Respiro

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.

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Sex and Lucia

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.

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Ararat

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.

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28 Days Later

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.

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The Grapes of Wrath

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 !

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Crimen del padre Amaro, El

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.

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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.

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Frenzy

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.

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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.

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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.

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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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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,

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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.

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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.

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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?

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In Cold Blood

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.

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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.

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"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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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Skins

Sometimes quite unexpectedly you come across a brilliant movie, like a shard of diamond in the ashes. Skins, the sophomore low budget indie from director Chris Eyre is just that. I didn't know a thing about Chris Eyre nor anything about the writer of the novel, Adrian.C.Louis, after watching this movie I have decided I am going to find more about the works of these two people.

Before Christopher Columbus came to America in late 1400s, there were 100 million Indians in North and South America combined. At the beginning of twentieth century their size had dimnished to a small group of 3 million, thanks to all the massacres that paved the way for the establishment of the brave New world! Skins tell the story of these 'natives' - actually two Sioux Indian brothers in a very current setting of Pine Ridge Indian reservation, South Dakota,one of the poorest counties in US which could put any third world country to shame.

Rudy the younger brother is a cop, where Mogi the elder one is an incurable alcholic like most of the other Indians at Pine Ridge. The film is an eye-opener about the people of the land, now reduced to nothing, battling the grim and horrible conditions charecteristic of present day Indian reserves. Alcoholism is a major killer of the people with about 75% of all deaths attributed to it, Graham Greene as Mogi has given a heart rendering yet humorous portrayal as an alchoholic Indian. Eric Schweig as Rudy and all the other actors have given true to life performances. This movie could be called a true life 'reverse western', it is time Indians got their due. A masterpiece but don't expect horse chases, burning teepes or indian men in colorful war paints, this is the otherside of US of A, as close as you can get it. Way to go Chris Eyre!

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Gangs of Newyork, Holes and some others 

Recovering from a surgery, kinda lazing around (read bedrest). Saw a lot of movies lying in bed...writing about everyone of them will be gargantuan task for a "patient in recovery" buhahaha. The list of movies I saw in the past week as in-bed entertainment is as follows,

+ + Gangs of New York: A concoction of history, Leonardo de Caprio, the Irish and NY of 1850's mixed in plenty of blood grime, dirt and vengeance. Coming from Martin Scorsese this epic movie is a good entertainer. Daniel Day-Lewis is unrecognizable as the butcher. A bit too long maybe, but then it is a historical movie.

+ + Rear Window: The Hitchcock masterpiece starting James Stewart as a bed ridden man in cast watching his neighbors through his rear window. He suspects that one of his neighbors has murdered his wife. It has far less suspense than some other Hitchcock movies, like Vertigo, Strangers on the Train etc but technically perfect movie nevertheless. Has Grace Kelly in it too.

+ + +Holes: A Disney movie for kids, about a detention camp in AZ where the supervisor believes that the inmates could become better citizens by digging holes in the desert. We do not know the real intentions until later. An interesting movie a lot better than kid flicks like Spy Kids.

+ + Take the money and run: A Woody Allen movie about a career thief. Funny of course but have seen funnier ones from Mr. Allen before.

+ + The Son's Room: The Italian director, Nanni Moretti stars and act in this Palme d'Or winner Italian movie about a psychoanalyst who faces a tragic situation in his own life. It is a no frills flick. which I found quite slow moving at times, which inturn reflects the reality that I'm becoming more of an American movie goer who wants things fast-paced.

+ + Pookkalam Varavayi: One of those Malayalam movies made to showcase baby Shamli in the late '80s. I was thinking while watching the film that had it been in US Jayaram could be sued and tried for child molestation, kidnapping and a lot of other related charges.

- - - Churaliya hai tumne: A pathetic excuse for a movie and two excuses for actors. Makes me feel that even hindi films should conduct entrance test to screen the aspiring actors. Well when lineage is all that matters then we the audience have to suffer. Esha Deol & Zayed Khan, I would give them money if they'd show the grace to leave the film profession and leave us in peace.

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The Hours 

It is an intellectual's movie, sadly I don't fall in that category. On the bright side it is a technically perfect movie - camera work, editing, makeup, music and acting - above average. Three brilliant actresses Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore have given it their best shot, not forgetting Ed Harris. From Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the same name, Stephen Daldry has made a good movie, if only I could understand what it was all about.


The three main characters in the movie, all of them women are tormented by some kind of agony. First there is the writer Virginia Woolf, played by Kidman, in 1920s England writing her novel Mrs.Dalloway. Then there is the 1950s house wife, who is supposedly akin to a character, Julianne Moore, depressed about I-don't-know-what and finally there is the reader, Meryl Streep in 2001 nursing her AIDS ridden friend and throwing a party after he wins a prestigious poetry award. The common thread which connects all the three women (in addition to a surprise connection which is revealed at the end) is their endless angst - the root cause of which I could not find out, expect in Streep's case which maybe becuase nursing a friend fighting a losing battle to AIDS for long years could be taxing on the nurse herself.

This is a kind of movie which is bound to be heaped with a lot of praise from the 'thinking' people, most of which the commoner like me or you would have no clue about. What do these three characters have to worry about so much so that, it drives them to suicide or fleeing their own families? What I think is that, these people have never known real worries, that leaves them plenty of time to ponder over 'non-worries' and conjure up imaginary torments and finally dish out a movie about existential angst. Ah...that favorite subject of writers and poets who have exhausted everything else, is now becoming the staple of Hollywood artsy movies?!?!!

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Count of Monte Cristo 

Alexander Dumas is 19th century France's raciest author, from all that I know about it (Not much!). A la Sidney Sheldon, John Le Carr, Sue Grafton all rolled into one. I had read an abridged version of Monte Christo when I was a kid, didn't have any recollection of it when I sat down to watch the film today.

This Kevin Reynolds film is an out and out entertainer starring Jim Caveizel in the leading role, Guy Pearce is his friend turned betrayer, Ed Harris as the old priest the Monte Cristo meets during his prison term and who becomes his teacher and guide and Luiz Guzman is the ex-pirate turned right hand man of the Count, once he comes back to Paris as the Count of Monte Cristo. There is betrayal, suspense, intrigue, swash buckling sword fights, kidnapping, pirates and a daring prison escape, there is a love lost and found, and there is a man who who gets a treasure, and a life after 13 years of solitary prison sentence - not bad for a two hour entertainer.

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Bowling for Columbine

Micheal Moore is da man. Bowling for Columbine is the one of the best documentaries I have ever seen (the other one is Waco:The Rules of Engagement). Before I go further, tell me what do these things/people have in common? Hitler, Clinton, Columbine and Kosovo? On April 20, 1999 Hitler would have celebrated his 110th birthday. Bill Clinton, the then Commander-in-Chief of United States ordered the largest air raid, the biggest bombing US ever made on Kosovo on the same day. In Littleton, Colorado two Columbine high schools seniors shot and killed twelve students and a teacher and later killed themselves in what came to be known as the worst high school shootout in the history of United States on the very same day. Too much of a day for history to bear, eh?

Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, the perpetrators of the massacre at Columbine were ordinary students and they did not come from broken homes as is often cited in similar crimes. They went bowling at 6 am of the day of the murder at the neighborhood bowling alley. (That accounts for the title of the film) "Bowling for Columbine", explores a gun obsessed country, where kids have easy access to firearms, bomb making materials and is populated with banks which give out a free gun everytime you open a new bank account (if this is not crazy, what is?). Klebold and Harris did extensive preparation for more than a year before, making pipe bombs learning how to make them from the internet. On the day of the massacre they planted two such bombs in the school cafetaria, which due to someone's wild luck didn't go off. Had they exploded instead of 15 people, the death toll would have been hundreds.

The movie is not a psychological exploration of the killers but rather it is a psychological exploration of a country which has gone berserk over guns and gun control(or the lack of it), a country where people won't enquire or go beyond what they are told. This is a movie that wants to wake everyone from their slumber of confirmation to the majority. It shouldn't take the murder of your child to make you realize what 'they' have been hammering into your minds with torrents of misinformation is wrong.

Micheal Moore tells in an interview, in the special features section of the DVD that there was one part he deliberately left out of the movie. The fact that police and the SWAT teams waited for three hours before they entered Columbine highschool after the first 911 call, they even stopped the people who tried to rush in thru' the barricades to save their children. Why did they do that? Afterall, the information they had was there were two or maximum three shooters, there was an army of law enforcement personnel waiting outside....what were they doing outside, when they could have prevented some deaths atleast, like that of the teacher who bled to death in three hours. And everybody else...including all the parents (except 2 or 3 people) followed the orders, they stood and waited obediently behind the "do not cross" yellow tapes. Meanwhile the killers themselves commited suicide one hour after they had started their shooting spree.

Has Columbine taught us anything? Hardly much, I guess. We need more people like Micheal Moore who'd not shy away from speaking the truth. I have to agree with him when he says, "Democrats are the lamest excuse ever for a political party", or "we live in fictitious times, ruled by a fictitious President" or when he warns the President against the war in Iraq, "when the Pope and Dixie Chicks are against your policies, you should know your time is up." Haven't yet posted the reviews of Moore's Stupid White Men and Dude, Where's my Country. Both real good books, hats off to Micheal Moore.

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Monster:Autobiography of an LA Gang Member 

Donning up my protective gear....today I am going to venture out into a volatile terrritory - South Central Los Angeles. Just breezed thru' Sanyika Shakur's best selling book on LA gangs, Monster: Autobiography of an LA Gang Member. Breezed through because there were too many shootings, beating ups and 'general slaying' involved, too much for the weak-hearted-me, almost in every other page, yet I made it to the end without skipping much.

It is an enlightening book, centered on the gang war activities in South Central LA (or the infamous South Central) of late seventies and eighties, as seen from the eyes of 'Monster' Kody Scott(Sanyika Shakur). Its an eyeopener for the rest of United States and the rest of the world, who thinks all is heaven in the United States of America. Shakur is a better story teller than me and just to give the taste of what his world once was, I am going to copy a few lines from the preface of the book.

Helicopters hover heavily above, staccato vibrations of automatic gunfire crack throughout the night, drowned out only by explosions and sirens. There is troop movement throughout the city, and in some areas the figting is intense. The soldiers are engaged in a "civil war". A war without terms. A war fought by any means necessary with anything at their disposal. This conflict has lasted nine years, longer than Vietnam. Though the setting is not jungle per se, its atmosphere is as dangerous and mysterious as any jungle in the world.

Neither side receives funding from any goverment, nor does either side claim any allegiance to any particular religion or socioeconomic system of governement.There are no representatives from either faction in the United Nations nor does either recognize the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Recruitment and conscription begins at eleven years of age.

The infrastructure of their armies are made up mainly of robberies and extortions(this was the seventies). Whereas today they are maintained from the proceeds of major narcotic deals and distribution. Each army has a distinct territory- the boundaries of some large areas are broken by enemy cluster camps. Each army has a flag, to which total allegiance is pledged. Each army has its own language, customs and philospohy and each has its own GNP. The war has been raging on for 21 years. The death toll is in thousands - wounded, uncountable, missing-in-action unthinkable. No one is keeping a tally.

Other than this, the war has been kept from the world, hidden like an ugly scar across the belly of an otherwise beautiful woman. Under the guise of the showpiece for the world where prosperity is easily found as water in a stream, America, for all her ostensible beauty has an ugly scar across her belly that she has tried repeatedly to suppress from curious onlookers."

There you go, this is not the description of a third world country embroiled in civil war, this was every night in South Central, twenty years ago. Today Shakur says the streets of his old neighbourhood are lined with luxury cars(instead of the stolen ones of his youth), dope dealers in Gucci shoes and troops with AK-47 assault weapons. What was a gang then, is a now an army. Much of the book reads like a novel, if you like being on the otherside of life, to find out the truth why people behave the way they do, this is a revealing read. Have you ever questioned the fact, why is that the assailant is always an "unidentified black male?" and why did many prominent African-Americans(Shakur uses the term New-Afrikaans in this book, in the place of African-American) from Malcom-X and Muhammad Ali embrace Islam? All the answers are hidden in this book, it might not be obvious but it is there, 'cause you are going to live the life of a man who had gone to the edge and made it out alive from the jungles of South Central. There are no better seats for the show other than the one Kody himself has, you got the second best - the book.

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In the middle, In a muddle 

I am reading too many books and watching too many movies at the same time and haven't finished any of them. Currently I am reading Monster:The Biography of an LA Gang Member by Sanyika Shakur, Bel Canto by Ann Patchett, A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Marakami, Coming into the Country by John McPhee and ,The Culture of Make Believe by Derrick Jensen. Current movies, is a shorter list, Micheal Moore's Bowling for Columbine, Banger Sisters and Tigerland, all in queue, still waiting.

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Ice Fountain 

This is the from where I get my books and movies. Actually, this is the snow fountain in the front yard of Public Library here in town.

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We Die Alone 

What kind of people turns me on? Survivors. Not the participants of that high rated reality show (silly, I'd say. Tribes, clans..woo hoo hoo.....*ROTFL*.....all in the name of pasting your face in the living rooms of other mindless millions). The real survivors are those people who made it back to life, after everything went against them, who had the closest shaves with death that we could never ever imagine and yet came back to live life the way the wanted to, although with much less glory and credit than Jesus after his resurruction. These are real flesh and blood people like you and me, ordinary citizens of mundane everyday human drama, yet they came alive from situations where death was the only option. How did that happen?

If you want to know more, read some of the books that celebrate such journeys. I really dig these books, it started when I was fourteen, with Alive:The Story of Andes Survivors by Piers Paul Reed, which narrates the story of an Urugyan rugby team, whose plane crashes into the remote Andes and the survivors even had to resort to eat the dead bodies of their teammates to stay alive. Yesterday I finished reading We Die Alone by David Howarth which describes a WW2 escape story made by a battered and frost bitten Norwegian soldier, Jan Baalsrud, through the Lyngen Alps, across German patrolled villages and into Sweden, which was neutral at the time. Some parts of his escape seem too incredible to be true, which the author says no one would have believed but for the presence of witnesses, who themselves corroborated the story and aided in his escape.

Jan Baalsrud, was part of a 12 member undercover Norwegian expat militia, who after a long ardorous journey from England to Norway, were supposed to form a counter resistance group against the Nazis, by organizing the villagers in the area. As luck would have it, as soon as the convoy of 12 men alighted on the Norwegian coast, they are ambushed by the German army and all except Jan were caught or murdered. Thus begins one man's epic saga of survival, which includes more than a month entombed in coma inside a snow tomb, hardly bigger than himself and operating his frost bitten toes himself with more precision than an experienced surgeon. All through his journey Jan relied heavily on the help rendered by his countrymen, without which he'd have never made out of it alive. I haven't said anything about the story as yet, if you like this kind of stuff, I'd say go for it.David Howarth, the author is a veteran writer of WW2 tales of escape and endurance, so that means there is more stuff out there for me to devour.

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How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days 

Romantic comedy, as was expected. The hero, is the staple of the makers of this film genre in late ninties and nots, Mathew McConoughey and the heroine is the bubbly Kate Hudson. Not much of a story, then again there were no expectations in that department either. The screenplay was really horrible, actually some romantic comedies inspite of having very obvious plot lines used to have interesting screen plays. This one seems to have run out wise crack dialogues, had it been there it'd have made the movie a li'l more bearable than it really was. Kate Hudson is good for the part, cannot comment this about anyone else. Well then, romantic comedies are like this, right. I didn't like Sleepless in Seattle much either ;) .

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Joe Somebody 

I like Tim Allen movies except when he tries to dress up as Santa Claus. Joe Somebody tells the story of an 'almost'-invisible pharmaceutical company employee, played by Tim Allen, who is a recent divorcee, is passed up for promotion and is considered a nobody at the office. The aim of the movie is to make somebody out of this nobody. I am not going to say how the movie goes about in achieving this seemingly impossible goal. All I can say is the ending sucks. If this is supposed to be a chick flick, I don't understand the workings of chicks' brains, especially the ones in this movie.

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Owning Mahowny 

Owning Mahowny is a gentle movie about a Toronto bank manager who is a gambling addict. Like all addictions this one too can make or break a man, the man in question, the bank manager is played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. There is not any adrenaline pumping drama, considering the fact that most of the scenes take place in Atlantic City and Las Vegas in addition to Toronto. It is a character study of an ordinary man, with access to the large sums of money - although illegaly and who channels it to meet his unsatiable addiction with black jack, craps and the such. The pluspoint of the movie is that it is based on real life events, which negatively implies not many high speed car chases and tecnically perfect cons.

Hoffman is brilliant as Mahowny, Minnie Driver in a blonde wig plays his girlfriend - nothing much for her to do in that part. Its fun to know how the casino bosses deal with high rollers such as Hoffman and how much hand luck really has in the whole business of gambling. A comparitvely good movie with no extra gloss.

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