Confessions Of A Dangerous Kind

This blog is...

2007-10-06T10:55:00.000-07:00

... no longer being updated by me. Please use email to contact me for any issues related to this blog. My email address is santosh dot shankar at gmail dot com.

Very disappointing Superman Returns

2006-06-28T17:26:00.000-07:00

I can honestly say I have never felt more letdown by a movie than this one! Bryan Singer, what have you done?

"It's the end of the World Cup as we know it...

2006-06-23T08:10:00.000-07:00

...and I don't care?"

Ever since USA's 1 - 2 loss to Ghana yesterday, the TV news channels here seem to have reached an agreement to pretend there is no World Cup football going on anymore! If you watched any of them today, you would be led to believe that so devastated are the other teams by the "shock" exit of a team which ended up scoring only 1 goal in the tournament that they have decided to pack their bags and head home as well, effective ending the WC...until 2010!

Or alternately, Group E with USA, Ghana, Italy and Czech Republic was apparently the only group in this year's World Cup. Just for a lark, the organizers decided to have a group phase with only one group in it and named that group after the fifth letter in the alphabet. Yes, that makes much more sense.

Annoying WC coverage

2006-06-10T11:24:00.000-07:00

A rant

So I am at work following the Germany - Costa Rica game online. Six goals are scored, two of them absolute crackers according to the text commentary at BBC. As soon as the game finishes I immediately head home to catch highlights and hopefully even a short post-match analysis. But, no! The first thing that the jackasses broadcasting the WC here want to talk about is the US soccer (no damn it, its football) team, its world cup performances historically, how they played in the last cup, their percentage of wins there, their star players, their opponents, their team colours, father's birthdays, pet peeves, favorite songs and every rot imaginable! This goes on for an atrocious half-hour right after the game before they finally condescend to show me 30 seconds of highlights from the Germany game!

Alright, I get it! No US men's national team does well at the international stage, not baseball, basketball, ice-hockey or any such thing. SO, ok, it is a reasonably big deal that they've made it here. And they are a pretty good team too, in my opinion, entertaining, good offence etc. But do you have to go on yapping about it? Their first game is on Monday, talk about it then or on Sunday night, not after every game, especially without showing highlights first!

Then there was today's England - Paraguay game on ABC. Being an England fan, I had gotten up reasonably early for a Saturday to watch it. About 15 - 20 mins before the game, I turn on the TV looking for the buildup, the singing of the anthems, the fans roaring in anticipation, the players in the tunnel, waiting to run on to the field. But, no! ABC, not being a regular sports broadcaster, would rather treat this match as an inconvenient intruder into its weekend TV shows. So, they start coverage only from the kickoff, not a second earlier! And to top it all, I was forced to watch the channel's fluffy early morning news show which covered, among other things, and I swear I'm not making this up, a donkey born on 6-6-6!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Are you friggin' kidding me?????

Mozilla, Wikipedia & Google: Changing the world...

2006-04-16T11:36:00.000-07:00

...wide web (atleast)

Does anyone really use IE anymore? And does anyone really not "Google" something? And these days Google pretty much lands you in Wikipedia everytime, doesn't it?

Ok, I guess quite a few people still use IE but its mostly because they don't know what they are missing. Mozilla Firefox appears to be all about tabbed browsing but its actually more about some absolutely cracking extensions. Ever use IE and think, "Man, I wish they had this feature". Well, Firefox probably has that feature as an extension already. The moral is if you desparately want something it's highly likely that a few others do too and atleast one of them knows how to put that into code.

The list of must-have extensions grows (extends, you might say) by the day. Right now the ones I have, which I'd classify as must-have are:

1. Google Toolbar - Not just convenient to google something but also enables you to highlight occurances of each word in your search string in a webpage. Of course, this is also available in IE.

2. Ad-block - Blocks Ads ("Duh!") and allows you to specify your own ad filters (For example, you can say you want to block all ads from "adsever.com" or any of its numerous clones)

3. Tab Mix Plus - Probably the most ingenious extension here, one that truly harnesses the power of Firefox. With TMP, you can, among other things, reopen a tab you accidently closed and save a multi-tabbed session so that all tabs can be loaded if you are forced to exit and restart Firefox. Has saved me a lot of heartache!

4. NoScript - Enabled you to block all JavaScripts, those malicious pieces of code that chew up performance! Damn them all!

There are of course a ton of other nifty extensions but I'd recommend you don't overdo it and end up like this. And one Firefox feature which not many people seem to know is the ability to open a link in a new window/tab by middle-clicking on it (Oh, you knew that one already?)

But I said Mozilla didn't I, not just Firefox: the other Mozilla product I use is their email client Thunderbird. Fed up with the resource-hogging Outlook and the not-too-great Netscape email client, both of which like to start up in super-slo-mo, I switched last year to the light-weight Thunderbird. And it has not been a disappointment. While it doesn't offer any ground-breaking new features, it simplifies your life by posessing a very neat and clean interface and a built-in calendar. It also has a nice method to create "Search Folders" and a good Junk mail filter. Oh, it has its school of extensions too, but so far nothing extra-ordinary.

Whew, just realize that this write-up has gone on for too long. Will follow up later!

Inside Man's Chaiyya Chaiyya sandwich

2006-03-30T15:31:00.000-08:00

Now that's what I call music!

Spike Lee's bank robbery movie Inside Man grabs your attention right from frame 1 (in fact, right from the time the Universal Studio's logo comes on) by playing A.R. Rahman's Chaiyya Chaiyya (from Dil Se) over its opening credits! Sadly, this is not complemented by Clive Owen and Jodie Foster dancing on top of a train, though no one's complaining especially since the song is played once again for the closing credits! Even better is the fact that in both cases the song is played in full with only some minor remixing thrown in.

The movie itself is full of surprises like that, not generated by the plot but rather with sharp and incredibly witty exchanges of dialogue between the major characters or the Players, as Lee likes to call them. It is quite reminiscent of Dog Day Afternoon in that this is one heist movie that should be classified as character-driven, rather than plot-driven which, while we are it, is riddled with holes. No single person in this story is a one-dimensional cardboard cutout, a plot-device, the typical Hollywood stereotype; each one seems real, with his own backstory and personality, all of it captured very efficiently in the dialogue. This is one special movie!

V for Terrorism? Not really!

2006-03-20T19:09:00.000-08:00

The debate over V for Vendetta

After watching V for Vendetta over the weekend, I was quite surprised to realize that the majority of reviews I'd read about the movie which criticized it for glorifying terrorism were quite misleading. Let me explain:

Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith from The Matrix) stars as the enigmatic character known only as V in this film adaptation of a 1980s comic book series that was written to protest the excesses of the Thatcher administration in Britain. It is set in a futuristic Britain where a totalitarian government is in power led by the ruthless (and seriously scary) Chancellor Sutler (John Hurt) who seems to be a composite of Hitler, Stalin, Dubya and Big Brother. Into this society, where freedom of speech is curtailed and secretive police wield unimaginable power, steps V who kick-starts his revolution by blowing up the Old Bailey one night. He then gives an ultimatum to the government and the people that in exactly one year's time he will be blowing up the British Parliament house.

The key words here are "night" and "ultimatum". Though V's acts can be classified as terrorism, the fact is no innocent person is killed as a result of his actions. By blowing up the Bailey at night and pre-warning the public about his intentions for the Parliament, he obviously ensures that no one will be inside those buildings when they explode. It is, hence, disingenuous to call him a terrorist because in the present world order a terrorist is one who deliberately kills innocent people. V is not one of them and the movie does not glorify terrorism!

Funnily enough, a few hours after I caught V in the theater, I happened to watch Gandhi, Richard Attenborough's 1982 masterpiece, on DVD! Two movies that are so different from each other yet share the common theme of attaining freedom from a suppressive British government. And among the two, V's approach seems to have yielded better results as he manages to unite the people in a (seemingly) successful revolution in the short period of one year. Gandhi? Well, it took a while, didn't it? :)

Between a Rock and a Crystal

2006-03-08T08:39:00.000-08:00

Jon Stewart's performance as Oscar host

Well, what about the Oscars this time, huh? Jon Stewart, the one reason I watched the Oscars for this time, was, I felt, slightly uneven and seemed unnaturally subdued. Some of his bits like the attack ads ("Dames For Truth!" Hilarious!) and his DIck Cheney - Bjork joke were killers but others like his initial intro sequence and the whole Tom-Hanks-getting-attacked-by-orchestra-for-long-speech were quite poorly done. And doling out personal attacks on movie stars (the Baldwin brothers crack and the Scientology thing) are certainly not his style. He himself appeared quite embarassed for making those jokes!

The other metric of an Oscar host's performance is his or her ability to ad-lib. In this, Stewart ranked way ahead of Chris Rock last year for keeping his on-the-spot jokes tasteful and without anything deroogatory (like Rock belitting Jude Law and Colin Farrell). In this, he was also better than Steve Martin who in 2002 (I think) kept picking on Russell Crowe for some reason. But the master of ad-libbing is certainly Billy Crystal. I still remember him in 2004 the year when "Return of the King" kept winning every award. "It's official," he intoned, "there is no one left in New Zealand to be thanked!", followed by, "People are moving to New Zealand just to be thanked!" Priceless stuff!

The award winners themselves, no surprises there except the big one, of course. Crash winning Best Picture was always on the cards I felt. Roger Ebert predicted just that and he's usually good at the guessing game (Last year, in his review for Million Dollar Baby he stated with utmost conviction that it would win the Oscar. Uncanny!) I personally thought that while Crash was an extremely powerful movie, the plot was essentially an algorithm that kept repeating over and over again. Syriana was better with its interweaving of story lines and by not being over-simplistic it played out like an adult version of Crash. Pity it didn't even get nominated! Anyway, it was worth Crash winning just to see the expression on Jack Nicholson's face when he read it out. "Whoa!" Hilarious!

A terrific Pride & Prejudice

2006-02-20T19:20:00.000-08:00

For people who are fans of the book, P & P is a must-see! Fantastic performances all around with pitch-perfect casting! Standouts include Donald Sutherland who captures the dry humor in Mr. Bennet perfectly and Matthew Macfadyen who oozes class as Mr. Darcy. While Darcy from the book is not someone exceptionally difficult to visualize, Macfayden convinces you that he was what Jane Austen had in mind when she wrote the book.

The minor characters leave an impression too. In fact, its quite incredible how you remember pretty much each and every person from this movie. Simon Woods brings a nice stoner turn to the role of Mr. Bingley, the romancer of the eldest Miss Bennet. Even funnier is Tom Hollander's portrayal of the clergyman, Mr. Collins, as someone who thinks spontaneity is a curse! His introductory scene at the Bennet dinner table where he enthusiastically suggests that the family convene after dinner to listen to his sermons for, oh, 2 hours, is delivered with uncanny comic timing!

That leaves the women and I don't know, I felt that they all played their roles adequately without trying to do too much more. Keira Knightly's tom-boyish Elizabeth doesn't manage to disguise her beauty while Rosamund Pike (Miranda Frost from Die Another Day) is satisfyingly glowing as Jane. And of course, if ever a British film is in need of a haughty aunt/grandmother/queen there's always Judi Dench who here plays a haughtly noblewoman by the name of Lady Catherine de Bourg. She probably did her lines in this movie when she was on break from Shakespeare in Love/The Importance of Being Earnest/Gosford Park. Nothing against her but you know what I mean! At least once they should get someone totally unexpected for this role. Like Keira Knightly :)

The Dark Side of Oz

2006-01-31T12:31:00.000-08:00

Did you know that if you played Pink Floyd's stunning album, Dark Side of the Moon, over the classic movie, The Wizard of Oz, they sync amazingly with each other? I didn't either until a few days back when the creatively titled Dark Side of Oz was shown here in Purdue.

The movie was played without sound while the Floyd album was started precisely at the end of the third roar of MGM studio's lion. It takes a while for the syncing to kick in: The first clear bit of evidence, for me at least, was when Dorothy looks up at the sky after belting out the first of her songs and as the sun tries to peek through closing clouds, a sound akin to thunder (at the end of "Speak to me") plays. Next, as Dorothy argues with her aunt and uncle about Toto, she moves from one person to the next seemingly in sync with the rhythm of "Time". This only lasts for a little while though.

More amazingly, "The Great Gig in the Sky" runs exactly as Dorothy's house is being spun around by the tornado, ending right when it lands. And just when Dorothy opens the door to the (colored) Oz, "Money" starts and its funky opening beats appear to reflect her awed mindset as the camera pans over the various visuals of the magical world. One other telling detail is when the lyric "The lunatic is in the grass" from "Brain Damage" comes on right after the Scarecrow gets down from his perch and begins dancing.

Though there are quite a few more extraordinary coincidences (for a full list, see here or just google "Dark Side of Oz") the whole things starts to wear thin by the time the album finishes and has to be restarted not just once, but twice (The album has to be played roughly two-and-a-half times to cover the whole movie). During the second and third time, you do notice a few other details, if you're still paying attention, that is.

Of course, the weirdest, though rather obvious, aspect to all this is the fact that Pink Floyd never designed their album to be related in any way to the movie, though Roger Waters seems to be the only one to have officially responded to any questions on the matter. That there are so many similarities between the two, definitely more than you'd expect between two random works of art, is a question best left to conspiracy theroticians!

Busy start to new semester

2006-01-21T11:48:00.000-08:00

Just realized that it's been more than two weeks since my last post! The hustle and bustle of catching up with work and settling in to the new semester here has kept me from doing anything exciting, let alone write-up something about it! There are also hardly any good movies in the theater now but I must say, the thrilling NFL playoffs have more than made up for it!

Being in Indiana, I support the good ol' Indianapolis Colts, a team which this season has performed much like India did in the 2003 cricket World Cup. In the regular season, the Colts were 14 - 0 at one point, i.e. 14 wins out of 14 games and were looking to be only the 3rd team to go the playoffs with a perfect 17 - 0 record. But alas, 14 - 0 ened up as 15 - 2, and soon a slightly shaky Colts were up against the indomitable Pittsburg Steelers in the second round of the AFC Divisional playoffs. (Playoff games are in knockout format)

And what a game it was! After playing outplayed in the first 3 quarters, the Colts came back strongly in the last, making the plays happen when they absolutely had to! And so it ended up, with around 5 minutes to go, the score was 10 - 21, Colts trailing, but importantly, had posession. The ideal scenario for the Colts was a touchdown + coversion (8 points), get the ball back quickly from the Steelers and score a field goal (3 points) to send the game into overtime.

And then disaster struck! Colts' quarterback Peyton Manning's pass was intercepted and it looked like game over! But no, the validity of the interception was questioned and though video replays clearly showed that it was legal, the refree inexplicably overturned it! The Colts got back the ball, scored the 'down followed a conversion making the score 18 - 21.

And then, things continued going to plan for the Colts. The Steelers were hardly allowed to move the ball and the Colts got back posession with around two and a half mintues left. All they had to do now was get into field goal range and turn the ball over to their kicker who had a 100% record for the season!

But Manning was not able to deliver, got repeatedly sacked and the Steelers ended up with the ball at the Colts 2 yard line! One and half minutes to go! Now it was definitely game over as a few disappointed fans began streaming out of the stadium.

But no! The Steelers, in an attempt to score a touchdown to make the result beyond question, fumbled the ball which was picked up by Nick Harper of the Colts who ran it 35 yards which was incredible given that he had been cut with a knife earlier in the day during an altercation with his wife! Mind-blowing!!

The Colts then managed to run the ball up a few yards and set it up for a 46-yard field goal attempt with around 20 seconds to go. And now came the final act of the game, the final layer of icing so to speak! The Colts kicker missed the field goal attempt and missed badly as the ball went way, way to the right! And that was the end!

Hearbreak for Colts! Celebration for the Steelers! If thie was cricket, the Colts would be "chokers".

Jon Stewart hosting the Oscars?!

2006-01-05T09:35:00.000-08:00

Woh! The LA Times reports that everyone's favorite fake news anchor, the smartest funny man or the funniest smart man on television, Jon Stewart, is going to be hosting the Oscars in 2006! Does this mean that the Academy is finally getting its act together? Who knows, they might actually end up awarding Oscars to deserving performances this time around! Now, that would be something!

For a memorable Jon Stewart performance, watch how he takes down the obnoxious host of the ex-CNN show Crossfire here. That show was cancelled shortly after this and the points that Stewart makes during his appearance here were reportedly an important factor in that decision!

And here is the link to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central. These folks are kind enough to put up clips from each show online. Bravo!

A jaw-dropping Kong and a bewtiching Narnia

2005-12-23T21:55:00.000-08:00

No outright winner in this battle of the CGI beasties

"Get your hands off my girl!" So seems to be roaring Aslan from Narnia to King Kong

I went to Peter "Lord of the Rings" Jackson's King King with admittedly low expectations! Given the uninteresting trailer and the notion of going gooey-eyed at an unlikely interspecies romance between an even more unlikely giant gorilla and a beaut like Naomi Watts, boy, was I looking foward to spending a miserable 3 hours in the theater! And boy, was I wrong!

Kong is a rip-roaring adventure movie that gets every thing just right without ever feeling overdone or cliched! Just when you feel how awkward its going to be to watch anymore of the tender moments between Ann Darrow (Watts) and King Kong, we cut over to a sensational action sequence. Just when we can take no more of that darn Skull Island, back to New York we go! Ann is no slouch either; unlike most annoying movie ingenues who enjoy walking into danger and paralyzing with fear just when they need to get the hell away, she makes all the right moves, keeping her head in tense situations and hesistating for just the right amount of time when playwright Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody) arrives to rescue her from Kong! Bravo!

The story is pretty much the same as the 1933 original: fim crew goes to unknown island; lead actress captured by natives and laid out as sacrifice for big gorilla who instead falls in love, gets captured and shipped to New York, escapes, climbs to the top of the Empire State Building and gets killed by airforce planes! Jackson fills the gaps with mind-boggling special effects, including a sequence in a insect-filled pit that is the stuff of your worst nightmares! The best CGI is of course Kong himself, animated in much the same way as Gollum in LOTR was and using the same actor, Andy Serkis, for the process. The movie, however, wouldn't have been remotely the same without the services of Naomi Watts who seems to be able to bring such conviction to any role she plays (watch her in Mulholland Drive and 21 Grams) that its a wonder she's not drowning in Oscars (she does have an outside chance for this role)!

While Kong tries to overwhelm us with its technical wizardry, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe sort of nuzzles up to us using the charm of four British children, who are whisked off to the magical kingdom of Narnia located on the other side of the titular wardrobe. Narnia is ruled over by the evil White Witch, Jadis (a creepy Tilda Swanton) who has doomed the region to permanent winter with no Christmas (kinda how I feel about the weather here. Brrrrr!). The Pevensies, Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy, discover that it is their destiny to liberate Narnia from the witch's clutches (little rhyme there!) and in this quest they are helped by various magical creatures that include fauns, centaurs, talking beavers and most importantly, the all-knowing Lion king, Aslan (voiced by Liam Neeson).

Similar to King Kong, Aslan is also completely CGI, though, however unfair it sounds, nowhere near the same level. While the latter is all but flawless, he is no match for the finesse of Kong, his worn, grizzled exterior, his pot belly and most of all his tragically human facial expressions. This is further exacerbated by the poor pacing in the middle portion of Narnia where not enough time is spent in developing the personality of Aslan; I remember more about the White Witch to be honest!

Where Narnia triumphs though is in the utter lovability of the children especially Georgie Henley as Lucy, the youngest of the Pevensies. There is a scene she has with a faun, Mr. Tumnus (James McAvoy), when she first enters Narnia, that hits a pitch perfect note of sweetness. William Moseley plays Peter, the eldest, with admirable earnestness as he tries to shoulder a burden he feels too young for. Then there is Edmund (Skandar Keynes), the bad egg in the family, who with his big eyes gives an exceptionally intense perforrmance as the traitor who betrays his family for some Turkish delight! All solid stuff!

Narnia ran into some controversy before its release here because of its none-too-implicit Christian subtext, so intended by the author of the books on which the movie is based, C.S. Lewis. The short answer to those who find this worrysome is this: The movie has as much Christianity in it as the book has and it will overwhelm the movie only if you want it to!

Syriana

2005-12-11T17:51:00.000-08:00

Where oil is power

Spot the good guy!

Stephen Gaghan's Syriana probably has the mother of all complicated plots I've ever seen in a movie. It can in some ways be considered the oily brother of Steven Soderbergh's Traffic which Gaghan wrote the screenplay for. While the latter was about the war on drugs, this one is about the war for oil, about what some people will do for oil and how oil is the black God of power in the world, whether we like it or not.

The movie revolves around four basic sub-plots each of which is connected to one or more of the others. An American oil company, Connex, which has just lost drilling rights in a Middle Eastern country to "the Chinese", wants to merge with another American company, Killen, which has just been awarded rights in Kazakhstan. A Washington attorney, Bennett Holiday (Jeffrey Wright) is hired by Connex to discover if there is anything shady about Killen that could affect the merger. Two Pakistani men, oil workers for Connex in the Middle East are laid off from their jobs due to the Chinese takeover, making them susceptible to extremist Islamic ideas.

Meanwhile, reform minded Prince Nasir (Alexander Siddig), the one who sold the drilling rights to the Chinese ("They were the highest bidder!", he mentions indignantly) finds American pressure is making his father, the Emir, pass the crown to his younger, pro-Western, brother. Matt Damon plays an energy analyst in Geneva whose son is drowned by accident during a party at the Emir's residence and finds his company awarded business opportunities as an apology, much to the chagrin of his wife who (rightly) feels that their son's life has been traded for money. Further, realizing that Damon shares his reformist notions, Prince Nasir hires him as a financial advisor.

And finally, finally, we come to George Clooney's character, Bob Barnes, a CIA agent whom you would find in the dictionary under the entry "grizzled veteran", finding himself sold out by his superiors after a botched assasination job on Prince Nasir. It is difficult to call Clooney the hero of this picture, though he is certainly the biggest name in there. In truth, there is no hero in this one, good seems to be a relative state, as the wanton hunger for oil supercedes every other consideration.

Clooney, though, clearly played his heart out for this role, reportedly gaining 30 pounds to become the beefy Barnes. This weight gain proved to be tragic during filming for him where repeated takes of a gruesome torture sequence caused him to injure his spine, requiring surgery and medication. While he certainly is at the very heart of the picture, it is Prince Nasir who IS the heart. His well-written role of an idealistic reformer with the odds stacked against him gives him plenty of good lines which he delivers like he belives in them! Look into his big round eyes and you WILL believe!

One of the movie's strong points is an amazing feel of realism. There is a great scene where some Pakistani oil workers are playing cricket and a god-awful batsman swings hard and misses each time! There is also a recurring theme of father-son relationships going bad, seeming to suggest the greed for oil undermines the most basic values. What is also suggested is the utter helplessness of the characters involved when the decisons are made by a higher power and disparate events are connected to each other in unimaginable ways; you become a pawn against your will and knowledge! The higher power could be the extremist leaders, the heads of oil companies or superiors at the CIA! Oil comes first; everything else is second. And that is the message of Syriana!

NOTE: I looked up the meaning of "Syriana" in an online encyclopedia and here is what came up:

Pax Syriana: (Latin for "Syrian peace", modelled after "Pax Romana" and "Pax Britannica") refers to a time of relative peace in Lebanon maintained by Syrian hegemony and enforced by the Syrian army. The term may also be used negatively to refer to Syria's imperialist ambitions in Lebanon.

I take it that in this movie it refers to illusions of propriety created by those working for oil-interests.

ICC Update

2005-12-03T11:29:00.000-08:00

November 28: End of India - South Africa ODI series

India pull of a convincing victory against Suid Afrika to draw the series 2 - 2 and take the ICC on an upswing again! Seeing as that India now begin a test series against the Lankans (which is off to a water-laden beginning), I will see if I can come up with a system to include Test matches and ODI's in the same chart. Till then, enjoy this nice indicator of India's inconsistency over the last two series!

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What is the ICC? Find out here!

ICC Update

2005-11-26T00:24:00.000-08:00

November 26, 2005

After India's resounding loss to South Africa yesterday (which followed an equally resounding win) the Indian Cricket Curve has taken the dreaded shape of a sinusoid, reflecting the team's inconsistency over the last few games! What a pity after the fine start as captain for Rahul Dravid against Sri Lanka! Hopefully, the series will end on a high note!

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What is the ICC? Find out here!

Music to fly by

2005-11-23T16:26:00.000-08:00

The teaser trailer for Superman Returns

HE WILL RETURN

When Bryan Singer, director of The Usual Suspects and the two X-Men movies, decided to quite working on X-Men 3 to take over Superman Returns, I was both disappointed and excited; disappointment because X-Men and X2 were the best and most fun superhero movies I'd seen (until Batman Begins) and excited because I could imagine what a wonderful Superman he could weave!

Well, both my opposing emotions turned out to prescient; Brett "Rush Hour" Ratner has taken over X3 and has already caused much angst among the comic book's fans by allegedly tinkering with the script and at one point considering his girlfriend Serena Williams (Yes, that Serena Williams) to play the part of a mutant hooker (I kid you not)!

Bryan Singer, meanwhile, went on and cast a relative unknown actor, Brandon Routh, to play the Man Of Steel, with Kate Bosworth and good ol' Kevin Spacey playing Lois Lane and Lex Luthor, respectively. He has maintained a video-blog of his progress on Superman Returns at bluetights.net , releasing itsy-bitsy clips of the movie periodically (Check them out, they are quite interesting). So excited were the public that a rabid fan, impatient for a trailer, went ahead and made his own trailer based on the clips from the blog (And that one was freakin' awesome, by the way. It apparently fooled a British magaizine!).

Finally, late last week, Singer relented and released an official teaser trailer that can be seen here or here. The thing about this trailer that instantly hits you is the music! Man, what music! I must have seen the trailer at least a dozen times and haven't been able to get that score out of my head! Along with that, there is a fascinating voice over by the late Marlon Brando (Archival footage was used apparently, though I'm not sure how it worked). Brando's crisp delivery of the uplifting dialogue (about the "good in man" or something like that) is synced perfectly with the music to create a transcendental auditory experience. Even though the visuals are nothing to write home about, this is one Superman (trailer) that really makes me want to leap of the tallest building and, hopefully, fly!

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

2005-11-19T03:08:00.000-08:00

Lives up to the hype and then some!

Harry, the hero

Mike Newell is the first British director to helm a Harry Potter flick and it shows! His best input into the franchise has been the way he's captured the essence of the British schooling system. And in no scene is this exemplified better than the one in Prof. Snape's class where one of the Weasely twins asks a girl out to a dance ball when the teacher's back is turned! The humour in that scene is Wodehouse-ian, wickedly so!!!

To those who haven't read their Potters, Prof. Severus Snape (Alan Rickman) is the most malevolent of the Hogwarts teachers, sworn enemy to our hero, Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe), whose friends, the Weasely twins, are the irrepressible class clowns. And while we are discussing Potter-illiterate muggles, here's the story. Harry's fourth year at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardy finds the school playing host to two other foreign schools for the Triwizard tournament, a series of magical tasks, with each school represented by their "champion". The champion for each school will be selected by the magical Goblet of Fire!

In an explicable occurance, Hogwarts finds itself represented by two champions, strong and handsome Cedric Diggory (Robert Pattinson) and an ineligible Harry Potter. Forced into the tournament, Harry must face fearsome fire-breathing dragons, underwater merepeople and a spectacular maze for the final task. But where there is Harry, there must be You-Know-Who and this time he appears in person, in the form of Ralph Fiennes, who utterly saves the otherwise poorly done ending.

The Hogwarts ritual of having a new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher each year also continues this time with Brendan Gleeson as Mad-Eye Moody, who has a prosthetic leg and a magic, swivelling all-seeing eye! His fine and totally unhinged performance is utterly exhilarating to watch!

Meanwhile, being teenagers now, the hormones beigin to range and our heroes are not immune to them. A Yule Ball presents the opportunity for some emotions to run wild, along with a few tears. The whole concept of teenage flirtations, though, was never handled well in the books and its not so here too! Perhaps, Newell realized that, which is why he plays most of the sequence out for laughs and is fairly successful in getting it out of the way.

Goblet of Fire is the fourth book in the Harry Potter series and it is generally accepted that it isn't the best one. What it has however is a series of magnificent set-pieces, like a Quiddich World Cup and the aforementioned tasks, begging to be translated into the big screen. Paradoxically, the voluminous and rambling nature of the book meant that such a translation would be very difficult to do without losing much of the plot's cohesiveness. Keeping that in mind, Mike Newell has done a terrific job in giving us an exciting and often, nail-biting movie. And the liberties he's taken with some plot lines, however sacrilegious to hard-core fans, are easily forgiven because, as our hero says, "God, I love magic!" And by God, is it FUN!

Introducing...The ICC

2005-11-15T20:17:00.000-08:00

The Concept...

Though there are various tables and numbers to rank a cricket team, there is no such concept as a chart or a plot of a team’s performance over time. The purpose of such a plot would be to evaluate the consistency of a cricket team: for example, even if India seem to be playing well against Sri Lanka right now, they have historically been a very inconsistent team. Alternately, even though Australia lost the Ashes to England this time, they have, over the last 5 - 6 years been the most consistent team in cricket.

The ICC, which stands for Indian Cricket Curve (or Indian Consistency Calculator) is a method I've developed to plot the performance of the Indian Cricket team, match-by-match. As of now, it is set up only for One-Day games. Four factors are taken into account while evaluating the ICCn, which is the ICC-number. They are:

1. Result – Whether the match was won or lost.

2. Margin of Victory/Defeat

The Net Run Rate or N.R.R. reflects both the above factors (Remember that it is positive for a victory and negative for a defeat). And in calculating the ICCn, instead of cumulating the NRR over an entire series, it is calculated for each individual match.

3. Relative Ranking Of the Opponent, which is defined as (Ranking of the opponent - Ranking of India), the ranking being evaluated according to the ICC rankings available here. The absolute value of the ranking is used in actual calculations as will be explained later.

4. Home/Away game: Whether the game was played in India or away.

This number is then plotted with time i.e. match number. I've started from the current India- Sri Lanka series, so the first match there is match #1.

The Formula...

The formula used to calculate the ICCn is designed to reflect the true nature of the result, as follows:

1. If India win against a lower ranked opponent, it is less valuable than a win against a higher ranked opponent; conversely, a loss against a lower ranked opponent causes more damage than a loss against a higher ranked opponent.

2. A win at home is worth less than a win away; conversely, a loss at home causes more damage than a loss away.

The exact formula depends on the relative ranking and nature of the result. There are four scenarios in this case. We start off with a number: 10 x NRR, and then modify it based on the relative ranking (REL, which is the absolute value) and on whether it’s a home or away game.

1. WIN against an opponent ranked LOWER than India, or LOSE to an opponent ranked HIGHER than India

- We want the ICCn to indicate that this result is not that that big a deal since India were expected to win (or lose, respectively) anyway. Therefore, the ICCn is reduced by a factor as follows:

ICCn = [10 x NRR] / [(REL + 1)/2]

2. WIN against an opponent ranked HIGHER than India or LOSE to an opponent ranked LOWER than India

- Not only is this a win (or a loss, respectively) but it’s a win (or a loss) against (or to) a higher (or lower) ranked opponent, making it a really GOOD (or BAD) result. The factor, 10 x NRR, is therefore further amplified:

ICCn = [10 x NRR] x [(REL + 1)/2]

And finally, to reflect home ground advantage, a loss at home or a win away multiplies the ICCn by a factor of 2. Otherwise, the ICCn stays as it is.

As an example, consider the following situation: As of now, Sri Lanka are ranked 4th, India 7th and Bangladesh 10th.

1. India WIN against Sri Lanka (REL = 3) with a NRR = 1.4:

Home Game: ICCn = [10 x 1.4] x [(3 + 1)/2] = 28

Away Game: ICCn = 28 x 2 = 56

2. India WIN against Bangladesh (REL = 3) with a NRR = 1.4:

Home Game: ICCn = [10 x 1.4] / [(3 + 1)/2] = 7

Away Game: ICCn = 7 x 2 = 14

3. India LOSE to Sri Lanka (REL = 3) with a NRR = - 1.4:

Away Game: ICCn = [10 x -1.4] / [(3 + 1)/2] = -7

Home Game: ICCn = -7 x 2 = -14

4. India LOSE to Bangladesh (REL = 3) with a NRR = - 1.4:

Away Game: ICCn = [10 x -1.4] x [(3 + 1)/2] = -28

Home Game: ICCn = -28 x 2 = -56

So, in the given situation, losing at home to Bangladesh is the worst that could happen (ICCn = -56) while winning away against Sri Lanka is the best (ICCn = 56).

The Curve...

All said and done, here's the ICC so far, calculated for the India - Sri Lanka series.

As you can see, the number dips below zero only once, when India lost in that 5th game, but even then, it wasn't a very bad loss. The first two games were absolute slaughter by India of a team ranked 3 places higher in the ICC rankings; hence the curve takes off!

The Future...

The curve will (hopefully) have more meaning as more and more results are added to it. I'll certainly continue to update this curve as I follow the exploits of India as they take on South Africa, who are ranked 5 places above India, next.

A few other things: even though the formula seems to have worked well in the Ind-SL series, I'd definitely modify it if it seems to give 'un-representative' numbers for other matches. We'll see! (Already, it's easy to spot a shortcoming in the formula, in that it gives ICCn = 0 for a tied game which doesn't seem correct. If India tie with Bangladesh, for example, it is a BAD performance. But those are rare circumstances and probably won't affect the overall curve much).

Future updates may include a curve for test matches and a Cumulative ICC (which seems more applicable but I haven't had time to come up with a suitable formula for it). And if anyone has the time or inclination to apply this curve for other countries, feel free to do so! Just refer this blog wherever you publish it.

Comments and suggestions welcome!

Great Movies Archive

2005-11-09T01:30:00.000-08:00

Because Ebert has one.

Ok, everyone has an opinion as to which is or isn't a great movie. Roger Ebert certainly has ! And so do I! Starting from today, this archive will consist of short reviews of some really special movies I've watched, mostly on DVD or video (rather than some newly released movie running in theaters). I also plan to limit it to movies that have come and gone under the radar, something that a "lay" moviegoer would not have heard of or at the very least, not seen. So here goes...
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#1. Changing Lanes (2002)

Changing Lanes is a Ben Affleck movie unlike any other. It is a movie in which Ben Affleck doesn't overact or underact and instead just acts! And unlike his other movies, this one has an extremely dark and complex plot that is unrelenting up until the very end! There is also the added bonus of a fantastic supporting cast that includes Samuel L. Jackson and Sydney Pollack (Yes, the Sydney Pollack, who doesn't direct this one) along with Toni Collette and Amanda Peet who shine in relatively small roles.

New York lawyer Gavin Banek (Affleck) has to deliver some all important papers to court; recovering alcoholic and insurance salesman Doyle Gipson (Jackson) has to attend a custody hearing that will decide if he ever gets to see his children again. Fate intervenes however as they get involved in a collision while changing lanes, leaving Gipson's car crippled. Young, hotshot Banek is not very considerate and after a short exchange of words with Gipson drives away leaving him stranded, causing him to miss the hearing! Aah, but he's accidently left his papers behind which Gipson helps himself to!

The rest of the plot shows how each man now finding himself in a desparate situation starts doing some really awful things to the other person - Gavin, to get back his papers and Gipson, to take revenge for the cruel blow his life has taken. A chain of events gets set in motion as each man tries to outdo the other, taking their lives into a seemingly unstoppable downward spiral, all in the course of a single day!

An expertly tailored script convincingly shows the (mis)deeds of these two men as logical, if terrible, recourses. Gavin, the lawyer, has to answer to his boss, an extremely scary Sydney Pollack who is also his father-in-law. This is one boss you wouldn't want to piss off! Gipson, meanwhile, just seemed to be getting his life back on track and a reconcillation with his estranged wife and children seemed possible (The opening scene shows him picking out a new apartment for all of them to live in). You absolutely believe that when these men do what they do, they are under unbelievable duress!

Sadly, however, the movie is all but spoilt by the ending which is so amazingly Hollywood-esque that it almost seems like a different movie! Disregard this ending! It was no doubt the work of an empty-headed studio exectuive afraid of the commercial consequences of a real ending! This movie deserves to be judged by everything it is up to that point and in that, it is one of the best character driven thrillers in he last few years! Watch it!

NOTE: It is true that Ben Affleck really does some acting in this movie! Atrocious performances in some big blockbusters, however, and the whole "Bennifer" thing have led most to dismiss him as just another "pretty boy"... which I agreed with until I looked up his profile at IMDB and came across some of the quotes attributed to him! Man, this guy IS eloquent! Just read some of the stuff he's said, especially during the 2004 Democratic National Convention. You WILL be blown away!

Dial M For A Perfect Murder Mystery

2005-10-28T21:26:00.000-07:00

Hitchcock's best??

A disclaimer (and confession) before I start: Until recently, I haven't watched that many Hitchcock movies! Actually, I'm not sure, I may have watched some when I was really young, too young to realize that I was watching the master of suspense at work (Very cliched, I know!)

Anyhoo, in the past couple of years I've been here in the US, I have made up for that, a little bit at least. Let's see: I have watched The Birds, North by Northwest, Vertigo, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Rear Window and of course, recently, Dial M for Murder (I told you I hadn't seen that many! That's just 6 out of 67) And for some reason, I haven't felt the inclnation to catch Psycho, especially since the shower-scene-bit has been taken down and beaten to death.

Out of these, one movie I never 'got' was Vertigo, which paradoxically seems to be the favorite Hitchcock for a lot of people. Among his movies, this one usually ends up being ranked quite high in a lot of "Top 100 movies of all time"-themed lists. That never ceases to baffle me: maybe I watched this one 20 years too late, but it never held much suspense for me and the plot seemed a trifle too far-fetched. Good movie, but not great!

Similarly Birds wasn't that awesome either. I imagine it would have been great to watch in a theater but I had it on surround-sound when I watched it at home and wasn't too thrilled or scared. Once again, not bad, just not great!

The remaining movies in the list were all outstanding, right up-until the climactic sequences! The dragged out ending in North by Northwest on the top of Mt. Rushmore almost destroyed all the suspense generated in the earlier scenes, while Doris Day singing 'Que Sera, Sera' in Too much was absolute Bollywood! In fact, other than Dial M, Rear Window is the only one that sustains its momentum right till the end and even there, the fact that the bad guy pretty much gives himself up is a bit of a downer; but that's just a minor complaint!

It is hard not too be dazzled by the sheer brilliance of DIal M. Much credit here must go the playwright for coming up with a plot of pure genious; having a man try to murder his wife whose boyfriend is a mystery writer! Astounding! The best scene in the movie is the one where the husband reveals to the 'killer' how the murder is to take place. Much like us, the would-be-murderer himself is astounded by the level to which the plan has been thought through as he listens to the husband character confidently describe what he expects to precisely happen, timestamped even! The plan DOES seem perfect and when the mystery writer later mentions that there is no such thing as "a perfect murder" you are bound to disagree with him!

Of course, things do go wrong, spectacularly so, making the fast thinking of the husband character even more ingenious. The movie is brilliantly paced by Hitchcock which adds to the tension in crucial scenes, especially right before and after the murder. The good thing about his movies is that the characters never behave as though they are in a thriller-movie, unlike in movies these days. His actors and actresses have a sense of vulnerablity about them: their reaction to being put in a situation of peril is usually an overhwhelming sense of disbelief, as if to ask, who would do such a thing to them?

Perhaps, it's a reflection of the growing cynicism of the times that in current cinema when a character is told that the villain is a near or dear one, their initial response is to cuss them soundly and then grab a gun to exact sweet revenge. In Dial M, when the killer is revealed, they all share a drink with him!

Everything is Illuminated

2005-10-14T17:01:00.000-07:00

Not a very premium movie!

Elijah Wood in his 'Frodo' face and Eugene Lutz

Everything is Illuminated is the directorial debut of actor Liev Schreiber whom you may remember as the minor weirdo Cotton Weary in the Scream movies and more recently, as the eponymous character in The Manchurian Candidate. He also wrote the screenplay for this movie which is based on a book of the same name, a book many felt would prove extremely difficult to translate into a movie.

That feeling turned out to be correct, partly at least. Everything has all the ingredients of a good film but ends up being unfocused and unfulfilling. It tells the story of a journey made by Jonathan Safran Foer, a young Jewish American (with huge glasses), to Ukraine to discover the whereabouts of a woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis during WWII. All he has to help him is an age-old photograph of his grandfather with the woman and the name of a Ukrainian village.

Foer is played by Elijah ‘Frodo’ Wood in a performance of stupefying rigidity! His youthful face, marred by the aforementioned glasses, almost registers no expression throughout the movie and gives away no motives as to his actions. His character is also an obsessive collector who picks up various oddities in clean plastic bags and pins them up in a wall in his room. No light is thrown on why he does that and in fact, this behavior evoked laughter most of the time, while it was certainly meant to be poignant.

Frodo, and pretty much everyone and everything in the movie, is upstaged by the wonderfully weird English spoken by Eugene Hutz as Alex (A conversation between Alex and Yoda would certainly have linguists across the world running to the hills!) Alex, who admits his English “is not very premium”, serves as Foer’s Ukrainian translator and tour guide, as they are driven across the countryside by Alex’s supposedly blind grandfather who is thankfully assisted by his “Officious Seeing Eye Bitch”!

The first three quarters or so of the movie is dominated by this clash of cultures as the Foer character tries to come to grips with his fear of dogs, his vegetarianism in a meat-loving country (“He doesn’t eat meat? What is wrong with him?” one character asks in disbelief), the grandfather’s hilariously vicious anti-Semtism and most importantly, Alex’s vocabulary! Which is kinda sad because when the story finally moves along in the last act it leads to some pretty startling revelations and powerful moments.

The prevalent feeling as I walked out of the theater was one of frustration as I realized how much more could have been done with this movie if the director had trusted his story enough to let it take center-stage, instead of the comedic elements, which though brilliant for a while, grow tiresome and repetitive. Almost every joke is recycled once or twice and there are also inexplicable displays of emotion by the characters which are never fully explained. Maybe it turned out this way because it was a first-timer’s effort. Or maybe it really was a difficult book!

Pics from Pitt

2005-10-12T14:50:00.000-07:00

Here are some snaps from my trip to Pittsburg where I was visiting a friend in Carnegie Mellon University. Unfortunately, cold weather and general laziness meant that I didn't get around as much as I'd have liked but overall, I did visit some pretty scenic places (as can be seen).

A view from Mt. Washington

Later, that evening...

Later, that night...

The Cathedral Of Learning: A spectacular building belonging to
U of Pitt. Classes are actually held in here!!!

And finally, yours truly and aforementioned chum, on top of ...you guessed it, Mt. W!

Road Trip

2005-10-12T08:35:00.000-07:00

Hey y'all! Was off on a road trip last week to Pittsburg, PA, for Fall break (Yes, we have a break for every season!) That's the reason why I haven't posted in a while! Anyway, expect things to happen in this space shortly, including snaps from the trip and a short review of the flick, "Everything is Illuminated".

For the love of the game

2005-10-02T13:26:00.000-07:00

And the game in question is poker or at least the online version of it!!! And that’s one of the reasons I haven’t posted anything is a while! That and the fact that I haven’t been seeing too many movies lately, in theaters or at home! Work has occupied the time I usually assign to them!

And probably, the only movie I’ll see in the theater in the next few months is GOB. Nothing else looks that interesting, at least to go all the way to a theater to see. A few nice, slow movies to see in DVD when they come out, maybe! Man, things HAVE been slow…

Anyway, back to poker for me…

Extremely awesome GOF trailer

2005-09-22T09:59:00.000-07:00

To anyone who still doesn't know yet, check out the full theatrical trailer of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in the official website!

Boy, they cerainly know how to give a good build up to a movie, don't they?! It looks really fantastic, visually I mean, with lots of colour, which I like. The first two movies were seriously drab-looking!

Restrictive Software, Crazy Computer Administrators...

2005-09-06T10:30:00.000-07:00

... and other causes of heartburn!!

God! I hate software which feels the need to own its user and thrives in its user-unfriendliness. The one I'm referring to now is this Finite Element code called ABAQUS which has led to a few ulcers spawning inside my body ever since I had the misfortune of running into it when I started my Ph.D. I swear, the software tries its utmost to be unhelpful. The documentation that comes with it is laughably inadequate when it comes to debugging errors. While I usually manage to find the bug after a couple of days of despair, this time, I think I have run into a titanium wall!. The program gives the message: "Error code 5. Access is denied" and basically stops running! I guess it never occured to the Einsteins in the software team to include an explanation of the error codes! Either that or they have hidden it well! Really, really, really well!

And obviously, the computer adminstrators in my university have no idea what this error means! No way, that would make things too easy! Of course, given the brain damage it seems to require for someone to qualify as a computer administrator, they wouldn't have helped much anyway. When I run into problems, usually brought about by that other paradigm of user-friendliness, UNIX, and am forced to turn to these Hitler-wannabes for help, they start by giving me a look that plainly says: "Do I really have to explain to this idiot he has to modify the kernel at the machine level in order to properly emulate the startx terminal?" (That probably makes no sense but they either say something like that or something like "Ok, you look at the keyword and type "L-O-G-I-N". You with me so far?") There is no middle-ground with these chaps, I swear, its impossible to communicate with them!

(another ulcer has grown while typing the above)

Now to more unversal reasons for hearburn...

Sharapova's brutal defeat of Sania Mirza. Yes, it was expected, but my friends and I were really crushed after seeing how unprofessional Mirza's game was. Granted, she's a newcomer, the first Indian girl to do all that, but, come on, she could have at least been a trifle better. I sincerely hope that she works hard on that second serve of hers and on the consistency of her groundstrokes (which were spectacular when they came off). Here's wishing her luck!

Then there's the Indian cricket team...Boo hoo hoo :(

That's enough hearburn for the day. Now for some good news. India aside, this has been a spectacular season for sports. First, there was the Ashes, awesomely entertaining, one of the best, if not THE best series of all time. Who'd have ever thought Australia would go on the defensive? (I'm referring to Ponting complaining about being picked on for the team's failures). And now, after two days Australia look to be in a good position after Warnie stepped up.

And how about the US Open, y'all? It seems to me that this has been the most competetitive Grand Slam I have seen, especially in the Men's side! What quality? How many 5-setters? What power? Blake, Dent, GInepri, what amazingly physical players? The magic of Fabrice Santoro! The Blake-Agassi match! Blake-Nadal! Dent-Hewitt! And on the women's side, Clijsters taking out Venus! And now she's up against Sharapova!

It's a pity I didn't realize earlier that the US open would be on during the Labor Day weekend. Else a trip to NY city would have definitely been on the cards!

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2005-09-02T09:42:00.000-07:00

A great day for Indian sport!

Indian cricket team keeps its head and pulls of good victory!

And more importantly....

....Sania Mirza makes it into 4th round of US Open with a straight sets victory!

Watch out Maria Sharapova!!!!!!!!

Sania vs. Maria?

2005-09-02T09:25:00.000-07:00

Well, she's at it again! Sania Mirza, seemingly India's only hope in singles tennis, is currently one set up and 3 - 2 up in the second set against France's Marion Bartoli (who, I believe, is ranked 43rd as opposed to Sania's 42). They've both traded breaks in this set so far and Sania just fought back from 0 - 40 down in her service game!

If she gets through this, she'll be facing Maria Sharapova in the fourth round (assuming she gets through)! And man, THEN (and only then) I get to WATCH Sania in action.

Do us proud, girl!!

Red Eye

2005-08-21T12:11:00.000-07:00

Fizzles where it should have popped

Wes Craven's Red Eye is all build-up and no pay-off. With two extremely engaging actors on screen in Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy, and an extremely effective premise, the final act of the film really disappoints as Craven reverts to the slasher style cat and mouse game he established in his Scream films. The running time of 80 minutes is misleadingly short as well; while "shorter is better" might be a rule of thumb in suspense thrillers, here the film's end credits hit us while we are still reeling from the speed at which Rachel McAdams's character, Lisa Reisert, goes from victim to victor.

Here's the set up: Hotel manager Reisert is flying back to Miami after her grandmother's funeral. She is befriended in the airport by a charming stranger with the unlikely name of Jackson Rippner (Cillian Murphy). Surprise, surprise, he also has the seat next to her in the plane! But not really! As it turns out Rippner wants to take out the head of Homeland Security who is to be staying in Lisa's hotel and threatens to kill Lisa's father unless she co-operates with him in his objective.

The scenes in the flight are the best part of the movie, the claustrophobic surroundings adding brilliantly to the suspense. Murphy's performance is especially outstanding here as he goes from charming to spooky in the blink of an eye; it's brilliant the way he smiles, able to make it flirtatious or chilling as it suits him. That said, Rachel McAdamas manages to bring a cerain intensity to her performance, unseen in any of the young actresses today (Did I say "young"? Just checked IMDB and she's pushing 30! Amazing, doesn't look that old!) Its a pity that the ending lets all of this goes to waste.

NOTE: I'd thought Red Eye was a term that would have a special significance in this movie. Turns out, it is just lingo for a late night flight!

Greatest game ever played!!

2005-08-15T10:42:00.000-07:00

3rd Ashes Test: England v Australia at Manchester, 11-15 Aug 2005

6 balls to go...

Going gaga over Goblet

2005-08-13T08:48:00.000-07:00

Ok, it's happened a lot of times before. The previews, the trailers and everything else look absolutely awesome. The build up is excruciating! It seems like its never going to get here!

And then when it does, everyone goes, "What the...?" All the good parts have already been shown in the trailer; the best jokes, the best special effects, everything!! The rest of the movie is just filler! The greatest example: The Matrix - Reloaded.

So, why am I falling for it again with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire? Ok, so the teaser trailer looked brilliant! All the stills they have been releasing look astounding in their detail! The important new cast members (Ralph Fiennes as You-Know-Who and Brendan Gleesen as Mad-Eye) seem inspired choices. For the first time we have a director who actually respects the material (Mike Newell is a big fan of HP books), who's talented and not unimportantly, British (I think non-British directors do not understand how British actors can make even the most pedestrian dialogue sound majestic). He's also mentioned that he approached the movie as a thriller and compared it to how a Hitchcock movie would be.

Ok, so I AM going gaga! Its my most expected movie of the year, has been since the teaser got here a few months back. Now there is almost a full-length trailer sort of a clip, available through Mugglenet. And that only reinforces my convictions about this!

After all, it can't be that bad, can it?

Recently watched, currently watching and obliged to presently watch

2005-08-03T13:14:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy, busy couple of weeks with a lot of research done and hardly anytime to post anything or more importantly, watch anything. Hardly, I said. I managed to squeeze enough time to watch Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, the superhero flick, Hellboy, the ok-thriller, The Game and finally, Super Size Me, about which I made a post recently.

I guess all four are pretty good movies in their own genre. I was actually quite disappointed with The Game, which I had really high expectations of. I had always caught only the first half-hour or so of it in Star Movies back home, quite a few years back, and it always left me very intrigued. These sort of thrillers work in such a way that only a big pay-off at the climax would logically satisfy the happenings early-on in the movie. Well, I'm sorry to report that the ending in this one pretty much destroys the movie.

A lot of people have mentioned that Hellboy is the best superhero movie/comic-book adaptation and I can see that they have a point. Though, the movie does let down in the end (again!), it is over-all a pretty whimsical and fun superhero flick, without every descending into camp. Good fun!

A Clockwork Orange: Kubrick definitely uses his soundtrack amazing well, in his movies that I've seen so far (2001 and this. I've also seen Dr. Strangelove, but that was a long time back and I don't remember too much). The music along with the opening shot in this movie pretty much ensured that I wouldn't take my eyes off the screen till the movie ended. A definite must-see this...

...which brings me to the movies I still have to see. Continuing my Kubrick festival, next up is The Shining. Then, I have the classic (and looooong) director's cut of Das Boot, often called one of the best war movies. After that, it will be two relatively newer movies: Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, which plagiarized its name from this blog (and not the other way round as most people might imagine!) and Glengarry Glen Ross, one of those rivetting dialogue driven thrillers.

In other news, I also read Yann Martel's Life of Pi. Very fascinating read. I can't for the life of me figure out whether the whole story is made up or (slight spoiler) only that version of the story!

This Harry Potter thing...

2005-07-28T11:48:00.000-07:00

These cartoons were swiped from:

http://cagle.slate.msn.com/news/HarryPotter05/main.asp

and will be removed if anyone has any objections!

The only watchable reality show on TV!!

2005-07-21T18:57:00.000-07:00

Morgan Spurlock's 30 Days

Morgan Spurlock literally "burst" into the scene last year with Super Size Me, a documentary that brought down McDonald's....or atleast tried to. In it, Spurlock tried to gauge the effect of fast food on his health by eating (and drinking) only from the McDonald's menu for 30 whole days, three meals a day! He also set a couple of other rules: one, he must have every item in the menu at least once in the 30 day period and two, must agree to "superisize" it, if asked by the McD's server.

Well, to cut a long story short, his body doesn't respond well to this assault: he gains lotsa weight, starts experiencing heart and liver problems (he is given a clean bill of health before he begins) and a reduced sex-drive. Indeed, this debut feature proved so successful that McD's removed "super size" meals from its menu just before the documentary's wide release. Incidentally, it was also nominated for a Best Documentary Oscar.

Now, Spurlock brings this idea to the small screen as (what else?) a reality show! 30 Days asks the question: What happens if you expose a person to a radically different environment than he is used to for a period of, well, thirty days? One of its first episodes, for example, made an orthodox, conservative Christian live with a gay room-mate in a gay community for a whole month. Another one had Morgan Spurlock and his girl friend live out the period on minimum wage!

The resulting drama, while not throwing in too many spectacular suprises, does make for very interesting viewing. It also doesn't feel too contrived either because people, who have spent a lifetime forming opinions, can be hardly expected to change them in a month. The orthodox Christian, taking that example again, considered gay people to be sinners, going by his interpretation of the Bible; he is still of the same mindset 30 days later, though there is a definite thaw in his behavior towards them as he gets to hear their concerns and realizes that their lifestyles are very similar to his.

The show's latest episode was especially gut-wrenching. A mother tries to stop her teenage daughter from binge drinking by going on a month long drinking spree herself. The mother's daily routine is reduced to shambles as she ends up feeling lethargic all the time, hardly ever has an appetite and in general, feels her health worsening: none of this, however, has any effect on the daughter who finds it funny that her mother is behaving like her other friends, sometimes having no memory whatsoever of what she did all night or "blacking out" as the daughter fondly calls it (something she doesn't seem to worry about). At the end of the 30 days, the mother gives up on her daughter and decides to focus instead on her 12-year old son, who is reduced to tears one day when his mother ignores him, heavily drunk.

All this is different from the numerous formulaic "reality" shows that seem heavily scripted and full of "fake" people; almost all of them seem to want to humiliate their contestants more than anything else, making them compete with each other in degrading contests while taking sadistic glee in capturing their disappointment and tears after they lose; of course, they also have this stupid rule where a contestant is "kicked out" at the end of each episode, something that was original in the very first "Survivor" but has been beaten to death since then.

And R.A.B is...

2005-07-17T12:47:00.000-07:00

In the interest of not spoiling it for those who don't wish to know, you are going to have to click here to find out who R.A.B is.

Just remember where you got it first!!!

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

2005-07-17T00:36:00.000-07:00

Not a children's book!

Plot points and other such things aside, my first comment about HBP is how kids who read this book (or have it read to them) are going to be mentally traumatized for the rest of their lives! I swear! And that's only part of it! Frequent occurances of "rude hand gestures" and unmentionable "curses" (not those Curses) are also going to make it extra-hard for poor parents to explain this book to the kids!

Well, good luck to them...

I think the best thing I like about this book is how rationally each of the characters behave and how logically various situations evolve and diffuse (or explode) . Fans will be happy to know that there are no stupid emotional outbursts from the Harry like the infamous ones in the Order of the Phoenix; he also listens to his elders (shudder!), doesn't take (too many) stupid risks and the death of the major character, when it comes, feels less inevitable than it did the last time.

There is especially this good bit about the nature of phrophecies and such, that exemplifies that logic I was talking about. Many books and movies, ok some, ok, I'm talking about The Matrix movies, have been let down when they get too deep into the nature of "The Prophecy", which is after all a "belief" system that seemingly has no place in an otherwise logic-driven universe. Not Harry Potter, it'd seem! I thought J. K. Rowling was going down a suicidal path when she gets into this in HBP! But, no! She actually ends up almost entirely redeeming what appeared to be a weak plot in the previous book.

This also brings me to what I didn't like about the book. I think the fact that there isn't much of a plot to speak of (Maybe the next book will prove me wrong! I hope so and I actually think so)! This book basically serves to tie-up all the loose ends from the first five books and set up the last one. And from what I read (from 1:30 am to 7:30 am) that's pretty much all it did. Sure, there is a plot about something-and-something but it seemed to beside the point (A second reading might convince me otherwise). I kinda got the impression that this book is a sort of sacrificial feed to the frenzied masses to sate their appetites as Rowling gears up to write the big one. In fact. it seems like Books 6 and 7 are two parts of a single big book.

So, yes, HBP definitely tied a million loose ends from the previous books but it also left some very delicious questions unanswered. Till Book 7 then...

And that's another two years away...atleast!

The countdown begins...

NOTE: The synopsis in the book jacket reminded me in a big way of the "scrolling text" that marks the start of each Star Wars movies, content-wise that is.

The magic number is...

2005-07-15T17:13:00.000-07:00

...44?

If you're going "Huh?", know that I'm merely trying to say that I'll be the 44th person in line tonight outside Barnes & Nobles (Lafayette, Indiana) to buy you-know-what.

That's "44", for those who weren't paying attention.

Can't hardly wait!

The real Gary Oldman?

2005-07-14T01:40:00.000-07:00

In the world of movies, this is the closest anyone has gotten to being truly invisible!

Clockwise from top: Gary Oldman in The Fifth Element;

The Contender; Hannibal; Harry Potter and the Prisoner

of Azkaban; Dracula; Batman Begins and Air Force One

My interest in this exceptional actor was piqued after watching his tremendously understated performance in the recent Batman Begins while happening to watch Hannibal on TV around the same time. Checking up IMDB to see who it was that played the horribly disfigured Mason Verger in the latter, I was blown away by what I found!! Never in a billion years would I have guessed! The role seemed inconsequential for an actor of his caliber but I realized that's one of the things he excels at: playing seemingly minor characters and making the role his own.

The montage above is a tribute to man who truly disappears...into his characters

Some spectacularly potty Potter predictions

2005-07-08T08:38:00.000-07:00

Who's the Half-Blood?

In the spirit of the release of ze very eagerly awaited Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, I've decided to make some uneducated and half-witted guesses as the nature of its contents

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven't read any of the Potters you should know that the following half-truths may reveal crucial plot details of more than one book. You should also seriously consider jumping off a cliff.

Here goes...

Numero 1: I'm pretty sure of this one: In true LOTR spirit, Sirius (the) Black returns as Sirius (the) White to complete his journey in this world.

Numero 2: Who snuffs it in this book? Ans: Albus Dumbledore. But why, you ask? The cover (pictured above) shows Dumbledore instructing Harry on something. My guess: He's the new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. And we all know what happens to them!! (But don't worry, he'll then return to guide Harry in spirit, a la Scooby Dooby Obi-Wan Kenobi)

Numero 3: Ron and Hermoine get seriously snuggly in this one!

Numero 4: Who's the titular half-blood prince? Difficult, very difficult. Let's work this out. Half-blood "Prince" suggests that there must a half-blood "King". And do we know any half-blood who happens to be a King? Or a Lord? Could that be Lord Voldemort? Why, yes! And that would make the half-blood prince his illegitimate son/grandson, probably conceived after a long night of Dark magic and Butterbeers!

Numero 5: What is the big secret that is going to be revealed about Lily Potter, Harry's mother? My guess is it'll be something to show that Harry is related in a more intricate way to the Dark Lord than we've been led to believe. The revelation will also involve Aunt Petunia in some way and will tie into all the above numeros (except, possibly, numeros 1, 2 and 3)

Over and out.

The aliens and the annoying kids

2005-07-02T00:29:00.000-07:00

The audience in the theater watching War of the Worlds with me, I swear, were rooting for the two kids in it to be disintegrated within 10 minutes into the movie! Seriously! As poor Tom Cruise tries to flee the marauding aliens in their tripods armed with death rays, he has to put up with an annoying Dakota Fanning, his 10 year old (or so) daughter who keeps screaming (No, make that screeching), that she wants to see her "mommy" and with a headstrong teenage son, played by whoever, who wants to go back and fight the aliens...

Other than that, this is a solid Spielberg entertainer, which means that it is way better than any other alien invasion movie made in this planet! The special effects are fantastic and like his earlier movies (ET, Close Encounters and A.I.), Spielberg can't resist showing us the aliens themselves, who turn out to be the least imaginative of the FX. The ending also left a bit to be desired. Safe to say that Steven Spielberg's obsession with family values takes the gloss of an otherwise brilliant Sci-Fi movie.

NOTE: DON'T read this review of the movie at salon.com unless you want all the fun of movie watching sucked out of you! Disgustingly one-sided!!! And these are by people who get paid to watch movies!!!!

Belated 'Batman Begins' Bulletin

2005-06-22T23:15:00.000-07:00

Best Batman movie so far!
Best adaptation of a superhero comic so far!
Batmobile: Love it or hate it! I loved it!
Brilliant back story. Loved the way it explained how Batman got all his funky Bat-toys (Ans: They are prototype designs meant for military applications), how all the weirdos in Gotham City came to be (Ans: They escaped from Arkham Asylum), how the Batsignal came about (Ans: It was set up by Jim Gordon) and what essentially drives Bruce Wayne to be Batman (Ans: No simple answer!).
Bale was great as Batman! Took his role seriously and was virtually unidentifiable when in Bat-costume.

Overall, the movie had a nice feel to it with a solid supporting cast. Gary Oldman was once again unidentifiable in his role, this time as Sgt. Jim Gordon, while Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman managed to bring about the right balance of humour and warmth into their roles.

One bad thing about the movie was the pretty terrible fight choreography! In numerous close-quarters fights, it was hard to tell who was doing what to whom! Which is a pity because Batman is supposed to be an incredible fighter and his fights against multiple opponents could have made for some great visuals!

This movie also didn't have too many spectacular set-pieces, standard in these comic book adaptations, which has led some to term it 'slow moving'. But I think director Christopher Nolan has done that deliberately so as not to divert attention from the main point of the movie: how Bruce Wayne became Batman and what established him as the guardian of Gotham. In that respect, this movie tries to, and pretty much succeeds in being, story-driven, which is very commendable for a superhero movie! Thumb up!!

NOTE: Looks like The Joker is going to be the main villain in the sequel. Having just recently seen the old Star Wars movies, my vote goes to Mark Hamill for landing the role!

Ashraful proving a handful

2005-06-21T20:54:00.000-07:00

It's been a week of turmoil in sports. Ok, not that dramatic, but at least cricket and F1 have been going through a phase. I decided to do a no show at Indy this time for the US Grand Prix 'cos I really haven't been following this season that closely, no particular reason. Turns out that the seven teams using Michelin tyres decided to follow my lead and not participate in the race too! But jokes aside, what happened there was disgraceful! Get this: the said-seven teams apparently even agreed to race for NO points, just to make sure there was a race on! NO points! And still the FIA refused to agree to add an extra chicane at the offending turn thirteen (which, in case you didn't know, was causing Michelin tyres to blow, for reasons unknown). I think F1 racing has sunk to its lowest yet! This sort of behavior on their part has got to be universally and vocally criticized to get the FIA to change.

Coming to cricket, what's up with Bangladesh, y'all? The worst team in world cricket beats the best, and in some fashion too! I wish I'd followed the match live on cricinfo or some such place, I'd have been blown away by the six hit by watshisname against Jason Gillespie (Ok, his name is Aftab Ahmed, I just looked it up). The last time I had the fortune to 'witness' such a spectacular end was when the Windies imploded to South Africa by giving Charl Langeveldt a last over hat-trick. That was something, but this is way better!

Looking at Bangla's three big matches in England (wins against Worcester and Australia along with today's loss against England), it looks likes Ashraful is turning out to be the key guy! He scored a quickfire 40 against W and that terrific run-a-ball century against the Aussies. Add to that today's 54-ball 92 and you have a batman who is having a super-duper time, definitely a contender for 'Man of the series'. And let's not forget Habibul Bashar who seems to be the Dravid of Bangladesh, keeping his head and guiding his team through the middle overs.

Could this be the start of something special or will it just be a temporary bright spot in the sordid history of Bangladesh cricket? This series should anwer that question!

The original Star Wars were Fun

2005-06-16T06:37:00.000-07:00

That's with a capital 'F' in case you didn't get it ;)

My friends and I had this semi-Star Wars-marathon in the weekend, watching Star Wars and The Empire Strikes back and boy, did we have a good time?! Those movies, especially, Empire, were almost like Indiana Jones in space, just jumping from one set-piece to another, without getting weighed down by stupid plot points like trade federations and mitochlorians!

I think the differences between the prequel trilogy and the sequel trilogy is best illustrated by the romances that develop in each one: Consider Empire, when Han Solo is about to be put into deep freeze by Darth Vader - a situation of peril, one might say! Princess Leia chooses that moment to tell him "I love you" to which Han replies "I know!", in classic Han Solo way! Brilliant!

Now take Attack of the Clones! My memory is a bit rusty, but I remember the situation is somewhat similar: Padme and Anakin Skywalker are in a bit of a hiccup and out of the blue comes the "I love you" from Padme. She then follows it up with some sappy "...love you madly, deeply" and other yadda-yadda! Utterly unconvincing, especially given the chemistry that never existed between the two of them!

Anyhoo, that's my 'dho paisa' on that...

On the same subject: after watching the two prequels, I was almost tempted to buy the 3-pack DVD of the prequels...almost! What put me off (other than the hefty price tag) were the numerous changes His Highness, George Lucas had made to the original trilogy. For me, the most execrable of these was replacing the ghostly image of the original Anakin Skywalker with that of Hayden Christensen at the end of Return of the Jedi, as discussed here in Roger Ebert's website!!! Come on! Imagine how the original actor (whose name is Sebastian Shaw which, I admit, I knew only after reading the above article) must feel! Forget maintaining continuity and all that, Mr. Lucas. What you did here was unfair to Shaw!

Another change that has become a hot-button issue among Star Wars geeks (myself NOT included) is an extra bit added in a scene where Han Solo is confronted by Greedo, a bounty hunter trying to capture him for Jabba. In the original version, Han shoots Greedo as he is talking, following the old maxim of "Don't talk when you can just shoot!". In the 'Special Edition', Greedo shoots first, misses from one foot away and then Han shoots back and kills him! This was done supposedly to show that Han Solo was really a peach of a guy and would never ever, in a million light years, shoot some poor dangerous bounty hunter when all he's doing is talking. In the original version, the point was that we never know until later on what sort of a person Han is.

To me, this change shows how George Lucas is trying to make everything about Star Wars one-dimensional. Characters are either completely good or completely bad; Jedi are good, Sith are evil; Anakin was a nice chappie while Vader is a bad baddie! And so on... He also seems to be saying to the fans, "This is my creation and I'll do whatever the hell I want with it. So there!". Which is all fine, but come on, what's his problem with releasing an unedited original version. Would it kill him to be a little nice? Fingers crossed hoping that the six-pack DVD, if and when it comes, has the option of buying the unchanged original. Then all is forgiven! But, until then...

A good Matrix video game and a good Batman movie...

2005-06-08T00:42:00.000-07:00

...finally?

Ok, first the game! I found this page at gamespot.com previewing a new Matrix computer game, The Matrix: Path of Neo, that's releasing in November. Previous Matrix-based games like Enter The Matrix have been more about the convoluted Matrix storyline than the gameplay itself. Not this one. Inspite of the cheesy name, this is kinda like a "Best Of..." collection of the numerous action set-pieces from the three Matrix movies (The trailer seems to show The Burly Brawl as well as the final showdown between Neo and Agent Smith, among other things). Also included in this game is the "shootdodge" technique that was executed so beautifully in the Max Payne games.

The graphics in the game don't seem to be that great, though, going by the three screenshots available. But still keep your gaming fingers crossed for what might turn out to be the ultimate Matrix game!

Next, catch an early review of Batman Begins at movies.com. The verdict from Ebert and Roeper is that its ABSOLUTELY FABULOSO! "Gets it absolutely right", "...the Batman movie we've all been waiting for" and "...one of the best movies of the year" are some of the plaudits Ebert's thrown around at this one! But I'd definitely take this with a pinch of salt. This is the guy who called Spider-man 2 "the best superhero movie ever made" and that movie sucked so bad, it was scary!

Enjoy this movie... with subtitles!

2005-06-06T09:00:00.000-07:00

There is something about the British accent that defies definition, no offence intended. Here are the people who supposedly (or is it supposably?) invented/developed the English language but watch a British movie or a movie filled with British characters and chances are a lot of the dialogue will go over your head...Interesting?

The movie I'm talking about right now is Robert Altman's Gosford Park, touted as an Agatha Christie style murder mystery but in reality is a not-so-subtle satire of the class system in England in the early 20th century. We have all the right ingredients for a murder mystery though: a gathering of friends and relatives in the manor of a wealthy Englishman who is, of course, murdered by the end of the evening. Everyone has a motive, whether it is money, hatred or jealousy. Whodunit?

But the murder is more a distraction than the focus of the movie as we see how the lives of the 'upstairs' people (the aristocrats) differ from that of the 'downstairs' people (the maids and the butlers), including the way that they react to the murder. The people 'upstairs' are worried about how the murder is going to affect their daily routine while those 'downstairs' are worried that they'll have more work to do if the guests are forced to stay on because of the murder investigation!

The movie is populated by a veritable who's-who of British cinema with the likes of Michael Gambon, Maggie Smith, Stephen Fry, Helen Mirren...and has so many British accents and characters that either a rewatch or subtitles is called for! But once you get into it, this movie is very absorbing and a lot of fun!!

More movies and more summer plans!

2005-05-31T10:46:00.000-07:00

My IMDB adventure continued last week with three more top 250 films: Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, a 2002 Brazilian film, City Of God and a golden oldie, Some Like It Hot (which coincidentally came on cable just a week or so after Samanth recommended it to me).

But, let's talk about City Of God...What a brilliant movie! It deals with life in a impoverished Brazilian city which gives the movie its name (Cidade de Deus is the original Portugese title). This is a city where little kids, let alone teenagers, are the gangsters and the drug dealers, quintessential "boys with toys". The story is narrated by this one kid who wants to break away and become a photgrapher. How he does that is told in a very matter-of-fact way with a lot of shocking moments which almost pass us by because no one in the movie seems to react to it! There is also a lot of humour in this tale and it ends up being very touching without seemingly ever trying to be.

By the way, check out the trivia section for this movie at IMDB. Lot of clever bits!

Rear Window made me realize that I haven't watched too may Hitchcock movies! That'll change soon...

Finally, saw Mumbai Express (had been lying untouched in my computer for more than a month). Entertaining first half and I thought Nasser was briliiant in the otherwise sucky second half!

As this summer (vacation) chugs along, I have added a couple more things to my "To Do" list. One is Mr. and Mrs. Smith, for which the trailers look seriously slick. The second one, rather obvious, is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Here's counting down to the witching hour!

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith

2005-05-23T09:20:00.000-07:00

The Force ends with a BIG BANG! Oh... and Yoda rules!

Yoda

In one of the scenes toward the end of this movie, Yoda (voice of Frank Oz) mouths, what is now, my favorite piece of dialog in the whole prequel trilogy. The situation is a high stakes lightsaber duel between Yoda and the evil Sith Lord, Darth Sidious who says something like "...the Sith will rule the galaxy once again!". Back comes Yoda: "Not if anything I have to say ABOUT IT". And then he does his stuff!!

Doesn't sound like much, admittedly, but by the time he takes to get to "...about it" I had a horrible thought that, maybe, Yoda had actually been defeated (not killed) by Sidious. I breathed a sigh of relief when he said that, while people around me jumped in joy and applauded for who is definitely their favorite character in this movie.

Revenge of the Sith is irrevocably Yoda-powered, however else George Lucas might have wanted it to be. He's the person everyone's rooting for; you yearn to see him in every scene with his 'Zen-master' attitude and his carefully crucified English. This CGI creation out-acts everyone around him, possibly with the exception of Ewan McGregor, as Obi-Wan Kenobi, who along with Yoda manages to bring about a certain dignity to the whole movie.

Also in this movie, Lucas continues the destruction of Natalie Portman's character, Padme, who, of course, is the secret wife of Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen). Gone is the strong willed Queen Amidalla from The Phantom Menace. Instead we have a woman who ends up blubbering in pretty much every scene... (I would, too, if I had to say the dialogue she does while watching Christensen try to act). Sadly, the dialogue and the acting take the sheen away from what is undoubtedly the best of the prequels.

The story, for anyone who's been asleep/comatose/dead for the past few years, charts the transformation of Jedi Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader, the evil Sith Lord who torments our heroes in the original Star Wars trilogy. Anakin's temptations are a result of some malicious manipulation by Supreme Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) who's character seems vaguely Bush-like in his dealings. Lucas does a great job in bringing the story full circle to Episode IV. In fact, this is probably the most plot driven of all the six movies - it strides purposefully towards it inevitable conclusion, throwing a few nice suprises on the way without punching too many holes into the overall plot bubble.

The special effects, as expected, are awesome. And as always, there are a slew of new characters and species, including a brief period spent with Chewbacca and the Wookies. There is a sensational new villain, the alliteratively named General Grievous, who outdoes Darth Maul from The Phantom Menace with a quadra-lightsaber configuration. And the final showdown between Anakin and Obi-Wan in "Mount Doom"-like surroundings acts as a fitting finale to lightsaber battles as we know it!

At the end of the day, this movie works because it makes you want to watch the original trilogy again. Its evocative closing shot (I'm not giving it away!) makes your heart heavy and brings a lump to your throat. To quote the cliche of cliches: It is the end of an era!

PS: Wanted to end with a Yoda-ism but couldn't think of any!

Have been out of it for a while now!

2005-05-14T23:15:00.000-07:00

Well, my exams got over a week or so back, and I really haven't felt up to major blogging since. Saw quite a few good movies though. I'm trying to work my way down IMDB's top 250 films list. Recently saw Goodfellas, Citizen Kane, 12 Angry Men, Life of Brian, The Sting... Wow! A lot of great movies. Really difficult to see anything as innovative as those nowadays.

Quite a lot of movies now also seem to be suffering from what I like to call 'The-Sixth-Sense-Syndrome', you know, the ones where they try to blow us away with a surprise ending. What these movies fail to realize is how careful they have to be with the script to pull off something like that. See the 'Sixth Sense' DVD people! There's a 'special features ' segment in that one where the crew explain how painstakingly careful they were while filming to make sure there are no plot holes. And of course, they also put in these little clues which most people would look for only in a second viewing! My favorite one among them is, I think, something most people know: the chairs don't move whenever Bruce Willis sits on one of them (for instance, when he's in the restaurant with his wife). Really smart stuff!!

Anyway, the reason I got reminded is because of this movie Narc I saw just a couple of days back. This is one of those rivetting cop thrillers shot with dark and greyish filters to let us know that it's a serious movie, dammmit!!! And then comes the ending. Don't want to spoil it, but it was soooooo unnecessary and undermined the whole plot.

Is it just me...

2005-05-09T16:50:00.000-07:00

... or do these stills from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire look TOTALLY OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD?!! I love the vibrant colour scheme here, especially the bluish-vapor-thing wafting about the goblet of fire. And the dragon looks pretty mean too!! Good stuff, Mike Newell!

...Ooooh! And I just came across the teaser trailer here. Looks pretty wicked! Especially like the background music!

And what about the Batman Begins trailer, available here ? Absolutely mind-blowing! Looks like movie directors are learning to spend their millions wisely these days!

Monty Python and the Holy War!!

2005-04-25T10:57:00.000-07:00

Came across this article by former Python Terry Jones mocking Bush's arguments for the war on Iraq. I think this was written sometime before the actual Iraq War itself. Quite hilarious! Check it out at:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1442.htm

Actually read about this article in a salon interview of Terry Jones about a new book he's written. This guy is really something! A very absorbing interview, available at:

http://www.salon.com/books/int/2005/01/21/jones/

Early review of Hitchhiker's guide

2005-04-20T17:22:00.000-07:00

Here's an early review of The Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy that I came across in the BBC website:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4461899.stm

Looks like DON'T PANIC is going to be a new catchphrase among cinephiles.

...atleast, I hope so!

And the award for most convoluted sentence goes to...

2005-04-19T09:38:00.000-07:00

Very funny article I came across on the BBC website last week! This was about a contest for the most nonsensically worded sentences people had the misfortune of coming across over the years! My favorite was a warning message on a computer screen:

"Do not press NO if you do not wish to continue".

Can you imagine seeing that on your monitor? This had me in splits for a while after which I resolved I'd figure this out. Let's see: If you press NO, you WILL continue. I imagined I was running the installation for some program and after entering some of the information, I change my mind and click 'Exit'. The following dialog box comes up with YES and NO buttons:

"Are you sure you want to exit? Do not press NO if you do not wish to continue"

Make sense? As you can see, I have waaaaay too much free time! Anyway check out the complete story at:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/3097779.stm

Plans for the next 3 months

2005-04-12T15:58:00.000-07:00

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (April 29) - Trailor looks totally cool. Check out some extra clips here at IFILM. Alan Rickman is voicing Marvin, the robot! What a frood!

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (May 19) - If only they had gotten another actor for Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader...Still, can't wait!

Batman Begins (June 17) - As with all contemporary remakes of superhero films, this looks to be the best of all the Batman movies so far. Of course, Batman is a 90's franchise. Still, all of them (with the exception of Batman Forever) sucked so bad, this series needed a re-invention. By the way, I definitely preferred one of the earlier titles for this movie, Batman: Intimidation.

War of the Worlds (June 29) - Steven Spielberg! Enough said!

Hold the phones!!!

2005-04-10T16:31:00.000-07:00

Someone's actually referenced the post on my Florida trip in their blog about Miami Beach!! I must confess I'm blown away! Here's the page where you'll find it:

http://www.miamibeach411.com/news/archives/02_local_news/

How did I come across this? I googled my blog's name within quotes and, boom, there it was! Unbelievable!

"You like me! You really like me!"

Sin City

2005-04-09T14:14:00.000-07:00

Revels in its R-Rating

Becky Blue Eyes

It's not so often that a movie comes along that is so gory, so graphic that the censor board gives it an R-rating without as much as blinking an eye or cutting a single scene! Sin City which has become the paradigm of "stylized depiction of extreme violence in a movie" has achieved that distinction. And when I say "extreme", boy, do I mean "extreme"?! Popular character 'disposal' methods include castration, mutilation, crushing and my personal favorite, being eaten alive by pet wolf. Add to that the fact that all but one woman in the movie is either a stripper or a hooker (a waitress being the offending profession) with a birthday suit as first choice of clothing for most, it is safe to say that this is one time the R-rating is spot on!

Sin City is the film adaptation of a series of 'noir'-ish comic books of the same name created by Frank Miller, who is also given a co-director credit in this movie. The main director, Robert Rodriguez, hit upon the idea of being totally and completely faithful to the comic book and in this one step, has revolutionized the thought process on comic book adaptation. Some of the scenes in this movie are lifted straight from the comic book frames (check out the movie website for an interesting comparison) with the net result that the movie pretty much serves to act as a filler between these frames.

Rodriguez also shoots the film entirely in black and white with splashes of colour thrown in to enhance certain details like Jaime King's juicy red lips or the jaundiced yellow skin of a sadistic serial killer and my personal favorite (another one), the sparkling blue eyes of a hooker named Becky (Alexis Bledel).

The movie covers three of the books in the series and is not as much a single movie as much as it is three disparate stories with only threadbare connections between them. The first of these is the story of Marv (Mickey Rourke) an ugly brute of a hulk (see him and you'll understand) who streamrolls everyone in his path to avenge the death of the only woman who was kind to him, a hooker named Goldie (Jaime King). Next, we have the story of Dwight (Clive Owen), a murderer with a new face who is trying to preserve the truce between the hookers and the cops of Sin City after a cop is accidently killed. And finally, Bruce Willis plays Hartigan, the last honest cop in Sin CIty, with the responsibility of protecting the life of Nancy Callahan (Jessica Alba).

Now, its not as if these guys are superheroes, more like exaggerated versions of larger-than-life heroes. Consider Marv for example: this guy is pretty much impossible to kill. So, we have him leap from tall buildings, get shot a million times before being hit by a speeding car but he always wakes up and shrugs it off with machismo. The action throughout the movie is accompanied by an undercurrent of comedy, as if the director was laughing along as he was filming.

The paths of these chracters also don't criss-cross as much as, say, in Pulp Fiction, nor is the narrative structure even slightly non-linear. Instead we have three stories told one after the other: when Marv's story gets over, Dwight's begins and so on. The complaint here is that this structure makes Sin CIty seem less like a movie than a set of three episodes in a TV miniseries. By the time we get to Hartigan we have all but forgotten about Marv, which feels like an injustice to him.

But ignore that minor quibble. SIn City is one of the most enjoyable movies to be released this year and according to the laws governing comic book adaptations, a sequel can't be far away. This movie does to comic book movies what The Matrix did to movies in general. The revolution has begun!

Events on April 18, 2005

2005-04-07T15:34:00.000-07:00

April 18th is the day I was born on way back in 1982. So, as my 23rd birthday looms near, I couldn't help but note down every other event happening that day that has come to my attention (by which I mean, I pounced on anything and anyone mentioning this date). Here's what I've come up with so far (Mark your calendars, everybody):

MS Thesis defense of Karthik Srinivasan, a friend of mine here in Purdue
Birthday of another friend of mine, Mahendra Babu, also from Purdue
Seminar by Dr. Robert M. McMeeking on "Simulations of Switching for Polycrystalline Ferroelectric Ceramics" from 11:00 am - 12:00 noon, also in Purdue (In case you're wondering, the secretaries in our department kindly send out an email to everybody whenever any distinguished gentleman purports to present something)
College of Cardinals meet in a secret conclave to elect a new Pope!! (By far, the coolest event of the day). Note that this is in the Vatican, NOT in Purdue.

More to come?

Attack of the library holds

2005-04-05T11:16:00.000-07:00

Aaaargh!! All holds that I've put in the local libraries in the past few weeks here have all come in at the same time!! Wouldn't be so bad if it didn't mean I now have to read four books (3 + 1/4 actually) in around 2 weeks, I think (and that's because someone else probably has a hold on these books and so I can't renew it!)

I also have to watch 2 DVDs but that's not too bad. Anyway here's what I need to finish:

Books:

The Rule of Four - Almost done with this. A quarter of the book left. Great so far.
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell - Probably my first priority once I finish Rule of Four.
State of Fear - Michael Crichton's latest. Put this on hold 3 months back!
America : a citizen's guide to democracy inaction - written and edited by Jon Stewart and the Daily show gang. Promises to be funny!

DVDs:

American Splendor - Starring Paul Giamatti of Sideways fame. A different kind of comic book adaptation.
The Godfather Part II - Ashamed to say that I haven't seen this yet :(

Also borrowed this book Pagan Babies by Elmore Leonard, the guy who wrote the books on which Out of Sight, Get Shorty and Be cool are based on. That this book is going to be my last priority is not a reflection on its quality (Dumb disclaimer, I know!)

Happy reading to me!!

I HATE UNIX!!!

2005-03-31T22:04:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to get that on record!

"I hate UNIX and anything that runs in UNIX!!"

So there...

UNIX is supposed to be stable right? Isn't that the main reason all the computer geeks out there use it (with smug looks that say "I'm a UNIX whiz and you are not")? Well, this UNIX program froze on me a couple of times today and, get this, I had to terminate and restart UNIX!!! I swear I'm not making this up.

So, above and beyond the mind-numbing complexity of a UNIX-based program and its stubborn user non-friendliness, I also have to put with it crashing like a Windows program!!! That's a great operating system! Thanks fellas!!

General Ramblings

2005-03-31T11:27:00.000-08:00

Just thought I'd type something up as I wait for a program to run (Research stuff). Looking forward to seeing Sin City, hopefully this weekend. Visually, the movie looks amazing, going by the trailers and the initial reviews have been promising too! Can't wait! Check out the picture on the left...<wolf whistle>

Have been reading a lot of books lately too! Currently reading The Rule of Four, sort of a Da Vinci code style code-breaking involving a 15th century book. Supposed to be written better than Da Vinci. Its set in Princeton University and invokes a lot of Princeton locations and traditions in the first few chapters I've read so far. (And tell you what, going by the book, Princeton seems to be an amazing place to be in. They have a lot of interesting traditions, not least of which is The Nude Olympics!! Need I say more?)

Also have Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke on hold in the local library. This one would fall under the genre of fantasy. Read the premise here from amazon.com. Sounds very interesting!

Florida was HOT...

2005-03-25T17:45:00.000-08:00

...if you know what I mean!!

Definitely one of the more beautiful places I've ever been to (not that I've been to a lot). Yeah, this definitely ranks up there. Palm tress lining the street everywhere, beautiful beaches and great weather (except for the one day when it rained!) .

Looking Cool in Miami

Among the places we visited, the Miami Beach area was my favorite(duh!)! Didn't spend too much time there though, which was a pity!! Reason: My friends and I had to sit through a stupid timeshare presentation as part of our hotel package and by the time we got out of there and fought the traffic all the way to Miami, it was 5 pm. Lots of people were leaving but there were still a lot of pretty sights IYKWIM ;)

Great night clubs there. One guy we met in Orlando (before we went to Miami) said they literally party all year long! Turns out he once went there on a Tuesday night and people were partying!

Funny incident: As we were walking along a row of really hip clubs, we noticed a road sign that said "School Zone"! Man, I wish I went to that school!

And the cars people drive there. I was surrounded by Mercedes convertibles, Hummers, Lexuses...you name it! I felt little driving my rented Chevy Malibu!

Great Fun!

Before Miami, it was Orlando. There we went to the Universal theme parks named Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure. Really amazing rides! They also have this funky thing where they have a high speed camera take your picture as you are going on a roller coaster! Bought a key chain with a picture of me and my buddies going down the Hulk, supposedly the scariest roller coaster there! Personally, I felt that another roller coaster, "The Dueling Dragons" was much cooler. Reason I'm mentioning the names: If anyone's headed that way, don't miss either!

By the way: IYKWIM - If you know what I mean

Warm weather, here I come!!!

2005-03-15T19:37:00.000-08:00

That's right! I'm going to Florida, y'all!!! For Spring break (yoo-hoo!)

The looooooooooooooong winter here (W Lafayette, Indiana) doesn't seem to want to leave, so I thought I'd leave instead! Flying to Orlando Wednesday evening. Planning to visit Universal Studios Theme park and/or Disneyworld!

From there its off to the beaches on Friday. And Saturday. And Sunday. My return flight leaves Sunday night though :(

But will I be on it? We'll find out next week!

Nooooooooo Sania!

2005-03-04T21:01:00.000-08:00

Just as you thought, "Hmm, there may be something to this girl after all!", she goes and out does something like this. After defeating US Open champ Svetlana Kuznetsova in the fourth round of the Dubai Open, Sania Mirza goes out and loses to Jelena Jankovic from Serbia in the very next round! In straight sets! In 48 minutes! The sad details are at: http://us.rediff.com/sports/2005/mar/03sania.htm

But of course, I'm being unfair. What Sania has achieved so far is pretty exceptional given India's bare tennis trophy cases (actually just trophy cases if you think about it)! So, well done Sania! We're rooting for you

Dumb, Stupid, Boring OSCARS!!!

2005-03-04T12:19:00.000-08:00

Million Dollar Baby was the best movie of the year? Are you kidding me? Ok, to be fair I haven't seen MDB but I know what it's all about (I read all the plot spoilers...) and honestly I don't see how it could have possibly topped The Aviator. Makes you lose what little respect you had for the Oscars, if any! (And Martin Scorsese losing out again? I really don't want to talk about it!)

The new Oscar format wasn't all that great either. Getting the contestants to come on to the stage made it awkward for those who didn't win the award. Other time saving efforts were pretty terrible as well. You know when the band begins to play to signal that time is up for the award winners to make their speeches, I hated that, I've always hated that! It's really disgraceful when you are supposedly rewarding people for doing something exceptional and then you go ahead and expect them to summarise their feelings within 30 seconds! Really smacks of hypocrisy!

Coming to Chris Rock. I thought his opening monologue was quite funny but it all went downhill after that. I don't think he was given enough time to get into his groove and I also got the impression that he had more material written but wasn't able to perform them because of...time constraints! (My funniest moment of the evening was Robin WIlliams doing an impression of Jack Nicholson as Bugs Bunny!)

The Oscars this time were booooooooring mainly because, as many people have pointed out, there wasn't this one big movie to root for. I also think the songs nominated this time were pretty ordinary, the only performance I listened to was Counting Crows' "Accidently in love" from Shrek 2. Speaking of which, it was a pity that Shrek 2 lost out to The Incredibles in the Best Animated Film category not because Incredibles wasn't the better of the two (It was also nominated for Best Original Screenplay and won for Best Sound Editing !), but because Shrek 2 was such a terrific movie! Hmm, if only the other categories had such competition.

The winners themselves: Aviator won most of the tech awards which was expected. The acting awards, well, I was rooting for Thomas Haden Church to win Best Supporting Actor for Sideways and Virginia Madsen for Supporting Actress (she positively glowed in the movie!). But alas, the awards went to the "popular" choices! Best Actor, Best Actress, I guess everyone knew who was going to win those. For Foreign Film, from what I'd read, I felt that Downfall from Germany, chronicling Hitler's final days in a bunker could pull off a surprise. It didn't of course! This was not the Oscar of surprises, of disappointment mainly!

Woh, Sania!

2005-03-01T12:20:00.000-08:00

Well, for those who thought Sania Mirza was a one-shot wonder (including moi), here's something to knock your brains out. She beat US Open champion Svetlana Kuznetsova (she of the non-existant serve) in the fourth round of the Dubai Open! Pretty kewl!! Check out the details in this link:
http://us.rediff.com/sports/2005/mar/01sania.htm

Salon.com screens Oscar nominated shorts...

2005-02-26T15:33:00.000-08:00

...and I missed it!

Salon.com apparently got permission to screen the five Oscar nominated short films (including India's Little Terrorist) for a 24-hour viewing period which ended Friday midnight EST. This was probably everyone's only chance to see these little masterpieces. Pity!

More info on this link:
http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2005/02/25/shorts/index.html

India DOES have an entry to the Oscars!!!

2005-02-19T15:52:00.000-08:00

...and it's a short film! Check out the details at rediff.com about Little Terrorist, which has been nominated for an Oscar under the category of Live Action Short Film. Here's the link:
http://us.rediff.com/movies/2005/feb/18terrorist.htm

Constantine

2005-02-19T15:00:00.000-08:00

Keanu Reeves goes through hell to...uh...

Comparison between Constantine and The Matrix movies is inevitable... so here's my take on that: they have both got (1) Keanu Reeves wearing a black trenchcoat doing stuff us ordinary humans couldn't dream about (in this one, he literally goes to hell for a short visit), (2) a story with a ton of mumbo-jumbo in it which would require months, if not years, of dedicated rersearch to unravel (I'm sure it all makes sense in the end!) and (3) a sort of deus-ex machina ending (to use one of Roger Ebert's favorite terms) to defuse a potentially impossible situation.

The premise of the movie is, however, quite promising and was one of the reasons I went to a sneak preview of it here (Other reasons include the fact that the aforementioned sneak preview was free (!) and the trailer was rather interesting). Anyway, here's how it goes: God and the Devil supposedly made a bet as to who between them can get a higher number of human souls; now, the rule was they aren't allowed to interfere with our lives directly, only sort of nudge us in some particular direction, which would earn us eternal bliss (in heaven) or eternal damnation (in, you guessed it, HELL), after we die of course. The actual "nudging" is done by their minions, angels, for God and demons, for the Devil.

So, where does Keanu Reeves come into all this. He plays John Constantine, a chain smoker, who has the gift to see these angels and demons walking among us and hopes to get into God's good graces by kicking wayward demon's asses back to hell. His life gets even more interesting when a police detective played by Rachel Weisz asks his help to prove that her dead sister did not committ suicide. (Did the Devil make her do it, then?)

With such a rich subject, you would expect things to explode off the screen, but, the movie, instead, makes the cardinal sin (its going straight to hell!) of taking its subject matter way-too-seriously and goes on to bombard us with a ton of pseudo-Christian hocus-pocus and unneeded, underdeveloped minor characters, that it loses its focus just as the plot "thickens" (Remind you of The Matrix-Reloaded and Revolutions, anyone?) The end product is an unevenly made supernatural thriller that isn't very super and doesn't thrill too much either.

Visually, however, the movie oozes style with some slick cinematography and camerwork that prevent it from looking tired. The plot also moves through a lot of different environments, sort of like a video game and each of them sport a different, interesting look. The special effects are awesome without ever dominating the movie, usually a good thing (but not so here with the people being as uninteresting as they are).

Constantine is based on a comic book and given the track record of comic books turned to movies, you really shouldn't be surprised by the lack of character development. Keanu Reeves' character is a 'been-there-seen-that' kind of guy which suits him perfectly as it means he hardly has to show any emotion ever. Rachel Weisz is very subdued throughout most of the movie - you never know what really drives her to be what she is; is she tough or vulnerable? Brave or stupid? The other characters...well, who really cares? What was needed here was more special effects, less mumbo-jumbo! That would have made this movie into another Matrix! Now, that would have been something!

NOTE: There was apparently a bonus ending to this movie, at the end of the credits, which I missed 'cos I didn't know about it (I read about it just today at imdb.com). Now, come on! That's not fair! There should really be a "bonus ending" alert in movies, kinda like "Parental guidance is advised" alerts. Can you really expect people to sit through minutes of mind-numbing credits rolling down in the tentative hope that there may be a flicker of light at the end of the tunnel? No!

Sideways

2005-02-13T14:32:00.000-08:00

Sideways is a poignant and humorous tale of two middle-aged buddies, Miles (Paul Giamatti), English teacher and wine-connoisseur, and Jack (Thomas Haden Church), an actor, going on a road-trip of California’s vineyards one week before Jack is getting married. Miles is the kind of person who can instantaneously kill the most swinging of parties; he’s a depressed, self-absorbed loser who’s unsure of where is life is heading. Jack is almost his alter-ego, a party animal, who wants one last week of freedom (read “sex”) before settling down into what promises to be a very opulent life.

In Miles and Jack, director Alexander Payne gives us two characters difficult to sympathize with, at least initially. Miles is not one of those interesting, lovable loser-types, the kind the audience roots for. He steals from his mother when he’s short of cash; he lies easily, gets drunk all the time and cannot stop talking about wine. Neither is Jack one of those lovable goofy guys whom everyone easily forgives with a shrug. He comes off as a selfish person, lucky to be where he is in life, seemingly prepared to throw it all away and hurt everyone around him, just to satisfy his cravings.

But our opinions begin to change as the week unfolds and we get to know the two better, especially Miles, who is the focus of the movie (Giamatti features in pretty much every scene). Miles goes around most of the time feeling like a heel, facing constant rejection and disappointment before eventually meeting Maya (Virginia Madsen), whose interest in him gives him some sense of redemption even though he is not sure he deserves it. Jack meanwhile has his dreams answered in Stephanie (Sandra Oh) who appears to be one of those hot, “easy” girls, just looking for a good time and just what the doctor ordered as far as he is concerned.

Even though we never really understand that Maya sees in Miles, their relationship helps bring out some of his nicer sides, especially as we contrast his behavior with Jack’s and, thus, begin to like him a little, kinda... In their first double date, Jack easily slips into infidelity with Stephanie, while Miles mumbles and fumbles his way through, unable to move from the subject of wine. Miles’ timidity compared to Jack’s temerity also provides a lot of the humor in the movie.

Overall, Giamatti gives a terrific performance as Miles here, a kind of depressed version of Kevin Spacey in American Beauty and it is quite surprising that he did not get a Best Actor nomination. Both Virginia Madsen and Thomas Haden Church definitely deserve theirs though and the only reason that Sandra Oh didn’t get one is we don’t get to know her as much as Maya (Much of her action with Jack takes place off-screen).

NOTE: I spent quite some time wondering why the movie was titled "Sideways". While I can think of a lot of low-level metaphorical explanations, I've been unable to come up with anything satisfactory!

The Aviator

2005-02-08T14:29:00.000-08:00

Extolling the genius of Howard Hughes

Howard Hughes. Film-maker/Womanizer/Inventor/Aviator. Here was a life that was meant to be turned into a movie! Director Martin Scorsese’s take on this remarkable character focuses chronicles the golden period of his life when he revolutionized the aviation industry through his brilliant foresight and designs. With Leonardo DiCaprio delivering a stellar performance as the title character, this is a movie that truly inspires. Here was a man who, almost literally, aimed for the stars and DiCaprio makes us believe in him and root for him. His irrepressible enthusiasm rubs off on us as he successfully executes one bold decision after another, on his way to, among other things, breaking the flying speed record and building the world’s biggest airplane to date, out of wood!

Millionaire by the time he was eighteen after inheriting his father’s drill-bit industry, the Texas-born Hughes moved to Hollywood to make movies, not totally thrilled by the prospect of manufacturing drill-bits for the rest of his life! There he made “Hell’s Angels” in 1930, which at $3.8 million was the most expensive movie at that time. He followed this up with “Scarface” which was censored for its extreme violence and “The Outlaw” which attained notoriety for its focus on the sensational bosoms of its lead actress, Jane Russell.

Hughes also made news for the numerous women in his life, Hollywood starlets whom he couldn’t seem to get enough of. The movie focuses on the most prominent of these ladies, Katherine Hepburn, delightfully mimicked here by Cate Blanchett, and Ava Gardner, played with seductive appeal by Kate Beckinsale. Hughes’ relationship with Hepburn is particularly amusing with Hepburn’s loquacity overwhelming the usually audacious Hughes.

The movie also shows how Hughes’s severe Obsessive Compulsive Order (OCD) affected his life, making him a total recluse from public life for extended periods of time. DiCaprio gives a very touching portrayal of OCD here without succumbing to the temptation of overacting. Watch him in one scene where he cannot stop himself repeating a line over and over again – he is at once both shocked at what’s happening and disgusted with himself for being unable to control it.

Other notable performances include Alan Alda as a U.S. Senator in the pocket of Juan Trippe (Alec Baldwin), Hughes’ competitor in the aviation industry. The always reliable John C. Reilly plays the harried Noah Dietrich who has to sort out the paperwork whenever Hughes decides to execute one of his seeming crazy ideas.

Scorsese is at his usual best here, impeccably guiding the movie through the vagaries of Hughes’ life without ever getting bogged down. Will this movie signal his first directing Oscar? Losing out in this category four times before, this prolific film-maker has also remarkably never delivered a Best Picture winner either. The Aviator may not be his greatest but deserves to win for sheer ambition, a hallmark of all of Scorsese’s works.

Spider-man 2

2004-07-02T14:28:00.000-07:00

At the end of the first Spider-man movie, you genuinely felt sorry for Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) when he had to renounce the love of his life, Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst), in order to continue his web-slinging activities without putting those he loved in peril. He also carried the burden of guilt for being indirectly responsible for the death of his Uncle Ben and worse yet, his life saving turns as Spiderman were reviled by the papers, most notably, The Daily Bugle, using, ironically, photos of Spiderman he himself takes.

Well, things definitely get worse the second time around. Peter’s in college now and not doing too well; he’s late for class, late for his job, late with his rent and, most importantly, too late to catch Mary Jane’s starring performance in The Importance of being Earnest. Yup, MJ’s an up-and-coming actress now and still in love with Peter (though she is going out with an astronaut). Of course, the reason for Peter’s tardiness is his “other” job, the one as Spiderman, which isn’t going too smoothly as well, these days, when his “web-supply” starts drying up all of a sudden. Yes, life has been unfair to Peter Parker and the first hour or so of the movie is spent in hammering this fact into our heads.

Then, things get worse…

Enter Dr. Octo Octavius (Alfred Molina), scientist-par-extraordinaire, who’s devised a method to sustain a controlled fusion reaction, which, he hopes to use for the greater good of mankind. His first demonstration, however, goes horribly wrong, leaving him without a wife, but instead with four mechanical tentacles that have minds of their own, attached to his spine. He is now Doc Ock who terrorizes the residents of New York, without, remarkably, seeming to kill even one of them!

This plot is clearly designed to hit us hard emotionally but, sadly, that’s where it fails the most. The choices that Peter has to make while difficult and heart-wrenching are, nonetheless, predictable. You really don’t feel surprised when he throws away his Spidey costume and you don’t feel surprised when he puts it back on (especially, after Aunt May goes on about how “there’s a hero in everyone of us”). You know that when Peter walks around to the sound of “Raindrops keep falling… ” in the background he’s going to have a good day. You also know that he’s the one who’s going to answer that difficult question in class and that he’s going to make it on time to MJ’s play this time!

In such a scenario, when you know what’s going to happen next, something extra-ordinary has to take place on-screen, sizzling chemistry between the actors, perhaps, or some riveting dialog, something beyond the ordinary, to keep the viewers’ attention from wandering. Spider-man 2 has none of that! The best thing about the movie is J.K. Simmons turn as J. Jonah Jameson, editor of The Daily Bugle who lights up the movie with his unrepressed blow-hardiness. Apart from that, the dialog is pedestrian throughout the movie, the editing, jagged and the chemistry between Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst, zero. The ending is both uneventful and unsatisfying, with some tidbits seen of what’s going to happen in the third movie thrown in. Don’t cross your fingers!

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

2004-06-06T14:27:00.000-07:00

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is rated among Potter fans as the best book of the series; and now, it is also the best movie of the series! Sure, the story is great, but for the first time it is backed by imaginative direction, a creative screenplay and young actors finally getting into their mold.

After the usual Muggle-baiting that kicks off each adventure, Harry Potter, who is 13 now and about to begin his third year at Hogwarts, runs away from his hateful relatives, the Dursleys, after transforming a particularly obnoxious houseguest into a balloon (‘found floating near Sheffield” as one of the characters reveals later in the movie)! Picked up by the Knight Bus, magical (and hair-rising) transport for the “stranded witch or wizard”, he manages to reach London where he runs into his best friends from school, Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Hermoine Granger (Emma Watson).

All is not well in the magical community, though, as Ron’s father Arthur informs him. Sirius Black (Gary Oldman), notorious mass-murderer and big time supporter of You-know-who, has escaped from the wizard prison Azkaban, the first wizard ever to do so. And it gets worse – Black is believed to be looking for Harry in order to kill him! On the prowl for Black are the guards of Azkaban, nasty, wraith-like creatures called Dementors who have the unfortunate habit of attacking anyone that comes in their way. They like to suck the happiness out of people and seem to have a particularly strong effect on Harry.

But help is at hand in the form of the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher Remus Lupin (David Thewlis), who not only guides Harry in sorting out his “Dementor issues” but also helps him unravel a little of his tragic past. Everyone’s favorite giant Hagrid is also a Professor now, for Care of Magical Creatures, and his new pet is a wonderful half-horse-half-eagle (computer generated) beauty called a Hippogriff who answers to the name of Buckbeak. Not every teacher is sweet and tender however – Harry still has to put with the sneers of Prof. Snape (Alan Rickman at his most menacing) and the whacked-out Divination teacher Sybill Trelawney (Emma Thompson) who seems to take particular joy in predicting Harry’s death.

With a ton of material to cover, director Alfonso Quaron (of Y Tu Mamá También fame) does a terrific job in sustaining the momentum through the movie. His sets, where it’s always raining or snowing (it is set in England after all!) have a darker, more surreal feel to them when compared to the first two movies. He is helped by the script which, for the first time, doesn’t seem obliged to follow the book scene-by-scene. The actors have also done a fairly neat job this time with everyone appearing comfortable in their roles (including Michael Gambon who replaces the late Richard Harris in the role of Dumbledore).

The movie’s taut script, which gives it a relatively shorter running time of 139 minutes, does have its drawbacks however- not everything is explained satisfactorily in the end after a climax which seems greatly rushed; gone also is most of the Quidditch from the book - the one game that does does make it into the movie is tremendously shot (but woefully short!). These are minor shortcomings; at the end of the day, this movie works and that’s what matters!

Shrek-2

2004-05-27T14:24:00.000-07:00

Voiced by Mike Myers, Shrek, the mean, green fighting machine (or love machine, if you go by the steamy opening scenes!) is back for a second installment, and boy, is he back with a bang! With a bagful of new characters, most memorably, Puss-in-boots, voiced delightfully by Antonia Banderas, the story takes Shrek and Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz) to “meet the parents” in the kingdom far, far away. But “great evil is afoot”, in the form of the fairy godmother (Jennifer Saunders) who runs a potion-producing, hex-making, “happily ever after” factory and is determined, by hook or crook, to get Princess Fiona married to the devilishly handsome son, Prince Charming (Rupert Everett).

The parents in question are the King (John Cleese) and Queen (Julie Andrews) of Far, Far away, a magical, Hollywood-style kingdom, that is home to such fairytale celebrities as Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. Back from their honeymoon, Shrek and Fiona receive a summons from the royal couple who have got the news that the curse on their beloved daughter has been broken by her prince charming (not to be confused with The Prince Charming!). Not knowing that the curse has been broken by an ogre, they still expect to see a beautiful Fiona and a radiant prince. Fiona convinces the reluctant Shrek to make the long trip (made longer by Donkey’s (Eddy Murphy) incessant chatter, one of the more hilarious sequences of the movie).

The fanfare of their arrival at the kingdom is quickly dissipated when everyone sees that they are, well, ogres! Shrek and Fiona soon have a spat and things don’t improve when the fairy godmother, on coming to realize that her plan to have Charming marry Fiona have gone awry devises a plan to do away with Shrek. Enter Puss-in-boots, Ogre Slayer par extraordinaire, with a major fur-ball problem!

The movie really picks up when Puss joins Shrek and Donkey in their effort to mend things with Fiona. What follows is a whirlwind adventure involving magic potions, a horse-carriage chase, a “Mission Impossible” style break-in and giant gingerbread men, culminating in one of the most terrific climaxes ever in animated movie history! There is still time for a twist in the end of the tale as well as a very stylish rendition of “Living la Vida loca”!

Shrek 2 is all that Shrek was and much more. It matches and many times exceeds the wit of the first movie: the animation here has been lifted up another notch and the new characters add substance to the movie rather than simply making up the numbers. The pairing of Donkey and Puss, especially, is hilarious and definitely the highlight of the movie. This is definitely the best movie of the summer so far and will require something special to overtake it!

The Matrix-Reloaded

2003-08-03T01:04:00.000-07:00

By the time the events in The Matrix-Reloaded take place (which seems to be a few months after the end of The Matrix), Neo (Keanu Reaves) has freed his mind enough to acquire demi-god abilities – he does his “Superman stuff” a lot! While this would have made his fights against his enemies, namely The Agents of the Matrix, and a few others, highly one-sided, the creators of the movie (The Waschowski brothers) have cleverly designed all his fights to take place against multiple opponents. The most notable, and spectacular, of these is the sequence where Neo takes on one hundred copies of Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving), a fight nicknamed The Burly Brawl. Yes, Smith is back and this time he has the ability to replicate himself, like a computer virus!

Also in these few months, the love between Trinity (Carrie Ann Moss) and Neo has deepened to such an extent that they are not able to keep their hands of each other, ever! And if Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburn) appeared to be the all-knowing, universally respected figure in The Matrix for his knowledge of, and belief in, the prophesy made by The Oracle (the late Gloria Foster), the very same beliefs lead him to be treated as a madman by many at Zion, the last human city located near the core of the earth (This doesn’t prevent him from being allowed to make a fiery speech in the Zion temple, urging his fellow Zion-ites to show their defiance of the machines by, well, partying!). Notable among his skeptics is Commander Lock, commander of the defense forces of Zion, who is more concerned with the looming attack of 250,000 sentinel machines boring their way down to the city. Neo, meanwhile, is trying to find the path to the source of The Matrix, which according to the Oracle’s prophesy will end the human-machine war. He also keeps having visions of Trinity being killed.

These form the background for one of the most visually stunning movies of the year, the highlights of course being the fights with their dizzying martial arts, stunningly choreographed using the then (during The Matrix) revolutionary bullet-time strategy. There is also a breath-taking fourteen minute highway chase sequence, already being called the best of its kind ever. Also breath-taking (and ravishing and spectacular) is Monica Belluci who plays Persephone who guides the trio of Neo, Morpheus and Trinity on their way to The Keymaker, a program who can get them to the source of the matrix.

For the most part, however, Reloaded is like playing a video game in God mode: Neo is simply too powerful for his enemies, he hardly gets a scratch, well, only one scratch, during the whole movie and his ability to fly, however awesome it looks, is just one ability too many. And when it comes to performances, it is Moss who steals the show: her sleek and sexy Trinity is possibly even more appealing than Angelina Jolie’s Lara Croft. Keanu Reaves seems unable to show any expression on his wooden face...in both worlds (there’s one rule even Neo couldn’t break)! Reloaded also has a couple of very silly scenes, the party at Zion being the worst offender. In spite of all these, Reloaded is undeniably ultra-cool, perhaps even more than the first movie, and will definitely live up to the expectations of its hard core fans. With its rather abrupt ending, it’ll also keep these fans on the edge of their seats till November, waiting for the third installation of the trilogy, The Matrix-Revolutions, to answer all the questions posed by Reloaded.