Movies by weekend

Payback:

Class-act. Really enjoy watching movies like these which have a really cool way of picturising the stylish-revenge story a la Kill Bill or the wild-westerns or the good old Hong Kong movies.

Pather Panchali:

Saw maybe 3/4ths of the movie but due to some player-malfunction could not see it completely. But liked the way the movie was shot. Guess, Satyajit Ray was class-personified in the way he shot the father-mother-grandmother-girl child-boy child.. kind of takes you through the memory lane, his characters seem to be very real.

Choker Bali:

The story was originally written by Tagore. Surprisingly there were not any of those Victorian-inhibitions expressed. The story also reminded me of Kalki's 'alaiosai' which again was set in pre-independent era (during quit india movement, while Tagore's 'Choker Bali' was set during early 1900's I guess i.e coinciding with the partition of Bengal). Both these stories will give you a glimpse of orthodoxy-class and their culture and their ideas about independent-India.

BluffMaster:

This movie was stylishly taken. Really liked the theme-music which comes in the background everytime Abishek walks into Priyanka Chopra.

Munich:

Steven Spielberg movie. One will get stuck with the thought whether the Israeli ordinary citizens recruited for
assasinating Palestenians were right or wrong in whatever they did. I think this took the charm away from the movie. It might be extremely tough in taking the 'who is right or who is wrong' call in crisis like these, but I think decision has to be taken at some point of time. Guess, the director could have tried to pull-off something bold rather than sticking to 'indecision' part. Another movie which also had slightly boring ending was 'Kingdom of Heaven', in a somewhat similar way.

Transporter 2:

Not as exciting as 'Transporter'. Amber Valletta was a stunner!

Capote:

Was expecting some sudden turn-of-events in ths movie when it reached the climax-phase i.e some twist in the tale and the convict is not exactly the killer but someone else.. or something along those lines... but sadly not much drama in this movie. The movie wasnt the 'biograph' nor was it a 'close-up on the crime' that happened on one night in Kansas. So, the movie seemed to have been lost as to 'what it was all about'.. i.e neither a drama nor a biographic one.

Syriana:

This movie was fantastic all the way. The story telling had a tinge of 'Traffic', which made it appear classy.
The movie talks about how America's brutal capitalistic expansionism is harming not just the rest of the world but even themselves. Capitalism is an extremely risky proposition, unless nice folks are there in the top. Thus, over-dependence on the system is dependent on individuals(leaders).
Clooney-Soderberg partnership again has produced a super-movie.

Movies by April Fools Day

Love Story:

Kind of liked this movie. It was a really clean movie and the theme music was good.
Remember hearing one Landmark final quiz question based on this theme music, guess this theme must have been picked
from some Bach's symphony.

The Hitchhiker's guide to Galaxy:

This movie appeared to be more like a TV serial or talk-show that they show on TV.
The comedy part in this movie was a bit stale.
Though the last 15 minutes of this movie was good.
I think I will try to read this book, which I feel will be more interesting than this movie-adaptation.

Grapes of Wrath:

Really good movie, based on Steinback novel.
Quite sad how rural poor or the rural unemployed gets manipulated by all for their own ends.
The rural poor have nothing to do except for moving to prosperous regions. And the minute they migrate, they join the nobodies of this world. They are paid lowest wages because they dont have another job. If the law or the employer uses his muscle they just have to be spectators against this injustice, if they talk-back they are silenced.
The parting-off conversation between the mom and the rebel son was interesting, the son wants to change the exploitation of the poor folks and mom wants him to stay with her, but realises that he also cant stay with her, because he s a bit of an idealist himself so he would be off-place here with her where she and her other family members just crawl before the mighty since they dont have a job.

Memoirs of Geisha:

Not a good movie, wonder where the hype came from.
The lead characters didnt look like Japanese i.e Zhang Zhiyi and Michelle Yeoh. Though Zhang Zhiyi looked brilliant without make-up. Rob Marshall was quite pathetic in Hollywoodising many of the components in this movie. The bright colours all around seemed to be too artificial. For similar reasons I found 'The Last Samurai' movie too nauseating, there is hardly any realism in any of the sequences. The role of Michelle Yeoh seems to be similar to the role of Rekha in the movie 'Kamasutra'.
Akiro Kurasawa movie 'Drunken Angel' was top-class Japanese movie, guess one cant see a better Japanese movie than that..

Origin of 'Charlie' (nickname for Viet Cong soldiers)

Got interested in the trivia related to the origin of the word 'Charlie' that was used to refer to Viet Cong soldiers after coming across an article about 'Apolcalypse Now' and the similarlity between Kurtz and Pol Pot.

Check the url about Viet Cong
and NATO phonetic alphabets to understand the origin of this word 'Charlie'.