Bollywood is certainly not breathing easy. It is still waiting for it’s first big money spinner at the box office in the year 2009 which has been mighty disappointing so far. In fact one of the films that has managed to bring in some smiles has come from a director whose last major release was one of the biggest disasters that the industry has ever seen – NO SMOKING.
One didn’t believe much in Anurag Kashyap to deliver goods with DEV D as well and just as majority was willing to write it off even before it’s release, the Abhay Deol starrer turned out to be a surprise success at the box office. Going strong till date, DEV D has been the only successful film this year other than RAAZ – THE MYSTERY CONTINUES.
This brings us to coming week’s release GULAAL. The film arrives five weeks after the release of DEV D and is directed by Anurag Kashyap again. One tends to wonder if yet again it will be Anurag again who will have the final laugh with his GULAAL turning out to be a success at the box office.
Of course the buzz around the film is certainly less than that of DEV D, courtesy it’s niche theme and lack of star names. However, considering the fact that GULAAL is a film closest to Anurag’s heart and has terrific actors in it’s pool (Kay Kay Menon, Mahie Gill, Piyush Mishra, Deepak Dobriyal), one can expect yet another quality affair. Let’s hope for the industry that the film indeed turns out to be a good watch on the big screen and do well with a pick up in word of mouth.
Other release of the week is JAI VEERU which is arriving on Wednesday, 11th March, to capitalize on the festival of Holi. However, promotion of the film has been quite weak and even though the soundtrack boasts of two very good songs [Tainu Leke, Sufi], they haven’t reached the kind of height they deserved. The film comes after a delay of one and a half years and with majority of stars hardly talking about the film, it only hampers the visibility factor further.
By Joginder Tuteja
