Khoya Khoya Chand

I started worshipping Sudhir Misra after watching Hazaaron Khwashishein Aise (HKA). The movie earned him the respect and adulations of a lot of serious movie buffs and if not for HKA, people like me wouldn’t have desperately waited for over a year to watch Khoya Khoya Chand. Sadly, the end product has turned out to dismal.

Hazaaron Khwashishein Aise (HKA) had the perfect storyline- A love story set against the naxal uprising and political turmoil of the 1970s. Kay Kay Menon, Chitrangada Singh and Shiney Ahuja lived their roles and the impeccable screenplay made it a modern classic for people of my generation.

Khoya Khoya Chand (KKC) had all the ingredients of a modern classic: the resplendent backdrop of the 1960 Hindi film industry, characters etched from the life of Guru Dutt, Waheeda Rehman and Madhubala and wonderful music by Shantanu Moitra .The grave mistake that Sudhir Misra made was casting Soha Ali Khan as the heroine. The incapability of the lead actress is so conspicuous in the movie and Sudhir Misra tries to hide her histrionics through innumerable long shots and clever editing.

Imagine this scene: Soha Ali Khan tells Shiney Ahuja how she was molested at a tender age of fourteen and throughout the scene; she remains as wooden as the old Sherwood tree. Vidya Balan or Chitrangada Singh would have fit the role to a tee and I think that even Rakhi Sawant would have fared better than Soha Ali Khan. The reason for casting Soha Ali would have been her 1960s look (thanks to her mom Sharmila Tagore) and her lineage but she is sadly unable to realize the depth of her role and ends up destroying the movie.

Speaking about Rajat Kapoor, he did a splendid job in Monsoon Wedding and Bheja Fry but he couldn’t do justice to his role of an arrogant superstar in KKC. His body language is out of tune and he doesn’t have the demeanor associated with the stars of the 1960s. Shiney Ahuja does justice to his role and delivers his lines with conviction. In the emotional scenes, he is exemplary but then again Soha Ali Khan fails to perform. Vinay Pathak is brilliant.

The story is a little dragging in the first half but anyone who has followed retro Indian cinema can easily identify with the characters that are trapped in a life of sleaze and deceit. After the interval, Sudhir Misra is totally lost and has no clue how to end the movie. The last half an hour is void of the emotional intensity of the first half and almost like a Karan Johar movie; characters shed their elements of grey and eventually sing and dance with the lead couple.

If HKA was a classic tribute to the student movement of the seventies, KKC is a half baked tribute to the sixties. There is a particular scene in the movie when Shiney Ahuja sits in an almost empty movie hall screening his directorial debut when a film reviewer walks to him and asks how it feels when one’s own movie bombs so miserably in the first week.

Same question to you, Mr. Sudhir Misra.

Sabari
10 Dec 2007

Shootout at Lokhandwala....

10 REASONS Y ONE SHOULDNT WATCH "Shootout @ Lokhandwala"
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#1: Dont get carried away b the big star cast like AB, AB Junior, Sanjay Dutt, Vivek Oberoi, Suniel Shetty...I should have checked the name of the producers, Ekta Kapoor and Sanjay Gupta. Sanjay Gupta is notorious for making B Grade copies of classics like Resorvoir Dogs and Oldboy & Ekta Kapoor needs no intro...

#2: Just imagine Abhishek Bachan coming in an Enfield bike, chasing some Khalisani terrorists and gettin shot within 5 mins. Yup, hezzz dead...Reminded me of the "K" serials in which the hero is killed all on a sudden and his portrait hung on the wall either bcos he asked for a pay hike or Maam Ekta Kapoor was pissed of with him...Ditto for Abhishek Bachan

#3: Another producer of the movie is Suniel Shetty who has not learned the art of acting even after a decade of movies. He has the same "constipated" emotion thruout the movie and has a Hindi accent which would put Katrina Kaif/ Tom Alter to shame...

#4: We also have an Arbaaz Khan(with a mustache that keeps on fluttering in the Bombay breeze) who handles English ,hindi N uRDU one liners with elan...Tuff!!! Beta, its better for you spending time with your wife Maliaka Arora.

#5: Tushar Kapoor(who happens to be Ekta Kapoors bhai) who desperatley tries to be a tough guy but has a voice that sounds like a kitten which meows frantically.....He better concentrate on movies like "Good Boy, Bad boy" which suits him to a Tee

#6: Aarti Chabria(whoz that???) trying to look sensuous as a bar dancer in 3 horrible item numbers ...

#7: Apporva Lakhia who directed mega blockbusters like "Mumbai se aaya mera Dost" and "Ek Ajnabee". His personal relation with the Bachans would get him a good star cast, but direction is another game dude...And learn the art of copying from English movies from "Sanjay Gupta"..You made a mess out of the scene "inspired" from Ed Norton's American History X

#8: Mr. Amitabh Bachan (the lawyer who pleads for the cops in the court) makes an appearance every ten mins in the movie. I just wanted to ask him one thin "Kyun g--d mein guss .......???" Sadly for Bachan, ppl in the multiplex were so irritated with his role that they started walkin out wenever he came on screen

#9: The story( Police attack goondas in a residential building - kill 5 of them - activists come against them n move the court- Bachan Senior pleads their case - Victory- And they lived happily ever after) is so wafer thin that the director has to get fillers in the form of Abhisek Bachan, Amrita Singh and Rakhi Sawant!!!!!

#10" Diya Mirza (as a reporter with a weird name like "Tuttu Kuttu") and Neha Dupia(the quintessential officer's wife who complains that he has no time for family blah blah) who are the female leads...I wonder that Hindi movies cast heroines bcos there is a mandatory clause in the Bollywood Film act to have at least one wife/girlfriend/item number per movie)


TAKE AWAYS FROM THE MOVIE
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1. Dawood Ibrahim always wears a dark cooling glass and sits by the pool side with a host of "firang" beauties in swim suits

2. Mumbai police do not need bullet proofs even if they are attacked by 1000s of bullets and rocket launchers....

3. During an encounter, police block all the roads and checkposts but do not cut the telephone lines so that the goons in the building can call up their family/ girl firends and say "tata, buy buy"... I luv Mumbai police.

4. Ray Ban is the official choice of all policemen and goons...everyone in the movie wears it except Arbaaz Khan

INTERESTING STATISTICS
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1. Number of cigarettes used: Sanjay Dutt(3 packs Marlboro) + Vivek Oberoi( uncountable)
2. Number of bullets wasted: 2000 +
3. Liters of blood: easily more than 10 gallons
4: Time taken to write the screenplay: 2 mins


On the whole, Lokhandwala is an "anmol ratan" which has to be send to the "cans" this year..

My rating = 1/10

Sabari

Traits of a master Orkutter
- Orkuts every 3 mins
-Starts intellectually stimulating Orkut communities like "Petrol Bunk in NH8 next to Radisson Hotel", "Butter chicken in MDI mess is awesome", "Parking @ Metro mall is better than parking @ DT Mall", "Salman should get Oscar for Salam E Ishq", etc
- Describes himself as "kool, handsome and romantic"
-Daily scrap is "Do u want to make friend ship with me"
-Joins 3000 communites
-Creates bogus profiles to increase number of fans

Why I started blogging?

Top 3 reasons for me to start blogging
- No more ubiquitous ringing of the mobile phone

- 3 terms in MDI had made me realize that there r better things in life than "Performance Management Systems"

-David Davidar of Penguin wants me to start writing and preserve my tenets of wisdom in e-land!!! :-)

3 qualities I developed in MDI
-Art of patience: Ability to listen to words like "Strategy", "Strategic Business Partner", "Innovation", "Vision", "Mission","Motivation", "Change Management", "Core Competency" 10000 times a day and still remain normal
-Art of making PPTs:
Step 1: Ping in IP Messengers for existing PPTs
Step 2: Change the background and font to "Tahoma"
Step 3: Edit the Group Name from Group x to Group 3
Step 4: Email it to group mates
Step 5: Continue watching the movie
-Dont ask the question "But,... she had a boyfriend outside college and u were going steady with ur Gf..."
I guess Ekta Kapoor/ Karan Johar should talk to Kush Pandey(our Hostel& Mess Secy.) or Choudhary(Mess Contractor) and stay in the boys hostel for a day. They are sure to get really good story lines.