One of my all time favorites.

Expected more

A Disappointing Continuation

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Aaina – remake – Laga Chunari Man Daag (LCMD) – release year 2007 30 years later, Bollywood made the same theme because they failed to drive in the message in the think-brains of we, the Indians – way back in 1977! So in LCMD- Rani (who eventually becomes a prostitute in the film) is the daughter of a retired Professor (Anupam Kher) who is not getting his pension and is shown running from pillar to post to get it. Jaya (playing Ran's mother) is somehow managing to run the household by sewing blouses & petticoats. Financial crunch drives Rani to the big city where she becomes a high class Prostitute – having the designation of 'Escort' because in big-big corporate sectors, the senior officials cannot ask like 'get me a prostitute for the night' …..etiquette does not allow – so a new name 'Escort' has been given to such sex-workers. They obviously get paid higher than the red light area sex-workers….yea – this is a kind of injustice – absolutely the same work but payment is vastly different! So in this world, in 2007, where unemployment is rampant, Rani starts living in a plush house in Mumbai plus starts sending money to not just feed the family but also renovate the dilapidated building they lived in! People from her village (her cousin in fact) comes to know that she was actually a sex-worker and even starts blackmailing her! She then meets a filthy rich handsome hunk who starts dating her and then even marries her because rich males – mostly f**k around all kinds of females – but in Rani – he could see the subservient, submissive qualities as well (along with promising sex-postures that escorts are supposedly experts at) – after all she was from a small town and decides to marry her after all. His brother marries Rani's younger sister – who was an MBA (not an escort because she was educated…..I think this is the reason why Indian females are kept uneducated – coz if they all become literate and independent..who would do the job of sex-worker?..this is an inherent fear that sleazy debauch males have and thus do their level best to promote whoredom among women and keep it alive forever!) Take Home for commoners (thick brained esp.) after watching LCMD:That a female can be a sex-worker – either out of choice or by force – whatever – because eventually they will find some rich & handsome idiot to marry – so why not enjoy with as many males as possible?When males are allowed to happily hump around females – why shouldn't females do the same? Why on earth should they maintain their chastity or virginity – when some debauch, amply humped demon will ultimately marry them? A demon only deserves a witch. Ravana needs to marry Mandodari. So there.Some males seem hardly bothered about concepts like chastity or virginity (so it seems in the film) – the fact that Abhishek (Rani's hubby in the film) happily agreed to marry the escort – knowing very well that later, when he attends the corporate meetings etc., the BEEPS will smile and even wink at his wife…reminding her of the 'nude' times they had together!!(you see Abishek happened to meet Rani in one of the corporate meetings…means that he will be meeting the same officers or executives – for whom Rani was present……like to entertain them on bed!Aaina - a yesteryear Bollywood film Difference between Aaina 1977 and LCMD 2007 – Not much really. Parents are dumb enough to not understand the source of money. Both the times the prostitutes got married and lived happily ever after.Indians (maximum) went to see the conical blouse & open cleavage of Mumtaz and Rani respectively.

I started out with a pretty bleak expectation, to be honest, but it was not all that bad after a 2+ hours.Though I was very impressed the ad-man Pradeep Sarkar's first outing, Parineeta. It was one of the best of that year. I began with expectations of good cinematography. But as the movie unfolded, it was hard to disregard the story to watch each and every frame! Certainly the frames, esp the Benaras ghat scenes were very artistically done. One can be pretty much sure of artistic delight of Pradeep Sarkar's penchant for visuals.Acting wise, it's Rani Mukherjee's solo movie. I don't remember seeing her in a pivotal role in any film. So much so that, her co-star Abhishek Bachchan almost seems a gust appearance in the movie. Kunal Kapoor does good job in his role. (Why does every working professional hero/heroine in the Hindi movies have to do a job in ad-industry?) Konkana SenSharma - the only character I thought was a miscast. A big fan of her, almost all her movies - but her role in this movie looks sorta fake! Its not matter of the middle-class-family daughter in Benaras or working professional (ad-industry, of course) in Bombay. For that matter, last year, Vishaal Bharadwaj shot her beautifully in Omkara! I just think she is not commercial-movie-type. She seems very fake, when trying to dance or sing.Shantanu Moitra's music is passable. 'Hum to aise hain bhaiyya' is hummable by the time you finish watching the movie, because it keeps playing in the movie throughout. This is a typical filmy album, with few happy, a dance number, a sad song, the usual fair. The only song really stands out is the sort of hip-hop number with Mita Vashisth's voice with Shubha Mudgal's rendition of Manna Dey's old classic, 'Laaga chunari mein daag'.Lastly, I am truly happy for Pradeep Sarkar. Here's a man, who came to the industry very late in his career, but I am glad he did. In fact, I think going to Switzerland for Yash Chopra's movies is a must, so he does! But really, he doesn't need to go abroad to make his visuals appealing, he has enough colors in his desi palette to fill the canvas!

As anyone who has seen a trailer for this movie knows, Rani Mukherjee is a girl from a fine Banaras family on the economic downslide, who goes to Bombay intending to make money to help them out and finds herself in business as a high-class professional escort.When her younger sister, Konkona Sen Sharma, comes to Bombay to take up her own job in an ad agency, we see the two of them in a tonga on Marine Drive, the Queen's Necklace fulfilling its promise to swirl the city in glamor. When some ladies of the night pass by the carriage, Konkona makes an unthinking provincial girl's harsh comment, and her sister rebukes her sharply for her lack of compassion.In this passage of perfect dialogue, you have the main tension driving the story, and one of its many moments of good acting between well-drawn women characters. What is going to happen if the younger sister finds out what her big sister has done in order to secure her own future? Will Rani's sacrifice separate her forever from her sister's love and respect, and from a chance at acceptance in romance and marriage?I gather this is a Hindi movie theme known to the Indian audience. LCMD is far from perfect -- there's a mixing of story types going on probably, the old-style melodrama and something more modern and psychological -- but the good things about it make it more than worth seeing. There are four striking women characters (Jaya as mother, and Hema Malini in a special appearance that blesses the whole movie, including a dance that should have been much longer) who all seem relatively "real" in relation to Hindi movie women. They relate to each other in a decent, normal way (in small roles we have a less-nice girl and also a friend in Bombay as well).Another good thing: the parents are less than respect-worthy without being "bad" Hindi movie parents -- father clearly is an upper-class slacker who'd rather develop "symptoms" than get a job, rent out a room, sell the property and live within his means; and mother is interestingly ambivalent about what her daughter is doing in order to be sending home the cash.The cinematography of Banares and Bombay is worth the trip to the theaters, and the clothes are worth taking notes on, both the subtle and stunning cotton traditional clothes of the family in Banaras and Rani's high-style nicely top-of-the-city wardrobe. You might be reminded of India as the home of the most wonderful textiles on the planet.If the story is still Bollywoodized and Bollywood-y (how did a villain know the thing he knows? why don't we see a bit more of Rani's "work life"? why do we need a song that is actually set in Switzerland -- though maybe that's ironic/postmodern?), it nonetheless is a rich enough, fresh enough, and engaging enough experience, with great performances. As it really is about its women, the men are fine but you wouldn't focus on them in thinking about the movie. If you see the movie, you may find it raises good questions -- it it progressive? regressive? what do we mean by these things? -- worth talking and thinking about.

This fall is supposed to be full of good and bad surprises. All the previews of this flick promised that a treat is likely to come our way. And this is exactly what has gone against this movie.The highlights of the songs weren't too misleading, as far as its catchy tunes are concerned. The plot revolves around a family settled in Benaras. Shivshanker Sahay (Anupam Kher) is a retired man lives in an ancestral house, with two daughters, and his wife, Sabitri (Jaya Bachchan). The elder daughter Vibha (Rani) is more conscious of her parents' old age, their growing anxiety for making both ends meet, and her incapacity as a woman to support her parents as a son would have done. This financial crisis pushes Vibha to fetch for work in a city of opportunities where opportunities are very hard to strike. From this point, the never-ending saga of Vibha turning into Natasha brings a very predictable twist in the story. Chutki (Konkana Sen) is one of the finest artists in Indian cinema. She has done full justice to her role as a younger daughter with little understanding of the family crisis and huge dreams for future. Though it is a very well-executed movie, with finesse of Pradeep Sarkar, and all the right ingredients for a commercial hit, it is a very predictable movie. The reason for its predictability is that the previews not only revealed the entire story, but stole all the surprising elements from it.