[ItzToday.com] "Dabangg" Movie Review |
- "Dabangg" Movie Review
- Bollywood Actress Neetu Singh full of praise for middle-class housewives
- 'With Karan Johar till I'm kicked out'
| Posted: 11 Sep 2010 12:11 AM PDT  Film: "Dabangg"; Starring: Salman Khan, Introducing Sonakshi Sinha, Sonu Sood, Arbaaz Khan, Mahesh Manjrekar, Dimple Kapadia, Vinod Khanna; Directed by: Abhinav Kashyap;Rating: ** 1/2 So here it is. A new genre of cinema. The Spaghetti Eastern. The velocity is virulent. The violence is relentless. The narrative doesn't pause for action. It is between bouts of the violence that characters take a breather to say things to one another that they don't really mean. This then is "Dabangg". A world swarming with uni-dimensional characters who seem to know exactly which way the fists fly. We certainly don't. The comic book hero Chulbul Pandey, played with lip smacking pleasure by Salman Khan, shows up in every dingy warehouse in this mofussil town to settle scores, man to man. "Dabangg" is the kind of oldfashioned family drama combined with a vendetta saga that we thought had gone out of fashion in the 1980s. Chulbul Pandey could have been played by Amitabh Bachchan 30 years ago. Yes, that killing comic dimension that Salman brings into his characters has its roots in the Big B's action-comedy films. And Dimple Kapadia, wheezing, coughing, groaning and ranting her way through the mother's role (what got into Dimple???) hams her way through this action drama where being opulently outrageous comes naturally to everyone. But all said and damned, there is something to be said about Salman's Chulbul Pandey's ability to be cartoonish, caricatural and larger than life and yet warm and very real in his tongue-in-cheek bravura. Some of the less over-punctuated moments in this film of ceaseless bone-crunching sound-effects occur each time Chulbul woos his bulbul Rajjo (debutant Sonakshi Sinha). Each time she passes by Salman becomes putty in her hands. The debutante has eyes that plead for peace. But who's listening? The raucous riotous soundtrack is slave only to the rhythm of blood gore and screams of innumerable goons crashing through wooden supports that have seen better days. The action sequences are the backbone of this bone-breaking actioner. The stunts are done in an enticing mix of masti and mayhem. The crusted dusty-brown unwashed ambience is created with care. But the plot is almost completely free of delicate moments. "Dabangg" is Ram Gopal Varma's "Shool" on steroids. In "Shool" Manoj Bajpai was the honest cop on a cleansing spree in a Bihari backwater town. In "Dabangg" Salman takes on the mofussil mafia with much more humour than Bajpai could muster. It is the need of the hour. We have to laugh away the corruption and violence all around us. Salman does a splendid job of it. It's hard to tell where debutant director Abhinav Kashyap's abilities end and the action director Vijayan Master begin. That seamless quality goes well with this unpunctuated tribute to the spirit of free-for-all one-upmanship. An ear-catching music score by Sajid-Wajid does diminish the level of violence in the presentation. Sonakshi Sinha uses her eyes beautifully. And the song "Tere mast mast do nayan" describes her eloquent expressions well. But this is a Salman Khan vehicle all the way. He gets to be funny, wicked and belligerent... sometimes all at once. Sonu Sood as the main antagonist brings an in-your-face menace to his villainy. He is in character. Though Salman slips out of character quite often. And quite happily. 
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| Bollywood Actress Neetu Singh full of praise for middle-class housewives Posted: 11 Sep 2010 12:04 AM PDT  Actress Neetu Singh, who stars opposite her husband Rishi Kapoor almost after 30 years in Habib Faisal's directorial debut "Do Dooni Chaar", says she feels that today's middle- class housewives are 'Mother India'."I truly believe, today's middle-class housewives are mother India. She manages so many things. She manages a whole family in a tight budget," Neetu told reporters at PVR where the first look of "Do Dooni Chaar" was unveiled Friday. In the 80's the couple enthralled audiences working together in 11 romantic films. Neetu reveals that she dared doing "Do Dooni Chaar" because she could connect to her character and there was a certain comfort level as she was working with Rishi. "My role is of Kusum Duggal. She is a very middle-class wife and she has to manage a lot of things, and how she manages her children who are growing up. Her husband has some values… I kind of found there is some connect. I also basically am from the middleclass. "It's been a long time. After many, many years, it's great to come back with Habib's film, which has been a great, great experience. Of course because of my husband, there was a comfort level, I was very happy doing it but more so it was the subject, his idea, the way he has conceived it, it was very, very beautiful," said Neetu. The 52-year-old actress and proud mother of actor Ranbir Kapoor was all praise for Rishi's knack in acting. "I was very young when I worked with him earlier, so I didn't really realize much what a great actor he is. I realize now. Working in this film I saw how finely he improvises his role, helps others, and he has helped me a lot while shooting," said Neetu. Asked if she was nervous facing the camera after such a long time, she said, "First day I was very nervous. I was forgetting my lines but from the second day it was better. " 
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| 'With Karan Johar till I'm kicked out' Posted: 10 Sep 2010 11:51 PM PDT  Director Siddharth Malhotra got his first break from producer Karan Johar and vouches to work only with Dharma Productions until he is kicked out even though he is getting big offers from others."Karan Johar is my guru. I saw his 'Kuch Kuch Hota Hai' and that day I decided I have to make a film like his," Malhotra, who made his directorial debut with "We are Family", told IANS. He says he looks up to Karan. "I learnt everything from Sooraj Barjatya and Karan Johar. I was associate director in Sooraj Barjatya's 'Vivah'. I have already started getting offers from many big production houses, but I will make films only with Karan until he kicks me out," Malhotra said. On the making of "We are Family", Malhotra said that he was working on a family comedy like "Chupke Chupke" initially. "Karan approved the story and I was signed. But we got stuck on a point in the second half of the film." "I always wanted to make 'Stepmom' and was sure to make it at some point. My writers started working on it early on. Luckily, the first draft of the script was ready," Siddharth said, adding that "We are Family" started from there. The Rs.20-crore film starring Kajol, Kareena Kapoor and Arjun Rampal is an adaptation of 1998 superhit Hollywood movie "Stepmom". Kajol and Kareena respectively play the roles of Susan Sarandon and Julia Roberts . Malhotra says he would not have made the film if Kajol and Kareena had refused to be part of 'the family'. "I had always planned to take Kajol and Kareena. I would not have made this film without them. While I was in the process of writing this film, I couldn't see anyone other than Kajol. When you see the film you would realise that no one except her could play that character." He said Kareena is his second cousin but he always maintained a formal relationship with her. "My grandparents are actors Premnath and Bina Roy. So Kareena's grandmother is my grandfather's real sister. That way she is my second cousin. I don't have a brother-sister relationship with her. We used to meet very formally at RK functions. Now we share a good rapport," said Malhotra. Actor Arjun Rampal was the perfect choice because he fits best for the requirement of a strong and silent character. "We needed a man who looks so good that two women would fight for him. He is strong and silent. We saw 'Rock On' and thought he is perfect." "When you are making a film where the heroines are the hero, you needed a hero who understands it and still gives his cent percent. In 'Stepmom' there is not much of Ed Harris; here I wanted to show that here is a man who is a failure as a father and husband. Arjun is there in every frame of the film," said Malhotra. And how does it differ from the original version? "I always wanted to adapt the story line and not make a remake. I didn't want to copy scene by scene. I wanted three children. In 'Stepmom', there is an illegitimate relationship, here they are already divorced and legitimately he is seeing another woman. Here intentions are very clear." "There are around eight scenes, which are similar to 'Stepmom' because those scenes are what you remember 'Stepmom' for," he said. Malhotra maintains that it took him around a year to transform the American comedy-drama into an Indian story. "It took us around one year. Karan came with his ideas, I came with mine. We knew that it's a hit Hollywood film, made by Chris Columbus, one of the biggest directors; seven writers had written that film; to adapt it and see that it should not look dated, the characters were made contemporary and the feelings were Indian; that took a lot of our time," said Malhotra. 
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