Bollywood Rewind 2007

In a year bookended by two excellent films -- Guru in the beginning and the year's last release, Taare Zameen Par -- Bollywood had a mixed 2007, with few hits and a number of flops. Shahrukh Khan broke new ground as producer and Aamir Khan as director.

Shahrukh Khan's production house, Red Chillies Productions produced Om Shanti Om (directed by Farah Khan), the year's top grosser at the box office. Aamir Khan showed he was just as accomplished behind the camera as he was in front of it, with what many regarded as the year's best film, Taare Zameen Par.

For the first time, since the 1970s, during the heydays of Amitabh Bachchan, one actor came up with four successive hits in a single calendar year. Akshay Kumar hit the jackpot every time he appeared on the silver screen in 2007. He began the year with Namaste London, then came up with Hey Baby, wowed audiences with Bhool Bhulaiya and finished the year in style with Welcome.

It was a great year for children's films and films about children. Taare ... had competition from Blue Umbrella, Nanhe Jaisalmer and the not-too-bad Chain Khuli Ki Main Khuli Ki Chain. Based on a short story by Ruskin Bond, Blue Umbrella is directed by Vishal Bharadwaj and stars Pankaj Kapur in a pivotal role.

If you add to these movies the success of animated films like Hanumaan and Bal Ganesha, one could see that Bollywood had finally woken up to the tremendous potential of wooing young audiences. Already in the pipeline are several children's films and a slew of animation projects.

The otherwise dependable Yash Raj films had an ordinary year. Saif Ali Khan and Rani Mukherjee-starrer Tara Ram Pum didn't exactly set the box office on fire. Neither Madhuri Dixit's comeback vehicle, Aaja Nachle nor the Pradeep Sircar directed Laaga Chunari Mey Daag made much of an impression on the viewers, though i must confess I quite liked Aja Nachle.

Chak De, a stirring sports story directed by the talented Shimit Amin, saved Yash Raj's blushes in a year in which the studio's premier offering, Jhoom Barabar Jhoom sank without a trace at the box office. Starring Abhishek Bachchan and Preity Zinta, along with Bobby Deol and Lara Datta and the Big B himself. The law of averages appeared to have caught up with director Shaad Ali who had earlier given Saathiya and Bunty Aur Babli.

But the biggest dud of the year undoubtedly was Ram Gopal Verma ki Aag. Verma's version of Sholaay was a tragic combination of miscasting, terrible acting and poor direction -- it was so irredeemably bad that it gave bad a bad name.

Verma had earlier in the year directed another flop, Nishabd, in which Amitabh Bachhan wows 18-year-old Jia Khan. The audience couldn't quite stomach an affair between the Big B and a girl who looked young enough to be his grand daughter.

A few months after Nishabd, we saw Bachchan in a similar, but far more credible, role in Cheeni Kum as a suave, pony-tailed restaurant owner, opposite the delectable Tabu. Fine direction, witty lines and some great chemistry between the two main leads made Cheeni Kum one of the most watchable films of 2007.

Following is the list of my TEN FAVOURITE MOVIES OF 2007. Because the list is restricted to ten, four very watchable movies -- Bheja Fry, Jab We Met, Aaja Nachle and Khoya Khoya Chand -- couldn't make it to the list.

01. TAARE ZAMEEN PAR : Aamir Khan's directorial debut combines rare sensitivity with cinematic panache to tell the story of a dyslexic child, played brilliantly, nay perfectly, by young Darsheel Sifary, in what must surely rank as the performance of the year.

02. CHAK DE : It is perhaps the best sports movie to come out of Bollywood. Shahrukh Khan comes up with a fine, understated performance (his best since Swades) as the coach of the Indian women's hockey team. All the hockey players were non-actors, selected as much for their skills with the hockey stick as for their histrionic potential.Director Shimit Amin who had served notice of his potential with Ab Tak Chhappan earns both box office success and critical acclaim with Chak De.

03. GURU: Mani Ratnam's controversial biopic on the life and times of Dhirubhai Ambani features a towering performance by Abhishek Bachchan, a superb cameo by veteran Mithun Chakraborty, and some great music by AR Rahman.

04. YATRA :Nana Patekar plays Dasrath Joglekar, a renowned writer on his way to Delhi to receive a prestigious literary award. In the train, he meets one of his ardent fans, who is a filmmaker by profession. They chat about his writings and the conversation drifts to one of his famous novels Janaaza, based on the life of a small town courtesan, played by Rekha. As director Goutam Ghose weaves an intricate tale, Patekar is simply brilliant as the sometime-moody, sometime-cheerful writer.

05. GANDHI MY FATHER : Theatre man Feroze Khan, director of the unforgettable Tumhari Amrita, turns film maker and Anil Kapoor dons the producer's role. Between them, they come up with a memorable movie about a side of Mahatma Gandhi's life one hadn't heard much about. Akshaye Khanna gives a powerful performance as Hari Lal Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi's estranged son.

06. MANORAMA SIX FEET UNDER : A film, set in the rare noir tradition, has superb performances from the entire cast, but most notably from Abhay Deol, Raima Sen and Vinay Pathak. Director Navdeep Singh, in a most impressive debut, takes care of minutest details and builds the story slowly, even languidly. The dark, almost foreboding Rajasthan landscape is very different from the customary one awash in bright colours, and adds to the film's moody look.

07. LIFE IN A METRO: Director Anurag Basu comes up trumps as he combines a terrific ensemble cast with the year's best music album to produce an eminently watchable film. Irfan Khan and Konkona Sen are stand out, but the rest of the cast -- Kay Kay Menon, Sherman Joshi, Shilpa Shetty, Shiney Ahuja and Kangana Raut are very good too.

08. CHEENI KUM : Along with Taare Zameen Par, Cheeni Kum was my favourite movie for the year. Superb direction, excellent script and two top actors, Big B and the effervescent Tabu made Cheeni Kum a stylish, even sexy film -- an altogether different sort of cinematic experience than what we usually get to see from Bollywood. If the director hadn't lost the plot a bit in the second half, then Cheeni Kum would have been even more watchable.

09. SHOOTOUT AT LOKHANDWALA : Lot of bullets, lot of action, lot of style in this dramatisation of a real life shootout between Mumbai police and a bunch of gangsters. Sunjay Dutt plays the cool cop and Vivek Oberoi is brilliant as the brash, tough as nails leader of the gangsters. Amrita Singh is very impressive in a small but key role. Directed by Apoorv Lakhia, the movie bears the unmistakable stamp of its producer Sanjay Gupta.

10. BLACK FRIDAY: Anurag Kashyap's labour of love was well worth the wait. Delayed interminably for years by nation's courts, the-almost documentary style of telling the story of the 1993 Bombay blasts is rather impressive. The film examines in detail the role of the Memon clan in executing the serial blasts that struck at the heart of India's commerce captial and left close to 300 people dead. The film features great music by Indian Ocean.