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Tag: Bobby Jasoos

  • ‘Humpty…’ & ‘Hate Story 2’ lead at BO

    ‘Humpty…’ & ‘Hate Story 2’ lead at BO

    MUMBAI: Pizza 3-D has proved to be a poor performer with few takers turning up at the cinema halls. The film collected Rs 2.5 crore for its opening weekend.

     

    Virr Das is another example of a media made star who don’t work on screen. His Amit Sahni Ki List stays poor in its opening weekend with barely Rs 1.75 crore to show for three days.

     

    Riyasat, Rajesh Khanna’s last screen appearance goes unnoticed and might as well as this was not quite the film the legendary super star deserved to be remembered by.

     

    The only film to draw some audience this week is Hate Story 2, thanks partly to its brand equity and to some extent to the exposure its promotion promised. The film has managed to collect Rs 14.5 crore during its first three days.

     

    Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania is a rare tribute to an all-time classic, Dilwale Dulhania  le Jayenge in this case that has worked; usually such tributes or imitations in the name of a tribute backfire. After a sturdy first weekend at the box office, the film remained steady and finished its first week with figures of Rs 51.9 crore. The film is reported to have done steady business in its second weekend too.

     

    Bobby Jasoos managed to put together Rs 1.15 crore in its second week to take its two week total to Rs 10.05 crore.

     

    Ek Villain, almost coming to the end of its run, has collected Rs 3.1 crore in its third week to take its three week tally to Rs 102.5 crore.

     

    Holiday: A Soldier Is Never Off Duty collects Rs 30 lakh in its sixth week to take its six week tally to Rs 111.07 crore.

  • ‘Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania’ shows its charm at the BO

    ‘Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania’ shows its charm at the BO

    MUMBAI: The week’s release, an excuse to pay a homage to Yash Raj classic hit Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, is tagged as the poor man’s Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge which won’t stop minting some fast bucks for its makers. While Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania opened to a fair response, it was the strong positive response from those who watched it that benefitted the collections get better on the weekend that followed.

     

    The film has collected about Rs 31 crore, a healthy take for the opening weekend, but is not expected to sustain as well as it enters the new working week.

     

    For the record, two regional films which are creating some box office records locally are the Punjabi film, Punjab 1984 and Riteish Deshmukh’s Marathi film, Lay Bhaari.

     

    Lekar Hum Deewana Dil, another third generation Kapoor clan starrer launching Armaan Jain, is very poor managing to collect just about Rs 2.5 crore in its first week. The pre-release promotion angle of the film was unimaginative to say the least.

     

    Bobby Jasoos remained poor in its first week despite being a fair entertainer even if not up to the mark. The film collected Rs 10.9 crore in first week. It will be a loser.

     

    Ek Villain is now an established hit. It also helps consolidate the standing of Shraddha Kapoor with another major hit to her name after Aashiqi 2. The film goes on to collect Rs 22.2 crore to take its two week total to Rs 99.4 crore.

     

    Humshakal has come to the end of its poor run at the box office not making its presence felt at all in its third week.

     

    Holiday: A Soldier Is Never Off Duty adds a symbolic Rs 55 lakh in its fifth week to take its total to Rs 110.77 crore.

     

  • ‘Ek Villan’ and ‘Holiday’ cash-in at BO

    ‘Ek Villan’ and ‘Holiday’ cash-in at BO

    MUMBAI: Bobby Jasoos was much publicised and Vidya Balan was expected to repeat the trick with another film after Dirty Picture and Kahaani. But, the moviegoers did not seem to share the enthusiasm of the makers. The film had a very weak opening day and managing to improve only symbolically as most films do on Saturday and Sunday. The film managed to put together Rs 7.5 crore for the opening weekend.

     

    Lekar Hum Deewana Dil has been rejected outright eking out a poor Rs 1.5 crore for its first weekend.

     

    Ek Villain continues its good run after a strong opening weekend. Appreciated for the story, the performances as well as the musical score, the film takes in a healthy Rs 70.2 crore for its first week and also holding on well through its second weekend.

     

    Humshakals collected Rs 4.3 crore in its second week to take its two week total to Rs 55.9 crore.

     

    Holiday: A Soldier Is Never Off Duty has managed a decent Rs 2.5 crore in its fourth week to take its four week total to Rs 110.2 crore.

     

  • ‘Bobby Jasoos’…open and shut case

    ‘Bobby Jasoos’…open and shut case

    MUMBAI: Bobby Jasoos is a curious mix of a light film, a romantic film, and a Muslim family social drama while also packing in a bit of suspense.

    Vidya Balan belongs to a traditional Muslim family from Hyderabad but her interests are not very traditional. She wants to become a private detective. When she seeks a job at an established detective agency, she is turned down. She then decides to start her own agency right opposite this agency. Her assignments are from fellow Muslim men and women from her neighbourhood, a dense Muslim locality.

     One of her clients is Ali Fazal; every time his family wants him to get married and choose a girl for him, he asks Vidya, Bobby Jasoos, to find some negative thing about the girl and to convey that to his parents so the marriage is put off. However, these are petty assignments earning her in the low thousands. What is more, she has to use the tea stall of a friend, Akash Dahiya, for her meetings with clients and has to order tea so that he gets some business for letting her use his joint. Her other sidekick is Prasad Barve, who runs a cyber cafe in the area.

    But Vidya has a problem at home. While her mother, Supriya Pathak Kapur, loves her like any mother would love her ward, her father is upset about her way of life and refuses even to talk to her. That is the family drama part of the film.

    Producers: Dia MIrza, Sahil Sangha, Reliance Entertainment.

    Director: Samar Shaikh.

    Cast: Vidya Balan, Ali Fazal, Arjan Bajwa, Zarina Wahab, Supriya Pathak, Tanve Azmi, KIran Kumar, Rajendra Gupta, Prasad Barve, Aakash Dahiya, Anupriya Goenka

    While working on her petty cases, Vidya suddenly gets her big break. Kiran Kumar, a very stern and suspicious looking person, walks into her life and offers her an assignment with wad of currency as well as an expense account. All she is given is a name and age of a girl and a birthmark on her palm to trace her. With funny trial and error methods, Vidya manages to find her.

    With this success follows another assignment at double the fees. She has to find another girl, again with only a name, age and a birthmark. Vidya is elated and wants to share her success with her father, but he will have nothing of it. For him, this is not how a traditional Muslim girl of 30 behaves.

    Somehow, Vidya succeeds in tracking this girl too through the pretext of carrying out a screen-test for a TV serial. And, now, Kiran Kumar is ready to give her a third and last case. She has to find a young man and is given his name but this time there is no birth mark. Only hint is that the boy has a toe missing in his right leg. But, by this time, Vidya is convinced Kiran Kumar is not a good man and lays a trap to find out his background. This is also the time to end the cat and mouse game and open the cards.

    Bobby Jasoos is basically a Vidya Balan show in toto. Her various getups are well done but the real Vidya pops out of each of them. But what is good about the casting is that, in the supporting cast, the film has a host of veterans in Kiran Kumar, Rajendra Gupta, Zarina Wahab, Supriya Pathak, Tanve Azmi and an effective Arjan Bajwa. The veterans live up to their reputation while the rest of the supporting star cast also does well. Ali lives up to the confidence of casting him.

    But as Vidya’s two lives are juxtaposed: that of family and her love to play detective, the film wavers, loses grip. The suspense created around Kiran Kumar and Bajwa shadowing Vidya turn out to be damp squibs. Gupta and Vidya’s equation, which remained ice cold throughout, changes in a few minutes’ worth of melodrama, which is cliché. Thankfully, there is little of music to slow the pace further.

     With Hyderabad as backdrop and a Muslim background, the release of Bobby Jasoos bang in the middle of the month of Ramzan shows utter lack of wisdom. 

    ‘Lekar Hum Deewana Dil’… going nowhere

    Lekar Hum Deewana Dil is a campus love story. There is a usual group of a bunch of friends, which includes the lead pair. The bunch generally has a good time because they are never in a class room but hang around the campus all day. The hero sports a guitar around his neck on daily basis. So what’s new?

    Armaan Jain and Deeksha Seth are college friends and they are in love but not quite aware of the fact, while to rest of their friends it is obvious that there is more than mere friendship. These two realise they are in love only when they have guzzled a few bottles of beer. Every love story needs a villain so in their case, the villain is the north-south divide. Deeksha is a south Indian and her father believes in maintaining traditions.

    Producers: Dinesh Vijan, Saif Ali Khan.

    Director: Arif Ali.

    Cast: Armaan Jain, Deeksha Seth.

    Besides his guitar, Armaan also owns a bike, mandatory for any college going young man in films! When Deeksha’s father is determined to marry her off to a suitor from his own community, she and Armaan decide to elope. Their first stop is Goa where they take shelter at Armaan’s uncle’s place. Soon the uncle betrays them and informs his family. The couple has to flee in hurry. And, of all the places, they land up in Maoist territory! Meanwhile, they have found the time to go through a temple wedding.

    Their stay at the Maoist camp is used to force in an item song and put on test the romance of the two immature people. Their love snaps under pressure and the bad circumstances they have landed in. The couple now hate each other as much as they loved earlier. Back in Mumbai, the divorce procedure starts at a family court. Sessions with a marriage counselor don’t work as both start fighting at the very sight of the other.

    As the divorce process is in progress, both embark on a great nostalgia montage of their good times together. Such montages have saved many broken romances in so many films so far so why should it not work here too? After all, love stories are all about happy endings. This is no Romeo and Juliet.

    Despite launching a new pair, with the hero much touted as the grandson of late Raj Kapoor, the film seems to be more about saving money rather than spending on it. With two new faces, there is nobody in the supporting cast whom one may have seen before. To add to that, even the promotion leaves much to be desired.

    The story is woven around a very flimsy plot. Screenplay is poor and so is the direction. With a song being forced in at every excuse, just a single number, Khalifa….. seems to have worked with youth. Rest of the aspects are below average. As for performances, Armaan is certainly not an actor; he is too raw and chocolaty. Deeksha, because of her south experience, does better.

  • 2014, a year of spy films?

    2014, a year of spy films?

    MUMBAI:However, it seems it’s going to change soon with a line-up of many detective movies in the coming year. So while we have Dibakar Banerjee’s highly anticipated spy thriller, Byomkesh Bakshi starring Sushant Singh Rajput and actress-turned-producer Dia Mirza’s Bobby Jasoos with Vidya Balan in the lead produced under her banner Born Free Entertainment, we also have a detective film for kids Jagga Jasoos with Ranbir Kapoor playing a 17-year-old. And not just this, there’s a franchise in the offering too – the Rajshri banner led by Kavita Barjatya with Samrat & Co starring Rajeev Khandelwal has announced a franchise of detective films.

     

    Samrat & Co that is set for release on 1 May, 2014 aims to target India’s young audiences with the very nuances of crime solving, human nature and the world of standalone private investigators will be presented on the big screen.

     

    The filmmakers seem to be investing some precious time in developing the detective characters. Dibakar Banerjee has been quoted as saying that the idea of an urban sleuth simply does not exist in the Indian popular culture and the Hindi film viewers have been watching recycled imitation that combine James Bond with a Sherlock Holmes and thus he is giving full-time in the development of his detective character.

     

    Even for Samrat & Co., it’s learnt that Kaushik Ghatak, the director of the film along with the producers is spending a lot of time on the lead character so that the storyline can be fleshed out well.

     

    It seems finally Indian filmmakers are taking a different route and experimenting with newer ideas.

  • Vidya Balan gets ready to play a sleuth

    Vidya Balan gets ready to play a sleuth

    MUMBAI: She is not considered the ‘Ms Perfectionist’ of Bollywood for no reason. There’s something about her that has added this tag to her name. We are talking about Vidya Balan, who after portraying a quirky Punjabi woman in Ghanchakkar and making headlines for her odd pairing with Farhan Akhtar in the upcoming Shaadi Ke Side Effects, is back in the news again – this time for getting in to the character of Bobby Jasoos.

     

    On Monday morning, pictures of the actress disguised as a beggar came out in the news. According to reports, the actor was so much in to the character that during the shoot a woman even gave her some money. The actor who has always pushed the boundaries to get in to the character is doing the same again.

     

    And the film’s producers know they have got an awesome performer on board. Dia Mirza, who is producing the movie along with Sahil Sangha, tweeted the picture from the shoot and wrote, “That’s our #BobbyJasoos in DISGUISE 😉 She’s one of a kind. #VidyaBalan”.

     

    The film went on the floor on November 23, 2013 in the picturesque city of Hyderabad and will be shot in one schedule, over a span of 55 days, amongst a host of never seen before real locations that stand testament to the vibrant and royal cultural history of Hyderabad, as it aims to be a summer 2014 release.

     

    Producers Dia Mirza and Sahil Sangha have put together a strong supporting cast that surround Vidya Balan in a pulsating, thrilling and most importantly heartwarming tale of a woman whose solitary dream is to become the numero uno private eye of her community. The cast includes Ali Fazal, Arjan Bajwa, Anupriya, Supriya Pathak, Tanvi Azmi, Aakash Dahiya and Rajender Gupta amongst others. The film also marks the return of Kiran Kumar who has been away from the big screen for some time and the makers are more than excited to present him in a dynamic new avatar.

     

    Shantanu Moitra and Swanand Kirkire are collaborating on the music of the film.

     

    Dia said in a release, “The idea of Bobby Jasoos was born over a year and a half ago. Today, blessed with an ideal cast and fantastic crew we are ready to roll and nothing gives me more pleasure. The actors have been busy in workshops, readings, look tests and their enthusiasm and excitement is palpable. Vidya has ably led from the front and her dedication to preparing for this part is evidence to the fact that she is an actor who continues to respects the craft and is hungry for more despite achieving so much already. I can’t wait for Bobby to be unleashed.”