Monday, May 30, 2005

Dogma

Dogma:

Inspite of the good star-cast the movie is an ordinary one.
The comedy-content is also mostly below-par except for a few scenes.
Even, George Carlin's humour is not entertaining.
The two prophets are funny when they are courting for the female-lead.

KwK - the final show for this season:

Boring one. No usual embarassing questions for the guests and Karan was going ga-ga about AB and SRK all-through-the-show.

Friday, May 27, 2005

Kingdom of Heaven

Good movie!

Found Orlando Bloom's acting to be good.
The movie's beauty lies in letting the viewers draw a parallel between the movie-plot and the current middle-east problem and Islamophobia among westerners.

'Religious zealots' and 'mercenaries' are strange-folks, it is very difficult to understand what actually drives them to this kind of madness! 'Kingdom of Heaven' tries to explore the reason why Muslims and Christians fought such bloody battles for the holy-land and strangely the movie just-stops of explaining 'the reason behind this madness'.

In the last scene of the movie, inspite of seeing the mindless-violence, both Bloom and his love-interest start their journey back to Jerusalem for yet another fight!

Nice segments in the movie:
i. The protagonist says, 'god doesnt speak to me, even in the place where Christ was crucified'.
ii. Saladin says 'nothing' and later smilingly 'everything'.. in response to Bloom's question as to 'why is he fighting for Jerusalem inspite of the heavy-casuality?'
iii. Last scene when Bloom and his love-interest ride their horse enthusiastically to (my guess follows) join the crusaders in their journey towards Jerusalem.

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Hitch

Romantic-comedy

Few observations:
i. Music that runs in the background seems to have been pilfered:
a. When Albert goes after Allegra(i.e just before the board-room sequence) - the background music seems to be an adaptation of James Bond theme music(of course, maybe the film-maker wanted it that way ... but it is truly unoriginal of the music director to have done that)
b. When Will Smith jumps on top of the car which Eva Mendes is driving(during the finishing-stages of the movie), the background music seems to have been lifted from the theme music of the movie 'Life is Beautiful'
ii. The scene in which Eva Mendes starts crying while seeing 'Jerry Maguire' is quite funny. Parallel to this can be seen in 'Sleepless in Seattle' where Meg Ryan starts crying when she sees a romantic movie in TV.
iii. The sequence when Allegra asks Will Smith - whether he taught Albert that she cant whistle or to throw the inhaler before kissing her or to dance in a zany way etc., Will Smith says 'No'.. then she asks 'what did you teach him?' and Will Smith says 'Nothing'. In short this sequences encapsulates the entire-movie.

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Notting Hill

Good movie.

The best part in this movie include:
i. Hugh Grant playing the role of a down-to-earth Brit, maybe overacting in the last scene of this movie where he gets down from the limo alongwith Julia and walks down a red-carpet.
ii. 'Brownie' scene in this movie was enjoyable
iii. The stupid blushes of Julia Roberts were a treat to watch and all those conversations she and Hugh Grant have without uttering too many words.
iv. The under-achieving friends of Hugh Grant and their conversations were also fun to watch
v. The songs that come in the background were good.(including 'She' by Charles Aznavour and 'When you say nothing at all..' by Ronan Keating)

After Julia-Hugh breakup, Hugh tries to find new girlfriend with the help of his friends - this segment in this movie is quite distasteful.
Wonder why the protagonist has to search a girlfriend?
Isn't the protagonist self-contained as he started in this movie?
Somehow, during that stage, the independent thinking-guy disappeared!

Brit-movies are a treat-to-watch with their good storyline, unlike most of the American-masala movies!

Sunday, May 15, 2005

Shifshuf Naim

This is an Israeli movie. Has loads of comedy-sequences in this movie. It could be classified as an 'teen-comedy-genre'. The english name of this movie is 'Hot Bubblegum'. Guess this movie can be classified as a 'mother of all the american-teen comedies'.

Hollywood Squares

Hollywood Squares has loads of trivia for any careful ear. Folks who are deep-into-quizzing will find loads of trivia. The programme is great fun, with the questions and its answers all extremely entertaining. 'Gilbert Gottfried' is my favourite star.

Movies by weekend

Sholay:
Did not enjoy the movie all that much. Lots of western flavour inserted into this movie. One character who came up with a reasonably cool performance is Amitabh Bacchan alongwith Jaya Bahduri. Hema Malini's make-up was atrocious.
Some info: The movie was shot in Karnataka. In the song 'eh dosti..' an advertisement hoarding in Kannada language can be seen in the background.

Revisiting Neverland:
Kate Winslet tells to Johnny Depp that 'we should just act like friends rather than become just more than friends i.e life-partners', for which Johnny Depp says 'No we cant act like this forever'. Johnny Depp later contradicts the same in a scene with young Peter, when he says 'he can imagine that his mother is there everywhere when in reality she is not alive'. Some contradiction, but the best part of course is that we are allowed to do all the interpretation, which I think encapsulates the beauty of the movie.

Life is Beautiful:
Magical realism in movies :-)
The first time I saw this movie was in a theatre in Chennai. Saturday nigh-show in Sathyam cinemas is always a tough proposition for anyone to grab tickets. Me and my friend were very confident that for a foreign language movie there wont be much of a crowd. But we were wrong, the theatre was kind of housefull and we were lucky to grab 2 tickets. While watching this movie, we noticed our former school principal sitting some few rows ahead of ours. I had earlier heard that she got divorced and got married to another man and is soon to shift base to somewhere in Europe. I think she quit her job as a principal shortly after this second marriage. The school administration is mostly old-fashioned and so guess the management would have found her unsuitable to be the principal of a school! Maybe I could be wrong and she could have volunteered to quit her job for moving to some prosperous country in Europe, but just in case she had decided to stay - 'I think the wrath of an orthodox school administration would have pushed her to quit the job'. I think people tend to look down when they see a 'dysfunctional family'. Honestly every family is dysfunctional in their own way. It is very difficult to find a working-kind. What matters is accepting the faults(if any) and move-on!

The Medallion:
Bad movie. Hope 'The Myth' with Mallika Sherawat is better than this!

KwK - Hema Malini and Zeenat Amman:
Hema Malini's views were a bit cryptic, while Zeenat's was straight-forward. Zeenat's english had a lot of accent attached to it. I think this American accent might have distracted the viewers from listening to what she said on camera. My friend felt the same, while watching Zeenat speaking, he got irritated with her accent-part. But I felt accent part is pardonable for someone who has stayed close to 20 years in USA. As for the content she spoke was much better than Hema Malini.

Sunday, May 01, 2005

Movies by Weekend

The Alamo:

Ordinary movie.
Dennis Quaid and Billy Bob Thornton play American patriots in this movie. This movie sings about american-jingoism - tells us all the story of how Texas was born!

Chandramukhi:

Rajni movie.
Tinge of Sherlock Holmes-style and Byomkesh Bakshi-style explanation of events - makes this movie interesting.
Another movie which dared to be different was 'alavandhan'. In 'alavandan', Kamal Hassan choreographed interesting sequence of events including the gory animated-fight sequences (Note: Kill Bill 1 had a similar fight sequences). Kamal was quite certain that censors would cut those gory fight sequences, so he took the animation route. Guess, Quentin Tarantino also did the same!

Both 'alavandan' and 'chandramukhi' had a not-so-usual-storyline, but the disappointing aspect in both these movies is the 'comedy'! Both these movies lacked the 'sensitivity-angle' when dealing with topics like 'split-personality' or 'schizophrenia' and followed the formulaic-cinema route. In 'alavandan' the psychopath-Kamal looked like a prankster in the climax segment of the movie.

The Peacemaker:

Movie in the Jerry Bruckheimer mould.
Seems like movies like this just keep coming out of Hollywood day-in day-out! Of course, entertaining one.

Closer:

Good movie.
Found this movie to be interesting and the leading ladies were gorgeous (Natalie Portman and Julia Roberts). Guess, Julia Roberts gels well into Brit based movies.(include: Notting Hill)

Young and Innocent:

This is the first time I saw an Alfred Hitchcock movie.
Nothing extra-ordinary about this movie. It was a fairly decent thriller, except that you know what the next scene is going to be!

Pink Floyd's 'Fearless'

Pink Floyd's song 'Fearless' has a 'chorus' to end. The last time when I saw Liverpool playing a match in EPL I heard the same chorus-tune which comes in the song 'Fearless'. This song seems to be a regular in every English football matches(whether it is the National team or club teams and infact even during cricket matches).

Source of 'You will never walk alone' chorus song:
click here