Analysing Movies

Rachit's post motivated me to go to the supposedly last Recreational Activity Forum ( RA F) movie.

The movie was Shehanshah.

Yes, yes I quite understand. The only well documented fact about this movie seems to be the monologue from the omnipresent savior of humanity, "Rishte mein to hum tumhare baap lagte hain, Naam hai Shehanshah"

But as I sat in the auditorium with several other mourners I realized that the character of Shehanshah is quite a smart chap. Not only has he a good sense of economy, he knows which role to play when. Now this is something lacking in Superheroes and many unsuccessful entrepreneurs.

He is a cunning chap. Police officer in the morning and a crime fighting superstar studded in black (with a steroid enhanced arm covered in silver) once the sun sets. He doesn't shy away from his duties nor does he give up on the money making opportunities that come his way. He takes bribes from the goons and pretends to be the stereotypical police officer, slacking on the job, chewing that pan which seems to replenish its juices on its own. But come dusk and he transforms into this mean crime fighting hirsute machine with an uber cool baritone.

So lets sum up Shehanshah then:

He acts like a lazy bum while on his day job, networking with high socialites and businessman and maintaining contacts and gathering enough information which he later uses to his advantage while he is "bustin' ass" in the night. He's earning decent too, with all those leather briefcases he's acquiring. And well its only fair, crime fighting is after all a job and why shouldn't one demand a compensation for one's services? The great thing here is that he's also portraying a clean image to the public.

And yes he gets the girl as well.

It had always been a curiosity of mine regarding the mode of income of Superheroes.

These are the Superheroes we need to worship, who have a keen eye for a good deal.

P.S: Meenakshi Sheshadri was surely well endowed back in the day.

This Week:

All thanks to Krishnan(for informing me about it), I won a 255 bucks Gift voucher from Odyssey( a book store in Hyderabad) for winning a quiz competition organised by the Hyderabad Quiz Club. The guy who partnered me, I don't quite remembered his name has to be the best quizzer in Hyderabad, all his guesses were hitting the bulls eye. JK's team came second( he was the quizmaster for OHT 07). Perfect way to end my stay in Hyderabad.

HP was unleashed and well...all who have read the book will agree with me when I say that well....we all sorta guessed the end didn't we?( barring a few flashbacks comprising the climax) and serious Albus Severus? Won't he be taunted by his little wizard buddies!

Pune seems to be one stop congregation of all urban college going junta. They seriously have an excess of them. They seem to be haunting every nook and cranny, infesting their wretched souls upon every kiosk, every counter, every table. Honestly, if you ever feel the absence of bright tee and dark jeans clad youth(especially feminine), you know where to head too.
Another thing about Pune, it acts like a slow poison with a burning after taste. The moment you land there(airport), you are greeted by lush greenery. Every hue of green is snugly arranged and it makes for a great viewing. A drive though this bio reserve is truly spectacular and then the reality rams up that tiny little orifice in your buttocks! People drive here to kill! The roads are magnificently adorned by extra deposits of tar which gives one an excuse to miss those rides in the amusement park. The not-so-lucky ones' tyres get stuck in the strategically located depressions. The perfect killjoy!
Pune is like the kid that wanted to be cool, but sorta lost his money.
But then there's a bright side to pune as well, they have some real nice eateries. Lovely bakeries that serve delectable savories. The cops are friendly. They are, atleast to a boy whom they catch sandwiched between two attractive women( he isn't aware that they are his cousins and wouldn't believe it either) at midnight, letting him go without any corporal punishment or sexual impairment( and no fine).
By convention every street MUST have an institution either spiritual or educational in nature catering to a medium or small proportion of people( some of which have to be foreigners, also by convention).
They have an amusing conversion system when it comes to autorickshaws, bodmas is extensively applied.
Conclusion:Pune is better than a lot of other places.

While in Pune, I also got to watch DIE HARD 4.0

The movie has to be the dumbest action flick I have seen. Okay Okay, I know that might have been like a massive slap across the moobs of you macho men but I can' help it. But hey, I never said it was a bad movie. It was very good, good in the sense that at any point of time, some one could walk into the hall and start watching the movie and yet not feel as though he's missed anything substantial. Computer genius not getting due credit for his mastermind project decides that its payback time and tries to bring the nation to a halt and cause a firesale. Wow! That's uber original!
Bruce Willis has done a commendable job in beating the cyber criminals( a chinki assasin included) to pulp, without even hurting his fists.I still feel the movie has been given tooo much hype, I'd watch Con-Air anyday.

And now in Delhi. its 2.34 AM and the people I want, aren't online. Might not update for a few days, or maybe the next post directly from Pilani.

Cya all there!

Harry Potter: The wait is over!

All around me I see people raving about how they were the chosen few to witness a phenomenon. The First Day First Show (FDFS) of the latest Harry Potter flick: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (OOTP). It’s almost as though the theaters could suddenly cater to a hundred fold extra audience just for this show. I am one of the few who got to watch it on the second day (by which time half the world had seen it)

J.K Rowling is surely having a gala time as the movie has shattered all box office records (just like all Potter movies do) and is raking in the moolah. It’s second in terms of first day earnings. Director David Yates took over from Mike Newell. And Wikipedia had this to say about the movie

Rowling wrote on her website on 19 december, 2006 that she was given a 20-minute preview of the film, which "looks fantastic"; after seeing the final product, she proclaimed the film "the best yet". Unlike some authors, Rowling has consistently offered her praise for the film adaptations of her work

Having seen all the Potter movies, except the Prisoner of Azkaban( for which I have to whip myself considering I feel it has the best climax of all the Potter books), I can vouch for the fact that this one has the best special effects, an aspect of the movie which has received unprecedented publicity. But then the reviews have been mixed. I agree to some extent with some of them. It’s a book about magic and magical worlds; sadly there isn’t much of magic in this one. The jokes are a lot more subtle, though not many.

Some other things which I noticed:

Personally I didn’t like Emma Watson in this one. Okay Okay I know I am going to have stones pelted at me for that but then hey…it’s my personal view. I preferred the cute Hermione from the first movie. People grow up I know. However almost everyone who’s seen the movie is totally mesmerized by her, so it’s probably just me.

I completely loved Imelda Staunton for her portrayal of Dolores Umbridge. She was flawless. With the Ministry’s backing and the power of pink, she simply stole the show. For me, the movie was all about her. Every dialogue she delivered those perpetual giggles and the style. Marvelous!

Luna Lovegood, played by Evanna Lynch was another spectacular role. She was so cute and so…erm…loony, as it is supposed to me. It’s almost as though she was meant to speak in riddles and was living in this endless dream sequence

Grawp was adorable, really cute and shit. But something about him struck me.

Does he resemble someone else we know?

And seriously, they have to make Voldemort scary.

This cannot be the ultimate face of terror which is supposed to freak the hell out of everyone, so much so that people shudder to utter his name.

Nor this

I get a feeling that he was made intentionally made to look like a douche so that children (who actually believed in works of fiction) wouldn’t piss in their pants.

I think most people loved the movie even more so because of the disaster of the previous one, which was in plain words: Boring!

This one thankfully has enough lines for everyone (well almost), unlike Goblet of Fire where everyone had a word limit of around 50 words.

Most hardcore Potter fans will love the movie despite its minor glitches here and there, though some people are rather shocked at some details not matching with the book. It was a 700 page book and a two hour movie, come on! Some parts just had to be edited and reframed, get over it and enjoy the movie for the other stuff. All in all I’d say; go watch it, definitely worth a watch.

Digging the Past

One of Jolies earliest movies. Hackers!
The first time I saw it, my reaction:
Whathaaa!
Followed by a roaring laughter!

My days in Bangalore have been quite relaxing and I think I have exceeded my sleep quota(if ever there was one) by a massive margin. Finally the D-day has almost arrived and its tomorrow. Sonam, a close pal from BITS has also come to head bang(though I dont kinow how much of that can be done with Steven Tyler singing) with us fellow rockers and spent the entire day with us. A substantial part of it went watching the movie "Shootout at Lokhandwala" and well...what can I say I was impressed.

The movie is from the White Feather production house, which was co-founded by Sanjay Dutt. The movie says that it was based on true rumours and that it was. Closely connected to the Mumbai Blasts and Dawood Ibrahim and other superstar tags, the movie was rather entertaining. Just one thing, there seemed to be no twist in the tale. Its like, fine , agreed, its cool and all, killing dozens of people and wasting excessive amounts of bullets but there is no twist. But my oh my was I excited.

I realised its probably because of the background music.

Damn, they hype it up so much. Everytime, Vivek Oberoi starts smoking a cigerette or pops a cap in someone's head(thats nigger for shooting someone down), this really cool music starts playing in the background, without which the act would seem..quite bland. And then there is this choir that starts giving backing vocals and its like, oh my god, killing people is like so cool, even though you know what they are doing actually happened and its outright illegal and wrong.
The movie quite clearly tells you the repercussions of being an outlaw and more importantly, messing around with higher powers(such as larger dons living in dubai) can really screw matters and end up with you getting killed. You're much better off being a sycophant.
The incidents are apparently mostly real( I verified that by wiki-ing and googleing for over 2-3 hours). The career graph of Maya Dolas, the notorious gangster played by Vivek Oberoi can be plotted and is something like this

Co-incidentally this is also the Stress vs Strain Graph of a untypically brittle material as shown on Wikipedia.
The movie has a nice tempo and there is not a single moment when you feel bored, just that the director has a wonderful way of pissing the audience by sneaking in two item numbers without any meaning and which are totally irrelevant to the plot thus giving the movie its aesthetic value. Also, Tushar Kapoor must be the funniest hit-man ever. The director has really tried to make him look like a macho-man, but has miserably failed much to my amusement.

However, after wiki-ing about the Lokhandwala shootout, I stumbled upon ULHASNAGAR. Its apparently a major gangster town and its sarcastically said(though has known to be true) that there are killings in this town on every tuesday. Surprisingly the literacy rate of this town is 80%(according to the 2001 census), when the national average was only 60%.

I've got my holidays going on. And what better way to spend them than to watch movies. I've started watching Hindi ones. I started off with MAHAL.
Its a 1940's thriller.
Let me first give you the gist of the movie and don't worry I wont give out the plot as I've been doing so far for the last few movies that I've written about.
The movie has Ashok Kumar, Madhubala and a Mansion starring in it.
Shanker has recently acquires a mansion at a govt. auction. Upon reaching there he gets the low down on the folk lore about the Haveli. According to this, the builder of the house dies soon after building it. His fiance can't bear the shock and dies thereafter. Shanker sees the painting of the builder and is shocked to find out that he's a clone. As the clock strikes two he hears a lady singing, whom he cannot initially see. He truly believes that he is the reincarnation of the builder and that they are meant for each other. What follows next is an obsession. He goes totally crazy thinking about her. Every night he is hypnotised by the song of the dame. He gets married to another lady. She has a hard time with her man considering that he is mesmerised by another woman.
She soon starts going insane and complains to the police about his husbands ongoing flings. Watch the movie to know what happens next.
What I enjoyed the most about the movie was the simplicity of the plot. Its wasnt anything fancy, but it gripped the viewer for the entire 2 and a half hours that the movie was playing. The cinematography was out of this world. Black and white truly is the way to go for horror flicks and thrillers, given that the camerawork is good.
Also, let me confess that I am truly in awe of Madhubala's beauty. She had the sweetest most beautiful face of her era if not of all time. ALL she had to do to get me addicted to her was to raise one eyebrow and deliver a dialogue. I vow to watch as many movies of her as I can in these holidays.
The music of the movie too is quite splendid. Yes! This is the movie which has the Lata Mangeshkar classis "Aaayega Aayega Ane wala...".

Casino Royale is the latest Bond movie.
Bond movies have that charm associated with it. Something is so cool, so sexy and so suave about these movies.
So how did I feel after seeing this one? In one word: Strange. Strange good? Strange bad? Umm..I really don't know, just plain strange.Right coming to the point. Bond movies is mostly about the gadgets and the girls. If you remove either one of them the movies becomes too bland.
This movie had hardly any gadgets. A watch was just a watch, an Omega yes ofcourse, but all it did was show time. A phone was only but a phone, used to make outstation calls and send messages. No knives coming out from sleeves, no camouflaged cars, no cameras in a pen. Even a gun is used in the most primitive way, like a stone, used to hit masses. It was sort of very bollywoodish with a lot of Dishum dishum, running around construction sites and very little sex.
The bond girls too! Very disturbing. Ok Eva Green was decent, but the other latino one whose name I cannot remember was hardly mention-worthy.
The movie shows the scenario when Bond has been just assigned with the 00 status (the 00 in 007 means license to kill). There is this dude Le Chiffre, who is a sort of safekeeper for terrorists. He plans to blow up a plane, the largest of its kind on the Miami Airport, Bond stops this. Now to recover the losses associated with the plan failing, Le Chiffre organises a Poker game in Texas. Bond somehow manages to get inot the playing 8. Now Bond has to somehow win the game, thus making Le Chiffre bankrupt, thus busting his tushy because then the scum of the earth will be after his ass. Le chiffre will have to seek refuge and MI6 will capitalise on this.
The plot as such is very un interesting and to some interesting confusing.
Daniel Craig. What's with having a blond Bond? And whats with that body? He makes Pierce Brosnan look like a stick with genitals. The acting as such was quite ordinary. The movie induces several yawns, especially during the 2nd show. The director Martin Campbell, who co-incidentally also directed former Bond movie Goldeneye, decided to make this movie very realistic, as in Bond was stripped of his demi-god status(which one probably acquires when one is made a double O). However that sort of disappointed me. Bond isn't supposed to be realistic. He isn't supposed to have blood stains, he isn't supposed to be held captive. He is supposed to fight villians in a suit and leave the scene without a scratch. He is supposed to RIDE his cool car, not faint in it. Everyone has been marvelling about the fact that the realistic bond is cool awesome, how they love Daniel Craig, well I miss Mr. Brosnan.
But then on second thought, maybe thats just me.

I just saw one of the coolest movies ever ade, or atleast thats what I thought of it.
Pulp Fiction.
Tarantino is god. He is a genius with the camera. The way the movie was made, the way how the lives of different people merge together, the way it ALL makes sense finally. It's brilliant!
Here is a dialogue from the movie which I feel just has to be put up on my blog.
Its the character of Samuel L Jackson, Jules. Here goes:


There's a passage I got memorized. Ezekiel 25:17. The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness. For he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you. I been sayin' that shit for years. And if you ever heard it, it meant your ass. I never really questioned what it meant. I thought it was just a cold-blooded thing to say to a motherfucker before you popped a cap in his ass. But I saw some shit this mornin' made me think twice. Now I'm thinkin': it could mean you're the evil man. And I'm the righteous man. And Mr. 9mm here, he's the shepherd protecting my righteous ass in the valley of darkness. Or it could be you're the righteous man and I'm the shepherd and it's the world that's evil and selfish. I'd like that. But that shit ain't the truth. The truth is you're the weak. And I'm the tyranny of evil men. But I'm tryin', Ringo. I'm tryin' real hard to be a shepherd.

Lagey Raho Munna BhAI
V for Vendetta
Forrest Gump
The Shawshank Redemption
Saw 1
Saw 2
Lost in Translation
The Italian Job
Euro Trip
Lucky Number Slevin
3 of these I wasnt seeing for the first time.
Apart from this numerous episodes of South Park, Scrubs and Clips that are objectionable to society(need I mention more?)

This pretty much sums it up. The last 3 days have been entertaining afterall.