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A movie and book review blog

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

Nov 29, 2003

Naomi Klein's No Logo 

I started reading Naomi Klein's No Logo yesterday, can't believe she's just 5 years older than myself and has already published such a ground breaking book. Cool!

From what I have read in the first few pages of the book, it seems like nobody is selling products these days, they are selling brands. For ex, I quote from the book "..Tommy Hilfiger, meanwhile is less in the business of manufacturing clothes than he is in the business of signing his name. The company is run entirely through licensing agreements, with Hilfiger commissioninng all its products from a group of other companies: Jockey International makes Hilfiger underwear, Pepe Jeans London makes Hilfiger jeans, Oxford Industries make Tommy shirts, the Stride Rite Corporation makes its footwear. What does Tommy Hilfiger manufacture? Nothing at all." This is new information for me. I am all geared up to read the rest.

Nov 27, 2003

The Exorcist 

Can horror movies be termed watchable? Atleast in my moviemeter, the Evil Dead Series, Nightmare on Elm Street series etc never caused any ripples. Well, the Exorcist is quite a different story, considering it was made thirty years ago and it still doesn't seem dated.

A generation and a half of movie goers have watched the Exorcist before me, so any high handed comments from me, I think, is totally unnecessary. I loved the movie, how a usually unconvincing story is made convincing, without taking any sides. All the special effects in the movie are purely mechanical, no digital makeovers were possible at the time. A technically perfect movie with a strong storyline about a much contraversial subject and a real horror movie for a change, thats what the Exorcist is for me.

Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch 

Science fiction is a territory I tread with caution, because many of the stories dissect and mutilate the same areas as time travel, aliens and the like. After a long time I decided to give science fiction another try and read Philip K Dick's 'Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch'. He is the same author whose story, Minority Report was made into a movie lately, starring Tom Cruise.

Three Stigmata deals with a time when every piece of rock which can support life in the Sol system(solar system) has been colonized by man and the people who live in these places are branded as colonists. Like during the times of Vietnam war, 'drafting' is dreaded word, that means you were drafted to live in one of these space colonies, far from terra (earth) for the rest of your lives. It is an alien narcotic(a lichen that grows in some other galaxy) called Can-D which the colonists use, to have hallucinations of earth, with out these hallucinations, lives of the colonists border almost on insanity. The story turns when Palmer Eldritch, a rich businessman who had traveled to some far-off galaxy and presumed dead for years, returns with a more potent stuff than Can-D, names it Chew-Z and starts marketing it across the colonies and the earth. The story goes on from there..

This novel was written in the early sixties, although not very exact or advanced as depicted in the story, I could draw a lot of parallels between the life in the story and our lives now. We have not colonized solar system yet, but factors like the control of big corporations and media over our daily lives, the virtual reality games like Sims, SimCity etc have all been anticipated by the novel in some way or the other. You'll like Philip.K.Dick's style if you liked the story of Minority Report. Has to give the man his due, all of this, including Minority Report was written forty years ago.

Nov 26, 2003

Shallow Hal 

If media can corrupt you, then media can redeem you too. In an age when the staple of infontainment are the images of thinner-than-air femme fatales and informercials air 24/7 the ads of miracle drugs that can make you lose 30 lbs in 30 mins, anyone with some(or any) grey matter still left, should by now, be aware of the warning signs of a massive media brainwash of the masses. Shallow Hal, coming from the Farelly brothers (There's Something about Mary and Dumb & Dumber) is a two hour effort to convince you that beauty doesn't always come in wafer thin packages.

Jack Black is good, so is Gweneth Paltrow and I for one is a comedy lover unless it is too 'slap-sticky'. Jack Black's character, after a chance encounter with a new age guru falls in love with Gweneth Paltrow's character, who is actually 300+lbs and not exactly Black's type. Its the guru who does a small trick with Black's vision that he starts seeing the inner beauty of all women, not their physical assets. So the 300+lb girl appears as Paltrow to Black and he's head over heels in love. This is like a modern fairytale, becuase there are some parts of the movie which needs more convincing, especially towards the end, but then think of it as a fairytale and everything's fine. By the way, the movie has a good soundtrack.

Nov 21, 2003

Unforgiven 

The first real good western I have ever watched, thats what Unforgiven is to me. I have decided to watch every movie Clint Eastwood has directed or will ever direct. May his tribe prosper. Its unforgiveable that I had not watched Unforgiven till now, so if you are movie buff and if you are yet to watch it, the only way can redeem yourself is to seize the earliest opportunity to go watch Unforgiven. Let the movie speak for itself, I am not sayin' anything.

Nov 18, 2003

A Dangerous Place: California's Unsettling Fate 

Thats the title of the book by Marc Reisner, I read recently. A doomsday look at the booming California, supported by facts and coming from a convincing scientist, A Dangerous Place is an informative read. To think about that one and half years ago, I lived right smack on top of the San Andreas Fault, one of the most geologically active faults in US and didn't even care a hoot about it. I knew then that this famed fault was somewhere nearby, but not right under my feet, now 6000 miles north and one book later, I know better.

I took this book because I wanted to know better about California, home for a year, this extensively irrigated, highly populated desert of a 'nation-state' and what its odds were in the long run. Well, after reading this book I would say I'd warn even my grandchildren to stay clear off CA, that is, if its still there with its fake lush charm. But then,some of the greatest cities of the world still exist in the worst of topographies, take Tokyo for example. Tokyo has been built and rebuilt again and again on the same terrain, one of the most earthquake prone in the world, for centuries now. So why shouldn't it be true for San Francisco or LA? If you keep aside the inherent plate tectonic defect of the region, there is still another problem - water. Well, water is problem in almost all the big cities of the world, you don't expect a sinking aquifer or a fast depleting lake to support exploding populations forever, right?

Whatever it is, I think California is like a prototype, a working, living machine, a real time experiment to test how far men can go, how far we can stretch and expand resources and how much can nature tolerate or when will we have to switch to alternatives (no, no no ......not soda instead water kinda alternative) just in time to save ourselves. Reisner has a scenario in the end when a big earthquake strikes SFO, and the last chapters are the simulation and effects of this event, its interesting to read, if you know or live around the place, just to see which houses will stand and which bridges will fall !

American Movie 

Another one from my documentary seeing spree. American Movie documents an aspiring film-maker, Mark Borchardt, somewhere in the depths of Wisconsin, trying to make a direct-to-market movie with his meager resources and infrastructure. At one point you may think that Mark's obsession with movie making is foolish, even pathetic, but as you watch the documentary you see the person, his relationships, his dreams and above all his life and in the end when he accomplishes the task, you know you'll have to applaud the guy, for all that he has been through.

Mark is an average or even below average(in terms of financial status) American guy with a penchant for film making. He adores horror movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre(the original one), Night of the Living Dead etc and has been making short movies since he was fourteen. We follow the making of his new movie Coven, a 35 minute black and white horror flick, through a time frame of 2+ years. Other main characters in the movie are Mark's ex-stoner pal Mike, who found his calling in life, which is to buy lotteries and who is a born again teetotaller after years of drug use and alchoholism and Mark's ailing uncle, who after Mark's relentless persuasion finally agrees to finance the film out of his retirement fund and Mark's parents, who although reluctant at first, support Mark in his pursuit of the 'American Dream'. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival, 'American Movie', is something you can only find in 'America', in the rest of the world we'd be done in by survival pressures before anyone of us had made it even halfway thru'.

Nov 16, 2003

4 Little Girls 



Spike Lee's documentary on civil rights movement of the sixties, starting from a vortex - which is the death of 4 little girls in the Alabama church bombing of 1963 and spreading outward. Its a memory trip, the entire civil right movement and the turbulent sixties of the American South seen through the eyes of the people who were caught right in the middle,in the eye of the storm. We live the era, through the interviews with parents and friends of the girls killed at the 16th St. Baptist Church bombing, we hear the lawmakers and the administrators, we hear how the police and KKK were inseparable in those days (acc. to the movie, one in every three policemen was a clan member!) and ofcourse about the will and determination of blacks in Alabama and the South, when an entire nation had turned a blind eye on their freedom and their needs. Thats history for you, if want to the see the real thing outside of the History Channel.

Nov 15, 2003

  • 11/15/2003 09:11:00 PM
A beautiful movie, I can describe this movie with a plethora of pompous adjectives, but that still won't do it enough justice. One of the best movies I have ever seen, this Japanese movie from Takeshi Kitano, flows like a poem, one that does not need a dictionary or an understanding of rhyme structure to enjoy it.

I watched it about six months ago and saw it again the second the time yesterday, when we bought the DVD. The movie is a search and a journey, undertaken by a six year old boy and a man who accompanies him, which is Mr.Takeshi himself. This film is supposed to be an exploration of a different genre by Takeshi, since most of his other films are associated with yakusas, violence, blood and the like. There is innocence and there is comedy - one that is neither slapstick nor what could be called the thinking man's humor, but something altogether different, something quirky. Kitano has kept up his deadpan acting style, but that only adds to the charm of the movie, the little boy is perfect for the part, so are all the other strange characters they meet on their journey, music by Joes Hisashi is another ace up the sleeve of this movie.

Nov 14, 2003

Ballad Of A Soldier 

Grigori Chukrai's Russian movie, Ballad of a Soldier is a timeless masterpiece. Here I was in 2003, watching a movie made in 1959 in post war USSR, checking again and again on the DVD cover whether this movie was actually made in 1959 or shot in black and white in 1999 or 1989 or so? There is a certain finesse, a certain element in the movie that I cannot discern which makes it timeless, you cannot see the the dramatic acting often seen in forties and fifties movies, you cannot see the abrupt jerky shots and actions characteristic of pre-war movies and there are not many style statements which stamp the movie as belonging to one era or another.

Its WW2 and Alyosha Skcortsov is a nineteen year old Russian soldier who is granted a visit to his mother after he singlehandedly fends off two enemy tanks. We follow Alyosha and his life during those few days of his journey to his home, through a war torn country, through loves lost and found, through demolition and strife, through hope and despair in the lives of people he pass through and finally he reaches home with just enough time to hug his mother and get back to the battle field. Ballad of a Soldier doesnot entrust its fame on the young shoulders of a brave teenage soldier but rather creates a poignant visual poem with him as the symbol of life, innocence, youth, love and hope, in a time which desperately needed all of these.

Nov 9, 2003

Hannah and her sisters 

Another Woody Allen flick, centered around the lives of Hannah, played by Mia Farrow and her two sisters. A typical Woody Allen story, characters and humor, a definite entry in the list of thinking man's list of comedy movies.

Blood Work 

A Clint Eastwood movie again, where Eastwood himself is the hero as the retired FBI man, with a newly transplanted heart. The movie begins with Eastwood being approached by the sister of the his heart donor, who is a murder victim. Although he has said goodbye the crime solving business, tugging at the 'heart strings' of his borrowed heart, is the question, "who killed the real owner of my new heart?" So our man plunges into unravelling what seems to be a murder during a convenience store heist. The story is good, the pace is fast, there are not many unwanted scenes in the movie, its pretty much tightly packed as the boat which serves as Eastwood's home in the story. A good murder mystery and I have finally decided I should watch Unforgiven after years of exercising restraint, thats says something about this movie, I guess.

Nov 8, 2003

Adaptation 

Nicholas Cage in a double role, Meryl Streep and Chis Cooper - that makes four actors who have acted extremely well in this movie. It gets off on a slow start brooding on the life of Hollywood screen writer called Charlie Kaufman and his newest project, a movie about orchids, which has experienced a writer's block at the very start itself. The other Nicholas Cage is Kaufman's twin Donald, a happy go lucky guy, who is an aspiring screen writer, who surpasses and surprises his brother when his so-deemed no good script is swooped up for millions in Hollywood. Meryl Streep plays the reporter who goes down to Florida to do an article on orchids and ends being having an affair with the eccentric orchid man, played by Chris Cooper, although its not as straightforward as I said it. Where does the characters of Streep and Cage connect? Well it is Streep's story that Cage is trying to adapt into film. The pace quickens up towards the end, although some of the actions of its main characters towards the end are questionable.Nicholas Cage is beyond recognition as Charlie Kaufman and the juxtaposition of the serious loser character of Charlie against the exuberant Donald, both played by Cage, shows his infinite range. I am not that much inspired by the movie, but Cage's acting is something to write home about.

Nov 7, 2003

25th Hour 

Directed by Spike Lee, this film starring Edward Norton is about the last day of freedom in the life of a NewYork drug dealer (Norton) before he goes to prison for seven years. I felt it was more like a narrative than a story with some destination. Norton has acted well in a low key role. It is not a typical Hollywood movie where you would expect car chases, clandestine deals and wailing cop sirens packed into a drug dealer's last day as a free man. This is pretty much like life viewed in retrospect through the actions of one day. So don't expect any nail biting or edge-of-the-seat thrills here, its a movie for grownups, though Iam not sure I am that grownup yet or not. It does sometimes go away on its own free will sometimes, like the time Norton curses everyone from Newyork cabbies, harlem boys, whites, Osama and almost everyone out there or at the time of Norton's ride to the prison with his father - these scenes are like complete poems in themselves.
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