Tag Archives: Ghajini

The Split Screen Podcast Debuts

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Big news! Shah Shahid — the man behind the multimedia review site Blank Page Beatdown — just debuted the Split Screen Podcast. Shah’s guest on the first three episodes of the podcast is none other than… ME!

SplitScreenPodcast

Here’s how Shah sums up the goal of the podcast:

The Split Screen Podcast will compare and analyze movies that are adaptations of other works, directly with the source material that they were inspired by. The goal is to essentially determine how good or bad the adaptations were and, most excitingly, going off on long winded, expletive laced rants when they’re bad.

Bollywood flicks are perfectly suited to such a podcast, given how many Hindi films are remakes of other movies. Shah is a lifelong Bollywood fan with a wide-ranging field of interests — including Hollywood films, comic books, and superhero TV shows — and he reviews them all at Blank Page Beatdown. Check the time stamp on his tweets, and you’ll notice that he stays up well into the night ranting about Dune or the latest episode of Quantico.

Though future episodes will cover films in other genres, the first three episodes are all about Bollywood (my realm of expertise). The initial episode is an intro to the podcast — labeled Episode 00 accordingly — in which we discuss Bollywood remakes in general. Episode 01 compares the Hindi film Ghajini to its far, far, far superior inspiration, Memento. In Episode 02, we rail against the horrible changes made to the female protagonist when Knight and Day was remade as Bang Bang!.

The podcasts are full of spoilers and some swear words, so be forewarned. Please check out the Split Screen Podcast and let me know what you think! Enjoy!

To keep up to date with new episodes of the podcast, follow Split Screen Podcast on Twitter or visit Shah’s website, Blank Page Beatdown.

Opening January 16: Chandni Chowk to China

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Chandni Chowk to China opens in theaters on Friday, January 16. It’s almost certain to be a blockbuster (by Bollywood standards), since it stars the unstoppable Akshay Kumar and the gorgeous Deepika Padukone, who gets to kick some butt in the film.

The movie is an amazing international venture; it’s the first Hindi film to be shot in China, and it’s being distributed in the United States by mega-studio Warner Bros. Pictures. The film earned a PG-13 rating from the MPAA.

In the Chicago area, Chandni Chowk to China will be showing at:

Marcus Addison Cinemas in Addison
Century Stratford Square in Bloomingdale
AMC Loews Pipers Alley 4 in Chicago
Kerasotes Showplace 12 in Niles
AMC South Barrington 30 in South Barrington
AMC Cantera 30 in Warrenville
Cinemark Seven Bridges in Woodridge

The South Barrington 30 is also carrying over Ghajini, which should be avoided at all costs.

Worst Bollywood Movies of 2008

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There were plenty of movies in contention for the title of “Worst Bollywood Film of 2008.” Recent lousy offerings like Ghajini, Karzzzz, Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! and Yuvvraaj threatened to overshadow crummy films from earlier in the year like Krazzy 4, Roadside Romeo and Summer 2007.

I decided to select the absolute worst movie of the year from films that I awarded zero stars when I reviewed them. Abhishek Bachchan starred in two of those movies: Sarkar Raj and Drona. I was tempted to give the dubious honor to Love Story 2050, if only because it suggested that we’ll all still be playing the Xbox 360 forty years from now.

But the worst movie of the year had to be the one that was most painful to watch, the one that wasn’t bad in a funny way (like Sarkar Raj, Drona and Love Story 2050), but was just bad. Based on those criteria, the Worst Bollywood Film of 2008 is Golmaal Returns. No other movie approached its level of immaturity and ineptitude. Everything about it was annoying, and if I hadn’t been reviewing it, I would’ve walked out of the theater after thirty minutes.

Congratulations, Golmaal Returns. May you never return again.

Movie Review: Ghajini (2008)

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1 Star (out of 4)

Buy or rent the movie at iTunes
Buy the DVD at Amazon
Buy the soundtrack at Amazon

Ghajini, director A. R. Murugadoss’s Hindi version of the Hollywood thriller, Memento, might’ve been more successful had it borrowed even more heavily from the original film that it already does.

Ghajini‘s premise is so similar to Memento‘s that Murugadoss included a note at the opening of the film: “We acknowledge other stories that have dealt with this issue.” They needed to; the premise is almost identical. The film’s protagonist, Sanjay (Aamir Khan), lost his ability to form new short-term memories after a fight with some goons who killed his fiancee, Kalpana. Now he wants to avenge her death.

Murugadoss didn’t just appropriate the plot. He also copied Memento‘s signature gimmicks, including the protagonist’s use of Post-It Notes, Polaroid photos and tattoos to act as his memory, as he learns more about Kalpana’s murderer.

Unlike Memento, where neither the protagonist nor the audience learns the identity of the murderer until the end of the movie, the identity of Kalpana’s killer is revealed in the first twenty minutes. He’s the film’s title character, Ghajini. So there’s no mystery about who killed Kalpana. The only questions are why he killed her (turns out it’s over something stupid and unrelated to the main plot) and how will Sanjay inevitably kill him.

Fortunately for Sanjay, the loss of his short-term memory apparently imbued him with superhuman strength. Khan spends most of the present-day sequences staring wide-eyed at the camera, before roaring and stomping about, Incredible Hulk style. Though he was a career businessman before his head trauma, he now can pummel henchman by the dozen. At one point, Sanjay punches a villain so hard that the guy’s head turns completely backwards on his body.

Perhaps the most awkward aspect of Ghajini is its flashbacks to the early days of Sanjay’s romance with Kalpana. The longest flashback sequence makes up the middle hour of the film and is, on its own, a typical yet entertaining Bollywood romantic comedy about mistaken identities. Asin Thottumkal is engaging as Kalpana, a role she originated in the 2005 Tamil language version of Ghajini. But the light-hearted flashback scenes feel totally inappropriate sandwiched between the humorless, ultra-violent action sequences of the present-day storyline.

There are actually some things that Ghajini does well. The chemistry between the lead couple during the flashbacks is terrific. The cinematography and fight choreography are excellent, and the film features some beautiful songs by A. R. Rahman. But the choppy story structure makes the film’s three-hour run time feel even longer, and it’s riddled with logical errors that Murugadoss should’ve corrected when making Ghajini for the second time. A film as good as Memento deserves a better remake than this.

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Opening December 24: Ghajini

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Aamir Khan’s latest film opens in U.S. theaters on Wednesday, December 24. Ghajini is a Hindi-language remake of Christopher Nolan’s Memento, a film I enjoyed. Given how dark the original movie is, I’m a little skeptical of a version that includes dance numbers. But I’m willing to give Khan and composer A. R. Rahman a chance to win me over.

In the Chicago area, Ghajini is showing at the AMC Loews Pipers Alley 4 in Chicago, the AMC Cantera 30 in Warrenville and the AMC South Barrington 30 in South Barrington.