Pakorakorner | A personal portal with a strong Asian Indian flavor on a whole range of topics.

Title: Outsourced Starring: Josh Hamilton, Ayesha Dharker This is one of the many movies based on the topic of outsourcing. In hindsight it would perhaps have been more timely to release this film now (in the midst of the meltdown) rather than in 2006. An American firm dealing with novelty products shuts down a department and starts an operation in India. One of the Managers is shipped out to India to train the staff there.  There are plenty of funny scenes as the ...

Title: Veruthe Oru Bhariya Starring: Jayaram, Gopika Language: Malayalam This film is a family drama set in small town Kerala which starts with plenty of promise but fizzles out in the end. It revolves around a couple and their daughter. The husband believes that its his wife's job to run the house and "serve him" at all times. The wife simply grows sick of all the house hold chores and the husband over bearing nature. This eventually leads to some conflicts (obviously!) and ...

There is little doubt that the overseas market for Indian films is huge and is constantly growing. Over the years a number of films have had simultaneous releases in India and overseas. These days this has almost become the norm especially for films featuring top stars. In fact, the percentage of revenue generated from the overseas market has been rapidly increasing. With the Indian diaspora ready to "lap it up," Indian movie makers have slowly started to hike up ...

Title: Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na Starring: Imran Khan, Genelia D'Souza Language: Hindi Direction: Abbas Tyrewala Imran Khan - another chocolate hero, another Khan, enters Bollywood, this time introduced by none other than the chocolate hero of the late eighties (now quite transformed) Aamir Khan, who produced this film. Imran Khan, the hero also happens to be Aamir's nephew. The film also marks the entry of south Indian actress Genelia D'Souza to Bollywood. There is little that is new in the story of ...

Title: Kung Fu Panda Animated film from Dreamworks I remember a time when I could not imagine being able to sit through an entire animated film. Over time this view has completely changed. Many of these films are so superbly made that its hard to choose between them if you ever had to. Animated films bring together a remarkable blend of technology, story-telling, and artistic talents. And Kung Fu Panda is brilliant on all these fronts. It is cute, funny and perfect ...

Title : Dasavatharam (Meaning: Ten Avatars) Starring : Kamalahasan, Asin Direction : K. S. Ravikumar The thought of a movie where a single actor plays ten different roles does raise some basic questions about how it might even be possible to weave a sensible story (unless of course it is a comedy like Naya Din Nai Raat). Watching the film just confirms the worst of these fears. Dasavatharam is a poorly concocted, meaningless film, with Kamalahasan playing ten roles in addition ...

Bollywood stars seems to have taken to blogging. Leading Bollywood actor Amir Khan now has a blog. His recent post included lines like, "Shahrukh is licking my feet and I am feeding him biscuits every now and then. What more can I ask for?" Apparently, his dog is named Shahrukh! While one can understand professional tensions between top stars it is sad to see it being voiced in public, and that too in such poor taste. Thankfully Shahrukh Khan has appeared ...

Title: Kadhaparayumbol ("While Telling A Story") Language : Malayalam Starring : Srinivasan, Mamooty, Meena Srinivasan's golden touch continues. His ability to churn out scripts that have the right blend of commercial value and realistic themes is simply phenomenal. This film is based on friendship. It is a story of two friends who grew up together but their lives take different turns. One of them (played by Momooty) grows up to become a huge movie star, while the other ...

Title: Kite RunnerStarring: Mostly unknown actorsDirection: Marc ForsterThe movie is based on the hugely successful book by the same title written by Khaled Hosseini. If you have read the book, you will notice that the Director has very carefully followed the book. There are no deviations whatsoever at any point in the movie. The difficulty though is that it is often very hard to capture all that you can in a book, in a film. I suspect that someone who ...

Title: Taare Zameen ParStarring: Amir Khan and a bunch of newcomersDirector: Amir KhanThe movie is about a kid affected by dyslexia and how his family and school deal with it. Amir Khan is a teacher at the school who identifies the problem and ensures that all and sundry work together to transform the kids life. This in short is the story line of the film.The theme is certainly new and Amir Khan deserves credit for experimenting with a new topic. ...