Celebrity Gossip: May 2011

Kung Fu Panda 2 (Movie Review)

The trailer of "Kung Fu Panda 2" claimed that the film comes with 'double the awesomeness'. For a change, the final product indeed lives up to the tall claims of its trailer with a film that is both funnier and darker than its prequel.

Our fat, lovable and perennially hungry Panda Po (Jack Black), though accepted by his dragon warrior mates is not accepted by master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman).Meanwhile, China has to contend with the rise of Lord Shen (Gary Oldman) who has a master weapon with which he is bent upon destroying Kung Fu and bringing China under his power. The only ones who can stop him is our motley gang of warriors. But the secrets to Po's quest for his parents will threaten their mission."Kung Fu Panda" took upon the well-known concept of the different fighting styles known in Kung Fu and instead of humans doing the different animals' styles, had the animals do their own styles. It invented gags and situations that left the audiences laughing. This part not only takes the elements from the first that made it so popular, but builds upon it to humorous consequences.The film is also an example of how despite being limited by the idiosyncrasies of the characters and situations set in the first part, the modifications and adaptations can be simply wonderful and original under the careful pen of imaginative writers and the camera of a skilled director. The film is funnier, yet the emotional search of the Panda's roots and an evil, power-hungry villain makes it much darker than the original while also making it engaging for serious adults as well. Also, the metaphor of the film, against modernity and destructive science, is extremely serious and 'adult'.History tells us that the genesis of gunpowder, that changed the world, its politics and science, was in China. However, while the Chinese never went beyond using it for fun and fire works, it reached Europe through the Arabian traders. Europe, and Christianity, was going through its dark age then and was engaged in a prolonged religious and economic war with Islam. What interestingly turned the tide in their favour was when the Europeans figured how to use gunpowder in guns. The rest as they say is history which saw Europe colonise most of the remaining world, including China."Kung Fu Panda 2" makes an allegory of the same in the form of Lord Shen (Gary Oldman) who, like the Europeans, figures out the use of gun powder in canons and sets out to destroy China itself. However, while unarmed Kung Fu fighters are able to prevent him in the film, the reality of what Europe did to the world with their new found power is much more destructive. Besides your usual voiceover, the film also features the voices of some other martial arts favourites, include Jean-Claude Van Damme and Jackie Chan to the delight of martial arts fans.The force is definitely stronger with this sequel that expands upon the vistas of the original and whose end foretells another instalment. In itself, it is a film not to be missed by young and old alike.

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Kucch Luv Jaisa (Movie Review)

On paper, this must have sounded like a terrific idea -- to showcase the amazing talent of Shefali Shah, who plays a disenchanted housewife whose husband has forgotten her identity, not to forget her birthday.She sets off on a day of adventure with a mysterious stranger, and discovers reasons to love herself. Wish we could love her as much as we want to. Wish we could share her zest to seize the day. The storytelling, sad to say, distances us from the housewife's zany confusions.The idea of a woman's 24-hour journey into self-discovery needed more careful packaging and a mastery over the emotions that she has to pour out into the script to give the sensitivity that it aspires to achieve.While Barnali Ray Shukla's writing sparkles, she is unable to put the situations on film in that inviting spiral of compelling situations that would make the housewife's predicament endearing and empathetic.Once we get over the initial excitement of watching the housewife overcome her initial boredom, the narrative pretty much settles down to letting the protagonist find her own centre in a story that doesn't quite know how to get going. The narration moves forward in fits and starts.Some episodes hold our attention for the effervescence that Shefali Shah brings into them. Here's an actress who is always in command of the material provided to her. Often we have seen Shefali go beyond the requirements of the script.However, that isn't a luxury afforded to this consummate actress on this occasion, as we see her struggling with dialogues and scenes that seem to have been written with much warmth but little conviction.What sees the film through is the intelligent camaraderie that Rahul Bose establishes with his co-star. This a road movie with the traffic in a state of chaos. We know the neglected housewife Madhu is out for a day of defiant adventure in the company of a sullen gangster who has just been betrayed by his girlfriend. Beyond that, we aren't really allowed to care for the two misfits.By the time the two unlikely companions reach their destination, the plot has reached a dead end. Ironically, the film's best sequences comes towards the end. It's a stolen moment between the mother and her rebellious teenaged daughter in the rest-room where the older woman wants to know if her daughter has ever had sex.This is the only time this sex comedy mentions the 's' word."Kucch Luv Jaisa" is a dissatisfying film about a dissatisfied life. It is littered with situations that had the potential to ignite into furious displays of intuitive intimacy. The moments are mostly squandered in trying to appear sassy, stylish and savvy.A bit more of sincerity and intimacy would have gone a long way into making this film on unrealised dreams blossom into a work of ambrosial possibilities.The pretentious songs on the soundtrack serve as a reminder of how much this film craved for more occasion to cheer the housewife's efforts to rise above her deadlocked existence.Shefali takes the character as far as it can go. Beyond a point, there is little she can do with a script that doesn't quite find its centre.

Mallika: I won't do it with older actors!

Mallika Sherawat adds another tantrum to the list. Apparently for Shalu, an item number in Bin Bulaye Baraati, she refused to shoot with other actors.Veteran actors like Gulshan Grover, Om Puri and others like Rajpal Yadav, Mukesh Tiwari and Johnny Lever were to be a part of the song. Most wouldn't be dancing, but would simply be watching Madame M dance. This was the initial plan, but Mallika apparently, wanted to do the item number on her own, without these actors around. Notes one of the actors, "It was shocking. We had gone for the shoot thinking we'd be filming together. The choreographer Ganesh Acharya shook hands with us but when we went to get our make-up done, he had vamoosed. The film's director, Chandrakant Singh took over and directed the song." As it turns out, Acharya had been pressurised to only choreograph Mallika on a separate day. A unit member says, "This must be historical. The other actors were shot separately and then added together with the item number." However, there was a dance step which Mallika had to do with Aftab Shivdasani and Priyanka Kothari. The source adds, "That was one shot Mallika agreed to do with them and that was done on a later date." Ganesh confirms that he shot separately with Malli but denies that she demanded it. "There was no such problem. Mallika was supposed to shoot alone with the rest of the actors joining her at the end of the song." Gulshan confirms that he shot separately with other actors but expressed ignorance on the reason. "Om Puri, Mukesh and I shot separately along with many other actors. I don't know about the reason. It could be due to convenience, time constraints, cost cutting or date problems. But it was a bit strange to shoot separately, " he says.The film is scheduled to release on 8 July 2011. A source close to Mallika states that she never put forth any such condition. The Tantrum queenMallika threw tantrums on the reality show Chak Dhoom Dhoom and was later shown the door.Had issues wearing a bikini in Double Dhamaal.Reportedly gave Kangna Ranaut the cold shoulder while working on Rascals.Credit :Mid-Day.com

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Love U Mr Kalaakar (Movie Review)

Tch tch.Boy is an artiste.He is humble, generous, kind and compassionate. But what the heck! He can’t keep his sweetheart in the lap of luxury. Girl’s Dad makes the Kalaakar, a cartoonist with a penchant for looking for warmth and humour in every cliché if life, an offer he can’t refuse. “Join my family business, prove yourself as a profiteer and you can have my daughter’s hand.” This, then, is the old-as-the-hills love story into which Tusshar Kapoor and Amrita Rao are thrown together. To their credit the pair gets into the mellow mood of the old-fashioned romance almost as though they’ve grown up watching the Collected Works Of Sooraj Barjatya.Having read some of the savage and dismissive reviews of this film, I am quite surprised to encounter a film which is innocuous and sweet, uncluttured and unassuming in its intentions.Neatly scripted it could do with some trimming in the last 45 minutes of playing-time. However director S Manasvi succeeds in infusing an even rhythm to the proceedings. It is Harindranath Chattopadhyay who said, “It’s very difficult to be simple.” It takes a lot of guts to make a film as simple, honest and and transparent as Love You…Mr Kalaakar in this day and age when Munni and Sheila are happily letting it all hang out and.And Ragini’s love is lost in the lust and greed of an MMS mess.Love You…Mr Kalaakar has a quaint oldworld charm to it. It doesn’t try to be anything but a story of love and trust set against the corporate kingdom. The dialogues though adhering to the film’s ‘filmy’ manoeuvres, are at times enormously moving. Tusshar and Amrita Rao convey a great deal of unalloyed charm in their collaborative romance.While Tusshar has recently found his niche as an actor one wonders why Amrita Rao has not found a place under the sun yet.The film gets a dash of added credibility from Ram Kapoor in the stereotypical part of the heroine’s disapproving father.Kapoor infuses a part belonging to Madan Puri and Pinchoo Kapoor with heart.And the Phool Aur Kante girl Madhoo has now matured into playing the leading lady’s aunt. And a dapper glamorous and sexy aunt at that.One wishes Madhoo had not packed in so many expressions in every shot. Maybe she was making up for lost time in a film that doesn’t try to live up to definitions of contemporary cinematic entertainment.Love You…Mr Kalaakar is just happy being itself.No hang-ups about its lack of innovativeness.

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Ragini MMS (Moview Review)

When Dibakar Banerjee took a previously done concept to make "Love Sex Aur Dhokha" (LSD), he not only created cinematic poetry but its commercial success made its studio greedy enough to replicate the formula. Sadly, what the studio did not realize is that unlike science, in cinema, formulas can not always be replicated. Proof - "Ragini MMS", a clone between LSD, Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity.Uday (Raj Kumar) takes Ragini (Kainaz Motivala) to a secluded house rigged with cameras. He intends to shoot a sex video. What he does not know is that the house is haunted. The sexy twosome, soon turn into a murderous threesome. There are too many things wrong with the film - the jump-cuts are often jarring, there are no subplots, it abounds in all cliches of the horror genre, though the performance of the lead pair is convincing, the others are bad, the ghost may not be wearing a white bed sheet and a candle, but her hazy, ugly witch avatar has been done to death before, the ghost is seen so much that she stops being frightening and the audio during the horror scenes is so loud that instead of the scene, it's the sound that scares etc. "Ragini MMS" does not seem to be the work of one or a few creative soul, rather it looks like the handiwork of many heads trying to break creativity together that end up breaking apart the film instead.One of the most key elements of a horror film is silence. The simplest trick in the horror filmmakers manual is to punctuate the film with lots of silent moments raising a false alarm in the minds of the viewer and striking horror when least expected.There is so much loud background noise put into the film that any sense of nuances is completely lost. The lack of a credible back story or subplots ensures that you don't empathize with your butchered couple. Raj Kumar who almost essays the same videotaping voyeur's role he played in LSD, is underutilized and though a feeble attempt is made at the end to make you empathize with him, it's too late.Also the concept of horror in the film is of western origin - that of pure evil. The Japanese version of horror, which is gaining currency in Hollywood after dozens of their horror films have been remade, is that of empathy for the ghost as well where the film also become a mystery, besides being a dumb slasher movie.Also for horror films, besides a notable exception in Paranormal Activity, linear plots don't work. The unexpected twists in the story do. Ekta Kapoor, who after landmark films like LSD and "Shor In The City", has the chance to become the patron saint of creative directors, needs to remember that a director and his team is hired for their creative vision. She needs to learn to trust them for that.Also, she needs to remember that you can copy a format and a formula, but not style and panache.

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404 (Movie Review)

In one word, stunning! That’s the impact of Prawaal Raman’s supernatural thriller. No creaking doors, no dolby-driven demoniacal sound effects, no half-naked girls running around with banshee shrieks and provocative protests, none of the trappings of the horror genre. And yet 404 (why the prosaic and uninspiring title?) is one of the most terrifying movie experiences in recent times. Leaving behind the gross audio and visual excesses of the horror genre 404 creates a universe of subdued and muted terror within the normal milieu. The music never rises to a crescendo even as the narrative peaks to an all-time high of smothered terror. 404 is the most natural supernatural thriller you are likely to see in Hindi. The excesses of the genre are quietly set aside for a tone of narration that constantly favours understatement. Prawaal Raman is not new to the supernatural-horror genre. In Darna Manaa Hai and its sequel Darna Zaroori Hai Raman never got it so right. In 404 he goes for the jugular and clamps a terror-band around your throat with the fear of the unknown stalking the mind rather than the film’s physical landscape. It isn’t easy to create a sense of foreboding from within the intangible places in the characters’s mind and heart. From the first frame when the film opens at a medical college in a quaint hill station (ah terror in tranqullity, that’s one cliché from the horror genre you don’t mind!) the narrative generates a feeling of darkness and danger lurking in the imposing corridors. And yet the film is never gloomy or dull in mood or visuals. Maybe it’s the luscious art work. More likely, it is just intelligent writing rather than cheap and gimmicky horror tactics that are usually applied to the genre. The smartly-written screenplay about a doughty medical student who befriends the boy who killed himself in the same room has echoic shades of Kiran Rao’s Dhobi Ghat which had the painter Aamir Khan moving into the house of a woman who commits suicide. Dhobi Ghat romanticized the link between the present and past. 404 imbues a sense of tragic regret and doom in the relationship that forms between the present and past room-mates of the hostel room. Lording over the eerie link is a professor of psychology—a true inherior of Shakespeare and Kafka’s legacy, if ever there was one-- battling over his own demons, struggling to keep the wall between the supernatural and rationale up firmly in place, watching it collapse in a noiseless but horrific heap. In the role of the professor who is rapidly losing a grip on reality filmmaker Nishikant Kamat (Dombivli Fast, Mumbai Meri Jaan) turns in the kind of evolved and involving performance that makes all other recent directors-turned-actors look like a harem of hams. Kamat builds the character’s troubled inner world with evocative gestures. His nervous restless eyes and fidgety body-language suggest a profound bonding between the terror in the mind and its manifestation in the outward physical world . Tisca Arora as his supportive colleague and wife is as usual, excellent. As is the newcomer Rajvvir Arora as the boy who can ‘see’ the dead. The film opens as a look at the sorry repercussions of ragging (done here with far more restraint than in Manish Gupta’s over-the-top Hostel) and then builds into an elegant but emphatic treatise on the guilt, memory, regret and grief. The cinematography by Savita Singh is richly layered suggesting deeper meanings in even the most routine moments. The editing by Sarvesh Parab is tight . But economy is not an obsession here. Getting the mood and pace right are predominant. In many ways 404 is an exceptional journey into a mind that sees beyond the physical world. The narrative is blissfully freed of humbug. The shots, even the ones expressly designed to generate horror, are remarkable for their aesthetic precision, warmth and emotional austerity. . At the end this highly original and engrossing work you are left with thoughts on mortality, after-life, death and other jokes. 404 takes the cruel joke that’s life and converts it into a forceful and spirited comment on the world of the spirits. Yes, there’s someone out there waiting to connect with you. 404 takes us on that journey into the unknown with such confidence and warmth that you start believing in an after-life. And that after-life is called cinema. Irrespective of whether you’re a fan of the supernatural-horror genre or not, don’t miss this one. After watching this film you’d never want Ragini to send you an MMS, promise!

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Lady Gaga's promotional blitz for new album offers new business model

NEW YORK, The release of a pop star's album usually comes with the typical cross-marketing splash — strategic magazine covers, a few major TV appearances, and perhaps a cosmetics or fashion deal to remind the public a new project awaits.Yet the social media-powered blitz connected to this week's drop of Lady Gaga's third album, "Born This Way," is bordering on epic, with partnerships ranging from Starbucks to FarmVille, and virtual giveaways of the album's 17 tracks. It also represents the kind of bold, new business model that could help rejuvenate a deflated music industry.Gaga already had a slew of magazine covers, from Rolling Stone to Vogue, and appeared on every high profile show, from Oprah Winfrey to "American Idol" to "Saturday Night Live," as well as her own HBO concert special.But she hasn't stopped there. Starbucks — typically home to easy-on-the-ears artists like Emmylou Harris — is selling her album as well as launching a "digital scavenger hunt" for Gaga-inspired goods; Google Chrome debuted a commercial with Gaga with a track from the album; the online fashion outlet Gilt Groupe partnered with Gaga to offer Gaga-inspired clothing and VIP performances; Best Buy is giving away the album to anyone who purchases a mobile phone with a contract; and Zynga, creator of the popular online game "FarmVille," created "GagaVille," which allowed fans access to exclusive Gaga songs.As if that wasn't enough, on Monday, Amazon.com sold "Born This Way" for just 99 cents as a promotion for their new music cloud service, creating a demand so strong it disrupted the online retailing giant's servers for a time.And it looks like the campaigns are paying off: Gaga's album is estimated to sell anywhere between a half-million to a million copies when the top album charts are revealed next week."It was really about expanding the distribution on this album and going into as many non-traditional retail partnerships and non-traditional marketing partnerships as possible," Gaga's manager, Troy Carter, told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "Just with the diminishing music labels, you want to find quality partners where you know you can reach new audiences and being able to push boundaries as well."

Among the promotions connected with "Born This Way" is the Disney Mobile Tapulous game Tap Tap Revenge, which gives fans access to the entire album and other content if they buy the game,"Born This Way Revenge," for $4.99. It's the first time Tapulous has put out 17 tracks with a game for that price.Tim O'Brien, vice-president of business development at Disney Mobile, said this was the third deal with Gaga, resulting in the total sale of five million songs so far.While they've worked with other pop artists with their Tap Tap Revenge app, he said Gaga — who has 10 million followers on Twitter and was recently crowned Forbes' most influential celebrity in part because of her tens of millions of followers online — is an act with unique appeal."I've never seen anything as powerful as when Gaga hits her social media channels compared to anyone else that we've worked with," he said. "I've never seen anything like it in terms of how she's utilizing social media."In pop history, there have been plenty of attention-grabbing publicity campaigns for debuting albums: Who can forget the huge statues Jackson had erected of himself and placed across the world for his "HIStory" album, or when the Backstreet Boys hit six continents in four days to promote "Black and Blue"? Then there was Jay-Z, who performed in seven cities in 17-hours for his comeback album, "Kingdom Come."But Bill Werde, editorial director of Billboard, calls Gaga's promotional efforts "more of a landmark campaign" for the new music industry."There's nothing about Gaga that's subtle, so I don't see why her marketing campaign would be any different," he added.One of the more unusual promotions was Amazon's decision to sell the MP3 version of Gaga's album for 99 cents on Monday, the day of its release, as part of its Amazon Cloud Drive, which gives consumers personal digital storage space on a remote network or cloud; 20 gigabytes of cloud space came with the album. However, there was such a demand it caused delays for Amazon's customers, a spokeswoman said.Though some people questioned the decision to basically give the album away, Carter wasn't concerned at all, calling the promotional idea "incredible.""I am more concerned about piracy and people stealing the music. If you can get somebody to experience the music at that sort of price for one day only, I think it gets a lot of attention for the album," he added.Werde said that's key in an age where album sales are deflated and serve more as a promotional tool for the artist's other money-making projects, including touring, in an industry more focused on what is called the 360-model of generating revenue."It's one of first big superstar releases that really grasps the potential of the new music business that everybody is talking about," he said. "For a superstar artist like a Gaga, the sale of recorded music — not the quality of the music, mind you, but the sale of recorded music— really gets sort of assumed as a marketing cost to drive this 360-engine."Carter says his data indicates Gaga may sell over 500,000 copies in the first week, and perhaps 700,000; Werde said "Born This Way" could go as high as one million.But Carter says the unique marketing tools used leading up to and during the album's release wasn't just to achieve monster sales for the album's debut."Nobody ever pays attention in the second week," he said. "For us it's about being in this album cycle for the next 18 to 24 months."It seems Gaga-mania won't be easing anytime soon. Source: The Canadian Press

Kashmakash (Movie Review)

How does one go about adapting a popular Rabindranath Tagore novel that’s filled with melodramatic coincidences without making it look like a distant cousin of a Hindi potboiler written by Gulshan Nanda rather than Tagore?

Ghosh has earlier done a delicately-drawn Tagore portrait on celluloid in Chokher Bali. Some of the cast in Kashmakash was also part of Chokher Bali. Raima Sen is common to both. And honestly one can’t tell the difference between her two personas in the two Tagore adaptations by Ghosh.Gosh seems to have dressed Raima up in the same sarees and jewellery in both. Sure, she plays a far more educated and urbane woman in Kashamash. But the physical reality of Raima’s character is determined in both cases by the director’s Bangla aesthetics rather than the demand of the theme. The sarees are more Tollygunj than Tagore. The eye for detail remains impeccable. Ghosh creates the turmoil of the Bengal in the 1920s with glorious gusto. If God lies in the details then Kashmakash is a psalm in silvery shades. Tragically a devil of a mundaneness shrouds the film’s breathtaking recreation of an era when women exuded grace and men inhaled that grace without getting libidinous. Though there are two weddings in Kashmaksh there is no sex. Not that Rituparno Ghosh has ever been shy of depicting love-making. In Antar Mahal he had made Jackie Shroff do unmentionable things to Soha Ali Khan in a bed that creaked suggestively. In Kashmakash there’s no scope for carnal collisions. It’s the story of fugitive intimacy between a man and a woman who are thrown together as man and wife during stormy circumstances. The rest is a mishti mystique filmed in vignettes of stolen giggles and heaving bosoms. Ghosh builds up the storm nicely. But eventually it appears restricted to a teacup. It’s a very elegant cup but nonetheless pretty emasculated in its epic energy. What ails Kashamaksh is the absence of a sexual energy. Jishu Sengupta, a fine actor and a Ghosh favourite, portrays the anguish of an ‘educated’ (read: inhibited) man married to the wrong woman, with the kind of bridled decorum that you wait to break free. It never does. Kashmakash builds up to a storm that culminates in a wimpering winter of pale shades. The use of Rabindra Sangeet in Hindi is as botchy and misguided as any effort to translocate a fragile cultural artifact from its roots to an alien landscape. The Rabindra melodies that usually bring an ache in your heart here leave you with a pang of embarrassment. Turn the page, please. Riya Sen takes care of the rest. As the timid bride who ends up in the wrong bed her voice is dubbed by whiny wimpy woman’s throat that sounds more fake than a bottle of cognac filled with hooch. Voice apart Riya is hopelessly miscast. Prosenjit in a thanklessly abbreviated part is effective. So is the capable Dhritiman Chatterjee as Raima’s father. The father-daughter scenes exude the scent of serenity and graced, sadly denied to the rest of this feeble adaptation. What redeems Kashmakash and finally makes it worth a lingering dekko is the warmth and romance that Rituprano Ghosh brings to his celluloid adapatation. The directly clearly loves his characters and actors.

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Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

The secret of a franchise, besides the usual elements that makes the original click, is to have enough elements that can be improvised, improved and recreated to ensure that the same audience isn't bored by it despite having seen it all. "Pirates of the Caribbean", with its fantasy, quirky characters and explosive action, is a perfect example of the same.In the fourth outing of the franchise, Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) gets the undivided attention in a full film dedicated to him. With its love angles, brawny pirates, the kings' armies, guns and magical lands, the film becomes the perfect adrenalin rush thanks to coordinated work by the film's team.This time we see Captain Jack Sparrow in search of the fountain of youth, with a former flame Angelica (Penelope Cruz) conning the master conman into her ship. The idea is to procure life for her father - an evil pirate Blackbeard (Ian McShane), who it is prophesied will meet his end at the blade of a one legged man - Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush). Together they battle killer mermaids, a Spanish army and treacherous jungles and seas to claim eternal youth. But everyone has their own secret agendas and caught between them all is our very own, shaky, lovable pirate - Jack Sparrow. "Pirates…" is a film every action, adventure film should be - a nonstop adrenalin rush with enough brawny men and twists, even though expected, to keep you rollicking in your seat for the duration of the film.The casting is perfect. Depp reprises his role of the swashbuckling though shaky pirate who lands in funny soups. And though he is as good as before, he seems a tad too conscious in the film unlike in its first instalment.Penelope is no stranger to sword fights. However, it is Rush and McShane who shine in the film.Rob Marshall takes over the directorial chair and though he is new, the strain does not show. Hans Zimmer is again spot on with the background score which does an apt job not only to give verve to the action, but also to fill the many gaps in the movie. The only major drawback is perhaps a very linear plot and very cliched subplots. But if you take the film as seriously as the film takes itself, which it does not at all, you will have a fun two-and-a-half-hour ride filled with sexy golden mermaids, witty dialogues, humour, charm, daring escapades and everything that you have come to expect of the franchise.Thus, the film may be called 'On Stranger Tides' but looking at it you will realise it sails on safe waters. You can expect another sequel to sail on the same waters soon.

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Neither Ashmit nor I believe in marriage: Veena Malik

Pyaar Ka Punchnama (Movie Review)

"Pyaar Ka Punchnama" packs in a precocious punch. In telling the story of three friends-cum-flatmates who get into 'serious' relationships with three self-serving working-class female monsters of the concrete jungle, debutant director Luv Ranjan gives us a film that's fresh, flavourful and finally hugely rewarding.Not that the film attempts to say anything we've not seen before. That's the beauty of this sometimes-embarrassing sometimes- disturbing, often-funny and never-dull peek-a-boo at youthful life in the metropolis where human values are frequently sacrificed for the sake of a trendy lifestyle or maybe just to get even with a fast-moving materialistic city that doesn't care how much you carry in your heart as long as the credit-cards keep working their mall magic.Meet Rajat (Kartikeya Tiwari) who, alas, meets Riya and his life changes forever. Wish we could say, for the better. In terms of an emotional graph and dramatic momentum, Kartikeya is the screenplay's most appealing and inviting character. That the actor plays his character with great gusto, just adds to the charm of the proceedings. No doubt the Rajat-Riya track conveys echoes of the Saif Ali Khan-Suchitra Pillai lamb-and-bully equation in Farhan Akhtar's "Dil Chahta Hai".It's not novelty for which this film wins extra points. It's the sheer energy, exuberance and sardonic humour that the director invests into building a case against young men in the city 'falling' (with a humping thud) in love with girl so ambitious they would climb the highest peak at the slightest pretext. And we aren't talking about the Himalayas.Though there's a delectable sexual subtext to the relationships, Ranjan keeps the proceedings surprisingly free of crassness. The vast eclectic material is nimbly edited in a criss-cross of fast-moving vignettes taken from a suburban immorality tale. Apart from an inexplicable fixation on urination in the dialogues of the first reel, the spoken lines communicate the musk of masculine prattle without getting over-lurid or picturesque.For a first film, Ranjan shows a remarkable grip over his characters' destiny. If Rajat's track moves at a vibrant volition, the nerdy Liquid's (Divyendu Sharma) one-sided devotion to the selfish office colleague Charu (Ishita Sharma) reeks of a desperate romance that Somerset Maugham described in his novel "Of Human Bondage" decades ago.More recently we saw Omi Vaidya do the hangdog Romeo in Madhur Bhandarkar's "Dil Toh Baccha Hai Ji".Divyendu is a solid actor. He gives to his wimpy cranky character an easily-recognisable profile.The plot involving Chaudhary (Raayo Bhakhirta) and his promiscuous lust-interest is the feeblest of the three love-tracks. And it suffers only in comparison with the sturdy momentum that the director allots to Rajat and Liquid's rather sordid love stories. Deftly written and edited with words and situations straight out of real life, "Pyaar Ka Punchnama" is the kind of rugged romantic -comedy that brings the smile back into the genre. The performances specially by Kartikeya and Divyendu are rock-solid, imbuing the light-hearted but never-frivolous goings-on with flavour and strength. Kartikeya's four-minute-45-second improvised monologue on how confusing feminine conduct gets for the male species is priceless in its piquancy.Peppery and pertinent, this is a film that no one should miss. True, it is a story about the below-the-belt follies of the young. No matter what your age you will see a slice of your own spousal relationship in the vicious circle that the plot creates around its three heroes.The ultimate horror flick? You got it! This one is about how scary the man-woman thing gets because most of the time men don't know what women want.You see, woman don't want men to know. That's the secret this devilishly-delightful film lets out.

Rajinikanth fine, don't spread rumours, says wife

Superstar Rajinikanth is "fine" and "doing well", his wife and doctor announced outside a Chennai hospital on Thursday as legions of ardent fans prayed for his recovery.The actor is still in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of Sri Ramachandra hospital but there is no reason to worry, said wife Latha Rajinikanth. "He is fine. It was an infection that has created an imbalance. He has been moved to ICU only to give more protection and give proper treatment because it's a sterile area," she said. "He is fine now."Latha urged the 61-year-old actor's fans and journalists to give her family privacy and not speculate about his health."Rajinikanth is a human and he has a normal body. Please do not create news that may cause tension to his countless fans. I cannot respond to all the news items and gossip that are in circulation, but please do understand that he is a normal human being and like normal human beings he has a normal body that is prone to infection. Please allow us some privacy and peace," she told scores of mediapersons thronging the hospital.Latha denied rumours Rajinikanth suffered renal failure. "Abosultely not, no kidney disorder," she said.Dr S Thanikachalam, senior doctor at the hospital and a member of team that is treating the actor, denied that Rajinikanth had renal failure or a heart problem."He (Rajinikanth) had an infection. It created an imbalance in the body, which is being corrected. We had to examine all that and conducted a thorough check up. Today he is hale and healthy," he said.Dr Thanikachalam said the actor was shifted to the ICU for a "sterile environment" and will be moved out this evening or on Friday.Rajinikanth was moved to ICU on Wednesday to improve his breathing. Rajinikanth, a former bus conductor turned actor, fell ill on the first day's shooting of his new film Rana (The Monarch) at the end of April and has been admitted twice to hospital.He has been in the private Sri Ramachandra hospital since last Friday. Medical sources said he is being treated for pneumonia and a kidney ailment.On Monday, doctors removed fluid from his chest that was causing breathing difficulties.

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