Tag Archives: Ranbir Kapoor

AIB Knockout – A Toast to the Roast

Image January 30, 2015 jcisnowjs Leave a comment

AIB’s Knockout Roast!!! What a Roast and what a bold new step in Indian Comedy.

If you have still not seen the AIB’s Knockout Roast of Ranveer Singh and Arjun Kapoor, then….. I guess, you must be lying. You don’t have to tell me or anyone else, okay. Don’t come out of the closet. It’s okay, like they said in the Roast, “Why are they talking in public, what we talk in parties”. 😛

AIB is a comedy group of Indian comedians, co founded by Gursimran Khamba and Tanmay Bhatt, along with Rohan Joshi and Ashish Shakya. The event that has generated a lot of interest in them, and their group, is a Comedy Roasting event where AIB, along with Aditi Mittal, Abish Mathews, Raghuram and Rajeev Masand; roasted Arjun Kapoor and Ranveer Singh.

It was special, because it was the first time that a no bounds roasting is done in an Indian comedy group, and that too with Roastee being a celebrity present there.

Roasting is like an insult comedy, where you trash your guest verbally by making fun of him/her in a best satirical way possible and the guest along with his well wishers present there, take all these insults in a good humor. If you want a more desi explanation – it’s more like in ladies sangeet of Indian Marriage where in some special songs, other party of marriage, is trashed in an abusive language.

Karan Johar was the perfect Roast Master and I would like to say, that he was at his best in the show. He was witty, with a perfect timing and, boy! He was sporty. Infact some of the best jokes were told on Karan’s expense. A big thumbs up for you, Karan.

What was interesting in all this was to see our female celebrities, like Deepika, Alia and Sonakshi, not only present there but also taking a lot of roast on themselves, in a very good way. Specially Deepika, seriously, thanks for taking one for the team. Alia baby, baby baby baby…. what were you doing there? Poor you! My bachcha…. beta, stay at home, these type of shows are for adults only.

Roasting was great, it was all in good fun, sometimes too offensive but when you compare it to Roasting comedy shows done internationally, it was not up to par with them. Where they lack was – content, few members trying too hard and off-course poor editing of the show.

Comedy Central’s Roasting shows are always a great fun to watch for. My favorite among them were those of Charlie Sheen and Joan Rivers. What made these shows fun was not the use of offensive language but the satire and witty one liners.

Content is the king. Some members like Tanmay, Khamba and Aditi were fresh in selecting their jokes and creative too. The best out of all the panel was Tanmay, who clearly is abundant in his talent too. Other comedians too were good but they became too much repetitive after some time. Most of the jokes look stale. Raghuram and Rajeev Masand were seriously not a good choice as the member of Roasting panel.

Specially Raghu was still on his Roadies set, and looked like he is trying too hard. He was stiff and abusive unnecessarily. Best rule of roast comedy is to roast someone in a way that as if you are toasting them. You don’t need to shout, as Raghu and Masand did, but infact you have to be satirical; which both lacked.

What did the most damage to the whole show, was its editing. It was like scrap of pieces joined together to make a comedy show. There was no continuity and flow. It was edited so much that it looked like the Roast of roasting panel than of the Roastees. Poor Rajeev Masand was highly edited, I don’t why, but it was like he said hi, and bye in a single shot.

To be honest, the Roastees, Arjun Kapoor and Ranveer Singh did a far better roast than the roasting panel. Arjun too, looked like he is trying hard to look cool with the whole idea, but he can’t look cool, not when he is in company of Ranveer Singh.

Ranveer stole the show. He was the best. Let it be his mimicry of Rajeev masand, or his take on Raghu’s abusive private life, he was The Best. Karan scored just next to him. For the rest, you need to up your game.

It was not the best, but it is big step for Indian Comedy indeed. Kudos to the whole AIB team for tackling this Elephant in the Room. 😛

Tuesday Talkies – Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania(jcisnowjs.wordpress.com)
It Takes Courage To Be Preity Zinta(jcisnowjs.wordpress.com)
#AIBKnockout Goes Viral: A Million Hits In 12 Hours(lighthouseinsights.in)
Does it make me a ‘bad person’ if I liked AIB Knockout? And other such existential questions.(itwofs.com)

Movies

Tuesday Talkies – PK – Is it a Waste of Time?

Image December 23, 2014 jcisnowjs 1 Comment

Aamir Khan, Rajkumar Hirani, Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Boman Irani; you mix all these ingredients in a recipe and its dish is going to be a sure shot hit. PK is that hit movie.

But, are you just expecting it to be a hit? Or, you were expecting fireworks from it?

Don’t know about you, but I was expecting Fireworks and I was let down a bit. Why? I will soon delve into that, but lets first go through the basics of this movie – PK.

PK is Indian Film Directed by Rajkumar Hirani and produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra along with Siddharth Roy Kapur and Hirani himself. This movie stars Aamir Khan in the lead role of PK; while Anushka Sharma, Sushant Singh Rajput, Boman Irani and Saurabh Shukla plays important part in this movie. Sanjay Dutt has also done a crucial cameo in this movie, but is completely wasted in this movie.

PK, played by Aamir Khan, is an alien who got stranded on Earth when someone stole his remote control device; his only way to call back his spaceship. PK then embarks on a hilarious journey of finding his remote. He goes to Police and every common man he can encounter, to get clues for finding remote, but only answer that he got was, “Only God can help you find it”.

Thus he decides to first find God and then he will take God’s help to find remote. Now,the big question is, Where is God? He went from Temples to Churches, from Mosques to Gurudwara, but to no avail. Until one day he accidentally bumps into a Baba’s aashram where he saw his remote projected as Shiva’s Manka/bead from Himalayas. Comes Anushka, who then plan a plot to help PK get his remote back from Baba, and in doing so they expose Baba and his claim of talking with God.

What works for the movie?

This movie is a full on entertainer. It will make you laugh, cry, question and will evoke so many emotions inside you. Hirani has chosen an apt way to use an alien to see our world from the perspective of an outsider. It gives an objectifying view of the whole spiritual corruption that is happening around us.

Aamir Khan is always flawless. He can be a student, or a magician or he could be an alien. whatever role you will give him; he will be that character to the hilt. Anushka and Sushant are the also in their best form. Anushka has looked confident in front of Aamir. Movie on a whole is good and watchable.

What does not work for the Movie?

One of the drawbacks of this movie is that it is following in the footsteps of ‘3 Idiots‘, and Munnabhai genre. It’s just not upto that standard. Reasons are many –

To start with, first half of the movie is tight and edited well. It is right on point in showing an objective picture of our religious differences and dogma attached to them. Comes second half and film loses its objectivity to an illogical emotional drama.

This movie sets a pace where at the end you are waiting for that big climax; where our protagonist PK will silent the Godman and his followers, once and for all, by his quick wit and logic. But alas, that climax was never there. Instead there was all this ‘Rona-Dhona’, India-Pakistan, Love Story, Baap Beti emotional drama and all.

That last scene could have made a lot of difference. It could have taken this film to a height where Hirani’s other films are, atleast. They could have written down an extraordinary debate where Godman could have shown to acknowledge his defeat.

Most absurd is the love story shown between Anushka and Sushant. Who in his right mind break up like that? You are left at the altar and you will not even ask why?? Infact, they were kind of shown living in together and the very next day they just left the country without even seeing each other. If I would have to leave a country, it would take me a week just to pack my stuff.

Some Hindu religious organizations/groups are protesting against this movie as it show Hinduism in bad light. To be fair, it does show each religion that way; but their main villain/protagonist being a Hindu Godman (only), does raises eyebrow. Hirani and Aamir for once could have taken a bold step and shown representative of every religious leader in the final debate. But again, the end is not at all what I would expect from this combo.

One more fact that is not highlighted about the movie is, that the character of PK was loosely based on ‘Abraham Kovoor‘, who was responsible for running a campaign against so called Frauds and Godman. His most popular target was ‘Sathya Sai Baba‘. Thus if you translate it into a film, you can relate to the Saurabh Shukla character more.

My suggestion to those who are protesting against this movie – Do not protest on social platform. You are only promoting this movie by doing so. Remember when it comes to films, every publicity is a good publicity.

Suggestion to viewers – Go watch the movie but do not expect sparks flying the way they it happened in ‘ 3 Idiots‘.

PS. I still couldn’t understand why Anushka Sharma have gone through duck lips for this movie. It just doesn’t make any sense.

Rajkumar Hirani: ‘Sanjay Dutt makes everyone happy’(digitalspy.co.uk)
Aamir Khan Hints of ‘PK’ Sequel; Will Ranbir Kapoor Play Lead alongside Mr.Perfectionist?(ibtimes.co.in)
Tuesday Talkies – Oculus(jcisnowjs.wordpress.com)
Frolic Friday : What to do when you have nothing to do?(jcisnowjs.wordpress.com)

Movies

Bombay Talkies: Celebrating 100 years of Indian Cinema

Image December 16, 2013 jcisnowjs 4 Comments

Finally I watched Bombay talkies, nearly half an year after the movie released. I had high hopes from the movie as this movie was made to celebrate the completion of 100 years of Indian cinema, also the more fascinating point being that it has four short stories directed by four maestro directors of Indian Cinema – Karan Johar, Dibakar Banerjee, Zoya Akhtar and Anurag Kashyap(My Fav). I won’t say that my hopes were not met, they were to some extent, but in the end I was craving for more. Craving for that extra icing on the cake, and that extra was satisfied with the title song pictured on the fabulous stars like Aamir Khan, Ranbir Kapoor, Kareena, Sridevi, Madhuri, Karishma, Vidya, Akshay, Imran, Shahrukh and many more…..

First story of this movie is titled “Ajeeb Dastan Hai Ye”, and is directed by Karan Johar. This story deals with homosexuality, and quite surprisingly very differently than Karan’s earlier attempt of “Dostaana”. Story is of a homosexual media intern Saquib, who is working for Rani Mukherji, married to News reader and analyzer Randeep Hooda. Problem arises when Saquib understood that the married couple is not so happily married and this is because the husband is gay. So, out of nowhere he makes a move on him (stupidly, in front of his whole news crew in the office), and got beaten up badly. Saquib again very stupidly went to Rani, and again in front of everyone at her office, announced that her husband has actually kissed him. So lame. Very mature Karan. Well, I really liked the part where saquib got into a fight with his father, slapping him continuously and shouting “I am not a eunuch, I am homosexual. And even if I would be a eunuch, there is nothing wrong with it. There is nothing wrong with me.” I didn’t liked the climax though, in the end it is shown that poor Randeep who was actually a confused soul (gay or straight, who am I?), got thrown out of his house, by the wifey, Rani. End is shown as it is liberating for Rani to finally know that it was not her fault in marriage, it’s his, the husband. And there goes the whole idea behind depicting homosexuality in a broad-minded way. It should have been the liberation of husband, who finally came to know what he actually wants and what he really is. Alas!

Another point which I should have pointed out in the beginning is that the above story does not seem to be related to Indian Cinema in any way. All the other stories have somewhat taken inspiration from the cinema. Moving on to the the next one.

This story “Star” is the most beautifully written. Directed by Dibakar Banerjee, this is the story of a failed star/actor played by Nawazuddin. He believes that if he is good in his work, then work will come to him. Thus, he is mostly without work, even though he proves in the end that he is good in his work. It was a surprise encounter of his mentor’s ghost that actually opens his eyes, and he came to know of the fact that it does not matter if you are good or bad in your work, what matters most is, passion. Passion in what you do. You could be good in acting, but unless you have the passion to leave everything, take risk and completely immerse yourself in acting, you can not achieve success. Realization come and he runs to his daughter and with that passion in the eyes, narrates his whole day to her. The day when he actually worked in a film with Ranbir Kapoor. He sleeps that night, peacefully. As if he has find his Nirvana.

Third story “Shiela Ki Jawani” directed by Zoya Akhtar, is of a little boy, who actually loves dressing up as girl, adores Katrina Kaif, and dances to the tune of “Shiela Ki Jawani”. His father, being a typical male, does not want his boy to go a girly way and impose football lessons on him. This story depicts that as a parent and as a society we are the one who have made differentiation between what a girl or boy can do, and what they are not allowed to do. A father can gift a doll to his daughter and ball to his son but not the other way. A teacher who is teaching classical dance to girls, does not want a boy to even look at the lessons. This is the same society we are living in, who then tell us to raise our daughters and boys as same. Most touching part was when the sister asks the boy, “Do you know, why papa was so angry at you?”. Boy replied “Maybe because I touched mamma’s makeup”. She replies “No, it’s because you were dressed as a girl”. And he said very innocently “Why? Is it bad to be a girl?”

Last story “Murabba”, directed by Anurag Kashyap, truly captures the essence of impact of Indian cinema in our lives. That larger than life image of film stars and the way we relate to them. A small town boy, Vijay goes to Mumbai to fulfill his father’s wish of eating a Murabba blessed by none other than “The Amitabh Bachchan”. This film also shows the honest and pure desire by which small towners still worship their cinema idols. Vijay struggles and try to work out any possible way to reach the mega star, he even try to bribe the security guard at Mr. Bachchan’s house. Finally, he did manage to give Murabba to him, actually persuade him to eat half of it before his eyes. Very innocent. Fun part was when his father tells him the true story behind his encounter with “The Dilip Kumar”. Lesson learn “Never put Murabba in Achaar’s jar”.

I did enjoyed all the stories, some more and some less but nevertheless I liked them. But, it was the end title song “Apna Bombay Takies” which takes your breath away. Phew!!!

Now, I am going to cook myself a good lunch, and there is no sharing when it comes to food. So, you better go and watch a movie 🙂