The best trailers of 2009

[seema]

Love Aaj Kal

Bollywood trailers are mostly trashy. Very few are creative, very few move beyond the people who star in the movies -- they're mostly just moving posters with faces presented front and center.

Yet some promos manage to startle, to provoke, to intrigue. To really make us want to watch the film.

Here, then, is a list of ten trailers for this year's releases. Nope, that fabulously profane Ishqiyaa trailer doesn't feature because the film's only out in 2010. But here's the best of 2009, a list compiled with much help from my gang on Twitter:

A slick use of splitscreen and racy visuals marks the trailer for this Imtiaz Ali film, even as Saif Ali Khan notices how it's only in Indian love stories that the girl's name comes first.

Add to that him as a sepiatoned Sikh alongside a Brazilian girl we'd never seen before, and this trailer that promised a really interesting film.

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[seema]

Wake Up Sid

Ranbir Kapoor sleeps peacefully before his cheek is assaulted by a well-meaning lady who says he should be a hero -- his mother agrees, saying he doesn't seem to do anything else anyway.

Cut to a montage of fun friendly visuals, and the hummable ru-roo-ru-roo theme -- plus the father-son office-for-car ensure we're intrigued by Ayaan Mukherjee's directorial debut.
And then comes the masterstroke: Konkona Sensharma shriekily demands rain, so Kapoor hurls mineral water into her face. Nice.

[seema]

Luck By Chance

It's a big industry in-joke, and while it's not the kind of thing that all audiences will immediately 'get,' the opening of this trailer -- featuring Farhan Akhtar as 'the struggler' and Konkana as 'the starlet,' albeit one playing a 'parallel heroine -- instantly evokes a curious grin.

Then comes producer Rishi Kapoor on a treadmill, Juhi Chawla as his shrewish wife, Sanjay Kapoor as a director, and Isha Sharvani as a star-kid. They're all stereotypes, but they all seem very fun -- not to mention Hrithik Roshan spoofing himself right from the get-go.

The dramatic montage that follows, the trailer could have done without, but the breeziness and frivolity of the first couple minutes have us hooked.

[seema]

99

So few of our trailers are plot-driven, and this Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK film focusses on story instead of stars.

We see a chase, an accident and, tantalisingly, Boman Irani theorising on luck armed with poker chips. The film claims to be 'almost' a true story, and the humour seems organic.

Full disclosure: I wrote dialogues for this film, but biases aside, I do believe this one's a very well cut trailer, and the background music works.

[seema]

Delhi 6

It's a bit of an unfair advantage to have AR Rahman's soundtrack to cut a trailer to, and the flurry of Delhi shots opening the trailer for Rakeysh Mehra's new film have this advantage.

Abhishek Bachchan, sunglassed and completely out of place in a convertible in Chandni Chowk, looks around dazed. Cut on a grinning Sonam Kapoor with that iconic pigeon on her head.

The curious moment-driven montage continues, an eclectic cast interspersed with intriguing, wonderfully shot Ramlila visuals. An ace promo, though one wishes every song from the film wasn't given its own chunk of screentime.