Friday releases: Crowd of films again

The late Joy Mukherjee jostles with 20-something year old debutant Akash Chopra in the theatres this week. It looks like a chaos of releases again. It’s the pre-Eid week when Ramzan is at its peak and a sizeable chunk of the audience stays away from movie theatres. Yet we have a very strange spectrum of releases lined up for Friday. Joy Mukherjee who passed away last year resurfaces in Love In Bombay, a 20-year old project directed by Joy (his second directorial effort after Humsaaya) that has the distinction of every actor and technician being dead except the lovely Waheeda Rehman...God grant her a long life. The late prolific filmmaker Ramanand Sagar’s grandson Akash Chopra makes his screen debut in the wedding comedy Rabba Main Kya Karoon directed by Amrit Sagar who gave us that excellent war film 1971. The film has an interesting lineup of comic actors Arshad Warsi, Paresh Rawail, Tinu Anand, Shakti Kapoor, Sushmita Mukherjeee...should be funny for all the right reasons. Debutant director Ajay Bahl’s B A Pass also features a new leading man Shadab Kamal in the very unusual role of a male prostitute. The dark gripping thriller is helmed by very good actors including Shilpa Shukla, Divyendu Bhattacharya and Rajesh Sharma. Like Santosh Sivan, Ajay Bahl shoots his own picture. That means a film which is visually arresting. Another new director K Rajesh directs that very fine actor Deepak Dobriyal in the comedy Chor Chor Super Chor. It is interesting to see the emergence as heroes this week of actors known for their comic timing. Arshad Warsi toplines the cast of Rabba Main Kya Karoon and Deepak Dobriyal, another natural-born scene-stealer heads the cast of Chor Chor Super Chor. But the 500-rupee question is, would the audience be willing to pay the exorbitant ticket price to watch the very talented Dobriyal or Warsi? Or the prison-reform drama Calapor with some skilled actors like Rituparna Sengupta and Harsh Chaya in the cast? Or maybe director Ajay Yadav’s serial-killer thriller Bhadaas? Or would they prefer to see some hefty South Indian stardom in Bachan (the dubbed Hindi version of the Kannada actioner starring Sudeep) and Main Hoon Surya Singham2 (the dubbed Hindi version of the Tamil Singham sequel starring Suriya)? Or would they just save their bucks for next week when Shah Rukh Khan return to the big screen in Chennai Express? Train your guns on the grumps grinners and sinners.