Blog Posts by Rummana Ahmed

  • Yahoo! India Movies Review: The Reluctant Fundamentalist

    By Rummana Ahmed | Movie Reviews – Sat 18 May, 2013 1:27 AM IST

    Kate and Riz in 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist'Cast: Riz Ahmed, Kate Hudson, Liev Schreiber, Imaad Shah

    Direction: Mira Nair

    Rating: ****

    Mira Nair takes on the daunting task of adapting Mohsin Hamid’s ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ and skillfully transforms a monologue into an engaging plot. She weaves an elaborate tale, infusing it with warmth and texture.

    Mira Nair’s narrative feels like a constant dialogue with the audience where she questions our presumptuous notions of the “other”. She introduces a third act; what does her protagonist do once the alienation is complete, after Changez (Riz Ahmed) decides to give up his American dream and return to Pakistan, a nation in turmoil? The third act provides a perspective and makes us hopeful of a possible closure.

    Changez Khan (Riz Ahmed) is charming and intelligent, excelling first at Princeton University and soon establishing himself as a successful business analyst on Wall Street. His professional achievements are complimented as he finds himself falling in love with the beautiful

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  • Yahoo! Movies Review: Aurangzeb

    By Rummana Ahmed | Movie Reviews – Fri 17 May, 2013 5:28 PM IST
    Prithviraj and Arjun in AurangzebPrithviraj and Arjun in Aurangzeb
    Cast: Arjun Kapoor, Prithviraj Sukumaran, Rishi Kapoor, Jackie Shroff

    Direction: Atul Sabharwal

    Rating: ***1/2

    Atul Sabharwal weaves an intriguing tale in ‘Aurangzeb’; the collusion of the powerful and the corrupt. The nexus of ministers, real estate developers and the police is almost impenetrable and there is no place for those who don’t fall in line.

    Arjun Kapoor in a double role is undisputedly the star of ‘Aurangzeb’. Twin brothers separated when young usually makes for a clichéd portrayal. Actors try so hard to play the two characters differently that the depiction eventually looks forced but Arjun doesn’t fall into these trappings. He plays brothers Ajay and Vishal, one is the spoilt brat born with a silver spoon, smug about his position of privilege. The other is a small town boy, unaware that he could have been the successor to an empire. Arjun plays the two characters with aplomb, there are some similarities and yet, he manages to create two distinctive characters, each immensely

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  • Live Tweet Review: Aurangzeb

    By Rummana Ahmed | Yahoo! India Movies – Thu 16 May, 2013 6:23 PM IST
    Gurgaon is the most modern boom-town of “India Shining”, the new frontier to be conquered by those who understand real estate. This city rose from a small town to a boom town satellite city in just fifteen years.

    However the law and order is yet to catch up.

    A family of Policemen...
    A family of Gangsters...

    Aurangzeb: The film

    Under the guise of a respected citizen, Yashwardhan (Jackie Shroff) runs a parallel world – a world, where he is the Emperor.

    To bring down a criminal... the law will have to now think like a criminal.

    When Vishal (Arjun Kapoor) is planted in Yashwardhan's world in place of Ajay (Arjun Kapoor), the lawmakers (Rishi Kapoor & Prithviraj) roll the dice and a sequence of events unravel – something much more than what Vishal bargained for, as he finds himself in a predicament that puts him to
    the test.

    Aurangzeb is all about a world where Kingship knows no Kinship and where there can be only one Emperor.

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  • Yahoo! Movies Review: Go Goa Gone

    By Rummana Ahmed | Movie Reviews – Fri 10 May, 2013 5:59 PM IST

    Meet the zombie hunterCast: Saif Ali Khan, Kunal Khemu, Vir Das, Puja Gupta, Anand Tiwari

    Direction: Raj Nidimoru and Krishna D.K.

    Rating: ***

    Are we familiar with zombies? Not really…okay, may be. But do we understand entertainment? Of course, we do. The directors of ‘Go Goa Gone’ understand that zombies are a completely foreign concept for many of us. They have therefore infused the narrative with dollops of comedy to ensure that this unusual premise is made palatable for the average Hindi film buff.

    Saif Ali Khan plays the Russian Mafioso whose rave party in an isolated Goan island goes all wrong. The revelers indulge in some red drugs and the morning after, they are loitering around zombified, hungry for blood. Blonde Saif nails it as Boris, the zombie hunter; he speaks with a twang, peppering his dialogues with choicest desi abuses (he is actually from Delhi). His portrayal, much like Javed Jaffrey’s pseudo- Australian accent in ‘Salaam Namaste’ (2005), remains the most memorable one from the film.

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  • In conversation with Mira Nair

    By Rummana Ahmed | First Cut – Tue 7 May, 2013 5:21 PM IST

    Mira Nair on the setsWhile finishing ‘The Namesake’, in New York in 2007, Nair read the manuscript of Hamid's unpublished novel, ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’. She found it immensely readable and was thrilled to have found a springboard from which to enter the worlds of both modern-day Lahore and New York. Through her own Mirabai Films and Pilcher's New York-based Cine Mosaic, the two optioned the film rights to the novel.

    Mira Nair is in India passionately promoting her forthcoming release ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’. Excerpts from a candid chat:

    Q. ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ is essentially a monologue. How difficult is it to translate a book like that into a film?

    It was possibly the most challenging adaptation that I have ever been involved with in my work so far because when a director chooses a novel you bring a lot of things to it; you want to inhabit that world for more than few years of your life. So I view a novel as a springboard for my imagination and besides the inherent challenge of

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Pagination

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