clog

Alright, I know I am late, can we please get further now. So, after everybody has watched, raved and forgotten about this movie, I finally watched it accidentally today. I came home dead tired and like everyday before I did anything else I switched on my TV and threw away the remote and then threw myself on the couch. Usually a few minutes of relaxation give me enough energy to pick up the remote and start surfing, but today was different and by the time I could get to that point, it came. It was on my watching list for quite some time, so there I go. The fact that I didn't untie my shoe laces for next half hour is evidence enough for me that the movie was gripping. Now on to the actual review.

Like every other movie, book or comic series, I liked it because of the characters not as much for the story. This movie had pretty interesting and impressive characters. It doesn't take them long to establish themselves which makes the later part more enjoyable and less of figuring out. The two characters in particular that I felt were excellent were Hans Landa and Shosanna. It doesn't take Hans more than 5 minutes in his first scene to showcase his incisive intellect. Every scene where he is investigating (in most of his scenes he is) something, you can feel the chill of the knowledge that he knows it and is just playing till he opens it up. The only disappointing part would be the ending, was too lame for his character but  I guess they also wanted Brad Pitt to look better.

As for Shosanna, the super pretty chic, who seemed to have made peace with her misfortune, the transformation (for the viewer) was quick and edgy. These were the two characters that carried the movie for me and of course I liked the climax. In a lot of movies I feel letting a disaster happen would have had more impact than averting it, this one actually lets it, even though it turns the history on its head.

While we are on the subject, Kurbaan was one such movie where this disappointed me more than any other recent one. From the beginning I thought, the movie will end with Kareena dying and Saif living with guilt, a deserved punishment for his deeds.  But sadly, they kill Saif and let Kareena take all the pain of living through her life.

Buy it

This is one book I wouldn't pick up if I want to understand how the financial crisis unfolded over years. You would do well for yourself if you pick just about anything from net about it. However, I would recommend this book for it's human element. It is a book about the could have beens ultimately achieving something they always deserved or thought they deserved. I must warn you though, the numbers in the book will drive you crazy. I have thought a lot about what would be a good amount for me before I call it quits to active money making and the numbers in this book just drove me fuzzy.

Paulson has made $4 billion in two years. If he decides to retire in India with this money, a savings interest would fetch him 9 billion INR a year for his expenses while keeping his principle safe. The other fringe 'successful' players made few hundred million dollars.

Barring a few like Greg Lippman, who was a hotshot banker then and now, most others who benefited especially the ones on Paulson's team were exceptionally smart underachievers. It also goes on to show how, there are many moderate successes for every single luminous success in this industry. And then so much of it depends on chance apart from a lot of other great qualities in those individuals least of them is exceptional smarts which is a given just to get an entry anyway. It also shows, what can happen to people despite their brilliance if they are not in the right place at the right time with right people. The two key architects of Paulson show, he and Paulo Pellegrini were kind of past their sell by dates for their calibre. Paulo almost a failure and Paulson a moderate success, who had his share of brilliant bursts but was never acknowledged overall to a status he thought he deserved.  It wasn't like he just entered in the business, he has been around for may decades and yet it took this latest crisis to get to a place where he always wanted to be. And there must be thousands (if not tens of thousands) like him who never got their chance and faded away in twilight.

Paulson isn't retired yet and still talking about future as far as four years forward, shows he still has a lot of hunger left in him.

Overall it is an engaging read at most times and turned out to be a far easier read than I thought, the initial apprehension which caused me to delay my reading of this book for so long.

Just when I mentioned Facebook to be one of the tools for flaunting coolness, Himesh lent it extraordinary credibility by using it in his latest film "Radio". Now, in my list when it came to coolness Himesh could have only beaten Keshto Mukherjee. But surprise surprise, here he is, geared up with all the borrowed tools of coolness.

- First things first: He is on facebook in his movie
- He describes his relationship status as "its complicated"
- The film even talks about f** buddies, a term alien to most of us Indians till we started exporting our software and importing few of these concepts here
- He has named his heroine Shanaya which sounds like a real earnest attempt at coolness.
- Commitment phobia? I don't know if it existed so much in India, or may be it did but was never named. Let's face it we are not great at naming stuff. Go west, you have cuddle buddies, f* buddies, play mates for your kids, your locker room buddies etc. Everything that can be, is named.

Anyway, my labeling of Himesh's movie as an attempt at coolness may be premature and wrong. May be his movie might prove everything I wrote about to be relevant to the script or some such thing which basically rubbishes my opinion. But I won't worry about it now and will take my words back when that happens, till then keep facebooking.

It's been centuries since the concept of Fourth wall has been in existence. At home, you would see a Kader Khan talking to camera in his millions of comedies or a child Mithun in Muqaddar telling the camera - "meri ma hai lekin baap ka pata nahi, main harami hoon".

A little further, Marvel comics has a character who knows he is a comic book character! Most recently he was seen in X-Men Origins: Wolverine

I could never appreciate the fourth wall and subsequently its breaking until I saw it in action. It was one of those moments when I witnessed something remarkable unexpectedly, kind of an aha moment. I was part of an exercise where a play was staged, and then paused to get audience reactions. To my surprise the reactions from audience were met with reactions from the characters without them coming out of their characters. It was not a defense of non committal parties. They were vehement or mild defending their actions as those characters would have, but defended they all. The experience amazed me, the simplicity and effectiveness of the medium. Not to say, the message they were trying to drive came home easy and was thoroughly entertaining. To put it mildly, it was f***ing awesome.

There is no doubt about the movie being a super-hit owing to the box office collections it has garnered in a week. The movie has mostly received an above average rating from critics, but found a few very negative reviews on blogosphere, some of them from famous bloggers. The movie is receiving flak for the fact that it's a copy of a copy (tamil Ghajini which is 'inspired' by Memento), a second level copy.

Now I haven't seen Memento, so I don't really have much to comment on the extremely intelligent or complex plot it had. Nor could I appreciate how Ghajini in Hindi failed as opposed to the one in Tamil. So, my reaction to the movie is without any baggage or benchmark.

Overall as a potboiler, it delivered to its promise. I would be surprised if someone really thought it was going to be an accurate documentary on anterograde amnesia.

There are stupid moments (Air Voice's executive team saluting their MD on road) and some over the top scenes (like the "60 by 40 me chaddi wale poster" scene). The villain might have looked stupid and might be flawed in his plots or reactions. There are flying bodies, endured-without-a-flinch rod hits and much more unbelievable stuff. However, even before I entered the hall I wasn't expecting it to be a logically and technically accurate realistic movie. If you needed to watch the movie to realize this, you certainly wouldn't have understood the complex plot Memento had created (again this is on the basis of claims by people, no first hand experience on Memento).

The movie is meant to be a hyperbole in violence and you don't try and find logic and technical accuracy in the trajectory of bodies flying around. Nonetheless, Amir Khan building an almost impossible body for the film to lend credibility to action sequences is commendable. I thought as a masala movie, the action sequences were very well done. They weren't too realistic to be boring or too unbelievable that they look ridiculous (like flying and reaching to a roof). I don't know if those who criticize the unbelievable action would actually enjoy watching two guys rolling on the floor fighting, pulling each others' hairs and doing other believable stuff.

Much has been said about Asin's OTT portrayal, I would agree to some extent, but then a movie doesn't need to be perfect to be enjoyed. The un-concluded love story I think is one of the high points in the story transforming a common man literally into an animal.

I watched the 3.5 hours long movie, didn't get bored for a bit and enjoyed it thoroughly. It helped that I wasn't really trying to spot inaccuracies because I assumed they were there but didn't really matter.

(*******Spoiler warning*******)
Finally I finished this extremely lengthy book around eight years after I first picked it up. The popularity of the book is so high that I always wanted to read it but the sheer size discouraged me every single time. The movie based on this book with the same name was released in 1939 and adjusted for inflation is the biggest ever money spinner in the history of Hollywood. Equally popular is the dialog that features in every top x dialog list - "Frankly dear, I don't give a damn".

In fact, this dialog has a wiki page dedicated to it.

This is not a full fledged review, not even sure if its a review. However, I was a little let down by the bulk and the excessive details painted in the book. But on the positive side, since it is so detailed the characters and settings are just too real for you to feel.

The story revolves around two main characters Rhett and Scarlett. The bland, self assured, composed, calculated and shrewd Rhett Butler and earthy, vivacious, stubborn, insensitive, selfish yet strong Scarlett. I would have liked to see Rhett being more present in the book. He goes off again and again only to reappear a couple of hundred pages later.

The characters are shown in an honest light. The reactions/thoughts of Scarlett are so selfish that you can't help but hate her. Deep down, however, I think a lot of us think as perversely as she does.

The book is no love story as they would like to call it. Usually love stories end with happy or sad endings but the lovers generally keep loving each other till the end. Not this one, interestingly the book ends with them (one of them) falling out of love and parting their ways even though they remain married.

Overall, if you have a really long journey on the cards, you can keep this book handy.

Watch this for the climax and the after taste. This is a movie I watched 16 years too late, or may be not. It is quite possible that I would have hated this movie when it came out, partly because I wouldn't have understood it, thanks to my limited exposure to English during my growing years :-)

If someone is bored of watching the new movies or has exhausted everything else around, here is one movie you can try out.

Its a movie about a killer and it is as unglamorous as it could get for an assassin. Usually hit-man movies glorify the killer, show him as an agile, kick-ass and powerful shooter who goes on killing men like no other.

This one is different. This is about a weak and old killer well beyond his prime, who comes out of retirement because he needs money and sees a cause justified enough to kill. The most of the movie seemed like a drag until it reaches the climax. The movie labors on the point that being a good killer isn't about being faster, but about keeping your head steady in the face of a life-death situation.

The setting is old American, cowboy era with a brown and dusty look. The characters are all realistic, to the extent that the protagonist is shown to have difficulty riding his horse, and falls many times. He had a bout of illness and then a sound beating to boast of.

The last fifteen minutes of the movie however makes up for the lack of excitement throughout. What makes this movie is the memorable role by Clint Eastwood, as a killer who doesn't glorify killing a bit and goes about it as casually as you would go to your office. The complete disregard for everything else (things like not killing an unarmed man) when he is going for the kill is what gives it a realistic air.

It has a certain heaviness throughout that may stay with you even after it's over and don't miss the last 5 minutes when the credits roll for you will miss the superb, simple and serene background score.