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A movie and book review blog

  • Reading films, watching books,....
  • Mind candy in the dark
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Feb 26, 2004

The Unbearable Lightness of Being 


Starring Daniel Day-Lewis in the leading role, this cinematic translation of Milan Kundera's famous novel confuses me, so did Kundera's writing. I think a lot of essence of the book is lost in the movie, because lot of the depth of writing need to be conveyed by the acting and who ever makes the film from a novel by Kundera, this loss is bound to happen. One good thing was I learnt about the Prague Spring of 1968,

Feb 25, 2004

A Wild Sheep Chase 

Prominent Japanese novelist Haruki Marakami's post modern literary effort. It is definitely very different from any of the novels I have read recently. I'll have to reread it to understand properly. The first few chapters are confusing and more than once I did consider giving up reading it.

There absurd sub-incidents, hope rereading will throw some light on them. It is really what you can call an ultra-modern novel, with meanings at different levels. I am trying hard to understand, but I have to give it Marakami for his very distinctive and refreshing style of writing. The stroy is also enigmatic as the style, although it takes some time to get to the crux of the plot.

Feb 24, 2004

Tricky Business  

This is my first Dave Barry novel. I was expecting a much more humorous something, although the plot is pretty well developed. Will have to read more Dave Barry novels before I can pass a comment. I had really liked the Tim Allen starrer movie, written by Dave Barry called Big Trouble.

Feb 21, 2004

Pay It Forward 

A do-gooder movie, guess its primarily aimed at kids - before they get disillusioned with the world, 'cause none of the adults are going to believe the 'pay a help forward', for a help you had originally received, in this materialistic world. Movie is kind of slow, has Kevin Spacey with a scarred face and a scarred teenage, Helen Hunt is the beaten-wife-alcoholic Mom and has the super kid Haley Joel Osment. Whatever it is I love that li'l guy, even if he plays so mature-adult like characters - the kid is so deep, man and his acting - was he really acting it?
  • 2/21/2004 12:31:00 AM
Wow! A killer of a movie. Directed by Richard Brooks, adapted from a story written by Truman Capote, who got his inspiration from a real life mass-homicide, this movie really lives upto its name in conveying the feeling.

Robert Blake and Scott Wilson play the film's petty thieves turned murderers, both of them have given performances par excellence. It is ironical that, one of the killers in the film, Robert Blake was recently accused of murder of his wife in real life. The editing, camera - black and white has tremendous potential when it comes to such heavy films and then the jazzy score everything together makes this movie a class apart. Its almost Hitchcockian, at times even better than that, because unlike a Hitchcock movie which ends after the murder is solved, this goes on with the lives of murderers - like a character study and ends with very realistic hangings of the murderers. Even the mass-murder committed by the two are so believable, its almost like being inside the skin of the murderers. A brilliant film.

Feb 19, 2004

The Sting 

A good entertainer, starring two of the most handsome blokes Hollywood ever produced - Paul Newman and Robert Reford. Directed by George Roy Hill, it portrays the twosome as conmen in 1930s Chicago, in a plot to avenge the murder of one of their close friends. Its a wonderful entertainer, one of the original 'brilliant conmen cooking up an unbelievable heist' movie. It won 7 Oscars in 1973 including the Best Picture and the Best Director.

"Play It Again, Sam" 

A very Woody-Allenish translation of Casablanca set in San Francisco! To complete the theme Bogart himself makes appearance as Allen's pep-guru. This is the first film Woody Allen and Diane Keaton starred together, a prolific partnership which would churn out Oscar winners like Annie Hall.

I have reserved all the movies in the library which are remotely linked to Woody Allen, the man knows to do his stuff. In this movie Allen plays a recently dumped-divorcee, with a low self confidence and a track record as a total failure with ladies. Diane Keaton and Tony Roberts are his faithful friends who set Allen up with one girl after the other, unfailingly the set-up is screwed by Allen on the first date itself. The movie ending is an exact copy of Casablanca with the fog, the propellers of the plane roaring in the background and the inevitable goodbye. Good watch.

Feb 16, 2004

Last of the Mohicans 

It has been 16 or more years since I read Last of the Mohicans. What I remember is a passionate story line, reading almost like a thriller and I think I finished the whole book in a day or two. This movie starring Daniel Day-Lewis has none of that magic. It couldnot kindle any empathy towards any of the characters(atleast not in my mind). At times I was wondering why were the native Indians siding with the French and the English and fighting their own kind. Maybe that was how the history was, I don't know. (No wonder there were no more Mohicans left!)

Daniel Day-Lewis is ok, nothing great, that also goes for Madeline Stowe,the leading lady. I don't know why the film failed to impress me. Maybe because I had read the book in my budding teenage years that I associated a lot more passion and romance to the story than it really had?!? I think Last of the Mohicans had a lot more potential, there were fights we viewers could have identified with, lives which we could have empathized with - but unluckily, thanks to movie we did not.

Feb 14, 2004

Punch-Drunk Love 

What does punch-drunk mean? I thought it was like passing out drinking punch at some goofy school party. Then I read somewhere it meant taking a lot of punches on the head during a boxing match that the boxer will be in a delirious kind of state - thats what punch-drunk really means. Silly me. Saw Adam Sandler's Punch-Drunk love expecting the usual Sandler fare. But I was not counting on the director Paul Anderson, him of the offbeat Magnolia and Boogie Nights fame.

The movie is wrought with imagery, a thunderous car crash at the beginning of the movie which doesn't seem to have any immediate connection with film, an abandoned harmonium which Sandler's character adopts etc etc. The movie seems like an alternate-director's take on comedy and not a bad effort at that. The movie also has Emily Watson as Sandler's love interest. Once you get the hang of the imagery or if you are accomodating enought to accept the off-beat character of the movie, you realize it is interesting. I liked the movie and I think that there are not more than two ways of appreciating this film, either you like it or you don't.

Feb 12, 2004

In The Name of The Father 

A group of totally innocent people who spent fifteen long years behind bars charged with a horrible crime that they did not commit and the smouldering issue of Northern Ireland make this memorable film etch deep into the minds and memories of any viewer with a conscience. It is adapted from the autobiography of Gerry Conolon, a simple Irish street thief, whose only crime was being at wrong place at the wrong time.

Daniel Day-Lewis plays Gerry Conolon in the movie, I could not gave imagined anyone else playing the part, ok except perhaps Sean Penn. Conolon and four of his friends are wrongly accused by the British police of bombing a pub in Guildford. Later the police also arrest and imprison Conolon's father who came to rescue him and few of his family members. It is a strong movie making a very strong statement. It does gravitate towards being sympathetic to the Irish and demonizing the English. But as a dialogue in the movie goes, " English never willfully left their conquered lands without a fight, they had to beaten out of these places"(Its a transcription as I remember it, not the exact words) , so I doesn't feel bad at all sympathizing for the Irish.

Feb 9, 2004

Soheir Khashoggi's Mirage 


I'd ask all women to read this novel by Soheir Khashoggi, men too can read, but this is a must read for all women who love words and stories. It tells the story of Amira, a Muslim woman, rich, married into aristocracy, her harrowing escape into freedom and her new life afterwards.

Mirage unravels before a world were the women of the family are confined to an all-female living quarters, with little or no outside contact, how daughters are lost to marriage( (probably to a middle aged or older man) before they can have a decent education or even learn the basics of life. Amira leads a comparitively easier life as she belongs to the rich upper echelons of society but the story shows that even she is not free of the tentacles of a society which is bent upon imprisoning their women. It reads like a thriller, I read it non-stop till about 2 am, when I finally finished it and went to sleep. Mirage is a window in to a culture which is so alien to us that we might doubt its existence, go read it and thank your stars for having born in a society where even amongst all the other travails you can still exercise your free will.

Feb 8, 2004

Lost In Translation 


Two words. Good Movie. A very natural movie, with its under exposed shots, reflections on the windows and slow but not so-boring pace give it a sense of life as if you are living it. Sophia Coppola's second directorial venture (not counting her first short) might not make it to the top ten greatest movies of all time, but it is definitely one of the year's best.

Two strangers who share a common language - English and a common feeling - loneliness, are brought together by chance, in the throbbing metropolis of Tokyo. Bill Murray plays a role which seems to have been written just for him and the second character in question, Scarlett Johansson is a pleasant discovery. In choosing her it seems like Sophia Coppola's Italian lineage took precedence because unlike the usual Hollywood starlets, Ms.Johanssen is not extremely thin nor does have the fresh label straight out of the plastic surgeon's office. Bill Murray's character is so credible that next time you meet him you might call him "Hey, Mr.Bob Harris!" I don't know how much I can relate to Johansson's character, but then, we are all different persons and it could be very much possible to find a mirror image of her character somewhere in real life. The only thing I didn't understand is the opening shot, showing Johansson's curvaceous booty - alright, lets give that one away as Ms Coppola's way of expressing her artistic freedom, afterall she gave us a good movie.

The movie also provides fleeting but memorable glances of Japan, its pop culture, its urbanism and also its serene side which Ms. Johansson's character experiences in the gardens of Kyoto. There is not much of a story except the escapades of the twosome in the strange but interesting city and their humurous brushes with the language and culture of Japan. There are lot of genuine funny moments in the film which never venture anywhere near slapsticky, my favorite one is one in the beginning of the film where Bob Harris is shooting a video commercial for Suntory Whiskey. The director of the ad-film spits out a paragraph of intense Japanese oratory and the female translator, translates that to Bob Harris as, "he wants you to turn towards the camera". Harris is flabbergasted, he asks his translator "Is that all he said, I thought there was more?". Exactly what a person whose command of Japanese begins and ends with sayanora would ask, which I think includes the majority of us. It is an extremely sensitive issue to find fun in language discrepencies, especially that involving a foreign culture without sounding offensive or racist. Sophia Coppola treads that thin line in this movie and leaves us at a point where we might want to travel to this interesting country. Whether it deserves an Oscar is an altogether different question, watch it and decide for yourselves.

Feb 7, 2004

Sweet Sixteen 

Ken Loach directs this coming of age movie set in Glasgow. Martin Compston, the fifteen year old who plays Liam - the main character, is very convincing despite this being his first film. Loved his sincere smile. The story is about a boy, brought up a single mother, who is in jail as the movie begins and goes on to show how he becomes entangled in drug selling and his miseries stemming from that as well as his life.

If not for the subtitles, I would not have understood half the dialogues as the accent is so very foreign and at times you (the Americans watching the movie) may doubt whether they are speaking English or not, at the same time it is endearing too. It is a movie about simple dreams of life, a boy who dreams of making it big, his struggles, his relationships, his life - a good movie, I should try out more from Ken Loach.

Feb 6, 2004

Green Card Fever 


When I saw the trailer of this movie sometime back I had written it off as a waste of time, it was such a badly made trailer. The movie has proven me wrong, it was not bad, it turned out to be okay. Vikram Dasu, is an illegal immigrant who lands in US with the dreams of getting a green card but is framed by a lawyer who treats him as a servant and is later caught by the INS. In the middle of all this he also manages to fall in love with a beautiful Indian girl, played by Purva Bedi. Directed by Bala Rajasekharuni, Green Card Fever exposes the frailities and corruption with in the US Immigration system and the unquenchable thirst of people of developing world to gain that ticket to their ultimate dreams - a U.S Green card and the lengths they will go to get it.

Bananas 

This sophomore effort of Woody Allen as a director is one of his funniest films ever. Woody Allen is a Feilding Mellish, product tester turned President-of-a-Latin-American country, both situations guarentee plenty of laughs, given his penchant for comedy and wisecracks. There lot of quotable funny situations in the movie like,

Nancy: Have you ever been to Denmark?
Fielding Mellish: I've been, yes — to the Vatican.
Nancy: The Vatican? The Vatican is in Rome.
Fielding Mellish: Well, they were doing so well in Rome that they opened one in Denmark.


Fielding Mellish: I once stole a pornographic book that was printed in braille. I used to rub the dirty parts.

....so on and so forth. Although there are telivised coups, murders and other bloody situations in the movie, blood is not seen anywhere so as to keep with the witty nature of the movie, I suppose.

Feb 3, 2004

The Poisonwood Bible 

I thought Barbara Kingsolver lived or did live for a considerable while in Congo to have written this novel, set in Congo, with such precision. I was amazed to find out, she did not, I have to salute her imagination.

One of the best written novels I have read in a while, Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible follows the lives of 4 sisters, three of them teenagers who are uprooted from their all-is-well-with-the-world-and-coming-out-parties life and is transplanted into the raw wilderness and the wild energy of Belgian Congo of the sixties. The reason they and their parents move to Congo is because the head of the family,Rev.Nathan Price, who is a Baptist preacher takes upon his shoulders to deliver all heathen Congolese people from evil and make them everyone of them, true Christians. The chapters of the novel are fashioned as narrations made by each girl as they struggle and acclimatize their way through Africa and their lives.

The novel also opens a small but true window on the specter of American leadership extending their strong arm to control the rest of the world. You thought Iraq was something new(well atleast there were some rotten parts to it, like the Presidential family), well Kingsolver got news for you. Patrice Lumumba, Belgian Congo's first democratically elected leader after its independence in 1960, who won with an overwhelming majority, was overthrown, later murdered and an US backed puppet dictator installed as President with the blessings of the illustrious Ike. All of this happened within a few months of country's independence from Belgium. Thanks to Congo's diamonds, gold and other precious natural resources. The novel follows the Price family through these turbulent times, how each of them carve out their own ways within the smouldering soul of Africa to emerge with their own voices and indebted to the great dark continent.

Feb 2, 2004

Dead man Walking 

Saw this Tim Robbins' movie for the third time in the last 5 years, it never ceases to move me. Death, the great leveller, doing his master act. I saw another movie The Chamber just before watching Dead man Walking. Both of them dealt with people sentenced to death. While in The Chamber, where the convicted man is put to death in a gas chamber, in the other one he's put to death by lethal injection. As Sean Penn says in his final words in Dead Man Walking, to kill people is wrong - whether the killing is done by you, me or the government. Still I am not sure whether I support the death penalty or not. Movies like these make me wonder, why do we walk our way through lives without caring much about others or doing some small gesture from our parts that might seem like a giant benevolence to the other, why are we too busy?
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