Category: Movies

Producers: Twinkle Khanna, Mukesh Talreja, Bhushan Kumar, Krishn Kumar. Writer: Nikhil Advani. Cast: Akshay Kumar, Anushka Sharma, Rishi Kapoor, Dimple Kapadia.

MUMBAI: Patiala House is about sports, about cricket since that‘s the sport Indians know best.

The germ of the story is the plight of a man who excels in a particular aspect of this game but has to refrain because his father has some misgivings about who he plays for.

There is this place called Patiala House, an indefinable construction with numerous pigeonhole-like rooms inhabited by no one knows who all, numbering a dozen or more at different times.

Rishi Kapoor, a Sikh migrant, is the lord and master of what he thinks this pigeonhole empire is; Dimple Kapadia is his typical, suffering in silence, Indian wife. Akshay Kumar, as a 17-year-old (played by Usman Qureshi) starts making headlines as a fast bowler and has a promising future in the England team. However, he has to give up cricket and any aspirations for playing for England. Instead, he is handed some sort of store which he runs for the next 17 years till a neighbourhood lass, Anushka Sharma, comes visiting his shop, the only good thing to have happened to him in all these years it would seem.

Akshay Kumar bears this burden of not having been able to do what he loved most- play cricket and even as he continues his bowling practice every night, he never changes his expression of perpetual sulk! Anushka, the new entrant in his life, wants to change this, make him play again and play for England national team; that he is 34, now notwithstanding.

But what is it that stops Akshay Kumar from playing cricket? The reason is that Rishi Kapoor‘s kin, Prem Chopra, was killed by skinheads and since then all Britons are enemies for Rishi Kapoor and playing for them amounts to being a traitor! And, Akshay Kumar would see him dead if he dared play, was his stand. If this is the silly premise on which Patiala House is based, no prizes for guessing how silly rest of the content will be.

A little about others occupying the pigeonholes of Patiala House; they all carry a uniform scowl or frown on their face except when they are taunting Akshay Kumar; their grouse is that because he obeys Rishi Kapoor all the time, even they have to! This is the kind of logic the rest of the script is also made of. Finally, led by Anuskha Sharma, they all convince Akshay Kumar to play again (England team is so depleted they are even waiting for him to return!). While he starts playing, the pigeonhole clan plans and plots to keep this from Rishi Kapoor, blocking all media from him.

The problems for the film are manifold. The story idea is silly, script is even sillier, music offers no relief and direction by Nikhil Advani is immature to say the least. Amid many gaffes, he even casts some old looking character as young Rishi Kapoor! Except for Akshay Kumar, Rishi Kapoor and Dimple Kapadia, there is no clue who is who in this crowd and it would take a Arthur Hailey to chart out a family tree!

Being veterans, Rishi Kapoor and Dimple Kapadia manage to hold their own despite flaws. Akshay Kumar is better here than doing buffoonery in other films but that is not enough. Anushka Sharma does well.

Patiala House is poor in all respects and that is how it will stay at the box office, too.

Angel: An ill conceived theme

Producer- Direcor: Ganesh Acharya. Cast: Nilesh Sahay, Maddalsa Sharma, Aruna Irani, Manoj Joshi

Angel is about a girl, Maddalsa Sharma, suffering from limbs disorder borne out of mental trauma, as the film tells you. Nilesh Sahay, who has been the cause of this girl‘s father‘s death, befriends her and helps her recover so that she talks, walks and uses her limbs normally.

Maddalsa languishes alone in a chawl room at the mercy of an ayah who is either smooching her boyfriend in another room or gold bricking while her brother and bhabhi stay in a semi luxurious flat provided in her name by the government because she is handicapped (does this happen in India?)!

However, this makes things convenient for Nilesh Sahay to visit her and tend to her and as would be expected, both fall in love and are attracted sexually, eventually.

An ill-conceived theme, Angel is poor in execution. Casting is a drawback. While Maddalsa Sharma passes muster, Nilesh Sahay is no actor material; his character is poor to add to his woes.
 

MUMBAI: Debutant director Rohit Gupta’s first feature film Life Camera Action has been invited for screening at the India International Film Festival (IIFF) 2011 at Florida in February 2011.

The 89-minute film in English, Hindi and Punjabi is a touching saga of Reina, a young, Indian-American woman who sets off to pursue a career in filmmaking against the wishes of her family. She struggles to complete her annual film project, working double shifts at an Indian restaurant and a DVD store. Reina eventually begins to see the need to reach out to her estranged parents as she begins to discover herself. 

Gupta made Life Camera Action with a two-member crew and shot it in a week and half in New York and New Jersey on a Panasonic DVX 100 camera on a shoe string budget. He mostly used the camera mike, limited usage of artificial lights to five per cent shot on locations and dubbed the entire film in four days.

Gupta’s first film Another Day Another Life, which was a 4.35 minutes long film in 2009, won awards and accolades at over 25 competitions and festivals in the US and UK and was officially selected at the Short Film Corner, Cannes 2009.

Gupta is the founder chairman and managing director of US-based RNG Films (Flagship) & Dot and Feather Entertainment.

MUMBAI: Launching their production house Born Free Entertainment, Dia Mirza and Zayed Khan have announced that their first film would be a romantic comedy titled Love, Breakups, Zindagi.

The film will go on floors in March and is slated to hit screens this August. 

Written and directed by their other partner Sahil Sangha, the film will have Cyrus Sahukar, Tisca Chopra, Satyadeep Misra, Pallavi, Vaibhav Talwar and debutants Auritra Ghosh and Umang in lead roles. Zayed and Dia will also feature in the film.

Says Sangha, “With our first production we have put our money where our mouth is. Above all, Love, Breakups, Zindagi is an entertaining look at today‘s relationships. But it is also absolutely honest. It has characters that will imprint themselves on the hearts and minds of all viewers.”

“How often have you had a brilliant idea and thought there was no way you could translate that on to the screen? Born Free Entertainment intends to give talented storytellers the opportunity to do exactly that, no matter what genre and what background they come from,” Sangha adds.
 

MUMBAI: Multiplex-chain operator Cinemax India is launching a new five-screen multiplex in Raipur on 11 February.

The new property, at City Centre Mall, will be open to the patrons with the screening of Patiala House and Dil Toh Baccha Hai Ji.

The company said that the new multiplex has a seating capacity of 1,055 seats, including 70 recliner seats, and it will offer a personalised cafe service.

With the launch, Cinemax will have pan India presence with 107 screens and 28,231 seats across 33 properties.

MUMBAI: It is known that Shah Rukh Khan‘s RA.One is one of the most eagerly anticipated movies of the year, but no one knows that the superhero fantasy film could well make a bigger impact with the actor-producer planning to release it in the 3D format.

Ever since Anubhav Sinha started work on RA.One curiosity about the film has been on the increase with each passing day. Moreover, given the genre and content of the movie, the focus will mainly be on its action scenes and visual effects for which Khan is believed to have invested a lot of money in setting up the infrastructure at his post-production house Red Chillies Studio.

After it was learnt that the film‘s release was pushed from early June to October end, a few post-production companies approached Red Chillies Entertainment to convert the live action film into a 3D format.

It is said that the team was excited on hearing that a few Hollywood post-production studios evinced interest in transforming RA.One into 3D format. It is not just specialist teams from the West but also Prime Focus that has initiated discussions on how they plan to convert the film to 3D.

MUMBAI: After weeks of running a mini festival of films of Goutam Ghose, fans of filmmaker Shyam Benegal will rejoice watching his 2008 film Welcome to Sajjanpur. Benegal will be present in Kathmandu for the screening of the film coming Friday.

It is being widely felt that the 77-year-old filmmaker‘s visit to Nepal will cement other ties between the two neighbouring countries. As India marks the 50th anniversary of its Film and Television Institute of India in Pune this year, the celebrations are also being shared in Nepal, which has nearly 40 alumni. Two directors in Nepal‘s film industry – Laxmi Prasad Sharma and Shambhu Pradhan – are both from the FTII.

The visit of Benegal will coincide with a three-day cinema workshop organised by the chapter of the FTII alumni organisation Graduates of Film and Television Institute of India (GRAFTII) in Nepal. The workshop, ‘Cinema for the New Generation‘, is being supported by the Indian embassy in Kathmandu and the B.P. Koirala India-Nepal Foundation.

Besides Benegal, the workshop will also have cinematographer Rajen Kothari discuss cinematography techniques, followed by the screening of 17 short films made by Nepali graduates of GRAFTII.
 

MUMBAI: Excel Entertainment‘s Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, directed by Zoya Akhtar, will release on 24 June.

Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, a young fun-filled road film shot largely across Spain, boasts of a starcast comprising Hrithik Roshan, Farhan Akhtar, Abhay Deol, Katrina Kaif and Kalki Koechlin. 

Produced under the banner of Excel Entertainment by Ritesh Sidhwani and Farhan Akhtar, the film has been written and directed by Zoya Akhtar.
 

MUMBAI: Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra has announced that he would re-release his last film Delhi 6 with a new ending.

The film, based on religious and political intolerance, is the story of a young American boy of Indian origin, who comes to India for the first time to drop his ailing grandmother. She wants to die in her own soil, and so prepares for her own death. After coming to India he interacts with his grandmother‘s neighbourhood and seamlessly dissolves in as if one of them. Little does he know that the endearing people including his grandmother have another face that feeds the devil within, a devil that resides within each one of them.

The director has revealed that his original plan for the climax scene was Abhishek Bachchan‘s character dying at the end. He, however, admits that he drifted away from his vision of killing the film‘s protagonist. The ploy, however, did not work. “I now want to re-release the film so that people can see what the original idea behind the movie was,” admits Mehra.

Despite critical acclaim at a number of international film festivals, the film under performed at the box office when it released last year.