Tamas (Darkess) is a novel written by Bhisham Sahni (himself a refugee to India from West Punjab, now in Pakistan) & it was conceptualized by Govind Nihalani for Big screen but was released as TV series on Doordarshan in 1987. The series revisits incidences of 1947 partition. Its haunting, captivating, it stays with u. Indians of certain generation will definitely remember this Saga and the controversies surrounding it. Being TV mini-series, it’s production quality was of any A grade movie. The ensemble of cast was treat for everyone’s eyes – Om Puri, Amrish Puri, Deepa Sahi, Saeed Jaffrey, A. K. Hangal, Dina Pathak, Manohar Singh, Surekha Sikri to name a few. Om Puri’s ground breaking performance bought tears to everyone’s eyes.

Tamas (Darkness) of those times of religious intolerance and civil war highlights two stories of refugee families, one Sikh and the other Hindu. These victims of hate and their Muslim counterparts had, until 1947, been brothers and co-existed for over a thousand years throughout the Indian subcontinent. The violence in the series is in the background, killers are shown instead of the killed bodies, instead of blood-letting, we are confronted with the faces of victims.

Tamas will remain as the creative zenith of Govind Nihalani. Most of the cast we able to depict the emotions so well, seemed to have lived during the partition and they were just revisiting those painful days to tell the new generation what they have been through. The series won couple of National Awards – Surekha Sikri for best supporting actor and Vanraj Bhatia for his haunting score. We can compare Govind Nihalini to Martin Scorsese who have always been snub at the awards function.  Govind Ji truly deserved National award for creating this saga but he didn’t win National Award.

Revisiting this saga again during Independence Day celebrations around will make you realize or feel the pain that our people have gone through post partition. 

Jism 2 one of the most anticipated movie has hit the theatres. It marks the Bollywood debut of Adult movie star Sunny Leone which made it ONE of the most anticipated movies. From the promos movie likes it will take eroticism & voyeurism to another Level in Bollywood, but it failed miserably. What you see in promos that what you will see on big screen too. There is not even a single good this that I can think about this movie.

Speaking of the cast Randeep Hooda & Arif Zakaria does decent job. Arunoday Singh is not at all convincing. Sunny Leone promises skin show with bare back and cleavage throughout the movie but one may get irritated with too cleavage show ;). Sunny, who also looks pretty, clearly wasn’t cast for her acting skills, but honestly, she is neither bad nor good.

The movie is directed by Pooja Bhatt & written by Mahesh Bhatt. It was a bold move to make a movie like this casting an adult film star, but that can’t be the only USP of the movie. Bhatt camp is known for its creating erotic thrillers with some great music fail here to make one. Songs are pretty boring and one will forget once out of theatres. For a movie to be a success it needs good story, script, dialogues, music, acting and most important good direction. But here nothing is upto mark. Bhatt movies always had good music, it’s songs were to look out for but this movie has disappointed with that too.

Obvious comparison is the previous Jism, which had beautiful songs, good dialogues, and good supporting cast. It created wonders for the film makers as well as cast associated with it. It was THE break for Bipasha Basu.

Verdict – Tag line of the Movie Says – “To Love Her Is To Die”, I will say “To Watch This Movie, Is To Die”

Previous Jism had sensational Dialogue – “Yeh jism pyaar karna nahin janta, janta hai toh sirf bookh, jism ki bookh.” I will rephrase it for this movie – “Yeh Jism (movie) entertain karna nahi Jaanti, Jaanti hai to sirf public ko disappoint karna”

Let us know how you feel about the movie.

Et Cetra

Jism 2 one of the most anticipated movie has hit the theatres. It marks the Bollywood debut of Adult movie star Sunny Leone which made it ONE of the most anticipated movies. From the promos movie likes it will take eroticism & voyeurism to another Level in Bollywood, but it failed miserably. What you see in promos that what you will see on big screen too. There is not even a single good this that I can think about this movie.

Speaking of the cast Randeep Hooda & Arif Zakaria does decent job. Arunoday Singh is not at all convincing. Sunny Leone promises skin show with bare back and cleavage throughout the movie but one may get irritated with too cleavage show ;). Sunny, who also looks pretty, clearly wasn’t cast for her acting skills, but honestly, she is neither bad nor good.

The movie is directed by Pooja Bhatt & written by Mahesh Bhatt. It was a bold move to make a movie like this casting an adult film star, but that can’t be the only USP of the movie. Bhatt camp is known for its creating erotic thrillers with some great music fail here to make one. Songs are pretty boring and one will forget once out of theatres. For a movie to be a success it needs good story, script, dialogues, music, acting and most important good direction. But here nothing is upto mark. Bhatt movies always had good music, it’s songs were to look out for but this movie has disappointed with that too.

Obvious comparison is the previous Jism, which had beautiful songs, good dialogues, and good supporting cast. It created wonders for the film makers as well as cast associated with it. It was THE break for Bipasha Basu.

Verdict – Tag line of the Movie Says – “To Love Her Is To Die”, I will say “To Watch This Movie, Is To Die”

Previous Jism had sensational Dialogue – “Yeh jism pyaar karna nahin janta, janta hai toh sirf bookh, jism ki bookh.” I will rephrase it for this movie – “Yeh Jism (movie) entertain karna nahi Jaanti, Jaanti hai to sirf public ko disappoint karna”

Let us know how you feel about the movie.

Et Cetra

The Urbane 

The Less Celebrated

The Joker

The Nationalist

The Senior

The Golden Trio of 70s, Gulzar, Sanjeev Kumar and Jaya Bhaduri

The princess

Experiments with a Tinge of Red

Writing for the best

The Dramatist

Brother Stories, Ensemble Cast

The Year of Acting Genius (1972)

Challenging the Established

Sholay (1975)

The Vocalist, the Musician, the Maestro

The Married Hero who never Married

Rich Dad Poor Dad

The Beginning in 50s

Trinity of the 60s

Majestic 70s

Oblivious 80s

Contiguous 90s

Unforgiving New Century, the 2000s

Final Walk before I sleep

Shilpa Shetty

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan

Konkana Sen Sharma