Aur Ab, Hollywood Se Bollywood Tak...

what would bollywood do if there was no hollywood? it would, of course, continue to make triangular romances and patriotic melodramas. but the likes of vikram bhatt and sanjay gupta would probably feel lost without the us dream-factory supplying them with a ready dose of inspiration. and after raaz, the desi version of what lies beneath, has done well at the box-office, a word of advice to the audience: gear up for a splurge of hollywood-se-bollywood flicks.sanjay gupta is currently putting the finishing touches to kaante, which stars amitabh bachchan, sanjay dutt, sunil shetty, kumar gaurav, mahesh manjrekar and lucky ali. in fact, gupta doesn’t shy from admitting that the film is a remake of quentin tarantino’s reservoir dogs. but to the director’s credit, he’s got his hollywood fundas right in terms of style and execution. and so has vikram bhatt, who had earlier turned jagged edge into kasoor, and found reasonable success with it. pankaj parashar is another filmmaker who’s all set to unleash his tumko na bhool payenge on an audience that may or may not be familiar with a long kiss goodnight. parasher has the necessary expertise, for he had earlier remade beverly hills cop into jalwa and robin hood: prince of thieves into rajkumar. on the other hand, david dhawan, who tasted success with a bad boys rip-off named bade miyan, chhote miyan, is eagerly looking forward to hum kisise kum nahin, his version of analyse this with amitabh bachchan, sanjay dutt, aishwarya rai and ajay devgan. he’s also busy turning big momma’s house into chor machaye shor with bobby deol. also coming up is kitne door kitne paas with fardeen khan and amrita arora stepping into the shoes of ben affleck and sandra bullock in forces of nature. while in the past, filmmakers would advertise their films as having ‘exciting action’ and cleverly insert a chase scene from a b-grade hollywood film, directors today would rather hire hollywood action-specialists to choreograph stunts — a case in point are the matrix action choreographers hanging akshay kumar, sunil shetty and aftaab shivdasani on cables for feroze nadiadwala’s awara paagal deewana. but then, why crib about bollywood aping hollywood, when sholay was inspired by magnificent seven, which was inspired by the japanese seven samurai? and that’s not all! currently hollywood itself is so short of ideas that it’s remaking the russian solaris with george clooney! or should we say: by george! it’s a ‘clone’y! delhitimes@indiatimes.com