Kahani (Story)

On a Friday evening at work when my friends called me to ask if I wanted to join them for yet another Vidya Balan movie I was quite sceptical. Being an ardent admirer and fan of her work I must admit I was disappointed watching The Dirty Picture. Contrary to popular opinion that The Dirty Picture was her best work to date I refused to believe so. I had never heard of Kahani until Friday and decided not to look into reviews and just go with a empty mind and zero expectations.

Top 5 Upcoming Action Movies of 2012

Being a die-hard fan of the action movies genre, I cannot fail but notice the array of action movies lined up to hit the cinemas in 2012. So I thought it would be a good idea to compile my favourite upcoming movies for the year. The list has quite a few surprises and mostly the expected entries. Anyways here we go.

The Dark Knight Rises	The Avengers
Prometheus	The Amazing Spider-Man
SkyFall

 

Forces spéciales (2011) : My unexpected foray into French movies

Forces spéciales (Special Forces) was a movie I started watching without knowing that it was a French movie. My first intent was to stop playing the DVD since I did not understand French, however the subtitles helped. Despite the movie being in French, an action movie buff that I am could not resist continuing to watch the movie. To talk about Special Forces in short I can call it as a tale of survival. Whenever I watch a war based action movie, I always tend to benchmark it against one of my all-time favourites Tears of the Sun. Did Special Forces beat my benchmark or did it fail?

The movie features a rich cast of actors in Diane Kruger (Elsa), Djimon Hounsou (Kovax), Benoît Magimel (Tic-Tac), Denis Menochet (Lucas) and Raphaël Personnaz (Elias). The movie was made at an estimated budget of €10,000,000 and released in France on 2nd November 2011.

The Inbetweeners: A TV series spin-off, a run away success?

Since the day my colleague said about laughing her wits out after watching a movie, I could not help but take a shot at the movie. Not knowing much at all about The Inbetweeners and its history, I made myself comfy on my lounge chair to watch. A group of teenagers on a holiday trip filled with lots of booze and sex seems to be a formula that works in recent times. When the movie began, the first thought that ran through my mind was “do we really need yet another American Pie style movie?!”

Anyways I started watching the movie and 96 min later I am sitting in the couch and wondering how different this movie was from any other teenage-booze-fest movie. The truth is – its not different et all!

Hangover III : Coming Soon ?

Sequels have always arose substantial interest amongst us movie buffs. However how many times have we been disappointed ? I know I have turned up several times at  cinemas expecting a swashbuckling sequel only to see my hopes squashed. But there were some select few sequels which did not disappoint me, the Jason Bourne episodes to name one.

 

Mere Brother Ki Dulhan (2011)

Mere Brother Ki Dulhan (My Brother’s Bride), also known as MBKD is a new offering from the Yash Raj Films production line in the form of a romantic comedy. The movie has Imran Khan, Katrina Kaif and Ali Zafar in the lead roles. The movie also marks the directorial debut of Ali Abbas Zafar. The movie was launched all over India on September 9th 2011. I watched this movie last night and I must say it did stir a few laughs throughout and kept the comedy going !

 

The movie says the story of two brothers Luv (Ali Zafar) and Khush (Imran Khan). Luv is based in the London and his younger brother is an assistant director in Bollywood. The movie opens with a bitter argument between Luv and his girl friend Piyali (Tara D’Souza). Piyali is frustrated with his lacklustre approach to their relationship and his laziness to life in general and the argument leads to their breakup. Hurting from the breakup Luv calls Khush and discloses that he broke up with Piyali and wants to get married to someone in India. Here Khush is entrusted with the responsibility of finding a right bride for his brother. Hence, starts the search on matrimonial sites and so forth for the right bride which leads to a host of hilarious and embarrassing situations for Khush and his mates.

 

X-Men: First Class

Guest Post by Ashvin Sawmynaden

X-Men: First Class is an attempt to reboot the X-Men franchise after the debacle of X-Men: The Last Stand when it was released in 2006. The Wolverine movie (X-Men Origins, released in 2009) did not aid the superheroes' cause as it had to be rushed to the screens after it was leaked to the public with most of its CGI still missing.

Thankfully, Hollywood does have a ready-made response to superhero movies that fail to make as much money as they should: Reboots. After Batman's turn under the direction of Christopher Nolan, it seemed logical that X-Men would soon follow suit. X-Men: First Class is the first such movie that hit the screen with the purpose of making us forget about the disappointment that The Last Stand was.

And the one thing that I must say is that this is a reboot worth watching. In fact, X-Men: First Class is almost as good as X2, which is the finest X-Men movie released to date. The one thing worth noting about First Class is that it takes us back to the origins of the X-Men and remains as faithful to the comics as possible for a Hollywood movie. It thus takes us to the time where Charles Xavier (played by a formidable James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) were still buddies and created the X-Men.

I am Number Four (2011)

Rated : PG13

Turning comic books into movies is slowly becoming the norm in Hollywood. I Am Number Four is another addition to the already exhaustive list that's already been released in movie theatres. Its difference with other comics is that it is however more geared towards teenagers and can thus in fact be described as a "teen movie". This is an important thing to keep in mind as other comic movies are instead targeted towards a larger audience.

The premise of I Am Number Four is as simple as it gets and devoid of any major surprises. It involves a teen who gets send to our planet (because apparently, Earth is still the safest planet in comics in spite of all the aliens that get sent here) to escape from a bunch of bad guys. It's pretty much standard, except that the protagonist is the fourth of a cohort of such heroes, hence the title I Am Number Four.