Dinesh Kamath’s column ‘New movie-releases in Navi Mumbai’ (Free Birds, Khara Sangu Khota Khota, Thor: The Dark World, Huff – It’s too much and Satya 2) that was published in Newsband

New movie-releases in Navi Mumbai

By Dinesh Kamath

Free Birds

Free Birds is a 2013 American 3D computer-animated buddy comedy film produced by Reel FX Creative Studios. Jimmy Hayward directed the film, which features the voices of Owen Wilson, Woody Harrelson and Amy Poehler. It was originally titled Turkeys.

Free Birds is an animated time-travel adventure that tells the story of the first Thanksgiving from the perspective of the turkeys desperate to keep the Pilgrims and Native Americans from leading to the annual destruction of their kind. There's some gun violence and an important character is killed. The language includes some insults like "dumb" and "coward," plus there's some borderline insensitive depictions of turkeys as similar to Native Americans. Plus, there's a romantic subplot and glimpses of a telenovela where a man is always surrounded by beautiful women.

In Free Birds, Reggie (voiced by Owen Wilson) has always been the odd turkey out. He's smarter than the rest of his flock and understands they're being fattened up for slaughter. When the president arrives for the annual turkey pardon, Reggie ends up the lucky fowl thanks to the young first daughter. Back at Camp David, Reggie is living it up with telenovelas and pizza delivery when he's kidnapped by Jake (Woody Harrelson), a strong, scatterbrained turkey. Jake tells Reggie that "The Great Turkey" has sent them on a mission to go back in time to the First Thanksgiving and "get turkeys off the menu." Reggie is skeptical, but soon the pair discovers a secret time machine and ends up in Plymouth Colony 1621.

Khara Sangu Khota Khota

Khara Sangu Khota Khota is a Marathi film directed by Sanjeev Naik with star cast consisting of Ashok Saraf as Dhandalkar, Sayaji Shinde as Dhandle Patil, Nirmiti Sawant as Nani Saranjame, Analesh Desai as Dushyant, Trishala Shah as Yashaswi, Hemangi Velankar and Dipjyoti Naik. Cinematographer is Manjunath Nayka, Editor: Sanjeev Naik, Umesh Rane, Choreographer: Domnic Alvaris, Shailendra Koli, Art Director: Tejaswini Arts, Writer: Ramchandra Sadekar, Lyricist: Aarati Desai, Music Director: Shreerang Aras and Singers: Awadhoot Gupte, Vaishali Samant, Vaishali Made, Swapnil Bandodkar and Shivprasad Mallya.

Khara Sangu Khota Khota is set on the backdrop of a village- Dhandalgaon, which has witnessed traditional rivalry between two neighbours. Dhandle Patil (Sayaji Shinde) and Dhandalkar (Ashok Saraf) are involved in all such acts, to show their supremacy in the village. The enmity between these two has reached such a stage that it has become a pass time of the villagers - so much so that some notorious people play the role of adding fuel into fire, by instigating them against each other.

Incidentally, the children of these two rivals study in the same college in a city. Forgetting the rivalry of his father with Dhandle Patil, Dushyant (Anlesh Desai), son of Dhandalkar, is madly in love with Dhandle Patil’s daughter Yashaswi (Trishla). To win her love, he fails twice, so that he could be in her class. Yashaswee, who is well aware of the rivalry; initially plays safe, to keep Dushyant away.

But the time comes when both the children are invited by their parents to the village and they travel in the same bus. In the meanwhile, the arrival of an enterprising and wholehearted character of Nani Saranjame (Nirmitee Sawant) who is a spinster running a marriage bureau brings them together. But, on reaching their respective places there begins the real trouble for both. However, the interaction of Nani with Dhandle Patil and Dhandalkar gives rise to humour filled situations only to flourish the love between Dushyant and Yashaswi.

Thor: The Dark World

Thor: The Dark World is a 2013 American superhero film featuring the Marvel Comics character Thor, produced by Marvel Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. It is the second Thor film following 2011's Thor and the eighth installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The film was directed by Alan Taylor, with a screenplay by Christopher Yost, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely and features Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Stellan Skarsgård, Idris Elba, Kat Dennings, Ray Stevenson, Tadanobu Asano, Jaimie Alexander, Rene Russo and Anthony Hopkins reprising their roles from the first, with newcomers Christopher Eccleston, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Zachary Levi and Clive Russell joining the cast.

Kenneth Branagh's Thor had a certain playfulness that pitted the ultra-serious world of Asgard, land of the Norse gods, against 21st-century USA.

Loki (Tom Hiddleston) has been locked up after his escapades in both Thor and The Avengers. Thor spent the past two years restoring order to the Nine Realms. But his heart is still with Earthling scientist Jane Foster (Natalie Portman). Jane, unfortunately, has made an unexpected trip to the Dark World. There, she's been infected with the Aether, a source of evil in the universe previously only known to anesthesiologists.

It's up to Thor to rescue her, both from the Aether (which looks the unleashed contents of an angry lava lamp) and from the Dark Elves, who were thought extinct. In fact, they've come back to gain possession of the Aether and plunge the Nine Realms into perpetual darkness.

Thus Thor: The Dark World sees the popular Norse deity combating an enemy as old as time, who aims to plunge the universe into darkness.

Huff - It's Too Much

The film Huff – It’s Too Much is produced by M. Sumanth Kumar Reddy, Dr. Arun Kumar Sharma, directed by Pushkar Jog and the actors in the film are Pushkar Jog, Armeena Rana Khan, Omar Khan, Mona Kiren, Humayun Zubairi and Niks Vaja. Music Director is Saii-Piyush and story writer is Pushkar Jog. The genre of the film: Romantic, Comedy.

Shot at locations across the United Kingdom, the film marks Pushkar Jog's directorial (Hindi) and Indo-Brit actress Armeena Rana Khan's acting debuts. The film is a romantic-comedy revolving around a creative director, his quirky best friend and a woman that he is confused about.

The film is an all and out youth centric romantic-comedy set in London dealing with the tryst and tribulation of young 'Desis' staying abroad. It is not just a funny take on their life and interaction, but also an out and out family film and with outstanding music.

With music by Saii-Piyush featuring singers Lucky Ali, Adnan Sami, Salim Merhant, Kunaal Ganjawala, Mahalaxmi Iyyer, Suzanne D'Mello and Marriane Dcruz, the film also has Pushkar Jog essaying the role of the male lead. This film had Indo-British Actress Armeena Rana Khan do things she never did before.

Satya 2

Satya 2 is a Bollywood crime film with production design by Saini S. Johray, directed by Ram Gopal Varma, as a sequel to his earlier blockbuster Satya. The film stars Puneet Singh Ratn, Anaika Soti, Aradhna Gupta, Mahesh Thakur and others. The film tells the story of Satya, an immigrant who comes to Mumbai aiming to refashion the Mumbai underworld.

The film has an interesting plot. By the year 2013, Mumbai underworld was erased by Mumbai Police. Satya (Puneet Singh Ratn), a man without a past, comes to the city envisions the rebirth of his company.

We are now in 2013 and since there is almost no underworld now, it is clear that there's a vacuum and whenever there's a vacuum in any lucrative business there will always be an entrepreneur to step in. If Satya was a story of a man who came in 1998 and shaped the then existing underworld, Satya 2 is about another man who comes in 2013 to reinvent the underworld. This is a futuristic film not in terms of science fiction but in terms of that there's no precedent for the protagonist of Satya 2. He starts a new underworld company based on his study of the mistakes of all the earlier dons and also on the ways he develops to deal with the modern day policing methods.

The police is completely caught off guard by this never before experienced menace of the new Company. So in one line Satya 2 is about a man whose thinking starts where the earlier Dons thinking ended and where the police cannot even begin to think. This new age gangster will obviously be armed with the mistakes of the earlier gangsters and also with the modern day policing methods.

The film has Puneet Singh Ratn as Satya, Anaika Soti as Chitra, Mahesh Thakur as Lahoti, Naara as Amitriyaan, Aradhna Gupta as Naanthanda, Raj Premi as RK, Amal Sehrawat as TK, Kaushal Kapoor as Purshottam and Vikram Singh as Anna.

To be still clearer as far as the story of film is concerned, nothing about Satya is what one would expect from a conventional don, neither his age nor his built. But there is something about his eyes and the way he looks at people. His stare can spread more fear than a hard core act of violence. A man of minimal words, and a million mind-games, Satya is as much a part of the crowd as he is the commander of it, as mysterious as he's out in the open. The only known truth about him is that nobody knows anything about him.

Satya's love interest is a pretty 19 year old girl. There is a naivety about Chitra that adds to her beauty. Lahoti is the one who discovers Satya and in a way unleashes his reign. A man with more enemies than friends and more a father-like figure to Satya than even a friend, Lahoti's role in Satya's life is indispensable. Naara is Satya's closest confidante, his soul mate, so much so that blood is bound to appear if someone tries to rip the two apart. Aradhna Gupta is the best friend of Chitra and quite unlike the happy-go-lucky boyfriend Naara, and she cannot be taken for a ride and that's possibly why she and Satya can never be good friends. RK lacks Lahoti's polish and class. But, he has his own way of commanding attention. RK has no idea that the revival of his gang was, in effect, the beginning of Satya's new Company. TK has the same impulsive, old-world aggression as his father RK. TK has a huge ego and it shows in his eyes every time it's injured. Absolutely miffed by his father's new projects, and extremely envious of Satya, he unknowingly heralds the cradle of Satya's master game plan. Purshottam is a retired joint commissioner of crime who is brought back into the force on special duty to tackle the new company. He is perpetually trying to outdo Satya's next move. Purshottam thinks quite like his enemy, out of the box, dangerous, and is extremely difficult to decode. There could not have been a more befitting opponent for Satya. Anna’s eyes and ears follow only Satya and he watches and hears only what he is told to. Loyalty is his biggest virtue or at least many think so.

The soundtrack of the film consists of nine tracks composed by Nitin Raikwar, Sanjeev-Darshan, Kary Arora and Shree D and lyrics by Moied Elhaam, Nitin Raikwar, Kumaar, Sonny Ravan and Shree D. The songs are Tu Hai, Special, Maagne Se (Title Song), Palkon Se, Saathi Re, Taaqat, Control, Veerani and Satya Is Back Again.