BOLLY REVIEW : Tees Maar Khan (2010)

Tees Maar Khan, Farah Khan's third directorial venture, starts interestingly with a voice-over of Sanjay Dutt and a very innovatively amusing, James Bondish title sequence involving a baby Tees Maar Khan(TMK) learning the trades of con from his mother's womb. This, unfortunately is the singlemost comic sequence in this wannabe comic caper gone completely haywire.

Based on Peter Seller's After the Fox, TMK tells the story of Tabrez Mirza Khan a.k.a. Tees Maar Khan (Akshay Kumar), a self-flattering con artist who takes pleasure in bragging about himself with not-so-funny one liners. He is surrounded by his incompetent assisstants Dollor, Soda and Burger (if these names are meant to be funny then I don't get it) and has a girlfriend(Katrina Kaif) who is dabbling in the Z-grade exploitative cinema to make it big as an actress. Aatish Kapoor (Askhaye Khanna) is a big Indian star actor who is obsessed with the Golden statuette ever since Anil Kapoor has made it to the Oscars. Then, there are the Siamese twins, the Johri Brothers (played by real life twins Rajeev and Raghu) who want to rob the antiquities that the Indian Police is transporting from Mumbai to Delhi in a heavily guarded non-stop train. The brothers seek the help of TMK who apparently is the only mind which can plan the great heist. And what does Mr.TMK do? He concocts a plan to shoot a fake film in a small village though which the train would pass and use the villagers as the cast. And this would provide him with enough men to stop and rob the running train. He also cons Atish Kapoor and convinces him to act in the film by posing as the great Hollywood director Manoj Day Ramalan. So much for the greatest con.

Scott Pilgrim Vs The World (2010) : A Review

What does a movie that blends the genres of action, romance, musical, fantasy and comedy remind you of? Definitely Bollywood for me. But, Edgar Wright has managed to put all these elements into a crazy Hollywood movie which is not even remotely Bollywoodish in nature. Based on the graphic novel series by Canadian cartoonist Bryan Lee O'Malley, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World is a fantasy-musical-action-comedy along the lines of Stephen Chow flicks which are mad, energetic but also extremely entertaining.

The movies revolves around Scott Pilgrim(Michael Cera), a bass guitarist for the band named "Sex Bob Ombs". He starts dating a Chinese high school girl Knives(Ellen Wong), but one fine day when he meets Ramona, he falls head-over-heals in love with her. From that moment, he starts ignoring Knives and begins wooing Ramona. But little does he know that to gain Ramona's love he has to fight her seven evil exes.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010) : A Review

The story of Deathly Hallows Part 1 continues from where it left off from Half Blood Prince. Dark Lord and his associates have taken over the ministry and began tormenting and prosecuting the Muggles in the Wizarding community. After Dumbledore's death, Harry, Hermione and Ron are on their own and have to find the Horcruxes while on the run and destroy them to bring down the Dark Lord.

The Harry Potter series has come down a long way from the heavily toddlerized Philosopher's Stone. The boys have become men and the girls have turned into nice women. I must say that this is the most complete movie in the series. Unlike the others, the movie doesn't take a hurried approach and gives ample time for the story to unfold. This had been possible only due to the division of the story into a 2 part movie. I wish the same approach was taken for some of the other movies in the series. The story though drags a bit where Harry and Hermione continue their search in the absence of Ron, but this attributes to the same dragging sequence in the book. The Part 1 concludes well and doesn't look like an incomplete movie. Kudos to director David Yates and the screenplay writer Steve Kloves for this.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010) : A Review

Based on the popular video game, Prince of Persia hit theatres this weekend worldwide. The pre-release buzz was very poor and so we managed to get the tickets easily on the opening week. The trailers for the movie were not too exciting and that set the expectations to an extreme low.

The story goes like this. The King of Persia gets impressed by the fearlessness of a slum orphan Dastaan(Jake Gyllenhal) and adopts him as a son. Tus, the eldest son of the King, on the advice of his Uncle Nizam (Ben Kingsley) raids the holy city of Alamut. With the help of Dastaan, they succeed in seizing the city. Meanwhile somebody conspires against Dastaan and he becomes the victim of a conspiracy that charges him with the assassination of the King. He flees the kingdom along with the Alamut princess Tamina and tries to bring forth the real culprits behind the conspiracy, while also trying to save the world from destruction.

BOLLY REVIEW: Mission Istanbul (2008)

I had the great fortune of discovering this movie called "Mission Istaanbul" starring Zayed Khan and Vivek Oberai. It falls in the category of "Its so bad that its fun". I would put it in my hall of fame movies along with "Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani" (# 1 in my list), "Qahar", et al.

Zayed Khan is Vikas Sagar, an IIT graduate with a computers degree and working for Aaj Tak as a journalist. He has absolutely no work experience in computers but is supposedly a computers expert (the expertise in which field? Not mentioned). He is infamous for his face-to-face interviews with the terrorists who put on a mask while recording a murder video but forget about it during the interviews. Vikas decides to move on to "Al Johara", a news channel in Istaanbul, for better opportunities of terrorist interviews. "Al Zohara" boss is a crooked looking, suspicion raising individual who is doing some confidential activities on the highly secured 13th floor of his office building. "Al Zohara" has a hall of martyrs room with portraits of all the journos who died mysteriously during the terrorist interviews. Sunil Shetty is the latest victim of Al Zohara. Vivek Oberoi plays "Rizwan Khan", a mysterious local, who keeps warning Vikas of the dangers at Al Zohara. He is supposedly a cool guy who can do loads of action with both hands and guns. Rizwan is capable of single handedly gaining access to the 13th floor but needs a computer expert to hack into some system. That is where Vikas comes into picture. The rest of the story is how these two guys unveil the mystery behind the 13th floor.

The movie is extremely entertaining due to its unintentional humor. Watch it to believe.

Highly Recommended for the same reasons as "Plan 9 from Outer Space".

IMDB
Trailer

Three Days of The Condor (1975) : A Review

Three Days of The Condor is a 1975 movie directed by Sidney Pollack. Josey a.k.a. The Condor (Robert Redford) works for CIA in the literary department where they read books from different nations and feed their plots and other suspicious content into the computer, for analysis. One afternoon, he goes for lunch and on return finds all of his colleagues assassinated. Thus starts his run from the perpetrators which also includes the director of his division. Josey kidnaps a young woman (Faye Dunaway) and with her help tries to solve the mystery behind the killings and the actual people behind them. A German professional hit-man (Max von Sydow) is hired to track and kill him.

The story of the man on the run reminds you of some Hitchcock classics. The movie is a fine thriller and no where do you feel the pace getting slowed. And the idea of CIA trying to control the oil producing Middle Eastern nations is so very relevant even today. Robert Redford plays the ordinary man stuck in a fatal situation with ease. Faye Dunaway looks extremely beautiful. But it is Max von Sydow who is excellent as the assassin and completely steals the show with his great presence.

Overall "Three Days of Condor" is a pretty entertaining fare.

IMDB Page
Trailer

Rated