Chaahat Ek Nasha...
Director: Jai Prakash Cast: Manisha Koirala, Preeti Jhangiani, Aryan Vaid, Sharad Kapoor
2/10
Having made a big noise about morality in the wake of Ek Chhotisi Love Story, what?s a nice girl like Manisha Koirala again doing in a film like this?
Chaahat Ek Nasha... is sleaze in the garb of a story about two pop divas supposedly modelled on Madonna and Britney Spears. No, there is no passionate liplock between Manisha and Preeti Jhangiani onstage, but director Jai Prakash finds other ways to titillate. Chhui-mui girl Preeti sheds her inhibitions to cavort with her music magnate mentor, Aryan Vaid, both in the swimming pool and out of it. Manisha has been there and done that with the same man, but is scared of marriage. By the time she realises that refusing to marry Aryan means someone else gets to be in the passion play, it is too late. Jealous and drunk, she asks her bodyguard (who, incidentally, is in love with her) to kill her former lover.
The denouement is something perhaps most viewers would not bother to find out, considering every bit of Chaahat Ek Nasha... is such a drag. It really is an achievement to sit through the film. Anybody game for the endurance test?
Ritu Parna Dutta
Parinaam
Director: Tanmoy Mukhopadhyay Cast: Sharad Kapoor, Nagma, Victor Banerjee, Sanjeev Dasgupta, Biplab Chatterjee, Shakuntala Barua, Kharaj Mukherjee, Sucharita Das, (George Baker)
2/10
Cupid has been overtaken this year by one gun-brandishing zamindaar (Victor) who makes it a point to shoot lover-boys at sight. Not convinced? Okay, then ask Sharad Kapoor who combines virtues of a goon-bashing Bruce Lee and a Malhar-belting Tansen (bringing down rain with songs). He loves Nagma (and kisses her at first sight) simply because she used his name to keep ruffians at bay, and to win her father over butts into her household as a butler.
Whatever follows after that in Parinaam resembles a filmed Jatra which could be better scripted by a Bhairab Ganguly than a Monotosh Chakraborty. The reels wasted unscrupulously like untaxed corporation water ? that, too, shockingly by a Tarun Majumdar deputy ? have Victor shouting off and on, seemingly out of his agony of having to play a tormenting, rather than a tormentor?s role. Sharad moves robotically and Nagma, the glam doll, looks mostly glum ?? dull. Songs are either flat or cribbed brazenly from old and new Bollywood hits ? the rain-bringing one being a straight lift from Lagaan. Lenswork (Nandu Bhattacharya) isn?t too bad, though frames don?t always come colour-corrected.
Arnab Bhattacharya
National Treasure
Director: Jon Turtletaub Cast: Nicolas Cage, Diane Kruger, Justin Bartha, Sean Bean, Jon Voight
4/10
On your next Victoria rendezvous, do not sceptically walk away from the man kneeling beside the queen?s monument, desperately fingering every scratch and scribble. Join him, rather. He may well be on to something really big. A Da Vinci code has been discovered behind the mysterious Mona Lisa smile, and the secret to treasure beyond imagination behind the American Declaration of Independence document. Sceptical, still?
Diane Kruger was just as sceptical. Shooed away a bored looking Nicolas Cage and Justin Bartha, who between the three of them steals the show, with his wittier one-liners, when they came to tell her that the Declaration carried an invisible code. Soon was with them, being chased by the FBI and Nicolas?s former partner and now rival, Sean Bean. With the Declaration document being tossed about, hoping to alarm the audience into ooohs of suspense.
But Jon Turtletaub?s National Treasure triggers neither alarmed ooohs, even when the treasure hunters are caved in and trapped, nor excited aaahs, when the treasure is discovered, at last. Glittering, still, hundreds of years after it was hidden by Freemasons, successors to the legendary Knights templar, who thought it was too much wealth to be owned by anyone, even the King.
Your scalp is safe, too. Not much scratching needed to decipher the code. All too predictable, right from the time Nicolas and Sean more or less stroll into the ship with the first clue, as if it was only waiting to be discovered. No mysterious Mona Lisa stuff here. But don?t ignore that man beside the queen please...
Deepali Singh
Sheesha
Director: Ashu Y. Trikha Cast: Neha Dhupia, Sonu Sood, Vivek Shauq, Eildith Macqueen
2.5/10
Who?s the dumbest of them all? There?s no need to ask the mirror ? Neha Dhupia wins hands down in Sheesha. And that, with two meaty roles, the skimpiest of bikinis and about a million shower scenes laid out on a platter for her. Neha goes through the motions twice over as Sia, a flighty mover and shaker from Bangkok, and Riya, her manic, clingy deaf-and-mute twin. The film pans out from there as one long, bad sleaze fest, with Riya trying her best to drag a reluctant Sonu Sood, her brother-in-law, to bed. Sonu tries hard, too hard at times, to look like a latter-day sex god, but he?ll need more than just bulging biceps and bike stunts to prove his weight in Bollywood. And Ashu Trikha will need more than a snazzy foreign location to show he?s got it in him as a director. Get the picture?
Satadru Ojha
