Even a 70 mm name like Karan Johar has decided to go relatively small with Kaal, directed by his assistant Soham Shah. A thriller shot in Jim Corbett National Park and Bangkok, it has "the element of the jungle" running through it, says Shah. "It's not NRI-friendly, it's the first time in years that you'll see blood and violence in our kind of films," says Johar, tongue in cheek. What's more, there are no songs either, save the ultimate item number in the stylised title sequence where srk and Malaika Arora wiggle to Salim Suleiman's Kaal Dhamaal.
Meanwhile, Johar's good friend Aditya Chopra is busy wrapping up the latest Yashraj production, Shaad Ali's Bunty Aur Babli. Shot in over 100 locations in Uttar Pradesh, it's about two ordinary, small-town youngsters (Rani and Abhishek) who chase extraordinary dreams. "It's romantic and fun, it entertains in its own intriguing way," says Ali.
The really intriguing film, however, is Bhansali's Black. Known for his colour-splayed song-and-dance spectacles, the young showman has now decided to do a songless film about a blind and deaf girl, played by everyone's favourite star-actress, Rani, whose world gets some cheer and joy through her teacher (Big B) but role reversal follows soon after when Big B himself is struck by Alzheimer's and Rani has to refill his forgetful world with words and memories. How will Bhansali marry the dripping rich sweep of his visual style and yen for drama with the intimacy and intensity of his idea? We'll know soon.
Meanwhile, in 7 1/2 Phere, a marriage takes so many twists and turns that it goes beyond the regular saat pheras. Written and directed by Ishaan Trivedi, dialogue-writer of Ghulam, the idea is simple: Indians are obsessed with weddings and our films and TV have exploited this as a success formula. So in 7 1/2 Phere a TV show directed by Juhi Chawla decides to cover a real wedding and everything goes wrong. Irrfan plays the uncle of the bride who intends to elope on her wedding day.
From the farcical to the real, Black Friday, produced by Mid-Day Multimedia and based on S. Hussain Zaidi's book, is a triumph of both content and form. It uses documentary footage with dramatic recreations and keeps going back and forth in time to offer clues to what happened in 1993 when 12 bombs ripped through Bombay; a rare Bollywood film which offers hardcore politics in the Costa Gavras kind of thriller format.
Otherwise big will still remain beautiful in '05.So you have Ketan Mehta's The Rising (Mangal Pandey in Hindi).Producer Bobby Bedi refers to it as "the first Hindi film made with an international audience in mind". It's a story of friendship and betrayal of Mangal Pandey (Aamir Khan) and the fictional British officer William Gordon (Toby Stephens, the Bond villain in Die Another Day), set at the time of the sepoy mutiny of 1857.
Subhash Ghai stays big-budget, but marks a departure of sorts with Kisna, his first period film. He introduces two young ladies whose names, for a change, don't begin with the letter "M". Set in early post-independence years, it's the story of love between village boy Kisna (Vivek Oberoi) and innocent English belle Katherine (Antonia Bernath). Dancer Daksha Seth's daughter Isha Sharvani plays Luxmi, the woman Kisna is set to marry. "It proves that nothing lives forever except love," says Ghai.
Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, with its Rs 40 crore budget, is an odd big film for Shyam Benegal. Shot extensively for three years in Ladakh, Uzbekistan, Germany and Burma, it literally follows the footsteps of Bose. "It's an epic adventure," claims Benegal. The film doesn't downplay his political ideology of violent action either. "Gandhi viewed him as a second political son. He believed in undiluted nationalism, not fascism," explains Benegal.
Away from the innovative crowd, producer and co-writer Vidhu Vinod Chopra's Parineeta intends to take cinema back to literary roots. His updating of the Sarat Chandra Chatterjee classic, directed by veteran adman Pradeep Sarkar, is set in 1962 instead of 1914. "The original in today's time would have looked dated but we are hoping that its spirit has been retained," says Chopra.
There are many other ambitious ventures. Mahesh Manjrekar's Virudh where Big B and Sharmila Tagore play a couple who go through struggles after the death of their son. Pritish Nandy Communications' Shabd has Sanjay Dutt playing a Booker prize-winning writer whose new novel fails. How he tries to reclaim his creativity and the power of his words forms the crux of the story. "It's about the thin line dividing illusion and reality," says debutante filmmaker Leena Yadav. UTV's Main, Meri Patni Aur Woh, directed by Chandan Arora, is about a mismatched pair, an ordinary Rajpal Yadav and his attractive wife Rituparna Sengupta. Journalists too get a box-office nod in '05. Get set to introspect on the dumbing down of media in Madhur Bhandarkar's Page 3. Who knows, a sequel—Edit Page—might follow soon.
