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| Skewed Script Robs Film of Emotional Impact | | By R.M. VIJAYAKAR | Rating:  | | indiawest.com | September 02, 2010 01:55:00 PM |
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Nagesh Kukunoor’s idol is Hrishikesh Mukherjee, whose masterpiece, “Anand,” was probably the benchmark he set himself for such a film. Alas, he did not realize that “Anand” was what it was because of the script.
The script is where almost all of the younger filmmakers go wrong, either in their kinky desire to move away from traditional or conventional Hindi cinema, or because they have been brought up on global cinema and want to emulate it — desi audiences be damned — or are on a superiorit | | | | | Read More . | | |
| Jarring Script at Odds with Skillful Direction, Performances | | By R.M. VIJAYAKAR | Rating:  | | indiawest.com | August 26, 2010 02:16:00 PM |
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One-Shot Nandu, real name Nandu Kamthekar (Neil Nitin Mukesh), is a hired boxer who wins bouts for the goon Usmanbhai (Piyush Mishra) by knocking down the opponent with just one blow. He gets into the fringes of crime thanks to Usman, by driving his car on the run, and knocks down Pinky Palkar (Deepika Padukone), a salesgirl in a mall who is a brilliant skate-dancer and dreams of going places beyond the humble “wadi” (locality) in which she resides with her mother and unemployed brother. Nandu k | | | | | Read More. | | |
| Vital Issue Film Done in by Topsy-turvy Tone | | By R.M. VIJAYAKAR | Rating: | | indiawest.com | August 19, 2010 02:29:00 PM |
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“Peepli [Live]” takes a lively peep into villages in India where most people, especially farmers, still live wretched lives below the poverty line. Unable to pay off their loans even to banks, they lose their lands and have no other option for their livelihoods.
Natha (Omkar Das Manikpuri) and elder brother Budhiya (Raghubir Yadav) earn the condemnation and contempt of the women in the family — Natha’s spitfire wife Dhaniya (Shalini Vatsa) and their mother Amma (Farrukh Jaffer) — because the | | | | | Read More. | | |
| Ms. Matchmaker’s Tale Is a Dull One | | By R.M. VIJAYAKAR | Rating: | | indiawest.com | August 12, 2010 01:44:00 PM |
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Rich and pampered Ms. Aisha Kapoor (Sonam Kapoor) is a self-styled matchmaker to all her friends and acquaintances — she had a success with her middle-aged aunt (Anooradha Patel and Anand Tiwari), and that makes her feel that she is born for this.
It never crosses her mind that the friends whom she mentally pairs do not need all this undue attention. It never strikes her that she is simultaneously being a schemer as well as an immature romantic, who lives in an imaginary world and needs a re | | | | | Read More. | | |
| Bland, Plodding Thriller on Kashmir Terrorism | | By R.M. VIJAYAKAR | Rating:  | | indiawest.com | August 05, 2010 01:54:00 PM |
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After terrorism raised its head in J&K, no filmmaker has made a truly great, or even thrilling, film on Kashmir terrorism.
The comic book Anil Sharma film in 2003, “The Hero – Love Story of a Spy,” did well in some centers, ditto Vinod Chopra’s 2000 “Mission Kashmir” (largely due to the first flush of stardom for Hrithik Roshan after “Kaho Naa…Pyaar Hai”), but different serious takes on the Kashmir issue — “Tahaan,” “Yahaan,” “Sikandar” et al — have failed to make a cinematic or commercial m | | | | | Read More. | | |
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