Mission Istanbul-sh*t

Well sometimes people make mistakes. OK maybe my mistake could well have been avoided, but I'll put it down to a lesson learned. You may be asking what the lesson was that I learned right? If a film looks rubbish and it gets rubbish reviews and flops big time, the chances are the film is really rubbish! Despite all these warnings, I decided to watch Mission Istanbul.

The story follows ace reporter Vikas Sagar (Zayed Khan) and his search for an exclusive on the latest terrorist story. He bags a high profile job with TV News Company Al Zohra (Al Jazeera anyone?) and travels to Turkey to start his job. Why the news station is based in Turkey is anyones guess but that's the least of our problems when it comes to plot holes! All is not right at Al Zohra and when fellow reporter Owais Hussain (Suniel Shetty)is killed during a mission in Afghanistan, Sagar starts to wonder if all is what it seems. Enter Rizwan Khan (Vivek Oberoi) a mysterious ghost like figure who starts to impart information to the confused Vikas. Soon it becomes apparent that Al Zohra is linked to notorious terrorist Abu Nazir and Rizwan Khan's job is to bring down Al Zohra with the help of Vikas.

The plot is wafer thin and there are so many plot holes that it would take a week to go through them. All in all, an absolute waste of time. However I must say one of the scenes featuring a George Bush look a like was pretty funny.

After watching Vivek in his most awesome turn as Maya Dholas in Shooutout Lokhandwala, one wonders why the hell he would sign a seriously rubbish film like MI. The only thing I would say is, he did look Turkish! A Turk that spoke impecable Hindi that is! Seriously Vivek, you gotta sign some decent films or you'll find yourself stuck doing roles that Suniel Shitty has a habit of doing.

But I learnt an important lesson, if the reviews say it's rubbish, the public say it's rubbish then take it for granted it bloody well is going to be rubbish!

0.5/5

Express Review - Tashan

Cast:

Akshay Kumar, Saif Ali Khan, Anil Kapoor & Kareena Kapoor.

An all star cast including the all conquering box office king Akshay Kumar was being hyped as a super hit even before it hit the theatres. The bigger they are the greater they fall. Tashan was slated by the critics and hated by the public. I put off watching it after reading some of the reviews but my curiosity eventually got the better of me. After all, there must have been something that attracted bollywood heavyweights Akshay and Saif to sign up to this!

The story is of Saif and his girl Kareena, they steal some money belonging to underworld don Anil Kapoor. Anil sends local gunda Bachchan Pandey (Akshay) to recover his money. And so the chase begins...

The Good:
Dil Dance Maare is quite a catchy number, barring that absolutely nothing else worth watching.

The Bad:
Everything other than that one song. The plot is terrible, the acting is awful. Anil and Akshay ham it up big time and it all just looks too fake. Saif is just there playing his usual self and just the presence of Kareena has me out in a rash.

Verdict:
Tashan is all about style and lacks any substance at all. The director spent so much time perfecting the outfits, the cars and the locations that he totally forgot about the substance. With all that talent at hand he still managed to produce a truly awful piece of cinema. Not since Jhoom Barabar Jhoom has an all star cast sucked so badly!

0 out of 5

2009 Predictions

As 2008 comes to a close people will be talking about which films made it big and which flopped over the past year. While Dostana and Singh is King (I refuse to spell it incorrectly!) ruled with their comedy, big films like Yuvraaj and Thoda Pyar Thoda Magic sank without a trace. So with this is in mind, I stole a copy of India FM's list of releases for 2009 and made a few predictions.

Movie Name	Director	Starcast	Prediction
A Love Issshtory	John Mathew Matthan	Himesh Reshammiya	Flop
Aa Dekhe Zara	Jehangir Surti	Neil Nitin Mukesh, Bipasha Basu, Amrita Arora, Koena Mitra	Flop
Acid Factory	Suparn Verma	Fardeen Khan, Dia Mirza, Irrfan Khan, Manoj Bajpai, Dino Morea, Aftab Shivdasani, Danny Denzongpa	Flop
Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani	Rajkumar Santoshi	Ranbir Kapoor, Katrina Kaif, Upen Patel, Darshan Jariwala, Asrani, Salman Khan	Average
Aladin	Sujoy Ghosh	Amitabh Bachchan, Sanjay Dutt, Ritesh Deshmukh, Juhi Chawla, Jackie Fernandez	Average
Banda Yeh Bindaas Hai	Ravi Chopra	Govinda, Lara Dutta, Tabu, Boman Irani, Rajpal Yadav, Satish Shah	Average
Billo Barber	Priyadarshan	Shahrukh Khan, Irrfan Khan, Lara Dutta, Asrani, Deepika Padukone	Hit
Blue	Anthony D'souza	Akshay Kumar, Sanjay Dutt, Lara Dutta, Katrina Kaif, Zayed Khan	Average
Bum Bum Bole	Priyadarshan	Darsheel Safary, Kaveri Jha, Atul Kulkarni, Rituparna Sengupta	Flop
Char Yaar (Earlier Titled Paying Guests)	Paritossh Painter	Shreyas Talpade, Javed Jaffrey, Ashish Chowdhry, Johny Lever, Chunky Pandey, Asrani, Paintal, Delnaz Paul, Celina Jaitly, Vatsal Sheth, Neha Dhupia, Riya Sen, Sayali Bhagat, Viju Khote, Inder Kumar	Flop
Daddy Cool	K Murali Mohan Rao	Sunil Shetty, Aarti Chhabria, Ashish Chowdhry, Tulip Joshi, Aftab Shivdasani, Javed Jaffrey, Kim Sharma, Sophie Choudry, Rajpal Yadav	Flop
De Dana Dan	Priyadarshan	Akshay Kumar, Katrina Kaif, Sunil Shetty, Paresh Rawal, Neha Dhupia, Sameera Reddy	Average
Delhi 6	Rakesh Mehra	Abhishek Bachchan, Sonam Kapoor, Atul Kulkarni, Divya Dutta, Om Puri, Rishi Kapoor, Waheeda Rehman	Hit
Delhi Belly	Abhinay Deo	Imran Khan, Shenaz Treasurywala	Flop
Dharma Productions' Next	Rensil D'Silva	Saif Ali Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Vivek Oberoi, Tara Sharma	Average
Do Knot Disturb	David Dhawan	Govinda, Ritesh Deshmukh, Lara Dutta, Sushmita Sen, Ranvir Shorey, Rajpal Yadav	Flop
Dulha Mil Gaya	Muddassar Aziz	Shahrukh Khan, Sushmita Sen, Fardeen Khan, Mohit Chadha, Tara Sharma, Johny Lever, Beena Kak, Suchitra Pillai, Vivek Vaswani, Howard Rosemeyer	Flop
Fox	Deepak Tijori	Arjun Rampal, Sagarika Ghatge, Udita Goswami, Sunny Deol, Vipul Gupta	Flop
Har Pall	Jahnu Barua	Preity Zinta, Shiney Ahuja, Isha Koppikar, Jai Kalra, Dino Morea, Lilette Dubey, Dhritiman Chatterjee, Yatin Karyekar, Dharmendra	Flop
Hello Darling	Manoj Tiwari	Celina Jaitly, Gul Panag, Isha Koppikar, Javed Jaffrey, Rajpal Yadav, Chunky Pandey, Amrita Arora, Divya Dutta, Asawari Joshi, Rasika Joshi, Mukesh Tiwari, Vrajesh Hirjee, Sunil Pal	Flop
Hissss	Jennifer Lynch	Mallika Sherawat, Irrfan Khan, Divya Dutta, Jeff Douchette	Flop
Housefull	Sajid Khan	Akshay Kumar, Deepika Padukone, Ritesh Deshmukh, Jiah Khan	Hit
Jashnn	Raksha Mistry, Hasnain S Hyderabadwala	Adhyayan Suman, Anjana Sukhani, Shahana Goswami	Flop
Johnny Mastana	Shoojit Sircar	Amitabh Bachchan, Dia Mirza, Sarika, Jimmy Shergill	Flop
Kajraare	Pooja Bhatt	Himesh Reshammiya, Monalisa	Flop
Kambakth Ishq	Sabir Khan	Akshay Kumar, Kareena Kapoor, Amrita Arora, Aftab Shivdasani, Vindu Dara Singh	Average
Kaminay	Vishal Bharadwaj	Shahid Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra, Amol Gupte	Flop
Kisaan	Puneet Sira	Jackie Shroff, Sohail Khan, Arbaaz Khan, Dia Mirza, Nauheed Cyrusi, Dilip Tahil	Flop
Kites	Anurag Basu	Hrithik Roshan, Kangna Ranaut, Barbara Mori	Hit
London Dreams	Vipul Shah	Salman Khan, Ajay Devgan, Asin, Om Puri, Chris Wilson, Michael Gamarano, Rannvijay, Babsy Artner	Flop
Main Aur Mrs Khanna	Prem R Soni	Salman Khan, Govinda, Sohail Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Preity Zinta, Sajid	Hit
Milenge Milenge	Satish Kaushik	Shahid Kapoor, Kareena Kapoor, Aarti Chhabria, Satish Shah, Delnaz Paul	Average
Mudh Mudh Ke Na Dekkh Mudh Mudh Ke	Seema, Sudhir	Himesh Reshammiya, Jennifer Kotwal, Niharika Singh	Flop
My Name is Khan	Karan Johar	Shahrukh Khan, Kajol	Hit
New York	Kabir Khan	John Abraham, Katrina Kaif, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Irrfan Khan	Flop
Paathshala	Milind Ukey	Shahid Kapoor, Nana Patekar, Ayesha Takia, Swini Khara, Dwij Yadav, Ali Haji, Sushant Singh	Flop
Raftaar	Shamim Desai	Emraan Hashmi, Neha Dhupia, Sagarika Ghatge	Flop
Run Bhola Run	Neeraj Pathak	Govinda, Tusshar Kapoor, Amisha Patel, Celina Jaitly	Flop
Saif Ali Khan's next	Imtiaz Ali	Saif Ali Khan, Deepika Padukone	Average
Shortcut - The Con is On	Neeraj Vora, Roshan Andrews	Akshaye Khanna, Arshad Warsi, Amrita Rao, Simi Garewal, Sanjay Dutt, Chunky Pandey	Flop
Tasveer	Nagesh Kukunoor	Akshay Kumar	Flop
Teen Patti	Leena Bajaj	Amitabh Bachchan, R Madhavan, Sushmita Sen, Raima Sen, Mahesh Manjrekar, Irrfan Khan, Boman Irani, Jackie Shroff, Danny Denzongpa, Sharadha Kapoor, Ajay Devgan, Saira Mohan	Average
Three Idiots	Rajkumar Hirani	Aamir Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Sharman Joshi, Boman Irani, R Madhavan	Hit
Tum Mile	Kunal Deshmukh	Emraan Hashmi, Soha Ali Khan	Flop
Veer	Anil Sharma	Salman Khan, Mithun Chakraborty, Lisa Lasarus, Jackie Shroff	Flop
Wake Up Sid	Ayan Mukerji	Ranbir Kapoor, Konkona Sen Sharma, Rahul Khanna	Flop
Wanted Dead And Alive	Prabhu Deva	Salman Khan, Ayesha Takia, Om Puri, Mahesh Manjrekar, Sayaji Shinde, Asseem Merchant, Vinod Khanna, Sajid	Flop
What's Your Raashee?	Ashutosh Gowarikar	Harman Baweja, Priyanka Chopra	Flop
Yahoo	Ken Ghosh	Shahid Kapoor, Arshad Warsi, Jiah Khan	Flop
Yash Raj Films' Next Untitled	Anurag Singh	Shahid Kapoor, Rani Mukherjee	Flop

And there you have it. According to my calculations; Billo Barber, Dehli 6, Housefull, Kites, Main Aur Mrs Khanna, My Name is Khan and Three Idiots should all be hits! My criteria for judging what might work and what might fail is pretty much all down to the star cast! A bit of a weak way of choosing but hopefully a few of my predicitions will come good! Roll on 2009!