Morigaon Online: Latest Entertainment News - Mira Nair likes Tusshar's Shor In The City

Latest Entertainment News

Mira Nair likes Tusshar's Shor In The City

April 23, 2011 at 12:08 PM

'Shor In The City is up for it's theatrical next week. Also in the year gone by the film has travelled film festivals across Pusan, Duba and New York. Appreciated by the critics, the film had fetched high ratings for itself with wide coverage in international media as well. In fact a special mention had come from Mira Nair as well who was quite excited about the film's unique narrative. "Yes, she really liked what she saw and was pretty generous in her appreciation", Tusshar smiles, "See, the fact is that Shor In The City bears the kind of sensibilities that works for the regular audience as well as the international viewers. Though it is not a regular Bollywood entertainer, it has that distinct Indian appeal to it which makes it stand out in the crowd." Generally though when a film makes it to the festivals, the tag of offbeat gets attached to it. Tusshar however has taken it upon himself to change this perception with Shor In The City. "On the contrary, the kind of audience response that I saw in the festivals woke me up to the commercial viability of the film", says Tusshar whose last release was a far more commercial Golmaal 3 (2010), "The film was appreciated by not just the folks who frequent festival circuit but also the regular NRI/crossover crowd. You know the kind of crowd for which a Hindi film stands for Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham. In any case Shor In The City was not made just for the festivals. Still, after testing waters at the festivals, we knew that we had to expand our horizon now." Tusshar admits though that this isn't for the first time that an Indian film has managed to bear a stamp of the new wave and does acknowledge that attempts like these have been made in the past as well. "There have been films like Love Sex Aur Dhokha and Life In A Metro which cut across boundaries", he says, "They can work in festivals as well as entice youth worldwide. Shor In The City too has a similar appeal. It is neither a documentary nor a slow drama. It is very crisp, edgy and fast paced fun film. If you ask me to define a genre here, I would say it should be looked at as an entertaining black comedy." The moment he says the word 'comedy', one is bound to start drawing a parallel with many a comic outings that Bollywood indulges in every passing month. What has the director duo of Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK resisted the temptation and done something really different with the comic genre here? "Don't worry, it is definitely not your regular slapstick comedy here", assures Tusshar with a smile, "Shor In The City is a little dark in it's presentation but it does have entertainment through humour at the same time. It has elements of thrill and drama at the core of it. Uske saath saath the genre of black comedy also flows along. At the end of it all, it is masala film which has a mix of everything."

Subhash K Jha speaks about Dum Maaro Dum

April 23, 2011 at 11:34 AM

By the end of it all, only one love story comes to a happy ending in Dum Maaro Dum. Maybe one is not allowed to say which. What one can safely say without the risk of sounding like a spoilsport is that love is not a popular emotion in the world that Rohan Sippy's edgy thriller encompasses. If one loves in this hell-hole of pleasure then there's only a dead end to look forward to. This film is certainly not a ride for the squeamish. Violence dominates the proceedings like a mistress who knows she can stop the sex and related pleasures any time. Ladies and Gentleman, welcome to the other Goa. The one that we don't see in Hindi cinema… unless we look really hard and come up with Pankaj Parasher's Jalwa 24 years ago. There too Goa became the scene of a watchable drug-busting drama. In DMD, the characters in Goa are constantly up to something self-destructive. You really can't afford to take your eyes off the screen as the lives of three unlikely 'heroes'--one a redemptive cop, the other a student who sells his soul for a scholarship and the third a musician trapped in discordant notes-- converge in most unexpected ways. But then the 'unexpected' is only expected in a film that addresses the uneasy nexus between crime and conscience in hedonistic Goa, without taking sides. A tall order, indeed. The temptation to just damn the drug abusers and traffickers and lump them together as the scums of the Goan underbelly must have been predominant when Sridhar Raghavan sat down to write the bustling screenplay. DMD avoids getting judgemental. The writing doesn't assume a position of moral superiority over Goa's inglorious crime syndicate. Probing into the anatomy of the global drug racket in Goa, the film sweeps us with a violent jolt into a world of doom and damnation where the innocent must perish and the incorrupt must suffer. The screenplay bulges with characters taken from the book of life who are turned with seamless skill into cinematic emblems empowered with the strength to represent that grey area between Good and Evil where all competitive societies are uneasily position in today's day and age. Dum Maaro Dum

Abhishek Bachchan's cop's role as ACP Kamath acquires an interesting moral ambivalence. Yup, the celluloid cop has evolved from the seething simmering Bachchan persona in Zanjeer to the laconic almost-cynical and acutely suffering law enforcer in DMD who must make hard decisions not in the last reel but Reel Now. The vehement violence and illicit wealth of the crime syndicate and the immediacy of its annihilation are brought into one jagged but unified line of vision. Often Rohan Sippy's direction seems to favour the craggy uneven route. But hey, that could just be Amit Roy's moody cinematography capturing the crowd sweat and greed of the Goan drug cartel. Sippy displays a tremendous partiality for restless visuals. The characters are always on the move though their destination is a mystery even to themselves. Maybe their aspirations are over-run by their greed. The narrative never stops long enough to let us come near to the characters to feel the heat of their hurt. A breathy wheezing anarchy rules over the universe that Rohan Sippy's arching cinema embraces. While the script seems to loathe the idea of making breathing space for emotions, some of the characters sneak in a warm regard for their individual space in unguarded moments of vulnerability. Abhishek Bachchan's mourning for his lost family runs through the film like an aching limb that cannot be amputed from the proceedings no matter how hard it tries. To the cop Kamath's role Abhishek infuses a kind of supple laconism that makes this suffering cop remarkably free of self-guilty, not to mention the khaki uniform. How one wishes Kamath's relationship with the troubled world around him was allowed to grow. The only time we see him in an interactive mood is with his subordinate Mercy who true to stereotype, gets bumped off. Has the film been edited (by Aarif Shaikh) too tightly, sacrificing the need to let the characters space for emotional growth for the sake of getting on with the process of cracking the case?

Very often we want to enter the pain-lashed soul of the characters, the underage boy played by Prateik (vulnerable, again!) who gets caught on the airport while trying to smuggle out drugs. The musician Raba Daggubati (striking debut, this) who loses love to crime. The crime-lord's mistress, Bipasha Basu (fetching in her trauma),who in a haze of numbing alcohol and drugs, wonders when she lost her innocence. That is a question that runs through the plot. And runs too fast. On some deeply ironic level Dum Maaro Dum celebrates that loss of innocence which haunts the beaches of touristic paradise. Good hearts are often sacrificed for the good times. And yet we see glimmers of stark humanity in Rohan Sippy's characters. It's not in the way the actors play these people. It's in the way fate plays with the characters' dreams. Rohan Sippy's Goa is an irreversibly blemished paradise. Though visually plush the hard-hitting content is not overpowered by style. And yes, the only time the disappointing soundtrack comes alive is when strains of R D Burman's 'Dum Maaro Dum' play in replicated splendour, reminding us of the poor quality of the rest of the music.

Aguilera honoured on Gay Walk of Fame

April 23, 2011 at 11:21 AM

Christina Aguilera has become the first celebrity to be inducted into the Hollywood's 'Gay Walk of Fame'.

"Josh Harnett loves India" - Bipasha Basu

April 23, 2011 at 11:03 AM

Bipasha Basu has just returned from Orccha in Madhya Pradesh where she was shooting Roland Joffe's Singularity with Josh Harnett and Abhay Deol. She brightens up at their mention. "Rana Daggubatti, Josh, Abhay...at last I am shooting with tall co-stars. Josh is really tall...6 feet 3 ½ inches. I end up looking very small in front of him." She's immensely impressed and influenced by Joffe's unit's affinity to India and Indian culture. "I feel I am less Indian than they are. I had never been to Orccha. If it wasn't for this film, I'd have missed one of the most beautiful spots in our country." When she reached Orchha, Bipasha couldn't stop complaining about the mosquitoes and lack of amenities. "But the foreign unit just blended in. They loved the place, the food ...everything. I soon fell in line." Bipasha Basu didn't know how to hold a sword, let alone wield one when she reached Orchha in Madhya Pradesh to shoot for Roland Joffe's Singularity. "There was no time. I learnt to use the sword on the job. And now I feel I've been doing it for all my life." Says Bipasha, "80 percent of Singularity will be shot in Orchha. And the remaining in London in current times. The film is located in two time zones - 18th century India and present day England. I don't figure in the contemporary portion." So while Josh leaves for London after the Orccha schedule, Bipasha heads for Russia. Bipasha was not in Mumbai for the release of her much talked-about Dum Maaro Dum (DMD).Talked about ...for all the wrong reasons. First there were the stories about her being miffed with Deepika Padukone. Then there was link-up with her DMD co-star Rana Daggubati. Said Bipasha, "I've done whatever I could for Dum Maaro Dum. I'm here in Orchha. Then after returning to Mumbai, I immediately fly to Russia for Abbas-Mustan's Players." Incidentally, the deep connection with Abhishek Bachchan is clearly a delight for Bipasha. He is one man she doesn't mind talking about. "Abhishek is in DMD and Players. And the last unit that shot in Orccha before us was Abhishek's Raavan. Do you know, Singularity is the first period film that I am shooting? But Abhishek and I were supposed to start our careers together with a period film (J.P Dutta's Aakhri Mughal)." Bipasha Basu is still smarting under the blow that the disappearance of her phone delivered on her self-confidence. Days after incident she tries hard to not to sound shaken about it. "I don't know who played a prank...or can it really be called a prank since twisted messages were sent from my missing phone to my friends and to the media. The instrument re-surfaced just as mysteriously as it had vanished. Though I am calling it a prank I am not amused." Bipasha has decided to keep her phone in the safe-custody of her business manager. "I am not much of a phone person. And this incident has made me even less enamoured of my phone. I'd rather do without something that poses a potential threat to my peace of mind."