Deepika Padukone – "My Choice" video review

Thinking of a superlative form of 'desperate'; (thinking, thinking)..Nah...nothing comes to mind. Let me give you an example- 

Deepika Padukone – "My Choice" video (picture source: everydin.com)

Ever asked yourself what drove a no-nonsense hardcore professional actress to the realm of  "woman-power" in the real sphere? Social awareness? The idea of doing good for others? Or was it cheap publicity before an imminent release. Or maybe the quest of a launchpad that imitates other actors in the industry who take to the idea of "social welfare" to promote their films. Whatever the reason, it's one video that goes bonkers over the idea of whatever it was meant to achieve.

Once again, like many of her films, this video starts to choke itself on its length after 1:30 and crawls towards the 2:30 mark. Again,  much like many of her films, it's unintelligent, opinionated and unsuccessful in talking to the audiences. Today, times are such that if you share a Facebook status with the tagline "Empowering the women", it will receive quite an engagement, let alone a 1080p HD video on YouTube with celebs like Anupama Chopra, Deepika Padukone and Adhuna Akhtar in it. To be completely honest, I opened it with what you may call "expectations" given such names and the direction of Homi Adajania but to be even more honest, it was an utter and shameless letdown.

The makers seem to think that they will put anything they want into the throats of the audiences and they will gulp it down because it supposedly contains a 'message' aimed at betterment of the society radical feminists to do their 'thing'. Hear out Deepika's narration; seems like the closing statement of  a primary school play and that too being read from a script by some replacement because the other girl was sick that day. Okay then...the visuals, a sort of a rip-off of the classic revolution Ingmar Bergman brought to the screen. Now, the 99 women shown in the video are supposed to be powerful and so the only thing the director saw fit to do with them is to play horror themes with their entrances, let their hair fly off like the iconic sequences of the movie Raaz and show dark shades along their faces...OOOOHHhh...scary.  Soon the video forays into scenes that remind you of Black Swan although it might be a complete 'co-incidence' or better yet an 'inspiration'.

Finally, the choice. Ask any rational, thinking, unopinionated woman in India or even outside India and she would tell you all that is wrong with what has been said about it. Maybe I could have done it; but then again, I am a sexist hog and a tool of patriarchy. Right? 

Bandwidth Verdict: It's high time the precious bandwidth of the country is stopped being spent on trash like this.                                                                                                                                   

Top 10 Mind Bending Movies

Top 10 Mind Bending Movies 

Source: mindblowngifs.tumblr.com/

Cinema started with the idea of amazing the audiences. From then to now, we have moved from surprised to perplexed to stupefied and to flabbergasted with some films. Hence, here we are listing down movies which either require multiple viewings to understand or leave you shell-shocked with a single viewing. The list is my own (therefore in my preferred hierarchy). And the list begins-

#10-The Man from Earth-  

"A talking snake made a lady eat an apple, so we're screwed."

source: pbs.twimg.com

It is surprising how a movie set in a single room and based largely on dialogue has produced a genre for itself at Hollywood. If you are really going to watch this film, please do not visit any sort of synopsis pages to know about it . Let me tell you whatever you want to know. It's protagonists? The actors don't matter. How long is it? 87 minutes. Why watch it? Because it is a work of fiction that will blow your mind.

#9-Perfect Blue- 

"If Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch collaborated for a film, the result would be something like this" - watchmojo.com

source: anime2you.de

Few films need to be so simple in order to be so engaging. Japanese films, particularly Anime has proved animation to be much more than the generally perceived notions. This psychological thriller seems almost impossible from the 10th minute of the movie and creates thin lines between reality and dream. What's hidden beneath the layers is easy and difficult to know at the same time. To not give away any spoilers but to tell you what I mean, let's say that for some, the film ends at 62 minutes while for some, it does at 78.

#8- 2001: A Space Odyssey-  

"Open the pod bay doors, HAL."

Source: francescastephens.com

Before anyone starts cursing me for keeping 2001 at such a low rank, let me make it clear that it is the greatest sci-fi ever made and makes to my top 10 all time greatest movies, let alone this list. But why it is at such a spot here is because excluding, what might be the greatest ending in Cinema history,  the movie is not that mind boggling. The visual effects, the story-line, those frames of evolution, those long shots moving over the spaceships are all classic material but that is not necessarily what we are discussing here. You completely understand what is happening in the movie the whole time and the end is open to be deciphered by the audiences which somehow easily came to me. You watch it again for those aesthetic scenes and not for the meaning. Hence the spot.

#7-Predestination- 

"What comes first, the chicken or the egg?''

Source: filmacizle.com

Predestination is a film that can't be written unless the writer bleeds his hands off while doing the screenplay. Although a keen movie watcher figures out the secrets somehow, the sheer paradox value it provides within 97 minutes of its run-time is unmatched. A loose sci-fi base doesn't mar the excellence of the movie which is an accolade in itself. It does't really deal with deeper truths and ideas like other films on this list but has an entertainment quotient equal to all others.

#6-Strange Circus- 

"The skull was placed on a plate and given to a girl,who then presented it to her  mother."

Source: watchbox-content.s3.amazonaws.com

There are still few films that only Japan can create. You might not have heard of this flick but once you watch this mystery thriller, you will never forget it. It is one movie that takes themes of extreme pain and bewilderment to humanity to their very peak and makes the audience jump off it. Darkness and Circus will have a new meaning for you once you watch it.

#5-Mulholland Drive-

"Just forget you ever saw it. It's better that way."

Source: pbs.twimg.com

When people actually came to understand the brilliance of LH, they loved Mulholland Drive. David Lynch once again was there, not to be tested by the audiences but to rather test them. So he began by building a nice sweet room around two beautiful people and then he crumbled the walls and tremored the grounds. There may be several interpretations of the movie and then again, none of them may be correct.

#4-Upstream Color- 

''As a united whole, humanity no longer has a use for a God who doesn’t care'' - Niki Boyle

Source: Amazon.com

With Upstream color, Shane Carruth graduated from $7k to $50k and from a dark sci-fi that amazes to a bright drama that questions. Without doubt, it does require a second viewing but only when you have solved most of the puzzle in your head in the first viewing. To top its difficulty level, the film goes deeper into similar questions as Persona and questions the legitimacy of lives being controlled by someone. Is that person wrong in doing that and does he need to be punished? The movie does give an answer but you may not like it.

#3-Persona- 

"The human face is the great subject of the cinema. Everything is there."

Source: offscreen.com

 Ingmar Bergman is some Director and Persona is some film. When things boil down to the debate of Idea vs. Execution, this is one film that can win it for the execution side. Beginning with a simple but enthralling story, it throws you exposition when you can't see it and breaks you to a point of absolute disbelief with its ever so famous face morph scene. Although towards the end, you may get a grip of the story but the deeper questions of what actually is our identity and what defines our persona leave you in want of answers for years.

#2-Lost Highway-  

"Funny how secrets travel..."

Source: queenmobs.com

To say something childish here, You literally feel lost the first time you watch Lost Highway. It's later that you try developing some sense out of it and then too aren't sure if it is right. Truth is, David Lynch doesn't really expect his audiences to formulate objective opinions about his movies. As such, with its matchless cinematography, the first 40 minutes of it are as good as any movie ever filmed. And it keeps on boggling your mind till the very end and beyond.

#1-Primer - 

"If you ditch work this afternoon, and promise to do the few small things I ask you; I will in  return show you the most important thing that any living organism has ever witnessed."

Source: yelotv.be

When Shane Carruth made this sci-fi masterpiece in a budget of $7000, little did anyone know that it will prove to be the toughest (for lack of a better word) and most difficult to follow film of all time. After 3 viewings along with some exposition, I could say I was able to grasp the 10 timelines in the movie. And what's the best part? When you see it for the first time, you feel like it's a single solitary linear flick. How about that for a movie ?

Bandwidth Verdict: There maybe films that I have left out because these outdo others for me. As such, all of them are must watch for all serious movie fans. If you people know any good films like these, please comment to share them with everyone                                                                       

Hunterrr

Source: Filmihungama

With the way things have been going about in Bollywood, a film like this was certainly due in the mainstream cinema. What actually surprises the audiences is that for a large part of it, Hunterrr is not a Bollywood film. The boldness and downright lurkiness of the protagonist and its depiction on the celluloid isn't something Indian cinema produces everyday and thus is a consequence of Hollywood influence.

As the theme goes, the central character of the film is Mandar (Gulshan Devaiya) who is a vasu i.e. a player. He has learnt and pretty much mastered the act of being a hunterrr since his boyhood with help from his cousin Dilip (Sagar Deshmukh). When this addict finally decides to get married after he realizes he is old enough for his age to be 'unclish', he gets rejected by several girls when he mentions about his past affairs. Enter Trupti (Radhika Apte) who herself has had affairs in the past and our hunterrr seems to have found an ideal match for himself. The story then is about his frustrations and his longing to be completely honest with the girl he has fallen for, for the first time in his life; And his fear of rejection at that for the first time in his life too.

The story progresses in a highly non linear fashion but there isn't any confusion created and so much credit goes to the screenplay. By doing this, the film talks about the events that have shaped Mandar's character and things he has kept bottled up through his life. You know that at some point, this 'adult-comedy' as people are calling it will get serious and you will get that necessary dose of 'Indian-ness' that is obligatory in a movie. And you do get it; but with a finesse and subtlety that makes you applaud the way the actors and the director (Hashvardhan Kulkarni) find a solution for doing that without much hue and cry. The best aspect of this film is how it catches the mentality of the macdonalds generation of the country and shows them in a light that despite all their shortcomings, you tend to care about them.

Although there isn't much attention dedicated to the technical aspects of cinematography or makeovers, there are some superb background tracks that keep up with the tone of the movie. The performances of most of the actors, including our hero, have been either kept to a minimum so as to depict the sexual aspects of their personalities as the dominating forces or maybe because it is the best they can act. But look at Radhika Apte and look at how far she has come from Rakht Charitra to Badlapur to Hunterrr. She is the perfect balance between an outgoing metro girl and a 50s bollywood heroine and she even acts to that level. Whatever Gulshan lacks in his words, Radhika makes up for it, bringing about actual, intense and dramatic sequences whenever she gets the camera. Hunterrr is thus, although unintentionally, the birth of a future star.

Bandwidth Verdict- Apart from some uselessly incorporated sequences, it could have been a must-watch film. But if you can handle that, this just might be your cup of tea.                                        

Interstellar

Source: Bizarro

The greatest advantage and the gravest disadvantage about a science-fiction film is that they are mostly based on a premise that defies common sense and may not even be possible. Much like Modern Physics and the theories of relativity that defy what we perceive as common sense. But it would be ignorant to say that they aren't true and it would be ignorant to say that Interstellar is complete fiction.

If I were to be completely frank, I would say Interstellar is pretty much another 2001: A Space Odyssey without the mind melting finale it gives. It is a captivating film with visual effects to kill for, a lot of which is shot in IMAX, capturing beautifully the horror of the cosmos. Much like 2001, it talks about man's place in the universe and makes a solid statement at that towards the climax. It tries to juxtapose emotional, scientific, rational and survival instincts, each of equal significance and asks the characters to choose between them. It looks like a pretty easy choice to the viewers but the film shows how reality is far more different.

At a rudimentary level, Interstellar is a lot of science but a lot more of fiction. It addresses paradoxes of time and space but leaves much to the 'magic' of a five dimensional world. So let's leave the science to the explanations of the films in documentaries and talk of it as just a film; and not just any film, n 'All Time Great' film.

Look at Matthew McConaughey, the male protagonist Cooper, who pilots a spaceship carrying a crew to a different galaxy via a wormhole created by some 'higher beings' to search for a planet where the inhabitants of a dying earth can survive and flourish. McConaughey is one actor who takes his role seriously enough to give it his everything. Similar is Cooper's character and so they tune in nicely. Another notable performance comes from Michael Caine (but of course) who plays Professor Brand, a physicist trying to device a theory in order to make it possible for all the earth people to reach the new planet. Caine, undoubtedly, looks intelligent enough to pull this through. Anne Hathaway as Cooper's partner on the ship and Brand's daughter has been given less work than she can actually take. A particularly solid character is that of Cooper's daughter that brings the right amount of emotional mix into the story. All this coupled with time dilation and black holes makes for one hell of a movie to watch.

The best thing about Interstellar is that it is intelligent and silent at the same time. Of course when you incorporate actual science in a movie, you throw in some exposition then and now into the scenes but look at those serenic pauses that it provides you to let the reality of the havocs inside the ship sink into the quiet of the outer space. The movie even succeeds at finding reasonable importance to the melodrama it throws at some points which I initially hated but later pardoned; because the overall excitement and thrill of the movie is awesome enough to complete it without any higher morality or supernatural phenomenon or any brain frying ending.

Bandwidth Verdict: It is an 'All Time Great'. But if you haven't seen it at a theater or in an utterly high quality, you haven't seen it at all.

NH-10

Source: filmibeat

It's a crude comparison to make but in the finale of the epic 'Invasion' story-line of WWE (then WWF), Shane Mcmahon himself fought in an elimination match to save the alliance that he owned then. The move was described as "putting his body where his money was" by Jim Ross I guess. Anushka has done the same as a producer in NH-10.

Anushka Sharma is the Nicole Kidman of Bollywood. She is a professional actress; and that is not a generic word in Bollywood because too few actresses are actually professional enough. Anushka knows how to be the talk of the town and that too for respectable reasons. She knows how to make powerful statements at the right time and how to shed away any weights that might hinder her ascent to the top. And it is safe to say that if she does not fall into any dreams of marrying a businessman and living a life far from B-Wood with charity institutions, she could very well become the Greatest Indian Actress of all time.

But I don't write all this simply because of NH-10. It is a good movie though; dark, speedy and most importantly real (mostly). The credit for all that goes to the director Navdeep Singh to have pulled all this in a convincing and believable fashion. If you forget for sometime that you know Anushka, it may look like a real story unfolding in-front of you. That is until the climax where the Heroine emerges from ashes and lets the audiences know of Woman power. It is a story of a couple Meera (Anushka) and Arjun (Neil Bhoopalam who is 'discount Rajkumar Rao' ), who are caught witnessing an honour-killing crime with Satbir (Darshan Kumaar) as the main villain. It is this old old story in an old bottle and yet it feels like a fresh one.

With the country charged with emotions of Woman power, the film tries to exploit the problems the 'woman of the metro' faces today. Things like that do turn boring sometimes but what's good about this film is that it never makes an issue out of it. There are no moral preachings by Anushka's character, no long monologues trying to depict her predicament even though it would have been good to see Anushka acting those things out. But she tries to do all that with emotions and not words and does a good job at that. Rest of the times, Meera means business.

You will not find any good music in the movie nor any picturesque sequences from a cinematographic point of view. The characters have no make-overs too; they act what they want to look. Look at Deepti Naval who plays a Sarpanch in a village. She doesn't look like one until she speaks and after that she looks nothing else. Except for this, there is no real acting in the movie. By this, I don't mean other actors haven't acted well but that it doesn't feel like acting and it appears they really are those characters. That however, is not a compliment.

All in all, NH-10 is nothing new except for a believable and real protagonist in Anushka.

Bandwidth Verdict: If you are an Anushka fan, watch this. If you are not, watch this to become one.

Dabangg

Source: wallpaperhdfree.com

Salman Khan is Bollywood; Bollywood is Salman Khan. In a show of Kaun Banega Crorepati, the great Amitabh Bachchan once remarked how films that were larger than life were made at his times so that people who turned to the screens after a hard day's work could find solace in a hero who had the world at his disposal and for once could forget the hardships of life. Those hardships still persist and thus, Salman's movies persist too.

And Salman has brought something uniquely original to Bollywood with Dabangg. He has brought style to Robinhood, spice to the anti-hero and awesomeness to the downtrodden cop whom the industry has degraded since its very inception. He plays Chulbul Pandey, a cop who is all that I mentioned above and more. With an Uttar Pradesh setting, he throws around multiple colours of his personality so much so that his flamboyance is reason enough to fall in love with this movie. But things don't stop here. There is an antagonist in Chhedi Singh (Sonu Sood) who is almost a match made in heaven for Chulbul. And then there is Sonakshi Sinha in her debut role of  Rajjo, who is volumptuous by present standards, but is so easy on the eyes and more so on the screen that even the camera seems to fall in love with her and can't choose between her and Salman whenever both are in the same frame. She seems so comfortable to work with as a co-actor that the chemistry crops up of its own when she is involved.

Dabangg is a style statement all the way. The belt-buckle twist, the goggles on Salman's back, the undodgeable insults bring you a fresh new form of heroism. The songs, the fights, the emotional confrontations and the sheer ball-fights are all so stylish that it is a sin to miss any minute of it. Dabangg has some of the most rustic yet memorable one-liners, a tradition that seemed to have died post the 70s bollywood but is revived now, and moments that will forever remain a treat to the eyes. One such sequence comes during an item number when, for pretty much the first time in Cinema, the hero comes out uninvited at the villain's lair but he comes out grand and not only that, he goes on dancing with the girl of the moment with steps that will be immortalized in Indian weddings. This moment is going to be a turning point in movie-making for days to come; people will try to imitate it, recreate it and replicate it but they would not be able to create the same magic again.

Chulbul Pandey in the movie is a hero; he can't really exist and neither does he try to. Salman doesn't try to make his greatest character a common man. He wants him to be a super-hero. He aspires for Chulbul to solve all his problems just like that; without any hue or cry. Salman seeks solace from his predicaments in real life by doing all this in reel life as Chulbul. And this is one of the most important things that cinema stands for. Salman Khan does all this without preaching a word about any higher morality and this is why audiences love him and this is why we will always adore him.

Bandwidth Verdict: If you like Bollywood, always keep a copy of this flick with you; who knows when you feel like having a solid dose of fantasy.

Haider

Source: Naturallyblabby

Sometimes in a movie, you love what the mind likes and at other times, you like what the heart loves. If your movie watching does not fall into any of these criteria, then this review is not for you.

With all due regard to people who appreciated this movie, for me it was a below average flick and should not have garnered the sort of acclaim and appeal that it did.

I haven't read Hamlet, which although should have facilitated my viewing of this film for as they say, "The Book was better". Still, seeing Haider (Shahid Kapoor) as the Kashmiri boy fighting to avenge his father's killing and what he does with this rage of his just doesn't get things going for me at any point of time. And I consider Shahid a good actor but Haider is not a good enough role. There are just too many 'topics' that are supposed to mould Haider in the movie but none of them gets the screen-time enough to show any impact on his character. Haider ends up, in a way, a by-product of everything that goes on in the movie instead of the supreme protagonist he is supposed to be.

Vishal Bhardwaj as a director does bring those dark shades into his characters but here they are just slow but not dark. Even the dialogues given to actors of the caliber of Irfan Khan, Tabu and Kay Kay Menon do not sink in enough to let the audiences feel connected with the theme. Tabu plays Haider's mother Ghazala, who seems to have moved on after his father's demise finding solace with her brother-in-law Khurram (Menon) but even an important role like this has been sidelined to show I don't know what. The only believable character in the movie is, surprisingly, that of Shraddha Kapoor who plays Haider's love interest Arshia.

The technical fields are also not anything to talk about. The shady cinematography and lukewarm choreography leave much to be asked. The fight sequences are plain and do not invoke any emotions whatsoever. Haider's makeover is classy though and full points where they are deserved. The tragedies don't get enough frames to make the viewer care for the people in the film. The movie is a letdown on multiple levels.

To add to all this, there is some unusual physical tension between the characters of Ghazala and Haider which is crude and irresponsible film-making to say the least.

Bandwidth Verdict: The Bandwidth Review 'slams' this movie. It is not worth the effective three hours time of anyone, however free he/she might be.

Queen

Source: Filmibeat

There is a sense of sheer pride and happiness you feel when some form of art depicts exactly what you feel like; when your own frequency tunes with that on the screen and when your heart makes an extra beat every time you see the pulchritude of real life on the celluloid. Queen provides you all of this and more; much much more.

For most of it, Queen is not about the plot. A girl Rani (Kangna) who gets dumped by her fiance a day before her marriage and her struggle to get out of this trauma has Bollywood written all over it. But look at this movie and look at Kangna who chooses to do this 'getting over' by embarking on a solo honeymoon that she had been planning for so much time. And as someone said so aptly, sometimes we travel to discover the world and sometimes to discover ourselves, Kangna's journey, and I say 'Kangna' instead of saying 'Rani' because I don't think any other actress could have pulled this off so beautifully; Kangna's journey is a landmark in Indian Film-making and would be remembered for all times to come whenever good movie-making is talked about.

A beautiful aspect of Cinema is that you don't really know who will come out of nowhere and deliver a masterpiece. As of Kangna, it is known how good she can be with her films like Tanu weds Manu, Fashion and Ganster. But Vikas Bahl, with his second directorial project only,steals the show like very few Indian directors ever have. His screenplay based on his observations of what really is the life of a Delhi girl can be guessed by his remark- "first half, Rani gets over the guy, and in the second, she gets over herself". The film, although made in a small budget and that too with great difficulties in production, has some of the most classy cinematography and stylish sequences one can find these days. All this coupled with some awesome background score makes it, pretty much an 'All Time Great' film.

And I am not joking when I say this. If ever you feel like watching some authentic method acting in a Bollywood movie, look at the sequences when Rani gets drunk and loses her inhibitions going all out about her world and her dealings with the people who constitute it. Kangna has cemented herself as the real queen of Bollywood with this film and as an actress, the makers can bank on for a combination of terrific acting and good looks.

Queen is pretty much the film of the decade for me; Not merely because it is so very enjoyable but also because it does not try to preach the ever so boring saga of  radical Feminism to the audience. It is a real victory of womanhood without any pretentious sage like female lead uttering cliches like " that is how a woman is always treated" blah blah blah. With Queen, Bollywood has grown up from an infant who keeps crying when he/she needs something to a thoughtful child who knows what he/she WANTS and knows how to get it.

Bandwidth Verdict: There are films without which there is something missing in our lives. Queen is one such film. 

Badlapur

Source: Careermasti

Bollywood movies have always had a peculiar distinction from Hollywood films- Speed. This does not actually mean that the story-line progresses itself at a faster rate but that within a certain time frame, very few eventful things happen in the movie so that you don't actually feel like having seen, say an hour of a film and Badlapur is no different.

As a viewer, one always has qualms from movies like this. The biggest for me was Varun Dhawan as the lead actor in the movie. If I were to be completely honest, I would say that Dhawan can't act for balls and that is the main reason the makers had to resort to unseaming and irrelevant shades of violence to compensate for this lack of his. Still, the movie is replete with some strong performances.

As the title goes, it is a story of revenge; don't let yourself get fooled by any 'higher philosophies' of 'change' or 'transformation' that although the movie seems to hint at but can't. Raghu (Dhawan) loses his wife Misha (Yami Gautam) and kid as they become victims of a hot-blooded murder. Who did this to him? The movie doesn't care about keeping any sort of suspense about it because it wants us to hate the man who did it, Laik (Nawazuddin) who is dark, shady and cunning. The movie however, tries too hard to create a worthy adversary of him in form of Raghu and loses the plot-line altogether doing that. But you don't get bored; you have Harman, Laik's crime partner, played by Vinay Pathak, the ever so entertaining care-bear and the surprise package of the film, Radhika Apte as his wife, who is although good in the movie for all the bad reasons, steals the show whenever she is in the frame. 

In one telephone talk with Liak, she beats Nawaz's dialogue delivery in a single line of three phases which is utterly awesome to watch. There are some other supporting acts too but those are useless and socially awkward. There is Huma Qureshi who plays Jhimli and upon whom I would not comment anything because it would be too damn cynical. 

The movie is made so as to create a noir feeling and bring about the greyness of the world. But it is a blunder on the part of the makers. This is because this greyness is created to bring about a sense of closeness to reality in films and to show how real people would behave given a similar premise. But the movie contradicts everything it stands for.

At the end of the day, it is a fresh movie but there wasn't any need of the Adult content in the movie. Also, any better actor in place of Dhawan would have changed the movie considerably.

Bandwidth verdict: It is a one-time watch Yes. But watch alone.

OMG: Oh My God !

In season 8 of The Big Bang Theory, there is a scene when Penny, a bimbo fresh into marketing, talks to his fiance Leonard, a boffin with an IQ of over 170, about how if her job turns good, she would be earning a lot more than him and how it might create financial drifts between them. As a man of reason, there are some things I know for a fact and understand to be true; yet it hit me hard when I heard this. How a super-genius physicist can be less valuable than a fresh out waitress? And then I saw PK.

OMG came in 2012 and raised questions about religion similar to PK but in a serious way with tremendous ardour. Although, such things are utterly pointless as there is nothing really wrong with religion in anyway, I see no harm in taking this movie (and not PK) as a good enough flick to browse through and enjoy. Yet OMG made ₹105 crore whereas PK made more than 6 times of that even though it wasn't half a film as OMG.

Of course, it was evident as OMG was a minnow to PK in terms of marketing, distribution and number of screens. But look at these movies at a go once. First OMG , then PK and tell me that you don't feel disappointed after watching the latter. OMG is some film; and Paresh Rawal is some actor.

It doesn't matter if it was an adaptation of a play or an Australian film; OMG is a superb movie that is not a story of Man vs. God but of Man vs. his disbeliefs. You have Kanji, (Paresh Rawal), a man in a real predicament who is an atheist but constantly donates money at places of worship; a man who has lost his everything in an earthquake but is determined to get it back even if he has to sue God himself to do it. The magic of the movie is that he actually does it and that too in a manner that will keep you amazed throughout the 125 minutes of the movie.

The best thing about OMG and why it did not spark so much controversy is that it embraces all religions and their teachings, respects them and does not make fun of them. It simply asks questions, and that too not to preach anything to the masses but to get a man what he believes he deserves. It does get wrong at times but what piece of art based on such an issue wouldn't?

OMG has some stylish method acting by Paresh Rawal and epic courtroom scenes that you will not have witnessed anywhere else. It has a good enough antagonistic bench with Mithun, Govind Namdeo and Poonam Jhawer. And then there is Akshay Kumar, also a producer of the movie who plays God himself ! Spoilers eh? Only if you are a non-Indian because the trailer gives it all away. All this along with a justified climax, that although may be shunned by some as cowardly, is the best thing that could have happened to this already awesome movie.

All in all, OMG is a film you MUST choose any day of the week over PK. Because although both films preach, you will take OMG home with you and remember something that is not bad at all.

Bandwidth Verdict: As another verdict stated, It's one movie you must watch.

Like Stars on Earth (Taare Zameen Par)

Source: photobucket

Do you know the scientific meaning of the term 'extrapolation' ? It is "the process of estimating, beyond the original observation range, the value of a variable on the basis of its relationship with another variable". In short, making unknown conclusions with little known data. This is what Taare Zameen Par actually does.

It tells you a story of an instantaneously lovable boy (for the audiences i.e.)  Ishan (Darsheel Safari) who as always in Aamir Khan films, is somehow surviving in this 'hell of a place' called society. He is dyslexic, but nobody knows that, not even he, and is thus scolded and dismissed by his parents and teachers as unfit to cope with his syllabi. Enter Aamir, as a part time teacher Nikumbh, who understands his problem, much because he can be called a specialist at that. And then follows the never ending screenplay filled with teaching and preaching to, not Ishan, not even his parents or other teachers, but to the society as a whole (as if something is really wrong with it). 

If you know how to fool your audiences, you become a good film-maker. And I have no qualms with that. But NO ONE has the right to give a wrong 'message' to the society and no one has the right to EXTRAPOLATE a particular case (read point)  and try to fit the whole curve of the society in any way he/she likes. "A child who has to have his own way becomes wayward" and this statement will remain true for all times, even when nobody remembers this movie.

Huff....Let's come out my cynicism and try to enjoy a movie that we MUST forget as soon as we are done watching it. Look at Darsheel Safari playing Ishan with a brilliance that will never be repeated in his bollywood career and Commerce and Economics will remain his stay for the times to come; Look at the famous ' diary scene' showing the separation of a child from his parents; And listen to that awesome song collection ranging from the screeching "Bum Bum Bole" to the ever so soothing "Meri MAA". 

Do all these things, do them. But don't let anything get into your head.

Bandwidth Verdict: If you have a cool head with a working brain, this movie would not hurt you.