Koyel's new movie

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Arundhuti

So this is a Bengali adaptation of the Telegu Movie, with the same title. Although I haven't watched the Telegu movie, internet tells me that it was a big hit and was dubbed in a various other languages and released around the same time. This is a story about a warrior queen Arundhuti who is reincarnated as a Mishti in her next life. 

Koyel Mallick plays the protagonist in this movie. It has been directed by Sujit Mondal.
Koyel says " Playing these larger-than-life characters isn't easy, specially because I have never done it. I needed to first believe in the subject. I believe in reincarnation and life after death. After saying yes, I had to really work very hard on getting Arundhati's body language right."

I think she got a the body language right for sure, check out the poster, she looks intense!

 I checked out the trailer as well which was released on her birthday, actually! And sure looks big budget to me with all the special effects. However, at the same time the uber special effects made me a bit skeptic. Is this movie wgoing to be over dramatic?

Naysayers are taunting. They are comparing the action sequences in the trailer to that of Rajnikanth movies. In fact they are saying, it might put Rajnikanth's action sequences to shame, sarcastically.

I say, let's not judge a book by it's cover. It is somewhat rare ( although we just had Swastika starring Take one)  that we see movies being made around a female protagonists. It is almost like it is separate genre. Actually Netflix recommends movies for me and calls them " Movies with Female in a Strong Lead role". Yet they never suggest movies with " Men in a strong Lead role". Jesus even Netflix is sexist! 

Anyway my point being, movies that celebrate women empowerment, and that is designed to be a commercial success and who target the masses and not just the connoisseurs are refreshing and always welcome!! Koyel - you go gurl! Rock Arundhuti.

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Parambrata's Lorai

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1. Lorai

Why am I excited?

It is a directional venture by Parambrata.. Isn't that enough ? Okay.. just in case you didn't notice from my previous posts he is my absolute favorite and I adore him. My objectivity gets a bit clouded when I see Parambrata's name involved with any project. I'm his " Andho Bhokto". 

On a more serious note though, it stars  heavy weights like Proshenjit aka our famous " Bumbada", Khwaraj Mukherjee & Payel Sarkar. Side note: Why do everyone who wants other to perceive them as part of the Bengali film fraternity use nicknames of famous actors? May be it is just our culture!

My observation from the recent Bengali movies is that, " Bumbada" (Yeah, I'm pretending we are really tight) doesn't just act in any random movie. Over the years he has become very choosy, and only acts in movies that are different, that are fresh. Actually even he, himself in one of his interviews, said (don't remember which one - reference police, go a bit easy on me) that Bengali movies were never created for heroes that were above a certain age and he was determined to challenge the status quo.  Which is why he took on  projects like Mishor Rohoshyo, Jwatiswar. He is conscious of the brand " Proshenjit" and wants to steer it in the right direction. Very SRK of him, I must say, on the whole brand thing! 

But I'm so glad he doesn't choose to be college going Romeo pining for Juliet who is half his age. Although I should add that he could give any 51 year old Bengali man a run for their money. Any Day! He looks younger every year! If I look half as good as him when I'm 51, I'll consider myself extremely lucky!

Anyway, I am deviating from the movie Lorai.

The movie also stars :

Kanchan Mallick, Apurba, Biswajit Chakraborty and Dipankar De. This movie is about a successful Anglo- Indian football player, Sebastian Paes. He unfortunately  had to call it quits prematurely due to an almost debilitating injury.  Sebastian coaches the kids in the local neighborhood and is obviously frustrated about how his carrier and life turned out. The frustrations also seep into his personal life and he becomes estraged from his family. He decides to leave the country hoping for a fresh start, but then one day he bags a new assignment of coaching a rural football team which is a turning point in Sebastian's life...

Proshenjit in an interview says that aparently there are a lots of twists and turn and that  "with Param at the helm of affairs, it will be a treat for the audience".

Are you excited it? I sure am! I know both Proshenjit and Parambrata could take a breather after "Jatiswar" and "Apur Panchali" respectively.. but I can't wait!

I couldn't really find a poster of this movie, so I'm posting a picture from the shooting and press conferences that I found on the internet.

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Apur Panchali - A Preview

Director: Kaushik Ganguly
Starring: Parambrata Chatterjee, Parno Mitra
Music by: Indradeep Dasgupta
Releasing: April 25, 2014

Okay, so I'm pretty excited about this film. I know I wouldn't be able to watch it until it is on youtube or netflix.. but I'm excited, anyway.


Synopsis:

We all know about the  Satyajit Ray classic "Pother Panchali" . This film is about the child actor's "Apu" or Subir Banerjee's life. Parambrata plays a younger Subir in the movie and Parno Mitra plays his wife.

Subir Banerjee was lost in oblivion soon after the iconic Ray movie and had never been a part of any other movie.  He lived a "chaposha" middle class life, worked in a a mill. Then, he worked as a clerk in Central Government and is currently retired.

Kaushik Ganguly  accidentally discovered Subir  few years back and was intrigued that Subir, never appeared on the silver screen again. Apparently at first Subir wasn't even ready to admit that he had acted in the role of Apu. Eventually however, they connected and Kaushik expressed his interest in doing a film on his life Subir eventually agreed and the rest is history. The movie fetched this talented director a Best Director award at 44th  International Film Festival of India. Pretty Impressive!

However, Wikipedia tells me that  India Today, had tracked down the child actor in 1980, about 30 years after the film was released and published an article on the child actor. But that neither reignited Subir's passion for films nor did it inspire anyone to make a film on it, it just got lost!




Trailor, Poster and Interviews : My Inference

The trailor starts of with this young man trying to track down "Apu", set in modern Kolkata. The film is a flash back of Apu's rather Subir's life and it is most probably set in the mid -late 70s. The flash back is black and white (classic!!) there is a hint of Nokshal andolon in there. There is also an inkling of a solid Bengali romance - they keep flipping back and forth between pictures of Parambrata/ Parno and Soumitra/Sharmila.

Parambrata is going to be fantastic, I can tell.What? Biased you say? Not one bit! I just happen to be one of Parambrata's biggest fan of all time, that's all!
Parno is the actress who portrayed the character of "Sunny", the tom boy from the film that is my blog's namesake " Maach, Mishti, more. She actually looks pretty good in this completely new avatar, but I doubt she is going to be have a lot of screen time or impact in the movie, no offense to Parno offcourse. I just think that that script being Subir centric, there will not be a lot of emphasis on Subir's lady love. Actually the fact that they say that there are similarities between reel and real Apu, makes me nervous of an untimely death of Parno's character. Or, I could be totally wrong and maybe this death has a profound impact on Subir's life and it changes how he sees the world?

I smell a hint of satire or rather irony -  the man who was part of a movie that changed Bengali move forever, was a one cinema wonder!

Finally it is a tribute to all the lost child actors that were part of cinema that changed the world. (It says right in the trailer).

I can't wait to find out what it is all about.

This movie is going to tug at our heart strings and make us cry!

P.S. There is only one song that has surfaced " Apur Payer Chap", by Arijit Singh. Wonderful song, very calming.

Ashchorjyo Prodeep- My thoughts ( Spoiler alert)

Yes, I'm a bit behind, I agree. This film was released 5 months ago, but I just watched it and wanted to talk about it.  Probably didn't need to put the spoiler but just in case any one of you haven't already watched it already.

So, a film by Anik Dutta! I was obviously thrilled to watch it. I watched the tailors on you tube and couldn't wait to sit down on a lazy weekend afternoon with a bowl of pop corn to be mesmerized.

We started watching it, it started off, excellent. We were thoroughly enjoying ourselves but then suddenly the movie started to go off in a different direction. I understand the whole concept of reaching a high point and then crashing, but it could have crashed a different way.

My bone of contention is this.. did the wife have to be the high class escort? Aren't we going back 20 years here in cinema and society?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying women don't choose these occupations, any more. But I'm saying, are you trying to tell us that women can not find anything else to do to support her family other than being an escort! She couldn't have been the agent or the owner of this business?  Even that would have showed her in a little bit of a different light.

Had she been the agent, it would have been a little less dramatic, agreed. But it could have been done. I think it maybe works for the movie, but it definitely doesn't work for the message that is going out . Granted, this was supposed to fun movie, but I can't help but ask myself what was the point of this movie, every time I watch movies that are made by intelligent story tellers like Anik Dutta and has such talented cast!

Another thing - you know how the Genie tells the protagonist that he can bring him everything material but nothing abstract such as love, sneh, momota and all - Great point - but it was too blatant! And could have been left for the audience to figure out.

I felt like the movie started great, with full "enthu" and then they either ran out of time, or money or whoever was in charge said "wrap it up, NOW" and they scrambled to make the deadline!

Today is finally my some day!

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Okay folks!

Here is my "this is my someday"  take 2! First of all I should start with a disclaimer : I did not come up with the name Maach Mishti and more! It is a Bengali film I watched some time ago and really liked.  I also thought that this really "fits" with what I want to write about. I'm a bangali girl ( don't like "bengali" or the term "bong", but I don't know how else to write bangali there is no "chondro bindoo" in English unfortunately.) who wants to talk about Mach( fish) , Mishti ( sweets) and more.

So what exactly is this blog going to be about?

 Here I'm going to talk about the movies I like watching and will give you my my thought about the movies I have watched. Yes I'm no movie expert and people in the film industry hate critiques, but hey.. I'm an ordinary girl, part of the audience and I'm simply telling you if I like it or not. If you don't agree with my thoughts, I'm okay with it and I will agree to disagree.  So I like Bangla movies - Kolkata ones. I haven't seen any amazing Bangladeshi movies yet, but I am open to it. I especially like the movies that are modern and not a musical that have actors that suddenly turn into politians and compare being in politics with being raped!

I am a huge fan of Parambrata Chatterjee. Why? His natural acting and his very South Calcutta thing he has going on. I can't really describe it. But no matter what he is portraying I can relate to it. I think if I ever meet him, I will have no issues striking up a conversation and start addressing each other as "tui" and I just know we will have a lot to talk about.. starting from phuchka to Shinghi Park er pujo to Patho Bhavan vs. South Point. So I try to watch every movie he is in :) .

I like Hindi movies too. I am a big fan of the actor Amir Khan and the superstar/businessman Shah Rukh Khan. I love analyzing his marketing his shrewd business and marketing strategies and I respect him for that. His movies, I'm sorry to say don't appeal to me any more.

My guilty pleasure is watching Karan Johar's Koffe with Karan and Zoom- isko dekho. Are they pointless? Yes, absolutely! But do I spend hours watching and analyzing it? Yes absolutely! I love it but feel guilty admitting to people that I do it! I sometimes feel like I am getting to see the real person, through how someone answers a question in an interview - although everything is probably is scripted. But I like to think that - don't take it away from me :P

 I will talk about food. I'm Vegan, by the way. Bangali Vegan sounds like an oxymoron, I know. But there are still a lot of food that is Bangali but Vegan ( think Jhalmuri, luchi alur dom, muri less muri ghonto.. my ma swears you can make it, lau diye dal, posto... just to name a few).

So, I'm starting this journey today, let's see where I go with it! I'm sure it will be a fun one!