#BombayVelvet #HindiBollywoodFilmMovieReview #JohnsonThomas #Rating:* *1/2
#BombayVelvet #HindiBollywoodFilmMovieReview #JohnsonThomas #Rating:* *1/2
#PicksAndPiques/SnippetFilmReview15thMay 2015/#JohnsonThomas
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#PicksAndPiques/SnippetFilmReview15thMay 2015/#JohnsonThomas
#BombayVelvet(Hindi) Rating: * * ½ #AnuragKashyap’s ambitious dream-come-true fantasy has it’s origins in New York rather than sepia toned Bombay. Transplanting a milieu alien to the unique city culture of Bombay reeks of inventiveness but doesn’t ring true in either form or content. His influences are obvious- #DickTracy #TheGodfather and many other noir styled underworld gangster thrillers but the Americanizing doesn’t help build connectedness with an audience expecting a true-blue picture of a late forties to early seventies representation of the birth of a city- even though he manages to intersperse the narrative with the mill union strikes, politician-underworld-builder nexus, and the real estate and tabloid wars significant to that era. Far too many jump cuts, tight close-ups, faulty Period detailing and intermittent incoherence create a major hurdle in the enjoyment here. All the actors look weirdly costumed and out of sorts too! Career wise this film may open the gates to big budget films for Anurag but in terms of craft, this one is way below par. #SpicePR #FoxStarStudios #FoxStarPictures #AnuragKashyap #RanbirKapoor #AnushkaSharma #KaranJohar #VijaySingh #PhantomFilms #GyanPrakash #MumbaiFables #VikramadityaMotwane #VikasBahl #SatyadeepMisra #VivaanShah #KayKayMenon #ManishChaudhary #SiddharthBasu #Remo
#DannyCollins(English) Rating: * * * About an old pop star discovering the true meaning of life, this is an appealing dramedy with streaks of melodrama, some sharp dialogue, and a able cast anchored by ever lovable Al Pacino. It’s genteel and imminently appealing and that’s more than you can say about the movies of today.
#AlPacino #JenniferGarner #AnnetteBening #BobbyCannavale #ChristopherPlummer #AnneMcDaniels #MelissaBenoist #DanFogelman #PVRDirectorsRare #PVRPictures #HardlyAnonymousPR
#MadMaxFuryRoad(English/3D) Rating: * * * * This is action heaven. George Miller’s magnificently imagined dystopian, road-action spectacle has been crafted with a lot of care. Replete with hugely enjoyable extravagant action set-pieces and memorable characters , it also has a strong emotional core that builds clingy attachment. This franchise, though it picks up 30 years later, with a strong dash of feminism, hope and redemption within it’s core, is well worth the long wait. This Stunning, uniquely thrilling, richly imagined tale of a post-apocalyptic wasteland is visually and technically awesome, and guaranteed to be one of the best big-screen spectacles of the year. #TomHardy #CharlizeTheron #NicholasHoult #ZoeKraviz #AdelaideClemens #AbbeyLeeKershaw #RileyKeough #RosieHuntingtonWhiteley #GeorgeMiller #WarnerBros #AnkitAgarwal
Johnson Thomas
Ambitious but not quite all there…
Film: Bombay Velvet
Cast: Ranbir Kapoor, Anushka Sharma, Karan Johar,
Director: Anurag kashyap
Rating: * * ½
Runtime: 151 mins
AnuragKashyap’s ambitious dream-come-true fantasy has it’s origins in New York rather than sepia toned Bombay. Transplanting a milieu alien to the unique city culture of Bombay reeks of inventiveness but doesn’t ring true in either form or content. His influences are obvious- #DickTracy #TheGodfather and many other noir styled underworld gangster thrillers but the Americanizing doesn’t help build connectedness with an audience expecting a true-blue picture of a late forties to early seventies representation of the birth of the city- even though he manages to intersperse the narrative with the mill union strikes, politician-underworld-builder nexus, and the real estate and tabloid wars significant to that era.
A period crime fantasy drama fashioned and styled in a sort of New York & Los Angeles- meets-Bombay fusion, Anurag Kashyap’s ‘BombayVelvet’ is as ambitious as it is faulty. Strongly influenced by L.A.Quartet, a sequence of four crime novels by James Ellroy, set in the late 1940s through the late 1950s in Los Angeles and admittedly fused with Gyan Prakash’s ‘Mumbai Fables,’ the script tries to do much more than it should in it’s attempt to romanticize and encapsulate the internecine struggles and events that surrounded the making of Mumbai as we see it today.
The film begins with sepia tinted FD footage of old Bombay while the credits roll on and then cuts to 1949 with headlines of Gandhi’s assassination and the Godse trial while in the foreground a mother and child, the young Johnny Balraj, disembark from a northern railway train. A few steps out of the station she begs for a job from a passerby. Cut to a young girl, Rosie singing in a church in Portuguese occupied Goa and catching the attention of a sexually divergent Portuguese Man (Remo)- who offers to adopt and train her for a musical future. A few more exposition shots detailing their childhood experiences and then a jump cut to their adult selves. Rosie(Anushka Sharma) bashes her oppressor over the head and escapes into a den of inequity and Johnny Balraj lives in a whorehouse and gets embroiled with the low-life of the upcoming megapolis while moonlighting as a street fighter by night. Their lives are of course meant to be intertwined with the history of the growing city. Rosie does a bikini shoot, works as a beautician by day and sings for her supper in a Jazz club by night. She also gets sexually involved with those who help her up the ladder and that includes the photographer and the journalist Jimmy Mistry(Manish Chaudhary) who expects her to romance Johnny and inveigle a set of critical negatives that could put paid to big ticket future plans of the mill owners-politicians-power brokers cabal that aim to strike it rich while the iron is hot. Johnny gets mixed up with a smuggler (Denzel Smith) and then a lofty publisher /Jazz club owner/ Power broker Khambatta(Karan Johar) in his attempt to make it big. The Johnny and Rosie live-in love affair is expected and Johnny continues to clobber people to death on the silliest pretext while the cops continue to stay out of the picture awaiting their cue for a close-to-interval entry. A natty CBI sleuth (Kay Kay Menon) does the honors thereafter while Johnny is given free license to go on the kill before the final comeuppance.
The film is beautifully mounted no doubt, but the detailing is suspect. Also the digital masking of Mumbai highrises from the Marine Drive skyline doesn’t come off convincingly. The attempt to stick to close-ups for the Bombay inferences only makes the experience just a little too claustrophobic and uncomfortable. The costumes especially those worn by the lead don’t befit the period ( they reek of designer labels unbecoming to their status in the film’s story)and the styling is quite haphazard too. Rosie’s hairstyles are fine but Johnny’s looks like he had perma-frost applied in an attempt to ape the MGR look. The distinctive sound design and the jazz score are quite elevating though. Manipulative plotting and confounding set-ups lead you on a merry chase that ends up in blood and gore. It’s a spectacle that doesn’t carry much weight though. The violence is unhinged much like the lead character Johnny, who doesn’t need much reason for a kill. There’s passion and fury but both amount to being unjustified. The performances too leave you cold. Ranbir is unclear whether he wants to ape Raj Kapoor or Al Pacino. It’s basically a confused performance from a gifted actor. Anushka’s lacks guile- a much needed requisite for a performer. The romance is clichéd and the chemistry between the two is also quite thanda even given the fact that they are shown together in several passionate clinches. Karan Johar is the weakest link here. As Kaizad Khambatta, a media moghul cum power broker of sorts he is out-of-place in the milieu and looks uncomfortable right through. The rest of the cast do duty as expected but none of them stand-out and can be reckoned with save for Satyadeep Misra as Chimman, Balraj’s childhood friend.
Bombay Velvet, though resplendent in ambition, lacks a sense of purpose other than the obvious leap-of-progression for the Director. Post interval, things get a lot more confusing with the romance and intrigue falling apart and violence and mayhem taking full control of the narrative. It’s a convoluted mess that just doesn’t make much sense. Ambition is appreciable but to waste a Rs 80 crore budget on self-indulgent fantasizing is hara-kiri in my book. This is one Anurag Kashyap film that just doesn’t get it right!
Hindi Film Reviews
Johnson Thomas
Grand but shallow too!
Film: Bombay Velvet
Cast: Ranbir Kapoor, Anushka Sharma, Karan Johar,
Director: Anurag kashyap
Rating: * * ½
Runtime: 151 mins
Anurag Kashyap’s ambitious dream-come-true fantasy has it’s origins in New York rather than sepia toned Bombay. Transplanting a milieu alien to the unique city culture of Bombay reeks of inventiveness but doesn’t ring true in either form or content. His influences are obvious- #DickTracy #TheGodfather and many other noir styled underworld gangster thrillers but the Americanizing doesn’t help build connectedness with an audience expecting a true-blue picture of a late forties to early seventies representation of the birth of a city- even though he manages to intersperse the narrative with the mill union strikes, politician-underworld-builder nexus, and the real estate and tabloid wars significant to that era.
Anurag Kashyap’s ‘BombayVelvet’ is as ambitious as it is faulty. Strongly influenced by James Ellroy's L.A.Quartet and admittedly fused with Gyan Prakash’s ‘Mumbai Fables,’ the script tries to do much more than it should in it’s attempt to romanticize and encapsulate the internecine struggles and events that surrounded the making of Mumbai as we see it today.
The film begins in 1949 with headlines of Gandhi’s assassination and the Godse trial while in the foreground a mother and child, the young Johnny Balraj, disembark from a northern railway train. A few steps out of the station she begs for a job from a passerby. Cut to a young girl, Rosie singing in a church in Portuguese occupied Goa and catching the attention of a sexually divergent Portuguese Man (Remo)- who offers to adopt and train her for a musical future. A few more exposition shots detailing their childhood experiences and then a jump cut to their adult selves. Rosie(Anushka Sharma) and Johnny Balraj(Ranbir Kapoor) have their lives intertwined with the history of the growing city. Rosie does a bikini shoot, works as a beautician by day and sings for her supper in a Jazz club by night. Johnny gets mixed up with a smuggler (Denzel Smith) and then a lofty publisher /Jazz club owner/ Power broker Khambatta(Karan Johar) while moonlighting as a street-fighter by night, in his attempt to make it big. The Johnny and Rosie live-in love affair is expected and Johnny continues to clobber people to death on the silliest pretext while the cops continue to stay out of the picture awaiting their cue for a close-to-interval entry. A natty CBI sleuth (Kay Kay Menon) does the honors thereafter while Johnny is given free license to go on the kill before the final comeuppance.
The film is beautifully mounted no doubt, but the detailing is suspect. Also the digital masking of Mumbai highrises from the Marine Drive skyline doesn’t come off convincingly. The attempt to stick to close-ups for the Bombay inferences only makes the experience just a little too claustrophobic and uncomfortable. The costumes especially those worn by the lead don’t befit the period ( they reek of designer labels unbecoming to their status in the film’s story)and the styling is quite haphazard too. Rosie’s hairstyles are fine but Johnny’s looks like he had perma-frost applied in an attempt to ape the MGR look. The distinctive sound design and the jazz score are quite elevating though. Manipulative plotting and confounding set-ups lead you on a merry chase that ends up in blood and gore. It’s a spectacle that doesn’t carry much weight though. The violence is unhinged much like the lead character Johnny, who doesn’t need much reason for a kill. There’s passion and fury but both amount to being unjustified. The performances too leave you cold. Ranbir is unclear whether he wants to ape Raj Kapoor or Al Pacino. It’s basically a confused performance from a gifted actor. Anushka’s lacks guile- a much needed requisite for a performer. The romance is clichéd and the chemistry between the two is also quite thanda even given the fact that they are shown together in several passionate clinches. Karan Johar is the weakest link here. As Kaizad Khambatta, a media moghul cum power broker of sorts he is out-of-place in the milieu and looks uncomfortable right through. The rest of the cast do duty as expected but none of them stand-out and can be reckoned with save for Satyadeep Misra as Chimman, Balraj’s childhood friend.
Bombay Velvet, though resplendent in ambition, lacks a sense of purpose other than the obvious leap-of-progression for the Director. Post interval, things get a lot more confusing with the romance and intrigue falling apart and violence and mayhem taking full control of the narrative. It’s a convoluted mess that just doesn’t make much sense. Ambition is appreciable but to waste a Rs 80 crore budget on self-indulgent fantasizing is hara-kiri in my book. This is one Anurag Kashyap film that just doesn’t get it right!
johnsont307@gmail.com
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