X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Marvel Comics are always so dark and dismal. There is no clear good and bad, all the characters are shades of gray. I enjoyed X-Men and its sequels because the effects were spectacular and the superpowers were awesome.

The storylines had me slightly confused though; mostly because I like the end of the movie to clear up any fogginess that surrounds the characters. I watched all three X-Men movies avidly, hoping that one of them would shed some light on Wolverine.

After all, Wolverine was the central character. And he was played by Hugh Jackman, who I absolutely adore.

So when X-Men Origins: Wolverine came out, I was sorely disappointed about not being able to watch it on the big screen. And I waited patiently for it to come out on DVD.

The story starts even before the credits, with James (the future Logan) a young boy with a high fever. From that point on, everything spirals into the darkness. Sabretooth, played by Liev Schreiber, turns out to be Wolverine's brother. They are virtually indestructible, so they survive through the centuries, even though they actively participate in every war that tears the land apart.

Sabretooth is volatile and vicious, caring for no one except maybe a tiny bit for Wolverine. Due to an insubordination, the brothers are sentenced to death by firing squad. Which of course doesn't work.

During their incarceration, they are approached by a army guy named Stryker. He recruits them because of their strange abilities into an elite task force. Their mission is not revealed.

Wolverine finally tires of bloodshed and leaves the task force, to settle with a girl in the Canadian Rockies. The story follows his descent into revenge and rage after Sabretooth kills her.

Stryker appears out of nowhere and offers him a way to beat Sabretooth: coating his skeleton with adamantium.

Of course, there are double-crosses upon double-crosses and finally the tale gets tangled up in itself. The story isn't ground-breaking, but Hugh Jackman is fabulous. The special effects are pretty good, but they are no where in the league of the X-Men movies.

There is no suspense here, thankfully, and the movie ends by explaining how Wolverine loses his memory.

Seven Pounds

Will Smith is sometimes enough advertisement for any movie. That holds true for some percentage of the movie-going population, including me.

I hadn't heard about Seven Pounds before I watched it, and we decided to go only because the poster had a Will Smith picture with the movie title across the bottom.

I don't think it is feasible to describe the plot of the movie without giving away a lot of the story.

The movie is profoundly sad, and explores the deep-seated guilt that a good person feels when he has wronged innocent people, however inadvertently. Will Smith goes to great lengths to attempt to even out the wrongs he has committed.

I think the seven pounds borrows from The Merchant of Venice when Shylock demands his 'pound of flesh'. Here, Will has wronged seven people.

The movie is profound and depressing. There is very little happiness, but at the end you feel respect for a man who gives up so much just to ease his conscience.

Definitely worth a watch.

The Water Horse

Like many, many people all over the world, I am totally fascinated by the Loch Ness creature. I say 'creature' because my definition of a 'monster' is Hitler.

The Loch Ness creature is stuff of fables and legends, and even today people have sightings of the majestic being.

The Water Horse is a delightful movie, set in the time of war. I usually hate those movies because I hate the thought of war and what it does to humankind. Soldiers perish on the front, and families suffer away at home. There is nothing gained from war.

The movie is about a young boy who lives in a big house. His mother works as a housekeeper for the lord of the manor, and he is a lonely little child with an all-abiding fear of open water. One fine day, while playing with sea shells and ocean debris, he finds an unusual egg. He picks it up and takes it home, where he hides it in his father's workshop.

A few days later, a small gray creature breaks its way out of the egg and blinks up at him. It is the fabled Loch Ness creature. He names it Crusoe, after Robinson Crusoe, and proceeds to bring him up in secret. Of course, before long Crusoe becomes too large to fit in a tub, and has to be set free in the loch.

The story follows the adventures of the small boy and Crusoe through war times. The movie has beautiful moments as the bond develops between the two.

However, I felt tremendously sad, as the legend says that every water horse is born an orphan. There can be only one water horse in the world at any time.

I turned off the movie, hoping very much that it wasn't true.

The Incredible Hulk

My first Edward Norton movie was Primal Fear. I had that movie on LD, and the last scene when Richard Gere is leaving the holding cell has remained with me till today. I thought Edward Norton was one of the most sinister characters I'd ever laid eyes on.

Of course I was very young at the time, plus I associated all actors with the roles they played. So I was dead wrong of course. Now the sinister aspect I had imbued Norton with has been replaced with a profound respect for the angular-featured actor.

I watched The Incredible Hulk more than a year ago, so there is very little I remember of the movie except for Edward Norton. He plays the troubled, mild-mannered Bruce Banner so well it left an impression. He struggled for control over a volatile temper, with far more serious ramifications that any normal temper.

I thought the movie was well-made, without crazy action sequences that I more often than not find difficult to follow. I respect advancement in technology, but sometimes it is just plain hard to understand what is going on. I imagine this is why armies in the old days wore colours - instant identification.

I enjoyed the movie, and probably will get it on DVD, although it doesn't top the list.

What's Your Rashee?

I didn't really want to go for this movie, but we generally wanted to watch something so we went anyway. BIG mistake.

The Patel family in Mumbai is in a bit of a financial soup, thanks to the swindling tendencies of the eldest son. They need a large sum of money super-fast. Through the aegis of an astrologer they find out that their younger son is going to receive a large sum of money on his wedding day. However, the caveat is that the time for his marriage is a little closer than expected - the 20th of month. (They neglect to tell us what day it is currently.) Also, this piece of good fortune is somewhat confirmed when the maternal grandfather calls to say he is bequeathing all his wealth to the same grandson on his wedding day.

Yogesh Patel, MBA and NRI and many other acronyms besides, is unaware of his impending nuptials. Lured to back to India on the pretext of his father's ill health, they spring the whole mess on him. of course he is taken aback and not ready to wed.

During his first night there, he is unable to sleep because of the time difference. He picks up a book called 'What's Your Rashee?' and discovers there are 12 types of girls, one per astrological sign.

After agreeing to go along with the crazy scheme, his father takes him to a relative. The relative often doubles up as a marriage broker. He has <insert number here (oh wait, I don't care)> girls lined up. Yogesh, utilizing his new knowledge, wants to meet only 12 girls - one of each astrological sign.

This merry-go-round carries on for the rest of the movie. There are two sub-plots: the relative has a suspicious wife who signs on his father to play detective. She suspects there is a mistress in the wings. The second sub-plot is a little more sinister; his brother has been intelligent enough to borrow money from an underworld kingpin.

The twist in the tale is that Yogesh meets 12 girls, apparently identical to each other. And this little nugget is visible only to him. His grandfather explains that he is seeing the girl he wants to marry in every girl he encounters.

After 4 hours of piteous misery, the rigmarole resolves itself and Yogesh marries the girl with whom he has fallen in love.

Great.

Can I have my money back?

Harman Baweja should consider giving up acting whilst he is still young and capable of building a career in another field. Perhaps freelance as a sack of potatoes. Enough said.

Priyanka Chopra is irritating to the extreme as multiple Gujrati girls. There is a serious overdose here, although she does manage to pull of some of the characters with great panache.

The movie was silly from start to finish. Avoid at all costs.

Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi

Possibly no secret to anyone I know, I don't really like Shah Rukh Khan. But I do go for some of his movies nonetheless because sometimes they are quite nice.

I didn't really like this movie very much. Possibly because, for me, Bollywood flicks are meant to be fun and frolicsome. No tragi-comic stories with lame ducks and broken hearts.

Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi is the story of a young man from Punjab. Not a startling man by any means, but one that gets by with a respectable job in a reputable organization and with minimum of fuss. He is a confirmed bachelor simply because he is much too shy to meet girls, let alone converse with them. He has next to no social life.

One fine day, he attends a wedding in his old teacher's home. The teacher's daughter is marrying the man she fell in love with, and as SRK sees her dancing in glee with her friends, he marvels at her lighthearted happiness.

Just then a messenger comes to say that her groom-to-be has met with an accident on the way to the wedding and has passed away. She runs to her room in despair, while her father suffers a heart attack with the shock.

The upshot of all this drama is that her father is critically ill, and unlikely to survive for very long. As she has no one else, he asks her to marry SRK's character. They both accept reluctantly, knowing full well that it is a marriage of convenience. Her father passes away in peace and they wed.

The adjustment period is difficult on both individuals - one crushed by tragedy and the other in love with his new wife who has no feelings except gratitude for him. A status quo is finally established with a few mild-mannered hiccups along the way.

A travelling dance program comes into town and the girl shows her first bout of enthusiasm then. She enrolls herself. Her husband also enrolls, after due consideration and a serious make-over, hoping to get closer to his wife as an entirely new person.

They become friends, and he finally tells her he loves her. At first she is horrified, seeing as she is a married woman. By and by, she realizes that this man makes her laugh, something she never thought she could do again.

And then of course, the whole story proceeds into an unholy tangled mess. As the characters get deeper and deeper into their respective messes, SRK becomes more and more miserable.

Finally there seems to be no clean, happy solution which presents itself. (At least it wasn't evident to me.)

Of course there was a resolution. And it was sappy and unnecessarily dramatic.

I did not like the movie, although I loved some of the songs.

Dil Bole Hadippa!

Less than hour after watching the movie at the theatre, and I'm already at my laptop banging out a review. Why? Because I have a few strong (bordering on vicious) opinions about this movie, and I was absolutely dying to voice them.

Firstly, the movie was lovely. A little overtly Punjabi, but then again there is no Yash Raj movie that isn't. Newsflash people: the beating-on-chest and deep-voiced 'I'm from the Punjab' is OLD. Get over already. India has some OTHER beautiful cultures too. Yeesh.

Secondly, I thought Rani Mukherjee was a doll. So utterly cute. And Shahid was a good foil. Again, newsflash people: the movie was about HER. Not him. So her name should've come first in the credits. Ugh our male chauvinist pig society. (This will come up a few more times in this review.)

Thirdly, why oh why did they muck up the ending? A nice light-hearted comedy and they made it all emotional and sappy towards the end.

- I would have had a much better opinion of Shahid's Y-chromosome if he hadn't gotten his panties into a bunch when he found out his opening batsmen was a girl. The same girl he was falling for. Geez man, LIGHTEN UP. I would've cheered like a sailor if he'd just laughed and said that he was just piqued that she didn't let him in on the secret. But NOOO, he has to get all weepy and clench-fisted, hurt and wounded, angry and irritable.

Yawn.

- When Rani Mukherjee is unveiled as a girl, and everyone boos, why does she get all emotional? Where is her Punjabi grit and spunk? Skin-deep me thinks. Her dialogue on the mike should have been along these lines:

"Dear ladies and pansies, you are only upset because a girl beat all you so-called men. You testicle-less morons have no business to sit there and judge me. I've proved myself better than all of you, so hell I sit here in judgment of your sorry behinds. And Ali Ansari? Next time you trip me, I WILL mistake your genitalia for cricket balls. That is all. Now go F*** yourselves."

Ah, that felt better.

Little Women

One of the classics, Little Women references have populated pop culture for many years now.

Back in school, my class put up a play where we played a scene from Little Women. The scene was set during Christmas time where the March sisters give up their dinner for the impoverished Hummel family. I played one of the Hummel children, and I remember my mother fraying an old set of my clothes to further reflect their abject poverty.

Then over the course of the years, I caught glimpses of the innumerable adaptations of the novel; whether plays, movies or even excerpts. But I never managed to read the whole book, or watch the full movie.

Little Women needs no praise, as anyone who ever had any interest in reading knows about the four girls. It is a brilliant classic, without any doubt.

The only caveat I had was the author's slightly moralistic tone of voice. That may have been applicable in her time and age, but in ours? Not a whit. One doesn't read novels for a lecture in moral science after all.

I still loved the book, and it is definitely one of my all time favourites.

Night at The Museum 2

It was pretty gutsy making a movie about stuffed animals and dinosaurs coming to life, considering how the concept was thrashed to death in the Jurassic Park age. However, the first movie was a great success, as it was funny, and it was a triumph of man over his failings that never misses. Plus the encounters with people like Teddy Roosevelt and other historic figures must've definitely gotten the attention of enthusiasts. It has just that twinge of supernatural that makes magic so real and within reach.

Night at The Museum 2 is set at the Smithsonian. The museum is bigger, there are many many more artifacts and well, the chaos that ensues is on a colossal scale.

The moving parts are newer although old favourites from the first movie (otherwise known as the known movie stars) reprise their roles once more.

New additions include Amy Adams plays Amelia Earhardt, the spunky pilot and Hank Azaria as the older Egyptian prince.

While everyone is all fine, and their performances are good, Hank Azaria steals the show. His scenes as an Egyptian prince are riotously funny, as his accent is British and he speaks with a slight lisp. His patent exasperation with his subordinates and his 'partners in crime' is hilarious.

My particular favourites are:

1) The one with Darth Vader and the Trashcan monster from Sesame street.

2) The one where his bird-men fly back into the portal

3) The one where Ben Stiller is trying to retrieve the hourglass in which he has imprisoned Owen Wilson's character, Jedediah. Here is a low-quality video I found on YouTube.

I laughed myself into stitches because of these scenes, and I think Hank Azaria, and a little Amy Adams is the reason people should watch this movie on DVD.

This is perhaps not the popular opinion, but then again, I don't care.

Brida

Brida is a book that is very simply written, but manages to convey powerful messages. That alone makes it one of the best books written.

It is the story of a girl who sets out on a quest to discover magic. She looks for teachers, and finds two that couldn't be more different from one another.

The lessons she learns are sometimes difficult and obscure, yet she manages to find herself on her quest.

While the above summary may seem very vague and somewhat waffly, the book itself is a like a closely-written parable that takes some deciphering.

I enjoy these books because the messages tie in closely, if not directly parallel, the esoteric truths that I read in books on spirituality and philosophy. There is a synchronicity in the fundamentals that underlie every ancient tradition and culture, fundamentals that do not vary just because their practices span different continents or dimensions.

Brida is a book that can be enjoyed on one of two levels: one, is the simple story of a girl who goes looking for magic and finds it. The second is the understanding that magic really resides in us all; we just have to find it. And we will at the right time.

Paulo Coelho is a powerful writer. Each of his books is a simple parable with a revelatory knockout lurking behind the words.

The Ugly Truth

Love.

Before the movie: Gerard Butler and Katherine Heigl. (In that order.)

After the movie: the movie.

Bad news first - the movie is formulaic. If you want something that has a super original storyline, a message in the movie and scenes that make you sit up and think: don't go for The Ugly Truth. You're better off sleeping.

Because The Ugly Truth isn't a groundbreaking movie by any stretch of imagination.

The good news - (where do I start?)

I love comedies, although rom-coms with the misunderstandings and the tear-jerking scenes where the relationship is on the verge of going down the toilet and the subsequent making up makes me nauseous. I enjoy comedies without any emotional leavening.

There The Ugly Truth delivers. The comedy is slightly PG-13, but it does make you laugh till your sides ache, and then some more.

Katherine Heigl is the epitome of the woman in control. High-powered, job over personal life, efficiency over looks and contempt for most men as inferior beings - she's the whole single package, dying for a 'meaningful relationship with a sensitive man'.

After a chance phone-in conversation with an obnoxious man on television, she is horrified to learn that her boss has planted the very same bloke on her show to up the ratings.

Enter the very skanky, very rugged and very yummy Gerard Butler. His humour is all about sex - unashamedly so. He tells women to get over their 'sensitive' criterion and realize that men and shallow. There are specific ways to snag a guy, and girls that want guys need to a) get in shape b) be pretty.

Of course there is the obvious tussle in the office, which spills over into their personal lives. Katherine 'encounters' a hot new neighbour and Gerard helps her snag him by coaching her reactions and looks.

Of course they end up spending a great deal of time together, and they develop feelings for each other, and yada yada yada.

However there are no emotional scenes. No tears, no recriminations and no unnecessary "I'm-so-sorry-I-love-you-and-only-you" scenes. Thank God.

Go watch it. It's fun.

The Lost Symbol

It's really hard to synopsise a Dan Brown book without letting on a number of the plot details. The man is so stingy with the facts leading up to the state of events, making the reader almost cry with frustration because there is little or no understanding of what is happening. It's a little like being led into a cave of wonders blindfolded and expected to assimilate as much as possible by feeling your way around.

Having got my annoyance at being kept in the dark out of the way, I must say that I loved The Lost Symbol. A fascination for secret societies and arcane knowledge has never failed to reel me right in, and The Lost Symbol caters to that exactly.

There is enough fact in the book to make the reader wonder about the realities of the secret societies and whether there really is a 'lost symbol'. The story with Robert Langdon is of course make believe, so there is no danger of wondering on that particular front.

The book moves fast, having been set in a time-span of 12 hours. Yet I was frustrated most of the time because I didn't understand WHY something was happening. Of course, that had the effect of me reading so fast that the words almost blurred.

The book holds the reader's interest till the climax, at which point I was sitting on the edge of my seat. As the book starts revealing its intricacies, a short 2 pages before the climax I realized what the finale was going to be - and I felt exactly how Robert Langdon expressed himself repeatedly during the book: How could I have missed something that was sitting right in front of my nose?

What I liked about The Lost Symbol was that Dan Brown did away with what seemed to be a pattern in his books: a character that one thought was the one fail-safe good guy (barring the actual protagonist) was always the criminal mastermind. That doesn't happen here.

What I didn't like was the unnecessary pages post-climax. Those dragged on and on for me, where they go looking for the actual 'treasure' and what it turns out to be. After such a thrilling climax, the ending was very bland. Plus all the nervous excitement built up in the preceding pages has exploded by then, and a tiredness is all the last few pages has to offer.

I would definitely recommend reading this one; and although comparisons are odious, Da Vinci Code was better, but not all that much better. It's different and it's fun reading; if a little stressful.

Bedtime Stories

After 'You Don't Mess With the Zohan' I was highly reluctant to watch anything with Adam Sandler in it. He is evidently degenerating into some crazy human-like form with a ridiculous accent/speech impediment.

Don't get me wrong - I loved Wedding Singer and I thought he was powerful in The Longest Yard; but honestly? He really seems to be past it now. His comedies are farces true, but how come Seth Rogen manages the same genre without being completely ridiculous? (I may be slightly biased, because I think Seth Rogen is so adorable - but that's beside the point.)

Bedtime Stories unfortunately did nothing to mitigate my opinion of Adam Sandler. It is about a two kids whose father is a humble motel owner. The father, while a great hotelier, is a lousy businessman; he eventually has to sell the hotel that he loves to stave off financial ruin. The person who buys the motel wants to build a deluxe hotel in its place, and promises the old man that one day his son will run the place.

Adam Sandler is the son, and surprise surprise the new owner goes back on his word and Adam Sandler remains a lowly maintenance guy. Strangely though, he is not bitter but always cheerful. Sometimes nauseatingly so.

His sister meanwhile has two kids and she leaves them with her brother for a few days while she goes off somewhere. During this time, to put them to sleep (and to get them to like him) he tells them stories.

Stories which come true the next day - in a modern, everyday context, of course.

What follows is supposed to be hilarity, as the most ridiculous events transpire because of the stories the previous night. Of course, it doesn't. Not remotely.

The movie is a complete yawn-fest, and I only watched it to the end because I am compulsive that way.

Avoid at all costs.

The Fourth Estate

I am famous in my family for burning through books that I enjoy, whereas having tomes that I don't collect inches of dust on my bedside table.

The Fourth Estate was one of those - I mean the ones I read super-fast.

The book is colossal so it took me more than one night to finish it, to the immense relief of the people around me. (I wonder how much I spend on books every month?)

Jeffrey Archer is one of my favourite novelists, and barring Prison Diaries, I don't think I've missed many intentionally.

The Fourth Estate is about two rather unscrupulous newspapermen tussling over a prime acquisition. The book starts in the present where both men owe a great deal of money, and have no immediate method to pay it. And then the book moves to their beginnings to explain how exactly they manage to get into their current predicament. Their backgrounds couldn't be more different.

Keith Townsend is part of a blue-blooded society in Australia. His father is a prominent newspaperman, although local, and his mother is a powerful socialite. He grows up, trained to take over the helm of his company and run it in the same fashion it has been done for years. From his school days he is painted as a fairly alright, if not entirely truthful person with a knack of putting other people to a disadvantage. He then proceeds to turn it to good account.

On the other side, Richard Armstrong begins his life in much humbler circumstances in pre-war Poland. His family is poor, sometimes subsisting on as little as one potato amongst the whole brood. The main cause for their abject poverty seems to be the terrible weather conditions, as well as his father's ineffectualness as an efficient farmer. He claws his way up the ladder, finally fleeing to England to build his empire based on lying, cheating and by breaking every rule ever known. All in all, while one starts by feeling deeply sympathetic, the feeling by the end of the book is that the man is an out-and-out villain.

The book chronicles their lives, where they start off in their own countries oblivious to each other entirely. It moves through their petty victories and high handed ruthlessness in an effort to reach the top. Their personal lives take backseats and relationships fall by the wayside.

The author paints Armstrong in decidedly black colours, while Townsend is just not a man to trust without very good reason. He has a few more scruples and at least he doesn't murder anyone.

A riveting book; very fast-paced considering it encompasses the lives of two 50+ men minutely. Each of the leads has many layers added to their personas, till they become extraordinarily real to the reader.

Blood Brothers

When I was in Ooty with my aunt, her college students were invited to a cultural festival put up by one of the MANY schools that line the hills and dales of Ooty countryside.

Since I was there, I decided to go too.

Now Ooty schools mostly are the kind that were opened by British educators. So the curriculum and the method of doing things is way better than a standard school setting.

Something I got to see first-hand.

The students were accomplished to say the very least. The festival was organized for a number of days, and each day something was put up. The finale however was the same play - Blood Brothers.

The play itself was a tragedy with a few funny moments strewn in to alleviate the oppressive feeling.

The story is about a poor woman with a number of children. She strives and strives everyday to feed them and keep the home fires burning. Her background is frighteningly textbook - a pretty girl, with not much ambition beyond gay revelry, meets a handsome boy with much the same ambitions. They conceive a child and are forced into adulthood with the responsibility. Intelligence wasn't their strongest suit, so they continued to have children; until one fine day the not-so-handsome man decides to leave.

However, not before they realize she is pregnant again.

She manages to grit her teeth and get ready for the newest arrival.

On the other hand, the lady she works for is a one of leisure and little work. She spends most of her time shopping with her husband's money, while he spends most of his time away on business trips. Her desire to have a child remains unfulfilled.

The poorer lady treks off to the doctor, only to find out that she is expecting twins. Horrified at the thought of the extra expense, she goes into a stress-related tailspin, unloading most of her fears on her employer.

The lady's brain clicks into place, and she propositions the maid to sell one of the twins to her for her own. After much persuasion, they finally agree, and swear not to let on to anyone else. The lady pretends to get pregnant, and the transfer takes place.

The story progresses through the lives of the twins and their ignorance of each other's true identity. The small boys become fast friends even as their mothers try their best to keep them apart.

The play was riveting, even though the actors were high-school children. They carried through the plot with immense commitment, earning them well-deserved applause after every act.

The play is a musical adapted from a book by Willy Russell. It was a super-hit musical with a number of famous names playing characters.

Definitely worth a watch - if one is in West End, of course.

Love Aaj Kal

A number of Indian youth of the NRI variety will probably identify with this movie. Not because it is set abroad, but because of the ambitiousness that the two main characters display. They are goal-oriented and know exactly how various parts of their lives fit in the grand jigsaw.

Of course, they will also identify with the realization that love isn't something that falls into well-planned grooves and sometimes compromise is really what is most required.

The story is simple enough with no twists or turns, taking the movie above the mundane level of Hindi cinema. Boy meets girl, they date, become inseperable best friends. However, her career takes her to India, whereas his dreams see him in San Francisco. They part amicably, without tears and a great dose of practicality. Keeping in constant touch, they start to move on in life, at least on the surface.

Running as a constant theme in the background, and sometimes in the foreground, is another old Indian's love story. Back when things were more difficult because of the times and the cultural taboos, he preaches of a love that conquers all practicalities and considerations.

Initially, there is ridicule at his old fashioned ideas and archaic ideas of love, but slowly parallels between love back then and love now begin to emerge; revealing that, no matter what age one happens to live in, love does in fact conquer all.

On a prosier note, I was thrilled with the acting and direction. True artistry lies in simplicity and being natural, and this movie was light-hearted and fun, yet tugged firmly at the heartstrings. Saif Ali Khan is probably at the top of his game in Bollywood, although he does look a big hagged. Deepika looks fresh and wholesome, without conveying the nauseating impression of being virginal. I detest virginal heroines, as they pander shamelessly to the disgusting Indian male mentality. For once, the kisses onscreen were portrayed naturally and not with accompanying pomp and fanfare, background music and fireworks.

I may be partial to comedies, and I do enjoy the occasional light-hearted romance, so I will give this movie a definite thumbs up.