Category: Movies

  • Movie List

    Due to the late relase of movies in this half of the world, below is the list of movies I am waiting to watch on the big screen.

    1. Babel
    2. Flags of Our Fathers
    3. Letters from Iwo Jima
    4. Blood Diamond
    5. Apocalypto
    6. The Pursuit of Happyness

    It has been ages since the pipeline has been so healthy. I wish they come to India fast.

  • History & Bullshit!!

    Had this mail converstation with my friends today. Read from the bottom upwards.

    Sudeep wrote:

    Hey Goyal, your thoughts remind me of this chapter we had in our hindi text books. Its written in Duryodhanas words and he narates his side of the story. He says exactly what you said here. He says to Arjun that I know that you would write the history that will be read by generations to come and you would surely glorify yourself.

    Very valid thought. If Duryodhana wrote history, whatever wrong he might have done, we wouldn’t have known about them. And even if he wrote about those deeds, he would have sugar-coated them enough.

    Misra wrote:

    I totally agree..

    An African proverb – “Till lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter.”

    Goyal wrote:

    Sometimes I feel that history is bullshit. And then my mind wanders back to Star Wars. And how nothing is good or bad. It is just who has power who describes an action as good or bad.

    Imagine being a part of Germany, loaded with an illogical debt after the World War I and all your self respect being taken away. Your people dying because the nation doesn’t have money after paying a stupid fine. Would you note hate the entire Western World. I am not justifying the killing of Jews. Its just what is good and what is bad is judged by the perception of the person/race/state in power.

    Just imagine what history is to the children of Pakistan, to whom Indians might have been described as tyrants and oppressors. And glorification of Jinnah. Think how the Indian (Congressified) historians have almost forgotten all the contribution of people other than Gandhi/Nehru to Indian Independence, and how they have totally ignored the cleansing of Kashmiri Pandits.

    Sometimes I wonder what history would have said, if at all, about the termination of Jews, had Hitler not lost the war!!

    Misra wrote:

    Hey.. I just watched “The Downfall”.. they’ve released it in PVR.. it’s a German movie subtitled in English.. about the last days of Hitler.. basically the Apr-May 1945 period. The movie is awesome.. Goyal, you toh will love it. The guy who plays Hitler, abhi Oscar de do yaar usko.. some of the scenes and dialogues are really hard-hitting. And it kinda showed a more human side of things.. these Nazis.. they were totally, utterly crazy.. but they weren’t totally devil incarnates.. they too were parents, mothers, fathers.. and in the end, they too were just scared more than anything.. I’m not even trying to describe the scene where this woman kills her 6 children coz she doesn’t want them to grow up in a wold with “socialist nationalism”.. while the film didn’t mince words as it went about showing the crap that these guys dealt out and their incredibly horrifying beliefs.. it also gave a slightly balanced view on things.. and I liked that.. coz it just made it even sadder.

    The story was mostly told from the point of view of Hitler’s secretary.. The last lines of the movie are totally hard hitting..

    “All these horrors I’ve heard of during the Nurnberg process, these six million Jews, other thinking people or people of another race, who perished. That shocked me deeply. But I hadn’t made the connection with my past. I assured myself with the thought of not being personally guilty. And that I didn’t know anything about the enormous scale of it. But one day I walked by a memorial plate of Sophie Scholl in the Franz-Joseph-Strasse. I saw that she was about my age and she was executed in the same year I came to Hitler. And at that moment I actually realised that a young age isn’t an excuse. And that it might have been possible to get to know things.”

    Verdict: Must watch.

  • The Fountainhead – A Review

    Ojas reccomended this movie to me. The novel I had already read and liked greatly. The movie sadly fell short of expectations. It could have been a brilliant movie, and is in parts, but is paced so fast that, for someone who has not read the novel, it is difficult to put two and two together.

    Movies based on novels very often do not do justice to the original. But there have been movies otherwise. The Godfather, the LOTR trilogy and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest being excellent examples. This however, belongs to the former category.

    The major problem with the movie is the length of the movie. According to me the movie should have been at least 3 hours long. During most parts the movie seems extremely rushed and at times it is difficult to connect pieces. The screenplay by Rand is crisp but haphazard at the best. For example, the relationship between Roark and Dominique could have been explored a little more.

    Gary Cooper are Howard Roark and Robert Douglas as Ellsworth Toohey are extremely good. The other actors however, do not leave a mark. Patricia Neal, playing Domonique Francon, is good only in parts but mostly has a wooden expression that fails to convince you.  Raymond Massey as Gail Wynand is ok.  Peter Keating, played by Kent Smith, hardly has any screen time to be judged.

    The fans of the novel however, must watch the movie once. I rate it as 3.5/5.0.

    Interesting: You can read a NY Times review (of 1949) criticising the philosophy behind the movie, and the movie itself, here (sign up required).

  • One Weekend – Three Great Movies

    One great weekend. Three movies. All awesome. Things I liked about them below.

    The Departed – 4.5/5.0

    Who am I? I’m the guy that does his fuckin’ job! You must be the other guy!

    The Departed is Jack Nicholson and DiCaprio’s movie. Matt Damon is good, the female (Vera Farmiga) is hot, but Leo and Jack make the movie what it is.

    Okay. This is not a review. These are points I noticed about the movie.

    1. The first one of the few movies I have seen with a Floyd song, Comfortably Numb at that, as a part of the OST. Just this alone made the movie worth all the money I spent on it. Though the rendition is not great, but still.
    2. Fuck. Yes. You hear the word so much in the movie that Anoop requested that we shift to shit for sometime to recover from the after effects. Good shit man.
    3. The movie has like a gazillion people getting killed, with only one dying a natural death. And that with no fuss at all.
    4. I admit. I have started liking DiCaprio. I haven’t see The Gangs Of New York but The Aviator and now this. Martin Scorsese has picked a brilliant actor. In the current crop, no one beats Leo and Depp.
    5. Two best scenes incidentally both involve Di Caprio. First, where he gets interviewed at the police headquarters by Mark Wahlberg. I mean the intensity on his face is just awesome. Second, when he is face to face with Jack Nicholson and tells him that he is not the rat.

    You accuse me once, I put up with it. You accuse me twice… I quit. You pressure me to fear for my life and I will put a bullet in your head as if you were anybody else. Okay?

    Best movie of the year so far, for me, and a sure shot Oscar contender in many categories. Better than V for Vendetta and Munich (which though are technically last years movies). So, all those who haven’t watched it yet. Guys you are missing something. Catch the movie ASAP.

    Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels – 4.0/5.0

    Its been emotional.

    If Sanjay Gupta is the Indian Tarantino, then Guy Ritchie is the British version. I mean the movie reminds you so closely of Pulp Fiction that you sometimes feel it is the same movie hadn’t it been for the thick British accent the characters had. The movie with no big stars, yet creating magic out of nothing. Which proves that the absence of stars from a cast is not a good reason to label a movie bad.

    The story of four small time criminals who dream to make it big by betting big. The lose big time and end up half a million pounds in debt of a sort of a mini mafia boss. After that it is almost like a comedy of errors.

    Jason Statham (The Transporter) is good. And so are Vinnie Jones (Big Chris) and Little Chris. Another character I liked is that of Rory, the black mafia boss. Hilarious like shit. Also the movie reminds me a lot of Snatch, another Guy Ritchie movie which I incidentally saw before this one.

    Must watch. And last but not the least.

    The School of Rock – 3.5/5.0

    This movie along with Independence Day and Big Daddy is amongst the very few movies that I like, even though they are rated pretty low on IMDB.

    Those who know me know why I would have loved the movie. Rock music is something I adore. Story of a useless bum who loves music, is kicked from his own band, pretends to be a teacher to pay off debts. He hears the kids play during a music class and believes that they have talent to make it big and will help him achieve his dream of winning a rock contest. During his interaction with them over the next few months he, unknowingly even, helps many kids get over their doubts and believe in themselves.

    God of Rock, thank you for this chance to kick ass. We are your humble servants. Please give us the power to blow people’s minds with our high voltage rock. In your name we pray, Amen.

    They finally don’t win the contest but are loved by one and all. And man they put up one hell of an act.

  • Sachin, Scorsese and Sunday

    Cricketing greats choose Lara over Sachin as the greatest of our era. While agree that Lara is definitely the more stylish of the two, I rate Sachin much higher for just one reason. Lara (or any other great) never had to carry the hopes of a billion people alone. There was time people used to say “Lets go home and cry. We cannot win from here on.” (actually happened in Sarjah, when Sachin mauled the Aussies) when Tendulkar was dismissed.So say all you can and rate all you can, Sachin remains there alone, head and shoulders above all greats (probably just a tad bit below the Don though.) Here is something that explains it all, from JaiArjun Singh,

    But Tendulkar is a batsman in a sport that thrives on them. Even his worst critics, even those who denounce him in the final analysis as being a false god, will – if only years after his retirement – find it somewhere in their embittered hearts to acknowledge that there was a time, however brief, when he brightened their gloomiest hours like no one else could.

    I might probably watch The Departed (#62 on IMDB Top 250) today. It has been rated as the greatest Scorsese movie after the Goodfellas (#22 on IMDB Top 250). Review after I am done with it. Even if it is half as good, it would be worth the money I spend on it.

    Last but not the least. Ending it with a quote for the day from the movie Good Will Hunting.

    Lambeau: Sometimes I wish I had never met you. Because then I could go to sleep at night not knowing there was someone like you out there.