All good art reintroduces you to a part of your humanity. Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s Delhi-6 does just that, many times over during its running time. Starring Abhishek Bachchan, Sonam Kapoor, Waheeda Rehman, Rishi Kapoor, Atul Kulkarni, Divya Dutta, Deepak Dobriyal, Prem Chopra, Vijay Raaz, Pavan Malhotra, Supriya Pathak, Om Puri, Sheeba Chaddha, K.K. Raina, Aditi Rao, and Cyrus Sahukar, it is an energetic tale of urban India with a mythic quality usually assigned to stories of a much more ancient variety. Roshan(Abhishek Bachchan), a fairly Americanised young man whose parents moved there decades ago, is unexpectedly thrown back into a small locality of old Delhi when he offers to bring his ailing Grandmother(Waheeda Rehman) back to India; She wishes to die there. What follows is an intricate study of humanity, of a small slice of India, how it affects Roshan, and how he affects it.

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Yet another hijinks-laden Anees Bazmee movie splashes onto cinema screens. But this seems to be the big one. Singh is King, oh sorry, Singh is Kinng … or is it Sinngh is King? Singh is Kinng is the next big Akshay Kumar movie. There, that should be enough of a review. I predict that the readership has immeditely split into those that hate Akhay Kumar’s guts, will never see any of his movies and say it is horrible anyway, and those who will go and see it no matter what and won’t care that it’s horrible. It’s Akshay Kumar. He needs to be watched on the big screen and that’s all there is to it. But if that’s not enough for you, the film also stars the talents of Katrina Kaif, Om Puri, Kiron Kher, Ranvir Shorey, Javed Jaffrey, Neha Dhupia, Yashpal Sharma, Manoj Pahwa, Kamal Chopra, Sudhanshu Pandey, and Sonu Sood. If there is still anyone sitting on the fence about this, and you’re impatient, let me just say that Singh is Kinng is stupid, badly made, and a LOT of fun.

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Abbas Tyrewala makes his directorial debut with an Aamir Khan production. Not a bad way to start. Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na is a typical college-romance-drama-comedy with Imran Khan giving his debut performance. The movie also stars Genelia D’Souza, Prateik Babbar, Manjari Fadnis, Sugandha Garg, Karan Makhija, Alishka Varde, Nirav Mehta et. al. The most important question always is, “Is it a good movie to watch?” To end the suspense, yes, it is. Abbar Tyrewala’s first baby makes for a very entertaining couple of hours, but the best way to describe Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na would be well executed.

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The Wachowski Brothers have an immense reputation to live up to following the seminal Matrix trilogy. After that epic SF philosophical musing, they have now chosen to tackle the more straight-forward world of retro anime in the new Speed Racer movie. What came across in their previous work was the consummate nature of their vision and their execution, and I am pleased to say Speed Racer doesn’t disappoint in either department.

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The director duo of Abbas-Mustan strike again. Starring Saif Ali Khan, Bipasha Basu, Akshaye Khanna, Katrina Kaif, Anil Kapoor, and Sameera Reddy, this latest outing of the sibling kings of mainstream Bollywood thrillers makes you appreciate a few things about this pair of seasoned directors: firstly, they stick to what they know and enjoy doing, and secondly, they make a constant effort to improve their craft in spite of being in this game for almost two decades. Race is a cheap and cheerful, unabashedly sleazy thrill-fest that is proud of its populist leanings and its fantastic unrealism. It comes as no surprise to me that this little beast is doing well at the Hindi box office, because it is all the better for its confidence, and I loved every twisted moment of it.

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Jab We Met (When We Met - Jab is pronounced like ‘cub’ rather than ‘cab’), starring Kareena Kapoor and Shahid Kapoor, is the second film directed by Imtiaz Ali. I was looking forward to this one because I fell in love with the director’s first film, Socha Na Tha, and I was expecting more of the same.

I’ve only ever written about one other Hindi movie in the entire history of this blog, and that write-up wasn’t the most flattering. If you went by that you could be excused for thinking that I wasn’t a fan of Hindi cinema. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am, in fact an ardent fan of Hindi films, but it just so happens that this year has not been a great year. There haven’t been many Hindi movies which I would wholeheartedly recommend since this blog opened shop, and I just wasn’t interested in whining about the rest of them. Now at last we have Jab We Met, and at last there is something I can gush about. That should have been enough to give up the plot of where this is going. I absolutely loved Jab We Met. After a long time, I was happy to see a simple, straight-forward romantic Hindi film done with class, which manages to be both engaging and endearing.

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10,000 BRAVE NEW WORLDS
One million years have passed since ancient man first launched his frail metal crafts into the great darkness named “outer space”. Now distant galactic clusters are home to the myriad descendants of the inhabitants of Earth. Now, each world, light years separate from the others, forms part of an island universe called ‘Starswarm.’ …

Thus begins the blurb on the back cover of Starswarm by Brian Aldiss. It is an old edition of the book which was first printed in January, 1964. Like many others in my collection, I picked it up on the streets of Bombay, off Flora Fountain, in the shadows of the large tropical trees that line the pavement beside the stone walls of Mumbai University. I decided to buy it the moment I laid eyes on the cover and the name of the author, but the cover blurb simply cemented my resolve and set my pulse quickening with that yearning to devour that only a hardened bibliophile will relate to. And so on that sunny afternoon, which is when I end up doing most of my book buying in Bombay, the money was paid, the old book was placed into a cloth shoulder bag along with our other finds for the day, and we caught a bus that would take us homeward.

The other little fact that every other hardened bibliophile reading this will relate to, is that I didn’t quite get around to reading this newly found gem immediately. It was only a few months later, far from Bombay in the chaotic comfort of my room that I finally picked up Starswarm again. Once more I admired the beautiful typography on the cover, I let the cover blurb wash over me, and I was hooked anew.

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