Articles

Film: "Cheeni Kum"; Music Director: Ilayaraja; Singers: Shreya Ghoshal, Vijay Prakash; Ratings: *** Ilayaraja comes to Bollywood to experiment and ends up creating an amazing album. With seven tracks to boast about, including two instrumental numbers, the soundtrack of "Cheeni Kum" is music to the ears.

Film: "Good Boy Bad Boy"; Cast: Emraan Hashmi, Tusshar Kapoor, Tanushree Dutta, Isha Sharvani, Paresh Rawal; Director: Ashwini Chaudhary; Ratings: *1/2 "Good Boy Bad Boy" or "Dhoop Chaon..." - last I remember Ashwini Chowdhary had made a lovely sun-kissed film called "Dhoop".

Film: "Life In A...Metro"; Director: Anurag Basu; Cast: Kay Kay Menon, Shilpa Shetty, Shiney Ahuja, Kangana Ranaut, Konkona Sen Sharma, Irfan Khan, Sharman Joshi; Rating: *** Director Anurag Basu seems to have an obsession with heights. In "Murder", "Gangster" and now "Metro", characters are seen hanging down or just sitting on ledges of skyscrapers.

Film: "Shootout At Lokhandwala"; Music Directors: Strings, Mika, Biddu, Anand Raj Anand, Euphoria; Singers: Anchal, Mika, Biddu, Anand Raj Anand, Palash Sen, Sunidhi Chauhan, Sukhwinder Singh; Ratings: ** "Shootout At Lokhandwala" is basically huge in every way. A huge star cast, huge board of music composers and a huge team of singers.

Life in a metro is like a boiling pot, where lack of time, the mad race for money and success, drying emotional quotient, entangled relationships lead to emotional turmoil and heartburn. Anurag Basu's "Life In A... Metro", releasing Friday, gives us a picture of all this.

Film: "Munna"; Cast: Prabhas, Ileana, Prakash Raj, Kota, Sukanya, Rahul Dev, Venu Madhav, Bharani and others; Director: Vamsi Paidipally; Producer: Dil Raju Music Director: Harris Jayaraj. After a damp squib like "Yogi", action star Prabhas once again fails to pick up the right script to salvage his image. "Munna", a clichйd revenge drama by debutant director Vamsi Paidipalli, is not going to help the young actor's fortunes.

Film: "Yatra"; Cast: Nana Patekar, Rekha, Deepti Naval and Nakul Vaid; Editor, Screenplaywriter, Cinematograper & Director: Gautam Ghose; Rating: ** This is the story of a creator's journey. It could be seen as a metaphor of the fairly prolific director's own journey across the oscillating oceans of the motion picture. And never mind the rough patches and the debilitating turbulence.

Film: "Good Boy Bad Boy"; Music Director: Himesh Reshammiya; Singers: Akriti Kakkar, Himesh Reshammiya, Himani Kapoor, Vinit, Alka Yagnik, Sunidhi Chauhan, Zubeen Garg; Rating**

Album: Raqeeb; Music: Pritam; Singers: Kunal Ganjawala, Gayatri Ganjawala, Alisha Chenoy, Zubeen, KK and Tulsi Kumar; Ratings: *** Music composer Pritam is the toast of the season. His music in "Metro" is already topping the charts and he maintains the rhythm in "Raqeeb".

Album: "Ta Ra Rum Pum"; Music: Vishal-Shekhar; Singers: Shaan, Mahalaxmi Iyer, Sneha Suresh, Shravan Suresh, Sunidhi Chauhan and Sonu Nigam; Rating **12 After the marginal success of "Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd", music director duo Vishal-Shekhar have composed another seemingly bouncy compilation in "Ta Ra Rum Pum". The album is relatively small by our Hindi film industry standards as it has only six tracks and there is not a single remix.

Film: "Life In A Metro"; Music: Pritam Chakraborty; Singers: Adnan Sami, K.K., Suhail, Soham, James; Rating: ***1/2 Anurag Basu couldn't have chosen a better composer than Pritam to create music for his film "Life in a Metro". The director-composer duo had earlier given us the brilliant album "Gangster - A Love Story", and "Metro" with its 'all male' board of singers is also a must hear experience.

Film: "Ek Chalis Ki Last Local"; Music Directors: Sandesh Shandilya, Amar Mohile, DJ Aqueel, Sanjeev and Ankur Tiwari; Singers: Alisha Chinoy, Sonu Nigam, Sandesh Shandilya, Rashni, Anoushka, Ankur Tiwari; Rating: **1/2