Dhinka Chinka Vs. Ringa Ringa – War of the Item Numbers

Here is the new item song ‘Dhinka Chinka’ from upcoming film ‘Ready’ featuring Salman Khan and Asin. The song has a nice beat and rhthym and has all the qualities to be a crowdpuller. Salman with his unique dancing style and colorful background fills up the scene.

Now watch this song called ‘Ringa Ringa’ from Telugu film Arya 2 featuring Allu Arjun. Allu Arjun dances brilliantly and song is far more raunchy version of the fun and dance Hindi one.

The hindi song of course is a straight lift from the Telugu original. Apparently same music director Devi Sri Prasad (DSP) has composed both songs and hence no controversies.

You listen and decide which one’s more funky.

Dum Maaro Dum – Title Track

Here’s the much awaited song ‘ Dum Maarao Dum’ from the upcoming film titled the same. The song is actually called ‘Mit Jaaye Ghum’ and features Deepika Padukone and is set to a remixed version of the original classic tune. The song was released during the India – South Africa game in the ongoing World Cup Cricket at Nagpur

The song set in a smoke filled bar, looks okeyish and Deepika looks hot enough to be called ‘item girl’ now. Hopefully it will do what it is meant to and draw the audience in the movie hall.

Here it is..

Tees Maar Khan – Horrifying Misadventure

Farah Khan’s previous 2 films ‘Main Hoon Na’ and ‘Om Shanti Om’ were inspired from 1970s Bollywood Cinema. In her third outing as director of Tees Maar Khan she mercilessly copies from little known Hollywood film ‘After the Fox’ starring Peter Sellers. TMK is almost an unofficial remake of that movie with of course the Bollywood twists, turns, item numbers and utter nonsense thrown in.

Akshay Kumar plays  Tabrez Mirza Khan or ‘Tees Maar Khan’ who is the most dreaded conman in the world !! He escapes from right under the nose of Police  every time he is caught. As the film progresses he and his faithful hencemen called dollar, soda and burger are given a task of looting Antiques worth crores from a moving train. For this he portrays himself a Hollywood director and decides to hire services on hundreds of innocent villagers on the pretext of making a Film in their village Dhuliya. Katrina Kaif plays the dumb girlfriend who aspires to be an actress in the film. Akshaye Khanna plays a superstar aspiring to win an ‘Oscar’ by doing such a film. The film is shot, villagers are fooled, banks is robbed, ghosts are caught, the loot happens and TMK is caught but once again he escapes in the end. This above paragraph somehow summarizes the story but then there are supposedly comic scenes and spoofs and item numbers and jokes and cliches all in this 2 hour long movie. All kinds of weird acting funny characters are assembled in this film including chief villains being conjoined twins, a bumbling police commissioner, village buffoons of all kind and so on !!

I always trusted Farah Khan to come up with something nice and witty especially as she loves to play tributes and homages to past films and makers and she is as ‘Bollywood’ as one can be without feeling guilty about it. But this time she has gone overboard with spoofing everybody that came to her mind and making spoof after spoof  and over spoofing. It seems either she has run out of fresh ideas and repeating her own cliched ideas of filmy maa, dumb heroine, everybody in village being so glamor struck and dumb etc. She has gone the ‘Priyadarshan’ and ‘Anees Bazmi’  way of making stupid films and then overdoing it or maybe she is just influenced by her not-so-smart husband who is not only the editor, but story writer, music director ( for title song), lyricist, producer and what not for this film. The film tries to mock everybody and everything but unlike her previous film ‘Om Shanti Om’ most of her jokes fall flat and people almost know what is coming even before the joke starts.

There are jokes and there are jokes within jokes and then there is Tees Maar Khan where the joke starts at the beginning and never ends, it goes on and on. Katrina Kaif plays the dumbest heroine you would ever see on film screen and you do not even laugh at her dumbness after a while. You can laugh at Avatar Gill spoofing A.K. Hangal’s blind man act once  but not every time he comes on screen, it gets irritating after a while to see Akshaye Khanna obsessed with the Oscars.  The dialogues like ‘Tawaiif ki lootati ijjat aur TMK ko jail mein rakhna na-mumkin hai’ and ‘ khanon mein khan- tees maar khan’ gets to you after a while. The conjoined villainous twins are ridiculous. There are racial jokes, jokes on poor villagers and crass humor. What on earth was that plot about headless ghost and missing children growing ‘Ganja’ in some jungle and that villager sitting on top of the tree?? The end credits gives ‘ oscars’ to all those who were involved with this film and Farah in the end gets a Filmfare as all Oscar trophies are with her husband !!

Farah Khan who was my choice for Manmohan Desai’s ‘heir apparent’ in Bollywood has clearly disappointed this time. From situational comedies and genuine spoofs she has come down to the level of Golmaals and Housefulls with slapstick comedy. I always thought Farah Khan as a filmmaker was much superior then her weirdo brother Sajid Khan or for that matter most commecial Hindi filmmakers, but after TMK, I need to re-think that.

The film did have an interesting plot to begin with and lot could have been done with it but it seems the makers decided the plot, the funny characters, the dialogues and Akshay Kumar’s charisma would make the film sail. But the dialogues are cliches, jokes are hardly comic, comedy is of slapstick genre and Akshay Kumar’s charisma is fading. Item numbers can only do so much and after watching ‘Sheila ki Jawani’ about 1000 times on various television promos, it hardly registers when you watch it in movie hall, although it indeed is very well choreographed  like most songs by Farah khan are. Katrina Kaif was never a good actress and here she shows how dumb she can be. She is just a glamor doll fit to do roles where she doesnt have to speak. She hams throughout the film. Akshaye Khanna and his horrendous wig,  what is he doing in the film, only he and his fat bank-cheque knows, he is paid to overact at every scene and he succeeds there, overdoing his bit at times  but then his role is meant to be like that.

It is an out an out Akshay Kumar movie, almost a portfolio for things he can do but this time it fails miserably. Akshay Kumar plays the role effortlessly but is so repetitive that people were yawning at some of his cliched lines which he keeps repeating. Akshay Kumar tries to do everything from hamming to overacting and playing it out loud and romantic at the same time. We have been watching this Akshay Kumar show reel in so many of his films that one more attempt looks boring.  Other actors like Arya Babbar, Sachin Khedekar, Ali Asgar are caricaturish. Salman Khan in a small cameo in the ‘wallah’ song almost promises to give some relief and there is no doubt about who is the biggest crowd pull in a theater these days.

Since this is the big holidays season and most people here and everywhere else have nothing better to do, they go out and watch films. Most times films are tailor-made for this season and most times they succeed. This film too might get the large numbers in at the box office and huge amount of money, in fact it has already begun on 100% openings at most places, but as far as cinema goes this film pushes Bollywood 5 years behind. What have you done Farah ?

My Ratings – 4.5/10 –  I am generous because of Christmas

P.S. I heard they have already decided to make a sequel !!.. * faints*

Item Song of 80s – Yeh Din tau Aaata Hai

Today every 2nd hindi film has an Item Number, which usually involves the film’s heroine or some other special dancer / model/ actress or all of that to gyrate to a fast rhythm dance track mainly to lure the hero/ other character of the film. The song usually does not have much relevance to the actual film’s plot although the makers do try their best to fit the song in the narrative of the film. The song is mostly an up tempo, fast beat song with lyrics being little important.

Of course this tradition of Item songs is nothing new and existed long back in our films. Here is one of the track I heard today,  of course have heard it multiple times in the past and enjoyed it too. Today, while hearing it once again, I realized that this was almost an Item song in the film with no actual connection to the film’s story, although it involves the lead stars only but the song is the film’s Item number.

The song in question is ‘Yeh Din tau Aaata Hai’ from the 1983 film Mahaan starring none other than Amitabh Bachchan in a triple role and featuring the best item girls your money can buy in the 80s, Zeenat Aman and Parveen Babi. This song features Big B and Parveen Babi dancing to the rocking  R D Burman tune. The song is sung by Asha Bhosale and R D Burman himself and is a fantastic upbeat number in true sense. You cannot but tap your feet to it.

Asha Bhosale’s catchy voice is matched by RD’s perfect tone and the music is a mix of Arabian and Indian tunes with generous dose of Disco to match the 80s theme.

Enjoy it once again..This song would clearly give Munnis and Sheilas a run for their money, even today.

Sheila ki Jawani – Tees Maar Khan – Item Song

The Item number from the year end release Tees Maar Khan called ‘Sheila ki Jawani’ featuring Katrina Kaif and Akshay Kumar. The song is sung by Sunidhi Chauhan and music is by Vishal-Shekhar.

Katrina Kaif gives her best possible jhatkas to woo the audience in this item number. In my opinion she is still not match for the ‘Munni’ song though.