Thursday, November 09, 2006

A Few Good Movies

The Departed

"I don't wanna be a product of my environment, I want my environment to be a product of me."

Whoa! What a movie. The movie leaves you simply breathless. I haven't seen a more revetting crime-thriller. A close-to-three-hours movie and you don't blink your eyes even once. The undercover cop, the mole in the police force, and the bloody gangster - all thrown at your face in one go. Expectedly, in keeping with the Sorcesese's penchant for making violent movies, this one is packed to the hilt with not only gory, bloody scenes, but so much profanity (even a Hindi gaali! which comfortably goes un-beeped by our censorwallahs..talk of India going global :) ) that after an hour or so of this one just stops getting shocked.DicapRio, Damon and Nicholson surpass all their previous performances.The movie has surprises in store at every turn, and certainly some at the end. If one has to sum it up – it's fast, it's slick (and sick!) and it's scary. It may not be a crime classic, but it's certainly one of the best crime movies I have ever seen.

Syriana

The four concurrent stories make it for a little recondite viewing. Neverthless, the common thread of corruption and power realted to the oil industry makes the subject all the more interesting. There is a jobless Pakistani who joins a fundamentalist goup in the end , an energy analyst , a CIA agant who is caught in his own web of deceipt and a lawyer who end up being his law firm's scapegoat . All starts and ends at an oil field and as you a leave the theatre the movie leaves you feeling blue . George Clooney is par excellence. Gaghan , the director, succeeds in driving home the message . Based on a book See No Evil.

A visit to home and a chance to catch up with movies i cannot squeeze onto my busy weekends. :)

The Motorcycle Diaries

I had read the book and eagerly wanted to watch the movie. For the uninitiated, the movie is in Spanish and has sub-titles in English which do fair enough justice to the movie. Different people had different view after reading Che's journey across the Latin continent. Some viewed it as the background that had set the breeding - ground for a bloodless revolution, the others about how he cared about the upliftmemt of the lepers and how their improvished state moved him enough to take up their cause. I viewed it , above all, as a story of two friends whose lives run parallel for a while and I was glad to see the way the movie ended; Alberto saying good-bye to Ernesto and how the epilogue in the end tell one Alberto gave up everything in the end to join his friend , Che in his revolution, later. The movie is a must-see.

Yun Hota to Kya Hota

Never before have I seen a Hindi movie where so many stories run tangentially with one another and get integrated in the end and the one common event that comes in at the climax simply leaves you gaping at your face! The cherished dream to make it to Uncle Sam's land, the land of aplenty falls flat at the face of many a characters in the end. A masterpiece from Naseeruddin Shah.

Upcoming movie reccos:

Stranger than Fiction
Eragon

Good reads lately:

The Search
Aruthur & George
Staying on

And I just became wiser, more mature( supposedly) and a year older.

Labels: ,

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

October Redux

Kiran creates hullabaloo in the Booker-Land and there are talks of Arundhati finally working on her next novel. Read reviews here, here and this one by Pankaj Mishra.

Pamuk wins the Big One and India, is the apple of world's eye at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Darwin gets e-booked [ I loved his picture with the lap on his lap] and Monica Ali talks of Malgudi Days.

Also, "Elementary, my dear Watson" is not a Doyle's coinage and writers talk on Writing here[requires subscription].

Wiki may get forked into Citizendium [I hate when people accuse Jimmy Wales of being anti-credentialist]..and I am hooked on to the Amazon Wire.


Labels: ,