Dil Se

There are two ways of looking at the mess that has emerged out of the tennis dressing room. First, that we should not get overly ruffled by players flexing their muscle at the cost of national interest. That, because medal hopes in Olympics are dismal anyway, so all this drama shouldn’t really matter. Second, that we should really get annoyed by the goings-on because whatever hope we have to mark our presence in the Big Games this year, is being taken away by a federation that has no hold over its players, players who may be professionals but are far from being patriotic, a Ministry that has sided with such players and an entire nation that is helplessly reading about the unfolding fruitless controversy around a sport that is erroneously pegged on individuals with hulk egos. Look at how ridiculous the scenario has been made out to be — Mahesh Bhupati will not play with Leander Paes because he feels the latter is a ‘backstabber’. Rohan Bopanna, who incidentally will be playing h...

Aamir Khan has managed to ruffle quite a few doctors and has since appeared on almost all news channels to face the ire of some of these physicians. Though one agrees that not all doctors are blood-sucking unscrupulous beings interested only in making money out of you, it is sad to know that some of these protesting doctors have launched a personal attack on the star. The syndrome is “people living in glasshouses should not throw stones at others” and the premise is Aamir’s divorce and second marriage some years ago. Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter continue to be deluged with personal attacks on the actor’s personal life. He may or may not have been textbook correct in his personal life but that’s certainly not the issue here. To me, this means that these protesting holier-than-thou doctors obviously do not have a sound argument to counter Aamir’s episode on their community making a killing out of hapless patients. Denying that doctors at all levels have a v...

Gangs of Wasseypur Starring:  Manoj Bajpai, Jaideep Ahlawat, Richa Chadda, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Reemma Sen & others At:  PVR & others Rated:  8.5/10 Gangs of Wasseypur  is not just any movie you go to for weekend fun. It is a treatise of violence, a slice of realtime history, a saga of relentlessness and a soiree of such potent sights and sounds that it grips you with the same insanity as libido and revenge grip its main protagonist Sardar Singh. The violence here is in your face. It is stark, pervasive, uncompromising and blood-stained. Yes, it makes you cringe. Yet, very strangely, it stops short of repelling you. It is not surreptitious but cunning enough to sidestep allegations of sensationalism. You could call it a picture perfect genre of savagery drawn out of blood-stained swords, firing guns and mean men by Kashyap’s skillful measurement and elan. It is, in a way, his best tribute to his diligence to dark, edgy, real and unapologetic cine...

Teri Meri Kahaani Starring : Shahid Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra, Prachi Desai At:  PVR & others Rated:  3/10 Difficult to write a full-fledged review of this one from Kunal Kohli as there is really nothing much to report. Despite spanning three lifetimes in more than a century, the story still does not have anything to tell, either in the name of a romance or any other genre for that matter. Yes, boy meets girl in 1910 Lahore, he again meets her in 1960s Bollywood and yet again in 2012 London. However, other than meeting the girl, he (and she) do pretty much nothing. Yes, they do sing a song but that’s it. Why would someone make a rippleless romance of this kind escapes a valid answer. You feel rather sad for the lead couple in Shahid Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra simply because they try so hard to somehow click with the audiences. But in the complete absence of a script, sequential events and a storyline, the duo fail to do anything more than looking groovy. Sha...

Rock of ages Starring: Tom Cruise, Alec Baldwin, Catherine Zeta-Jones At: PVR Rated: 8/10 It is quite another kind of starkness, this one! Propelled by the king of rock Stacy Jaxx who is America’s most unabashed bare-stopped slave of rock music, this one redefines gay abandon in as much detail as it does commitment to collective debauchery. For one, Jaxx is a complete crowd puller whose self indulgent to the power of infinity. He can pee on the boots of his unscrupulous manager the same way as he sings on stage swaying away any kind of guilt you might have felt in following this completely satanic star singer and the more his music propagates to a shocked yet surrendering society. Why guilt? Because who in her senses would worship a man whose tongue keeps going into all kinds of unimaginable places as he enslaves even his staunchest women critics, whose nipple is so swollen that you might want to rub in a little diuretic. His  chest adornment would put your boldest...

Ferrari ki Sawaari Starring: Sharman Joshi, Boman Irani, Ritvik Sahore At: PVR & others Rated: 7/10 You good, me good, they good, all good. The good, good, good dose of Harishchandra and Mahatma Gandhi goodness may not be your and VV Chopra’s chartered accountant’s cup of tea, but the team of Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Rajkumar Hirani and Sharman Joshi delivers quite a meaningful punch with the gentleness and poise of a leaping gazelle. It may not be a punch that will exactly blow away the box office figures, thanks to the restless population’s impatience with goodness, but that will not take away from the simple, straight, emotional, inspiring story of a head clerk with Worli RTO tending to his prodigal son’s cricket career as also to the failed one of his cynical and tongue lashing father. The real hero of this movie besides, of course, the essential dose of goodness and honesty, is the little Ritvik who gives in a stunningly natural performance with his angelic looks a...

Rowdy Rathore Starring: Akshay Kumar, Sonakshi Sinha, Paresh Ganatra At: PVR & others Rated: 8/10 Don’t angry me. But yes, you can comedy me. Comedy me, because Akshay Kumar has decided to have a blast and all of you are invited. And this unabashed bash is a cacophony of everything ridiculous and yet strangely entertaining. So if you have any pretensions of taking your brains along to this party, just be his gate guard doing  Chinta Ta Ta  (smashing backsides into a  chutney ) to people of your kind! Those who are inside can, meanwhile, get ready for a multi-pronged attack on the senses, something you are shocked to say you quite enjoyed. If you manage to not get hijacked by Akshay’s pants, there is unadulterated bufoonery wrapping up all the action and drama. There’s a bit of  Agneepath , a lot of  Singham  and dollops of  Dabangg  but it is the  Khiladi  in a very  rowdy Rathore  who is adding up 2 plus 2 for...

Madagascar 3 Starring:  Ben Stiller, Chris Rock David Schwimmer, Jada Pinkett Smith, Frances McDormand, Sacha Baron Cohen At: Delite Diamond & others Rated: 6/10 The sweet animal dozen from the New York zoo are back to scintillate you with their humour and action, this time through a journey from the wilds of Africa to their favourite home back in America — the New York zoo. Having been left by the penguins high and dry, the lion, the zebra, the hippo and the others undertake the journey and visit all kinds of places in the bargain — be it the happening casinos of Vegas where the dirty penguin duo is minting money along with the unscrupulous chimp, or the Russian Circus through Europe where they find new love interests, new life and new jobs. Though  Madagascar  3  is an engaging animation living up to its title, one must admit that the original was the best. This one is humorous, interesting, action-oriented and everything else, but all this only ...

Prometheus Starring:  Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Idris Elba, Guy Pearce At: Delite Diamond & others Rated: 4/10 Yes, it is Ridley Scott, that too in 3D. He is the master of aliens. He is Hollywood’s  badshah  of visual imagery, especially when it gets to being spatial. But, sorry to say,  Prometheus  dangles in a nowhere land where it sees a beginning but no end. The journey begins at the end of the story so it looks quite fruitless to have sat through a blood and gore sequence of events in rather unexplained circumstances. Scott, who plays to the gallery to the hilt when it comes to shock value, surpasses himself in this one. The self-surgery sequence makes you squirm so much that you puke before the protagonist does. Yes, it is a technically superior sequence, as many of the other sequences in the film are, but the needlessness of it all is thrown at the viewer with all the 3D force the director could manage. Promethe...

Shanghai Emraan Hashmi, Kalki Koechlin, Abhay Deol, Pitobash Tripathy At: PVR & others Rated: 6.5/10 Shanghai  stops on you many a times. But, that’s certainly not because it does not have much to say. In fact, it does so, for quite the opposite reason. It has too much to depict, too much negativity to unveil. And it does so, with no cushions for your comfort levels. It is a raw, gut-wrenching reality that Dibakar Banerjee unfolds before you — the reality of corruption in its extreme and most cunning form, of political chicanery right at the top of the order, of corporate fangs and of the ultimate betrayal of the common man. Like it or not, this reality has no light at the end of the tunnel and if you were to be honest with yourself, as Banerjee is to his mount, you will recognise a dire fact — that we live in a dismal world of no-trust, no-courage and totally no will to fight our way out of it. Opening into a small town of Bharatnagar, Dibakar loses no time to...

A teeny-weeny schoolgirl with braces in place and freshness of youth came for internship the other day. This Class XI student (yes, schools are having such small kids intern too nowadays!) happened to be a sports, especially tennis, enthusiast who was in love with Maria Sharapova as much as she was with unbeatable Rafael Nadal. She told me that Roger Federer at 31 was too much of an uncle to win any grand slam, particularly on clay court. As it turns out now, the girl was right. While Sharapova has reached the ultimate round (despite the age if I can point out) and may even lift the Cup by the time this column reaches you, Federer behaved much beyond his age and played like a retiree against World No 1 Novak Djokovic. He was nowhere in contention, lost set points, failed to consolidate his serves and returned home with a bag so full of unforced errors that it is sure to break his aching back. All this, much to the chagrin of millions of his supporters who saw him go down like ...

The Azlan Shah Hockey tournament showed up the Olympic-bound Indian team with all its chinks and follies. It also showed up a few good things, like hard work and improvement quotient, among its players. But, most importantly, it told us in no uncertain terms something that has been staring us in the face, something we have doggedly refused to acknowledge — that there’s a next to nothing chance of an Olympic medal for Indian hockey this year. It is a sad fact, but true — unless, of course, a miracle makeover happens to India’s players and playing style. A nuanced fan of our national sport would not consider this to be the doom and gloom of a sport that was in its golden era quite some decades back. From the ignominy of an Olympic absence in 2008 to now, a lot of hard work has gone into the sport by our players and coaches, both of whom have had to fight the administrative mess in Indian hockey no one is ready to clean up. In the scenario, when you see the players play their hearts ...