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Zokkomon

Director: Satyajit Bhatkal
Cast: Darsheel Safary, Anupam Kher, Manjari Phadnis
Rating: **

Zokkomon is a brilliant business plan and every parent's best bet for escaping their kids for a few hours. A superhero movie that features Darsheel Safary's journey from awkward to awesome has to be the best way to kick-start the summer vacations.

The film opens to an establishing shot of rural India which is done with Kailash Kher belching out a number, appropriately picturised on Makarand Deshpande. This is done simultaneously as Kunal (Darsheel Safary) is being sent to the custody of his legal guardian, Chacha (Anupam Kher) after the demise of his parents. And the helicopter shot of Hogwarts Express that you might have caught in the promos is actually Indian Rail that's taking Kunal to his predictably evil uncle and aunt who leave no stone unturned to give him the Cinderella treatment.

Soon, Kunal is forsaken at an amusement park by his evil chacha, who then pronounces him dead, to polish off

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Vidya Balan burst onto the scene as a breath of fresh air with her very Indian look in Parineeta, reminiscent of the quiet dignity of Meena Kumari and the playful innocence of Jaya 'Guddi' Bachchan. Her understated portrayal of a middle class girl weathering personal storms and heartbreaks brought back something that was missing in Bollywood for a long time - grace. It's common knowledge that heroines in mainstream Bollywood either need familial backing/clout or a sugar daddy to be cast as the leading lady, or be ready to pull a bare-and-dare act in their debut. But Parineeta was a dream debut for her in every sense of the word.

From thereon, however, it's been a mixed bag - some terrible choices that she must have signed in haste opposite leading men who either looked like cherubs or gummy bears. Her style/fashion sense has been heavily panned, too, both onscreen and off screen. Leaving behind the nightmares of romancing Shahid Kapur and starring in movies whose names were fatally

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Zindagi Na Milege Dobara

Zindagi Na Milege Dobara's teaser has Hrithik, Abhay and Farhan flaunting their chiseled abs. Is B'wood's obsession with lean eternal?

Bollywood's lead heroes have always been voluntary shape-shifters. Every time one gains popularity for a certain waist size, others fall in line to chisel themselves into the same. But this wasn't the case back in the day. There was a time in Hindi cinema when one's physique didn't matter and Sanjeev Kumar was a lead hero and fat-burners were the least popular drug.

And if you thought, we're just quoting pre-historic examples, you thought wrong. Remember, Rishi Kapoor confidently twisting his wiggly-comfortably-round self in Chandni? Or perhaps even Govinda at the peak of his career, gyrating better than Munni or Sheila in his seriously overweight state in Sajan Chale Sasural. Neither of them shaped up or needed to ship out on account of their excess flab. It was a blissfully corpulent world.

It was only by the fag end of the 80s, when a new look

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Teen Thay Bhai

Sometimes films read like a dream on paper but do not live up to the written word on celluloid. The carefully crafted idiosyncrasies, the bizarre setups, the exaggerated reactions might have immense potential for a rib-tickling page-turner but fail to be enacted on the big screen. Such is the case of this simple tale of three brothers.

As the title suggests, the film is based on the lives of three brothers of the Gill clan. Their names, as the promo gives away, are funnier than most gags in the film. The eldest and the unreasonably angry one is Chiksi (Om Puri), the quirky excuse-for-a-dentist is Happy (Deepak Dobriyal) and the blissfully idiotic one is Fancy (Shreyas Talpade). Like most screen brothers in comic films, they can't stand each other and end up spouting Punjabi abusives over the most trivial things. So, 'Tere Piyo di' and ''Khottay de puttar' are prefixed to every dialogue.

If you care, the plot involves a grandfather's singular will that requires the Gill bros to

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Aamir Khan seems to be everywhere nowadays, a phenomenon that is usually associated with the Baadshah of Bollywood, Shah Rukh Khan. He was found cheering loudly for Team India at the World Cup, sporting his new look for the upcoming film with Honeymoon Travels' Reema Kagti. He apparently partied with the boys in blue till the sun rose the next morning the day we won the World Cup. His brand and cause endorsements can rival any other top star's in Bollywood today. He makes big news for his productions, for his skillful PR both in India and abroad, for the Twitter conversations he has with the Big B and for random sound bytes every now and then.

Long living in the shadow of arch rival Shah Rukh Khan, he seems to have perfected the art of PR that SRK was hailed for. During Aamir's decade-long (was it longer?) tiff with the media, when he refused to attend award shows, give interviews to certain publications and refused to play favourites, SRK reigned as the media's golden boy. There was

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Bengali filmA little independent Bengali film is creating a lot of buzz - five sold-out screenings at the 61st Berlinale in February this year, a successful screening at the Slamdance festival in Utah before that and the director has been invited to more than 30 international film festivals.

The subject is compelling- a story of petty crime, angry rap music and explicit sex and a film that has prolonged sex scenes and full-frontal nudity. Even the name of the director is intriguing, 'Q' - the director has adopted this letter as his identity.

Q explains, " the film was born from a sense of despair. It arrived in the form of words, out of anger, and a sense of desperation and hopelessness. That is exactly how one feels if the desire is to tell stories, unhinged and unashamed, for that's how stories should be told."

The complete article further states, "So he felt that the story of "Gandu," inspired and informed by real events and real characters, lent itself to a visual and aural experience that

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Thank You

Anees Bazmee's 'Thank You' is very similar to his film 'No Entry' (2005); it's all about cheating husbands and trusting wives and how to reform the infidels. The premise and the treatment is almost the same which makes you wonder why Bazmee wants to re-tell an old story with some cosmetic changes.

It's been five years since his previous work on infidelity and nothing has changed in the interim; husbands manage to fool unsuspecting wives and the hapless spouse can do nothing except cry over their fates or commit suicide. The other option is the one that these women opt for- they hire a detective/friend/well-wisher who vows to reform the erring husbands.

The premise- Raj (Bobby Deol), Vikram (Irrfan Khan) and Yogi (Suneil Shetty) have beautiful, loving wives but are always looking for casual sex outside their marriage. Sonam (Bobby's wife) has blind trust in her husband and readily falls for every blatant cover-up. Enter Kishen (Akshay Kumar) who lays traps and counter-traps to first

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Movie: Thank You

Bollywood's warped take on adultery dictates that every husband's chief passion after cricket and before pissed-drunk-dancing is cheating on their wives. And husbands will cheat, regardless of whether or not their wives are naggers, nosey, indifferent or caring. Why? Because from 'Biwi No 1' to 'No Entry' this genre has broken every box office record, that's why! And Anees Bazmee's 'Thank You' is yet another to further engrave the above point.

If you've clicked on the promo at the end of this page, you know this film is about three cheating husbands, Raj (Bobby Deol), Yogi (Suniel Shetty) and Vikram (Irrfan Khan). What you don't know is that they're involved in the business of luxury yachts in Canada and can afford fancy sports cars and mansions. But professions in films are as detailed as the makeup man's dialogues in the film, so the unfounded affluence is only fair.

Anyway, getting to the cheating part. Being Bollywood heroes, even cheating has to involve singing, dancing and

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