The Lives of Others

My home state Kerala has an incurable addiction - Communism. Our ideological gurus, the beacons who had showed us the course in the fifties and the sixties - the Russians and the Chinese have fallen or adopted a brand of capitalism that is their own. But Kerala staunchly remains in the race to claim the title as the last bastion of Communism in the world - being nestled inside a democratic framework surely helps.

Many a time a thought crosses many of us - the ex-Keralites(or non-resident Keralites), that we should put all these Communists in a real communist state like China or North Korea and let them 'enjoy' the fruits of the system. Since that is practically impossible, the next thing would be to show them a movie, made by the intellectuals who had languished under the Communist regimes in different parts of the world. The 2006 Oscar winner for the Best Foreign Film, The Lives of Others is one such film. I don't think a few movies can cause much damage to my Communist brethren. Their genes are hard-coded with principles, first created in nineteenth century Europe as a cure for a vastly different world order. But this movie is a gem, worth a watch for anyone following any kind of '-ism'. An incredibly true-to-life portrait of the life of people under the eagle eyes and iron hands of the former East Germany regime(German Democratic Republic.)

The film starts in the early eighties where a STASI officer, amongst other things is put in charge of a surveillence-wire tapping operation on a prominent German playwright. How the officer gets entangled in 'the lives of others' he is supposed to keep a watch on, without being physically present, forms the crux of the movie.

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, the director-script writer has done a job par excellence. The film's 56 wins and 22 nominations at various film festivals across the globe speaks its merit.

Although the film starts off slowly, it become pretty intriguing and builds up to a crescendo in the second half. The work of all the actors, especially the one who played the central character of the STASI officer(Wesler), Uhlrich Muhe is commendable. The last hour of the movie is what carries it to the realm of the classics. It has one of the best endings I've seen in a movie of our times. Review: 5 *****

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Akkara Kazhchakal

It had been a long time since I watched any Malayalam TV serial. Living close to the the Arctic circle has served as a natural inoculation against the said TV serials. The Malayalam channels understood(rightly) that Malayalam is not a popular language North of 60 deg N. It had worked well in my favor keeping me safe from the onslaught of emotianally charged pixel streams till Akkara Kazhchakal - a serial on Kairali channel recently crossed my radar. I chanced to see a mention of Akkara Kazhchakal during one of my virtual voyeuristic sallys in Orkut, searched YouTube immediately afterwards and have been hooked on the serial ever since.


Akkara Kazhchakal is such a realistic portrayal of East coast Achayans that it is hard to believe it is not a reality show. Ajayan Venugoplan, the writer seems to have an indepth understanding of the East Coast Malayalis, most of them Christians who came to the US as nurses or husbands of the said nurses from seventies onwards.

Goergekuttychayan, the lead character is the life-breath of the serial. He carries the show on his capable shoulders with his mannerisms, accent and his general outlook on life. Other characters like Gregory aka Girigiri, Rincy - Georgekuttychayan's wife,their two kids, Mahesh and Babykuttan aka Bobby - the fresh-off-the-boat male nurses, each one embodies a unique segment found in every US Malayali community. The story ideas for each episode is refreshing and topical. It has been a long time since Malayalam TV media has come out with something that is entertaining and believable at the same time. Kudos to director Abi Varghese, Ajayan Venugopalan and the team at Kairali TV.

Edit 2011

Akkarakazchakal - the movie is coming soon. You can see the stills here.

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Chocolate

An entertainer that does its job. Shafi's Chocolate has the sellable environment of a college campus as the background. That itself calls for young fresh faces and a lot of color, songs and drama. The youthful cast is led by Prithviraj and Roma, with Jayasurya, Salim Kumar and Samvruta Sunil.

Except for premise of the movie, which is about what happens when a guy is admitted to an all girls college, the story is composed of nuances we've seen many times before. But the treatment of the theme, finesse and the technical quality of the final product makes this movie a winner. Prithviraj is sizzling hot and just the right dude for the role. Roma as the female lead for Prithvi is a good choice because she is one of the few who will not wilt away on the screen in the presence of such super-hot co-star. Salim Kumar's dialogs are witty and he acts well although he feels kind of old for goofing around with college kids, but then again our fifty year old superstars do that all the time, then why not Salim Kumar? Some of the old faces from the past make appearance in the supporting cast like Shari and Vanitha.

Only thing I don't understand is why this name? The mention of this dark gooey substance occurs once in a song, which was probably written after name was chosen. Well, you can't have everything. Review: A good entertainer.

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Naqab

It was supposedly a thriller, but we were laughing the whole time. Our bad. Bobby and Akshaye won't let us have it any other way even when they were seriously 'acting'. About the movie,bah humbug.

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Blood Diamond

This was one movie I have been waiting to see. My reading habits over the years had ensured that I was enlightened of the truth about diamonds at an early age which cannot be said of the majority of female population in the United States. Blood Diamond is Hollywood's translation of the evil truth behind the 'forever-diamond' for the masses. Hope it was successful in educating atleast some.

The movie is Hollywoodsy in parts, then again Hollywood cannot escape Hollywood. That can be excused when movie is doing a social service. The three main anchors of the story are Zimbabwean white-farmer's son turned diamond smuggler Danny Archer played by Leonardo Di Caprio, the Mende(an African tribe) fisherman from Sierra Leone, Soloman Vandy(Djimon Hounsou) and an American journalist Maddy Bowen(Jennifer Connelly.)

Coincidentally just before this movie landed in my hands, I was reading African novelist Ahmadou Kourouma's book "Allah is not Obliged" , the novel about a child soldier in West Africa. There were parts of the book which were hard to digest, the inhuman transmutation that ordinary children undergo to become child soldiers. The movie shows that it is the reality in the war-torn regions of Africa, portrayed by the ruination of Soloman Vandy's family. Di Caprio is a good choice for these exotic white man roles.

The film makes a not-so-veiled finger-pointing at the diamond giants De Beers, by calling the main diamond merchants with another Dutch name, Van De Kapp. I do not know whether the exaggerated over priced stone that cost millions of third world lives each year will fall from grace in the eyes of dreamy brides in Western world with just one film. But Edward Zwick, hats off to you, you did put some of Hollwood's money in for a good cause. More than what most people do. Review: Go watch it and remember diamonds are forever once you buy them, they have little or no resale value. You can be fooled once, but fooled forever?

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Pranayakalam

It is often said that the reason Malayalam movies are made with aging superstars is because they are the only ones who can guarentee a return for the producer. With newcomers it is hard to sell the movie to distributors and there is no assurance that it'd succeed at the box-office either. Or you can go the way of Pranayakalam, use the age-old no-fail formula to win Malayali hearts - lead them to the deepest dens of despair and let them howl their heart out for two hours. A truck-load tears, even in these days, even in a movie with new-comers can give a decent run at the box-office.

But that is not all, Pranayakalam starring Ajmal Ameer and Vimala Raman does have its merits. It has a not-much-nonsense life like script, photography and editing are above par and the director Uday Ananthan succeeds in holding all this together in a nice bundle embellished with some good songs. All in all if you have tears to spare, it is a time-pass movie.

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Khoya Khoya Chand

Welcome to the Bollywood of the Fifties! Khoya Khoya Chand is a peep in to the lost world of India's early dream merchants in the company of the beautiful Zoha Ali Khan. There have been a lot of scathing reviews about this movie, many of them commenting about the lack of acting skills in Zoha, thrust in to a role too big for herself. For me she was perfect. If Mommy Sharmila Tagore was beautiful, Zoha in this film is close to perfection and I fail to see any glitches in her performance (found out just now that she has a Masters in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Sciences, wow!) .

Rajat Kapoor, Shiney Ahuja and Vinay Pathak play the male characters. We follow Nikhat(Zoha), an aspiring extra, then an actress in bit parts and finally thanks to Prem Kumar, the mega-star(Rajat Kapoor) she makes it to Bollywood as a leading lady. It is a story about the rise and the times of Nikhat as the Bollywood star, men she get involved with, the prominent among them Zafar(Ahuja) - another Bollywood aspirant like herself, who becomes a famous writer-director later on.

Love the technical perfection of the movie, the sets, the old Bollywood, the costumes, the music, the sepia-sodium vapor lamp tinted era of black and white stars and their hazy, tangled lives behind the screens. Kudos to director Sudhir Mishra.

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The Last King of Scotland

I was not able to find Forest Whitaker in the movie, all I saw was Idi Amin. The transformation of the actor in to the dictator was so complete that you forgot Whitaker is your familiar Hollywood actor. Wow! The man really deserved the Oscar.

It has an interesting and captivating story. Told from a Scottish physician's(Dr. Nicholas Garrigan played by James McAvoy) perspective it is easier to digest and sell it for a Western audience rather than telling bluntly about yet another African dictator's blood-letting and inhuman saga. It is based on Gile Foden's novel of the same name partially based on real-life events. Review: Good movie, mind-blowing acting.

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Vinodayathra

Sathyan Anthikad tackles the picnic that is life in his 2007 movie, Vinodayatra. The literal translation of the title means 'Picnic' or 'Excursion'. It also means the 'journey of Vinod', the central character of the movie, Vinod played by Dileep. Somehow this reminds me of Benigni's Life is Beautiful, who made an imprisonment at a concentration camp in to picnic. This is a far less harmless situation, but the idea of life as a picnic is common to both.

Director(in the center), with two lead actors - Dileep and Mukesh
It looks like lately I tend to like every alternate Sathyan Anthikad movie. Gone are the days when all them were equally appealing. Narendran Makan Jayajanthan Vaka was interesting, but Yathrakkarude Shradykku and Manassinnakkare were so-so. Achuvinte Amma was good, but I stayed away from Rasathantram. Now in Vinodayatra, I could glimpse the shades of old Sathyan Anthikkad magic.

Dileep, contrary to what has been stated in the popular reviews of the film, I think has acted well. He has showed restraint and maturity in a role where he could have gone easily overboard. The first half, which has a 'larger' presence of Mukesh(who is getting rounder by day) is rife with comical situations, which thankfully doesn't fall in to the lows of forced rib-tickling fare. Thanks to the director and the script.

The second half gets more serious and focus is shifted to from Mukesh-Dileep duo to Meera Jasmine and Dileep. Murali, Vijayaraghavan, Sabitha are some of the faces who comes in to the movie in this changed scenario. Mamukaya and Innocent also has some subdued but natural roles. The songs are commendable in the sense that the lyrics are meaningful yet melodious. Probably won't be great hits, but they are hummable. That itself is a lot to ask from a Malayalam movie these days.

The bottom paragraph is the movie is a light, good entertainer. Although not in a class of Sathyan Anthikkad movies of the 80s or early 90s, it is a breath of fresh air in the current suffocating climate that exists in Malayalam cinema.

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Goal

In the casual slang that floats around Kerala's college campuses there is saying, "Goal aayi", which could be loosely translated as 'inflicted a self goal.' That's the feeling one gets after watching Kamal's Goal. It looks like it is trying to cash in on the fame and success of Rosshan Andrews' Notebook. But Goal falls painfully short of the goalpost that was Notebook.

Only believable and interesting characters are the school boy villains, soccer coach played by Rehman, Captain Raju as the headmaster and to an extent, the teenage hero - Rajith Menon. And what was Mukesh doing in the movie, he was supposed be at the Howrah Railway station?! This movie will win one award definitely, Best Performance of an Actor as a Hammer in Hamming Role for Mukesh. Maybe he was used as a convenient excuse, if nothing justifies the soccer talents of the hero, atleast an insane fifty year old dad who used to play soccer would. Talk about genes that never lose their way to reach their goals.

The film-makers also resorted to an awful lot of CGI to make a soccer superstar out of Rajith Menon, the number 10 jersey alone didn't seem to suffice. All of it looked totally crude and a la Who Framed Roger Rabbit, with our soccer star as Roger Rabbit. Overly made-up girls who were supposedly teenagers make up the rest of the story, serving as colorful dolls, doled up in pancake and mascara. Then there was Salim Kumar in another wasted role. Review: "Goal Aayi"

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Devil Wears Prada

One chick-lit book I really enjoyed reading was Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger. Not that 'am averse to chick-lit but most of them bore me, like the yada yada yada sisterhood or the shopaholic series neither of which I could go past a few pages. But Lauren Weisberger's novel was of the un-putdownable kind, but the movie not much so.

Meryl Streep as the devil boss of the fictional fashion magazine Runway, modeled after the Vogue's Anna Wintour, didn't seem evil enough. Probably after seeing Ms.Streep in so many different roles, the shades of her other roles come through. Anne Hathaway as the protagonist was a good choice, but somehow the transformation of the character from a booky duckling to a fashionista is not as subtle as it was in the novel. Then again unlike in the book where I could sympathize with the main character ruled by an evil boss, the movie dwells a lot more on fashion - an area I don't have any clue about. When you have one wallet for all occasions(not even a purse) and one pair of shoes for every kind of surface, fashion could be as alien as Martians drinking martinis, Review: A time pass movie for the urban female.

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Shaurya

Shaurya is K.K.Menon's film. He probably did the movie for free.The story takes place in the innards of Indian army, a territory I am not too familiar with. It is about the court-martial of a soldier who is accused of murdering his fellow officer in Kashmir, a fertile ground for such incidents.

Rahul Bose has the leading role. A happy go lucky army lawyer who tags along with his buddy, a stellar army lawyer played by Javed Jaffrey. When Jaffrey's character is assigned a case, just so that he can be along with his friend, Bose's character takes up the post of defence lawyer in the same case and both reach the 'haseen waadis' of Kashmir. If these character relationships don't sound gay enough, there is always Rahul Bose's wardrobe which looks like it has been handpicked by the same people who attired the cast of Reno 911. Another total miscasting is Minisha Lamba as a journalist. Her acting puts too much oomph in to a serious investigative role. After watching Koel Purie switch between sexy and serious roles in two different movies I think it is all on the actress, what she wants to convey and how she goes about achieving it.

Javed Jaffrey's portrayal of his serious subdued role is decent. But it is K.K who takes the acting cake. His portrayal of the stubborn high ranking officer, almost a God for those under his command, originally played by Jack Nicholson, is done with elan. Forgot to tell you, this is A Few Good Men, with those famous dialogs translated to Hindi, verbatim.

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ArabiKatha

There is hope, still. All is not dead and ready to be written off in Malayalam film industry. There might still come a day of liberation for the natives from the Taliban rule of M&Ms. As long as the rebel forces under the command of Northern Alliance led by Sreenivasan don't let their pens lie silent, I will still believe in the promise of a new dawn. Arabikatha(An Arabian Tale), directed by Lal Jose is awash with shades of that hope.

Personally this movie resonates with my concept of Kerala's communist system, its evolution, ideologies and the people devoted to the cause. Being born in the heartland of Kerala's revolutionaries, it feels to me as if many of the characters in the movie were my real life neighbors and relatives. If you had lived in North Malabar, you'd realize that every aspect of the a die-hard Communist reflected in Cuba Mukundan(the main character portrayed by Sreenivasan)'s character, be it Coca-Cola or China is true and exact in its description. The way the Iqbal Kuttipuram's screenplay brings it out is laudable. There could have been no one else but Sreenivasan to fit this role.

Lal Jose is a director to watch. The choice of his stories gives the impression of being fresh and different without trying too hard. His selection of actors is commendable, everyone molding perfectly in to their roles. The supporting cast includes Jayasurya(in one of his rare negative roles), Indrajith, Nedumudi Venu, Salim Kumar, Samvrutha Sunil and a Chinese actress Chang Shumin. Cinematography is another praiseworthy aspect of the film. Manoj Pillai, the cinematographer comes from Sivan's Studio, the school which has given Malayalam and the Indian film industry some of the best in the field including Santosh Sivan.

The movie has bowled me over. The way things are going with Malayalam film industry, if another review of this kind is going to happen in this blog, looks like I might have to wait for a long time.

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It's Breaking News

The breaking news is about a TV journalist covering a sensational case. You'll get to see the channel wars, news manipulation, corrupt police officers and poor girls who are exploited by the high and mighty. Koel Purie plays the leading role of the TV journalist,Vidya Sehgal supported by a number of new faces. I didn't know anyone except Harsh Chhaya(from his TV serial days.)

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Inspector Garud

What makes money is what is made. So we have Inspector Garud. A corrupt but entertaining police officer, Garud(a) nicknamed after his swooping(money-off other people's hands) prowess. Corrupt by default is entertaining, in the same way straight talk is not. Dileep who stars as the inspectors and the producers have tried to cash in on the entertainment value of corruption. But since heroes cannot remain the bad guys for long, Dileep has a life-changing accident, comes back a new man from the verge of death to annihilate all the real bad guys off the face of the planet.

Kavya Madhavan is Dileep's wife in the movie, wears a sari like a strait-jacket with an expression to match. Guess that is the image of female IAS officers the movie intends to promote, the other IAS officer being Aishwarya (daughter of actress Lakshmi.) She is also seen wearing similar outfits along with blouses with collars which signifies a no-nonsense approach. Neither of the ladies have much to do in the movie, except act tough and ultimately show their vulnerable side.

Another presence worth mentioning is Vijayaraghavan who is the main villian Chettiar. In addition to speaking Tamil like a Malayali, he goes thru' the entire movie looking like someone slapped his face after he had a paralytic seizure. Probably this movie might have kept the ticket counters ringing for Dileep and cheap seats clapping and the rest rattling their jewelry.

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Palunku

Palunku means crystal in Malayalam, the movie is the third offering from Blessy one of the much touted directors of contemporary Malayalam cinema. The wiki link for Blessy I've posted above makes me want to bang my head against the wall and question the basic concept of wikipedia letting no-namers no-experts(like myself) update crucial information about people, places and history. The link equates Blessy's talents with Padmarajan and Bharathan - the maestros of Malayalam cinema which is like saying moon could take the place of the sun if only it rose during the day. Blasphemous!

Anyway moving on with the movie, the central character Monichan, a high-range farmer who migrates to the city with his family is played by Mammootty. The film starts off in serene village settings, where in spite of the burgeoning odds against survival in the form of un-payable loans, schools without teachers, the world is still fresh and innocent. That is one thing I've against Blessy's interpretation of stories - the absence of grays. The idyllic scenarios like the 'golden past' or the 'unspoilt village' is juxtaposed against the 'dreadful present or the 'sinful city.' One has all the good qualities and the other has all the bad qualities and the characters invariably have to fit in to either of these settings and are devoid of any shade of gray.

Monichan's family of wife and two kids are living in a blissfully tranquil high-range village with cows, tailor-birds and chickens when the children's school run out of teachers. This forces the family to shift their base to the city which is like the hot-bed of evil. But the Monichan parivar is unaware of it, they remain largely innocent and wide-eyed except for Monichan who takes to the city like a fish to water. From there on he takes the worst route possible to making a living in the city. The story despite its shortcoming becomes more interesting in the second half.

Mammootty is a good choice for the role, atleast he is 'acting his age.' Blessy introduces Kannada actress Lakshmi Sharma as Monichan's wife,she's good too, so are the two little girls who play the roles of their kids. Jagathy has a very interesting part. The story is tighter in the second half. There are no diversions from the main theme and it progresses fluidly on to the ending, which although I didn't see it coming, was not a total surprise either. It was like the movie had to impart this message of poetic (or is it Biblical) sense of justice or there had to be a 'moral to the story'. Afterall you spent two plus hours watching the film, did you get to take home a message? That is what the current Malayalam film makers are aspiring to achieve, which makes their stories predictable as fairytales or nightmares - whichever is the flavor of the moment.

After the much hyped Kazhcha which fell flat on my face and the award winning farce of Thanmatra, Palunku is infact a winner. It looks like Blessy is getting better as a director and a script-writer, although he has a long way to go before he can be anywhere near his mentor - Padmarajan.

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Idavela

Many of the cult classics in Malayalam came out in the early eighties and escaped media attention because most films made in that era were of above average quality. Today, looking back at those, a quarter century later, all that I could do is to lament and curse at the speed with which the value of Malayalam movies have eroded to pathetic nothingness.

Idavela is one such classic movie of the eighties(1982.) The humble beginning of the movie without any flashy overtures, how the story progresses in a natural manner unpretentious of its merit and reaches the final crescendo which itself is underplayed is not achievable these days. Idavela stands in stark contrast to what could a present day director could have made out of its story. If it was today there would be rib-damaging tickles meant to invoke laughter, ostentatious costumes and over-the-top dialogs that bear no resemblance to life in campus - living or dead, strict adherence to the formula loop one has to follow- comedy followed by a song n dance routine, followed by a tension-some chase scene, a fight - it is all oh-so-predictable these days and the only difference to look for is, which of the 50 year old M and M superstars duo is playing the 'college kumaran' in the particular film.

M.Mohan's understated classic starts out as a campus story involving four boys. Much of the credit goes to the script, written by one of the master writer-directors of Malayalam movie-world, Padmarajan - he who never wrote or directed the same story twice yet churned out refreshingly new movies and scripts one after the other. The main two characters are played by Ashokan and Babu(who later became famous as Idavela Babu after this movie) who are themselves in their late teens or early twenties. I do not know the name of the other two actors although one of them seems to be familiar.

There is the usual pranks that the boys of the age do, although the movie doesn't just revolve around these. Every character including the ones of the boy's family members, the college staff is explored and evolved to exact proportions as is required, nothing more, nothing less. The conversation and the story is natural and free flowing. Somewhere halfway through we get an inkling that this is going to be a coming-of-age movie. But like in real life the coming of age does not happen with fan-fare and hoopla, it just unfolds along the narrative path.

The second half of the movie takes us to scenic locales of Munnar, which itself was an unsullied hill station in Kerala in the eighties, away from the beaten path of tourists. The second half also introduces the major female character, played by Nalini, an eighties actress and the story takes a turn. It is a relief that the characters talk like you and me and not like people from soap operas, even in situations which could've justified the insertion of soap talk. The ending is perfect and there are no sudden jumps or cuts to reach that conclusion, things just fall in to place.

I wish the present day Malayalam directors would take some time out and sit down and watch eighties movies produced by the same industry they are affiliated to now.



(p.s- It's interesting to note the extent to which IMDb is riddled with mistakes when it comes to early eighties Indian regional language movies and actors. So much false information which is worse than no information. )

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Shingari Bolona

A pathetic product of the contemporary Malayalam movie industry with a eunuch of a name which is neither hindi nor malayalam.

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Mixed Doubles

A realistic take on an urban middle class marriage after ten years and one child. Realism for me doesn't come from the controversial subject - swinging, but from the natural quality of dialogs and the life portrayed, the actors who fit in to their roles like gloves and the seemingly effortless direction, sets and script.

Konkana Sen Sharma and Ranvir Shorey has the main roles in the movie as the working everyman and his wife in a ten year old marriage. The man is ready to experiment new things and bring the spark back in to the marriage and the woman is not sure swinging is the way to go about it. The director, Rajat Kapoor also plays an important role in the movie. The situations are very realistic and their treatment as well although the subject might not sit well with the average Indian film-goes, might probably do well with urbanites though.

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Jesus Camp

Jesus! What a camp! Jesus Camp is a documentary about a summer camp for Jesus loving kids run by Pastor Becky Fisher in North Dakota. The camp makes full uses of the idiom - catch' em young. Islam is doing its share by minting suicide bombers, then why not Christians for a less bloody cause like spreading Christianity - that's Ms.Fisher's argument.

For an outsider or some one who has never lived in the US, United States might seem like the mecca of modernism, leading the world, although there have been signs in the recent times of that leadership is being threatened. Under the fast freeways and the fast food, the glamor of Hollywood and the Big Apple there is a lot of United States that is hidden, reminds me of the iceberg analogy and most of it is overwhelmingly Christian. If you listen to the voices from the heartland you'd realize how deep the water of Christianity runs in this country, supposedly a nation of immigrants from the world over.

Jesus Camp gives a glimpse of the deep rooted sympathies of a nation where more than half the people still question evolution and would rather go with intelligent design. And they are recruiting more foot soldiers -the children, in to their ever increasing fold. This is camp where George W.Bush has an aura of a messiah. What a religion want to do with its children is its prerogative, but the picture turns scary when the religion wants to run the nation.

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Children of Men

It is 2027, human race is infertile, no child has been born on earth since almost two decades. Then the miracle happens in the unlikeliest of places and Clive Owen is put in charge to transport this miracle. Clive Owen seems like he has been typecast playing the transporter, the driver, the deliverer etc etc. The first time I saw him was as a driver in one of the BMW shorts. He was Madonna's driver in that short directed by her husband, Guy Ritchie.

Anyway coming back to Children of Men, the germ of the movie is based on the P.D.James's novel of the same name. But there are significant differences in the plot between the movie and the book. I had read the book about a year back and was expecting to see an exact moving, talking, emoting replica on screen, but director Alfonso Cuaron has veered it away to a much broader perspective than a power struggle between two individual(as it was in the book) which turns out to be better.

But there are certain points which gets cloudier as director steers away from the book. For example there is no clear explanation about the reason for their fleeing. The infertility element is transfered from the male to the female to give it a more socio-religious implication? Don't know. Although I read at some places about the film's parallels to the birth of Jesus although unlike in the book the first child born is a girl.

Best thing about the movie is the bonus materials section of its DVD, which is a good documentary in itself cataloging the changes and opinions of the current world. The movie attempts to address a lot of issues - immigrants, capitalism and the demise of world economy, repercussions of humans playing God with the use of technology etc, with one shot(or rather a series of scenes.) I am not sure how much they've succeeded. It is an interesting film for someone to watch in 2007-08. There are a lot of ways the world can go wrong. This gives a glimpse of the future from a place where there is no future to look forward to. It doesn't mean future would be grim, grimy and depressing with a light finally turned on at the end of the tunnel as in the movie, it is just one of the many possible futures, thanks to our(human) excesses.

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Jab We Met

Kareena Kapoor has come a long way as an actress since her first film, Refugee. In her one and only film released in 2007, Kareena stars opposite her then real-life boyfriend, Shahid Kapoor, giving an inspired performance as a Sikh girl from Bhatinda. It is ironical that the real life pair breaks up during the shooting of this film, dubbed as a romantic-comedy.

Jab We Met is all about Kareena. I am totally impressed by her evolution as an actress, this coming from somebody who didn't like her in the first place. Between the two of them, Shahid and Kareena make a hit out an ordinary story line. Credit also goes to the script which is very spontaneous and natural.

When story of the film has a Punjabi background, it translates to finding new cinematic horizons for the term entertainment - that is the usual Bollywood trick which this movie resorts to as well. The success of the director, Imtiaz Ali is in the casting of the lead pair, bringing out the best in them with a neat script in what really is a run-of-the-mill Bollywood storyline. Jab We Met is unadultered Bollywood fare at its comical best, delivered by two wonderful actors.

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The Curse of the Black Pearl

Jack Sparrow couldn't have been so endearing if it was someone else and not Johnny Depp who played the part. I am not a big fan of Johnny Depp, but Captain Jack Sparrow is one hell of a pirate. Looks like Disney had the old trick of two birds with one shot in mind when it made the Pirates movie. Increased revenue from the already existing Pirates of the Caribbean theme park and revenue from the movie.

The first Pirates of the Caribbean theme park was opened in Disneyland(Anaheim,CA) in 1967 - the last attraction that Walt Disney himself oversaw. The refurbished Pirates theme park(after the second movie in the series Dead Man's Chest) features many of movies prominent figures includingJack Sparrow and Capt.Barbossa.

The movie has some really quirky dialogs, delivered by Sparrow or Barbossa. Entertaining to say the least, Keira Knightely provides the feminine power and deservedly, the latest in the series - Pirates of Caribbean: At World's End won the People's Choice awards last weekend.

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Heyy Baby

An out and out Bollywood entertainer. One cannot be expected to make critical reviews of such a movie, so I'll stick to the facts. Guess the year 2007 has been benevolent to the Khan siblings, no, not referring to any actor Khans who infest Indian filmdom, but Farah and Sajid Khan. Heyy Baby is Sajid's directorial debut fared well and his sister Farah's Om Shanti Om was the box office mega scorer of 2007. Heyy Baby's inspiration comes from the 1987 Hollywood flick, Three Men and a Baby directed by Leonard Nimoy(yeah Spock for the Trekkies), starring Tom Selleck and Ted Danson. If you have the germ of the story it is possible to adapt it for different audiences and cultures. That is what Heyy Baby did in 2007 and Malayalm flick Thooval Sparsam did in 1990. No harm in that, in a hopelessly interconnected world as ours, it is hard not to get 'inspired'. Heyy Baby has three bachelors, desi and rockin' in Sydney. Three Men and a Baby were holed up in a New York apartment and Thooval Sparsam was set in Cochin. As expected of bachelors, life is all girls and excitement when Heyy Baby starts. The opening song(also happens to be the title track) has some of Bollywood's hottest ladies(all in guest appearances.) Then another girl(this time an infant) arrives and they are taken for a roller-coaster ride of their lives. Akshay Kumar, Fardeen Khan and Ritiesh Desmukh play the three main roles with a supposedly modern version of Vidya Balan. It is hilarious in parts, entertaining, generally recommended for family consumption.

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Photographer

It is hard to make a realistic film with Mohanlal these days. His superstardom is the stumbling block, especially when it is the younger film-makers who is directing him. That is what happened to Ranjan Pramod. He is not a Shaji N.Karun to make a Vanaprastham. I am not comparing the talents of two directors, but the age and the experience which prevents Shaji N.Karun go weak-kneed infront of the star power of Mohanlal is absent in the younger, first time director. Under such conditions, what results is a fiasco like Photographer.

Mohanlal is a freelance photographer, Dijo John, whose photos have made it to the pages of big name magazines like National Geographic. He married a Brahmin girl against his family's wishes and has a son. Like many of the recent movies which has cashed in on the plight of Adivasis, this movie makes use of the infamous Muthanga Incident of Feb 2003, where Kerala police and the Adivasis of Muthanga(Wayanad Dist., Kerala) clashed in a bloody battle. In the film the Dijo John happens to be in the adivasi village on the fateful day and ends up saving his tribal guide, a little boy named Tami. Tami's father is shot down by police bullets right infront of their eyes and there is no news about his little sister.

This personal link leads Dijo to get involved in the volatile issue which had taken on immense political proportions by then. So far so good. The problem I have with Mohanlal films these days is, no matter what the social standing of the character played by Mohanlal, the rest of the cast act in a way that conveys utmost reverence to him. The final nail on the coffin is driven in by the director himself who gives long, weighty dialogs tailored for Mohanlal - the super star, but is no way justifiable to the character he portrays. This is not exactly his flaw, but it ruins the film. Photographer is just one in a long series of movies with this fatal flaw, but I am sure it is not going to be the last one.

Dijo John, the photographer has loud conversations with God himself. The God of Malluwood 'hotlining' to the God of the Universe. The Central Govt. has its own designs on Dijo and doesn't like him playing God to an adivasi kid and secretly takes him into custody and he disappears from the scene for a while. As if the thousands of movie-goers across the state of Kerala cannot languish in a Mohanlal-less void for any length of time during a Lal movie, the director springs a twin for Mohanlal - Joe John, a planter, writer and a totally uncalled for character. Except that through this double role of Joe John, Mohanlal gets a chance to live unleash his star power, which was kind of restrained in his former character, Dijo. Stunts, cheesy jokes, a beautiful maiden in the wings, exaggerated acting are all part of the Joe John package.

There are a lot of half-baked parts - Biju Menon, the Forest Minister, Ganeshan(ex-transport minister of Kerala) who plays an investigating officer, Manoj K.Jayan as an evil incarnate police officer who disappears without trace from the script in the second half and what was the role of Saranya Bhagyaraj(daughter of Malayalam heroine of yesteryear Purnima Jayaram and Tamil actor-director Bhagyaraj)? It felt as if the director lost the sense of direction midway through the movie and ended up wandering in circles in the forest, like the character of Dijo does in the second half. The redeeming aspect of the movie is the camera which lets the audience take in the beauty of Wayanad's forests and the script when Mohanlal was not mouthing the lines.

Despite all this I'd consider Photographer one of the better Mohanlal movies to hit the screens in the recent past, because of its toned down version of the actor. Probably that was why it didn't sit well with the Kerala audience who have placed Lal on a pantheon with their other personal Gods and ended up being a mega-flop.

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Black Friday

A lesson in contemporary Indian history that no self respecting Indian should miss. Anurag Kashyap's Black Friday starts a few days before the fateful Friday in March(12) 1993 when the city of Bombay was blown apart by extremist bombs and follows the subsequent police investigation that solved the case. Based on S.Hussein Zaidi's book of the same name, Black Friday, despite being a feature film is the most realistic and comprehensive account of the infernal Bombay blasts that I've ever seen.

It is hard to believe it is a movie and people are acting. It feels like there was a hidden camera recording the actions of the real people as they planned and schemed and died and fled and bled through those gruesome days. Anurag Kashyap wrote the script of Ram Gopal Varma's much acclaimed film about Bombay's underbelly, Satya. This is his second film as a director, although I believe Black Friday reached the public(despite a two year delay) before his first film Paanch did.

For a large part, the movie reminds me of trying to see the world from the other-side, like a German movie about WWII or a Soviet film about the Cold War. Getting under the skin of the character and breathing his air, you realize why people did the things they did. The credit goes to the director and script writer - in this case, Kashyap and the writer Zaidi for providing the original well researched content which the director built upon. Kay Kay Menon plays Additional Commissioner of Police Rakesh Maria, Badshah Khan(played by Aditya Srivastav), one of the accused in the bomb case, represents the pawns, who in the hands of terrorist master minds, Tiger Memon and Dawood Ibrahim becomes a terrorist. Pavan Malhotra plays Tiger Memon and Vijay Maurya, who was also in Paanch, plays Dawood Ibrahim.

An important slip that Kashyap has avoided is that it doesn't become another Satya, especially considering Kashyap scripted both the movies and both are about the darker side of Bombay. Black Friday appeals to me because it is hard to come by a powerhouse of a feature film loaded with information and details about contemporary event(s) depicted in a truthful manner.

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The Angrez

For Hyderabadis, Of Hyderabadis, By Hyderabadis - that is the short version of the Angrez. There has been so many movies about Bombay in this vein and probably many of us can do the Mumbaiyya slang without ever having to travel in local trains during Mumbai's rush hour. The Angrez is a tribute to the life and lingo of Hyderabad, an amateurish one, but entertaining nevertheless.

The life of the movie is Salim Phekku(Mast Ali), Ismail bhai(Raju Shrivastav) and the old city gang along with their Hyderabadi Deccani Urdu mixed Hindi. Delivered by true blue Hyderbadis, the movie you takes you on a romp through the Hyderabad of the locals. When you take a movie about the city that makes a living minting NRIs at a record rate, it has to be about NRIs. Nikkil Kunta(the director of the movie) and Ganesh Venkatraman plays the two NRIs who have come to India to become partners in a software company. Nikkil Kunta draws from his real life experiences as an American returned desi and two years of roaming around with his handycam in the Old City of Hyderabad capturing the life and lingo.

If you exclude the Old city guys and their antics, what remains is mostly half-baked, especially the NRI part. I am not sure NRI vocabulary is limited to sh*t and its variations. The last scenes of the movie which involves a girl crying over, what in my eyes, is a very decent way to propose a marriage could have been avoided.

Chudi bazaar,Bonalu prasadam, Banjara Hills, Hyderabadi Biriyani, Ganesha pooja and the quintessential NRI - the raison d’être of this movie was to showcase Hyderabad and it did that successfully. The rest of it could be forgotten, because if somebody had taken a movie about my home-town in this manner I'd have loved every minute of it, no matter how lousy the story.

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Dor or Perumazhakkalam

What I watched yesterday was Dor(a thread, a connection in Hindi), from the NRI turned RI director Nagesh Kukunoor. If Hyderabad Blues - his path breaking first film was a true original in Indian 'movie-wood', Dor cannot be called so. The story is based on a real life event and first time it hit the screens was in 2004, away from the Bollywood spotlight, when Malayalam director Kamal, made a movie out of it by the name Perumazhakkalam. Perumazhakkalam went on to win the National Award for the Best Film on Social Issues in 2004 and numerous awards for its two leading protagonists played by Kavya Madhavan and Meera Jasmine. Kukkonoor supposedly bought the story from the Malayalam film makers. There is still a lot of controversy surrounding it.(Read Here.) I'd say better he than anyone else, Priyadarshan might have cast Akshay Kumar and Suniel Shetty as the two leading female protagonists who happen to be behroopiyas(person who takes on different roles/costumes to make a living aka an actor) and gotten away with it under the cover of a few kaleidoscopic dance numbers.


What Dor has going for it is the finesse, Kukonoor has certainly evolved as a director since the amateurish Hyderabad Blues(despite being a big hit of the times.) Technically Dor is a cut above the usual Bollywood films. Then again I am wrong in two counts. First, Kukunoor is not a usual Bombay masala movie-maker, he is from the contemporary alternate cinema in India, he just happens to be successful(which is a quality that sometimes evades parallel cinema makers.)Second, Bollywood is not what it used to be. Most of the Bollywood movies now have a certain level of perfection which places them far above the majority of mediocre regional flicks. Money could be an element here, but whatever it is the grade of the Bollywood end-product is commendable these days.

Gul Panag and Ayesha Takia have the leading roles in Dor. Gul has the more stronger character and she is the right actress for it. Ayesha Takia is ok, but something is amiss, I cannot point my fingers on to it, but it is there. Shreyas Talpade is funny, a very likeable guy, although he falls a little short of the Rajasthani behroopiya. He'd have been great if he was a Maharashtrian or a Hyderabadi. It looks like he had immigrated to Rajasthan in his teens and could never quite cut-off his central Indian roots. Oh..and the cameo by Kukonoor, is a total misfit. I couldn't take the clean-shaven, too well-mannered to be corrupt Nagesh as the scheming lecherous Chopra Saheb. I mean Nagesh Kukonoor could be a lot of things but he cannot yet copy the flitting evil glint of Gulshan Grover.


Perumazhakkalam on the other hand had an excellent choice of actors. I saw it a couple of years back and my memory is getting rusty befitting my age. So I'll start off with what is easiest to recollect, the title. To captivate the Kerala audience who feast on tears, the title of the movie aptly means the Season of Incessant Rain. The rain is one of the important characters in the film, so much so that it is over-used and you can really make out that most of the rain is coming straight off a fire hose. Kavya Madhavan won the State Award for the Best Actress of the year(2004) for her restrained and teary-eyed performance. Same award cannot be given to Ayesha Takia who plays her role in the Hindi version.

There are no beharoopiyas or Chopra Sahebs in the Malayalam version which is truer to real life. Cannot blame Kukonoor for making Dor a li'l vibrant because the film should be packaged to suit the tastes of the audience. Where Keralites pride in their work horse tear glands and prefer the exact portrayal of the grittiness of real life on screen, Northern Indians fancy fantasy and colorful scenes. Dor is set in two of the most touristy destinations in India - the green snow capped mountains of Himachal Pradesh and the stark, sandy and colorful Rajasthan. Had Kukunoor gotten this 'original story idea' from T.A.Razak(the story and script writer of Perumazhakkalam) before Kamal got hold of it, he might have won the Best Picture award for National Integration, bringing together the Muslims of northern-most Northern India and the Hindus of the cow-belt - Gujarat, Rajasthan, UP region. Alas, original happens only once!

The story of Perumazhakkalam is about a death(or a murder?) which happens in Saudi Arabia and involves two young-men(one is murdered and the other one ends up accused) from India who had gone there to work. Saudi court rules death penalty for the accused and the only way the sentence can be reduced is if the wife of the victim forgives the accused. With the males in the story killed or imprisoned, the film takes on a feministic edge, because the females has to do all the work, like in real life. Gul Panag(Dor) / Meera Jasmine(Perumazhakkalam) is the wife of the imprisoned man. Ayesha Takia(Dor) / Kavya Madhavan(Perumazhakkalam) is the Hindu widow. The untimely demise of her husband has the widow in charge of a super power - the power to give or take the life of a human being(one particular human being, her husband's supposed killer.) After that it is the power play between two women of two contrasting cultures - Hindu and Muslim, translated by two different film makers(Kamal in Malayalam and Kukonoor in Hindi) for two widely differing sets of audience.

Perumazhakkalam is a mature take on the subject for a grown-up gallery who doesn't know or care much about Shah Rukh Khan. Dor is for a congregation of devotees who had just finished watching a King Khan movie, on bended knees and have worked up enough courage to watch a 'really serious' Hindi movie. Both movies, I believe, hit the right spot with their target audience.

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Aayirappara

Aayirappara literally translates to 1000 'para', where 'para' is a unit for measuring rice, one 'para' equals 7.5 kgs. In the movie it is a reference to the Aayirapara paadam(the field that yields a thousand paras or a field of bumper harvest.)

Directed by Venu Nagavalli, the film is set in the rice trough of Kerala - Kuttanad, incidentally it is also his native place(Ramankarry). The movie dabbles in history, it is a period piece, my guess is the story is from the early 1960s, around the time when the first Communist ministry came to power in Kerala.

Madhu and Narendra Prasad in Aayirappara

Aayirappara paadam is owned by the benevolent landowner, played by Narendra Prasad and his faithful servant, Pappi. - a role veteran actor Madhu carries of with ease. The central character in this movie is the colorful Shauri, Pappi's son, played by Mammootty in perhaps the only Venu Nagavalli(directed) movie where Nagavalli chose someone else other than Mohanlal to play the lead.

The film portrays the tumultuous period of economic and social change in Kerala, where the land and the earnings from the land started to be distributed more democratically, religious tolerance increased albeit as a result of numerous sacrifices from the people involved. Actress Urvashi has the female lead, as the daughter of the landlord. Music is composed by Raveendran and one of the songs 'Yathrayaayi' is quite a melodious number.

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Cheeni Kum

Thanks to the presence of the oldest angry young man in Bollywood, sixty plus guys have finally received the green signal to go ahead to fall in love and marry women half their age. If not for Amitabh Bachchan, Indians could not have been persuaded to sit and watch such a 'sacrilegious' movie(lol.)

Cheeni Kum has the sixty four year old, sharp-tongued, restaurant owner-chef Bachchan wooing Tabu, a woman half his age. Tabu with her carefree elegance is just the right person to match up to the sarcastic and proud Bachchan. Thankfully Zohra Sehgal is still live(let her continue rocking us with laughter forever and ever) which is good news for Jaya Bachchan otherwise she could have been called to play his mother's role. Let us not forget Paresh Rawal(Tabu's Dad in the film), he has evolved as a comedian so much so that I've forgotten that he used to be the stereotypical bad guy once upon a time.

All could have gone well and we could have gotten a new age Hindi romance if they had not imported the cruel stock villain which guaranteed a flood gate of tears at the box-office in the seventies and eighties - blood cancer. IMHO the overly-'literate', smooth (adult-)talking kid was a needless character. The screenplay is really a long tit for tat affair, quite enjoyable one at that. Direction is also good for a first time - R.Balki. If not for the abnormal proliferation of leukocytes which ruined the movie, it'd have been one of the good modern Bollywood movies of recent times.

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Disco Dancer

A decade of video players imported by NRIs from Arabian Gulf were tested using this movie, Indo-Russian bilateral relations reached a peak in the eighties, even in the absence of Raj Kapoor, thanks to this dance musical and with this movie Bengal added a Bollywood superstar(ofcourse his national award winning feature Mrigaya came long before that, but who watched award movies?) to its already bursting bag of talent, filled with Nobel laureates and freedom fighters. You know the movie I am talking about – it defined a decade, with its legendary stature it has etched its name in history as the icon of the eighties – Disco Dancer.

As a kid I was one of the under-privileged who never got to watch the said film but only heard exponentially glamorized versions from our lucky friends who had not only seen it, but also had the video cassette in possession, thanks to their Gulf-employed relative. The unpardonable crime of not watching the Disco Dancer struck back in my late twenties when I met the Russians. Being close to Bering Strait and Siberia our neighborhood is overrun my Russian émigrés, most of them close to my age who try to strike up friendship with us with the intro, "Mithun Charkraborty. Disco. Disco Dancer," with accompanied animation and dance moves. The immense gravitas of those opening words, they believe, is enough to forge a lasting bond between two great cultures. Who grew up in the eighties India without knowing the power of the Bollywood cultural ambassador, Mithunda?

The situation was rectified this weekend. We learnt to spell D-I-S-C-O and refreshed our memories with eighties costumes, hairdos and those hit songs which made Disco Dancer what it was. The one who was most entranced by the movie was our one and half year old, which brings me to the point that it is like a fairy-tale. You don’t need any language to understand it, that’s probably why the Russians and the Middle-Easterners took to it so easily. The story is rich vs poor singer, rich defeated by singing, poor guy gets the rich girl via disco and in between a terrible disease called ‘guitar-phobia’ makes a guest appearance so does Rajesh Khanna. Karan Razdan(ex-husband of Priya Tendulkar of ‘Rajni’ fame) plays the bad guy along with Om Shivpuri –the bad guy’s dad who is a really bad guy. Mithun is his lithe rockin’ younger self, a treat to watch. Other than that there is not much in the movie story-wise. I’d take Disco Dancer as a vehicle to deliver Disco to the masses and Mithunda to the Russians. Think it accomplished both those tasks successfully. End of review.

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Yaadon Ki Baraat

From the father of formula films in Bollywood, Nasir Hussain, comes one of the biggest hits of the century - Yaadon Ki Baraat. This is probably the third or fourth time I am watching this 1973 classic. A vanguard in its own right Yaadon Ki Baraat was a nested product of formulas many of which Hindi filmdom has been recycling to this day. The important ones include son avenging the death of his parents, brothers torn away by circumstances reunited by a talisman(a song in the typical Bollywood fashion in this case), the utterly honest poor guy with incredible singing capacity wooing the rich girl, the high-tech villain in his seventies gadget-infested dungeon bent upon destroying the hero while wearing shoes of two different sizes(a dead giveaway!) and a Miss India(Zeenat Aman.)

The incredible soundtrack of the film composed by R.D.Burman is another selling point. The song 'Chura Liya' defined an entire generation and beyond, so did Ms.Aman. Vijay Arora stars opposite to her in the movie, as the second one of the three brothers. Dharmendra is the elder brother and the youngest is played by Tariq, a nephew of the director. Neetu Singh makes a guest appearance in one of the songs, so does the later Bollywood heart-throb Aamir Khan. This is his first movie(well, the director was his uncle) and he appears as a child artist - the youngest of the three brothers. Yaadon ki Baraat is your quintessential Bollywood movie of the swinging seventies. If you have to give someone an introduction to the proverbial Hindi masala movie, you can pick this one sans hesitation.

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Nee Varuvolam

Directed by Sibi Malayil, this is one of the first movies of Dileep as a hero. It has Divya Unni as a village belle where she looks totally out of place in long silk skirts and a made-up innocence which is hard not to notice. Dileep is okay, the story thrives on what a typical Malayalam movie should ooze in tons - grief and insurmountable obstacles only solved by suicides or sudden deaths.

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Manorama Six Feet Under

A quirky black thriller from Navdeep Singh. The movie, Singh’s first directorial venture establishes him as one of the latest breed of talented film-makers who are crawling out of the Bollywood wood-work with their original and offbeat creations. Abhay Deol is a Deol of a different breed (after Sunny, Bobby, Esha and Papa Deol), this cousin Deol is the proverbial everyman yet handsome and talented.

The movie is set in a Rajasthani desert town, beat up by heat and overlooked by rain clouds for years. Nothing is going anywhere, life languidly flows with what is at its disposal, which is to say not much. This is not the Rajasthan of typical Bollywood movies or tourist brochures. The colorful village belles and the multi-tasking singer-dancer camel herders are noticeable by their absence, so is the thakur-thakurayin duo and the big haveli where it is always the wedding or the infighting season. This is the small town Rajasthan of everyday India – hot, parched, corrupt, Hinduized, politicized and middle-class.

Abhay Deol plays a PWD engineer who moonlights as an author, albeit a failed one at that. The novel which was supposed to make him a household name ‘Manorama’, sold just 200 copies, but it plays an important role in the movie. Gul Panag(a former Miss India) is Deol’s wife in the movie, a role which she carries off with natural panache. Vinay Pathak, ex-Channel V VJ has a very distinct role in the movie as the local police officer and Deol’s brother-in-law. Raima Sen plays her usual role as a guy-trap. Sarika and Kulbhushan Kharbanda plays other important roles.

What is interesting is that unlike in the usual Hindi movies, there is no easily readable black and white as such in this movie, it covers a lot of grey zones. Gold fishes are used to expound life’s big lessons since people keep on making the same mistakes you and me would make and are no good. Natural, darkly comic and a lot like real life.

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Life in a Metro

Hindi movies are going places. I heard the songs of Life in a Metro perhaps six months ago and as expected of my tin-ear, promptly forgot about them, except for the title of the film – which was a bit different for a Hindi film. The songs came back from the dead, a couple of months ago when my more sensitive other half resurrected them from a dusty back-up drive, wrote a CD and made it our traveling companion. Have been hooked on the songs, composed by Pritam with lyrics by Sayeed Qadri, ever since.

Then came the quest to get hold of the movie and watch it. The mission was completed successfully this weekend. It is a slickly produced version of life in India’s primero uno metro, Bombay (or Mumbai as it is known now.) The film deals with the emotions and sentiments in the lives of its nine protagonists, all whose stories are intertwined in a way, although the characters themselves are not aware of these connections in the beginning.

What impresses me about this movie is its photography, music, editing and direction. What takes away some of the glory is its plot-lines, some of which looks like they may have been borrowed from some Hollywood originals. Shilpa Shetty, Kay Kay Menon, Konkona Sen Sharma, Sharman Joshi, Shiney Ahuja, Kangana Ranaut, Dharmendra, Nafisa Ali and Irfan Khan play the nine main characters who inhabit the four interconnected plots.

Although it might go against majority’s idea of how a movie should be made, I loved the inclusion of the band who composed the music for the film in the song scenes. It gave the songs a music video effect, not bad considering this is not the run-of-the-mill Bollywood movie. Life in a Metro is one of the movies which catalogs the evolution of Bollywood cinema. It might not be mind blowing, but it makes you aware what’s blowin’ in the wind and gives an idea where that wind might take you.

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Babel

Alexandro Inarritu - the king of multiple story threads, all with connecting elements which will be revealed as the story progresses, is the director of this trans-continental cinematic odyssey. His second foray in to Hollywood as a full length feature director sees him paired with his favorite writer and literary twin, Guillermo Arriaga. All Arriaga's screenplays are written for the movies, has a one of a kind feel and is assured to give the audience the edge-of-the-seat anticipation with events that happen to real people. Inarritu and Arriaga had a fall-out after Babel was released and the director banned the writer from attending the film's screening at Cannes, that's another story.

The events in Babel take place in three continents and four nations - Morocco, the USA, Mexico and Japan. With an ensemble cast that includes Brad Pitt, Gael Garcia Bernal, Cate Blanchett, Adrianna Barraza(nominated for Oscar for her role in this movie) and Rinko Kikuchi, Babel got seven Oscar nominations in 2007, although only one materialized in to the coveted bronze statue - Best Original Score.

Like Inarritu's Amores Perros and 21 Grams - the other two his Death trilogy, Babel is driven forward by the tension experienced by the viewer just as it'd be if the viewer had faced the situation in real life. Unlike the other two, Babel is more topical. It touches more contemporary issues like the US government's definition of terrorism and how it affects the rest of the world, illegal immigrants from across the Mexican border and shows a side of Morocco most Americans would never see. The two young Moroccan boys who plays goat-herds in one of the stories have shown exceptional acting skills, so has Adrianna Barrazza, the Mexican actress.

Although the film is peppered with brilliant pieces of direction, cinematography and acting, one that I'll mention here is the Rinko Kikuchi's drug induced evening at the park and discotheque. If you plan to stay away from hallucinatory drugs or has never taken any ever, this sequence is a must-see, it is the next best thing.

As the lyrics from Mike and the Mechanics song, 'The Living Years' goes, "You say you just dont see it, He says its perfect sense, You just cant get agreement, In this present tense, We all talk a different language, Talking in defense....." all of us are right in the light of our plights and many a time, all of us are wrong. That is the premise of Babel.

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Little Miss Sunshine

A very European movie from the United States. Most of the American indies I've seen are individual obsessed, this one has as its core a dysfunctional family or rather a normal family which is not perfect like all the other normal families. It is a commendable effort from the first time feature film directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris.

A road-trip in a rickety old VW van with quirky characters - although everyone looks alright on the surface, brings about unexpected events. The choice of actors is brilliant and everyone fits into their roles perfectly. The title character of the movie, the youngest of the family who is going to enter a beauty pageant called Little Miss Sunshine is played by the seven year old, little Miss Abigail Breslin who lives upto the role.

The movie shows the triumph of common man against not so-gigantic but the everyday-type odds. The film identifies with the average, the everyday, the common-place yet different, which is how the human life is and that is the recipe for its success.

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Pakal

Pakal is the first movie of the producer turned director M.A.Nishad. Before I go postal on the movie with an acerbic review, let me confess it is one of the true to life, watchable movies that had been made in Malayalam in the recent years. Wonder why all of them has Prithviraj as the hero? Although to tell the truth that point shouldn't cause much wonder, because lately he is the only believable hero in Malayalam.


Pakal takes up a contemporary social issue - the suicide of farmers trapped in debt, an issue that has caught national media attention. Prithviraj has the role of a TV journalist who has taken up the cause of bringing public attention of the plight of poor desperate farmers in the hill-district of Wayanad in Kerala. T.G.Ravi acts as a debt ridden farmer whose family's story becomes the central plot of the movie. Jagadish has a very different role as a unscrupulous money lender, a role he handles with panache. The main female characters in the movie, the farmer(T.G.Ravi)'s daughters are played by Sreeja and Jyothirmayi, who do justice to their roles.

What disturbs me about the movie is that, the anger it exemplifies is the blood-boiling-rage of the youth and it is shown that this anger does finally bring results, bring down the bastilles of the establishment. Knowing the political pandemonium in India it is hard to believe that truth is going to triumph this easily. In a way the movie gives an idealistic solution, which is hardly the case ever.

Then there is the usual resort of Malayalam filmdom to win the ladies' votes - send them a truckload of tears and get them over to your side. Maybe the subject matter of the film will justify the presence of sentimentality.

For a first time director it is a not-so-bad film, exceptional if you consider the current state of Malayalam movie industry and thankfully M.A.Nishad's direction is not as cliche-ridden as Blessy's - the other director who is driving the social cause-current issue bus in Malayalam.

A watchable movie, which is a rare treat in Malayalam these days.

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Ek Chalis ki Last Local

This is one of the best movies to have come out of Bollywood recently. From the debutante director Sanjay Khanduri comes the most under-estimated flick which will endear you with its all pervading quirkiness, its original story line(that’s something that’s hard to come by in Bollywood movies) and believable characters. The movie reminds me of the dark humor in Tarantino’s films, quirky and unpredictable, but delightfully watchable.


Abhay Deol is a perfect fit for the protagonist who misses the last train to his home in Vikhroli. Mumbaiites know how important trains are in their lives and missing one changes the life of this young man forever. The story, the dialog, the camera, the perfect characterization and the general ambiance of the film in the hands of a director who knows what he is talking about delivers a winner. Khanduri tells that the story(he is the story writer and the script writer of the movie) is inspired by a night he was forced to spend in Mumbai’s under belly after having missed the local train himself. Well then, nobody could have made it better, right?

Another bit of trivia about 1:4O ki last local: 'Ek Chalis Ki Last Local' created a record by selling 1.18 lac DVDs in just first 14 days of its release. Its surprising for such a small film to do such a good business. Moser Bayer had launched its first commercial feature film DVD in Indian market by this film. It has sold more than any DVD VCD combined of any Indian film in first 2 weeks of its release.

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Hard Candy

Hard Candy is a psychological thriller that keeps you riveted on the edge of your seat, with knitted brows for almost two hours. The frames, tight close-ups against bold single colors provided by the setting - a modernist house of an art photographer, imparts the feeling that you are inside the character. You switch your loyalties many times with each return volley served by the two characters.

Ellen Page is intense and believable as a teenage over-achiever with a cause written in stone and nothing is going to deter her from her course, not even an innocuous looking photographer(Patrick Wilson) of the models. For her portrayal of Hayley - the teenage protagonist in this film Page won the Best Actress Award from the Austin Film Critics Association. This is also the first film of the British director, David Slade.

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