The Bollywood Elephant

I would like to open with the lines, "Wahi kahani phir ek baar, majnu ne liye kapde phaad macha tamasha beech bazaar." This line holds true for the clichéd romances everywhere. In Bollywood, the romantic genre has gone out of hand. There is a "formula" which seems to be followed by every Bollywood director who is into making romance.                                                           To make a romantic Bollywood "drama" follow the following steps: Step 1: Girl meets Guy. Step 2: Sparks happens and songs are required for emoting love. Step 3: There has to be a "tragedy" or a "bad guy" who shall not allow our lovebirds to be at peace. Step 4: The Guy and the tragedy come face to face , there is action and bloodshed. Step 5: A sad song re-asserting the guy and girl's love. Emotion also added to spice up. Step 6: Girl and Boy triumph the world and happily ever after. Viola! Here is a typical clichéd romance r

Before watching 'Begum Jaan', I watched the movie that inspired this remake-'Rajkahini', a Bengali movie so there are going to be mentions of it in this review too. Rajkahini and Begum Jaan, both are lead by the same director, Srijit Mukherjee. It is suprising to see that the presentation of both movies differs drastically. Rakahini was led by the bengali actor, Rituparna Sengupta, Begum Jaan is lead by the super-talented Vidya Balan.                                                         Begum Jaan is superiorly backed by the ample of power packed performances. Vidya Balan playing the titular role can just be described in one word- Phenomenal. Though at times she goes a little 'too loud' but majorly she holds the movie together. With 16 characters in the movie, everyone having their share of screen time but Gauhar Khan as Rubina, Pallavi Sharda as Gulaabo, Ila Arun as Amma and Sumit Nijhawan as Salim impress the most. Though Ashish Vidyarthi and Rajit

It has been 8 months since I came to Dublin. Since then, I seem to have grown some 'extra' fondness towards Bollywood. Over my period from September 2016 until March 2017, I have watched a lot of Bollywood movies at the theatres. The first movie that I watched after coming to Dublin was Karan Johar's 'Ae Dil Hai Mushkil'. Initially, I went to buy the tickets from the box office believing that the seats I might have got could be flexible (as in to change it).                                                   Upon entering the theatre, I was dumbstruck because the movie was housefull and I believed about KJo's ability and Aishwarya's star struck presence could bring audience to the theatres even abroad. The next movie that I watched was 'Dear Zindagi' which took surprisingly turned out to be housefull on a weekday. Here I believed it was SRK's star power that brought people into theatres.                                                   

The Indian Premier League commenced today. A question on the minds of most of the trade analyst throughout the seasons of IPL has been "Will the bat and ball Dent the ticket windows?" The answer to  this question lies on both- the 'type' of cricket played and the movies released during this  period.                                                                                               On a lighter note, we can also say that IPL/any cricket league decides who is the real boss of the house- the husband or the wife. A self respecting man cannot miss the live telecast of the match and a woman can't let a man prevail with the T.V. remote.                                                      But on a serious note, these cricket tournaments have heavily dented the box office collections of the movies that 'dared' to take on this tournament. Movies like  'Tashan', 'Game', 'Thank You', 'Krazzy 4','Paathshala&

Naam Shabana is the prequel to the much acclaimed thriller, 'Baby' which had Akshay Kumar in a lead role.'Baby' was written and directed by Neeraj Pandey who has written and directed movies like 'A Wednesday' and 'Special 26' and so one can imagine how high the pedestal was set for Naam Shabana. Though Neeraj Pandey has only written this prequel, there is no meat to the script. It is infact a crash course on "How to become a spy." When the writing is poor, it all boils down to the actors and thee director to carry the  movie. Director Shivam Nair makes Naam Shabana an even "traumatizing experience". The abrupt switches from scene to scene, the connectivity between pre and post interval sequences seem to be missing and terribly hamper the viewing.                                                  The only good point about the movie is Taapsee Pannu. She performs the role of Shabana Khan to perfection. She is vulnerable and emo