Lootera...an ode to loveliness...

I was just not impressed with the trailers of the movie doing the rounds for a while now on TV. The movie looked...boring to me and I was willing to skip it.

Now I am glad I didn't. Because Lootera is not a movie to be missed. Its a movie to be savored, to be enjoyed like you would enjoy a slow and delicious meal which ends with a delectable dessert.

The opulence in the movie is not overbearing, and I could connect with it right from the first frame. Every frame is beautifully planned and executed, I could feel the director's love for his masterpiece. But its not just the beauty of the movie that transfixes you, its actually the content that goes far in connecting with you. Not even for a moment I was disappointed with the relaxed pace, or the time the movie took to develop its principal characters. In fact, for me that was one of the most beautiful aspects of the movie. The pace of the movie slowly build up, reflecting in part the lives of its key protagonists.

The movie helps you connect with the characters, you do not see Sonakshi Sinha or Ranveer Singh, but just see two people in love with each other. For the first time (to me at least) Sonakshi looks absolutely lovely in some of the shots, beautiful and very child like; and the star is thankfully missing. Similarly Ranveer the star is missing and the actor takes his place, though I would make him dub a few of his lines again (his diction gets blurred sometimes).

And Vikramaditya Motwane (the director, for those who still don't know him) is simply brilliant. He is a master storyteller as well as a master visualizer. I can't imagine how extraordinary his future movies will be, if his second movie itself is like this. But whatever he does next, I am surely gonna lap it all up :)

Please guys do yourself a favor. Watch Looetra!

Image ref: Wikipedia, Koimoi.com

A Separation

Music starts only when the end credits start rolling in. You are almost overwhelmed by emotions by then, but they don't overpower you. They linger on...and you do not want to let go of them.

A separation...

There are plenty of reviews about the movie on the web, but I am yet to read any. I will do that soon though, maybe later in the night. But I am convinced that a movie which wins the "Best Foreign Movie' award at the Oscars would surely have glowing reviews.

The movie works on multiple levels, and almost all levels compete with each other to excel. But somehow its the grayness of the characters which stand out, all the characters, what they say what they do, how the story unfolds. No one is wrong, and no one is right; its just the way it is. There is no categorizing it in anyway, you can relate to it, empathize with it, and connect with it. The story is fair to everyone, its just perfectly balanced.

I don't know how some film-makers do this, but I am glad that such phenomenal people exist and make such exceptional cinema; world would just not be worth existing if such movies aren't made.

Image source: www.laist.com

The Dirty Picture - a review

The following is the review for the movie 'The Dirty Picture' which is winning hearts all over. Muzayun used to write on her blog, but had to shut it down due to some caustic elements. She would be publishing articles through this space, however, all views expressed here are her own. Its highly unlikely that they reflect my views as well, we've always been on opposite poles when it comes to thoughts!

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Frankly what was dirty about the picture, it wasn't Silk or any other thing in the movie, it was a dirty job done by its thinkers.

The movie had a subject line depicting life of a lady who dared to be fearless. It is badly shot, disappointing directed and leaves you with disgust, not about the story, Silk’s actions, or the casting rather on the team’s incapability to make anything remarkable. This film is far from perfect, but the producers will have nothing to worry as they seem to earning enough. 

Silk was in a way living her life according to her terms. A tale deserved an art-movie treatment, but Ekta Kapoor only wanted to make money out of some little known facts from her teen days. There is little attempt, basically, no attempt to treat this material with sensitivity and depth. A bold, beautiful and arrogant woman was definitely an avant-garde of that time, I didn’t see her doing anything more than the present day actresses do. The difference is in the curvaceous Indian woman as Silk against the slim and copy-western-model theme of the present. She is out there and proud in her skin, men of her time could not bear the crudeness in her character, and this film could just unfold it as a series of provocative scenes strung together for Indian men, on the strength of some sexually loaded dialogues. 

Abraham’s detest for Silk also seemed to be misplaced, and so does his sudden change of heart and yet he has the most interesting dynamics to create a flow. Alas, it’s too little too late, to give some character to this trailing job. The dirty picture fails to do justice to an otherwise stunningly dirty life of Silk. I am sure Silk did not die in a red ‘K series’ sari, with a desire to be married, she was way beyond that typical notion of women’s internal desires.  

As one of my friend who gave me a company to watch this says, ‘we saw some soft corn of 80s’.

The BBC List of 100 books to read!

Disclaimer: This post has been derived from Aakanshaa's blog. Do go there and read some fabulous reviews :) 

Top 100 books chosen by viewers (re-edited and remastered from the BBC site). The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here. See the original list here.

Copy this, Bold those books you’ve read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish or read an excerpt.

1 Pride and Prejudice  - Jane Austin 

2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

6 The Bible  (Some of it)

7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials –  Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare  (Some of it)

15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch – George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma -Jane Austen

35 Persuasion – Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis (Btw this should  be in the Chronicles of Narnia)

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving

45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding

50 Atonement – Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel

52 Dune – Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula – Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses – James Joyce

76 The Inferno – Dante

77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal – Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession – AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery (English)

93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks

94 Watership Down – Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas (Unabridged and all three volumes)

98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Additional books that seemed to have been excised from the list above and replaced with some others.

28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving

31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson

33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett

41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery

45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh

49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian

50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher

53. The Stand, Stephen King (Some of it)

56. The BFG, Roald Dahl

57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome

58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell

59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer

64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough

65. Mort, Terry Pratchett

66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton

67. The Magus, John Fowles

68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett

72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell

73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett

74. Matilda, Roald Dahl

79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens

80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson

81. The Twits, Roald Dahl

82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith

83. Holes, Louis Sachar

84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake

85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy

86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson

88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons

89. Magician, Raymond E Feist

91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo

92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel

93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett

94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

95. Katherine, Anya Seton

96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer

98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson

99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot

100. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie

Black Swan, a critique

Perfection is not just about control, its also about letting go...

Image source - www.filmofila.com

There is rarely a movie which completely blows you away, or lets say sweeps you off your feet. Black Swan both and much more, with an elegance which is sheer poetry.

Oh boy! what a ride it was watching the movie. It has a constant beat right from the beginning, weirdly your own body beat synchronizes with it and moves along as the movie progresses.

The real and the unreal/ surreal interplay throughout the movie, often with devastating consequences, and needless to say those are the parts which have the maximum impact. And mind you, these scenes have such audacious intensity that they also scare you to the core. I was often waiting for some such scenes to actually end, so that I could breathe easy. They are subtle, understated yet make your pulse run.

Natalie Portman is brilliant as Nina, often changing her form with the mood of the movie. It comes as no surprise that she has been winning every major laurel in the best actress category. Mila Kunis as Lily (Nina's part companion, part competitor) is brilliant too, you really do not know what to expect from her and that often drives the movie. Vincent Cassel who plays Thomas (the director of the play Black Swan in the movie) is good too, and gets to say possibly one of the best lines in the movie...Perfection is not just about control, its also about letting go...

Go watch the movie if its running at a theater near you, or just rent a DVD and see it on small screen. Either way, it would be an experience to remember.

For more details see the official website.

Kantishah ke Angoor

Well, this does sound like a catchy line for a blog post, and a soft porn movie too :)

Here is a quick review on a movie I saw last night and thoroughly enjoyed too - UDAAN. I went in thinking this would be a typical parallel-feel-good-cinema kind of a movie and would either end with darkness or lots of light. But the movie is unusual in treatment.



No use giving a typical review of the movie, you can read it here, here and here. Let me talk here about the grayness of the movie here. The movie has only about 3 characters and the whole story revolves around them - Rohit, his father and his six year old younger half-brother. The one character which stands out is the father, full of darkness, but with glimpses of light and some rare love as well. Easy to hate, but impossible to dismiss. Lots remain unsaid about why and how he is the way he is, but there are enough glimpses throughout which act as clues. In fact there is lots that's left unsaid and that makes the movie even more delightful. The intelligence of the movie lies in treating its audience as intelligent, and as audience you do feel good about it.

The end is surprisingly resolved, though still open ended. One can easily take the movie forward after leaving the theater.

Despite the duration, I strongly recommend the movie to all movie lovers. This one surely remains with you even after you are out of the theater. And if it doesn't, consider yourself unfortunate.

p.s. I never saw the promos, but here is one for those who still thinking about watching it.

...and yes, you need to see the movie to know more about Kantishah ke Angoor :)

Love, Sex aur Dhokha

The shock value of two couples sharing their naked pictures over the internet (DevD) is now passe, and the latest buzz is voyeurism. While DevD was convincing with characters who were common people like most of us, LSD pushes the comfort zone that a movie explores much further. You can't afford to watch the movie and blush. Everything is real, and the reality is dark, dirty and often ugly.

Sex often sells, but sex here just makes you uncomfortable. But you continue watching it further. That is the addictive part of voyeurism, you can easily get into people's lives and its often difficult to come out of it. Though we may never admit, there is often pleasure in knowing the dirt around.

The movie is a collection of three stories (each based on Love, Sex and Dhokha, in that order), often crossing paths and affecting each other. Each story has all three building elements (Love, Sex, Dhokha), but in varying degrees. And drawn from many real instances, the stories immediately connect with the viewer. Privacy takes a backseat as the stories progress, with the camera watching and recording almost everything. The protagonists are comfortable with leaving a digital footprint of their lives, often intimate and very personal, while some are even tricked into this. But the portrayal is chillingly convincing, helped by the fact that the entire movie is shot on a hand-held camera (or at least shown like that).

The movie paves the way for many more movies to come on subjects considered taboo right now. One can hope for the trend to continue.

Ghajini

So here is my take on the current rage in the country...

EXTREMELY ENTERTAINING !!!

Saw the movie late last night and enjoyed it thoroughly! Cant say its a great movie, though it certainly entertains. Certainly worth a watch!

Music is fabulous...and action entertains for a change. Its gross for sure, but it never gets boring. Nidhi Dang was sitting next to me and hid her face almost always for nothing, but am quite sure she was an exception. Bhavin thankfully enjoyed it too!

Go watch it! If only for the excessive masala!

Five things I loved about 'Rab ne Bana di Jodi'

Here is a list of five things that I loved about the movie:

1. Its is mercifully not 3.5 hrs long

2. There are only 5-6 songs

3. No 'Kirron Kher' to ham

4. The actors live in Amritsar, and not London (ever, quite amazing!)

5. Aditya Chopra is a brave man; he can actually make this movie and release it too!

Sea of Poppies

Finished reading 'Sea of Poppies' by Amitav Ghosh today afternoon. This post is not meant to be a book review but a recommendation to read this book.

Its difficult for me to really write much about the book but I loved the fantasy world created in it. Trust me most will not find it very fantastical, but to me it certainly was. The poppies, Bhojpuri, Calcutta with its Sahibs and Mems, Ganga right from Baneras to Hooglie, the Rajas and so much more. The book took me into a state of trance at times, or maybe it was just of my illness. Well, I would never know that for sure, still...

Shalimar the Clown

Started reading this book (Shalimar the Clown, dodo!) today in the loo (other books in my life haven't been so lucky), and found the first few pages quite interesting.

Couldn't go beyond page 6 as my bowel movement was rather impressive today and I found it foolish to just sit in the loo and read (especially because Bangalore has cooled down quite a lot in the past few days and my loo is much more suitable for a cold dead turkey than a warm cold blooded mammal)...

The first character introduced is called 'India'...odd for a name, but if we read a little deeper maybe not so. India is named so because of Indus which flowed through the ancient North Western India (now Pakistan) and kind of demarcated the Indian territory in the olden days from the 'Greater Persia' in the West.

Now, The name Indus is a Latinization of Hindu, in turn the Iranian variant of Sindhu, the name of the Indus in the Rigveda (Wikipedia)!

So much history behind a name...no wonder carrying forward with a name like 'India' would not be an easy task. But I still find it extremely interesting...