Oh well this isn't a movie review but while we waited for our Golmaal show to start, we went and sat in the hall which was screening Due Date that stars Robert Downey Jr and Zach Galifianakis, two people on a cross-country road trip.
Being directed by the director of Hangover, Todd Phillips, one could almost feel the movie suffered from a hangover of "The Hangover". It was good for a while before humor just turned nasty. I like Galifianakis's deadpan style of humor but I thought Downey Jr. was in the wrong movie. Will watch the rest on DVD.
The consonants in the title might be the same but the range of emotions I went through in the first Test between India and New Zealand was contrastingly different.
Usually I am all excited about an India series but this time led to my behavior towards this series was apathetic to say the least. Even before the series had begun, I was looking forward to India's tour of South Africa later this year haughtily dismissing the Kiwis as minnows and ripe for a good trounce. However, when i woke up on the fifth day, I expected a "meander to tame draw" headline to greet me but it was famously Chris Martin who was featured on Cricinfo's first page . I was a worried man, ruing my views on the Black Caps. At the end of the day I was a relieved man, with Bhajji finally showing his batting abilities and the ever dependable VVS on the other side to guide India to safe shores. Although, it sounds gross but the fact is that the Kiwis made me eat crow :P
P.S. I think India will thrash New Zealand in Hyderabad. Bachcha log these kiwi boys :D
*ing : Ajay Devgan, Arshad Warsi, Kareena Kapoor, Kunal Khemu Tusshar Kapoor, Mithun Chakraborty, Ratna Pathak,, Shreyas Talpade, Johnny Lever, Mukesh Tiwari, Sanjay Mishra, Vrijesh Hirjee and Mukesh TiwariDirected by : Rohit ShettyThree's a crowd in..Rohit Shetty’s 3rd film in his Golmaal trilogy. It starts off with what has become a trademark Rohit Shetty opening shot – dramatis personae introduction in a mêlée of colors positioned in a physics defying position. Not that we need any introduction, as the audience is very much familiar with all the buffoons in the Golmaal world.
The plot is once again inspired from old Hindi films, a couple of English ones and mixed with a clever dollop of nostalgia. The main story revolves around Pritam (Mithun), a widower and his three sons Madhav(Warsi), Laxman(Khemu) and Lucky(Tusshar) who due to business rivalries cannot see eye to eye with Gopal(Devgan), his brother Laxman(Talpade) who are actually the sons of Pritam’s ex lover Geeta(Ratna Pathak). The ex-lovers situation is uproariously executed in a Hindi film spoof and Mithun Da reprising his disco dancer role. Daboo(Kareena) tries to get the old couple together but in the process has to convince the whole family to live together.
From the performances, Devgan just can’t crack it at comedy. He is pretty wooden and I think Shetty just picks him up for representing sanity in this mad atmosphere. Arshad Warsi, Tusshar Kapoor and Shreyas Talpade are the main rib-ticklers while it was great to see Johny Lever back in form. His two cronies Vrijesh Hrijee and especially Sanjay Mishra whose way of spelling was just hilarious also liven up the already frenzied air. Perhaps, the more interesting aspect (for me who prefer humor to be more subtle than slapstick) of the movie was Kunal Khemu’s idiomatic dialogues which packed a nice little punch of their own. Kareena is for the glamour but goes through the motions well. Mithun and Ratna Pathak Shah are good.
Overall, the fun remains until the jokes and acts begin to get repetitive but neither the film claims nor expects to be some logical device. Total Paisa Vasool. Watch it for timepass but I just hope no more Golmaal movies are in the pipeline.
Rating : 2.5/5
*ing : Leo DiCaprio, Marion Cotillard, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-
Levitt, Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe & Dileep Rao
Directed by : Christopher Nolan
The stuff that dreams are made of, not quite..... because
There is a thing called watching films because of the simple pleasure involved in watching them. But seeing Christopher Nolan’s Inception, gives you watching a video game feel. Audiences claim that it bends your mind but looking at its action sequences I thought it bends gravity more than the mind.
Dom Cobb (DiCaprio) plays a corporate thief, whose métier is dipping into people’s minds when they are asleep, He and his team infiltrate people’s dreams and steal ideas. Their new assignment involves a client Saito(Ken Watanabe) wanting to “plant” an idea in a target’s (Cillian Murphy) mind in order so that he can break up his business empire. This is easier said than done because the mind always knows the genesis of the idea, explained to us by Arthur(Gordon-Levitt),a team member. So an extra team of specialists is assembled with world-designer Ariadne (Ellen Page), identity forger Eames (Tom Hardy), pharmacist Yusuf (Dileep Rao) who each in turn explain their fortes and impact on a dream to us.
But these dialogs are added in the narrative in a very instructive manner. Hence the sequences become verbose and go on for too long and I felt I was always waiting for the big jaw dropping sequence that never arrived. What happens is by the time you are digesting the overload of information in the previous sequence, a new action sequence comes along that leaves the attention divided and our verdict on the scene’s astuteness, if any compromised.
Nolan is a clever director and dares us to think that something might be wrong in the set up. There is no doubt about the novelty of Nolan’s ideas especially the dream inside a dream conceit. The problem then with the film I have is not with Nolan’s idea but his ultimate script that is tethered by his own mechanical way of thinking. Dreams are after all dreams, abstract, moody and weird. Then why, do we ask that these expanses of mind and the characters to whom they belong to are not explored further, made more colorful or vivid(case in point Tim Burton) but instead culminate in a succession of action set pieces stacked one over another that could be readily found in an expensive potboiler.
It isn’t helped by the fact that, Nolan right from his Batman Begins days hasn’t yet learnt the art of choreographing actions scenes and the same problem is on display in Inception. Some of them dazzle like the bending of Paris or the city of cards SFX but most just fizzle out in a muddle of harrowing movements across the screen.
Leo DiCaprio is painful as the humorless protagonist(for no apparent fault of his) while the others are just there because they are a team. Not one from the cast of Gordon Levitt, Tom Hardy, Ellen Page or Dileep Rao stays on the screen long enough to register an impact. The only performance worth watching is from Cobb’s beautiful but estranged and scary wife Marion Cotillard but she too is his projection or so it seems.
Look, Inception is not bad. It is entertaining as long as it lasts but the bottom line is that with a lack of peripheral character development, the movie feels unsatisfactory almost scolding us to observe something “deep and unusual” in what is after all just a heist movie with not one but 3 time clocks ticking. It just gets too cool for its own good. People who think that ,they would find something more profound, with the help of multiple viewings, must be dreaming.
Rating : 3/5 - Unsatisfactory
What is common between Dev.D , Wake Up Sid, Admissions Open, Aisha and Udaan? Answer:
The man behind the music of the above films launched his career just a couple of years ago with Aamir(film) and he is already my favorite - Amit Trivedi. It started with the strangely unique but arresting "emosional atyachaar" and he has delivered hit after hit which include Wake up Sid's mesmerizing Iktara voted as 2009's listener's choice best song of the year.
His sounds are unique, youthful, rocke-ish, accompanied with some great arrangements in such a way that most instruments he uses seem so clearly heard and even more cleverly introduced into a sequence. His music is definitely something you won't classify as filmy although he did go a little mainstream with Aisha at the expense of sounding like Vishal-Shekhar but even in Aisha, he had his usual trademarks when the music soared with the melancholic Lehrein and the soothing vocals of Anusha Mani. One has also got to listen to low key films like Admissions Open , especially the songs Meri Rooh and Roshini. My current favorite is Udaan, an admirable movie with a thoroughly enchanting score. From the rock dominated Kahaani, folk rock in Naav, sitar and harmonica interspersed within rock elements in Aazadiayan and finally ending with the poignant piano based theme, Amit Trivedi delivers the perfect note to capture the mood of the film.
3-4 movies in the pipeline. Really looking forward to some more of his work. Awesome, keep it up Amit Trivedi.
