Bollywood Adda

Cast: Sharman Joshi, Sohail Khan, Eesha Koppikar, Gul Panag, Amrita Arora and Sharat Saxena

Director: Atul Agnihotri

There's a scene in Hello in which the six protagonists of the film are trapped in a car that's dangling precariously off the edge of a construction site. Death is imminent.

Until they are saved by a phone-call from God.

This one time — just this one time — you wish God had been busy attending to something more important, so the characters in this film had indeed plummeted down to a gruesome end. For one, it would have made this film at least fifteen minutes shorter. And two, it would have been a very fitting revenge for the agony these characters put you through just watching them go about their scenes in this terrible film.

Adapted from Chetan Bhagat's bestselling novel One Night at the Call Centre, Hello is an embarrassingly amateurish movie. Remember the kind of class plays one put up in the school quadrangle when one was 12?

This film is only a marginally more professional effort than that. The screenplay, written by Bhagat himself and the film's director Atul Agnihotri, is slipshod and contrived, and in fact it's so silly you can't help laughing even when you're not meant to.

The plot's focused on a group of six call-centre employees in Mumbai who're grappling with serious personal issues, and the life-altering experience they go through on this particular night-shift.

Starring Sharman Joshi as a call-centre team-leader in the making, and Sohail Khan, Eesha Koppikar, Gul Panag, Amrita Arora and Sharat Saxena as the members of his team, Hello makes it abundantly clear that attention-to-detail isn't top on its list of priorities.

source: ibnlive.com

This week there's an assortment of thrillers, drama and science fiction at the box office. There's Hello, Babylon AD and if you are a sci-fi fan, then you can catch Star Wars and that too in animation. But if you don’t fancy thrillers, you have got an emotional drama as well. Take your pick.

Hello

Based on Chetan Bhagat's bestseller One Night At The Call Centre, Hello is directed by Atul Agnihotri. The film features Sharman Joshi, Eesha Koppikar, Gul Panag, Sohail Khan and Amrita Arora, apart from cameos by Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif.

Hello captures a night at a call centre at large but in particular it is a story of almost lost love, thwarted ambitions, absence of family affection, pressures of a patriarchal set up, and the work environment of a globalised office.

Babylon A.D.

This sci-fi thriller stars Vin Diesel as Thoorop, a mercenary who is sent on a task by Russian mobster Gorsky to bring a young Russian woman by the name of Aurora from Russia to New York.

From being Aurora's enemy, Thoorop turns into her protector. But will he able to rescue her from Gorsky? The film also stars Michelle Yeoh.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

The Clone Wars is the first full length animated feature to hit the Star Wars universe. It is set before the third Star Wars film and follows Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker as they fight for the cause of the republic.

Directed by Dave Filoni, the film features the voices of Christopher Lee and Samuel L Jackson.

Edge of Heaven (Turkish with English subtitles)

Directed by Fatih Akin, Edge of Heaven won the best screenplay award at the 2008 Cannes film Festival.

Ali, a widower based in Turkey gives shelter to Yeter who is a prostitute but soon he suspects that his son is having an affair with her.

Her accidental death prompts Nejat to trace her daughter in Germany. Set between Germany and Turkey, the film deals with territorial issues and generational divides.