Film: “Bhagam Bhag”; Cast: Govinda, Akshay Kumar, Lara Dutta, Paresh Rawal, Rajpal Yadav, Jackie Shroff; Director: Priyadarshan In a Priyadarshan comedy, one is always comforted in the chaos of colliding characters by the thought that somewhere in the on-going blizzard of bacchanalia there’s a rhythm and a rationale. It’s that thought which keeps you [...]

  Film: “Kabul Express”; Cast: Arshad Warsi, John Abraham, Salman Shahid, Hanif Hum Ghum and Linda Arsenio; Director: Kabir Khan; Ratings: *** First thing first – director Kabir Khan’s directorial debut will not appeal to those looking for candyfloss kind of entertainment. But one should see it for its absorbing intricacies and intelligent narration. It [...]

  Film: “Aryan: The Unbreakable”; Cast: Sohail Khan, Sneha Ullal and Inder Kumar; Director: Abhishek Kapoor; Rating: * 1/2 Sometimes the heart is in the right place. But the spirit meanders. And you end up watching a film that makes all the right moves and yet fails to move the audience. Though it calls itself [...]

  Album: “Guru”; Music Director: A.R. Rahman; Lyricist: Gulzar; Music Label: Sony BMG “Guru” is one of the rare occasions when Mani Ratnam, A.R. Rahman and Gulzar have come together. Loosely based on the life of Reliance founder Dhirubhai Ambani, the film has Abhisekh Bachchan playing the role of the late business icon. “The album [...]

  “Baabul”; Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Hema Malini, Rani Mukherjee, Salman Khan, John Abraham, Om Puri, Sarika; Director: Ravi Chopra; Rating: * 1/2 When you have everything going for you, including a top star-cast and a powerful socially relevant theme, it isn’t easy to mess things up. But “Baabul” does exactly that. Just why or how [...]

“With Love… Tumhara”; Cast: Nakul Vaid, Preeti Jhangiani, Parveen Dabas, Anupama Verma and Sharat Saxena; Director: Kamal D. Nathani; Rating: *1/2 Love is…an unread diary. War-widow Preeti Jhangiani (didn’t she play one in her debut film “Mohabbatein”) gets down to read her dead soldier-lover’s diary. Half a sentence later, there’s an electricity failure. The diary [...]

  Cast: Hrithik Roshan, Aishwarya Rai, Abhishek Bachchan, Bipasha Basu, Uday Chopra; Rating: *** Clever … very clever. That’s the impression you come away with from this sumptuous package of gloss, glamour, glitter and oomph quotient. If you’ve seen the first instalment of “Dhoom”, you would know Abhishek Bachchan and Uday Chopra carry forward their [...]

  After the hit sex comedy “Kyaa Kool Hain Hum”, director Sangeeth Sivan is back to entertaining audiences with the sitcom “Apna Sapna Money Money” releasing Friday. Sivan’s narrative focuses on the lives of a mechanic, a conman, a club dancer, an upright cop, an obsessed father and his homely daughter, a ruthless gangster, a [...]

  Film: “Vivah”; Cast: Shahid Kapur, Amrita Rao, Anupam Kher, Alok Nath, Seema Biswas, Samir Soni; Director: Sooraj Barjatya; Rating: *** Sooraj Barjatya rectifies all the mistakes he made in his first two historic hits “Maine Pyar Kiya” and “Hum Aapke Hain Koun”. The sweet coyness and almost-unbearable bonhomie of his earlier films are replaced [...]

Album: “Baabul”; Music Director: Aadesh Shrivastava; Lyrics: Sameer; Music Label: T-Series; Rating: ** Aadesh Shrivastava in “Baabul” carries on from where he had left in B.R. Films’ earlier family melodrama, “Baghban”, – managing to bring in enough hummable scores and doing a good job. The album rolls off with the reggae-pop-bhangra number “Come on come [...]