Silence of the lambs

This movie is a psychological thriller, and has some brilliant performances by Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins the two main characters. The story is classy, so is the screenplay, Hannibal Lecter the character played by Hopkins is a serial killer and a cannibal, and he appears so in his chilling manner of talking. Jodie Foster the young trainee FBI agent who interviews him to get help in finding another serial killer plays the part amazingly well. The serial killer that they are trying to find is secondary and is not attached much importance as a character, save that he is a maniac who is trying to fashion a woman suit made of human skin.

The Hindi version is about as scary as someone screaming in your face. Agreed that its indianized and all that but then they could have made up another story altogether with the same loud characters. Firstly my favorite character of Hannibal Lecter (a serial killer-cannibal) is changed to a an emotional man wrongly put in prison, who has the power of an underworld don and also happens to be of all things, A professor. Even cannibals cant digest this kind of a character.

The character of Jodie Foster is played by Preity Zinta who obviously most resembles Jodie Foster in Bollywood, otherwise any champa, chameli or tara could have played the role of acting terrified/appearing overactingly concerned. The loudest character and the most entertaining is the character of the serial killer they are trying to find - Lajja shankar Pandey, a psychopath who kidnaps little children for sacrifice(apparently this makes him more horrific), because he believes that this act will make him immortal(makes him seem more psycho), it is this character that holds the story together, and creates tension in the storyline, same as the horrible ghost/zombie in a horror flick.

Mr. Bhatt has failed to realise that serial killers aren't so obviously loud/street mad, most times they are sober and often charming and manipulative, and when they have a purpose (eg.human sacrifice), they will not kidnap a ministers daughter which will get the entire police department after them thus hampering their activities. A professional like Reet Oberoi is trained to cunningly manipulate an emotional man like Akshay Kumar's character, and Akshay Kumars character ... no don't get me started on that one ...

The film is as moderately entertaining as a horror movie, especially the part where Lajja Shankar Pandey disguises himself as a street eunuch to evade his pursuers. This movie was a hit and you can watch it if you are into Indian films. Avoid it if not, but don't miss the original. 

Bollywood - Russel Peters

This is Russel Peters take on Bollywood. Russel Peters is an international comedian of Indian origin with racist comedy and mimicry being his forte. In this video he tells his international audience about Bollywood films and jokes about the Indian film industry. Enjoy the video.

Taxi Driver

This movie has an endearing Robert De Niro playing the lonely taxi driver who has been in the vietnam war. He has insomnia and cant sleep, he drives all round town and has a few fellow drivers for company, you connect with him right at the beginning of the movie and enjoy his innocence and humility, then he falls awkwardly in love with cybil shepherd who works in a political campaign office, you are worried in the embarrassing scene where you realise the poor guy doesnt even understand that he shouldnt take her to a porn flick on their date, she ignores all his pleading not to desert him, and then he meets the young teenage prostitute Jodie Foster and finds some purpose... anyways this movie is not to be read it has to be watched and felt.

Our Indian version has Sanjay Dutt driving a taxi because he cant sleep because of the trauma he suffered when he saw his sister jumping out of a window, the entire street sympathizes with him, and this traumatized character leads the singing and dancing in the street together with intricate steps, hell! there is even a scene showing him returning a 100 rupee note that a passenger hands him by mistake proving that he is honest too. Then one night he almost runs over Pooja Bhatt who has decided to play with some caged birds in the very middle of a dark deserted road, (silly really but then she is the directors daughter) he offers to take care of the birds as she will be going away soon. Well she is then sold by her uncle to the eunuch villain maharani Sadashiv Amrapurkar. Then while dropping off his best friend Deepak Tijori at the local red light area he spots her again and then decides he will spend all his savings to rescue her accompanied by his friend and with additional help from a hardcore pimp who was reluctant until our hero reminded him he has to answer to god someday and advises him to do do one good deed for the purpose i.e to help him rescue the damsel. Our Taxi driver then rescues her not before a few songs, some close shaves with the villains, but they get recaptured, and the villain maharani leaves him tied to a wooden cross on a secluded beach before taking the heroine away. He then re rescues her but not before breaking the cross with his feet, single handedly wiping out the other armed villains twice his size, and physically lifting and hurling the villain maharani into a fire, and then catching the heroine when she jumps off the top storey of the brothel. That is our Taxi driver for you.      

Mackennas Gold

Firstly this legendary movie is of too big a stature to be reviewed by anyone now. I can only describe that it is a great treasure hunt adventure movie with fantastic cinematography and art direction, the story is set in the wild west, where Gregory Peck (Mackenna) a Marshall encounters an old Red Indian and finds his map to the gold, he memorizes the map and then burns it before getting captured by Omar Sharif and his confederates who force him to lead them to the Apache Indians gold, they have a lot of small skirmishes and difficulties on their way and are joined by more unwanted treasure hunters until they find the gold. This movie started a wave of similar Hindi movies in India, that is what this post is for.

The first remake was called Zalzala (Earthquake .... Earthquake???) and just like in the original has a narrator telling animatedly about an ancient Shiva temple of gold built by Raja Harshvardhana which is in a secret location in the mountains, and that if any sinner goes to the place there will be an earthquake. The scenes shown during this narration all look pretty ordinary.

Anyways from here the film rolls on its own track with a lot of western style bar scenes, lots of horses, and heroes and villains that are lookalikes or dressed up like characters from other westerns. Danny Danzongpa looks suspiciously like Angel Eyes from "The Good the Bad and the Ugly". Rajiv kapoor sleeping on a cot dragged along by his horse directly enacts Trinity from "They call me Trinity" but they have improvised and shown his horse to be a whiskey drinker!.

The 4 heroines are added for good measure, not counting the anonymous damsel who dances in front of the villains. The soundtrack is all American save for the emotional Indian moments, rest assured everyone seems to know horse riding very well, and can shoot accurately-without even using the sights. Heroines included. The U.S cavalry here is shown to be the Indian police.

The Shiva temple has one more great property that even the narrator fails to tell us. This golden temple gleams like crazy in the sun, but strangely upto 1988 no helicopter/plane or the forest Dept. has managed to spot it. Ever. The story of the original is set in the unexplored America of 1860 so cannot be accused of the same peculiarity.

After more than an hour of character/Plot building, the film gives up and rejoins the original starting with the scene of Shatrughan coming in waving a white kerchief like Eli Wallach in the original, from then on the story resembles the western blockbuster, with a few defiant changes, the huge rock that casts the direction giving shadow in the original, is a stone carved as a cobra here, and hilariously will cast a guiding shadow only if a conch shell is blown on the sunrise of Mahashivratri day.

Yet another pitiful comedy is that the idol of lord Shiva has to break out of the roof of the temple to get a straight line of sight to fire from the third eye. The director needs to have faith that the Almighty Shiva can punish sinners from his place, the film ends with the heroes worshipping the idol, and thus being protected by lord shiva from the villains and the subsequent earthquake that results from the blasphemy, although one hero and heroine is killed pointlessly by the script. In the end no one gets any gold.
 
Moral of the story: Stick to the original movie.