
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Laaga Chunari Mein Daag

Saturday, December 26, 2009
Uncle Fred in the Springtime

Ordinarily, I love P. G. Wodehouse books. There are the odd couple of reasons why I can't read through his books in one sitting, but that's mainly a personal shortcoming. It is certainly no reflection on the sumptuousness of his writing style.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Avatar
Few movies have the power of being so absorbing that you find yourself almost in the very landscape. Avatar was definitely one of them. And I watched the 2D version yesterday.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
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.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
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.
Monday, September 28, 2009
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.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
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.

