Here are ten restaurant business ideas tailored for the USA market:
1. Farm-to-Table Restaurant: Embrace the growing trend of sustainability and locally-sourced ingredients by opening a farm-to-table restaurant. Partner with local farmers and producers to offer fresh, seasonal dishes that highlight the best of the region.
2. Gourmet Food Truck: Launch a gourmet food truck serving up high-quality, chef-inspired cuisine on the go. From artisanal burgers to fusion tacos, the possibilities are endless, and the mobility allows you to reach different neighborhoods and events.
3. Plant-Based Eatery: With the increasing demand for plant-based options, consider opening a vegan or vegetarian restaurant. Create innovative and delicious dishes using fresh fruits, vegetables, and meat alternatives to cater to health-conscious and environmentally-conscious consumers. read more.....
'Fighter' Review: Hrithik Roshan, Deepika Padukone soar in this aerial actioner
Fighter Movie Review: Helmed by Siddharth Anand, 'Fighter' is an entertaining action-drama that has been made for the big screen. The film stars Deepika Padukone and Hrithik Roshan in lead roles.
In 1986, a film about a pilot who is given a second chance to redeem himself took the world by storm. Tom Cruise’s Top Gun set the benchmark for what an aerial action film involving planes should look like. Many tried to duplicate the formula but nothing came close to the original, until 2022, when Cruise made a comeback in a refurbished version of the franchise.
Siddharth Anand’s Fighter takes several cues from Top Gun to lay the foundation for what becomes a pacy story about valour, patriotism and celebrating the birds in the sky that protect our country. It doesn’t hurt that the cast is led by two good-looking actors -- Hrithik Roshan and Deepika Padukone. But do the actors deliver or does their vanity come in the way of making Fighter a bonafide action caper? Let's find out.
If Rajkumar Hirani is the badshah of feel-good films and no one can match family dramas like Karan Johar, Siddharth Anand has carved a niche for himself with his larger-than-life, good-looking masala entertainers. With Fighter, that writing has taken a patriotic flavour. Every time a film shifts to Kashmir and the Indo-Pakistan conflict, there is a certain template that is set. Siddharth Anand follows the cue but adds dollops of glamour, high-octane action scenes and loads of patriotism with ‘Vande Mataram' and 'Jai Hind’ playing in the background.
Anand has a way of introducing his men in his movies. Be it the stylish entry scene of SRK in Pathaan or even back in the day, how Hrithik Roshan blazed on screen in Bang Bang and even War. But in Fighter, he tries something different. He gives Deepika Padukone’s Minni a stellar entry scene before he brings in the big gun -- Hrithik Roshan’s Patty. Given the scale of the film, the director doesn’t rush into the big action scenes. He spends most of the first half introducing us to the Air Force pilots. Led by Rakesh Jaisingh aka Rocky (Anil Kapoor), the unit of Air Dragons comprises of Minni (Deepika Padukone), Patty (Hrithik Roshan), Taj (Karan Singh Grover) and Bash (Akshay Oberoi).
The plot revolves around the Pulwama attack and incidents leading before and after the incident. In terms of storyline, Fighter flies high on the newfound love of filmmakers to weave in patriotic sentiment in a bonafide potboiler. The action scenes are the real hero of Fighter. Anand steers away from any Top Gun comparisons by creating an original palette for the big-ticket shots.
The first half has the right mix of emotion and action, but the second half nose dives before picking up just in time for the juicy climax. Deepika and Hrithik’s pairing is a winning master stroke. They not only look good as a pair, but also do justice to the characters when they are in uniform. There is a certain seriousness they bring to the table when they mean business. Anil Kapoor shows us why he’s the real boss. His scenes with Hrithik and the team are a major highlight.
Unlike the free spirit of Pathaan, Fighter feels a bit caught in its own web of trying to walk the thin line of being commercially viable without compromising on the integrity of its sentimental appeal. The scenes where we are given lessons on loving the nation or the wordplay that Patty indulges in get weary after a point. You want to see the birds in the sky but you need to be patient for those scenes.
What helps Fighter maintain its pace is the lead hero Hrithik Roshan, who reminds us what makes him a true-blue Bollywood superstar. His committment to making Patty’s journey feel personal is something the young blood should take a cue from. Deepika Padukone delivers in both the action and emotional scenes. Watching her and Hrithik flirt in the first half is pure thrill and so is their delicious dance in the air. Karan Singh Grover and Sanjeeda Shaikh provide the right support to these able front-footers. The weakest link however is the villain Azhar Akhtar, played by Rishabh Sawhney. His nearly ironed hair and lip-glossed pucker seem too pretty to be menacing.
Fighter is a big-screen spectacle. When those birds soar high in the air, there is nothing that can take your eyes off the screen. Hrithik and Deepika set the screen on fire and I won’t be surprised if they become the go-to pair for big-ticket movies in the future. Siddharth Anand’s Fighter soars high on the entertainment quotient.
‘Dunki’ movie review: Shah Rukh Khan and Rajkumar Hirani deliver a drama that delights and drags in equal measure
In ‘Dunki,’ Rajkumar Hirani’s first and long-awaited collaboration with Shah Rukh Khan, the purpose and social concern is laudable but the storytelling feels facile and laboured after a point
Early in Dunki, a simplistic but heartwarming take on the poor illegal immigrants from Punjab who make dangerous journeys in a desperate search for greener pastures, a set of hopefuls find a way to crack the English test. They memorise a paragraph by rote and decide to parrot it to the examiners by just changing the name of the topic.
Inadvertently, the long scene with diminishing returns becomes a metaphor for the sameness that surrounds Rajkumar Hirani’s storytelling. Over the years, he has engaged the audience with almost the same story structure, but has always managed to imbue it with a beating heart and a smiling face.
In Dunki, Hirani’s first and long-awaited collaboration with Shah Rukh Khan, the purpose and social concern is again laudable, but the storytelling feels facile and laboured after a point, largely because Hirani doesn’t want to test newer ways to put his point across. The spontaneity that we associate with his work is sadly missing.
Set in a small town in Punjab, Dunki goes into flashback to tell the tale of four characters with modest means who want to immigrate to London to get over their difficulties in life. When they are about to give up, Hardy (Shah Rukh), an ex-armyman, comes into their lives to make their dream a reality by taking a circuitous, illegal route. Along the way, he develops a soft corner for Manu (Taapsee Pannu) only to realise that her wish to cross over to a foreign land is stronger than her love for the man who gave her the belief.
The theme of illegal immigration may be relatively new for the Hindi film industry, but it has been tackled in Punjabi films and the news pages are full of first-hand accounts of the perilous journeys that the so-called ‘donkeys’ make. So when the film presents the challenges as a novelty, it doesn’t come as a surprise. They feel tepid in picturisation and we keep looking for a little more nuance and a little more poignancy. The feeling becomes stronger when the end credits show some facts and figures superimposed on some heart-rending images of illegal immigrants.
Hirani always puts emotional logic ahead of conventional logic and uses situational humour to great effect. Here, he does it again, but the results are not as consistently riveting and charismatic as they have been in the past. The emotional swell does overwhelm you two or three times, but the seamless unpredictability of the narrative that has been the hallmark of Hirani and Abhijat Joshi’s writing is missing here. More importantly, in the light-hearted first half, the jokes around English and Englishmen start feeling repetitive. And, some, like one around the national anthem, don’t land properly. Perhaps, Hirani has chosen England over the the US and Canada because he could use the colonial connection, but in the present scenario the illegal immigration to the US and Canada is more newsworthy and relatable.
Having said that, Hirani’s focus on how the policies on immigration are stacked against the poor strikes a chord, and his knack for incorporating social commentary into the screenplay is very much noticeable. The comment on the trousers-wearing mother of one of the candidates opens a window into the deep-seated patriarchy in mofussil India where the son feels embarrassed by the fact that his mother works as a security guard.
Once the dust settles down, one could pretty much guess where the film is headed. The narrative sags in the middle overs. Things look up in the second half when the film finally moves from the comic set pieces, most of which are part of the trailer, to convey the larger message behind illegal migration. But after a couple of powerful scenes, it feels like the writers are straining to take the film to a fitting conclusion. The musical tapestry, particularly the combination of Javed Akhtar and Sonu Nigam in ‘Nikle The Kabhi Hum Ghar Se’ and Varun Grover and Javed Ali’s chemistry in ‘Chal Ve Vatna’, gives goosebumps.
Shah Rukh surrenders himself to Hirani’s universe and the way he evocatively puts nation over asylum in a courtroom sequence, makes a strong socio-political statement and is one of the highlights of the film. The problem is that the love story between Hardy and Manu doesn’t create much magic. Taapsee fails to cast the spell that the story requires for the boy to wait for her for 25 years. The supporting cast is solid, particularly Vicky Kaushal, who reprises a staple character in Hirani’s universe, earlier essayed by Jimmy Shergil and Ali Fazal in Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. and 3 Idiots respectively. Vikram Kocchar and Anil Grover are efficient but Boman Irani isn’t tested much.
Movie : 12 Fail Directed by: Vidhu Vinod Chopra Written by : Vidhu Vinod Chopra,Jaskunwar Kohli Produced by : Vidhu Vinod Chopra,Yogesh Ishwar
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12th Fail: The heartwarming and inspiring real-life story of Vikrant Massey’s character, IPS Manoj Sharma
When Abhishek Bachchan was asked what he thought was the biggest hit of 2023, he didn’t name Pathaan or Jawan. His pick was 12th Fail, Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s latest directorial starring Vikrant Massey. Having hit theatres on 27 October, the movie, which is based on Anurag Pathak’s 2019 novel, received much critical acclaim within the industry and among a global audience. In fact, 12th Fail, which was produced on a minimal budget of Rs 20 crore according to News18, grossed an approximate Rs 60.87 crore at the box office.
12th Fail is based on the real story of IPS officer Manoj Sharma, who failed in all subjects except for Hindi in the 12th standard, but didn’t allow that to deter his dream of clearing the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC exams). Growing up with meagre savings, Sharma resorted to odd jobs like driving a tempo and walking the dogs of affluent families to pool together the requisite tuition fees.
To Massey, playing Sharma came with a tremendous amount of responsibility. Speaking to IANS, the actor said: “We have said in the media, written on the poster, and also said in the trailer that it is based on a true story, but it is inspired by a million true stories. It represents that common man who has faced hardships. And I just had to go out there and represent my own life. I had to go out and do justice to Manoj Sharma's life, and to do justice to Mr Chopra's vision. It was a daunting responsibility”. Going by multiple verdicts by credible film critics, he delivered on that score, but the actor lays all the credit at Sharma’s door.
With 12th Fail now streaming on Disney + Hotstar, the movie, which stars Massey as Sharma and features Medha Shankar as the latter’s wife IRS Shraddha Joshi, is back on everyone’s mind. Before watching their story play out on screen, here’s a quick primer on how a 12th-standard fail managed to overcome every hurdle imaginable to become the Additional Commissioner of the Mumbai Police.
12th Fail: Know the real and inspiring story of Vikrant Massey’s character, IPS Manoj Sharma
Early life
Manoj Sharma was born in 1977 in Bilgaon, a small village in Madhya Pradesh’s Morena district. His father worked in the agriculture department and money was short. Added to that, Sharma performed poorly in the ninth and tenth standards, passing only with a third distinction. But the real crisis arose during his board exams when he failed in all subjects except for Hindi. Considering his dream of pursuing and clearing the most competitive exam in India — the UPSC exams — next, this certainly put a pin on things for a while. However, undeterred, Sharma went on to clear his 12th standard papers on the next try and then began to prepare for something much bigger.
Working the odd jobs
The next few years went into sincere preparation for the UPSC exams, the toughest test to secure a post in the civil services. Through Sharma, 12th Fail has offered the country a glimpse inside what goes into UPSC preps, turning the spotlight on the thousands of hopeful candidates who embark on the gruelling journey each year. In Sharma’s case, money was a big problem; he didn’t even have enough to scrape together the tuition fees for the exams. To this end, he took up a series of odd jobs, from working as a tempo driver to a dog walker to affluent families and even serving as a peon in a library. However, through the latter, Sharma was introduced to the works of Maxim Gorky, Abraham Lincoln and Muktibodh, which helped him understand life, and his purpose in it, even better.
Despite all the preparation and hard work, Sharma failed the UPSC exams on his first try. The next two times didn’t bring much luck either. However, forever tenacious, he kept at it, finally clearing the test on his fourth try, achieving an all-India rank of 121. Following this, he joined the Maharashtra cadre in 2005 and is currently serving as the Additional Commissioner of the West Region in Mumbai.
Both, in Pathak’s book and the movie, 12th Fail spends a large chunk of its narrative on a heartwarming love story between Sharma and his wife Shraddha Joshi. The couple reportedly met at a UPSC coaching centre in Delhi’s Mukherjee Nagar, The Indian Express reports, as a teacher at the institute had recommended that she meet him. “That day only I felt that there is something special about her,” the real Manoj Sharma told the newspaper. With Joshi shying away at first, Sharma worked hard to win her trust by becoming her greatest friend, and soon the relationship transitioned neatly into love.
Joshi has been his north star since. A hard taskmaster, she made him ace his writing skills (as shown in the movie) and even made notes for him. Joshi herself has earned a mixed bag of accolades, serving at the helm of Mahila Arthik Vikas Mahamandal (MAVIM) and leading initiatives in financial inclusion, livelihood development, and grassroots institution building, SheThePeople reports. She, too, started her career in 2005 as the Deputy Collector of Nainital, and in 2007, joined the Indian Revenue Services (IRS), contributing to tax implementation across various domains like service tax, central excise, and customs.
12th Pass has been submitted to the Oscars as an independent entry.
Ranbir Kapoor is Ranvijay, who, as you probably surmised from the trailer has everything money can buy, except his father’s love and attention. Never mind his poor mum enabling his bad behavior, all Vijay wants is to be able to spend his father Balbir’s birthdays with him, again mother, very much alive and standing around looking sad, is inconsequential. Denied this love, Vijay slowly turns into an “animal”, with uncontrollable instinct, acting upon every single intrusive thought in his man-brain. Also because Balbir is the richest or one of the richest men in India, nothing Vijay does, including straight-up mass murder, has any legal consequences. Law enforcement doesn’t exist in Balbir and Vijay’s world.
The film takes place in flashbacks, and I tried to figure out why. The first scene is a prosthetically aged Ranbir Kapoor in the year 2056, telling a group of men an inane story about a monkey in a jungle. Just like this scene, much of Animal’s screenplay presents sequence upon gory sequence, purely for the shock value they provide. Violence for violence’s sake, sexism for sexism’s sake, declarations of masculinity only because one can. “Sadly it’s a man’s world”, Vijay says to his wife in a scene, without a hint of awareness. You don’t have to tell us twice.
The entire film illustrates it being set in a man’s world, using as many bullets and murders as possible. It is not a lament, like Nikhil Nagesh Bhatt’s ultra-violent KILL that premiered at TIFF, where violence is portrayed as a way of showing the trappings of masculinity, of resorting to use your manhood as a tool when all else fails, the one thing that gives you’re an automatic advantage in the world, regardless of your social status. In KILL, Raghav Juyal and his men murder on a train, because it’s the only option they are left with, to gather wealth in a system that doesn’t work for them. In Animal, Vijay is violent because no one booked him for a psych evaluation as a teenager. In this slasher movie men protect the honor of their families as real men, using swords, axes, and guns, with enough references to penis and body hair underlining this declaration.
Anil Kapoor is Balbir, a businessman so preoccupied with his empire, that he seemingly doesn’t even retaliate or care upon realizing a teacher at school has physically assaulted his son. While the actor is, you know very good at his job, especially in the yell-y scenes where he tries to parent his enfant terrible. Aside from this though, the character is a ping pong ball bouncing around of a screenplay desperately trying to justify its protagonist’s rage with some semblance of a reason WHY it is translating as murderous. When Balbir is not yelling vocational platitudes like “I run a business across three different time zones”, he sits behind an office desk silently simmering, allowing his progeny to rain hell, clearing his conscience with the occasional “I don’t agree with your methods”.
As Ranbir Kapoor enters the film interrupting YET another wedding, with yet another embarrassing song performance, a sort of 4th wall breaks, reminding you how many times you’ve seen the actor do this before. Almost like reading our minds, then it goes “AHA! So you think you know Ranbir haan? Now let me show you what your wildest imagination could not have anticipated”. And that’s what Animal boils down to, intended to provoke “snowflakes” and opinionated critics of Vanga’s last outing, Kabir Singh, very carefully picking out commentary on that film, and giving it just a bit of a twist. So you were concerned at men applauding when Kabir slapped Preeti? Sure, Vijay will never slap his wife Geentanjali, played by Rashmika, and she will slap him, so when you bring up Vijay’s misogyny, these slaps can be invoked. Oh, you didn’t like how Kabir debased Preeti? Look how Geetanjali debases herself. It’s almost like Vijay fancies himself as a Napoleonic king. There is a scene in BOTH Ridley Scott’s Napoleon and Animal where this “conqueror” returns home to his nubile, attractive wife and makes her take her clothes off in front of the house help, presenting her body for him to admire and touch. While Ridley Scott’s Napoleon is seen through a comedic lens, as a pitiable fool who doesn’t realize all his heinous actions are leading him towards an embarrassing end, Vanga’s Vijay is heroic and tragic right till the end. Asking his audience to empathize with and love this sad, broken but strong man, who kills people because his father didn’t cut a birthday cake or two. I shall not and honestly CAN not get into all the misogyny, because anything a female film critic will have to say about this movie will be reduced to a feminist splitting hairs over a movie, there is enough in the length here to be used as a counter. “Oh, you don’t like that he asked Tripti Dimri to lick his shoe? But how about HER plans? You didn’t like how he treated his sisters haan? So a brother shouldn’t step in to protect his sisters?” These aren’t arguments that can be had, and frankly getting involved with them takes focus away from the larger discussion around the current climate of Hindi cinema that celebrates major movie stars and filmmakers coming together to propagate hot-tempered brutality as an acceptable, or perhaps only way of attained justice. Wickedness masquerading as goodness.
I wondered if the script and story here were arc-less and pointless for a reason. Stitched mostly episodically, Animal never crescendos, because its protagonist is almost always very consistently, flatly angry. When at school a digitally de-aged Ranbir Kapoor shoots an AK47-looking assault rifle and drives boys off the road in his car, the rage in his small frame is proportionate to that in his bulkier figure in the climactic shirtless fight with Bobby Deol. From Delhi to Scotland, the journey is only external, not internal. Ranbir Kapoor is angry in the first scene and angry in the last.
Animal isn’t written to present finesse in cinematic storytelling, character development, sub-plot, conflict, catharsis, or pathos. The film is a 3-and-a-half-hour-long bait for cultural commentators. It’s almost sad really. The craft of filmmaking is sacrificed for glamorous scenes where a group of masked men appears at a hotel to kill Vijay RIGHT as he is in another room doing an arms deal, which means harr tarah ka weapon is available. The seemingly Oldboy-inspired corridor ax fighting sequence is overlayed with dexterity over Bhupinder Babbal singing Arjan Vailly and it looks magnificent. Even though I wondered what the mask budget of the opposing team was, and why the footsoldiers kept their masks on as their ring leader, the most important guy who must conceal his identity immediately takes his off. Did they have trial fittings before being sent into action, 200 of them on their way to kill one man?
Animal doesn’t exist in a reality you and I know and can perceive, neither is it convincing as a purely fantastical, melodramatic Bollywood film where disbelief must be suspended. When Vijay, in another fit of rage, kills a prominent man and all his stooges, with about 100 eyewitnesses, in the middle of a conference orchestrating what can only be described as a massacre, it is barely referenced again, the writing uninterested in tying loose ends, or satisfactorily culminating sub-plots. So, all I’m taking from this is, that India mein ultra-rich can get away with not just murder, but wholesale slaughter.
And don’t come for me saying why I must invoke this as an “India” thing, the film invites you to look at its protagonist as a sort of ghar mein ghus ke maarega new age Indian man, something you’ve heard Hindi cinema espouse before. Background score is pointedly halted during a havan seen for Geetanjali to ask Vijay to drink cow urine, which he promptly does. During a fight sequence, a hybrid lawn-mower-esque bullet machine is emblazoned with Made In India, Upendra Limaye as a jumpy arms dealer Freddy proudly proclaims his weapons are an example of Atmanirbhar Bharat, yelling “salute the champion” after Vijay achieves his Vijay using said weapons.
On the contrary, the bad guy played by Bobby Deol is Abrar Haque, a Muslim with three wives. As he murders someone during his third wedding, right in the introduction scene, in the sequence after, he summons all three of his wives into his bedroom, proceeding to violently rip their clothes. Giving the men in the audience a quick chuckle.
