On The Guardian

Pat Condell rips through The Guardian

I have seen it too, Guardian is annoyingly pro-Pakiland and anti-Indian.

7aum Arivu – My take

Shruti Haasan and Suriya hire a rickshaw in Chennai and driver does a “meter down”!!. Please read it again, .. no hold it, let me type it again (it

Ezhaam arivu - through wikipedia

feels good) Auto driver turns meter ON!!! There. That should’ve been my first clue!

As you already might have guessed, I hated 7aum Arivu. Disappointing.  Although I am glad I chose this movie over Ra.one. That would have been a suicide. (BTW, Shahrukh Khan came to my bathroom, while I was bathing, asking me to watch his Ra.One. !!! Did that happen with you or is it just me?)

Back to “the seventh sense”, I promised my friends that I would list 10 negative about this movie, against 5 of the good ones. So here you go.

Shruti Haasan: she is an excellent actor in a world where Rahul Gandhi is an excellent statesman. Kapish?

Direction:  Ghajini had memento as reference.  This one had nothing to inspire from. So, no wonder movie derailed after first 20 minutes. This director stretched one hour story like a chewing gum, threw common sense out of window and on top of it – he took my money!

Stunts: I can’t believe why our directors don’t have any idea on what Kung Fu is. They simply had to pick up any Chinese/Thai movie, except “crouching tiger..”. But looks like they checked only that movie, so kung fu now is surfing on bamboo trees.

SCI-FI: Flying objects without any explanation does not make any movie a sci-fi (nor historic), as this proudly claims. Bunch of kids just out of their diapers, tweak a guy’s a DNA to make him a superhuman, and you want me to believe it!?!

We laugh at Kyapten Vijaykanth typing on Windows media player, but we are OK with Sruthi compares two DNA in microscope! We laugh when Balayya diffuses a bomb with On/Off button, but we are Okay with Dong lee placing a Jammer on top of the car for public display (BTW which says “Jammer switched On”).

As usual, unbelievably stupid “science”.

Hypnotism: Really! Are you kidding me? Does anyone know what is it? Somebody please explain this director what it is, I think he believes it to be something similar to “statue” game we played in 4^th grade.

Romance: 90 minutes with 3 songs. I turned believer for a moment and asked “God, what have I ever done to get this kind of treatment!”. There is absolutely no justification for wasting 90 minutes on pointless romance when you claim movie is action/sci-fi or whatever it is.

Flaws: Millions of them, for naming one – Shruthi&co don’t have money to hire a monkey, but she conducts DNA test for an entire village in Kanchipuram! That’s smart economics.

Bio war: Its basically conspired by 6 Chinese officials plotted in broken English, even though they know mandarin very fluently.  Basically they want to attack India through a virus in a month so. It’s the same paranoid theory few Pakistanis think Indians plotting it (or Palestinians thinking Israelites, and so on )

Songs & dance: Below average pointless and they were “inserted”

Historic Accuracy:  Is Bhodhidharma father of Chinese medicine and Kung fu? Movie says I should be ashamed if I don’t know this, Now I am back at my desk and I can’t find reference to this. Can you please help me out?

Comedy: Alright! Are we banking on retarded and dwarfs?

To name some good things:

1. Suriya.
2. Cinematography for first 20 min
3. Hmm.. still can’t think of anything else.

Review: 7 Khoon Maaf

Saat Khoon Maaf has been underperforming at the box office! What did you expect? You should have anticipated it when you brought that plot for Europe, which does not fit in our “Indian culture”,. I mean, a woman with 7 husbands!, and she kills all of them – what a slut!.  Did you not know that we Indian cinemagoers are bunch of fourteen year olds who would like to giggle for PJs and miniskirts? Let me remind you again, we can’t bare the thoughts of serious thoughts of homosexuality, pre (or extra) marital sex, female polygamy (male is fine) etc, even though they all are stacked up in the closet.

image via wikipedia

It’s so frustrating to see such artwork does not get the attention, recognition and popularity it deserves. Almost a century now of history of Bollywood and its audience still did not reach puberty.

Back to the movie, it’s brilliant, just what Vishal Bhardwaj promises, every time! I am a Vishal fan, ever since Omkara. This again, based on a book, “Susanna’s Seven Husbands” – a Ruskin Bond novel. Story of a woman constantly in search of eternal love (read: overrated love) and she ends up marrying (and killing) all of them. As it was done for Omkara, story was customised to the Indian context. Susanna, of course, is retained as a westernised Christian woman; otherwise it is not possible to tell a story of seven husbands. Remember that Indian cultural thing – once a widow always a widow (Manu wrote this, not me).

Movie is collectively almost a masterpiece – fine acting, great direction, brilliant storytelling and nice choice of character. Priyanka Chopra did a great job, but I am still not a fan. Annu Kapoor was the best part of the movie, other husbands did well. Songs were good; “Daaarlinggg” was worth the applause.

Only departments that fail in the movie are graphics and make up. Black panther was totally a cartoon, and the burning house looked like a gif image from a mail forward. Bollywood has a long way to go make the graphics look real. While fixing that, for the next movie, Vishal can fire his Make-up artists. Plot reads Susanna ageing from 20 to 65 along the storyline, but she always looked like age 28 to 28.5, with several bad disguises!

Review: Dhobi Ghat

An art film, to me, falls into either of two categories. One kind strikes audience with a brilliant sigh, making us wonder how a complex thought can be so simply put (E.g. Black Swan). The other kind is a folder of scribbles thrown at you, which does not make any sense even if you arrange in any order. Dhobi Ghat belongs to second category. It’s a high profile, big banner, “star” cast, much anticipated commercial-art movie which makes you feel you are reading few torn pages of someone else’s dairy. Probably, that’s the reason wise say you shouldn’t read someone else’s dairy. It’s so freaking boring!

image via wikipedia

Dhobi Ghat is not a traditional Bollywood commercial-art movie; hence my comments are also not regular ones. Movie is attributed with fine acting and brilliant direction. Bummer – it is pointless and boring. It neither does the justice to the time spent in cinema nor to the pop-corn bought. (Just a thought: Movie like this is the reason why Akshay Kumar in industry, to bring pointless but not boring movies). Dhobi Ghat revolves around a modern art painter Arun (Amir Khan) obsessed with video letters of Yasmin. At the same time NRI investment banker Shai (Monika Dogra) stalks him while successfully manage to get herself obsessed by Munna (Prateik) the Dhobi, whom she meets on her clichéd poverty trip. Arun changes houses! That’s all – I dint miss anything to explain on the plot!

All newcomers (all of them except Amir) have done nice job, justice to their roles, while Amir still struggles with “new age” acting – the natural one. Amir acting still stuck in mid 90s standard of great acting, I feel he was weakest link in acting department. Kiran Rao’s direction is great, even without considering this is her first presentation. Actually this is a relief! Since for a long time now Farah Khan was taking all the sympathy votes for being the only female Bollywood mainstream director. Now Farah can retire and Kiran can take her place with an understanding that her first movie is a mistake and she won’t be making a pointless movie again.

After Dhobi Ghat, I went into depression for a while and was actually looking for an Akshay Kumar kind of movie to undo this effect. We don’t run out of options do we? I chose Vijay’s Kaavalan over “Yamla Pagla Diwana”. As anticipated it was crapy one and boom! I am back to this world again, Thanks to Vadivelu!. Anyways, here are some options; if you would like undo the hangover after watching Dhobi Ghat (I used all three):

Kaavalan: Vijay is a kick boxer, student, body guard, dancer, comedian, singer, honest but innocent, most eligible bachelor as usual! Basically he is almost all the things I dreamed I would become when I was 12.

Black Swan: Amazingly brilliant movie. Watch it yourself, I am running out of words to explain it.

127 Hours: Another brilliant masterpiece by Danny Boyle. It surely will bring you goose bumps (as “The way back” did). Again, I am running out of words to explain the movie. One note on AR Rahman though! One more evidence to show he copies tunes, from his own work! Or, do we call it reuse? Some part of this movie has background tune of Raavan (Behene De to be specific.). Probably he thought the crowd that watched Raavan and watching 127 Hours are mutually exclusive. He is obviously wrong isn’t it?

In search of the best thrillers

Here, some notes on thriller TV serials, roughly 50 of them. They are crime, action, war, and medical (etc.,) TV serials – basically non-Glee stuff. I’ve spent a lot of time researching on them trying sample episodes/seasons on YouTube/forums. See if you can make use of these recommendations. Also, let me know if I have missed any.

Good ones (Try not to miss them)

Dexter (5/5) – Could you bring some more please?
Fringe (5/5 so far) – Hope JJ doesn’t take the path he took for Alias/Lost
24 (4/5) – Can’t tolerate one more season.
X-Files (3/5) – Don’t want to watch them all.

Yet to try out (short-listed)

Breaking Bad
Criminal minds
Flash Forward
Generation Kill
Lie to me
Regenesis
Sleeper Cell
Spooks

Tried and “no thank you”.

House (3/5) – Good one, but not for me.
Lost (2/5) – First season is good, director “lost” it second onwards.
Alias (2/5) – Good start, totally lost it in first season itself.
CSIs (2/5) – too boring.
The Mentalist (2/5)
Bones (2/5)
Burn Notice (2/5)

Totally rejected (thanks to YouTube, Wikipedia):

Ashes to Ashes, Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica, Carnivale, Damages, Day Break, Dead Like Me, Heroes, Human Target, Jericho, Kidnapped, Law and Order, Life on Mars, Mad Men, Murder One, Oz, Prison Break, Rescue Me, Smallville , Sons of anarchy, Supernatural, SVU, The Wire, White Collar.