Eid-ul-fitr 2013: A Game of Thrones, who are you supporting?

Missing your beloved Daenerys Targaryen or the charming Jamie Lanister? Craving to see more of Varys or Tyrion Lannister. Well, the famous American TV series, Game of Thrones, may not be returning until 2014, but Eid-ul-fitr this year in Pakistan is going to be pretty much a game of thrones itself! In this post I will be sharing the uncanny resemblance that the three Eid releases share with some characters from the series. If you have not seen the show, don’t worry you will still get everything as there is loads to go on!

So you all already know that this Eid is boasting a release of three Pakistani films, and with foreign content out due to the ban, the fight for the glorious throne (meaning box-office success) will be just between these local films. There is just this one little addition to the original and initial three films we have been bragging about since Galaxy Lollywood as a site picked this Eid-releases-topic for a series of its articles that will continue till the extensive reviews and box office reports of; now the four Eid films. Which four films you ask, well, here you go…

Ishq Khuda: A Punjabi film by the successful Shehzad Rafique who has already given us blockbuster hits in the past such as Salakhain and Mohabattan Sachiyan. This one stars Shaan, Ahsan Khan, Meera, Saima and Wiam Dahmani. The film is based on Sufism and can very much be termed as a musical.

Josh: Debutant director Iram Parveen’s film starring the hit “Seedlings jodi” of Amina Sheikh and Mohib Mirza is somewhat of a social message film based on feudalism. This one has been lauded by critics world-wide and is sure to hit the right chord with a select audience.

Main Hoon Shahid Afridi: Directed by the newcomer Ali Raza, but who really cares, as Humayun Saeed has left no stone unturned to let the world know that this is HIS film and he is running the game. The film stars Humayun Saeed, Noman Habib, Ainy Jaffri, Mahnoor Baloch, Summer Nicks, Shehzad Sheikh, Gohar Rasheed, Nadeem Baig, Javed Sheikh and a whole lot of actors. The film is not really based on Shahid Afridi but on cricket and is a full on masala.

Zama Arman: Before moving on to movie’s description, I just want to come honest on one thing. I didn’t intend to make this film part of the article initially. The only reason it is here is because of the fact that breaking a site norm earlier, we went into promoting Ishq Khuda, which is a Punjabi film. Because it is a Punjabi film and that we have already entered into linguistics, I thought it would be unfair to not give space to a good quality Pushto film. But as per Galaxy Lollywood’s policy, no official review will be done on either this film or Ishq Khuda, if you would see any review on this site, done on either of these two movies, it will be done in personal capacity by the reviewer as just an individual, and not on behalf of the whole site.

Zama Arman is a full on HD flick by debuting director Liaqat Ali Khan. Produced by Fayaz Khan and written by famous Pakistani film writer Pervez Kaleem, the first HD film in the history of Pushto cinema could not cast someone else than the Pashtun superstar Arbaaz Khan. Rest of the cast again includes two very well-known faces of Pushto cinema, Jahagir Jani and Sobia Khan. The film, through its teaser trailers and songs, seems to be Romantic-Drama in genre with a love triangle in central plot. Nothing more can really be commented on this film right now.

Now let’s go to the main part and add a little ‘Game of Thrones’ Tarka here.

Ishq Khuda

The sigil: According to me (and also due to the limited choice on the GOT create your sigil website) the sigil for this film is musical notes because of the many songs this movie features.

The house motto: Kheth (fields), ganay aur ganay. Well if there is anything Shehzad Rafique has constant in all his films, it’s the “kheths” and the many similar sounding similarly picturized “ganay”. So I think this motto is pretty much apt for the film.

Which GOT character is this film? Ishq Khuda, to me is pretty much like Mance Rayder and his army across the wall. Similar to the show; where everyone is tangled up in the fight for the throne and nobody even knows or acknowledges this army; is the case of Ishq Khuda. All the biggies like MHSA and Josh are all ready to fight for the box-office and nobody is really considering Ishq Khuda a serious threat. Though the film is in Punjabi, it surely has a huge market to cater which may be far greater than Josh, Waar or MHSA‘s. Apparently, it looks like the battle ground for this film; just like for the army of Mance Ryder (Northern part and wall), is restricted to one province, that is Punjab, but one must not underestimate the power of Mance Rayder I would insist!!!

Josh

The sigil: A movie clapboard, because of the fact that it is a film and there was nothing better to choose at the website!

The house motto: Critics, film festivals aur praise. Well that pretty much does sum up Josh, right?

Which GOT character is this film? Josh is just like my favorite GOT character Daenerys Targaryen. In the past few seasons Danny has basically been a young helpless girl going here and there for an army, ships and what not. Basically the girl had nothing and has been on the run constantly. Something similar can be said about the film Josh, more because of the fact that it is the smallest among other releases. Comparatively it has a meager budget and does not really have huge names backing it. It needs to fight for success and needs to collect support for the film, pretty much like our Danny. But as Danny now has an army and everything, so does the film Josh. It has huge media partners, a strong promotional campaign going, and it may very well beat the other films to the box office.

Main Hoon Shahid Afridi (MHSA)

The sigil: The sigil for the film is a dollar sign basically referring to money. Why? Because Humayun Saeed has said this on record that the film is made on a budget of 10 crores. Which I think is bu****it bu****it bu****it x infinity. If you are thinking why is this B.S, well I am sorry you have no common sense left and need to get yourself checked up.

The house motto: We gonna make some serious money. Despite the fact that the budget of the film has been inflated for the media, the fact remains that this film is hugely commercial and is accompanied by the cricket factor, which makes it bound to make history at the box office!

Which GOT character is this film?  Well, I’ll give you hints and you have to guess the character. MHSA thinks really highly of itself, Humayun Saeed and his team are surely arrogant regarding the film and think of themselves as the winners already. Yes, you guessed it right. MHSA is very well the hated Joffrey Baratheon from the show. No, people don’t hate the film, but the film is very much similar to the Joffrey character who is self-conceited and thinks really highly of himself. He thinks he is in power but is not aware of the threat that lies to his throne. Similarly, MHSA  thinks of itself as the clear  winner already and is not even considering Josh and Ishq Khuda as competition.

Zama Armaan

The sigil: The penguin here actually depicts snow, and snow in Pakistan is associated with the northern areas of the country–the region where this film belongs to. The sword there represents fight or fighter, in this case a ‘Ranger’.

The house motto: The Lone Northern Ranger. Zama Arman has a very big factor to its advantage. There is simply no competition to it. It is a lone ranger with all the territories waiting to be conquered and the film will not probably think about coming to the territories of other Eid releases. It has its own battle to fight against limited number of cinemas in KPK and to some extent the security situation as well.

Which GOT character is this film? After giving it a great thought, I think the character of Jon Snow would suit the film best. Jon is a good, intelligent warrior, part of Night’s Watch guarding the Nothern Wall and is groomed there as a probable candidate to command the force somewhere in future. Detached from the ‘Wall Rangers’ he somehow ends up joining the opposing force ‘Wildlings’, only to be discovered later that he had joined the force to discover their plans. Now the lone ranger, hardly managing to live, Jon reaches back to Castle Black, the headquarters of Night’s Watch. Zama Arman is quite similar to Jon snow, a.), because of its northern belongings, (Jon is actually an illegitimate child of the Lord Eddard Stark, the former Lord of North), and b.), because of a tough (harsh winters) but still bright future ahead (command of Night’s Watch), in Zama Arman‘s case, finding enough number of cinemas and tough security conditions, but still a probable superhit status in KPK, Pashtun belt of Baluchistan and Afghan cinemas, though it depends how many cinemas are actually there. Here is something of a fact for your information, Pakistani Pashto films are regularly exported and screened in many Afghan cities and Arbaaz Khan holds quite fan following there as well, we can surely expect Afghanis to have appetite for a good quality Pashto film.

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Before I end it here, I want to clear any confusion that might have been caused by the mention of Waar above in the article, It was used only for creating a particular point there and the film, as reported by the site some days earlier, is not coming on this Eid-ul-Fitr.

Now with everything done. I will end it up all here wishing all four films a very a good business at box office and a tremendous success overall.

Final Editing by: Aayan Mirza

Note: The opinion(s) and view(s) presented by the writer in this article do not necessarily depict the views and policies of Galaxy Lollywood as an independent site/blog. The articles in this category are written by the writers in order to present their own view-point.