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aakash-karkare

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Tere Bin Laden (2010)
0 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
Good Comedy, 15 December 2010

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Tere Bin Laden is part of the new Indian Cinema. It belongs to the category of films like Dev D, Khosla Ka Ghosla and Road, Movie. Movies about real people. Played by good actors. These movies do not rely on huge budgets, exotic locales, over the top acting and item numbers. Instead the focus on plotting, scripting, directing and acting. Things that really make a movie

Tere Bin Laden is different from most Bollywood films that have been made in the last decade. It is well researched and actually says something intelligent. It has a sense of humor and has good jokes. Compared to the shipload of terrible comedies made in Bollywood over the last decade Tere Bin Laden can be heralded as the 2nd coming. I can see this film with a big budget. Akshay Kumar playing the lead in his over the top manner. Katrina Kaif playing the hairdresser and forgetting to act. Paresh Rawal playing Osama and somehow trying to make sense of the mess surrounding him. And somewhere we will have an item number by Malaika Arora thrown in. And thats that. We will have the biggest Bollywood hit.

Tere Bin Laden doesn't do that. It stars a bunch of character actors from Bollywood and stars a Pakistan Rocker as the lead. They all do a good job and all of them make an attempt to act and create. They seem like they are having fun and that goes a long way in making this a good comedy and not another piece of dung like Housefull and the like. Some jokes do fall flat but I think that's because they try to make the film have more of a selling point but that doesn't matter.

The film opens with a disclaimer that a particular word used in song lyrics is a reference to a Bulgarian poet and isn't meant to offensive. The point of having such a disclaimer eludes me. IS that how sensitive the audience has become . I found that the film was sued, banned, condemned. How stupid have viewers become ? Can no one say anything different from the what is the status quo? Have they forgotten what satire is ? How to laugh? Douglas Adams would never be appreciated by South Asians.

But the reference to the poet shows that the director is well read and intelligent. Ali Zafar the lead in the movie has posters of films like Goodfellas and Amercan History X. An Indian director with good taste in books and films? Thats new. It told me all I needed to know. I was in good hands. I would be entertained in an intelligent manner that wouldn't insult my intelligence.

Tere Bin Laden towards the end makes a few intelligent points. The writer seems fairly up to date with current affairs and efficiently lampoons the current scenario. It is not like Karan Johar's fecal piece My Name Is Khan that was so divorced from reality that it wasn't even funny. It was just two and a half hours worth of depressingly bad cinema. Tere Bin Laden is a breath of fresh air in Indian Cinema. It is not quite art but at least it is entertaining.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
3 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
You owe us a story, 11 December 2010

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is one of the finest westerns I have ever seen. It is more than the traditional western. Much more than any traditional kind of film. Directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne and James Stewart(one of my favorite actors) The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is one of the best Westerns ever made.

It endured a troubled production. Ford was such a stern director that he ridiculed Wayne and Stewart so they would deliver an efficient performance. Wayne would fight with Stroud because of this. But you cannot see this internal turmoil anywhere in the film.

The film starts with a retired senator returning to his old town for a friends funeral and he begins recounting the tale of his adventures to a journalist. From there we are shown his early life and how he set out for a adventure as a idealist law graduate looking for adventure in the west.

Liberty Valance is the archetypal bad guy. He kills ruthlessly and there is no remorse in any thing that he does. He isn't arrested because of the coward marshall.

Unlike most westerns the film isn't about anti - heroes and lone warriors. It is about a town and its colourful characters. It is about their struggles. Their attempts to find beauty in the world and try to make sense of it as best as they can. There is no room for law & order .

The film tries to talk about the need for all these things. You cannot go all guns blazing all the time. Like Batman you have to know where to draw the line between your enemies and yourself.

An underlying feel throughout the film is about roots. How you cannot really leave the place where you are born. I love this quote by Abbas Kiarostami that talks about this. He says that he doesn't leave Iran because he would feel like a tree that has been shifted to a new location and suddenly the fruit wouldn't be good anymore

There are moments of tremendous beauty and poignancy in the film. Like the cactus flowers. And the ending is one of the best I have ever seen. It was visceral. Sergio Leone calls this his favourite John Ford film because he says that Ford had finally learnt a word called pessimism. While I wouldn't call this film pessimistic. I would say this is his most true to life picture. Because it is the most chaotic, yet there is an answer in this chaos. There is beauty in it.

Peepli Live (2010)
Peepli Live, 8 December 2010

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I really wanted to like this movie. I love it that Indian film makers have begun treating cinema as an art form. Cinema is now becoming a medium of expression of thoughts and Peepli Live exemplifies this to the core.

It is quite similar to a film that came out last year. It was called Road,Movie and was directed by Dev Benegal. Another of the small indie Indian films that I really wanted to like.

But, unlike Khosla Ka Ghosla both of these movies lacked something that is very important for a movie about characters like these. Movies that are concerned with real people and about real things that happen to them. Both of these movie were too detached from their source material. The films lacked an emotional core.

Peepli Live is an efficient film. The camera is used as something more than a tool. It is used like Scorsese uses it. Lighting is used brilliantly in the film and gives its village setting a more real film. So you cannot fault the film on any technical aspects.

Peepli Live tries to lampoon both sides of the story. The farmers are shown as a bunch of illiterate good for nothings while everyone is a bloodthirsty predator. I understand that is really the case. People are really this terrible but life is not this devoid of beauty.

Mumbai Meri Jaan was a similar movie about the human condition but there the people had hope. They could think about the future. They were trying to find meaning and hope. But in Peepli Live the struggle for any kind of higher goal has been left behind. Every single person has become a terrible person and is justifying it.

Anusha Rizvi was a journalist before directing Peepli Live. Maybe that is the reason for a clinical approach to the story. What she does makes everything very realistic. Her use of the camera evokes the style of the cinema verite movement but somehow it is lacking.

The film is a breakthrough in Indian Cinema but it fails to say anything new. It doesn't add anything new to the existing dialogue. Ir doesn't contribute to public opinion. It scratches at the surface but never reaches down into the deep exterior. We never know what Natha really thinks about or what the wife's thoughts on the whole issue are. Everyone is playing their part. Everyone is more or less one dimensional.

But still Peepli Live is a great achievement for Indian Cinema. If only this movie wasn't tainted by Aamir Khan productions it would be a greater achievement.

http://www.dnaindia.com/entertainment/review_quick-review-peepli-live-is-enjoyable-but-not-hard-hitting-enough_1422458