:::: MENU ::::

A movie and book review blog

  • Reading films, watching books,....
  • Mind candy in the dark
  • All the books left to read...

Aug 30, 2003

The Shipping News 



New Foundland is America's answer to Europe's mysterious celtic ways. Lasse Halstrom's movie 'The Shipping News', is set in New Foundland with Kevin Spacey, as Quoyle, the protagonist. Quoyle is typical example of a so-called life's loser, as he says at the start of the film, someone nobody notices. He'd have continued his nameless faceless existence somewhere in great vastness of suburban America had not he married a very promiscuous woman, who later dies in a car wreck and had not his aunt on her way to salvation (which by the way is her native NewFoundland) not stopped by to steal his father's ashes and had not these both events coincided.

Well the story makes a turn, and there goes Quoyle with his aunt and his daughter to NewFoundland, which supposedly has Artic climate in May????(We have higher average temperatures in Alaska in May than New Foundland, hows that possible??) Anyway, in his ancestral village(or town?), Quoyle lands a job as Shipping News reporter with the local paper and the story goes on. The charecterization is good, maybe should thank the author of the book from which this movie is adapted, Annie Proulx's Shipping News. Cinematography is haunting, doing justice to NewFoundland's frigid but sweeping landscapes and wind swept shores and it does have some surrealistic shots like the line of people tugging the great house across the snowy expanse. Its a nice movie to watch, don't expect much action,there isn't any.Its more like warm chicken soup, filling and homely, lie back, relax and watch.

Aug 29, 2003

Bringing Out the Dead 


One of Nicholas Cage's best performances is in this movie, Bringing Out the Dead. He lives his role as a grave yard shift paramedic on the verge of losing sanity in the streets of New York. When you see his job you'll realise that your job is not half as bad as his. I mean, the greatest offer a boss can make to his subordinate is to fire him, thats what Cage's boss promises him every other day.

Its a brilliantly dark movie by Martin Scorcese, happening mostly at night. It depicts the harrowing job of a paramedic which does have it highpoints occasionally, when atlast he's able to save a life, he says it's like walking on air. The cinematography and editing are good, the sound track has REM, 10000 Maniacs and the slick montage of scenes when these songs are being played is impressive. Patricia Arquette, Cage's then wife in real life plays the female lead in the film, as the daughter one of the patients Cage brings in. Another Scorecese masterpiece, couldn't have been anyone else in there but Nicholas Cage.

Aug 25, 2003

Serenading a Segway 



Atlast, I could get on a Segway, the human transporter. And boy o boy, wasn't it a marvel !!!!! Forget about how you'd contribute towards green environment, or not contribute towards the enlargement of ozone hole, Segway is a treat, it adds a new dimension to motion. Yesterday I rode one of these ulitmate human transporters at the State Fair and I am at a loss of words to describe the experience, maybe akin to a kid riding his first bike, but much easier to learn. Segway acts like an extension of human body, everything is controlled by your body movements, you have lean forward to drive forward, give pressure on your heels to go backward and to stop you have to be upright, only buttons on the machines are the turn buttons to turn either left or right. When I saw the George W's mishap with the Segway a few months earlier on TV I thought that maybe it was like a learning to ride a bicycle, you need to get balance, but this is really a piece of cake, the kind you'll be addicted to for long. Hopefully the price will come down from 4.5K in the years to come, once it becomes more common.

Aug 21, 2003

Antonia's Line 



A kinda of biographical Dutch movie with strong emphasis on females of the family. Antonia is the matriarch of a family or rather a large commune of family and friends in a Dutch village. The story starts with Antonia and her daughter Danielle coming back to Antonia's native village at the end of Second World war to start a new chapter in their lives. From there the movie progresses through their lives and how Antonia's line is continued by her daughter Danille, grand daughter Therese and finally her great grand daughter Sarah.

It is a movie about female empowerment, about mothers, about women, the role of males reduced to the are minimum, but it is not about male bashing either. The film doesnot concentrate on male domination, but rather on female power and roles they play in this life. You could have taken a movie in the same way way with a male lead and male progeny and called it Antony's Line, but then there have been many movies made that way and it couldn't have been any different from the rest. Antonia's line is an interesting movie to watch, especially if you are a woman or if you love good movies with great characters, great dailogues with a fine vein of comedy embedded in them and beautiful countryside.

Aug 19, 2003

Mystic River 


Just finished reading Dennis Lehane's Mystic River. Gripping tale, could have read in one stretch but had to sleep and go to work inbetween. Its about three boys, one of them who was kidnapped in childhood, but returned four days later, how all of them grow up into adult human beings, lead different lives, until the day they are drawn together again by the murder of the daughter of one of them. It might seem from the summary that its going to be a growing-up- analyzis-of-life story, which it could be in some small way, but basically its a nail biting thriller where the identity of the killer is confused more and more with every page that you turn.

Even as you read you could see a Hollywood movie in between the lines, the one thats kind of dark and brooding, with unkept houses, toussled hair people and a sense of loss. Warner Brothers too realized that and the movie Mystic River is bound to be hit the screens this October. The three main characters are portrayed by Kevin Bacon, Sean Penn and Tim Robbins and the director is Clint Eastwood. Hope the movie will be as good as the book..

Aug 13, 2003

Supari 


Yesterday I saw the hindi movie Supari. After having read some negative reviews about the movie, I had braced myself up for another of those Bollywood underworld flicks that has been flooding the Hindi movie industry after the success of Ram Gopal Varma's 'Satya'. To my utter surprise, I liked Supari. The acting of all the four lead actors and the sole heroine, Nandita Das was above par, cinematography and direction were also slick. The movie has 4 real good songs in the sound track, although I could find only three of those in the movie, maybe the fourth one was added in the album, not part of the original movie.

Uday Chopra's acting is brilliant, I didn't like him much in Mohabbatein and the movie Mere Yaar Ki Shaadi Hain was a total washout. He seems to have got into the skin of the intense character of Aryan Pandit, he plays in Supari. All the other male leads, Rahul Dev, Purab Kohli and Akash Saigal have done good jobs. Nandita Das hasn't got much to do except slick back her hair with pomade, line her eyes with kohl and appear dark, gothic and menacing as an underworld 'queen'-pin. She fits into the role right in. The one drawback (if it could be called so) is the uncalled for 'rain' scenes. There are a couple of scenes which happen in rain, the rain looks very artificial, doesn't in anyway add to the 'mystery' or intensity of the scene, a rain in Mumbai in blazing sunlight,eh?!?!!! All in all I was impressed by Supari (which by the way means "contract killing" in Mumbaiyya slang"), but seems like a lot of people out there didn't. Check it out yourself.

Aug 11, 2003

Six Degrees of Separation. 


No,no, not the movie. Its a research project that is being conducted by Columbia University's Department of Sociology. Anybody can signup and join the research. Its an internet/email project where once you sign up, you'll be given the name of a stranger(the target), whom you are supposed to reach forming an email chain of six people, including you and the target.That is to prove that between you and any stranger on earth there exists just six degrees of separation, thus allowing 4 other people(email ids) who can form a chain from you to the target . Its fun, if you interested in such stuff. You can find it at Columbia's SMALL WORLD site.

Aug 8, 2003

All About My Mother 


Pedro Almodovar's tribute to women, mothers, actresses, 'All About My Mother' is a fascinating and revealing portrayal of women in the many roles they play. There is the mother, played by Cecilia Roth, who is a hidden actress as well, then there is the acting diva, the pregnant nun, the transvestites who aspire to be women with their expensive surgeries, all in all its a story about women, brilliantly acted out by women, in a colorful settings which are Barcelona and Madrid. The camera work is brilliant, the composition, the color make each frame a painting in itself. As far as the characters are concerned I like Antonia San Juan who played the transvestite, she was so witty and convincing at the same time. The film won at Cannes and the Best Foreign Film Oscar(2000).

Aug 6, 2003

Kandahar 



Kandahar is a city in Afganistan, a city that always found itself at historic cross roads, has the largest airport in Central Asia (or the remains of it, now) and it is the name of Mohsen Makhmalbaf's movie of one woman's journey to rescue another from under the oppressive rule of Taliban. It is shot in documentary style and is the real life episode in the life of the lead actress Nelofar Piraza. She made the same journey as depicted in the movie and later apporached Makhmalbaf to convert it into a movie.

The movie beautifuly portrays the life in Afganistan, the oppressed and shackled lives of their women, the generations of half limbed men (legs lost by stepping on mines) searching the skies for Red Cross helicopters that drop off artificial limbs and the madrassa(the Islamic school) where only thing they teach in addition to Quran is what an AK47 is and its uses. Hunger, strife and war is rampant in a country the world has chose to ignore, maybe because it didn't have any resources worth mention or value. The characters in the movie are well chosen and very natural, there is the Afgan boy who befriends the heroine at the start of the journey, the Afican-American muslim man who is in Afganistan in search of God, but ends up treating poor Afganis without having any proper medical degree, the persistant, sly villager who agrees to become the guide in the final lap of the journey towards Kandahar, everyone of them fits right into their roles. Kandahar makes you realise that how lucky you are, it could have worse, much worse, had you been an Afgan woman.

Aug 5, 2003

Amores Perros 

Alejandro Inarritu's brilliant flick that connects three stories with a car crash and canines. Gave me a taste of life in Mexico city. The stories are quite mesmerising and the way they are brought together is also an achievement. The gruesome killing of the stray dogs in the end by one of their own, struck me as quite graphic. I think it is one of those films which give you not more than two options - either you like it or you don't. I did.

Aug 1, 2003

26 Things 


Yesterday I submitted my photopage at 26 Things: The International Photographic Scavenger Hunt. This was the first time I participated in such a thing or took photos pertaining to certain subjects. There were 26 subjects in all and participants (that could be anyone on this planet) were to submit one photo each under these 26 heads before the last day of July. With my procrastrinatic nature I took all the photos on the last day, that was yesterday, except for a few photos I had from my July trip to Valdez. That means that the quality of my photos are not so great and makes me aware once more of the universal truth that procrastination is no friend of creativity. 
Take me to the top of the page BEAM ME UP, SCOTTY