Manish-Jyoti were the ghost duo in the other horror flick Vastushastra, which also happens to be the last one I saw. That movie was lot better mainly since the ghost kids were not made to narrate heavy dialogues unlike here.

Plot is simple. Parents go for abortion and the aborted fetus becomes ghost only to haunt them 8-10 years later. 3 years after the abortion, the parents have a daughter. The name of the ghost baby is Gauri and that of the daughter is Shivani.  So Gauri keeps watching the happy family and gets upset whenever she sees parents showering their love upon Shivani. So she posses Shivani and then starts troubling the parents. She scares the parents and also tells them that she will kill Shivani after 3 days. Later on, a senti drama follows and she lets them go.

A badly executed horror movie. You would expect a horror flick to grip you and make you wait for what might happen next moment. Nothing like that in this movie. Humans (read parents, their friends and relatives) get to know of the ghost, her agenda and everthing before intermission and after just one creepy sequence. So in a way the movie ended there itself. I mean cummon, the victims are not supposed to know whats going around them in a horror movie. But here, everyone knew everything and they just patiently wait for the ghost to show them magic tricks. Which the ghost does whenever she is in mood. No logic, no reasoning. Once scene she is doing all sorts of nasty things. Next scene she is asking the mom to sing her a lullaby. Total useless junk. The change of heart takes place somewhere during this cat and mouse game. She (the ghost of an unborn baby) gives some big time fundas about how bad a fetus feels about being aborted  . Basically being killed by her own parents when all she was looking for is love. And all this before she was even born. Thank god the baby was aborted. How demanding she would have been

Lets now come to the acting department. I liked Rituparna Sen in Main, Meri Patni aur Woh but here she was simply bad. Same for Atul Kulkarni. So far, he was good in most of the movies. But then in all of them he had similar roles. Of an ideal journalist, an ideal politician etc. But here in the role of a perfectly normal married man, he fails miserably. Esp. in the romantic scenes. They both looked so uncomfortable doing those scenes. The child artist who played Shivani was irritation at the best. I think it has to do with bad direction. Even the others in smaller roles were as bad. This was some new director Aku Akbar. Infact, this was the very reason I thought this would be a good movie. Since these days most of the debutant directors give very good movies. But this one didn't look even 1/10th as impressive as others.

All in all, avoid it. Just not worth the time and money.

This is very different from other Sanjay Leela Bhansali movies that I have seen. Maybe because I didnt see Black. It was more like reading a book than watching a movie. Sakina (Sonam) is in love with Salman and waits for him every night. Raj (Ranbir) sees her once and instantly falls for her. He befriends her and gives her company for next 3-4 nights while she waits for Salman.

Raj (Ranbir Kapoor) performs at a night club. He is always smiling and also brings smiles to his near and dear ones. One night, he sees Sakina (Sonam) just standing on a bridge lost and sad. He tries to strike a conversation but she is evasive. He senses her sadness and tries to talk her out of it. He falls for her in the process. Rest of the movie, he is torn between his love for her and her expectation from Raj to help him find her love (Salman). This is where I think the direction is superb, the movie doesn't move on to become a regular Bollywood flick with Rona dhona. He simply sticks with her and tries to keep her happy during her wait.

Sakina stays with her aunts and gets into a relationsship with Salman when he was a paying guest in their house. Does that remind anyone of HDDCS  . Lesson: don't let Salman stay in your house if you have bahu-betis.  Anyway, Salman leaves with a promise to return after an year. The time is near and hence she is out every night waiting for him. She is shown to be sad at times, but mostly cherubish and lively (esp. in the company of Raj).

Both Ranbir and Sonam were refreshing. Ranbir's love for Sonam and his child like enthusiasm keeps the movie alive.  The characterisation of the movie in general is pretty good. All the characters and being drawn out neatly and they don't deviate from it ( a rarity in Bollywood).

Cinematography. It was beautiful. All in blue and green with sign boards all over the place. No days, only nights. Makes you feel like you are standing in an old city market. More like theater than a movie. A small set with a river, a bridge, curvy roads, bullock cart, a tavern. Like a stage. Heard lot of people complaining about how this is not how it is. But that wasn't the objective. The point was not to keep it close to reality but to weave a dreamland which Bhansali did beautifully. There was one scene in particular, where the top view of the whole set is shown. Totally breathtaking.

My advice, go for it but don't expect an emotional drama. Its just a narration, a short story. 3 days in the life of 2 people.

Yet again an Abhay Deol movie which was so totally different from a routine Bollywood movie. I guess its not difficult to find such thrillers in Hollywood but in Bollywood its an absolute rarity.

Satyaveer (Abhay Deol) is a regular government employee with a penchant for writing. He wrote a detective novel which ended up being a big flop. But he still had that detective lurking somewhere inside him. Thats why when Manorama(Sarika) comes to him with an offer, he couldn't refuse. What started as a small assignment kept getting more complicated and much more dangerous that he could have ever imagined. He should have probably washed his hands off it but his curiosity took him to a point of no return.

In the acting department, Abhay Deol impressed like he always does. The key take away was Vinay Pathak in the role of inspector and Satyaveer's brother-in-law. The guy is just too good. First Bheja Fry and now this. Two totally different roles and the guy was just excellent in both of them.  Gul panag was strictly ok. Raima Sen looked beautiful and Sarika didn't have much role to play.

Cinematography was brilliant. The shots of rural Rajasthan were so real. I myself being from Rajasthan could totally relate to them. Those roads, those houses, havelis.. authentic Rajasthani stuff. No glamour. True potrayal of how Rajasthan is. There was no trace of any fake there.

Plot was good. The storytelling and the pace of it were apt.

Overall if you are fine with watching a slow paced thriller with no glamour element, I would say go for it.

Just came back after watching Shootout At Lokhandwala. Had very high expectations since few of the critics rated it very high and a friend who saw it early in the day had few good things to say about it.

Its mainly the performances and the flawed direction that dragged the movie from a 3-4 star one to a mere 2 star stuff.

The movie started off well with Sanjay Dutt and his team being grilled by a committee headed by Amitabh Bachchan. First 15 minutes saw a bunch of Khalsa militants being encoutered by Sanjay Dutt. Then it moved on to Mumbai underworld. Maya Dolas(Vivek Oberai) is the new face in the underworld and has started to challenge the big boss of the Underworld. The movie went on to show some brutality by them which was less logical and more of the work of a maniac. DCP Khan (Sanjay Dutt) establishes a group within the police force to fight the Underworld. He choses the best officers available in the police force.  He fights Maya and his gang and finally manages to swipe them out after a bloody encounter in a locality in Mumbai called Lokhandwala.

Here is what I feel were the screwups:

• Vivek Oberai was just too patetic. I havent liked his performances lately but hoped it would be different this time. Reasons are his kickass performance in his debut Company and a couple of articles in the dailies claiming it to be a powerpacked performance by the guy. He kept laughing and smiling sarcastically throughout the movie for no reason what so ever. His entry, he is on an assignment to kill a guy, everyone of his friend is worried if they can pull it up and this guy emerges out of an autorickshaw, full of confidence, with that irritating smirk on his face. Few more incidents, he gets to know they are surrounded by tons of cops and what does he do ?? , he just smiles. His mother calls him up at that point and he just wears that confident smile of his. He is standing face to face with Khan, he runs out of bullets and again.. that irritating smile. Overall, the movie could have been lot better with him being replaced with someone else, lets say Ajay Devgan.
• Tushar Kapoor. Why would someone want to take him for a role of a shart shooter I dont understand. Not even worth writing about.
• Amitabh Bachchan. What was his role. He kept listening to Khans story. Kept giving impressions he is totally against them, ridiculing him for everything he said. The in the end, he turns out to be all for the Khan's cause. Atleast they could have shown a proper enquiry in the court. That typical Bollywood style case, full of drama but no substance. No proof given, no story told, no defence argued. He just put up a stupid question which was supposed to touch the judge and finally resulted in him waiving all charges from Khan.
• Finally, what the heck was the encounter. Khan and his team with their bare hands. And that is when the byline of the movie was that police fired 3000 shots in that encounter. At the least they could have shown a proper encounter. There were plenty of bulletproof jackets available but no one in the direct line of fire was wearing them. Sanjay Dutt even threw it away when offered one.
• All the gangsters calling their families when they are surrounded by tons of cops.

Finally some strong points:

• The plot was good.
• Sanjay Dutt and his team was good. That included Sunil Shetty and Arbaaz Khan.
• Abhishek Bachchan just had a cameo :) . This one is personal since I cant bear that guy.

Well. just so that this review is taken in an unbaised fashion, lemme start by telling that I have seen all the movies by Madhu Bhandarkar and I love every one of them. But this one.. this is just a big piece of sh** . He seems to have gone too far this time.

In his earlier movies, he seemed to have striked a good balance between characters. Be it Corporate or Page 3 . He was also clear about the agenda of his movies in those cases. But this particular movie is a far cry from any of those movies. He didn't even know what the movie was about. It had everything... starting from a prostitute to an outbound sales executive... Just a glimpse, it had .... beggers, a man who controls all those beggers, a man who controls the man who controls all those beggers and on top of that a man who controls all those men who control the men who control all those beggers :)  . Seems a little too much. Doesn't it? Infact there was a hint in the first half that there was one more man (whom they didnt show in the first half atleast) who was on top of the hierarchy that I just talked about and cotrolled everyone. Appears too contrived to me. And as if this wasn't enough, he had road side sellers, a politician, a prostitute, a gay prostitute, a social activist, an NGO, a builder, a dopchy, a cop,  a mafia and the list goes on and on......

It all just looked like a big mess to me when they showed that intermission screen and for me atleast, it was the end of my mission. I decided I had better things to do at home and left the theater. As for the movie, it was IMHO, by far one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Though I didn't see the later half but there was no way that movie could have been salvaged from where it stood at the interval.

At first I am amazed a movie like this could make it to the box office. Then I remember the rule in the center has changed hands since then. BJP government would have never let this movie come out.

As for the movie itself, it was a well made movie with a strong message. Though there were parts with which I personally don't agree. The old man preaching Gandhigiri, Naseeruddin Shah fasting for 9 days and some kind of enlightenment in the end of it are few to name. Also the message at the end of the movie suggesting the BJP government lost the elections because of Gujrat was highly politicized and IMO far from truth. 2 years is a long time and voters have short memory. Moreover, after the riots, BJP won the state elections more convincingly than they ever had.

Naseerudding Shah is a parsi married to a Muslim(Sarika). They have a son and a daughter. The movie depicts the turmoil their lives take during the Gujrat riots. The depictions of the riots, the apathy of the government and its systems esp. police, are pretty real and convincing. The scene where Naseerudding Shah is sitting in a police station trying to enquire about his lost son and station officers total indifference is something that I have myself encountered a couple of times :) .

Most of the performances were good. The old man preaching Gandhigiri was prolly dispensible.