NO SMOKING is about K (John Abraham). Simply K. A 30 year old man who thinks of himself as quite smart and refuses to listen to anyone, big or small. Confident about himself and whatever he does, he is a chain smoker in the true sense. Catching hold of this habit from a very young age, he hasn’t looked back ever since.

His well wishers (read his wife and friends) have tried in vain to see to it that he lets go off this habit but all to no avail.

Will he finally manage to come out of this or will he only dig his own grave?

The man who could save him was Baba Bengali Sealdahwale [Paresh Rawal]. A simple looking man who could just be found at every nook and corner, he was autocratic and dictatorial but ensured guaranteed results. He has his own way of curing his patients. It’s in fact quite simple. They only have to follow all his orders. And if they don’t, he turns out to be their worst enemy.

Would K be next in line?

Well, K was not alone as he had a pretty wife in the form of Anjali [Ayesha Takia]. As a young woman who cared for her hubby in spite of his addiction to smoking, she herself was addicted to television soaps. K also had a pretty secretary for company, Honey [yet again played by Ayesha Takia].

Who was she? And in her, did K found an alternate to his wife?

Meanwhile K also had to contend with his friend Abbas Tyrewala [Ranvir Shorey] who himself was a cigarette addict once and had introduced smoking to K. What made him look for a solution? His love for his wife. And what made him cure his habit? Baba Bengali. This was the reason why he introduced K to Baba.

Will he manage to help his friend out?

An Anurag Kashyap film, NO SMOKING is, as per the film maker himself, a bizarre piece of cinema. With music by Vishal Bhardwaj and Kumar Mangat as the producer, NO SMOKING releases all over today.

SPEED - Now don’t get confused with the namesake ’speedy’ thriller which released around a decade back and was a huge success worldwide. Instead, SPEED is inspired from another Hollywood hit, CELLULAR, which too was a racy thriller that kept it’s audience at the edge of the seats.

The basic plot of SPEED is simple though the situations that the protagonists go through are quite complex to say the least. The central character in the film is Urmila who only has one device which could help her survive from her kidnappers - her cell phone!

But first of all how and why has she been kidnapped? Well, she is the wife of an undercover MI5 agent (Sanjay Suri) who has to follow certain instructions as dictated by criminals in tow Aftab Shivdasani and Sophie Chaudhary. In an attempt to use Sanjay Suri to aid the assassination of India’s Prime Minster, they put pressure on him by first kidnapping his wife and later his kid.

In some other part of the city, London, where all the action is taking place, is a happy-go-lucky character Zayed Khan who is busy wooing his girlfriend Tanushree Dutta. But in the midst of all this ‘masti’ and ‘maza’ he gets a call.

A call which he would have never anticipated.
A call for which he had to immediately find a solution.
A call which may result in him loosing his girlfriend forever.

Still, he chooses this call over everything else. He does that because on the other side of the call is Urmila for whom he is her final hope….and the last call. Because if the call disconnects, she is not in a position to make another call! This is her last and final chance of survival and she has to hold on to it.

Now what Zayed has to do is follow instructions of a total stranger, give back some instructions and last but definitely not the least, act as her only moral support. He has to make sure that the call doesn’t disconnect, the assassins do not make their move, he doesn’t come in the way of the criminals and Urmila is safe from their clutches.

Meanwhile London cops too get a hint of something going fishy during the PM’s visit and go all out to make sure that they get their best men on duty. One such man is Ashish Chaudhary who leaves aside his personal obligations and makes sure that he is up there for the call of the duty!

Zayed has to save Urmila
Ashish has to save the PM
Sanjay has to ensure that the assassins’ plans are foiled
Aftab and Sophie have to ensure that their plans materialize at whatever cost

And all of this promises to happen at a ’speed’ which is sure to take you through a roller coaster ride which begins tomorrow i.e. 19th October!

Actual functioning of media has traditionally been looked with keen interest, especially by followers of alternate cinema. The farthest one can remember is Amitabh Bachchan’s ‘Main Azaad Hoon’ that received intense critical acclaim. Madhur Bhandarkar’s ‘Page 3′ worked both critically and commercially while ‘Corporate’ too seems to be going on the same route. In between came Shahrukh Khan’s ‘Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani’ but an attempt to mix art and commerce didn’t really cut ice with many, though in retrospective the film seems to be have released way ahead of its times.

Now comes yet another film that aims at exposing the games played by media in their attempt to announce, plant or sometimes even manufacture ‘breaking news’. And this is where the film takes its title - BREAKING NEWS! While there has been a world where news breaks all by itself and arrives on your door steps, there is also a world where news has to be created in order to have it break in front of millions of viewers.

STING OPERATION is one such tool to facilitate that!

An operation that depends a lot on glamour, sensationalism and controversies.

Vidya [Koel Purie] is one such journalist who gets involved in a operation masterminded by her. But was it an easy living for her from hereon?

A committed professional, Vidya had just begun her career as a news correspondent and was satisfied with her stint with the entertainment world. But this was not what she was destined to do as some organizational reshuffling results in her shift to crime reporting.

Little was she aware that this shuffle would result in shuffling of her ethics, principals and even her life!

Starting as a novice, she soon learns the tricks of the trade and finds her way up on the ladder as she starts delivering one breaking news after another for her channel. With her confident boosting up due to her success, she starts getting better assignments to work on. With her morale at an all time high, she comes across a story that brings a complete shift in her attitude towards the world of journalism!

The story is about the plight of a girl called Sangeeta, who calls her up and narrates the trauma she was going through. Apparently numerous officials from the local police had been sexually abusing her for a long time and she had finally mustered courage to approach media for help. Excited and all charged up for this challenge, Vidya plans a sting operation to help the girl and arrives at the sight of the crime with her team.

Unfortunately the unexpected happens when instead of the SP [whom they had originally tried to nail down in the operation], the DIG arrives and actually rapes Sangeeta. As the entire episode is captured live on the camera, she and her cameraman Rafiq are distressed with the task that they had in hand since they couldn’t do anything to help the victim.

On the other hand they are also left with a bad taste in the mouth since officials at their news channel were happy with the footage they had in hand, which could further boost their TRPs. While Vidya warns the channel against using this footage and ensures Sangeeta that none of this would happen, the two women are shattered when the actually see the footage right in front of their eyes on the small screen.

After such a bitter experience, Vidya’s conscience left her with no other option than to resign from her current job and join her uncle’s press that still belonged to the old world where news was actually news! Her partners in her quest to bring to fore the REAL news were Rafuq, Bala (who himself was a crime correspondent in rival channel) and Trishna (who was her batch mate in journalism course).

Individually they may have had different point of opinions and way of functioning but as a team they had a common objective - provide justice to all and report the news in its true sense.

Vidya aims at providing Sangeeta justice but there are numerous hurdles in her way. Would she and her team be able to break all the barriers and bring back actual journalism in this new world?

Also starring Abhimanyu Singh, Swati Sen, Atul Parchure, Harsh Chhaya, Vinay Apte, Vandana Gupte, Virendra Saxena, Shishir Sharma, Nandita Puri, Tanushree, Anita Wahi, Dhananjay Mandrekar, Vijay Patwardhan and Rahul Vohra, ‘Breaking News’ is produced by Shreyas Mhaskar and directed by Vishal Inamdar. The film is ready and is slated for release soon.