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A movie and book review blog

  • Reading films, watching books,....
  • Mind candy in the dark
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Jun 30, 2004

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf

This movie has given me a whole new perspective on Elizabeth Taylor, where she's much more than a man-killer with more husbands than days in a week or a fat obnoxious aging starlet. Here was a woman who could really act! No wonder they gave her the Oscars for this one.Richard Burton, her one time real life husband plays her husband in this film, he has given a commendable performance as well.

The story of the movie is rather heavy, full of metaphors and deep pointy suggestions at what life really is. Though I wonder how much of this'd really happen in a similar real life incident. The story encompasses a single night where a middle aged couple(Taylor and Burton) play hosts to a newly married couple. The men are both professors, one who has spent almost his entire life teaching on the campus and one just starting out. It is an interesting film, maybe one of the films that defined the thinking man's Hollywood movie, a bit to heavy for me, worth a watch anyway.

Jun 25, 2004

Today, mercury hit a new mark on the Fahrenheit scale, obviously Ray Bradbury is pissed and so are a lot of others. Today, I realized why United States of America still retains the title "the land of the free and home of the brave" (this film getting made and released proves it). Today, Michael Moore, yes that opinionated jerk, propagandist liberal, manipulator of facts, self-appointed soul keeper of American politics had his movie Fahrenheit 9/11 released nationwide. Today I saw this "liberal" movie in a theatre bursting at the seams in a city, which till now I had considered a red-neck haven (my bad) and to add to my surprise the red necks followed it up with a standing ovation when the titles came rolling in.

About the film : Don't go anywhere near it if you are a hard nosed conservative, you might embark on a shooting spree at the theater itself, in order to cleanse the world of those mindless idiots who fall for all this over-the-top sentimental mis-information. Otherwise the movie shows a world of improvement in Mr.Moore's talent as a film-maker(some'd say propagandist), better than Roger and Me and Bowling for Columbine. If it had an OST I'd buy it, loved all the songs! Its easy to accuse Moore of concocting evidence. But if you could really read the evidence in the first place, Florida and later Iraq would not have happened, and Michael Moore would still be the little known fat guy munching on a dough nut at some unheard of street corner at Flint, Michigan still dreaming of making a movie that'd rock America and get the longest standing ovation (20 mins) in the history of Cannes!

p.s - in one of the earliest books on war games -the Mahabharata, Sri Krishna(the in-house spin doctor) advises Yudhistira (the good guy king), "a lie told for the greater good of humanity ceases to be a lie." Yeah all is fair in love and war.

Jun 24, 2004

Tea with Mussolini

A band of British ladies in Florence before and during the war form the interesting group on which this movie is focused on. This Frank Zefferelli film staring Cher, Joan Plowright, Lili Tomlin, Judy Dench and Maggie Smith is kind of like a book turned into a movie, but I guess it was not a book, the story/screen play was written for a movie.

It is amusing to see the antics of British ladies, because after America, the British always seem very decorous and proper. I loved Cher's and Joan Plowright's roles. A laid-back movie.

Jun 23, 2004

Lovers on the Bridge(Amants du Pont-Neuf, Les)

Another French love story, this time it is set during the bicentennial of the French revolution - 1989 and stars Juliette Binoche and Denis Lavant.

Two homeless bums, meet on Paris's oldest bridge - Pont Neuf, closed for renovation and their home for the moment. Its kind of slow moving at the start, but the story picks up and you'll find yourself in the middle of an interesting love story. It makes me wonder at the different sorts of people who end up homeless, all bums have a history, eh? Directed by Leos Carax I'd not call it a moving love story, maybe if you want to see a different foreign film, this could be it.

Jun 22, 2004

Jules and Jim

This sure was a strange film. I wonder why Jules and Jim was so famous? Maybe because of its revolutionary story line(the story takes place before and after WW1) or is it because of the director, the famous Francois Truffaut?

What I found from the movie is that lot of French films have a narrator who links the various scenes of the movie. This movie(1962) has it, so has Amelie and so has the Spanish Apartment. My experience is limited to the movies I have watched. Another question I have is, why is it called Jules and Jim, it should be called something like Catastrophical Catherine or something. The movie is a love triangle between Jules,Catherine and Jim. I liked one dialog in the movie, where Jims tells Catherine(played by the immortal Jeanne Moreau) which transcripts to the idea that - "lot of us have the dream of making love to the stranger we met on the train, but for the sake of our significant other and for the sake of the love between us, we rise above that dream, above that selfishness and dedicate ourselves totally to our significant other, but you Catherine cannot do that." The whole movie revolves around this handicap of Catherine, not my cup of tea.

Rhapsody in August

The rhapsody started with good intentions, but somewhere near the crescendo it lost me. I took it because it was directed by Akira Kurasowa, after Darsu Uzala I had realized Kurosawa was not that artsy as I had thought. But this one shattered all my expectations, not because it was too artsy, but because it lacked the quality of a master's touch.

The story is about an elderly woman, grandma to four youngsters living in the hills behind Nagasaki, still in the shadow of that dreadful August day in 1945. The story is fine, but the way the children narrate it to the viewers under the pretext of educating youner children, their frequent excursions to the city to relive the past - all seemed pretentious. As if they were laboring to make the viewers understand thru' some kind teacher - student technique. Richard Gere has a small role in the movie as the Japanese-American nephew of the old woman.

All in all, it seemed to me like a slow moving film, with special effects like thunderstorms produced by pouring milk in a glass of water and shooting it close-up, I am wondering where was Kurasowa?

Jun 21, 2004

The Princess Bride

This is one wacky bed time story! Enjoyed every bit of it. It also stars my favorite kid of the TV land - Kevin Arnold a.k.a Fred Savage of The Wonder Years. The movie is built on a traditional framework of a grandfather reading a story for his sick bed-ridden grandchild(Savage), but don't that fool you. It is nothing but traditional!

The character are wacky and endearing, so are the witty dialogues. From the start it has the airs of an out-of-the-box fairy tale, which it lives upto through out the way. Robin Wright Penn is the Princess Bride, directed by Rob Reiner, it is a good entertainer for children and adults alike.

Jun 20, 2004

Love and Death in Long Island

It had Jason Priestley on the cover - thats the reason I took this movie. I thought it'd be fun to see Priestley doing a serious role, other than the teeny bopper stuff of his I had been familiar with. I was a regular watcher of Beverly Hills 90210, the original series when it started airing in the early nineties and Brandon Walsh played by Jason Priestley was one of the goody goody chocolate box heroes who appealed to the age I was at the time.

Coming back to Long Island, it didn't doesn't ring up any high scores in my register. But its a different movie all the same - one could say its a bit quirky, even. It also stars the British actor John Hurt who plays an author in present day England who has just started discovering modern day contraptions like the Television and the Microwave and on the way he also discovers Ronnie Bostock(played by Priestley) and this leads him to Long Island, NY where Bostock's home is. I can warn you it is a slow movie and movie is mainly Hurt's rather than Priestley's.

Jun 17, 2004

Whale Rider

An incredibly beautiful movie. Keisha Castle Hughes has presented a talent that is way beyond her years, if she was an American she'd have converted her Oscar nomination into an Oscar.

The film is set in the Maori heartland, ie NewZealand. Pai(played by Keisha) is a Maori girl who is the last descendent of a long line of Maori chieftains, but alas! she's a girl, which means she broke the male chain of chieftains - thus her birth was her unluck and her people's, so believed her grandfather. This heart rendering story follows Pai's efforts to prove that even though a girl she's fit to lead her people if a need arises. But her grandfather would have none of it. Though he inhabits a space-time of present day NewZealand, he firmly believes women are not supposed to be leaders.For the rest, watch the movie.

The photography is par excellent, so is the music and so are all the actors - a brilliant combination directed by Niki Caro. This film should be made a must-watch in all the countries which practise female infanticide, enlighten yourselves people, times, they are a'changin'..

Jun 13, 2004

Chaos

My guess is all the women will love this movie, becuase in a way it represents them, their emotions and their struggles with the world in general and men in particular. Brilliant acting from the two leading women in the movie - Catherine Frot and Rachida Brakhni has added to its quality.

The photogrpahy has a home movie awkwardness, the kind you and me would do with our Sony handycams, I don't know how they have achieved it.Written and directed by a woman, Coline Serreau this is a must-watch movie for all the females of the species.

Jun 11, 2004

The Deep End

Tilda Swinton has done good acting in the main role of the movie, The Deep End, as a mother who tries to cover up what she thinks is a murder comitted by her son. There were some parts of the story which I found questionable but all in all it was an average thriller with some very good sea blue photography. The actor Goran Visjnic who plays is a major role in the film, is a Croatian army-vet in real life was a quite a discovery for me, People Magazine had voted him the sexiest import in 1999. Maybe you can see it for Tilda, Goran and the photography.

Jun 10, 2004

Pirates of the Caribbean

The Curse of the Black Pearl is an entertainer par excellence. So is Johnny Depp. I was blown away by his performance in this film, which also stars Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley. The story is set in the times when the sea was still the final frontier(yeah Star Trek was yet in the future)and anybody with a dash of adventure in their veins made sure that they dashed to the sea and atleast spent a season or two exploring the far reaches of the oceanic horizon. I am not going to disclose the story, but let me just say it is an out and out entertainer and will definitely live upto your money's worth. Go Pirates!

Jun 5, 2004

The Day After Tomorrow

Saw The Day After Tomorrow yesterday, a week after its release. To me it seemed like Roland Emmerich had some messages weighing down his chest that he had to release to humanity as soon as possible and being a film maker he did what he always did - he made a film. The story is so made up, with a real loose plot, without any coherence or valid explanations, but the special effects are fantastic. The kind fifty years from now, some teenager watching the same movie would exclaim in appreciation, "Man, thats some special effects for a movie that old!"

The Day After Tomorrow,is where finally film makers have caught up with the environmentalists and have overtaken them sans effort. There are lavish CGI powered scenes like New York in a big freeze with a scene stealer of an accelerated super freeze of Empire States Building with windows popping out, snow blizzards in New Delhi and LA ripped open by tornadoes starting of course with the ripping off of the Hollywood sign on the hills.

Environmental activists who worked with Day After Tomorrow said that the exposure and media coverage they got while shooting the film was many times more than the what they received from decades of activism! Experts at Lawrence-Berkeley lab in CA warn that although the climatic changes in the movie take place at a fast-forward pace which in real time might take decades, the cause(the changes in the Gulf Stream) and the effects might be the same but not on such a compressed scale of time as depicted in the movie. In other interesting news, related to the movie, on April 1, 2004 NASA issued a memo saying, "No one from NASA is to do interviews or otherwise comment on anything having to do with ... " the film, “The Day After Tomorrow.” (which they later retracted).

A global climatic change in a compressed time scale of a few days does give tremendous freedom for CGI and special effect artists, but if it succeeds in making the Americans with behemoth SUVs who drive 6liter-V8 engines in the urban jungles of San Francisco or New York (why do u need an SUV to drive in a city, to make up for you small u-know-what?), to take a second look on their choice of personal transportation, that’s the best that Hollywood can do for the environmental cause.

Jun 4, 2004

The Piano

Mind blowing photography! It is one of the best aspects of the film. Set in NewZealand, it is a story of a mute woman, who is an excellent piano player, sent to NewZealand by an arranged marriage. She takes the piano with her but is forced to leave it on the beach she landed as it was too heavy to carry to her new husband's home, deep in the forest.

The film thrives on the bond between the woman and her piano and how far she'd go to have it by her side. It is also an interesting portrayal of new European settlers in NewZealand and their relationships with the native Maoris. I am not one who is drawn much towards intense emotional drama involving two or three people, so if you like that kind of story this one is definitely for you.

Jun 2, 2004

Bitter Sugar

It is the story two young people, Gustavo and Yolanda, bursting with dreams in the communist Cuba. Gustavo is an idealist, who believes in the revolution, in the good that it can bring, whereas Yolanda is suppressed by the suffocating atmosphere around her brought about by the system. And then, they fall in love.

The movie by Leon Ichaso is shot entirely in black and white maybe to accentuate the funlessness in Cuban life. But I wish they had shot it in color, it'd have been more vivid(maybe thats exaclty what the director didn't want) and more informative. It gives a real and glaring picture of hopes and dreams being destroyed in the contemporary Cuba and how every Cuban aspires at least at some point in life to be in that dangerous raft heading towards Miami. Beautiful and thought provoking movie.

Jun 1, 2004

Barcelona, one of the cultural capitals of European new wave is the location for this MTV-ish movie. A Parisian guy spends a year in Barcelona on a student exchange programs where he shares an apartment with students from different parts of Europe. If you have shared an apartment and lives of your friends as a student or in your early adult year this is one movie you can easily empathize with. It is said that the applications for admisssions for EC's Erasmus (that is the name of the exchange program thru' which the protagonist arrives in Barcelona) program doubled after the release of this movie!

Chocolat

It has all the airs of a best selling novel made into a film - in its style of narration, in the particular type of story involved and in the development of characters. Juliette Binoche plays a woman who opens a choclatarie in a remote French village with her small daughter, Anouk. The villagers first treat her as an unwanted guest who had invaded into their quiet peaceful lives with a mysterious and devious sweetness that goes by the name of chocolate.

The film follows Binoche's character thru' her encounters with villagers - some pleasant and some not so pleasant, her rebellions against the rigid village code and her meeting with a mysterious stranger - Johnny Depp. Its a modern day fairy tale directed by Lasse Halstrom which talks about things French and thus enchanting to the American audience.
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