Trailers! I wake up and there are trailers! How exciting! Let’s see if I can watch and write about them real quick before I have to leave for work.
First, Hichki! Which is not about Kalpana Chawla AT ALL! Despite that being the rumor that everyone somehow knew was true. So either Yash Raj purposefully floated this rumor or, more likely, it somehow got around and they decided to just go with it because they were getting more publicity that way than they would have by correcting and saying “no no, it’s just a small story”.
I am very excited about this small story! I think it’s a great small story. There aren’t nearly enough teacher movies out there, I love the Tourettes thing as metaphor for all the small things you have to overcome to keep moving forward, and they filmed it at St Xaviers, where I have been, so I feel all cool and familiar with the location. And it’s a perfect Rani role. Big enough to take advantage of her talent, but small enough that it doesn’t seem like she is overreaching.
Mostly though, I am very excited about the small story aspect. Shot in two months, releasing on an off weekend, but looks good and enjoyable. And not a romance! This is the kind of film Maneesh Sharma has been producing (Dum Laga Ki Haisha, Mere Pyari Bindu), but a human drama story instead of a romance.
It’s a slight expansion and alteration to the new Yash Raj business plan. A small film that will almost definitely make a small profit, only being experimental with the genre. It’s not a “two minor actors playing the lead in a grounded in location love story”, it’s “one major actor doing a really interesting role”. I want to see more of this! I want to see Shahrukh, Aamir, Amitabh in tiny interesting films that will give them roles that are worthy of them.
And then there’s Aiyaary. Which completely confuses me. Sidharth is doing surveillance and overhears a government official being corrupt and decides to go undercover to root out corruption. That I got. But is Manoj Bajpayai good or bad? I can’t tell! Is he the good guy who taught Sidharth everything and is now assigned to track him down, or is he one of the bad guys who Sidharth is trying to punish who is fighting back?
I do like Sidharth in the role! I am convinced, I think he should just be an action star. He looks good in fight scenes, and he can play “thinking my way out of the situation” well. And once again, it’s a very smart role for him. He’s not trying to take the lead of the film with his emotional performance, he is part of the ensemble and the script is the star.
(Although nothing will ever be as good as A Gentleman)
Which is very Neeraj Pandey. It’s all about the process and the story and the big patriotic moments, not about the relationships or the individual moments. The only Neeraj Pandey touch I am missing is, he hasn’t put Anupam Kher in a ridiculous wig. But I assume that happens at some point in the film, even if it isn’t in the trailer.
So, what do you think? Which are you more excited for?
dontcallitbollywood 
Definitely excited for hichki.. I watched mardani in the theatre and it was a treat. I think Rani is being really smart with the roles she picks. She doesn’t need a hero in films like these and romance is not required. Small films, no big themes but it never gets dull either. A very gracious post marriage career for her. She’s still the leading lady and these aren’t multi starrers so her stardom isn’t diluted
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“Gracious” is just the right way to put it. She also isn’t trying to be some kind of “mutton dressed as lamb” (one of my favorite sayings) thing, still being the bright young heroine who just graduated college. She is playing her own age, and finding a nice movie built around who she is now.
On Tue, Dec 19, 2017 at 8:19 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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She was actually heavy set for mardani! The word itself means “woman who looks manly” and she totally looked like a policewali! I compared that to Tabu is too well fitted cop uniform in Drishyam which looked actress-y and her dignified suits which were on point for a senior IPS officer!
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I am really enjoying Rani embracing her identity as an actress rather than a Movie Star. She seems to have looked at aging out of the standard roles as an opportunity rather than a problem.
On Tue, Dec 19, 2017 at 8:34 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Standard roles are meant to only make the heroes look good.
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After she reached a certain acclaim and made it to being a heroine for Yash Raj ( or perhaps once she was assured of financial stability) she has been doing roles which give her a chance to leave an impact with her character. Vidya balan too has been taking that approach.
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It’s smart, you are never going to be able to compete with Heroes for the big big films, better to do small interesting stories.
On Tue, Dec 19, 2017 at 9:28 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I guess somewhere down the line they both got the confidence to turn down the unworthy roles and the arm candy roles. Vidya had stood out right from Parineeta and it was her arm candy roles that flopped. But she definitely came into her own with The Dirty Picture.
She’s done a bunch of small films where her role didn’t add anything to the plot but it became essential to the fabric of the film. Like in Ghanchakkar!
Rani should deffo do more small films. Rani had her female led films at the start of her career too -Raja ki Aayegi baraat – and a few other weird ones. I guess girls who’ve done films where they had the “hero” role early in their career have an easier time sliding into the “hero” part in their post-marriage career too
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I really want to see Rani do more parts like she had in Talaash. Where she is part of an ensemble of great actors, with no one person really standing out. I love that she is taking the lead in this small film, but I also miss that she doesn’t get to play off of other similarly experienced actors. Or I guess like Vidya got to do in Ishqiya, or in TE3N. It doesn’t have to be a romance and she doesn’t have to play the “love interest” but there would be ways for her to take an interesting role without being the sole lead.
But of course it would be tricky because it’s so much easier to just build a movie around the hero and let all the other parts fade away.
On Tue, Dec 19, 2017 at 9:49 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Where she’s at, an ensemble cast means she’s either overshadowed by superstars or her role isn’t meaty enough to make her stand out. If we can accept the khans not doing ensemble cast roles, shouldn’t the girls from their generation also be given the chance to shine in their own right?
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I agree on the women getting their chance to shine. But Margaret has a good point. For example, I wish Aamir would do another ensemble role because he’s better when he’s interacting with actors as good as he is. My favorite Aamir performances are in films like Talaash and Dil Chahta Hai. And speaking of female leads, he was great supporting Kajol’s phenomenal performance in Fanaa.
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This is a very silly comparison, but I kept thinking of ABCD versus ABCD2. ABCD was all about Prabhudeva, everyone else was a total unknown. Which had advantages, it let them experiment and gave Prabhudeva a chance to shine. But then ABCD2 they brought in Varun to work with Prabhudeva and it was a different kind of energy and shook things up a bit. I like that this film lets Rani really shine, but I’d love to see her opposite someone who could bring her to greater heights.
On Tue, Dec 19, 2017 at 10:30 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Alisa, I think likewise and I liked Aamir the most in Talaash and DCH…
It would be nice if Rani does both: strong female lead roles and multistars movies.
Liked the trailer very much…a movie about a woman with Tourette syndrome becoming a teacher…wow!
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Hichki looks very interesting. The ending will be a goody good one yet the issue is so relevant and something I have heard a lot about. The entire teaching attitude and approach changes.
Aiyaary is a whodunit and if they pull it off like special 26 it will be interesting. Back to back whodunits with ittefaq and now this for Siddharth. Manoj bajpai is the good guy. I think they purposefully kept it confusing. Sid is undercover and working with bajpai to expose anti national elements. It’s crossing the double crosser.
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Back to Back to Back for Sidharth, don’t forget my beloved A Gentleman. He’s really going all in on the twisty action hero type roles.
On Tue, Dec 19, 2017 at 9:27 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I loved the trailer of Hichki! It looks really good! Aiyaary on the other hand was kind of confusing. But I agree with you that these are the kinds of roles that Sidharth should stick to.
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Glad to hear I wasn’t the only person confused by Aiyaary!
On Tue, Dec 19, 2017 at 11:10 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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My guess is that both Sidharth and Manoj Bajpayi are gray characters
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Hichki trailer is great. Especially the beginning. It captured all my attention. I’m happy that the teacher has Tourette, because it makes the movie much more interesting, and Rani can exhibit all her talent.
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Yes! for the plot, it felt like they had to give the teacher an obstacle to overcome as well, and this is a good one. An easy thing for Rani to act out, and a little bit unusual.
On Wed, Dec 20, 2017 at 2:26 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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So all of Rani’s films will be produced/presented by Yashraj now? And oh, it’s apparently based on a 2008 film called Front of the class.
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I think I talked about Rani and Yash Raj back when this was first announced, it definitely feels like, as a proper married woman, she will only be doing movies with the approval of her husband from now on. Sort of like working out of the home, only working out of Yash Raj studios.
I just looked up the 2008 film, it’s based on true story memoir about a man with Tourette’s who became a teacher. And it’s a TV movie, one of thousands made a year. And Tourette’s is the only thing they have in common, there’s no “you have to reach this class of slum kids” challenge or anything, it spends more time on his relationship with his parents and his love story. I would be very surprised if anyone ran across this film and watched the whole thing, just because it is so obscure, but I could believe someone saw the one sentence description of the book or film somewhere, “Man with Tourette’s becomes teacher” and went with that.
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It’s really sad that she has to work with only Yashraj.
Are other filmmakers not ready to sign her up? Or is she willing to work only with Yashraj because she can be flexible about her timings? Or because she can get roles written for her? I mean, she is a fantastic actress, shouldn’t be difficult to get roles written for her, but I guess it’s probably easier for her to get such roles in Yashraj especially written keeping her in mind?
And about the made for TV movies, I don’t really get them. Is it because they have budget issues? Or such films don’t get a huge audience?
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In America, we have about 100-200 standard channels. Plus all the streaming you could want, more and more people aren’t watching TV at all because they just stream content all day from the internet. The top rated shows on Television still get less than a 5% audience share in the ratings. This is a Hallmark movie, so it would be high quality and a big deal, for a TV movie, but we are still talking around a 1-2% audience share for the premiere. It just seems very unlikely that one of that 1-2% was an Indian scriptwriter who saw the whole thing and then threw out most of the plot and did something different. But I could believe seeing the DVD case in a bin or the book on a shelf and having the idea of “Tourette’s-teacher” stick in their heads.
For yash Raj, i don’t know that she HAS to only work with Yash Raj. It just seems likely. From the other side of things, it’s kind of her studio now, so it’s also like Shahrukh only doing Red Chillies movies. If a good script comes her way, she can arrange for yash Raj to fund it and shoot it and do all of that. And she can have her baby with her onset and have lunch with her husband between shoots and go to and from work with him, it just seems nicer for her.
oh, I found the post where I talk about the wording of the announcement related to Rani and her married status! https://dontcallitbollywood.com/2016/10/04/ranis-coming-back-yaaaay/
On Wed, Dec 20, 2017 at 7:46 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Thanks for the info on the made for TV movies!
Well, it’s very likely that Aditya is going to read the scripts for her.
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Yeah, that seems reasonable, if you’ve got a resource like that in bed with you, why not say “hey honey, read this and tell me what you think.” And if he likes it, why wouldn’t he snap it up for his production house?
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Yeah, true! Although I have a feeling that he’s finding scripts and making movies for her. Nothing wrong, but just feels that way. But then, Rani was working with YRF continously right from 2007 – Tara Rum Pum, Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic, Laaga Chunari Mein Daag, Dil Bole Hadippa etc. So, this is not exactly new. But I do wish she works with other producers who would showcase her in different ways, like Talaash and No one killed Jessica. I loved her in Talaash.
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I loved her in Talaash too! But maybe she didn’t love herself? The buzz around the movie did kind of have Kareena over-shadowing her in it, and then Aamir over-shadowing both of them. Maybe she would rather have everything produced at home and definitely have her starring.
On Wed, Dec 20, 2017 at 9:06 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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