Slumdog Millionaire - Must Watch!!!!

So, aside from knowing that it was directed by Danny Boyle, and that he’s a genius, I had absolutely no idea what to expect from Slumdog Millionaire. I had no idea it was set in India, no idea that it involved the Hindi version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, I had no idea about anything. I’m glad I didn’t know anything about the film, or else I wouldn’t have been so spectacularly surprised. It’s such a beautifully compelling love story, and so much more. It’s definitely a must see.

In many years or maybe in decades you may get a chance to watch such a wonderful movie, and this time it is called “Slumdog Millionaire”. A movie that not only tells a story but shows us a path beyond surviving in this world, a world where love and life comes really hard, very hard for most of us.

“Jamal, an 18 year old orphan from the slums of Mumbai is yet to experience the biggest day of his life. Each chapter of his life reveals the key to the answer to one of the seemingly impossible quiz game show’s questions. It’s the answers he learned through his journey of life and the love that ultimately made him a millionaire.”

Undoubtedly, this film is one of the best movie I have ever seen all these years. It is based on the book Q and A written by Indian author and diplomat Vikas Swarup, a brilliantly directed movie by Danny Boyle & Loveleen Tandan (co-director), awesome music by A.R Rahman, the superb casting & performance on screen and the mind-boggling over all presentation. You like everything about it and so it is done perfectly, as if you are witnessing something that happened just in front of you, connected with unbelievably real souls of an unknown world. I felt like, the story is just another reality, shocking, at times scary, very profound and thought provoking. In the end, it’s the love that remained the gift for the life turned luck.

“Slumdog Millionaire” is nothing short of a heartbreaking, soul-stirring, breathlessly guided glimpse into a life worth celebrating. For that, and not that alone, the film itself deserves to be celebrated just the same.

Joker n the Oscar

Warner Bros has publicly begun its push with this Variety advertisement for Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight for a Best Supporting Actor nomination. Academy Award ballots are mailed on December 26th, polls close on January 12th, and the nominations are announced on January 22nd.

I hope that the "Joker" wins this time!!!

Socha hai??

In the recent past,there's one song that's just blown me away..yup,a hindi song:).

Asama hai neela kyun.paani geela geela kyun
Gol kyun hai zameen?
Silk mein narmee kyun.aag me hai gaarmi kyun
do aur do paanch kyun nahin?
Ped ho gaye kam kyun.teen hai yeh mausam kyun
Chand do kyun nahin?
Duniya mein hai jang kyun,behti laal rang kyun
sarhadain hai kyun har kahin?
socha hai...
yeh kya kabhi
socha hai..
yeh hai kya sabhi
socha hai...
socha nahin,toh socho abhi..

**hats off to javed akhtar**
Probably these lyrics don't make literal sense..but,i just love the honesty of the lyrics.These lyrics make me think about the greatest gift given to man(which he rarely uses), thinking and ability to question..Children make the most use of their brain,because they question,the curiosity within them makes them question,even if it is as naive as "why don't i have a third ear?".But as man grows older,he loses his ability to question,he ignores it.He just flies through life,not bothering to stand,analyse and question,because it's just a waste of time.He wants to get on with his life,wakes up every morning,finishes his job,runs back home.He wouldn't dare to question "why doesn't the goverment do anything about the bihar floods?",because it's not related to him,its not his job.
I cannot generalize,but i can say,the greater proportion of the people fail to question.If it has been a long time since you questioned,look at the mirror now,and ask yourself"Where do i stand?","What do i look forward to everyday?"..you will discover a lot.

Hello - Hell No !!!

Watched Hello!! yesterday...... 10 minutes into the movie, you get to realize why the name of the movie is Hello!! It is, I guess to ensure that people do not leave the cinema hall halfway....

Jokes apart, a truly horrible effort at trying to make a movie out of a book. For those of you who liked 'One Night at a call Center', by Chetan Bhagat, you will hate the movie..... And for those of you who did not read the book, you will hate the movie!!! The only thing that stands out at the end of the movie is the solace in the fact that Atul Agnihotri is a consistent guy. He is as bad at directing as he ever was at acting.... (Remember the song on the bike??!!)

Well, the movie starts off with an item number by Mr Khan with mind bogling lyrics as 'Bang Bang Bang, Boom Boom Boom'!! (what was he thinking!!) After the item number, he gets ready to leave when his departure is delayed due to a technical fault with his chopper!! While sitting there, Katrina Kaif sits next to him as she needs to use the charging unit for her laptop and that is the only place where she can get it. She then starts off the narration of a 'oh so pathetic' story on the condition that Mr Khan makes a movie out of it....

Focus shifts to Connexions, a fictional call center in every sense of the term..... It is a rainy night an everybody is getting ready to get to their shift in time. And whether you believe it or not, everybody has his sob story in life starting from the supervisor Shyam, son of divorcees Vroom, the ever dutiful wife Radhika, aspiring model Isha, aged Military uncle and the soon to be married to a NRI gal, Priyanka. They are all part of the same team which handles Customer care calls for an appliance company... They are all cribbing about their lives at work when we get to know that Shyam and Priyanka were going steady before they broke up and Vroom likes Isha.... Between all this, there is news of employee retrenchment by their manager Mr Bakshi, an America loving SOB manager.... Due to a system issue and rise in tempers, they all decide to take a break from work and go and booze before making their way to office... (Wonder how!!??)

On the way back, Vroom is drunk and so eh crashes through a construction site, the car thus ending up at the very precipice of an under construction 'something'(Never got to know what it was!!) here, amazingly, none of them are able to get any signal on their mobiles... And then God calls!!!!!

Most of the conversation is one sided and illogical.. Basically God asks them to stand up for themselves and follow their mind in what they do. After all this they go back to office, teach a lesson to Bakshi and stop employee retrenchment....

The way they stop employee retrenchment by increasing calls is phenomenally crazy!!! During a fire drill the same night, Shyam and Vroom convince everybody assembled that they have to receive more calls to enable retention. Therefore, the suggestion, call up all customers and tell them that there is a mysterious virus attack on the US through appliances (whoa!!) and by keeping on calling, they can somehow annihilate the attack!! (Basic premise here is all Americans are dumbasses!!!!) And thus all is well that ends well.

And hey BTW, if you are not bored by the sheer idiotic of it all, you come to know at the end that Katrina is God!!!! My God!!!

The movie to talk about in a few words is a slap on the book, a slap on the faces of each and every employee of the burgeoning back office industry through its potrayal and and therefore deserves a slap on the face of Mr Agnihotri, Mr Bhagat and all of the cast!!!!

Even if you are supremely bored, I suggest you watch a crappy movei on Zee Cinema or Set Ma rather than sitting through this joke of a movie!!!!

Rock On - A Review

I was talking to a friend yesterday, and i got to know that she has not yet watched this movie yet.. So for i hope she will watch the movie atleast after reading this review!!

Rock On is a brilliant movie – a very simple concept converted into a brilliant motion film supported by terrific performances by debutant actor Farhan Akhtar and Arjun Rampal, and the whole cast ensemble.

Rock On makes you swing emotionally, making you laugh and cry, and teaching you to revel in the joys of life. It is a story of four friends who live music and run a rock band fondly named Magik. Things move good and then things turn bad and they move apart. They are again gelled together, courtesy wife of Farhan Akhtar, who is an affluent investment banker and a reticent. All four friends have moved on and chosen the path never meant for them.

I am sure all of us have had great friends during our school or college time and then lost touch with them. Now, due to Orkuts, LinkedIns and FaceBooks we are able to trace them; that’s good for you, but there are people who we lose in lives and even if we trace them on SNSs we will not contact them. Either we had a fight with them or things turned so sour that we are afraid to take an initiative. In any case, we are so engulfed in our current work-life balance that old contacts hold very little relevance.

Rock On glorifies this divide between 20s and 30s very well. All of us move on and hardly care for what has been left behind us. A once-talented poet has no inspiration to write and would waste his life doing stocks; a drummer would spend his life selling diamonds to beautiful rich women; a super-talented guitarist would never be successful because he is too ethical and over-sensitive in this manipulative and money-minded world; a keyboard expert would be lonely in India’s most crowded city. That’s what the four friends of Rock On become.

When life brings these four friends together again, they are now matured adults who want to prove nothing to the world but to their collective ego. When their hearts call out to be with each other, you know that finding reasons behind everything is not logical. Logic is for those who live life too seriously; those who live life, live it from their heart, they listen to their soul and are often termed crazy in the contemporary world. Rock On only makes me believe in this more.

Rock On shows that if you lose friends you are not fortunate to get them back always; they may be in the last stages of their life, and you will realize that you lost precious time. It makes you realize that the love you took so much for granted and left behind is now being embraced by your worst friend or best enemy. Not everyone is as fortunate as Farhan; he kicks away his love to only find someone more considerate and angel-like! We need to learn from this movie but also notice our script is not written by a benevolent Bollywood writer. It is written and destroyed by us.

I guess I have written more of a philosophical message than a movie review. You will love the music too! For me, the best movie of this year so far at least musically. I have now lost the count of the number of times i have played the tracks from this movie!

Life is Beautiful !! It surely is :):)

When I started blogging, I never thought I would write on a movie. But, the movie 'Life is Beautiful (Vita è bella, La)' impressed me so much that I started writing about it as soon as the movie ended. May be ... because, I did not want to loose the essence the movie.

I have been trying for many months to watch this movie. For some reason or the other, I could never watch it till this week. I had very high expectations of this movie as I had heard quite a lot about the movie. After the first half of the movie, I googled to see if this the movie I had heard of as an excellent story of a man who tries to save the life of his son in a Nazi concentration camp by comparing the day to day activities with an imaginary game. The first half of the movie looked like a romantic flick. Like any other love story, the first half has some standard scenes which viewers expect out of a romantic movie. Now that we are talking about romantic movies, I want to mention a movie (When Harry met Sally) I watched earlier this weekend. If you compare the first half of Life is Beautiful with 'When Harry met Sally', I think the latter scores just for a single dialogue in which Harry talks about male-female relationship. I cannot stop from referring to the dialogue and I am pretty sure many men would agree with the dialogue. Watch the video below atleast for Meg Ryan :), if not for the dialogue.





But boy, the second half of the movie (Life is Beautiful) is awesome. I have to look for adjectives to describe second half. The main character (Guido), a jewish italian is happily married to a non-jewish italian (Dora) with a kid (Joshua). A typical happily ever after family. But it does not remain so after the German invasion. The Jews are sent to Nazi concentration camps and the rest of the movie is just awesome. In order to refrain Joshua from getting negatively influenced in the Nazi concentration camp, Guido attempts to portray the life in the camp as a game. A game in which the first person who wins 1000 points wins a tank, a big tank. Guido cleverly discourages Joshua's attempts to return home by telling Joshua that they are leading the game. And the game continues till Guido sacrifices his life only to make Joshua victorious. The manner in which Guido mimics the walking style of Nazi soldiers even in the face of death is beautifully presented. The rest of the events unfold in a dramatic manner and you can feel the emotions going through Joshua when he notices a big tank approaching him.

If Guido can smile in the most challenging conditions and let Joshua spend the worst time in the history of mankind in a cheerful manner, I am sure everybody could take a leaf out of this movie.

Now lets play around with the story line a little bit. Imagine what would have happened if there had been another Guido following similar strategy. Lets call the two fathers Guido-1, Guido-2 and the two kids Joshua-1 and Joshua-2. The fact that the first person who wins 1000 points would win a tank could result in competition between the Joshuas. Now, there are two kids with the common goal of winning 1000 points first for the lucrative prize. Will this be a classic example of survival of the fittest? Will the Life be beautiful in this scenario? Will Darwin be proved wrong? Going by the general principle, it is unlikely.

Creativity apart, I consider this movie to be one among my all time favorites (Oops.. I have to update my orkut profile). And I suggest readers who have not yet watched this movie to seriously consider watching once. I bet, it is definitely worth every penny and every second you spend on it.

THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION

I have now lost the count of how many times i have watched this movie..

So here is my first movie review:

Cast: Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman

Director: Frank Darabont

Screenplay: Frank Darabont

Genre: Drama

Running time: 2 hrs 25 mins



CRITIQUE:


This has got to be one of the most enduring classics of our time. This is a superbly-written and directed film about a tale of hope, friendship, redemption and forgiveness that’s subtly enclosed under the outer shell of a prison movie. And when it speaks its bitter truths and hard-hitting realities, it goes straight to the heart. THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION could have been a film that easily strays into melodrama and over-sentimentality, but its assured direction from classy filmmaker Frank Darabont makes sure it delivers its points, and its writing makes it all the more compelling to sit and watch.


What could have also been a prison break movie, one expects bullish characterisations of thuggy personas, stereotyped in prison films, with added violence and brutality. However, SHAWSHANK retains its dignity and gives more spotlight on the importance of storytelling in a gentle, quiet and dignified manner. We meet Andy Dufresne (an excellent Tim Robbins) who was wrongly sentenced of life imprisonment for allegedly murdering his wife and her lover. The film never says he’s guilty of the crime, and lets the audience ponder of his ambitiousness. The Shawshank Prison becomes his lair but neve his barricade. He led a clean life, albeit being molested, and found an unusual friendship with one of his inmates Red (Morgan Freeman delivers his seemingly best here). The narrative point of view shifts to Red as Freeman becomes the narrator, as he starts to identify himself and his wonderment to Andy’s deep-seated acceptance of his fate, as he claims his innocence despite of all the lies around him. This becomes his hope, and he never fails, to which leads to his mostly deserved freedom.


Based on Stephen King’s novella “The Shawshank Redemption and Rita Hayworth” (no, it’s not horror fiction, presumably King’s first non-horror writing piece), the tale transforms seamlessly to provide both a heartwarming and heartbreaking sincerity. Anyone who isn’t moved by the inexorable determination of Andy and his belief of the human spirit is a stone-cold anti human. Who doesn’t resolve to tears when Andy ambushes the Head’s office only to put on a classical music for the rest of his jail mates to hear outside? Who doesn’t feel touched by Freeman’s exposition of the old librarian who achieved freedom finally but remains “institutionalized”? It gives us the choice, either to “Get busy living, or get busy dying”.



VERDICT:

THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION is one of the most life-affirming films a human being could ever see – and when it does, it stays and will always do. This is beautiful, compelling, uplifting stuff.