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.

Män som hatar kvinnor / The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009)

Verdict:  9/10

The movie has some nudity & violence.

"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" directed by Niels Arden Oplev, is adopted from the 1st book of the hugely popular "Millennium Trilogy" series written by Stieg Larsson. Spare a thought for Larsson because he died before any of the trilogy books were published. The movie is the biggest ever Scandinavian movie & the highest grossing movie of Europe in 2009. There are 2 more sequels to this film which have been already released in Sweden & will be released in U.S in the coming months. I didn't read the novel but as the movie is gradually unfolding, you can actually feel like reading the book. The literal translation of the swedish title is Men who hate Women.

Henrik Vanger (Sven-Bertil Taube) is a retired former head of a business empire as well as the head of a big dynasty. 40 years ago his niece Harriet has disappeared & her body was never found. Henrik, for whom Harriet is like a daughter, is convinced that she is murdered by some one from his own family & he employs a tainted journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) to find the murderer. Mikael gets an unlikely partner in the form of the antisocial computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) who is fighting some demons from her own past. They form an unlikely detective pair & together they must find the murderer before they themselves became the target.

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.

Jesus Camp (2006)

Verdict:  10/10

This is one of the most terrifying horror documentaries that I've seen in the recent past. Leave aside your exorcists, grudges & halloweens. I've seen Gin gwai 2 a couple of days ago & as far as horror is considered, Jesus Camp actually beats it. If this documentary doesn't send even a single chill through your brain, I promise I will stop seeing any horror movies in the future. 

A couple of quotes from the documentary.

Becky Fischer: It's no wonder, with that kind of intense training and discipline, that those young people are ready to kill themselves for the cause of Islam. I wanna see young people who are as committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as the young people are to the cause of Islam. I wanna see them as radically laying down their lives for the Gospel as they are over in Pakistan and Israel and Palestine and all those different places, you know, because we have... excuse me, but we have the truth!

(If I erase "The Book" from your mind Becky, Where/What is the truth that you are talking about?)  

Becky Fischer: I can go into a playground of kids that don't know anything about Christianity, lead them to the Lord in a matter of, just no time at all. They are so usable in Christianity.

(Usable! Since when did Kids became some junk stationary.)

Jesus Camp directed by Rachel Grady & Heidi Ewing is a critically acclaimed documentary film which received an Oscar nomination but lost the award to Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.

NO TITLE FOR THIS POST

Oh yes. There is no title for this post because honestly I thought about it for a while but nothing appropriate flashed in my brain. When I started my blog, I only wanted to post whatever movies (plus occasional documentaries & science videos) that I've seen from mid-March 2010. I wanted to keep my personal beliefs/opinions regarding anything other than movies away from the blog.

If somebody asked me now what is my religion, I would say I had no religion at my birth, then I am brainwashed to be a Hindu because I was born in a Hindu family (I would have been a Muslim if somebody kidnapped me at birth & sold to a childless Muslim couple), finally came to my senses after 20 years & now I again assume my religious position at birth which is no religion. Mind you, once a person is brainwashed in a religious way (which most of you are) it is very difficult to come out of it, which explains why there are so many suicide killings, honour killings (based on both religion as well as caste). I am proud to come out of such brainwashing.

I had friends in my class who are afraid to mingle with my friends of another religion. I have friends whose family members, in case of a medical emergency, only take blood from within their relatives because they think that other's blood makes them impure. But when you accept evolution as a fact, there will be no place for any type of discrimination in your heart because everybody is related to everybody. You (whoever is reading this now from whichever place on Earth) are related to me, & we both are related to every other person on the planet albeit by a distance. When you think of every other person as your distant relative, you may not love them but at the same time you won't hate them. For e.g., I love & adore my sister. I also love my first cousins very much but not as much as I love my sister. My love towards my second cousins is far less than that towards my first cousins. I actually don't know about my third or fourth or any other cousins. But if somebody comes to me & says that he is say my fourth cousin, I may not love him but I definitely won't hate him. So when you think that every person is related to every other, believe me when I say, the whole perception of your world changes.

One more thing I wanted to add was this brain washing of kids. I have a question which you need not answer here but just answer to yourself. Are kids the property of their parents? (or) Are they the responsibility of their parents? I believe children are not some kind of stationary/property on which parents can start brainwashing their religious beliefs & customs. They are only the responsibility of parents until they have enough maturity. Please don't treat your kids like some property. Teach them the facts & leave them the freedom to choose their lifestyle when they are mature enough.    

Check this video on YouTube although this is not exactly related to the above subject.

Also check these winners of Project Reason short film contest. The 2nd one is nice but the 3rd one eats the cake. 

So why am I Posting all this? It is because I saw a documentary Jesus Camp. I almost cried after seeing that. I completed it at 2 a.m & now it is 5 a.m but I am unable to sleep. I have to let go my frustration of not being able to do anything except lying on my bed & thinking. Now that I vented some of feelings, probably I will sleep. I will post about Jesus Camp in my next post.

Gin gwai 2 / The Eye 2 (2004)

Verdict:  6/10

It was 1 a.m. My roommate was already sleeping. No disturbances. I closed the windows & it was my perfect setting for watching a horror flick. The downside of loving & watching too many horror thrillers is that nowadays unless I have the above said perfect conditions, it is becoming increasingly difficult to get my thrills.

An important observation regarding the title is that there is absolutely no relation between the movie & the title. I felt cheated because going by the title, I thought this movie has some connection with Gin gwai/The Eye which was one of my favourite movies. Since the first movie was a hit, just to cash on the success, the directors Pang Brothers named this movie as a sequel but the story is completely new one. As the story isn't bad at all, they should have kept an independent tile. The second thing which I hated immensely was the background score in the 1st half. Random usage of heavy music was actually distracting although in the 2nd half the situation improved. As a whole I would say job not well done as far as background score was considered.