Cast: Neil Mukesh, Zakir Hussain, Dharmendra, Rimi Sen; Director: Sriram Raghavan; Rating: *** Johnny Gaddar isn’t a thriller. Actually the title reveals the mystery. A gang of five semi-criminals hatch a plan to make quick money. The toughest among them travels from Mumbai to Bangalore with two and a half crore in cash. From the [...]

Cast: Imaad Shah, Shreyas Talpade, Nikita Anand; Director: Manish Tewary; Rating: **1/2 IF Chase was the inspiration for Sriram Raghavan in Johnny Gaddaar , then Satre could be the reason why debutant director Manish Tewary chose to focus on the existential moorings of his young hero, Apurv. His hero quotes Satre and reads Hanif Kureishi. [...]

 Cast: Om Puri, Tusshar Kapoor, Tanushree Dutta, Arbaaz Khan, Rajpal Yadav, Payal Rohatgi, Sharman Joshi, Kunal Khemu and Murali Sharma; Director: Priyadarshan; Rating: **1/2 With Dhol, Priyadarshan returns to what he does best: comedy. And like all the comedies he’s known for, this one is also like old wine in a new bottle. Dhol — [...]

Cast: Shabana Azmi, Ayesha Dharker, Jameel Khan, Darshan Jariwala, Manish Acharya, Seema Rahmani; Director: Manish Acharya; Rating: *** “Are you ashamed to be seen with me?”, the only white -American contestant in the all-desi US-based music contest asks his strictly-brown girlfriend Ayesha Dharker. And you wonder, not for the first time during the nimble narration, [...]

 Cast: Abhay Deol, Sarika, Raima Sen, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Vinay Pathak, Gul Kirat Panag, Brijendra Kale, Jogiji; Director: Navdeep Singh; Rating: *** Manorama – Six Feet Under starts on a promising note. Abhay Deol is Satyaveer Singh (SV), a PWD engineer. He likes to write in his spare time and dreams of becoming a famous writer [...]

Album: “Om Shanti Om”; Music: Vishal-Shekhar; Singers: K.K., Sonu Nigam, Udit Narayan, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, Sukhwinder Singh, Shaan, Abhijeet, Rahul Saxena, Sunidhi Chauhan, Shreya Ghoshal, Richa Sharma, Marianne D’Cruz, Nisha Mascarenhas, Caralisa Monteiro; Rating: **** As Diwali ’07 makes its way around the corner, we can all expect to witness the Best of Bollywood [...]

Cast: Bobby Deol, Katrina Kaif, child artiste Dwij; Director: Samir Karnik; Rating: ** Nanhe (Yadav) is a precocious ten-year-old who is lives in Rajasthan and is the sole bread-winner for his family. He is also die-hard fan of super star (!) Bobby Deol and has his sister write to the actor everyday. One day he [...]

Cast: Tusshar Kapoor, Koena Mitra, Shreyas Talpade, Vikas Kalantri; Director: Anant Mahadevan; Rating: ** Janvi (Udita Goswami) is a woman whose life seems perfect on the surface. She runs a business, is married to a psychiatrist Dr Adi Merchant (Shreyas Talpade). Enter Aryan (Tusshar Kapoor) who joins Janvi’s company. She gets drawn towards Aryan. Soon [...]

Album: “Bhool Bhulaiyaa”; Music: Pritam; Singers: Neeraj Shridhar, K.K, Tulsi Kumar, Shaan, Shreya Ghosal, M.G. Sreekumar; Rating: ** Director Priyadarshan’s forte is remakes. Take any of his past flicks like Hulchul, Garam Masala, Bhagam Bhag and the more recent Dhol and you will certainly observe that they are all comic remakes of Malayam movies. And [...]

Album: “Lagaa Chunari Main Daag”; Music: Shantanu Moitra; Rating: *** Music is not just about beating the drums, flirting with the guitar and creating a boisterous atmosphere for no rhyme or reason. In an age, where music has lost the touch of originality and is gripped with meaningless verses talking about everything but the theme, [...]