Raavan (2010)

Trailer 1 Alice in Wonderland: For a second, I thought that I had entered into the past only to realize that this movie is yet to be released in Hyderabad. By the way, Alice in Wonderland was the 1st post in this blog.

Trailer 2 The Last Airbender: Manoj N Shyamalan (Sixth Sense fame) was once considered to be the most gifted story teller of his generation. That appears to be a distant past now. The Last Airbender is his latest movie. The trailer showed some great visual effects. But I'm not very impressed with it as a whole. Considering his recent track record this is a very important movie for him.

Coming to Raavan, from the trailer and the general talk, you might have guessed the basic premise. Raavan (Abhishek Bacchhan) kidnaps Sita (Aish). Ram (Vikram), with the help of Hanuman (Govinda) tries to get Sita back and kill Raavan. Ofcourse, the motivation for Raavan's abduction of Sita is the insult of Surpanaka (Priyamani). What if this basic premise constitutes the entire movie with nothing else? The movie is going to suck & that is what Raavan is. What makes the original Ramayan interesting is the many many interesting characters and subplots without which even it would be uninteresting. This is where Raavan fails.

Vedam (2010)

In 2 months time, Allu Arjun gave one of the worst movies and one of the best movies of this decade in Tollywood.

Vedam has 5 independent stories in it which are taking place parallelly, and the characters of all the stories converge at the big climax. In my limited memory, I can't remember such a movie being made prior in Tollywood. This could be a risky subject but director Krish (Gamyam fame) pulled it off with great aplomb. I won't brief about the 5 stories but they are very different from each other and there is believability to each one of them although in various degrees.

If an award for the best performance by an ensemble cast in Tollywood is introduced next year, Vedam would be the leading contender. Nobody in the movie messed up there roles. Allu Arjun is an excellent fit in the role of Cable Raju. His performance & emotions at the end where he has a change of heart is the best that he had done until now. After the movie Arundhati, Anushka has become a clear crowd favourite. The whistles and shouts during her introduction scene were only matched by the entrance of Arjun. Anushka has nailed the role of Saroja going from funny to angry to angst with ease. She definitely is one of the best actresses in Tollywood right now. This is my first Manchu Manoj movie. He was an apt choice to play the music loving wannabe rock-star Vivek. Manoj is not only a better actor than his brother Vishnu but he is also choosing his scripts wisely. He created a good first impression on me. I haven't seen Manoj Bajpai fail as an actor and the same goes here. He gives good performance as the victimised Muslim Raheemuddin Qureishi. Nagayya as a poor weaver and Saranya as his daughter-in-law gave some honest & sincere performances as the exploited rural people who wants to educate the boy in their family.

Kites (2010)

Kites is directed by Anurag Basu, produced by Rakesh Roshan & stars Hrithik Roshan, Barbara Mori, Kangana Ranaut, and Kabir Bedi amongst others. Story by Rakesh Roshan, Screenplay by Anurag Basu, Robin Bhatt and Akarsh Khurana, Music by Rajesh Roshan, Cinematography by Ayananka Bose.

My review is for the 130 minute Indian version. For your info, next week a 90 minute international remix version of Kites is going to be released which was re-edited under the supervision of Brett Ratner (director of Rush Hour series and X-Men:The Last Stand).  

Some of the reactions that I observed in the theater. At the 80 minute mark, the person adjacent to me is whispering in a tired voice "Oh my God! how much more time is the movie going to last?" At the end of the movie, I saw a group of friends waking one of their friends. There are uniform sighs of disappointment from the audience by the time end credits started rolling. You may guess now in which direction this review is going to be.

I saw the trailer of Kites a couple of months ago and was not at all impressed by it. So I went to the screening with a bit of low expectations. But the movie was worse than my already lower expectations.

Iron Man 2 (2010)

The movie is written by Justin Theroux who previously cowrote that fantastic comedy Tropic Thunder. Director of the movie is Jon Favreau who also acted in the movie as Tony Stark's bodyguard.

The trailer first. The beauty or the not so beauty thing about this trailer is that you can get a really good idea of almost all of the plot points of the movie in this.

Not difficult to guess the best part of the movie. Sometimes you feel that a particular role was destined to be played by a particular person. You can't seperate the role and the person. Robert Downey, Jr. is Tony Stark. He is so convincing that if not for the backlash of the fans you may very well change the name of Tony Stark to Robert Downey, Jr. He is absolutely enjoying this role and it shows on the screen. Also Mickey Rourke is an excellent casting choice for Ivan Vanko / Whiplash. He is really cool. I read that it was Downey who initially proposed Rourke's name for Whiplash.

30 ROCK Season 1 (2006-07)

30 Rock is the name of an American comedy series which Tina Fey created partly based on her experience at Saturday Night Live. So here we have a fictional live sketch comedy show called as "TGS with Tracy Jordan" (initially called as The Girly Show) whose head writer is Liz Lemon (played by Tina Fey). We see what happens behind the production of this TV show along with knowing about the various persons/characters involved with it. 

Season 1 was nominated for 10 Emmy awards. Apart from the writing, the really best part of the series is actors. Casting was absolutely fantastic. Alec Baldwin, Tracy Morgan, Scott Adsit, Judah Friedlander, Katrina Bowden, Keith Powell, Lonny Ross, Maulik Pancholy everyone was great in their roles.

But the 2 people who really stood out for me are Jane Krakowski as attention seeking star of TGS and Jack McBrayer as the ever happy, obedient, stupid NBC page. For me, these two and Tina Fey of course are the real stars of 30 Rock. 

The comedy is top notch. If what you want is plain don't-use-much brain comedy, this is the thing for you. As far as the characters are concerned, they make me laugh very much but somehow I'm really not concerned about what happens with them except Liz Lemon. But my liking towards Liz Lemon might have to do more with Tina Fey than Liz Lemon (also I guess there might be a lot of similarities between Fey and Liz Lemon). With other characters, it's more like you make me laugh but I don't care if you are out of the show because someone else is going to do the same job. But once again the comedy is really good.

Verdict: 8/10

Some of the episodes that I felt to be very very good are episodes 13, 14, 18, 20 which are Up all night, The C-word, Fireworks, Cleveland respectively. But my top 5 favourite episodes are

1. The Head and The Hair (episode 11)

2. Corporate Crush (episode 19)

3. The Rural Juror (episode 10) & Black Tie (episode 12)

5. Jack meets Dennis (episode 6 )

Love to know your favourite ones,

LIFE IN THE UNDERGROWTH - Part5: Supersocieties (2005)

Successfully completed the wonderful wonderful series Life in the Undergrowth. Although my favourite episode of the series is the 3rd one named The Silk Spinners (mostly because of my love towards spiders), this episode Supersocieties is a very very special one because of the similarity to our society and these societies of superorganisms.

After watching this episode, you really feel that at some point of time there was some connection to us. I mean, apart from intelligence there are a lot of similarities between us and these superorganisms. (It is another matter altogether that by seeing some of the actions of our species, I some times feel that we are less intelligent than some of these invertebrates.)

At the start of this episode Attenborough states that "The superorganisms such as ants, bees or termites are not the blindly mechanical robotic slaves that we once thought they were, indeed we now know every insect society is full of conflict, power struggles & mutinies".

Power struggles & mutinies! I never thought that could happen in other species apart from ours.

So in this episode we go into these super societies to see how they work. There is one superb footage showing the rise (from scratch) of a bumblebee society, its functioning and finally its end when the worker bees revolt and kill the queen bumblebee.

The wood ants squirting Formic acid when threatened is another good shot. After a flood, the mud ants quickly saving their eggs and moving them to a higher ground is another thrilling sequence in this episode.

The specialty of this particular episode is that most of the sequences in this episode are like from a thriller movie. Check this clip and see whether this reminds you of an old James Cameroon movie.

LIFE IN THE UNDERGROWTH - Part4: Intimate Relations (2005)

In this 4th episode of the wonderful series Life in the Undergrowth, we are dealing with the relationships developed by the invertebrates not only towards their own kind but also towards plants. Most of us know that generally plants and insects depend on each other. But the kind of footage that they have shot for this episode is unbelievable.

This clip shows how a Gall wasp uses an Oak tree for the development of its egg.

LIFE IN THE UNDERGROWTH - Part3: The Silk Spinners (2005)

As the title says, in this episode of the Life in the Undergrowth series, we are dealing exclusively with the invertebrates which produce silk.

If you are thinking that spiders are the only invertebrates which produce silk then you are wrong because there are a whole lot of other beings which produce silk, of course apart from silk worms.

Check this clip to see the amazing fungus gnats, from the Waitomo Caves of New Zealand, building beautiful chandeliers to trap prey. This is a truly truly beautiful clip.

LIFE IN THE UNDERGROWTH - Part2: Taking to the Air (2005)

Since I've given a minute introduction to this series in my previous post, I will straight away give a few snaps from this episode.

As the title shows, here we deal with the invertebrates in air such as butterflies, dragonflies, wasps and a lot lot more.

There are a lot of metamorphosis videos shown in this episode but the best of the lot is the following one of a dragonfly. You wouldn't believe that the initial monster looking creature has changed into such a beautiful one.

LIFE IN THE UNDERGROWTH - Part1: Invasion of the Land (2005)

I've seen many programs about various wonderful forms & variety of lives on our beautiful planet. But until Life in the Undergrowth there hasn't been a program that dealt about invertebrates in such a great depth.

Narrated by the one and only incomparable Mr. Who Else, this is a series par excellence.

More than 95% of all animal species on Earth consists of Invertebrates. For every one of us there are more than 200 million of those. As David says in the following intro clip, if we backbone creatures disappear suddenly, everything goes on normally for them but if they disappear, we are going to disappear with them.

The following clip consists of the first 200 seconds of the program. Observe that at some level we do have some similarities. 

1940 lo Oka Gramam (2009)

In an interview, Narasimha Nandi, the director of this movie gave the following statement. “I held 30 shows for distributors but no one seemed interested in buying the film". After watching the film, I can easily see why this happened. I will bet my laptop that each one of those distributors were sleeping soundly by the end of the movie.

1940 lo Oka Gramam has won 3 Nandi awards & a national award for the best regional (Telugu) language film. As the title says, the film is about the superstitions & class discrimination by the upper caste Brahmins in a village in the year 1940. This film is adopted from the book Ghosha by Gurazada Appa Rao.

The film starts with an intense scene where a man from a lower caste is castrated because of his love with an upper caste woman. So I know (atleast thought) that this is going to be an intense thought provoking film. But by the end of the first 30 minutes, I understood that this is going to be one of the most agonizing & torturous experiences that I will have. Dheekshitulu is a 65-70 year old brahmin widower with no children. He sees the beautiful 16 year old Susheela & goes to her parents to ask her hand. Though her mother is angry with this proposal, Dheekshitulu says that he will give them a lot of kanyasulkam to which they finally agree. 

(To my friends in other countries who don't know about kanyasulkam, kanyasulkam roughly means brideprice whereby sometimes an old brahmin would buy an young bride by giving the bride's parents money as an exchange for the bride. This was prevalent in some areas of South India prior to the 1940s. Thankfully, like smallpox, this practice was completely eradicated only to be overtaken by a more horrendous practice called dowry system which, like AIDS, is unfortunately yet to be eradicated.)

The Office: Season 1 (2005)

Completed the season 1 of The Office. Point to be noted is there are only 6 episodes in season 1. Of course I'm talking about the American version. For those of my friends who doesn't know what this is, The Office is a mockumentary comedy series showing the daily lives of office employees working in a branch of a company called as Dunder Mifflin Paper Company. So you have all the variety characters that you assume would be present in a typical boring office. 

I've started to love the title music. Most of us when we love a program & hear the music related to it, we have this mixed feeling of warmth, pleasure & nostalgia. You know what I mean. As soon as I hear that initial music I'm having the same feeling. So I guess I'm starting to love the show & the characters.

I haven't watched the British version. So naturally I don't have any benchmarks to compare with, which is really great. All the characters are excellent. I'm remembering their names though not all of them yet.

Pilot episodes of The Office & 30 Rock

Last year at this date, I didn't knew that there were two comedy series by the names of The Office & 30 Rock. In the last 6 months, I've read a lot of praise for these two series. One of my friends got the dvds for these shows, so finally I've decided to watch these comedies from today.

After watching the pilot episodes, these are my initial thoughts & reactions about these.

In The Office, we follow the chronicles of people working in a fictional company by the name Dunder Mifflin Paper Company.

It is like one of these cluttered govt offices where people are so bored. They appear kind of content but not content. You know what I mean. I am introduced to some of the key characters neatly such as Michael Scott (Steve Carell), Jim Halpert (John Krasinski), Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson), Pam Halpert (Jenna Fischer), etc,. All of them looked really good in their characters. Steve Carell was sometimes funny but mostly I felt his character was kind of irritating & slightly lunatic. I wanted to throw paper weight on his head after his practical joke on Jenna but that is the reaction they wanted from audience I suppose. It would be interesting to see how these characters are going to develop in my view. Especially Carell's after that irritating sketch in this episode.

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Verdict: 9/10

The Maltese Falcon is written & directed by John Huston and adopted from Dashiell Hammett's novel of the same name. The movies star cast includes Humphrey Bogart as private investigator Sam Spade, Mary Astor as Brigid O'Shaughnessy, Peter Lorre as Joel Cairo, Sydney Greenstreet as Kasper Gutman, Lee Patrick as Effie Perrine, Elisha Cook Jr. as Wilmer Cook, Gladys George as Iva Archer amongst others. There is a special cameo by Walter Huston.

The Maltese Falcon received Oscar nominations for Picture, John Huston for Adapted Screenplay & Sydney Greenstreet for Supporting Actor.

I won't give any plot details here except that this is a wonderful crime mystery that started the classic film noir period of Hollywood. The movie starts with these lines scrolling.

"In 1539, the Knights Templar of Malta, paid tribute to Charles V of Spain, by sending him a Golden Falcon encrusted from beak to claw with rarest jewels ----- but pirates seized the galley carrying this priceless token and the fate of the Maltese Falcon remains a mystery to this day ---".

So we know that we have to find the falcon & in the process we deal with lies, murders, characters full of deceit & cunningness. You know the typical film noir settings.

The Maltese Falcon is the first movie directed by John Huston who in his illustrious career was nominated for 15 Oscars. John Huston hated the two previous movie adaptations of the novel The Maltese Falcon. He thought that there is a lot of scope for improvement. The beauty of the film is that there is not a single waste line nor a single waste shot nor a single waste performance. Everything is so perfect & each character is very well developed. I felt Huston has filtered the movie like water, over & over, until it became so perfect.

The Rules of FILM NOIR (2009)

The music in background is the nostalgic classic jazz. Everything is in black & white. Matthew Sweet gets out of a car & says this "Dark, isn't it? You better get used to it. For the next hour, this is how the world is going to be. THIS IS THE WORLD OF FILM NOIR. It's a dark American place with a fancy French name. A place where the sun has died & people get buoy with Neon, where the only pleasures to be had are from bourbon & the satisfaction of knowing that life is a cheap little game in which everyone plays dirty". I immediately knew that the next hour is going to be a superb fun ride & boy! Am I delighted by the end of the programme.

This BBC programme, narrated by Matthew Sweet, deals with the wonderful world of film noir. The word film noir invokes different things to different people. If I have to say 3 things that flash in my mind in a nanosecond, they would be unbelievable shadows, tobacco smoke & Put the blame on Mame. Isn't Rita Hayworth ravishing in Gilda? I would love to know the 3 things that come to your mind first when you hear the word 'film noir'.

Serendipity (2001)

Verdict:  9/10

How many of us doesn't like a good love story with some humour & some melancholy. I think the romcoms of the 30s, 40s & 50s are amongst the best in Hollywood history. We have such precious gems such as Adam's Rib, Roman Holiday, It Happened One Night, My Man Friday & the list goes on. The next 3 decades saw a decline in this genre save some rare exceptions such as Annie Hall. But the last 2 decades saw a revival of sorts. I think the success of When Harry Met Sally & Pretty Woman has a lot to do with this.

I like many romcoms from the last 2 decades but if you ask me to name 3 movies that I absolutely adore from the last 21 years, I would say 10 Things I Hate About You, My Sassy Girl (not the English version but the Korean version Yeopgijeogin Geunyeo) & Serendipity.

I actually saw Serendipity for the 1st time only a year after its release. At that time I haven't seen many rom-coms & also I wasn't thinking about movies in a critical way analysing their good, bad & ugly. It was just some rom-com which I was seeing to waste some time. But by the first 15 minutes, I started to love the movie. One reason was due to the interesting start & another reason was due to Kate Beckinsale about whom I never heard of before & who will always remain my 1st Hollywood crush.

Serendipity is directed by Peter Chelsom & written by Marc Klein.

Most of our Universe is Missing (2006)

From here onwards, to encourage my readers to watch the science videos, I've decided to include a few screenshots in my posts. Hope this encourages you to give some of your time for knowing about some interesting things that are happening around you.

Most of our Universe is Missing is another episode in the long lasting series BBC Horizon. This episode is narrated by Academy Award nominated actor Sir Ian Holm.

I will give a brief intro about what this episode deals with.

Do you know that around 96% of our universe is missing? And I'm not talking about the vast emptiness that we see. All the galaxies with stars, planets & other debris that you see has a total mass of only 4% of our universe.

Prior to 1970, everything in our universe is accounted for. Or that is what most people thought. But in the 1970s Prof. James Peebles & Prof. Jeremiah Ostriker, who were working on the stability of the galaxies & universe, found that with the notions of total mass existed at that time, the stability of the galaxies is difficult to achieve. They were thinking of some missing matter that is unknown to us & they came to know that forty years earlier Prof. Fritz Zwicky had the same ideas about missing matter. Thus our Dark Matter was discovered in theory. But the problem for others to accept this is that neither dark matter could be seen nor it was discovered practically. So, many of the others dismissed it as speculative.