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.

How to Train Your Dragon (2010)

Verdict:  8/10

How to Train Your Dragon directed by Chris Sanders & Dean DeBlois is a big budget CGI animation film from the DreamWorks Animation stable. 

The story is set around the ancient & mythical Viking land where the glory of a man lies in becoming a dragon slayer. Dragons occasionally raid the Vikings & take the livestock & any other available food which invariably results in a fight. The protagonist of the movie is Hiccup (Jay Baruchel), son of the chief of Vikings (Gerard Butler). As with any other Viking, Hiccup wants to be a dragon slayer but is constantly discouraged by his father because he is 'different' read not muscular. So at one of the dragon raids, when Hiccup injures a most feared dragon called Night Fury, noone believes him. He goes to the adjacent woods to find & kill it, but when the time comes he couldn't do it because he realizes that it is as much afraid of him as he is of it. So he releases it & an unlikely friendship is forged. Gradually Hiccup finds that dragons are not harmful unless provoked & he tries to change the perceptions of Vikings especially that of his father. With the help of his lady love Astrid (America Ferrera), how he achieves his goal & brings peace between Vikings & Dragons forms the rest of the story. By the way, the intro of Astrid is hot, literally. There are enough action pieces & aerial fights in the film. The Big Daddy at the climax looked like a hybrid between T-Rex & Archaeopteryx. Imagine a flying T-Rex breathing fire.

Date Night (2010)

Verdict:  8/10

Ads before the movie in theatre:

1. New Samsung 3D. The ad was amazing on the big screen although I doubt the real effect of the T.V.

2. Trailer of The A-Team, which was rather uninspiring with the only inspiration being Liam Neeson's face.

3. Insipid trailer of The Bounty Hunter starring Jennifer Aniston & Gerard Butler. I found the comedy rather bland. Never a fan of Aniston.

Date Night is directed by Shawn Levy whose previous credits include The Pink Panther & Night at the Museum movies amongst others.

The movie stars Steve Carell & Tina Fey as the married couple Phil and Claire Foster living in New Jersey with 2 children. They are one of those couples who lead the same monotonous routine life, day in & day out. Although they do love & admire each other, they feel nothing "special" or magic in their relation as well as life. Every week they go on a date night to the local restaurant where they make jokes & amuse themselves by imitating other couples' talks & guessing their stories. But even this has become a tiresome experience now. When their best friends inform the Fosters about their divorce by saying that they no longer feel like couple but good room mates, Fosters feel the same about themselves. So in order to rekindle their romance Steve takes Claire on a date to a costly Manhattan restaurant.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

Verdict:  8/10

God:               What are you doing now? 

King Arthur:   Averting our eyes, oh Lord. 

God:         Well, don't. It's just like those miserable psalms, always so depressing. Now knock it off!

Monty Python is a very famous British comedy group which started in the early seventies. The group comprises of Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin. The Monty Python has a cult following worldwide. Infact the goup was so famous that the word Pythonesque (see the dictionary) was coined after the group. They were also responsible for the word spam. A dinosaur was named after the group's name. Each of the 6 members has an asteroid named after them. 

Setting the basic info & trivia aside, Monty Python and the Holy Grail has all the six members of the group playing the principal leads, infact every one of them performs multiple roles. The movie is directed by two of the group's members Terry Gilliam & Terry Jones.

This Is It (2009)

Verdict:  8/10

“If you enter this world knowing you are loved and you leave this world knowing the same, then everything that happens in between can be dealt with.”  

  --- Michael Jackson.

This Is It was actually the name of a planned series of 50 concerts to be held in London by the King of Pop, one of the greatest entertainers, Michael Jackson. But with the unfortunate death of him, the concerts were stalled. AEG Live were the concert promoters & in an attempt to salvage whatever they could, AEG sold over 100 hours of rehearsal footage to Columbia. This footage was actually intended for Michael's personal library & was never thought to be released as a film.