mere-paas-oscar-hai dept.

Rehman chose to snub Big B very smartly, using the "Mere paas maa hai" line in his acceptance speech.
Killing them softly, indeed!!!
For the record, I liked Slumdog Millionaire.
People who disagree are invited to debate it out on chat with me, mano a mano.
One of us will leave the conversation having changed their mind.

oye-lucky-lucky-oye dept.

Not everyone can take on Steven Spielberg and Ridley Scott, and then outdo them.
Its unfortunate that an outstanding movie with great performances has to release at this time :(.
I hope everybody goes out and sees this one.

paisa-vasool dept.

Om Shanti Om is very nicely done, funny movie. Its about as nice as a cherubic little friend who makes your acquaintance, or a nicely satisfying backrub after a tiring day at the office.

So there. I don't have anything even mildly sarcastic to say about it.

When I was little I had a cassette tape of Naseeb, and my favorite song which I repeated ad nauseam, was John, Jaani, Janardan. OSO is the kind of movie that little kids today will grow up with, they will know the dialogues and the songs and 30 years from now, pot-bellied and balding, as they gather round for a few drinks and some pakoras, some of them might even trade a few laughs by reminiscing about it for old times sake.

meter-down dept.

Taxi no. 9-2-11 is an interesting little hot-rod of the Ben Affleck, Samuel L. Jackson vehicle Changing Lanes. Its well-made, the performances are good all-round. But...the climax. the climax jars. It was a bit like taking a Porsche to get the groceries.

I mean there is nothing feasibly, ethically, morally or legally inconsistent in doing so, but a Porsche parked in a supermarket parking lot just violates the beauty and symmetry of nature, don't you think?

two-movies dept.

I was visibly moved by Rang De Basanti. So much so that my wife had to restrain me from going out and doing something reallly stupid. When I calmed down after a dose of good old middle-class morality washed down with some excellent wine at the Swiss Cheese Garden, I finally saw through the sham, and now am back to writing code during the day, and kissing my powerbook goodnight every night.

C.S.Lewis wrote The Chronicles of Narnia. He was chums with JRR Tolkien, who wrote The Lord of The Rings. Both have been made into movies. I mean the books, of course. Actually, C.S.Lewis was also made into a movie once.

Narnia is unique, in its own way.

There are weird-looking creatures. There is a prophecy. The good guys have a mentor who dies and then is magically resurrected. A horn is sounded. There is a character who's very prim and proper and carries a quiver full of arrows. There is a battle at the end. There is a blonde guy reluctantly brandishing a shiny sword on a horse leading the good guys into said battle even though they are desperately outnumbered.

Only, he does not give a speech before doing this.

I really missed the speech.

when-harry-met-voldemort dept.

I saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire over the weekend.

I liked many things about this movie.

But most of all, I liked the imaginative, and highly original plot twist at the end.

*** WARNING: SPOILER ***

The evil villain Voldemort (a noseless Ralph Fiennes), not having much of a corporeal existence until now, proves he is a character of some substance after all.

This is followed by a climactic wand-duel between Potter and his nemesis in a graveyard, where Harry loses his balance at a cliff edge, and hangs on precariously, gripping onto a tenuous fistful of English lawn.

Voldemort, gloating over his fallen prey, grins and says:

"Dumbledore never told you who your real parents were, Harry".

Harry winces.

"He told me you betrayed and killed my parents."

"No. I am your father, Lu ... errr ... Harry."

"NN..NNN...Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo"

"Search your feelings, Harry, you know this to be true. Join me, and together, we shall rule the galaxy."

"The galaxy eh? You sure about that?"

"... errr ... I mean ... errr ... well, at least a rather substantial part of Islington."

mystic-redemption dept.

In Mystic River, Tim Robbins plays a man abducted by child molestors as a kid, who spends his adult life finding and beating up child molestors. In that movie, he is seemingly dispatched into Boston's Mystic River by a vengeance-seeking Sean Penn.

In Steven Spielberg's War Of The Worlds, however, we learn that he somehow made it out of the river, moved to the countryside, and found out that his abductors were actually Aliens from outer-space, planning a mass extermination of humanity. Now he waits, talking to his shotgun in a rickety old basement of a rickety old house, biding his time. Until of course, his old tormentors arrive to finish the job.

Then he runs into a guy who calls himself "Ray Ferry", who is actually Mitch McDeere, hiding under an alias -- he brought down The Firm, remember? Mitch is trying hard to pretend he is not a Yuppy, working at the docks, trying hard to look like a slacker, stretching out his perfect abs to simulate a beer belly that isn't there. He's gone underground, taken his older brother's first name (and also his persona, I might add ... but naah, Ray McDeere was way too cooler), and managed to lose his wife to a guy who's not afraid to show his yuppiness (also I don't think Abby really forgave him for that beachside romp in the Bahamas, and of course, for the fact that he got to cheat with a Penelope-Cruz lookalike hottie and she got to cheat with Gene Hackman. Although women are turned on by wealth and power, well, he's still Gene Hackman.)

Abby -- she's actually Eowyn in disguise, conferred immortality after an accident in the grasslands of the Riddermark with a Noldorin Elf and some spare Longbottom Leaf from Pippin's secret stash -- has now moved to Boston.

Meanwhile, all these strange goings on, with people hiding themselves under aliases, talking to their shotguns, Aliens digging themselves into the earth, only to come out of it, first zapping human beings with a death ray, then thinking it would be a good thing to drink their blood and spray the tri-state area with their intestines instead, all of these strange things have been foreshadowed by Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding. He was just fed up of fixing boats in Zihuatanejo is my guess. Besides, when one does too much voice-over work, one does get 'institutionalized'.

Homeland-Insecurity dept.

Lovable American Desi works like a mule, pouring bucketfulls of sweaty money into the American social security system (which he knows is going to give him a royal thengaa), only to find himself swindled out of an ethnic identity and emotional security. With great enterprise (and some steadfast support from his best buddy -- also a Desi), he extracts a two-week leave and returns to his Des for some spiritual R&R.

Aforementioned Desi is actually Shah-Rukh Khan in a Caravan, who in a subtle masterstroke is also simultaneously running a giant sleeper ad campaign for Phillip Morris Inc. Calmly he winds his way unobstructed through the idyllic countryside in search of his lost Aaaya. There he meets interesting, lovable, quirky people with some equally quirky problems. Also a really dapper school teacher (with what seems like an inexhaustible wardrobe of the best Kanjeevaram silk), who, after a still-born first impression, he manages to thaw into some edible state after a cleverly disguised item number masquerading as a Ram-Leela performance. Together they run amok reminding all those country bumpkins what bumbling fools they really are. The country bumpkins listen patiently, agree, then help Desi Dude build a neat-little science project.

The dude though, himself briefly dithers before he makes the obvious choice -- he dumps his silver Jag and a swanky apartment (with wooden flooring and designer plumbing!!!) plus a job managing a satellite that looks strangely like Space Shuttle Columbia for a lifetime of replenishing his Desi Ma'am's Kanjeevaram wardrobe.

Oh, and all the time he's away, best buddy faithfully handles his boss John Q.Something and covers for him with unselfish generosity. Like any other typical Desi, he covers his manager's ass without coveting his manager's job.

Right...

Sigh! If only real life could be that simple...

loss-for-words dept.

I don't know how I had never come across the Hrishikesh Mukherjee movie Satyakaam, despite having read so much about it. Ah, that statement was so naive! Haven't I often experienced the mysterious arrangements of nature as she, with an amused smile, moulds time, space and causality like a lump of clay?

It should suffice to say, then, that I have seen the movie, and am at a loss for words. Very few movies leverage the cinematic medium to the fullest extent, even fewer transcend it. This is surely one of them.

I shall say no more. This review has said it before me, more eloquently than I could ever have.