Rushed review of Rush.

Since I enjoyed two Emraan Hashmi films from last year so much, Shanghai and Jannat 2, I figured I wouldn't mind seeing a third one as well. Rush is a debut direction from Shamin Desai, who passed away before the film could be completed, leading to several delays. Finally the film was finished by his wife.

Rush takes place in the world of 24-hour news channels, where Samar (Emraan Hashmi) gets fired because he interviews a hitman, who boasts about killing the influential friend of the news channel's owner. Soon Lisa Kapoor (Neha Dhupia) contacts him with a luxurious job offer to become the chief editor of Crime 24, a crime-reporting network, where he gets full editorial freedom, company car, apartment and other significant perks. As you can imagine, it's a bit too good to be true..

Knowing the production history, the film in all its poor quality begins to make more sense. The promos give promise of a pretty slick film, but what is actually revealed inside is a muddled fever dream of somebody who's stayed up too late, watching trashy 24-hour news networks. Rush attempts to portray the honest journalists, slaving away to uncover the corrupt civil society for what it is, but whatever interesting ideas it contains (and the minor 'twist' is predictable from the get-go), those get lost inside all the bad acting, bad dialogue and badly integrated song sequences. Probably the best thing about the film is the fact you get a glimpse of Sagarika Ghatge (better known as Preeti from Chak De India) as Emraan's girlfriend, and even she's not great in this.

As far as Emraan goes, because the film began shooting in 2010, you can see this is probably still the stone-faced Emraan of old. While he's had fans throughout his career, I think there's a very good reason why he only gained serious mainstream success starting with The Dirty Picture - the man just wasn't a very good actor before. He had the delivery of lines, but none of the emoting capabilities we've seen him with as of late - it's almost as if he's sleep-walking through these older films of his. If I was ever planning on checking out more of his filmography, this film convinced me not to. The films don't interest me on their own, and it seems even his acting is unlikely to impress me, so I'm better served by just following his future ventures.

In summary, Rush ..just don't.

Abhay party update: I admit it, drunk already.

I am crossing the border between sane, clinical interest and into the wild realms of crazy-enough-to-get-all-completist when it comes to Abhay Deol filmography. But you can't possibly blame me, because just like Siddharth, my only other object of filmography completism, this man does not make bad films.

He really doesn't.

So of course I'll keep watching. Insert narcotics addiction reference of choice.

Oh well. At least his films don't come with a 30 dollar shipping charge from BhavaniDVD (yes I am looking at you, Siddharth). Plus it's always great to know that I'm not alone. If I was truly crazy I'd get completist about somebody who boasts a 200+ credit filmography and has been known to appear in some stinkers, right? These guys with their barely 10-film long filmographies are peanuts.

But really delicious peanuts.

Ek Chalis Ki Last Local (2007), directed by Sanjay Khanduri, is a bit of a weird one. It's a black comedy about two people who miss the last train (that leaves at 1:40 AM) and try to kill a few hours to catch the morning one. In the beginning of the movie, Nilesh (Abhay Deol), our narrator, has walked away with 2 crore in a suitcase, but how? A movie-long flashback scene begins. First he crosses paths with Madhu (Neha Dhupia), who is also heading towards the same part of Mumbai as he. It's a bit of a Kaminey Lite - we see various characters in different situations and towards the end, most of them part of the underworld, things get messier, and we see the individuals coming together. It's all just a little Tarantino, for better or for worse.

I had some small irks, like how boring the characters besides Nilesh and Madhu are, and how I didn't really care about what happened to them, or the romantic arc, which is definitely one of the strangest I've seen in a while. It starts out as frank sexual desire on Nilesh's part, as well as a bit of a saving-the-girl complex, then dissolves into something undescribable, then Madhu does something one could only do to somebody they truly cared for, and by the end.. Well, see it for yourself. Throughout the film there was a bit of an uneven feel to it. I liked it but at the same time I felt like I shouldn't like it.

But overall, I definitely liked it. Like Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!, it had me constantly chuckling to myself, even if the humor here is broader in some ways. Abhay is great and Neha Dhupia totally reminded me of why I like her; the role is not the most typical but she gives it great edge. And she's of course amazingly gorgeous. The kiss between them (yes! there is one!) happens under bizarre circumstances storywise, but visually it's great, not awkward in the least.

Ahista Ahista (2006) is quite honestly the Abhay Deol film I've liked least so far. The plot tells of the aimless, ambitionless Ankush (Abhay Deol) meeting Megha (Soha Ali Khan) who has eloped to Delhi but her boyfriend never shows up. Ankush takes care of her, makes sure she has a roof over her head and as she gets settled back into a regular life, he slowly falls in love with her and also manages to make progress with his own life as well. The story is fairly unbalanced towards Ankush's side of things; we see very little of what Megha thinks or feels. Soha does a great job portraying some of it with her eyes rather than dialogue, but it still feels like we're missing one half of the story.

Normally I'm not one to chuckle at lame "hey this word means another thing in some other language" but whenever I type "ahista" I am reminded of the Finnish colloqualism, "ahistaa", roughly meaning "I'm feeling distressed/anguished." The verb ("ahdistaa") used can also mean "pressure" so I guess the idea is that you're feeling pressured from all sides, feeling trapped somehow.

It certainly in some ways describes my feelings towards this movie, even though I know the Hindi meaning is quite different. I never get a sense of whether the film is trying to be a love story or a coming-of-age story or both or neither, and the ending really kills most of the fondness I had for the movie. I hate to say this because I know Imtiaz Ali normally writes good stuff (he scripted this): the ending is just bad writing. I disliked the second half so much I began skipping and what I did see of it was not good. I suppose the ending in some ways may seem logical. But I just wasn't into it.


And now I have to recommend everybody out there watch CNBC TV18's Beautiful People interview with Abhay Deol. Part 1 of 3 is here. Seriously, seriously good stuff, including what makes an independent film in the Hindi film industry (vs non-Indian ones), art vs craft etc. Some people may disagree with me on the interviewer but I rather like her. She puts actors on the spot, and doesn't necessarily make them feel comfortable by patting them on the head and showering them with compliments all the damn time. Her interview about Salman Khan is also worth a look; Salman looks positively pissed off at her, but he reveals a lot of stuff and in the end I think he's just frustrated at certain things fame has brought into his life, which he'd rather keep quite simple. Beautiful People, based on what I've seen, is ALWAYS a good watch.

PS. I want to coin the term Hindie for Hindi 'independent' films. Of course, it makes no difference when spoken out loud but I just kind of dig it.

My weekend with Akshay. Singh is Kinng & Bhool Bhulaiyaa.

It seems that the more I see of Akshay Kumar, the more I like him. When I came down with a slight fever and throat ache this weekend, I surrendered myself to the Awesome of the Khiladi while bed-bound and resting, and (partly due to my condition, I'm sure) the Khiladi did not disappoint.

Of course, a part of why I've begun to really appreciate Akshay is because it seems that the more popular he gets, the more his roles suit him as an actor. When sitting down with my (pirated, oh the shame!) copy of Singh Is Kinng, I had some reservations, though. Being respectful of minorities has never been Hindi films' greatest strength, and on top of that, haven't we seen enough films showcasing Punjabi pride by now?

Instead of Punjab glorification, the film turned out to be Vipul Shah's spin on Munnabhai-like philosophies. Akshay plays Happy Singh, a well-meaning but clumsy villager whose fellow men trick him to get him to leave the village - Happy has to travel to Australia to retrieve Lucky Singh (Sonu Sood) back to the village to meet his (supposedly) ill father. Lucky, however, has become the king to a happy bunch of goofy sardar mobsters in Australia and after some plot turns, Happy finds himself leading the gang himself - but with his own, unusual methods..

It's a given that these sort of films will include some of the vapidest stuff you'll ever see in your life, but the movie never seemed painfully idiotic on the whole. The film only really fails when you can see Aneez Bazmee, the director, going for the emotional, touching moments but doing it so heavy-handedly that it fails to move the viewer. Happy bringing out the good in criminals is somewhat heart-warming, though, and Akshay pulls the character off with sincerity so despite the missteps, the story of the film works as a whole.

As for other performances, most of them are very much two-note comic characters (fun enough to make you chuckle). Neha Dhupia stood out for me as the witty, gun-touting, filmi-crazed gangstress - I hope she gets more nice roles like this one. Katrina Kaif is very pretty, but still not a good actress. I can't put my finger on why her jodi with Akshay works nonetheless - it's either that they look good together (superficiality never goes out of style!) or that because they've done so many films together, she's learning to match him.

The soundtrack isn't very good, but being annoyingly Pritam, it's very catchy all the same. In other words, I've had "Tere or" stuck in my head all day, and that's only because I knew not to listen through that damn Snoop Dogg song (please let it be noted here that I am usually all for Hiphop Meets Bollywood type of musical expeditions - this time the song is awful, the video is awful, and everything about it is just not working).

Then I saw Bhool Bhulaiyaa. I usually do like to check out Southie originals to Bollywood remakes but this time, I hadn't had the chance to. I had seen some bits from Chandramukhi, the Tamil version. Thanks to this, I knew some details about the plot, but a testament to either my short memory or the movie's good narration, I didn't really think about those things until they revealed themselves in the film.

A young descendent of a royal family Siddharth (Shiney Ahuja) decides to live in the deserted mansion after his marriage to Avni (Vidya Balan). His family agrees to renovate the place, but the third floor remains locked up - it's believed to be haunted. Avni is curious about the rooms behind the locked doors, and Siddharth agrees to let her open them. Shortly afterwards, bad things begin to happen and Radha (Amisha Patel), Siddharth's childhood friend, is suspected of being possessed by a ghost. Two experts are called to aid - one Hindu priest, and one psychiatrist (Akshay Kumar).

Even without seeing the original films, I feel like I can safely assume Priyadarshan's direction squeezes only half of the potential the story has. And even that little makes for quite an entertaining film. Vidya Balan does a great job, and Akshay is in good form as the odd but clever psychiatrist Aditya (though the science in the film might be more than a bit fuzzy, but then, who's minding when Akshay gets to have lines like "I want to go beyond the limits of conventional psychology"?).

Some of the comedy interludes weren't integrated all that well but fun all the same, and while the soundtrack mostly relies on That One Song, it's overall on the harmless side (except for the catchy-as-hell "Hare ram, hare ram, hare krishna, hare ram" chant you hear on one of the tracks).

Actually, watching these two films nearly back-to-back, it almost felt like watching a TV show. Everybody Loves Akshay?