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In the list of my favorite female actors, the top two names are occupied by Kangana Ranaut and Anushka Sharma (not Anuskha Shetty of Tollywood).  I have been impressed over and over again by their acting skills, be it serious or a light hearted roles and both of these stars perform with quite an ease.   
 
I happen to watch Tanu Weds Manu over the weekend.  I had read somewhere that its story line is somewhat similar to Jab We Met and that Kangana did a different kind of role than her usual serious role.  The movie had received mixed reviews so I wasn’t expecting much from it.  Ofcourse one of my favorite actor, Madhavan, is the lead actor in this movie.  So I sat down to watch this movie over the weekend and after watching the first 10 minutes of the movie, I knew that I wont’ be disappointed and I was not. And it’s not similar to Jab We Met.

 
The movie is about a lonely Indian doctor, Madhavan, living in the UK visiting India and falls in love with a brahmin middle class Delhi educated Kanpur girl, Kangana Ranaut.  The entire middle class family setup, home, rooms, Kanpur, Lucknow and Kapurthala locations, guest house, all looked realistic.  I enjoyed every bit of the dialogue and conversation that happens in the typical UP, Punjabi and Patna style.  How many times have we seen a Bollywood movie with middle class home (other than Dabangg) or even the streets in a small town.  In recent times in bollywood movies, all we see posh bungalows, people speaking with mixed English and Hindi, girls wearing jeans, pants, T-shirt or skirts and locations outside India.  In one of the scene Pappi says after flying kite in Kanpur "Tumhare mohalle mein haththey se kaat detein hein, patang udane hee nahin detein".  It was so natural.  I haven’t heard "haththey" word since I was kid when I used to fly kites a lot during months of Nov-Jan.  It was good to see Kangana doing a more light hearted comic role rather than the usual serious role so convincingly.   She is just awesome and one of the very few female actors in the recent time who could pull off movie on her own.  

Madhavan is great in the role of a lover ready to sacrifice his love.  The entire supporting cast of this movie, Mr. Sharma (Madhavan’s father), Mr. Trivedi (Kangana’s Father), Pappi(Madhavan’s Friend), Payal (Kangana’s friend) was superb.  I have rarely seen in an Indian Cinema where the entire supporting cast were so involved and fabulous. 

Now comes the surprise package of this movie, Jimmy Shergill.  Probably the best role he got in his entire filmy career.  I have seen him in Haasil, Yehaan, Mohabbatein, and Munna Bhai series, but by far his role in this movie is the best. His second best would be Haasil -> Yehaan.   His rough nature, and control aggression and the way he treats Kangana and Madhavan are one of the many scene stealers in this movie.  And the last 10-12 minutes of the movie where Madhavan confronts Jimmy is mindblowing.   In recent times I rarely remember dialogues unlike Amitabh’s movie from 1980s.  But this one from Jimmy in the last 10 minutes of movie are worth remembering:
 
"Agar yeh itne bhale insaan na hote, aap inke pyar mein imaandar na hoti ,huh… hum thode se beimaan na hote aur aaj somwar na hota , tho bholenath ki kasam goli maar dete inko."    
 
People from Lucknow are Shiva’s devotees and Monday (somwar) is very auspicious day so Jimmy says that its one of the reason he cannot kill Madhavan.
 
In addition to acting, direction and screenplay is superb.  Songs are good and very well picturized.  I have already watched it twice and may be watch it again over the weekend.   
 
A must watch…

According to World Bank, India’s economy will grow 5.2% this year. Whereas according to our own Finance Minister, Mr. Pranab Mukherjee, the growth will be around 7%. Let’s see how close these numbers are in reality. With recent compromise between the Multiplexes and the India Movie Producers, we will soon be seeing the so called block buster hitting on big screens again. Its a good news for the metro janta who throng to multiplexes to watch crap movies. Most of these movies in a months time end up on DVDs unlike blockbuster like Ghazani or Taare Zameen Par, which I think took almost more than 6 months to come onto to DVDs. DVD business is booming in India and it will continue to grow considering the growth factor. People like to watch movies at their own pace and own time. With big screen TVs (LCD/Plasmas) filling the Indian Market, more and more people will watch movies at home. In many big cities and II tier cities, real estate builders are building gated community. I would recommend these builders to come up with (5-10) mini-theatre with projection or LCD TVs big enough to entertain small group, say 20, of resident. The number of mini-theatres could be determined based on number of resident / flats / houses. There mini-theatres need to not be hi-fi. Just a basic room with good cushy chairs to sit and enjoy movie comfortably. I guess the cost of constructing this would be around 15-20 lakhs which they can include while fixing the home price. With this approach, I guess more people will watch movies on DVD. Many would say that these blockbuster movies come to TV channels like UTV, SETMAX, Zee Cinema within 6 months time or watch on pirated DVDs/VCDs. So why to pay extra? Well if you are someone who enjoys movie in true sense, either you would go to theatre or watch in a theatre kind of atmosphere. Have you seen the picture quality of movie telecasted by channels on LCD TVs? Or the picture quality of pirated DVDs/VCDs? The picture quality is so bad that you would end up getting headaches and if you continue to watch bad picture quality movies, you would definitely end up getting vision problem. I think to avoid piracy, the entertainment industry need to bring down the prices of quality DVDs. I think currently good movie quality DVD sell around Rs. 400 / -, which is quite expensive considering that Bollywood is not an industry like Hollywood. Most of the workers in Bollywood are temporary and they don’t get any benefit and they dont have fixed income. This is something which I think entertainment industry in India need to think about.