DHOOM 3 Review: Get Set... Dhoom!

A couple of hours drive through the California desert to reach San Diego had this lucky blogger enjoying an early Christmas gift from her best friend: a prepaid ticket for the first day and first show release of Vijay Krishna Acharya’s much anticipated Dhoom 3.

I have a confession to make. I would not say I am an action flick fan (I tend to find the genre a bit soulless) and have often been disappointed with the multiple attempts to achieve Hollywood-like results in Indian films or to create the ”Indian James Bond”. Not only do I believe Indian cinema need not use Western cinema as a measuring stick, but in my humble opinion, these attempts have met little success… probably less due to a lack of budget than to faulty scripts. So before starting this review, I wish to give my sincere applause to Vijay K. Acharya and Aditya Chopra for taking a giant box-office title like Dhoom and writing a script with soulful Indian flavor while creating a pretty consistent and entertaining action plot that can appeal to any audience.
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EK THA TIGER Review: Romancing Masala

Once upon a time there was Tiger... A Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif starrer... a full-blown masala entertainer... what could rake in more box office success?

Ek Tha Tiger has been the press' favorite phenomenon this week due to its record breaking success figures and most media is likely to praise and recommend it.The film is a Yash Chopra production with Salman Khan as its main man and therefore makes the movie an entire Salman Khan centered affair, with a fresh-as-a-flower looking Katrina Kaif as his befitting love interest.

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GROW UP, BOLLYWOOD GIRLS!

Guest post by Dolce from the Dolce and Namak Talk Indian Movies blog

Dolce (Italian for “sweet”) is an Eastern European movie addict (Indian movies to be precise) who has made Toronto, Canada her home over the past few years. She has an endless infectious enthusiasm for movies, songs, settings, dances, badassness and everything else that makes Indian movies a world of their own. You may visit Dolce's blog by clicking here..
 

One of the biggest disadvantages of having a group of friends where everyone is 3-5 years younger than you is that you're always waiting for people to grow up. You keep making excuses for them and keep saying: they'll grow up when they get a real job, they'll grow up when they find a steady girlfriend/boyfriend, they'll grow up when they move out, etc. And there is some truth to that because that is usually how people learn responsibility and maturity. In fact, on the opposite end, the most telling sign that someone is refusing to grow up is that they will do anything (and I mean ANYthing) to not get a full-time job, or what we call a "real" job.

In a way, Bollywood is like these friends of mine: it keeps refusing to let its heroines (and heroes sometimes) grow up. In real life, if someone is responsible enough to keep a real job and live on their own, we also expect them to be emotionally mature. (Of course that expectation can backfire horribly, but that's for a different day to discuss.) But Bollywood, as I have discovered, doesn't like emotionally mature characters. It follows logically that they cannot have jobs (or if they do they're in the artistic realm), live on their own or make reasonable (read: mature) decisions. So... they don't.

I have already discussed in my blog that a fair percentage of the male characters have become manchildren (without actually getting to the bottom of why that is, but we might get there in this post), so it's only right to now discuss what type of female characters will suit these boys. Not surprisingly: girls! Not women. Girls. Sometimes (not very often, thankfully!) manic pixie dream girls and other times just girls in the process of growing up along with their hero. But girls nonetheless.

Look around at Bollywood movies from the past two decades: how many women can we count and how many girls? And of those women, how many are the heroine? Moreover, how many of those heroines end up with the hero? Three questions, each worth exploring in some detail.

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TOP 10 ROAD TRIP MOVIES OF THIS CENTURY

Guest post by: Arnab Maity

Arnab is at simultaneously a photographer, a seasoned traveler and a software analyst from Bangalore who also delights his readers and photography enthusiasts regularly at his own blog: www.arnabmaity.com His never ending wanderlust has contributed to making him develop a keen taste for road movies. Fly away with him and his list of Top 10 Road Trips of the Century from all over the world, which features a couple of our own Hindi language favorites.

We all love our road trips, don’t we? That orifice to vent out the vapors of our day to day chores, to bring us out into the open, sometimes gifting unusual sights and sometimes making us meet unusual people, who leave a mark throughout our lives.

We all have such road trips in our lives, which had changed many a thing about us and there are many such movies which have inspired us to leave our couches and get onto to the road!

This compilation consists of those movies, which had left us thinking and made us pack our bags, to explore the unexplored and meet the unknown.

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LOVING SANJAY DUTT = LOVING KANCHA?

 Guest Post by: Diwali

Diwali is an enthusiastic Sanjay Dutt supporter who has agreed to give us her take on Kancha, Sanjay Dutt's newest character in the acclaimed Agneepath, directed by Karan Malhotra. The Hindi Cinema Blog thanks her for her valuable contribution to more literature on this amazing actor and is glad to leave more detailed introductions to Diwali herself. :-)

 

Okay, for the record and for those who don't know me: I love Sanju. However, I do not call myself a "fan" – I prefer the attribute "supporter" for that is what I do: I support Sanju for better and for worse. Sure, you might point out that I was crazy enough to fly down to Mumbai from Germany for only a two day stay (!) two years ago just because I got an invitation to meet Sanjay Dutt. On the other side, this meeting confirmed my opinions about the human being Sanju (I always cared more for the human being than for the actor) and so I keep on supporting him running my website www.sanjay-dutt.info and my Twitter fanclub SanjayDuttFC for him. Even a series of flops (not undeserved in the case of those mindless comedies in 2011) cannot change my affection for him given that, as I said, the man means more to me than his movies.

When the news was out that Sanju would play the role of the villain Kancha in Karan Johar's Agneepath I got the immediate feeling that this could turn out to be one of his best movies. My confidence grew when I heard that he should go bald for Kancha for this sounded just too good. I guess I should add that I do not belong to those film fans who always want their favorites to look good/dashing/sexy/hot or whatever on screen. I love actors who don't care about how they look in their films and who do not shy away from ugliness if the role requires it. And Sanju is such an actor. He has proved it again and again since his early years in the industry. He never wanted to be a star given that, as he once said, stars fade while actors stay forever.

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MERA BROTHER KI DULHAN or BODYGUARD?

Both films pulled audiences to the ticketsale counters. Both offer solid and modern entertainment this autumn season.

Mere Brother ki Dulhan is a youthful and pacey tale of the search for the perfect modern day liberated bride, incarnated by Laila (Katrina Kaif) who lives to drink and have fun. It is utterly refreshing to see Katrina Kaif as a full-out rebel, even though her acting still requires developing her individual style more as she somehow often seems to emulate other successful actresses of yesterday and today... She is however very commendable in her role and, as a woman, I have to salute her for not being stick thin but still looking fresh and beautiful. Who wants to be size zero, I say indeed? 

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ZINDAGI NA MILEGI DOBARA -The Ultimate Road Trip

Zoya Akhtar knocks it out of the park with her second film. This fresh and full-of-life movie has breathed new zindagi into Hindi cinema much like Dil Chahta Hai did back in 2001. This delicious adventure takes place in Spain and was beautifully filmed in additional locations such as Egypt and India.

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