Black and White (released in 2008) - Starring Anil Kapoor, Anurag Sinha, Shefali Shah, and Aditi Sharma

This is a serious movie, on a serious topic. India has seen one spectacular suicide bomber, in the form of Dhanu who blew up in 1991, killing the former Congress Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and a number of others (including his security personnel) in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. But even though India has seen a huge number of terrorist attacks, with such terror attacks at many different regions of the country; there have been very few such suicide bombers in India (it has occurred in many other movies though, another one being the film Dil Se ). There have been many cases of terrorists attacking the police or acting in a conflict where they are not likely to survive (including the Mumbai attacks where the terrorists would have known that they would not come out alive), but no suicide bombers.
The movie starred a few known actors such as Anil Kapoor, Anurag Sinha, Shefali Shah, and Aditi Sharma. The movie was directed by Subhash Ghai, more know for romance movies, and other such movies (Taal, Karz, Pardes, and many others). However, over a period of time, Subhash Ghai also contributed to meaningful movies, such as the movie Iqbal. This is a movie of a disaffected man, whose passion have been bought to a boil and he has agreed to be a suicide bomber, and in turn takes on the identity of a man who has been brutally affected by the horrible communal riots in Gujarat. He has been recruited to strike at one of the most significant celebrations - the speech of the Prime Minister from the ramparts of the Red Fort on August 15th.




He (taking on the identity of Numair Qazi - played by the actor Anurag Sinha) comes to Chandni Chowk in the older section of Delhi (right next to the Red Fort, a crowded area where Hindus and Muslims live next to each other and take part in each other's celebrations). The idea being that he will make friends with a college professor Ranjan Mathur (played by Anil Kapoor) who lives in Chandni Chowk along with his wife Roma Mathur (played by Shefali Shah). He is the perfect example of a person living in harmony in Delhi - he is an Urdu professor at Zakir Hussain College, and lives with both Hindu and Muslim neighbors.
When in Chandni Chowk, Numair discovers a lot of things that are alien to him. Hindus and Muslims live among each other, they help out in the religious activities of each other (the Chandni Chowk area takes on an air of celebration during festivals of all religions - Hindu, Sikh and Muslim), and even those local politicians from either religion who supposedly play to religious fervor are actually friends of each other and are doing all this for political reasons. He was supposed to be tricking the professor by getting his help and managing to sneak in bombs and blow himself up. Does this experience of communal amity that he sees change his plan ? With the CBI and the police on the trail of terrorists, can he be caught before he can blow himself up ?
This movie was not a big hit commercially, but it is a serious movie for those who are interested in such a topic, and is decently well made with good acting. Well worth a watch.

Tashan (released in 2008) - A much awaited movie, but acclaimed as a major disaster

Tashan was one of the most awaited movies of 2008. The movie was the first movie together of the new star couple (Kareena Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan) and hence very awaited. In addition, Akshay Kumar was also part of the star attraction, combined with Anil Kapoor in a negative role, some much awaited (and different) music by Vishal-shekhar, and the much-talked about major attraction of the movie, Kareena Kapoor in a size zero and in a green bikini.
And this was also one of the biggest stinkers of the year, getting a just about average rating from critics, and getting pretty bad word of mouth. This was compounded by the fact that there was a huge dispute about revenue sharing between the multiplex owners and the film producers and it took some time to get this dispute resolved. This dispute also resulted in some reduction in the bookings for the movie; but the bigger problem was that most people did not really like the movie. The saving grace for the movie is that the CD / DVD of the movie is a good seller, which means that people like this movie when they can see it at home, but did not really want to see this movie at the hall.

Amazon	Flipkart

The movie saw a lot of interviews before the release, with a lot of coverage of Kareena Kapoor for the size zero she achieved, and the exercise regime she followed for getting there. And there were the sound-bites by Vishal-Shekhar about the music they had released, and how it would become a landmark event, just because of the different kind of music. Anyhow, all this hype fell flat, and let us get some idea of the story.
The movie is a bit of a madcap, chase, deceit, love, and a lot of courage. In addition, the romance is shown in the end between Kareena and Akshay rather than between Kareena and Saif. So, you have Jimmy (Saif Ali Khan) as a person teaching English at a call center. Into his life comes Pooja (Kareena), wanting him to teach English; he assumes that he will be teaching her and agrees. However, it is actually her boss Bhaiyyaji (Anil Kapoor) who wants to learn English. Pretty quickly, Pooja is able to get Jimmy on her side, convincing him that she owns money to Bhaiyyaji and wants to go to her father's funeral at Haridwar. So, Jimmy agrees to help her steal money from Bhaiyyaji, and they run away. He does not know too much about Bhaiyyaji, and when he learns that Bhaiyyaji is a mafia don and known for his cruelty, he wants to warn Pooja but she has already run away with all the money.
Bhaiyyaji sends Bachchan Pande (Akshay Kumar) to go after Jimmy; and when Bachchan catches Jimmy, they head off towards Haridwar to get Pooja. However, she sees them and runs away, and in a fight between Jimmy and Bachchan, the car has an accident, and falls into the water, the same water from which Pooja emerges in a scene meant for the front-benchers. Some episodes later, Pooja realizes that Bachchan is actually her childhood love, and that long lost love is reactivated. However, Jimmy has changed the money with stones, the same stones that Bachchan is now taking towards Bhaiyyaji. And then follows a fight at Bhaiyyaji's place, where they are surrounded by a lot of henchmen, but then they defeat everybody and Bhaiyyaji gets killed.