Home Alone is a prequel to Die Hard

Ok, item 6 on this list by my esteemed friends at Cracked tells us that Home Alone (1990) was a remake of Die Hard (1988). More power to them for figuring this out. BUT THEY ARE WRONG!

See, they have this wrong way around. Home Alone is the origins movie for the Die Hard franchise. This is the film in which Kevin MacAllister (Culkin) is shown to a be a slightly maladjusted attention-whoring kid who just happens to be the last person standing before those two inept burglars. But this is also the film which shows him developing all the traits which we have come to associate with John McClane (Bruce Willis) - he is resourceful, has a never-say-die attitude and has an instinctive dislike for authority. Of course, during the process of growing up, he gets into more shenanigans, changes his name to McClane, switches his Scottish heritage for the more believable, and equally aggressive-as-fuck Irish, acquires a slight drinking problem, a wife and a reputation for being an effective cop; but a loose cannon. And then, Nakatomi Plaza happens - and before you can say "Now I have a machine gun, ho, ho, ho!", all of those skills developed years and years ago are put to the test, by none other than Professor Snape!

See, the theory fits perfectly!

Red Tails

A film by George Lucas about the Tuskegee Airmen - the first US Army Air Force unit made up entirely of African American. Does anyone remember the mid 90's made for Tv film - "the Tuskegee Airmen"? Yeah, didn't think so. I remember Laurence Fishburne putting up a bravura performance in it. Far superior to what I saw in Red Tails.
Also, while we are at it, why does Terrence Howard always look as if someone kicked him in the nadgers, took his lunch money and his 401k and buggered his aunt for an encore? I mean, has that man ever played a happy role?
So, back to Red Tails - fantastic action. Fabulous sequences of aerial combat, but completely let down by one dimensional characters and dialogue that sounded like it came straight from the Commando Comics. And the music - dear Gawd... remember Glory? Remember the rousing music. Well, now imagine the opposite. Amateurish, at best.
All in all, a rather mediocre effort. Probably put together with the best of intentions. But hardly worth your time.

Don 2. And hopefully the last.

Don2.

The Khan in what looks suspiciously like cornrows. Also him kicking the everloving shite out of many, many baddies. Who else bought that? Ya' know what, I am going to be all systematic an' jazz and write out a list of all that was not well. Here goez:

1. Cornrows. Cornrows and shades and rivergoing powerboat (have you no consideration for the fishes, what with your 400 hp motor an'all?)
2. Fighting. Like serious fistfighting. But what would look convincing if done by Brad Pitt and even more so if done by Hrittik, looks uber fake when done by the Khan. Granted, Farhan, the wunderkid diro does much to make it look even summat realistic. But it fails. The Khan should spend less on botox and ask Hrittik to lend him some sixpacks.
3. Car chase through the strasses of Berlin. A Toyota SUV chasing a late model Hyundai. In Berlin. In effin' Germany. In the land of bimmers and mercs and audis. Is that sacrilege? Yes it is.
4. The plot. With gaping holes like a fishing net. Still, this was better than Ra-One.
5. Irani fighting. Uncool.
   

There were many things which were right with this fillum.

1. Priyanka Chopra. That official uniform with the shoulder holster. Hawtness. Try asking Amisha Patel to pull that off.
2. The car chase. Again. Wasn't too bad as car chases go. Even ended up with a medium sized pileup in front of the Brandenburg Gate. Seeing as how Indian movies are all about the armchair tourism bizness, this one did quite well.
3. Irani acting. Very cool.
4. I am conflicted about this one. Whenever a SWAT or GSG9 type of team heads out, the blokes are all in bulletproof Kevlar flask jackets and shite. The dames are in tank tops. So, here Ms. Chopra, in her substantial hawtness, has about half the body armour she should be wearing. On the other hand, tank top. See, tough call.

The verdict - if you like the Khan, go see it. Otherwise, don't bother. Also, when will they make films which are do not revolve around a superstar? And in that same breath, thank goodness, this did not have Salman.

Ra-One

We Desis don't do subtlety. It does not come naturally to us. Melodrama has always been, and will continue to be a big seller when it comes to entertaining us. Hence 'jatra'. Hence, also our enormous love for bling, be it in our clothes or our houses. Hence, also the Punjabi word 'shosha' - the meaning of which I leave you to find. Not that I am against any of the above. Oh wait, I am. That is why I feel compelled to to take some time away from sleep to write this review of Ra-One straight after returning from the late night show.

The one sentence summary - this movie sucks giant, hairy balls. Avoid. At all costs.

However, since I have subjected myself to this ordeal, I will tell you about what you should miss. This movie is about a viddy game archvillain jumping the barrier from the digital world to the real one, and the superhero doing the same to save the day. The superhero is, of course woodenly acted out by our beloved Sharook Khan. SRK delivers his best post ki-ki-ki-ki-Kiran acting here - straight from the HART - by which I mean the viddy game's Hertz Analog something Transmitter. Yes, the movie is full of such technobabble. Of course the nice thing is that it references EVERYTHING. Yeah, really everything. If, for some reason you have been completely oblivious to the movie and pop culture milieu of the last twenty or so years, fear not. Messrs. SRK and company have taken it all, shoved it into a giant blender and served you a cocktail which has the same aftereffect as a New York mugging.

The whole thing about the HART being part of the villain (Ra-One) and the hero (G-One) and has to be integral to the bloke in orde for him to be vanquished smacks of different flavours of the "shaitan ki jaan us pinjre mein band tote mein hai". Apparently the budget was 150 crore Rs. That is what - 30 million $? A lot of money. And you can tell where it has gone. A liberal application of bullet-time Matrix style shows up. As do shades of Terminator, and of course Iron Man. But the actual philosophical underpinnings - well they might have well been derived from the David Cronenberg sleeper eXistenZ, and also from the rather awful Virtuosity - where a cyber villain Russel Crowe battles Denzel Mr. Eternally Righteous Washington. All of that has been updated here, and very slickly done, all the way down to a Tron style lightcycle.

The masses have not been forgotten. The great Rajni makes a surprise appearance, and what I really liked - Munnabhai comes in - but not to peddle 'Gandhigiri'. Kareena is her usual ravishing self - and there is a song and dance routine which is almost worth sitting through. Seriously, there are very few wimmen who can look like that one in a sari. My 'watch this!' scene was when Kareena was powersliding a bloody huge Volkswagen Panzer, um.. sorry, Touareg for what seemed like 6 or 7 turns. Speaking of which, this was the first movie in which I have seen a veedub Phaeton. Methinks that most underrated of overachieving German exec saloons will now be sold in the Des.

But then again - what is completely lacking in this movie is a marginally competent storyline and good dialogue. The emoshuns are ladelled on nice and thick. And the music changes gear like a suburban mom suddenly placed in a racecar. This is supposed to cue you into the current emoshun. Bang, bang, dishum, dishum! And then, suddenly a wailing mandolin informs you that it might be time to turn on the the tears. The screen-changes and lines have all the finesse of a sledgehammer. Typical Bollywood blockbuster.

Bottom line, avoid this. Bollywood has a long way to go and shelling out money for tripe like this will only encourage them to produce more movies where everyone gets a paycheque except for the scriptwriter.

PS - the best acting, by far in this movie, and I mean by miles is by the obviously gay transit security bloke at Heathrow who almost wants to see all of Sharook's piercings. Bemused? Don't be - I am sure someone has put this scene on the web. Me-also-thinks that this is a not-so tongue in cheek reference to when the SRK was strip searched at Newark Liberty Airport. Go Jersey!

PPS - ladies, Arjum Rampal takes his shirt off. You might like that.

Images, images

The beginning of every interesting piece of art is a canvas. This is especially true in the world of storyboarded cityscapes rendered in hypercontrast as Robert Rodriguez does. There are other ways of going about creating art and putting it down on film though.

Some auteurs have managed to think of every frame as a canvas in itself - and have spent loving hours (sometimes years) in turning such frames into masterworks. Examples? Certainly. Ray's Pather Panchali, Sergio Leone's Once upon a time in the west - remember Harmonica's thousand year old face, enduring and indestructible like the mountains which framed him? And yes, remember also how a camelback rider suddenly appears in the view on the far left of a huge, huge, vista - they called that 'the anvil of the sun', in David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia.

The very best of these works have told beautiful stories, and have used fantastic imagery to imprint those stories into our consciousness. But sometimes, the story takes second place to the canvas. A fabulous example of this is Refn's Valhalla Rising. This is a ponderous work, which creaks under its own burden of self importance.

Every frame is created with the utmost care. Vivid nightmares of colour appear, to be washed away by the everpresent mist. There is a long and arduous Rime of the Ancient Mariner chapter, save that there is no albatross, and no redemption. The violence is sporadic, but always threats to break loose. And the soundtrack. Dear Gawd, the soundtrack. The use of harsh guitar tones from an obsessive compulsive strummer you cannot see - mixed in with the sound of a heart beating. This, frankly is baiting. Very skilfully done, effective, even - but not subtle.

There might be a story here. Who knows? Depends on how psychotropic your last indulgence has been. But this will leave you shaken.

10 wildly historically inaccurate movies

(mostly pertinent only to Hollywood)
are here. Observe that our man, Mel Gibson makes it to the list thrice. As SouthPark would have it, it hurts, it hurts!

Lakshya, Dhoom and Dhoom 2.

There are Hindi fillums and there are Hindi fillums. I have often wondered why really good Hindi cinema does not get the attenshun it deserves and why crap floats up to the top and makes so much money. A case in point is Drohkaal, a cinema I have already blogged about. A more recent example is Lakshya, which is based on the 1999 Kargil war.

Briefly, a slacker finds his way into the Indian Army through the proverbial series of unlikely cooincidences. The discipline of the Indian Military Academy proves too much for him to handle and he decides to quit. Except that he just goes AWOL. When he gets back home, he is greeted by (in sequence): relief (his mom), disapproval(his dad) and contempt(his girlfriend). Something inside him goes, quite audibly 'click', and he heads back to the IMA. His CO takes him back, but not before hammering out a very well deserved punishment. They say that the life of a GC (Gentleman Cadet) at the IMA is harsh to the point that after graduating as Second Lieutenants, these young men find life at the LoC(Line of Control in Kashmir) quite relaxing. This is what our protagonist goes through, and after graduating, he is promptly posted to Ladakh (the highest battleground in the world, where the Indian and Paki armies have been facing off for 25 years). His regimental CO is the venerable Amitabh Bachhan who in one of his most masterly understated roles yet, points out to the youngster at the unit welcome dinner that "one billion Indians sleep secure in the knowledge that you and I are awake, and watching over them".

Prophetic words, for shortly afterward, in the spring of 1999, an Indian goatherd spots armed men sneaking across the LoC. Afghan mujahideen, backed by Paki Special Services Group and the Northern Light Infantry had built fortified bunkers on our side of the LoC. The Indian and Paki forward commanders have long had a gentleman's agreement to collectively withdraw from the border in deep winter, a time where both sides lose men to exposure and not bullets. The Pakis, not being gentlemen, decided to use the opportunity over the winter of 1998 to move men and materiel over the LoC. This started the Kargil war, where over 500 Indian officers and men died. The Pakis admit to losing 350 regular Army soldiers. Unofficial estimates put the number of Paki and mujahideen dead at above 3000. Perhaps we shall never know how many people fell in the snow. But what is known and recorded by scribes from the front was the immense bravery of the Indian Army. The Indian officer ethos is summed up in the simple words 'follow me'. The disproportionately high officer casualties suffered in the taking of Tiger Hill and Tololoing came from brave young men leading from the front.

Lakshya means 'goal' or 'objective', and the objective of our hero in the film is an unnamed hill, which is a Paki artillery observation post. Was it Point 5353? It is never mentioned in the film. We share our hero's desperation as he leads his team in an almost sucidal assault up a sheer cliff. Lakshya was a rare film, one that showcased bravery and sacrifice without ever descending to jingoism. And Indian audiences rejected it at the box office.

In return, Bollywood gave us movies like Dhoom and Dhoom 2. Both of which are lame and brain dead. And people loved them. We deserve that shite that is served to us in the name of cinema. Before leaving, check out these clips from Lakshya:
1. IMA graduation
2. The unit welcome
3. The ascent

A love story and nothing in particular.

The time traveller's wife is a wonderfully written book about a bloke who travels back and forth in time, without any control. It is dressed up as science fiction. But I think it is the most beautiful love story I have read in a long time. And that includes that one time I read a Helen McInnes all the way through expecting that it was a spy novel, only to finish it and realise that there wasn't a single spy there at all!

Also saw Bunuel's Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie. I am so confused!

Provoked. Not impressed.

The title of this blog is rather ambiguous. Could I be provoked, but not impressed? Certainly. This is about the British film about a Punjabi housewife in England who is beaten and abused by her husband for 10 years, and finally burns him to death. The protagonist is played by the beautiful Aishwarya Rai. This woman is ethereal and angelic. Unfortunately, her acting follows in the finest traditions of the Keanu Reaves school. Her abusive husband is acted very ably by Naveen Andrews (damn, he gets in bed with Jodie Foster, and now this?!?!?). When she is in jail, her case is taken up by a women's rights organisation, spearheaded by Nandita Das. This was rather sad, Das is such a great actress, but she comes across as rather lame. The direction was simply bad. Lousy script, bad dialogue. Important story, which needs to be told, but is not told properly. But try to see it.

CLASSE TOUS RISQUES

CLASSE TOUS RISQUES: a French gangster flick about a man on the run with his two young children. The script is very competantly worked, very tautly strung, hardly a moment wasted. Lino Ventura plays the protagonist, intensely aware of the noose inexorably tightening around him. Jean Paul Belmondo is awesome as Stark, the only friend our hero has. Decent camera work, score more often silent than not. But the real winner is the script and the strong performances. One can see echoes of the performances in much later works from Miller's Crossing to Last Man Standing.

Slumdog Millionaire

Apparently won big at the SAG awards last night. Here is a rather negative review of this film. I tend to agree with the review for the most. What do you think?

Zombies!

I saw the new version of the Dawn of the Dead last night... and I am going to stock up on canned food, batteries .. the works... maybe a shortwave radio...

Snyder has given us totally badarse zombies.. these mothers move FAST.. no dickin' around waiting for live meat to walk by.. they come and get what the want... and like Ben Johnson on steroids (oh, well, we all know what that is like... ).. but seriously, George Romero's social commentary was wasted.. but what we got in turn were awesome characters and some great action... this is much closer to 28 Days Later than the original Dawn of the Dead, but no complaints from me! Go Snyder!

Music, cinema and emo's.

This song is beautiful. Listen to it here. This is Here is a sampling: Waqt ne Kiya, and the lyrics are posted below:

Movie Name: Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959)
Singer: Geeta Dutt
Music Director: Burman S D
Lyrics: Kaifi Azmi
Year: 1959
Producer: Guru Dutt Films
Director: Guru Dutt
Actors: Baby Naaz, Guru Dutt, Johny Walker, Mehmood, Pratima Devi, Waheeda Rehman
Theme: Art/Offbeat

Tum rahe na tum ham rahe na ham
Waqt ne kiya…

Waqt ne kiya kya haseen sitam

Beqaraar dil is tarha mile
jis tarha kabhi ham juda na the
Tum bhi kho gaye, ham bhi kho gaye
Ek raah par chalke do qadam
Waqt ne kiya…

Jaayenge kaha sujhta nahi
chal pade magar raasta nahi
Kya talaash hai kuchh pata nahi
Bun rahe hain dil khaab dam-ba-dam
Waqt ne kiya…

This song is fascinating as much for its poetry/music as for Geeta Dutt's voice and also for Guru Dutt's direction. But what really bugs me is the comments people leave on Youtube. Why does a lovely song have to bring out the emo in everyone?

A deeply haunting/cathartic experience. Geeta Dutt has brought the searing pain/longing/helplessness of kaifi's words to such melancholic intensity....that crying is a some sorta relief! Remarkably the song stunningly foretells the doomed real-life relationship of Gurudutt-peerless Waheeda! Tragedy of tragedy is Geeta Dutt has to undergo the trauma for no fault of hers.....isn't it a travesty that she sings for Waheeda. Great talents, human beings tragically lost early! All we can do is remember

Guru Dutt really lived cinema. It was tragic that this movie was a hit after his death. Great song. Lyrics, Music and the singer at their best.

I love geeta dutt's voice. Such intense
wish she had sung more songs :(

I never thought I will every cry watching this video.......May be a kid I never understood this song or this video....every emotion , every expression and every word is so true .....hatts off to Indian cinema....now days we are really deprived of good cinema. poor us...

Aaah too much! This song never used to bother me that much when I was a teenager, but now I'm much older and so have really loved it makes me cry :.(..

Makes me cry every time! Time has inflicted on us such a cruelty, you are no longer yourself , I am no longer myself.

And the other major elekshun issue is...

Cow abductions! Again, I have not heard anything from either of the two presidenshial candidates about their commitment to dealing with this issue. I mean, I understand that there is some governmental attenshun being focussed on this matter, but the people involved have their own issues to deal with...

And then again, cows are sacred to some people and lunch for others. Cows are important. As this video shows.

The elekshun and possibilities of a zombie apocalypse

The most important issue in this elekshun is being totally ignored. And that is making me angry. So, no beating about the bush...

SENATORS MCCAIN AND OBAMA, DO YOU HAVE A STRATEGY FOR DEALING WITH A ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE?

Why don't people realize that this should be on everyone's mind? We need political leaders who can step up and keep a cool head in case of crises and I am not talking about something like a wimpy thermonuclear faceoff. What if, and no sniggers here, the dead come back to life and do a walkie? Are we prepared to deal with shite like that? Methinks, given our current state of preparedness, or lack thereof.. no. I mean, it could happen. Like, tonight. And if it did, then somethings would look different. Such as these.

But, the main thing is stay cool and elect leaders who will take us through without too much damage. Leaders like Shaun. Perhaps limited to a few melted Cornettos.

PS- thanks to people unknown for borrowed images.

Fear.

Let us being by saying that I have not sat through reading any Stephen King. This is in spite of the fact that I consider myself a patient reader, and I am willing to give most things a chance.There is just something about King's writing that does not appeal to me. But some of his works have been translated into brilliant films. One of them is 'The Green Mile'. This was directed by Frank Darabont, and simply had to be awesome, with that cast.

Darabont came back to King with the 2007 film 'The Mist'. This is about people in a small (New England?) town trapped by a mist coming in from the mountains. They find themselves barricaded in a small supermarket.

Now as one person had long ago derisively captioned King's works as "IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL DAY... AND THEN THE EVIL CAME!!!!!!!!"

True, sort of. But I don't know whether it was King, or the genius of the director who made this something else. Every good "scare" moment is better for the reflections seen in the faces and minds of people themselves. Every good SF work is ultimately an exploration of the human soul. The Mist went straight to that level. The way the group splintered into a small, rational group, struggling to convince a larger hysterical group was frightening. Even more so was the hold one deranged preacher had: who saw Armageddon in what lay outside. This was an illustration of the siege mentality at its very best. The Mist is mislabeled as a SciFi/Horror film.. it is an illustration in experimental psychology. The fundamental question it comes down to is "what will fear make you do?" In that scale it excels.

The Matador

I have to say this about the moviegoing public. They are absolute phookin' gits. Why, you ask? because The Matador, a 2005 film about an assassin suffering from a terrible midlife crisis bombed. It raked in a paltry 10 mil at the box office. While, our own Michael Bay's videogame turned retard-central movie made more than the GDP of several small European nations. You know which one you watched and which one you didn't give a shite about. What a cryin' shame... this was our man Pierce Brosnan's very finest moment.. with awesome support by Greg Kinnear.

And now for your amusement, I will include a small selection of the best lines from The Matador. Courtesy IMDB, of course!
Julian Noble: I'm as serious as an erection problem.
Julian Noble: [after flirting with some Mexican schoolgirls] I hate these Catholic countries. It's all blushy-blushy and no sucky-fucky.
Julian Noble: I look like a Bangkok hooker on a Sunday morning, after the navy's left town.
Julian Noble: An assassin without confidence is a horrible thing to behold. It's like a relief pitcher who fumbles the ball.
Danny Wright: Please tell me you know you mixed two sports in a metaphor.
Julian Noble: Huh? Yeah, I can't do that.

yes, me back

From a five week break from science, blogging, youtubing, all of those things which make up a busy graduate student's life. I went to Germany, Italy and India. India.. finally, after two long years. it was wonderful. But now that I am here again, there "are experiments to run, there is research to be done". So, let me start off with this awesome link which tells us the secret behind Arnold's cinema career. View and laugh.

A few reflections

So, here I was, reading Promised land by Connie Willis and Cynthia Felice and all the time, I was thinking .. 'why this this remind me of Heinlein so much?' Well, specifically, 'The moon is a harsh mistress', also with certain dollops of Julian May's 'Many coloured land' tossed in. Frankly, I am disappointed. Connie Willis means a really interesting plot(Passage), some awesome humour(To say nothing of the dog) and gutwrenching drama(Doomsday Book). I think this might be due to the efforts of Cynthia Felice. [note to self: avoid literature by Cynthia Felice].

Also, in related news, I gave up on Gregory Benford's 'Beyond infinity'. Really, the only reason why I thought he was any good was because Asimov collaborated with him. (10 points if you name the work they did together). Not impressed in the least.

Is it that I am growing old or is it because I am too busy.. I don't know, but I am increasingly less tolerant of bad writing. Perhaps its the old 'life is too short to waste on bad literature'. Add bad films to that list.

Antarmahal was on my list recently... Rituporno Ghosh (yes he writes his name that way) made this film from a story by Tarashankar Bandopadhyay. A beautifully told story of Colonial (West ) Bengal, where a zamindar (landowner) has taken another wife. for obvious reasons.. (he wants a son, stupid!).. while trying to impress the hell out of his favourite British viceroy (sycophantic bastard) by fashioning the Goddess' face like Queen Victoria, during the annual Durga Pujo. Now, Ghosh has the wonderful habit of taking otherwise decent actors and extracting performances of such delicacy and nuance from them that one is taken aback. He did so this time as well... in fact, he pretty much outdid himself (wrt Utsav, Titli, Shubho Muhurat... ).

I also saw Renaissance.. a future S/F work placed in mid-21st century Paris, finished in ultracontrast B/W anime style. Very slick. Also tried to say Faces. Utter crap. Now in the meantime, here is a question.. how important is it to plan things? Or not? I recently had the misfortune to observe people arguing over the necessity of planning.

And lastly, here we go with some pictures to make you smile.
Clouds!!!
How to camouflage an aircraft factory.

Of dinner, birthdays, films, photos and many other things.

A friend of mine has a list, actually two, put up on her fridge door which is the things she plans to do over summer with her roomie. Bear in mind that both these gurles are very nice people and great to hang out with. Anyway so the list had community service, and planting trees ad many other nice things.

YS and yours truly plan to have two lists: films to watch, and beers to drink. getting on wih the story: my efiling system is a pet black hole: which is a nice way of saying that pictures which pass over the event horizon of my computer are lost to all mankind for ever. I believe this expression was first used by Clarke to describe Kubrick. Why all this? Well, I have taken some pretty louvvly pics of people recently. Which they want. which I will provide, after processing and indexing. Which might take some time. Hence, I get yelled at. But I managed to print some other pics too. Although there is much more to do, and many more pics to take. Really, it all boils down to making the right metering. I hear some of the new Canons have 51 point AF. Do they use all of that? But really, there is a crying need for some less expensive glass on the 4/3 system. And Sigma is being a git about it.. they come out with the oh-so-desirable 150-500 mm antivibr lens. And no 4/3 mount. Bstrds! And what happened to the 14-150 mm Leica antivibr lens which was announced and never released. Will you people stop drinking Pilsner and make that piece of glass. Now? Danke!


But as it was C's birthday and YK is going to India for a bit, I exerted my lazy bum and managed to get beautiful prints of their best pics (which it pleases me to describe at shaadi.com pics) and handed them over yesterday at C's birthday party lunch. Everyone was happy.

YS insisted that we see District B13. This is a delightful work of eurotrash. Think of Mithunda making fillums in French and getting them dubbed in Whitechapel. Yeah, something like that. Eminently avoidable. We also saw the Golden Compass (Daniel Craig fights Gawd). Now the book (the Northern Lights) has a very complicated plot, but that is quite readable because Philip Pullman is a talented storyteller who puts you in his character's skin very very effectively. But translating that to a workable film was apparently way to much to ask for. For people unfamiliar with the story ( and lets be realistic, with LOTR, the bar has been set extremely high on fantastic/alt universe books converted to movies), asking them to keep pace with all that happens is way too much.