SILK SMITTEN!

A young Reshma (Vidya Balan) runs away from her village home to Madras to escape marriage. She works at a local eatery, idolizes Suryakanth (Naseerudin Shah) and mouths firebrand lines. As an annual ritual,she queues up with other girls at a film set with the hope of landing some role in a movie. Her life isn't picture-perfect, but she's determined to make it that way.

A chance encounter at a film set changes it all. She bags a two-minute dance sequence in a movie. A whip is her only prop and she doesn't mind inflicting pain on herself. This 'nakka mukka' song revives the fortunes of a sinking movie. The producer Selvaganesh (Rajesh Sharma) is all happy, he christens her Silk and gets her to do more movies. The director Abraham (Emraan Hashmi) calls her moti and abhors her.

Then there's no stopping her. Silk knows that sex sells and she sells it just right. She bites her lips, pouts, shoves the lumps of her breast in the audience's face and dances in various stages of nudity. All men have dreams, but Silk is their only wet dream. If other actors play to the galleries, Silk 'foreplays' to the galleries. She develops cold feet on first seeing superstar Suryakanth, but tactical that she is, she seduces him off-screen before going 'Ooh la la'. Soon enough, she becomes the toast of the 80s South film industry. But professional highs bring with them personal lows. Her sexual escapades with Suryakanth come to an abrupt end. Enter Ramakanth (Tushar Kapoor) his younger brother. This affair begins on an earnest note, but soon fizzles out.

Filmmakers start changing loyalties, competition begins to unsettle her, gossip magazines carry unsavoury stories and thus begins Silk's gradual descent into alcoholism and unemployment. It is at this time that her bugbear Abraham warms up to her. An unlikely love story almost begins, but Silk's encounter with a porn filmmaker changes it all and also perhaps proves to be the final nail in the coffin. She commits suicide.

As Silk, Vidya Balan's performance is commendable on almost every count. On a cosmetic level, she just doesn't mind flaunting her stomach folds or dipslaying her muffin tops. She chucks size zero for size 'hero'. Acting-wise she convincingly utters every dialogue, most of which have sexual undertones. In this movie, she has shed her inhibitions as she has her clothes and given Silk a soul.

However, her personal and professional downward spiral are depicted very hastily by director Milan Luthria and those sequences are not very convincing. Shah and Hashmi are very good in their parts and they ably support Balan. Kapoor is okay and has nothing much to do. Of the peripheral cast, Sharma and Anju Mahendru (as the magazine editor) are brilliant. The dialogues are funny but full of double entendres. Vishal-Shekhar's music is good with 'Ooh la la' being the most hummable song.

But, the only reason The Dirty Picture is worth a watch is because Balan pushes the envelope as far acting and appearance go (and as the envelope falls, she, irrespective of her dangerously low neckline, doesn't mind bending down to pick it up!).

Worth a 'watch'

The opening shot of Mod shows us clocks of different shapes and sizes in Aranya Mahadeo's (Ayesha Takia Azmi) home which also doubles as her watch-repair shop. Staying with her father (Raghubir Yadav) in sleepy but picturesque Ganga, Aranya also assists her aunt ( Tanve Azmi) at the latter's restaurant.

From being adept at handling watches to asking her drunkard father to sleep outside their house, Aranya has, to quite an extent, an unusual air about her. Every morning, the father-daughter duo watch the train enter their small town - a ritual practiced ever since Aranya's mother left them.

Soon enough, romance enters her life in the form of Andy Raymond (Ranvijay Singh Singha). With his round-framed spectacles, every day he turns up at Aranya's house with a water-soaked watch. In exchange of her service he daily pays her hundred rupees, the note folded in the shape of a swan. It is soon learnt that Andy was Aranya's school-mate and is now back in her life after a good ten years.

Their part-quirky part-romantic exchanges continue till Aranya notices abnormalities in Andy's behavior. A little help from her school leads her to know that the student named Andy Raymond had died ten years ago. And this is where the story takes a turn.

The second half of the movie sees Singha, who is suffering from dissociative identity disorder, alternate personalities between Abhay (his real self) and Andy (his dead friend). How Aranya decides to help the man she loves, forms the rest of the movie.

With a love story as the central theme, Nagesh Kukunoor's Mod suffers from a sluggish pace and some inconsistencies. It, however, is a sincere effort with some good performances. Takia is adorable as Aranya and Singha too puts up a reasonably good act, specially as the geeky Andy. Yadav and Azmi are effortless as the father and aunt, respectively. In a small role, actor Nitin Ratnaparkhi beautifully portrays the resentment of an unrequited lover.

Scenes showing Aranya and Abhay's initial interactions, the one where he's found dipping his hand in a bucket of water just so that his watch gets spoilt and another one in which Ratnaparkhi 'punishes' Aranya for refusing his proposal, stand out from among the rest.

While the music is okay, Chirantan Das' cinematography captures the small town nicely.

A tribute to Kishore Kumar and a save-the-environment message are woven subtly in the movie's story. Mod may not belong to the league of Iqbal and Dor, but it certainly is worth a 'watch'.

This rolling stone doesn't gather much Maus.....am

Spanning three continents and ten years starting 1992, Mausam starts off on a convincing note. Shahid Kapoor's Harry hangs out with friends, tricks the village elders, falls for Aayat (played by Sonam Kapoor), all this while awaiting his sarkari letter. In these parts, he's very likable and so is the movie. But soon, a temporal and transnational leap happens, followed by many more such leaps.

Mausam relies on national tragedies and an international one to establish the movie's timeline, similar to something that Saat Khoon Maaf had done.

The tension in Kashmir forces Aayat to move to Mallukot at her aunt's (played by Supriya Pathak) place. It's here that Harry and Aayat just begin to fall in love. The best scene in the movie is when the lovers quietly exchange chits to express their thoughts to each other, just so that Harry's sister who's sleeping right in between them doesn't wake up. Aayat accepts his inky notes, puts them in a glass of water and barters them with her hennaed replies.

Unfortunately, the Babri Masjid demolition takes a toll on this Hindu-Muslim romance. Aayat vanishes overnight without leaving behind so much as a note to inform Harry as to where she is. And from then on, the movie runs into rough weather, literally and figuratively.

Balle balle is replaced by ballet, rural gaucheness by urban refinement and India by Scotland.

Harry, a stern-looking air force pilot meets Aayat, now a graceful dancer after seven years. But this time the Kargil war distances the lovers. Soon enough, there is a mention of 9/11. Somewhere in between, there are references to the Bombay riots.

With so many incidents crisscrossing the movie's script, it progressively begins to lack logic. It is impossible to understand why the lovers don't even attempt to leave behind notes or messages to each other before parting.

The final portion of the movie set against the Gujarat riots turns out to be the funniest. A Ferris wheel, a child, a white horse and a paralyzed hand contribute to the humor.

While Shahid as the mustachioed pilot tends to get droning, Sonam is sincere but average when it comes to acting her part. Anupam Kher and Supriya Pathak have nothing much to do. Aditi Sharma as Rajjo is perfectly cast as the woman who secretly harbors feelings for Harry despite being married to his friend.

Binod Pradhan's cinematography makes the Punjab and Scotland parts look beautiful. Rabba main to mar gaya and Ik tu hi tu hi prominently stand out among other Pritam compositions. Pankaj Kapur's directorial debut doesn't match his standards as an actor.

This mausam call for a mausambi juice instead.

Robotox!!

As audience, we expect many things when we stake our money and time to watch a movie. But if movies were ever to expect anything from their audience then I’m sure Rajinikanth starrer Robot (Enthiran in Tamil) would want its audience to suspend disbelief (and perhaps much, much more) for a good 165 minutes. I happened to see this movie some days back on TV and regret not having watched it in the theatre.

Directed by S.Sankar, Robot stars Rajinikanth, Aishwariya Rai and Danny Denzongpa in prominent roles. In a nutshell, the movie is about a scientist Vaseegaran (played by Rajinikanth) who creates a lookalike robot. His mentor Dr. Bohra (played by Denzongpa) misuses it and turns it to a Frankenstein’s monster. How to put an end to the mayhem caused by the robot forms the crux of the movie.

Every plot has a start, an end and everything in between. And in Robot it’s the ‘in between’ that matters.

This robot named Chitti (also played by Rajinikanth) can match up to the speed of a Chennai local train and remove random wires from junction boxes and insert it somewhere near his abdomen to charge himself. In a particularly noteworthy scene, Chitti switches on his magnetic mode which attracts all his opponents’ weapons. The weapons then align themselves on his body almost making him look like Goddess Durga. Sana (played by Rai) manages to do a Munnabhai at an exam because Chitti tells her the answers via Zing-Ping protocol, yes Zing-Ping protocol! These are just three of the gems Robot has to offer.

The best ones are when Chitti develops human feelings. He helps a woman in labor deliver and earns himself a kiss from Sana. That’s when Cupid strikes this metal man’s heart. Like most men in love he too grows possessive. And this time Chitti does unimaginable things. He chases a mosquito right from Sana’s cheek to a garbage dump, converses with it and listens to its demands (one of them being ‘declaring mosquito as the national bird’). There is also a mosquito named Dengue-Lakshmi. He dances like there’s no tomorrow and also confesses his love for Sana. Sensing her confusion, he assures to artificially inseminate her (not exactly inseminate but plant some chip or something) and give her the distinction of being the first woman to deliver a part-human, part-robot baby. She nixes this prospective Guinness World Record offer. This enrages him enough to kidnap Sana from her marriage hall and take her to a place full of similar looking robots.

Operation ‘Rescue Sana’ begins with the help of state and central machinery. This is when the movie becomes a complete special effects festival. A huge ball of closely knitted Rajinikanths, a Rajinikanth pyramid or a colossal Rajinikanth snake – the viewer is treated to all of these. But not once does the movie lose the viewer and therein lies its USP.

In the end of course Chitti is destroyed but not before he testifies for Vaseegaran’s innocence.

While Rajinikanth (in the thousand or lakh roles) that he has played is his usual entertaining self, Rai has nothing much to do than look good. A.R. Rahman’s music is reasonable and so are the special effects.

I know this may be spoiler for those who have not seen Robot, but I still recommend it and assure you that what you’ve read is just a nano fraction of what you’ll see.

Temptation: Seven times over

People usually maintain to-do lists. But you know Susanna Anna-Marie Johannes inhabits a different space because she prepares a ‘to do away with’ list. Yes, each time she finds herself in a bad marriage she does away with her spouse – part because of their fatal flaws and part because of her own behavioural extremism.

In Vishal Bhardwaj’s Saat Khoon Maaf, Susanna (played by Priyanka Chopra) ages from a 20-something girl to a 60-something woman who is unabashedly optimistic about life as she walks down the aisle not once or twice but six times. Layers of caky make-up and different wigs aid Chopra in her transition. The viewer is informed of the movie’s timeline by mention of some key incidents, two of them being the Babri Masjid demolition and 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks.

Abetting Susanna in her crimes are a faithful butler, a matronly maid, a pint-sized horse trainer-cum-jockey and to some extent her godson Arun (played by Vivaan Shah). Among the songs it’s Darrling and Bekaraan which touch a musical apogee. The rest are just hummable.

Of the husbands, Irrfan Khan and Aleksandr Dyachenko fit their roles to a T. The latter mouths Shashi Kapoor’s dialogues and imitates Amitabh Bachchan’s posture, all in one breath. Neil Nitin Mukesh and John Abraham are okay. Annu Kapoor and Naseerudin Shah can’t do much in roles that expect them to pop the blue pill and apprise the benefits of mushroom, respectively.

The film’s best moments belong to Vivaan Shah who is eternally obliged to Susanna and secretly in love with her since he was a kid. He is perhaps the only one alive to know her darkest secrets. Subtle and restrained, Vivaan shows a lot of promise. It’s his voiceover that strings this movie together.

Saat Khoon Maaf does occasionally have good dialogues and scenes (the scene where Susanna and her aides dance around Dyachenko before killing him is one of them), but that’s about it. Like an elaborate Halloween fest you are taken from one marriage to another as Susanna bumps off each husband with serial ease. But even as her 'ex files' pile up and she flits in and out of various get-ups, Chopra is just about average. As a woman to whom temptation comes more than just often she is not fully convincing as Susanna. However there are scenes that stand out. Her struggles with a wife-beating poet, older Susanna’s first encounter with Keemat (played by Annu Kapoor) and the final confrontation with Arun are some of them.

Also, as a viewer I felt that in some parts, Susanna aged all of a sudden leaving me a bit confused.

To sum it up, as a cinematic experience, Saat Khoon Maaf does have something unusual to offer. But whoever said that unusual should be interesting was right and that’s where this movie fails.