. we all know that andhraites form a big chunk of the population in USA and they have the clout. they need to step-in and say that they want ‘united states of andhra’. they should come together on a forum and appeal to the people before its too late. wake up guys, don’t let this happen.

piyush mishra re-wrote the legendary song for the movie ‘gulaal’ keeping in mind the current scenario. and he has done a wonderful job.

sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamare dil mei hai
dekhna hai zor kitna bazu-e-qaatil mei hai
waqt aane pe bataa denge tujhe aye aasmaan
hum abhi se kya bataye kya hamare dil mei hai

o re bismal kaash aate aaj tum hindustaan
dekhte ki mulk saara kya tashan kya chill mei hai
aaj ka launda yeh kehta ‘hum to bismil thak gaye
apni aazaadi to bhaiyya laundiya ke til mei hai’

aaj ke jalso mei bismil ek goonga gaa raha
aur behron ka wo rela naachta mehfil mei hai
haath ki khaadi banaane ko zamaana lag gaya
aaj to chaddi bhi silti angrezo ki mill mei hai

dekhna hai zor kitna bazu-e-qaatil mei hai
waqt aane pe bataa denge tujhe aye asmaan
hum abhi se kya bataye kya hamare dil mei hai
sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamare dil mei hai

The movie did not work for me at all, it was crass. I felt it was hyped because of the director-actor combination, but lacked substance. The acting was brilliant, no two ways about it. But what I hated was that, there was not a single sane character in the movie. I dont enjoy a movie thats filled with characters/caricatures but lack depth.

You have Kevin Spacey who is suffering from inferiority complex and the only thing he looks forward to is his daughter’s friend, that’s a sick mind where sex becomes a goal to work for; not family, not wife or children but an object of lust tat too someone who is 20 years younger; I can still accept that becasue its not a moral issue. Meena Suvari, who actually reciprocates Spacey’s lust; does she have a mind of her own or what? Annette Bening is shallow too; she cheats on her hubby by sleeping arnd instead of confronting the truth, and continues to live selfishly in a bad marriage. Thora Birch who is low on confidence and the only thing that would cheer her up is a boob-job; and the sudden interest shown by her nerdy neighbour actually turns her on because no one has ever seen her in amorous way.

The drug peddler who tries to find beauty of life in shooting flying polythene bags and death, how demented. And his army-burdened dad who suspects that his son is gay.

While i do agree that America has lots of such families with such characters, but I would definitely not believe that all these characters would be found in the same family. Yes, you can find these characters but in different families, you dont bring in all fuckin nerdy characters in the same house. Come on .. gimme room to breathe. This is a potboiler situation where you bring in all the wacks/freaks you can think of and put them in the same frame and call it ‘american beauty’

This is the poster of Dibakar Bannerjee’s latest movie. His previous successful movie was Oye Lucky Lucky Oye [OLLO] which starred Abhay Deol. Click PFC to know more

“devaa aa gaya”… announced Dharamdas[Tiku Talsaniya] in 2002’s version of Devdas. But my Dev hadn’t arrived yet. What SLB did was excellent, poetry on celluloid; but what AK has done is more like a sonnet. I would not like to compare the two becasue SLB had his version while AK has his own subversion [pun intended].

SLB took great pains to re-create the past, an old era near Hooghly while AK has done a whole lot of research to portray Dev for the present and future. He has set a benchmark for other writer/directors becasue this is a movie that respects the sensibility of a mature audience. AK has gone a few notches up in the story-telling department. Black Friday looked like a docu-drama and No Smoking went into a fantasy and looked like AK had lost control due to his over-indulgence; but DevD is a perfect blend between visual imagery and story-telling … like Coke with Vodka.

I have followed DevD diaries and have been reading about it from inception to conception to gestation and finally reproduction. And it was worth the time that it took, becasue he has got everything right; well almost. I thought the second half dragged a bit, lost a bit of momentum; but it ended well.

AK has moved Devdas to Punjab, from Kolkata, and rechristened him as DevD. That in itself is a huge shift and makes us realise that Dev belongs to Gen-X. He has pleasure trips, guilt-free sex, enjoys a good smoke and lots of liquor, has sex-chat with Paro; in fact his dad quips in that Dev has acquired new taste .. “chicken chhodke fish, whisky chhodke vodka aur asli ladki chhodke sookhi baas ki bamboo ke peeche bhagna”. Thats Dev, always running away; sometimes from Paro, sometimes from Chanda and most of the times from himself.

He loves Paro immensely but his arrogance gets the better of him. He loves her so much that he breaks a bottle on the head of one of the villagers who brags that he has had a nice fuck with Paro and that she is great in bed; but his chauvinism does not permit him to make love
to her. So great is his arrogance that he belittles Paro, breaks her heart and pushes her away to marry somebody else. The realisation dawns on him only when her ‘doli’ is about to leave with the blaring ‘Emotional Atyachar’ in the background. Perfect song that describes the feeling and captures the emotions of Dev.

Then enters Chanda in his life. A precocious girl who was wronged by her boyfriend, he shot a video of her giving a BJ and circulated it. The shame that her parents go through when media guys hound their house waiting to make a scoop, finally makes her run away. She has been disowned by her mom as well as her friends who refuse her calls and she finally lands up in a dingy brothel, or should we call ‘pleasure house’ where rich brats visit. Dev is also brought here by a pimp called Chunni.

Some people don’t find love all their lives, but Dev fortunately or unfortunately finds love twice; this time in the form of Chanda. But both the times he fails to recognize it. When he was with Paro he did not realize it was love till she left him, and now that he is with Chanda the thought of Paro keeps haunting him. He wants to meet her once, make love to her. Meet he finally does, but Paro has moved on in life. She has been mature enough to compromise and she accuses Dev of not being in love with anybody but himself. And thats the last we see of Paro, totally out of Dev’s life. While Dev is still not able to accept this fact he drowns himself in alcohol and in his drunk stupor
he over-runs 7 people o the footpath in his BMW.

In the final reels, after his dad’s death he has a near miss accident when a car crashes against a wall beside him. And that brings in a new consciousness and he decides that he has to move on. I shall not reveal the ending but all I can say is that this Dev is a guy of the new generation; and hence the ending had to be new and believable too. A special mention should be made of the fantastic music-lyrics duo, Amit and Amitabh have done an excellent job. All the songs are apt and they have been weaved into the movie; they are almost like a smooth narrative. Mahi Gill as Paro was brilliant in the movie. She has everything it takes to make an actress, an amazing range of expressions – from grief to grin, from anger to anxiety, from love to loathing…everything. Kalki as Chanda was good but she could not express herself through her voice and face; she needed lines.

The editing was slick and 360 deg camera rotation was used to great effect. Cinematography was fantastic, capturing the beauty of Punjab, the loneliness of Delhi streets, the filthy room of Dev, dingy brothel areas; everything was shot well. And finally, Abhay and AK…from concpet to conundrum…they created it. Abhay has rasied the bar for himself, he is no longer competing with anyone but himself. I am waiting for his next and of course AK’s next titled Gulaal. Until then
… dhol yaara dhol.

This post was first published on PFC

Working on the look of Rocket Singh[Ranbir Kapoor with Jaideep Sahni]

A popular actress of yesteryears, Bina Rai, passed away in the morning hours of 6th Dec’ 09. Not many people/channels reported about it.

She will be most remembered for her performance in and as ‘Anarkali’. She also later went on to essay Mumtaz role in the movie ‘Taj Mahal’. Pradeep Kumar had played the hero opposite her in both movies. She did a couple of more movies after ‘Taj Mahal’ and then quit the scene. May her soul rest in peace.

1. You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to
her and say: “I am very rich.
Marry me!” – That’s Direct Marketing….

2. You’re at a party with a bunch of friends and see a
gorgeous girl. One of your friends goes up to her and
pointing at you says: “He’s very rich.
Marry him.” -That’s Advertising…

3. You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to
her and get her telephone number. The next day, you
call and say: “Hi, I’m very rich.
Marry me” – That’s Telemarketing…..

4. You’re at a party and see gorgeous girl. You get up
and straighten your tie, you walk up to her and pour
her a drink and say “Marry Me?” – That’s Public
Relations…

5. You’re at a party and see gorgeous girl. She walks
up to you and says:”You are very rich!
Can you marry me?” – That’s Brand Recognition…

6. You see a gorgeous girl at a party.. You go up to
her and say: “I am very rich. Marry me!” She gives you
a nice hard slap on your face. – That’s Customer Feedback…

7. You see a gorgeous girl at a party.. You go up to
her and say: “I am very rich. Marry me!” And she
introduces you to her husband. – That’s demand and supply gap…

8. You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to
her and before you say anything, another person comes
and tells her: “I’m rich. Will you marry me?” and she
goes with him – That’s competition eating into your market share…

9. You see a gorgeous girl at a party.. You go up to
her and before you say: “I’m rich, Marry me!” your
wife arrives. – That’s restriction for entering new markets…