Finding Nemo

Disappointed. After Shrek and Monsters Inc. the other famous animated movies I had great expectations for Nemo, add to the fact that our library never seemed to have a copy of Nemo it was always in circulation. The dialogs are very contemporary American, which makes me feel whether those viewers outside US be able to get the gist of the ideas implied. Its seems to be a family movie, intended to make children take the right route to adulthood.

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Anger Management 

Anger Management, it got on my nerves as much Jack Nicholson was getting on the nerves of Adam Sandler in the film. Sandler came off as a perfectly normal guy who was being sent off to an a 30 day anger management session with a wacho shrink, played by Nicholson. Ok, in the end we find out the whole thing was a set up, but the reason of this set-up was that Adam Sandler was not normal, he was edgy. For me he seemed perfectly normal right from the start who had to undergo this horrible experience to correct himself?!?!!?

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Spring Forward 

Its two men talking set inside a visual poem. The movie starts in Spring in Connecticut, when Paul(Liev Schrieber)comes to work at the local park system. His partner is Murph(Ned Beatty), a wizened old man. The movie goes forward thru' season along the conversations of these two men as Paul, an ex-convict tries to fall in with the system and Murph. The camera has captured the bounty of seasons in the fullest degree, there are lots of right-on philosophical dialogs. It was a slow moving film, I felt like I should take it like a vitamin pill 5-10 minutes daily, small snippets to drive life the right way.

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The Navigators 

It was Ken Loach's film Sweet Sixteen which made me look for more Loach movies at the library. Landed on this one, made a year previous, The Navigators centers on the railroad at Yorkshire. The socialist director in Loach had this time taken upon the privatization of Bristish Rail in 1995.

It is satirical, at the same time poignant and touching, peopled with real men trying to hang on to the only job they know how to do. The one thing I regret is the lack of subtitles in the DVD I was watching which meant that there were some gaps in my understading of the film since I couldn't follow their accent properly. Like any Ken Loach movie this one is also a fine portrayal of life as we live it - not very rosy.

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The Spanish Prisoner 

I took David Mamet's Spanish Prisoner from the library thinking that I had not seen it before, turns out that I had, but except for a few scenes I couldn't recall anything, not the plot or the story. That was good because Spanish Prisoner turned out to be quite an intriguing entertainer. The plot thickens at every new scene and you are caught up in the mystery. It stars Campbell Scott as the hero and for a change, Steve Martin as the villian. David Mamet's wife Rebecca Pidgeon also has an interesting role in the film. Worth watching if you haven't seen it or have turned amnesiac like me.

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Water for Chocolate

Finished reading the book a few minutes before I started to watch the film of the same name written by Laura Esquivel and directed by Alfonso Arau. A treat for the senses, don't blame me you are overcome by a sudden urge to create culinary wonders.

Every chapter in the book starts with a recipe, an ethereal one at that, you wish you could atleast see how they'd look like once they are done. Watching the movie right after reading the book afforded me the simple pleasure of seeing how those wonderful recipes looked like in real life, although second best only to tasting them ourselves. It is a love story of Tita and Pedro, their troubles and turmoils and their final union after 22 years during which had taken place a marriage for Pedro and an engagement for Tita among other things. The book and the movie is an excellent primer for those who want to explore the "mystic realism" of Latin American writers.

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Envy

Envy was the last movie I saw in theater, the first weekend we came from the trip and struck by an irresistable urge to go to a movie hall we zeroed in on envy. It seemed promising starring two actors we like, Jack Black and Ben Stiller. Can't say much about the movie. Jack Black's role is not what could be termed as comical and Stiller's role is downright serious. A movie for a lazy afternoon, maybe not worth buying tickets, better rent the dvd/video when it comes out.

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Bowfinger

Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy together in a movie written by Steve Martin himself, it has to be funny. Steve Martin is the owner/producer/director incharge of Bowfinger films who is trying to make a film with the actor Kit Ramsey, played by Eddie Murphy. The problem is Kit Ramsey doesn't know that he's in the film! How Martin and his mismatched bunch of helpers go about shooting this film something of the innovative. And man, Eddie Murphy could really act, this is the first time I am givng him his due credits.

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Munnabhai MBBS - I

Thank God that Sharukh Khan had to decline the title role as he had to go to London for his back surgery and it came to Sanjay Dutt instead. The role fits Dutt like a custom-made glove and he's at his brilliant best as the Mumbai-don turned medical student Munna Bhai.

If you have lived in Mumbai, you'll certainly appreciate the rawness and the comedy of the film. There is not much forced tickling comedy, rather its the dialogues that make you chuckle over time. Arshad Warsi as Munnabhai's side kick Circuit is at times better than Munnabhai himself. Although there is some melodrama in the film, it is excusable for the rest of the film makes up for it. The success of the movie rides on the fact that all the characters are believable and gels well with the story.One of the funniest movies to come out of Bollywood in the recent times.

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Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

From the story by Alan Silitoe, Loneliness... is about the story about a rebellious and angry youngman who is sent to Borstal school after he's caught stealing from a bakery. Tom Courtney, as the rebellious hero, Colin Smith gives a commandable performance. This is a movie against the system or a person's statement against the system and how he wins by losing the race. This cinematic poem by Tony Richardson, picturised in dreary grey Nottingham, asserts itself from the opening shot itself and is touted to be one of the best British films ever.

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Maelstorm

This French-Canadian film by Denis Villeneuve is said to have won many awards. It starts with a fish, on the cutting table, which is just about to be cut and packed into cans divulging some of the great philosophies of life by telling us the story of a young woman. Water or shades of water is the predominant color theme of the film. It reminds me of the Kiezlowski films, Blue or was it White? There is too much stress on making it artsy and thereby unco-ordinated. Too much co-incidences and plots linked to plots thru' some random and seemingly senseless incidents at the time, but which are shown connected later on. Hmm... Iam getting confused already.

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Leila

Leila is a young Iranian woman, happily married to Reza living somewhere in urban Iran. All is roses and pearls till the couple realize that Leila cannot have a child, not that Reza is desperate to have one. The more conservative mother-in-law and aunt-in-law decides that Reza should remarry in order to have progeny. Leila meekly agrees to this and goes along with the proceedings.

To an extent I can understand the Leila's submissiveness to this decision considering the society she was born and brought up in expected her to be like that. What I don't understand is even though his wife agreed to his mother's decision of taking a second wife, why he himself went ahead with it although reluctantly? Add to this the fact that Reza's father and his three sisters were totally opposed to his second marriage. Its slow moving at times, I don't understand the mind games of the two main characters - Leila and Reza. One thing I learnt from the movie is Iranian cities are very modern - wide highways, turnabouts, ramps, modern apartments, cars and ladies in black chador.

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Revenge of the Middle Aged Woman

I bought this book for in-flight reading for a long flight from NYC to Seattle and then onto Anchorage. Finished it by the time we touched down. Set in London, it is about a middle-aged literary editor, Rose. As is anticipated by the title, it is about the mid-life crisis she undergoes.

I selected it from the rows of best-sellers at the airport kiosk because I thought it was the story of an everyday woman, some of us who have been thru' such things and some of us will get to that age in the future. Its an ordinary story, narrated in a way that makes you want to read. The setting could have been anywhere - London, New York, Tokyo or Rio. To me it feels like a story about women by a woman, for there are other interesting female characters in the story as well. An easy read, we should be hearing more about Elizabeth Buchan on this side of the Atlantic soon.

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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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