Jannat
Cast: Emraan Hashmi and Sonal Chauhan
This year, when most of Bollywood's biggies failed to hit a home run at the box-office, Jannat proved to be a surprise hit. It uses cricket's murkier grounds – the bookies and the match-fixing – as its backdrop.
The movie tells the story of a compulsive gambler – a young man who likes to take risks. As he finds his dream girl, money-making starts becoming his obsession and he is desperate to make his dream world a reality. Using his calculative mind, he makes a transition from being a small time card-player to one of the biggest cricket bookies. The world of match-fixing is just a step away and an international mafia don soon inducts him into the business. Operating from South Africa, he gets so involved that he doesn't have time to listen to his girlfriend's fervent pleas for a normal life. With an Indian police officer hot on his trails, will he be able to renounce his shady past and make a fresh start?
With its fast-paced, well-told narrative and good performances (especially from the underrated Hashmi), Jannat manages to make its mark.
Krazzy 4
Cast: Irfan Khan, Arshad Warsi, Rajpal Yadav, Suresh Menon and Juhi Chawla
A psychiatrist takes her four recovering patients out on a city trip. But instead of fun, they end up having to contend with cops, criminals and conspiracies. The A-list cast and lavish production values (including item songs by Shah Rukh Khan, Hrithik Roshan and Rakhi Sawant) fail to infuse life into this inane comedy with a weak plot.
Dragon Lord
Cast: Jackie Chan, Paul Chang, Fung Feng and Kang Ho
Two lifelong friends become rivals over a beautiful girl, but unite to fight a gang of crooks who are trying to smuggle Chinese antiquities out of their country. This is a Jackie Chan movie from his early Hong Kong days and it is full of his electrifying, death-defying and fun-filled martial arts action.
Quiet cool
Cast: James Remar and Jared Martin
Joe Dylanne is a plain-clothes New York City cop who uses unconventional methods to tackle hard-nosed criminals. While responding to a distress call from his ex-girlfriend, he has to encounter murder and mayhem from a band of drug lords. It is an out-and-out action film with a B-grade cast.
Abbott and Costello - The series
Cast: Bud Abbott and Lou Costello
If you love the comic antics of Laurel and Hardy and the Marx brothers, then you would also like to take a peek at the Universal Studio's box-set presenting many popular Abbott and Costello films as double bill DVDs.
American duo of William (Bud) Abbott and Lou Costello (born as Louis Cristillo) is widely regarded as one of the best double acts in comedy. They dominated the decade of 1940s, then became the pioneers of episodic television comedy in the 1950s and influenced many a latter generation American comedian including Jerry Seinfield.
Both Abbott and Costello started off in the 1930s from Burlesque- a typical early American theatre form, relying on stand-up comic routines interspersed with titillating dances. With tall, handsome Abbott playing the straight man and short, stocky Costello playing the clown, the pair mainly relied on rapid-fire witty repartees to entertain. Their stage success took them to radio where their famous baseball skit Who's On First? won them huge popularity and also got them film contracts from Universal Studio.
In the decade of 1940s, Abbott and Costello became the top double act in America, providing the much needed comic relief to the country facing the horrors of the Second World War. Their simplistically funny films relied on plots where the duo landed in different strange and dangerous situations only to ultimately emerge unscathed thanks to their dim-witted natures.
The box set contains – Buck Privates / One Night In Tropics, In The Foreign Legion/ In Society, Meet The Invisible Man/ Go To Mars, Meet The Killer/ Meet Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde.
Rated: G
Oliver twist
Cast: Rob Brydon, Gregory Fisher and Edward Fox
In 2007, the BBC aired a superb new television series based on Charles Dickens' classic Oliver Twist. Charting its own course, this feature is different from the previous television and movie adaptations (including the famous musical Oliver). This new version manages to bring the 19th century's dark Dickensian world to life. As usual, the famed BBC production values are evident from the outset. The locations, the sets, the costumes and the make-up are meticulously portrayed to evoke the period feel and the casting is perfect.
Remaining true in spirit to the original novel, but making the necessary cinematic adaptations, the series tells the life story of Oliver Twist – a poor orphan boy born out of wedlock and raised in a dingy workhouse run by an unsympathetic board of trustees and a cruel Mr. Bumbles. When Oliver Twist dares to ask for an extra helping of the terrible food, he is sold off to an undertaker. A scuffle forces him to bolt to London.
There he meets Artful Dodger and his gang of street urchins, as well as a kind lady named Nancy. On one hand, Twist's life is set to change for the better with his rich grandfather trying to find him, but with villains such as the devious Fagin, brutal Bill and mysterious Mr Monk in the way, it won't be easy.
Oliver Twist is not just a fascinating story of an orphan boy – it is Dickens' scathing satire that highlights the social inequalities and hypocrisies of 19th century England.
Rated: PG 12
