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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...

Mar 18, 2004

  • 3/18/2004 10:15:00 PM
Shot at a beautiful Italian fishing village on the coasts of sun drenched Mediterranean, Respiro reminded me a lot of fishing villages in India. The only I difference I could see was the fisherfolk in Italy were white tending to be brown, whereas in India they were brown tending to be black, all the rest seems the same.

A beautiful film, about mothers and sons, husbands and wives, children living in a un-artificial world and a lot of Vespas. For me it is film about unfettered childhoods, about villages acting as one big family and simple human travails and joys. Emmanuel Crialese, the director sure is very talented, but why is it there are only three films, ofcourse more should be on the way. For now, I will try to get the other two, which I desperately want to see now that I am so moved by Respiro.

Mar 17, 2004

  • 3/17/2004 11:51:00 AM

Sex and Lucia 

There's some sex, there's Lucia, there's a floating island somewhere in the mediterranean and there is an interconnected web of characters who are more or less unaware of their interconnections till the very last. Directed by Julio Medem, it follows Lucia who is a waitress and her writer boyfriend, Lorenzo, who is absent at the beginning of the film.

The story of the film is closely woven into a novel Lorenzo is seen writing. There are characters of the novel you meet in real life and then go off into the realm of fiction. The movie seemed to be slow moving in the beginning, its the second half thats real fast paced, good that I did not give up on it after the first half.

Mar 15, 2004

  • 3/15/2004 10:22:00 AM
One thing I learnt from this movie, hitherto unknown to me is that there was a genocide of Armenians in Turkey in 1915 which left a million and more dead. Thats all I got out of this film by Atom Egoyan. I am a true outsider with no knowledge about the enmity between Turks and the Armenians. It seems like the director's idea was to reach out to the world and remind them of the forgotten Armenian genocide. But it was a very convoluted way he took to get the message across and by the end I felt like he never got it through. It'd have been much better had he made a film directly focussed on genocide instead of incorporating plots, plots, more plots and then some sub plots.

First there is the Canadian-Armenian young man, Raffi, who I think is the main character of the film. There are subplots involving him and his mother, him and his girlfriend(who is his step-sister), then his mother and his girl friend(who is her step daughter), him and the customs-officer and by the end you lose track of everything and the film loses its emphasis. The main plot revolves around a movie being made(film-within-a-film), which is also called Ararat, centered on the Armenian massacre and Raffi is a production assistant for the same. I wish they had shown this movie instead of the real one because then it'd have been easier to empathize with genocide victims. All in all a hodge-podge in the name of a movie.

Mar 13, 2004

  • 3/13/2004 09:46:00 PM
An interesting British sci-fi thriller from Danny Boyle, he of Train Spotting fame. It is the usual virus-feasting-on-humans flick, but minus the Hollywood's cheap tricks, which makes it one of the most believeable sci-fi flicks I have ever watched. Plus you get to see the the most eerie shots of London, with it deserted streets(fully evacuated for the purpose of shooting this film) and abondoned buildings which add to the character of the film.

The first half was pretty good, in the second half the movie seemed to have veered a bit off the common-sense way. Still it is a lot better than other virus flicks considering there were no cures discovered in the nick of time, there were not many super human acts from the protagonists, there were no microscopic close-up shots of the 'deadly' virus and its subsequent graphic run thru' the human system it attacks and for a change(a big one at that) it was not LA or NY under threat this time, it was the British Isles. A good sci-fi horror flick, after a long time.

Mar 9, 2004

  • 3/09/2004 09:19:00 PM
Released in 1940, I saw this film in 2004, 64 years - after almost a lifetime in man years. The movie is one of the gems of American cinema, stars and stripes to the core. From now on whenever I think of the history of United States of America, Tom Joad and the Joad family is going to figure in my thought train as migrants within an land built by migrants. Going to California, is for many Americans like how moving to United Staes is to the rest of the world. Moving to the land of opportunity, moving to a place where you may not be welcome always but where you would still try your level best to blend in and build a new life because it is the land of the milk and honey - as it might have appeared to the poor migrant farmers from the Dust Bowl states.

Henry Fonda as Tom Joad and Jane Darwell as Ma Joad have given outstanding performances. John Ford's direction is also worth mentioning. The Grapes of Wrath is an enduring saga of human survival in some of the worst conditions in the very heart of America - the land of plenty. It is like reading a log book of those times of depression, of what people underwent, what people undergo, even now. That is what attracted me to The Grapes of Wrath, that human suffering perpetrates time, somewhere in the world, Dust Bowl migration is happening right now. If you are humane enough you can see the common threads, there is a Tom Joad and a Ma Joad somewhere out there trying to make the ends meet in a hostile world which tries to beat them down. For all the people who made this movie possible from the great author John Steinbeck, John Ford, Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell and others - may your tribe prosper, here's to you all !

Mar 8, 2004


The Crime of Father Amaro, is a Mexican movie starring Gael Garcia Bernal as the catholic priest Father Amaro. I'd say it is an average movie, for me it gave me a peep into the interesting country that is Mexico, the lives of its people, Catholiscm firmly planted into its culture. Its not rare that priests fall for temptation in the form of a beautiful young girl, here it is Amelia played by Ana Claudia Talancon for whom Father Amaro falls. Ana Talancon reminds me of Hindi actress, Kajol.

It's an ordinary film, I liked the charaters of the senior priest, Father Benito and Father Natalio more than Bernal's Father Amaro, with whom I could not relate to much. The other two characters seemed more humane inspite of the pressing circumstances whereas it was Amaro who could have been all that and much much more.

Mar 6, 2004

Vertical Ray of The Sun 

One look at this Vietnamese film and it feels like someone emptied a pail of mouthwash into the camera, its so fresh looking a film. With green, blue, turquoise as predominating shades its like living in an aquamarine world. I have to check whether the director Anh Hung Tran is an ad director or a camera man in his previous life, because the movie seemed like a long chain of ads stringed together. Photography was out of this world, at some point it is as if the whole reason of making this movie is to showcase the photography and the color scheme.

The story of the movie revolves around three sisters (Hannah and her sisters?) , their lives and their relationships with the men in their lives. Its kinda slow at times, to give depth to the artsy feel, I guess. Technically a very perfect film, I wish the director concentrated a li'l more on the story part though.

Mar 5, 2004

  • 3/05/2004 09:29:00 PM
A very English Hitchcock movie set in a very English place, where else London. I don't know why I liked it more than his much touted earlier movies like Strangers On A Train, Rear Window and on par with Psycho. Frenzy takes place in London and we are hot on trail of a serial murderer of ladies who uses his nectie to strangle and kill them. I guess none of the actors who played the main parts are quite famous, read somewhere they were London stage actors.

Mar 4, 2004

Emma 

Austen's Emma, starring Gwyneth Paltrow in a very English setting. The English aristocratic atmosphere of 19th and early 20th century never fails to put a smirk on my face. Very lady-gentlemanish parties, everyone treading oh...so lightly on false pretense, tea in the afternoon, liveried butlers, did they know there was a world outside? Jane Austen's fiction did one good thing - it provided a peek into the culture and life of a particular section of human society about whose workings 99% of earth's population was unaware of.

Mar 3, 2004

Venus Beauty Salon 

Directed by Tonie Marshall, this 1999 French movie tells the story of the lives of three girls working in a beauty salon in Paris. The film revolves mainly around one of the girls, Angele played by Nathalie Baye who lives a life of loneliness pursuing meaningless relationships with men. For me it was a film to see how ordinary people in other parts of the world lived (in this case - Paris). It was surprising to note that the beauty salon, the beauticians, the surroundings is very much similar to that we have at home. People are the same whether they are in Paris, Vladivostok or Mumbai. Forgot to tell there is a very innocent looking vixen of an Audrey Tataou in the film too.

Mar 1, 2004

Sweet and Lowdown 

Yippeee...Sean Penn made the Oscars worthmy watching! If it had been another year, my favorite director Clint Eastwood have won too. Anyway yesterday saw another movie which had given Sean Penn and Oscar nod few years back - Sweet and Lowdown. Directed by Woody Allen, this film tells the story of life and times of 30s jazz guitarist, Emmet Ray. Penn is funny and charismatic as Emmet Ray. The movie also stars Samantha Morton and Uma Thurman.
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