Top 5 Bollywood movies of 2010

What makes a great film? Simple, everything! There are so many things to get wrong in making a film, it’s truly a magical experience when the sound design, editing, music, cinematography, acting, writing and directing all wrap up into one to make the perfect film.

There were some truly great films this year, so many that I had to pull all my hair out to pick just five. Incidentally four of the five I picked were directed by debutants! Don't know if I will get bouquets or brickbats for my choices but these are my top 5 in no particular order:

Ishqiya

Director: Abhishek Chaubey

Cast: Vidya Balan, Naseeruddin Shah, Arshad Warsi

Ishqiya had terrific performances, great writing and fantastic direction.

And music by Vishal Bharadwaj was so good especially 'Dil Toh Bachcha hai Ji' that Madhur Bhandarkar's forthcoming movie is titled the same.

Udaan

Director: Vikramaditya Motwane

Cast: Rajat Barmecha, Ronit Roy

Udaan was unconventional Bollywood at its biting best. Udaan spoke about a lonely teenager's traumatic life as his father and he dealt with their clash of personalities.

Vikramaditya Motwane deserves distinction marks for narrating a slice of life film with aplomb but the two kids, Rajat Barmecha and Aayan Boradia, were the real stars of this enterprise.

Tere Bin Laden

Director: Abhishek Sharma

Cast: Ali Zafar, Pradhuman Singh

A satirical comedy, Tere Bin Laden spoke about US's paranoia for anything Islamic post 9/11. It had a smart script and some smart acting.

India found a star from the other side of the border, Ali Zafar, a package of good looks, super talent and the right screen presence.

Peepli [Live]

Director: Anusha Rizvi

Cast: Omkar Nath Manikpuri, Raghubir Yadav

Peepli [Live] dealt with farmer suicide cases in a satirical and witty way.

The music was remarkable and the dialogues laced with expletives, were truly fantastic and most importantly, real. The film, deservedly is India's entry into Oscars this year.

Love Sex Aur Dhokha

Director: Dibakar Banerjee

Cast: Anshuman Jha, Neha Chauhan

The only film in this list without a debutant director, had three stories talking about serious issues like honour killings, MMS scandals and sting operations.

Banjerjee has a keen ear for local textures and dialogue and incredibly, he gleaned impressive performances from his cast of rank newcomers.

Click here to view the published version of my article: http://www.cinecurry.com/news/movie-news/hindi/top-5-bollywood-movies-2010

Top 5 Hollywood movies in India of 2010

Most people would remember 2010 for the sequels of franchise flicks like Twilight, Narnia, Shrek and Harry Potter or Tom Cruise and Angelina Jolie blowing up stuff but all the above were rendered forgettable by the presence of some awe-inspiring celluloid gems. Here are 5 Hollywood movies from the ones released in India this year that had me impressed:

The Social Network

Director: David Fincher

Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield

Fun. Interesting. Well made. Though their marketing plan was questionable, their dialogue was more than impressive and they managed to successfully make a film about people sitting and typing at a computer fun, dramatic, and interesting.

Fincher proved again that he is an amazing visual director while Eisenberg is so great with his performance that he manages to make you love and loathe Zuckerberg simultaneously.

Inception

Director: Christopher Nolan

Cast: Leonardo Di Caprio, Ellen Page

The idea of our dreams and how one affects them is a risky topic to tackle because it’s endless and quite complex. Nolan made it not only easy to understand but raised many interesting debates on “mind travel.”

It was an exquisitely beautiful film with a magnificent soundtrack by Hans Zimmer.

Toy Story 3

Director: Lee Unkrich

Cast: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen

Surprisingly as good as the first but in an entirely new way. Not only was this film funny and well made, but it dealt with concepts that serious dramas are afraid to touch. Yes it had a few cheesy kids lines, but on the whole it was dark, dramatic, interesting, funny, it was more than just a film, it was an experience.

I have said this before and I will say it again, if you didn't have a tear or two rolling down your cheek in the last 30 minutes, then you’re probably a heartless Decepticon.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

Director: Oliver Stone

Cast: Michael Douglas, Shia LaBeouf

The film didn't try to copy the original as much as you might think. Yes, there’s the mentoring of an up and comer by a devious veteran but it also tackled the politics and corruption present in the new millennium. Money Never Sleeps opened a whole new bag of worms.

Every actor elevated the other’s performance, which made the film more watchable and more entertaining. LaBeouf may seem like an odd choice for such a dramatic role but he really brought it and proved that he can hang with the big dogs.

The Town

Director: Ben Affleck

Cast: Ben Affleck, Jeremy Renner

What made this movie a cut above the rest was how it employed generic elements like revenge and romance to device empathy for its morally-ambiguous protagonists without ever compromising on the hard-boiled intentions of its cleverly-manufactured screenplay.

From top to bottom there was a great cast in this film. Renner, Hamm, Affleck, Lively, Hall all gave solid performances though Pete Postlethwaite was the star of the show for me.

Check out my published version of this article on: http://www.cinecurry.com/news/movie-news/english/top-5-hollywood-movies-india-2010

How The Ronster Stole Your Christmas!

We all (Ok most of us!) know how the Jesus story has been lifted from pagan mythology. It was travelling in the Mediterranean almost 1000 years before him. The virgin birth, baptism in the river, resurrection etc were actually taken from stories of Osiris, Dionysus, Adonis, Attis, Horus and Mithras. But come on even the date of birth had to be stolen??? For dim-wits who still haven’t followed, yes, ‘The Saviour’ wasn’t born on December 25^th!

The Bible has as many cases of plagiarism against it as the next Bollywood movie you will catch in the theatre or Pritam’s next composition. The cave-men who wrote His story just did a pre-historic cut (wiping out Paganism mercilessly)-copy (a very accurate one)-paste (and we give you JESUS).

To prove that this is not a hoax, I give you the whole story:

From its early Babylonian roots, the celebration of the birth or "rebirth" of the sun god on December 25th came to be celebrated under various names all over the ancient world.  You see, the winter solstice occurs a few days before December 25th each year. The winter solstice is the day of the year when daylight is the shortest. In ancient times, December 25th was the day each year when the day started to become noticeably longer.  Thus it was fitting for the early pagans to designate December 25th as the date of the birth or the "rebirth" of the sun.

Let's even pretend for a while that my pal J.C. existed and the Bible accurate. So where did Christmas come from? Well, the truth is that the word "Christmas" is not actually found anywhere in the entire Bible. In fact, the word "Christmas" was not even invented until about a thousand years after Jesus left this earth. The Catholic Encyclopedia even admits this: "The word for Christmas in late Old English is Cristes Maesse, the Mass of Christ, first found in 1038." But Jesus was not even born on December 25th. The reality is that it would have simply been far too cold for shepherds to be out with their sheep at night in Israel on December 25th. The vast majority of Christian scholars now acknowledge this. So when was Jesus actually born? Based on the information we have in the Scriptures, it appears that it is most likely that Jesus was born in the autumn season.

So how did December 25th come to be celebrated by Christians? Well, by the time the Roman Empire legalized Christianity in the 4th century, most of the other religions in the empire were celebrating the birth of their gods on December 25th.

So in the year 350 A.D., Pope Julius I declared that the birth of Jesus would be celebrated on December 25th from then on. There appears to be little doubt that Pope Julius was trying to make it as painless as possible for pagan Romans to convert to Catholicism!

Also thousands of years before there was a "Santa Claus", there was another supernatural figure that would supposedly visit a tree and leave gifts every December 25th. His name was Nimrod!

According to ancient Babylonian tradition, Semiramis claimed that after the untimely death of her husband Nimrod, a full grown evergreen tree sprang up overnight from a dead tree stump. Semiramis claimed that Nimrod would visit that evergreen tree and leave gifts each year on the anniversary of his birth, which just happened to be on December 25th!

Dampened the Holiday spirit have I? Ho Ho Ho (It’s not Nimrod laughing but the Grinch) :D