[ItzToday.com] 'Burlesque' Movie Review |
| Posted: 29 Jan 2011 10:27 PM PST  Film: "Burlesque", Director: Steven Antin; Cast: Cher, Christina Aguilera, Alan Cumming, Stanley Tucci, Cam Gigandet; Rating: ***Much like the 'nautanki' in India, burlesque was a form of fun music, dance and comedy that kept America entertained from the mid 19th century to the 1960s. The film, that takes its name from this form does just that, without being serious about itself. Aspiring to become a dancer, Ali (Christina Aguilera) leaves her small town and moves to Los Angeles. There she finds the club 'Burlesque' owned by Tess (Cher) and is mesmerized. She wants to dance there, but not getting the chance, she takes the job of a waitress with the help of Jack (Cam Gigandet), while also living with him, but platonically. The club has dwindling business, and only a miracle will save it from being taken away by the bank to which it owns money. Even Ali does not know that she is that miracle. At the onset, it has to be observed that "Burlesque" is no "Moulin Rouge", for it does not have that grand sweep of love and neither is it anywhere close to the stunning cabaret with its grand sweep of history. Instead, "Burlesque" is an ordinary film of our time about a girl's aspiration of becoming a star. And it is about nail polish, lipstick and shoes. Yet, the film is entertaining enough for the general audience. It is quick and witty, with snappy dialogues. The songs are foot tapping, and that's the least to expect from a musical. Cher is often too busy trying to ensure her face does not show too much of her wrinkles. Christina Aguilera is surprisingly good in her debut. Stanley Tucci keeps the humour going in his imitable way. Burlesque as a form is old and exists only as a novelty, rather than a commonality that it was. And so is the tradition of spoofing and humour that was a part of it. The film seems to make an appeal towards helping the old survive, while taking in the new. This is epitomized by Cher, the old star, versus Christina, the current one. The music, in the beginning, is old. As it progresses though, it gets a touch of the new till in the end, it blooms like a full moon. Yet, what the film lacks mostly has a grand intention. It aims not for the stars, but for the next rooftop and manages to get there. And that does indeed seem like a waste, considering it has an ensemble of talented actors and dancers. But in its predictability and cliche, is the comfort of the known which can be either lilting or entertaining, depending on one's preference. 
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| Posted: 29 Jan 2011 10:23 PM PST  Film: "127 Hours"; Director: Danny Boyle; Actor: James Franco; Rating:****French auteur Jean-Luc Godard had said "all you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun". If you consider British filmmaker Danny Boyle, all he needs is a man and a boulder. And like Aron Ralston, whose hand is trapped by a boulder, you will find yourself trapped in your seats - thankfully not for 127 hours, but just for the 94 minutes of the film. Aron (James Franco) is the loner with a penchant for extreme sports. He goes off hiking to Grand Canyon but a little accident causes his right hand to get trapped between a bounder and a solid rock wall. He tries to get it free and after five odd days with his food, water and energy out, he has no option but do the unthinkable - to try and cut his hand off before he slowly starves to death. It was easy for Godard to say what he did, but try making a film like that and you know how tough it is, especially to keep the audiences glued to the seats. Thankfully Boyle has many tricks he has used in delightful films like "Trainspotting", "Millions", "Sunshine" and his Oscar winner "Slumdog Millionaire". He uses multiple split screens, dreamy flashbacks, bright hallucinations, macro photography, film speed variation and quick zooms. He thus travels not just within and outside his imprisoned character, but into his past and future, while giving you a macroscopic view of his surrounding present. This heightens his incarceration and claustrophobia. It was definitely not an easy film to make, and it isn't an easy one to watch. A few scenes will make you squirm so bad in your seat, as if you too are a prisoner there. Thankfully the Indian censors have been intelligent enough to let the scenes be. Without them the film would have lost its impact. James Franco proves himself to be an actor with reckoning. After the immature "Spiderman" to the mature "Milk", he transcends himself as the man trapped not just by a boulder but by his own selfishness. The 127 hours trapped by the side of the rock become his time to not just question his life but to find a possible resolution to it, a meaning. One thing Franco and Boyle tell us is to pause a while in our life, lest our life speeds past us. You don't have to be trapped for 127 hours under a boulder or go to a 10-day silent Vipassana to do it. You can pause your life daily to reflect on it. "127 Hours" is a film, as Aaron discovers, about the choices we make in life. Your life is a sum total of your choices made or not made. And your entire past has conspired to bring you to this moment. For Aaron it is a moment that will lead to his death-trap. Obviously he regrets the choices he made that led him here. This 127 hours-long near-death experience leads him to inspect his entire life, and his motivations and through his hallucinations and desire to give up, he finds the strength to do the unthinkable to not just survive, but for once in his life, really live. 
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| 'Dil Toh Bachcha Hai Ji' Movie Review Posted: 29 Jan 2011 10:20 PM PST  Film: "Dil Toh Bachcha Hai Ji"; Starring: Ajay Devgn,Emran Hashmi,Omi Vaidya,Tisca Chopra,Shazahn Padamsee,Shruti Haasan, Shraddha Das; Directed by: Madhur Bhandarkar;Rating: *** ½ Ummm….Picture to achcha hai jee. Disregarding the rather strenuously upbeat ending "Dil Toh Bachcha Hai Ji" (DTBHJ) turns out to be quite a charming and clever concoction. Though this time Madhur Bhandarkar, one of the strongest celluloid creators of contemporary times, veers into virgin territory, the trademark Bhandarkar touches, like the almost-incestuous use of sex as a bartering point between the sexes, are evident everywhere in this multi-plot story of love, sex and betrayal during times of laughter music and backchat in Mumbai. The writing (by Bhandarkar, Anil Pandey and Neeraj Udwani) weaves skillfully through the hearts and conscience of our three heroes who are designed to be a study in contrasts and yet so believable, you can touch their lives by just watching them stumble, fall and redeem themselves in tentative, sometimes funny, sometimes moving ways. This, then, is the story of three house-mates wading through the concrete jungle of Mumbai in search of love, sex and, yes, a sense of belonging. Their houses, hearts and environment look believable. They are shot to resonate reality. Though projected outwardly as a comedy, DTBHJ has deeper, darker resonances that we cannot miss even if we are too busy laughing at the protagonists' clumsy attempts to get lucky in love. Bhandarkar's narration communicates that sense of empty enjoyment that you can feel under all the glitz and noise of Mumbai's racing pulse. Omi Vaidya, who plays the most idealistic love-seeker of the triumvirate, says to the go-getting struggler from Mumbai(Shraddha Das) at a pub, "How can people talk in here?" She of course doesn't hear him. She's lost in the pursuit of her wanna-shine dreams that take her further and further out of reach of true love. Vaidya is in splendid form here, far more in control of his character's destiny than in "3 Idiots". In the way he hybridizes his yankee accent with Marathi and a sense of earnestness with a subtle tone of mischief, Vaidya is absolutely endearing. So is Emran Hashmi. Playing the character with the steepest graph, Hashmi goes from Tisca Arora's toyboy to the new-age Devdas rejected in love by the savvy NRI chick who has social conscience and a practical attitude to men. When Shruti Haasan (looking so lovely you know she's found her metier in Hindi films) turns around and tells the philanderer, "Yeah, so we slept together. So what? It wasn't your first time nor mine," you know that Bhandarkar has not abandoned his scathing and savage exploration of urban values which made his heroine-centric dramas from "Chandni Bar" to "Fashion" so unforgettable. He's only added laughter to his cinema. In DTBHJ, Bhandarkar walks a tightrope. He has to balance the laughter with the dark underbelly of Mumbai's beautiful, but alas, desolate people. Besides the powerful writing (Sanjay Chel's dialogues are tongue-in-cheek and sometimes killing in their effectual demolition of the sacred cows of urban conduct) and razor-sharp characterization (barring the caricatural people in Devgn's office), the film gets high marks for dead-on casting. Every actor breathes life into the constantly mutating comedy. If we care for all the three love stories that run in criss (never crass) cross it is because the actors enacting the love relationships go beyond their own personalities in search of the people they play. While Omi Vaidya and Emran Hashmi make a great impact, it is Ajay Devgn, echoing Amol Palekar's Common Man from the 1970s, who must be congratulated in the loudest voice for abandoning his 6-pack mean-mirth-machine image to play a mousy middle-aged divorcee with the hots for his comely secretary. Among the female cast, Shazahn Padamsee is extremely easy on the eyes and fits her bubbly ingenue's part like a chic glove. Tisca Arora as the bored socialite who strays into a lust liaison with an ever-ready glorified gigolo, lends a certain weight to the proceedings with her fiery eyes. DTBHJ is a true-blue sex comedy that doesn't lapse into unnecessary passages of vulgarity and innuendos. Though Bhandarkar has sought inspiration from the romantic comedies by Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Basu Chatterjee, the style of storytelling and the tantalizing merger of libido and urban morality would have flummoxed those wondrous comedy makers. Times have changed. So have the films. Thankfully we still have filmmakers who believe the story is the hero. This is the world of Bhandarkar's "Page 3" coming together with the laughter of Blake Edwards' rom-coms. A must-see film with enough meat in the plot to keep us engaged till the end. And three heroes who never take off their shirts even when they are sweating in nervous anxiety. Love is like that only. 
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