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The shifting trends
I told this long time back to one of my movie buff friend that if you are an Indian cinema fan, then the last seven odd years have been nothing less than great news. Indian cinema now lives in exiting times. The reason for my enthusiasm lies on the fact that finally Bollywood has got makers who are willing to push the envelope.
Thank you god almighty! Indian filmmakers have woken up to political-social thrillers!
I told this long time back to one of my movie buff friend that if you are an Indian cinema fan, then the last seven odd years have been nothing less than great news. Indian cinema now lives in exiting times. The reason for my enthusiasm lies on the fact that finally Bollywood has got makers who are willing to push the envelope.
I frankly consider makers like Rajamouli are also part of the extended Bollywood. In the filmmakers like Anurag Kashyap, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Neeraj Pandey, Meghna Gulzar, etc we have discovered intriguing and fascinating cinema delivering capabilities. In these generally exciting times comes the phenomenal icing on the cake or that tempting cherry on top of the cream – socio-political thrillers like ‘A Wednesday’, ‘D-Day’, ‘Baby’, ‘Special 26’, ‘Phantom’ and the upcoming feature ‘Airlift’.
The trailer of ‘Airlift’ is pure sensation. It is like you standing outside your favourite hot curry restaurant in a cold winter street, the door opens and you can peep inside for a few moments to watch waiters carrying hot dishes and the aroma of hot spicy gravy only increases your craving. In my very personal opinion the combination of Akshay Kumar and Neeraj Pandey is the best thing that happened to Bollywood and this genre.
It is also the first high voltage duo to deliver on screen magic since Sunny Deol and Raj Kumar Santoshi have parted ways. Sure Pandey was able to deliver a phenomenal movie in ‘A Wednesday’ driving on the back of fantabulous performance from Naseeruddin Shah and then phenomenal climax speech delivered on behalf of the battered Indian common man.
He still needed a long term BO initial delivering star to experiment with the different plots he had in mind. Akshay Kumar has done a big favour to both Pandey and audiences like me by partnering with him.
Having said that, I guess Bollywood makers woke up to the scope of this genre with Anubhav Sinha’s ‘Dus’ in 2005. The movie had a tight plot and presented our regular stars in a different avatar, Shilpa Shetty for example in this one was not to shake her backside but kick a few as an ATS agent. There was no “Bharat mata” rhetoric but a subtle under plot of hardboiled love for country. ‘Dus’ impressed a few and while it did not set the box office on fire it actually made roaring business with DVD and VCD sales.
Bollywood is no longer about the Swiss Mountains, happy joint family and the white little doggy movies. The industry is now giving us true stories like ‘Talwar’ and rescue operations of fellow trapped Indians in an airlift.
By:Rahul Deo Bharadwaj http://thesocietyasiseeit.blogspot.in
