Laaga Chunari Mein Daag

Cast : Jaya Bachchan, Rani Mukherjee, Konkona Sen Sharma, Kunal Kapoor, Abhishek Bachchan, Anupam Kher
Producer : Aditya Chopra, Pradeep Sarkar
Director : Pradeep Sarkar
Music Director : Shantanu Moitra
Release Date : 12 October 2007

After the classical romance Parineeta, Pradeep Sarkar returns to the marquee with the socially relevant Laaga Chunari Mein Daag - Journey of a Woman, which releases Friday.

Starring Rani Mukerji, Abhishek Bachchan, Konkona Sen Sharma, Kunal Kapoor, Jaya Bachchan and Anupam Kher, the film is about a woman who willingly chooses prostitution as a profession to support her family.

Rani plays the central character of Badki who lives with her parents (Anupam Kher and Jaya Bachchan) and younger sister Chutki (Konkona Sen Sharma) in Varanasi. On the surface, life is fun. The sisters enjoy playing pranks, sneaking off to see a forbidden mujra, and soaking up life on the banks of the Ganges.

But a financial crisis is brewing and Badki is fully aware of it. It gets worse when Badki's father falls ill. The family is in dire straits and Badki decides to go to Mumbai to seek a living to support her mother and sister.

Alone in Mumbai, she battles with dark forces, keeping her focus on her purpose to support her family and continue Chutki's education. She deliberately morphs into someone else, leading a secret life full of murky compromises.

As luck would have it, Chutki too comes to Mumbai to work. After her arrival, Badki's life turns into a minefield because she has to hide her secrets from her younger sister.

Chutki finds success at work and also meets Vivaan (Kunal Kapoor). They eventually fall in love.

While supporting her family and battling with blackmail, Badki gets attracted to Rohan (Abhishek Bachchan) but she lets him go, as she believes he is not meant for her.

After a sequence of events, Badki's dual life is revealed, and the two sisters find themselves face to face in a confrontation neither had expected. When love beckons Badki again, the whole family is thrown in a tumultuous storm.

Everything threatens to explode in their faces, destroying all of them.

Rani is pinning her hopes on the film because her last three films - Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna, Baabul and Ta Ra Rum Pum - bombed at the box office.

The subject is relevant as thousands of young girls are either forced into prostitution or willingly they get into it to earn their livelihood. Films like Chandni Bar, Chameli and Julie, which probed prostitution, were received well. Trade pundits predict a good response to Sarkar's film as well.

Buddha Mar Gaya - Movie Review

Starring : Anupam Kher, Om Puri, Paresh Rawal, Mahbanoo Mody-Kortwal, Rakhi Sawant
Directed by Rahul Rawail
Rating: None

Whose laash is it anyway? Decades ago Kundan Shah killed us with laughter in a comedy about a corpse that needed curious manoevering.

To his corny credit, Anupam Kher plays an inert deathly-still corpse in Rawail's feel-crude film as convincingly as Satish Shah did in Kundan Shah's film.

But the catchline 'You'll Die Laughing' is not really applicable in Buddha Mar Gaya…. one just dies of shock and shame watching the director of such modern classics as Arjun and Dacait plunge to unimaginable heights of infantile crudity.

The ensemble cast of this pitch-black comedy is devoid of all motivation except a searing self-serving greed. Every member of this multi-millionaire malfunctional family scoffs at all moral values and sniggers at finer sentiments.

In a sense Rawail's family's complete lack of innocence is in direct and devilish contrast to the family Sooraj Barjatya gave us in Hum Aapke Hain Koun and Hum Saath Hain.

Cunning, wicked, evil and vulgar, the family in Rahul Rawail's films spoofs the aesthetics of the archetypal Family Drama with a lingering appetite for red-hot crudity. It's hard for us to share their enthusiasm for the low life, specially when the dead man's grand -daughter performs an item song in front the corpse-pretending-to-be-alive.

The opera of the grotesque opens with the death of a tycoon (Kher) who dies while making love to the indefatigably saucy Rakhi Sawant. She eventually seduces and kills several other men from Vinay ( Bheja Fry) Pathak to Prem ('Mera Naam Hai Prem') Chopra.

What are all these talented actors doing in this over-heated over-cooked comedy of a disintegrated generation?

"What a glorious death. He came and went simulatenously, " says the dead man's grandson who finally turns out to be the dead man's son sired by the (now-dead) old man in lieu of his gay son (Mukesh Tiwari), secretly having an affair with the family godman (Om Puri) who's also doing it to the dead man's plump sister (Mohbanoo Mody-Kotwal, coming a long way off from her extraordinary 'Mrs Nair' act in Black).

By the time the cacophonic bump-and-grind satire creaks to a halt, you are looking at a film that makes a fashion statement out of anarchic iconoclasm.

By simply disregarding and rubbishing social institutions like the family nucleus and the rituals of death and mortality (Ranveer Shorey plays a cremation-ground broker who sells bodies to the 'needy') Buddha Mar Gaya attempts to give a tantalizing twist to the school of stripped-down satire.

But sorry, it isn't comic or cool to cut up the patriarch into pieces, literally.

This could be elected the one 'comedy' that tells you how not make a supposedly funny film. First of all, please don't convert the joint family into a circus of circumstantial irreverence…not if irreverence means anything from alternate sexuality to incestuous intentions.

Marigold - Movie Review

Cast: Salman Khan (Prem), Ali Larter(Marigold Lexton), Nandana Sen(Jaanvi), Helen, Suchitra Pillai, Ian Bohen (Barry), Shari Watson, Vikas Bhalla, Vijayendra Ghatge, Kiran Juneja, Gulshan Grover, Rakesh Bedi
Director: Willard Carroll

Marigold is a musical romantic comedy about a young American woman who travels to India.

There, she finds her life transformed in the most unexpected ways by her experiences and adventures.

Beautiful and bad-tempered American actress Marigold Lexton (Ali Larter) arrives in India with no luggage.

Stranded in Goa when finance for her low budget Hollywood movie falls apart, Marigold finds herself in a small role as part of a Bollywood musical.

Eager to prove herself, she enlists the aid of Prem (Salman Khan), the film's choreographer. Talented and hard working, Prem left his privileged life behind to follow his dreams.

After several heated arguments, during Marigold's dancing lessons, she experiences renewed confidence and growing love for Prem.

In rapid succession, Marigold discovers that Prem is not only descended from royalty but is about to have an arranged marriage to a beautiful Indian girl, Janvi (Nandana Sen).

Unable to deal with this development, Marigold angrily departs Prem's family estate. But she is urged back by Janvi who confesses that Prem doesn't love her and never will.

Another complication unfolds in the form of Marigold's boyfriend, Barry (Ian Bohen), who arrives unexpectedly in India and finds Marigold emotionally drained but still very much in love with Prem.

Does love ultimately triumph? Will Marigold and Prem ever be brought together? And what happens to Janvi and Barry? This romantic journey, pure Bollywood style has all the answers.

Kaisay Kahein - Movie Review

Starring: Rajveer and Neha Julka With Kunal Kumar, Aditi Govitrikar, Meghna Malik, Chavvi Mittal and Zarina Wahab
Music: Pritam
Directed by Mohit Hussein

Kaisay Kahein is a modern-day love story that pits romance against career. What happens when love breaks into the lives of two career-minded people?

Aditya (Rajveer) is a young banker with a bright future, but with no time for anything personal. That is till Radhika (Neha Jhulka) comes into his life.

A hardcore TV journalist devoted to her work, she meets Aditya during a sting operation. They fall in love, but the relationship is negotiated around their careers. Their professions remain priorities.

To keep their love alive, they decide to keep their personal lives separate from work.

But it's easier said than done, as love can't keep up with the erratic demands of their careers. Aditya can't leave his job and Radhika decides to take a much-awaited promotion that would take her away to another city.

Can love survive long-distance? Can Aditya and Radhika find the same passion in them as before?