Dilwale Dulhaniya Kootitu Povaanga

When I saw the trailer of Chennai Express I wasn't sure I wanted to watch it. Not that I am averse to mindless comedies. In fact I am a huge fan. This is the only genre of mainstream bollywood I am sold even before I see the trailers. But from the trailer, it seemed like Deepia was intent on butcher tamil and they had used the villians's underlings from Shankar's movies to be what seemed like the main villians. Then I found out Sathyaraj was in the movie. And I was tempted.

And surprisingly I found that this is not a hindi movie but more of a hindi-tamil-english trilingual. A lot of the movie is in tamil. And the portrayal of most of the tamil people is how a tamil movie would have portrayed them. In America the entire movie is subtitled but from the way the movie flows I don't think the tamil portions are subtitled in India. I mean Tamil people will catch a lot of the jokes before the others. Because a lot of the jokes take advantage of SRK not knowing tamil. So a situtaion is explained  in tamil. This is usually the set-up for the joke. SRK is forced to answer by nodding his heads. And his nods lead to something slapstick funny happening to him. Deepika then explains in hindi what was told and to what he nodded. So the hindi audience gets a translation as an explaination after the joke has passed. Since most of the audience was laughing I guess they didn't mind.

The movie is another typical rohit shetty movie. The gags are completely slapstick. And you laugh because you have gone to see a movie and forget about everything else. It is a fairly entertaining two and a half hours. The laughs kept coming through most of the movie. A lot of the movie is a tribute to DDLJ. Right from where he gets Deepika into the train five minutes into the movie to the climax where he goes back to Sathyaraj's village to get his permission to marry Deepika but is almost beaten to pulp by the guy Sathyaraj had chosen for her to marry.All this in true Rohit Shetty style, with a lot of buffonery, exploding cars and fights.

I enjoyed most of the movie and wouldn't say I was disappointed. I laughed and had my paisa's vasool. You are expected to leave your brain behind. And if you you will be rewarded with a decently funny movie.

But they could have made this a lot better. Instead of having Deepika they could have used a tamil speaking actress to perform her role. Like say Asin. While Deepika's exaggerated accent in hindi was irritating I would still accept it. It was her tamil that was so badly spoken. When Dhanush did Raanjhana he didn't murder Hindi. Yes a few wisps of his tamil accent remained but it was fairly accurate. If Dhanush could have worked so hard on his hindi, surely Rohit Shetty could have asked Deepika to work on her tamil. Hell the one marathi dialogue that Deepika says is delivered with a perfect marathi accent. But not one tamil dialogue was spoken correctly. Similiarly the guy Deepika was engaged to, if anything spoke worse tamil. And with an impressive name like Thangabali.  They could have just had his voice dubbed and nobody would have known the difference. But they insisted on him speaking twisted tamil. These things may not be noticeable to the primary hindi speaking audience of the movie. But the difference between an average movie and a good movie are in these details.

Overall though I am actually happy with how tamil people were shown in the movie. It is very rare to hear proper tamil in a hindi movie. You typically only hear the Mehmood style of tamil if you hear it at all. But this was a proper bilingual. More such collaborations would surely be fun to watch with the caveat that the few people whose accent is still poor work on that! 

Blue Jasmine

Going to watch movies made by old movie-makers is usually a lot of fun. These directors have very little fucks to give and so they make movies from their heart and not tailored to a particular audience. As it is, Woody Allen, for most of his career didn't make movies that would appeal to a wide audience. Obviously he has his small but extremely tight fans. I was always intrigued by them. I mean I have watched Annie Hall previously and I liked it. But I wouldn't call myself a huge fan.

Well with this background I went to see the Blue Jasmine. I was expecting a fun but depressing movie. What I saw blew my mind. No seriously. This was a movie made by a guy who knew his craft. A tight movie with amazingly power packed performances. Cate Blanchett's acting is beyond words.

Blue Jasmine is a depressing tale of the leading character, Jasmine, whose husband turns out to be a Ponzi scam artist. The story builds slowly and shows how the once rich girl reacts once she loses all her money. How she cannot adjust to the menial, and how she pushes her poor but happy sister to get try and snatch a rich guy. In the process she almost destroys her sister's happiness. The detailing of Jasmine's fall to depression is just amazing. 

The movie has very very few scenes that are funny. Even though the movie is made by one of the leading stand-ups of the past and has a role for the biggest stand-up comedian of today ( Louis CK in a small role). 

A lot of the movies I like are tragedies. The well made ones really move you. And the point of cinema is to touch your emotion. One of my favourite ends to a movie is Moondram Pirai.  A depressed Kamal on seeing that Sridevi doen't even recognize him goes and sits in a bench. And the director focusses on his face and then pans to the credits. Extraordinarily moving. There the depression comes in ten minutes. Here its a slow but steady fall towards sadness. Its mostly bought on by Jasmine herself. You try to empathize with her when she tries to get out of her situation by trying to study. But she gives up and tries to use a short-cut to get out. And you stop feeling bad for her. But the end is heart rending nonetheless. She lies to her sister that she has got her escape and hopelessly depressed walks out sits on a park bench and starts mumbling about her past without realizing what she is doing. She is a complete wreck and in a pitiable condition. And Woody Allen fades to the credit.

For a couple of seconds you will be wondering WTF happened. But when you go home you will still be thining about the movie. About how brilliand Cate Blanchett and Woddy Allen are!

Fruitvale Station

Hollywood makes realistic cinema very very rarely. Fruitvale station (though produced by a relatively small Hollywood studio, The Weinstein company) is one of these rare gems. The movie style is more Persian neo-realist rather than anything from Hollywod.

I really loved this movie. It tells the tale of an African American who has messed up in the past. But he is more or less a nice guy who loves his mom and his daughter. Problems exist with his wife but he is trying to make amends. He even decides to give up dealing marijuana, most likely the screw up from his past. These provide a decent portrait of the lower middle class America but the punch of the movie is about how the police deals with the black people here. They kill them while hundreds of people are watching.

When I came out of the movie theater I was really moved. The movie begins with mobile phone camera footage showing the real like incident that happened in Oakland, CA. Before coming to America, I just would not have imagined such a thing could happen in the land of the free. Hell, even in India the police at least tries to create false pretenses by claiming that they shot only after being shot in the first place. But here you have the police officer coolly take his gun out ( he claims he was taking out his taser) and shoot a guy in the back. The guy who was shot was handcuffed, overpowered and with his face touching the ground. And all this happened in a railway station with hundreds of people watching and filming this.

The movie is a reminder that all is not well with how America deals with its poor and marginalized. Yes, a  lot of black eople commit crimes. But if you have a situation where you ghettoize a community, which has an already high crime rate you are only asking for more crime. You don't need a criminal psychologist to tell you that. Add the fact that almost most of the people in jail (read: criminals who are caught) are black and you have a recipe for disaster.

The movie itself doesn't tell you all these directly. But it is a mark of a very good political movie that it provides a lot of subtle hints that make you realize that the system is even more fucked up than a guy being shot in the back by someone who is supposed to protect him.

As with any kind of realistic cinema this is a really slow movie. It is also not very pretty. It has probably been shot with a cheap hand held camera. For added effect the cinematographer also holds it unsteadily. And there aren't too many light moments ( the father-daughter bonding is probably the only exception to this). And in the end it hits you in the feels. So to put it simply it is a serious movie that is right up my alley. Everyone should watch this. At least once it comes online!

Sweet my love, I live for thee

When you watch Maryan, the first thing that will strike you is the rawness of the movie. The way the characters look, the food they eat, the clothes they wear everything is straight out of a fishing village in southern Tamil nadu. In most of the recent, gritty realistic sons of the village movies, directors let one flaw seep in. They paint the lead actress white. Here, director, Bharat Bala didn't even let that happen. The lead actress, Parvathy Menon, with her extra-ordinarily powerful performance, is also one of the strongest suits of the movie.

Though the movie is titled after the male character, Maryan, played to perfection by Dhanush, the movie is more about Maryan's love for Panimalar. How her memories pushes him to escape his abductors and unite with her. Dhanush's choice of movies in the last five years, and his sustained performances with that fire in his eyes, deserve every ounce of praise that he has been receiving. This movie adds to his already impressive repertoire of roles.

Spoilers

The plot of the movie, inspired by true events, is mostly straightforward and extremely rich in drama and tension. The first half is essentially the story of how Panimalar and Maryan fall in love. Maryan, who knows nothing but the ocean is then forced to go to Sudan to earn a better living. As he is about to return he is kidnapped by local militia and held for ransom. He escapes from his abductors and runs across the desert before being spotted by friendly locals and taken to safety.

/Spoilers

What made this a truly nice movie to watch was the technical team. The camera work  (Mark Knocix) was phenomenal. Both the ocean and the dessert were picturised perfectly. Even at times when the movie slows down, you are watching something very beautiful and so you tend to be satisfied. The background score is also excellent. The second half is pretty much 127 hours territory and Rahman actually betters himself. Another thing I noticed was that the sound was engineered very well too. The songs are all very good as well. Especially the inspiring Nenju Ezhu and the gloomy Yenga pona rasa. Most of the songs are situational but a couple of dance numbers also exist. These dance numbers are one of the few negative points of this movie. These unnecessary songs also make the movie feel a tad too long. But even given these minor negatives the movie was an extremely satisfying watch.

I really hope we see more such movies in mainstream commercial cinema. Movies, where the masala and the action are inherent in the script! 

Milk Kha Singh!

Biographical films typically require the director to exercise his creative licence to make the dull parts more dramatic. But in the presenting the story of possibly the greatest track and field athlete India has produced, this was unnecessary. A life filled with guts, glory, determination and also immense tragedy is absolutely ripe for being made into a film. So much so, I am surprised that this movie has come out only in 2013.

The movie sketches the life of Milkha from the time he is a 12 year old around the time of partition to about the time he is just past his peak running ability. And what an amazing life it is. Watching his family butchered in front of his eyes before acting on his father's last words extolling him to run ( the title of the movie are those words), only to escape to a tough life at a refugee camp and then the hard work and determination involved in trying to become the world's best runner. The narrative is presented in a non-linear form and this keeps you engaged through the length of the movie. And though the premise seems extraordinarily serious the movie never overwhelms you. Humour and romance are used in just the right amounts.

My only gripe with the movie was that it could have been tauter and a couple of songs were completely unnecessary. The songs themselves were quite good but a couple of them did nothing but hinder the flow of the movie.

The acting of both the people who play Milkha, Farhan Akthar and Jabtej Singh (as the young Milkha) were amazing. Farhan's commitment to the movie is really quite impressive. In the course of the movie you can see him convert from scrawny teenager to extremely bulky sprint champion. And though before this, I wasn't particularly a fan of his acting, particularly his voice modulation, in this movie his perfomance was extremely well done as well. Among the technical aspects the cinematography was especially noteworthy (Binod Pradhan). I really liked the video game like rendering of the riots. The rest of the movie was also shot beautifully.

Overall I really enjoyed this movie. I hope this inspires more sportspeople in India as well as more sports based movies.

P.S: This is the 2nd big Bollywood movie about a runner in 2 years. Last year's Pan Singh Tomar being the other. Both are nice movies. BMB takes the obviously dramatic approach to tell the story of a legend. PST took a more subtle approach to show the fact is stranger than fiction of an international athlete who was part of the army and then became a dacoit. Personally I liked PST more, but BMB is extremely inspiring too.

Despicable Me 2

So it is summertime. Which means more animation. The one thing which Hollywood seems to do right. The first feature for this week was Despicable me 2 at its premiere show. And to say the least it was extremely enjoyable.

The other studios are clearly catching up to Pixar and this is wonderful for the audience. The artwork was quite good, the story engaging and above all the jokes make you laugh through the length of the movie. The movie follows the story of Gru who is now a responsible father and has stopped his villainous activities. He is extremely protective of his daughters, the oldest of whom is old enough to start dating boys. This leads to some of the smarter lines of the movie. Gru is recruited by the anti villain league (AVL) to help nab a mysterious bad guy who has stolen a potion that can convert cute things (rabbits/minions) into crazy monsters. Gru's partner from the AVL provides the romantic angle, the one thing missing from the first movie. And the minions continue to entertain with their amazing slapstick sense of humour. The minions are adorable, funny and stupid. And in addition to providing amazing entertainment, Despicable me 2 has gotten me extremely excited about next year's minion movie.

The romantic track could have been more engaging. The love ballad that one of the minions sing in what would be their equivalent of Italian was hilarious but the characters themselves don't make you root for them. Apart from that the movie gets full marks. A truly funny movie that made me leave the theater with a huge smile on my face. 

Boo! utiful

The first movie I am going to write about is an extraordinary piece of art. All pixar movies are accompanied by a short. The one screened before Monsters university, called The Blue umbrella, is possibly the most beautiful one to come out of pixar's computers. The movie is classic Pixar. Without a single word being said, they show how our hero, the blue umbrella, bumps into the extremely pretty Red umbrella, falls for her and tries to unite with her. The story itself is touching. You root for the blue umbrella and hope he get to be with red. But what blows your mind is how detailed and perfect the artwork is. Pixar, in my opinion, is the gold standard when it comes to art in animated movies. But even seen against pixar's lofty standards the art here is phenomenal. It is unbelievable how the animators are able to convey so many emotions on the faces of pavement tiles, mail boxes, sewage pipes and obviously the umbrellas. I don't think rain has been captured so well in  any movie, live action or animation. Accompanying all this is a beautiful music score. The six minutes take you through a whirlwind of emotions ending with a nice happy feeling at the bottom of your heart. Whether or not Pixar wins the best animated feature oscar next year they are almost certainly winning the best animated short. Especially given that the academy is partial to movies like this. ( Paperman won last year)

Which brings us to the feature. I really loved Monsters Inc. So I was looking forward to Monsters university with decently high expectations. The fact that Pixar's track record with sequels (Toy story 2 and 3) is awesome added to these expectations. They typically avoid extending a franchise unless they are very sure about their material.

Monsters University does nothing to harm their reputation. It most certainly is not as awesome as Monsters Inc. but it does not disappoint either. The prequel is mainly a Wazowski show. Mike Wazowski, as we know, is not exactly a Gabbar Singh of the monster world. Parents are definitely not going to tell their children that if they do not sleep on time Mike Wazowski will come and scare them. And  anyway children would probably cuddle him rather than get scared by him. But there is only one catch. Mike does not know this. And dreams that he is going to be greatest scarer ever. The story follows Mike's fight to overcome his unscariness with sheer determination, confidence and well-planned strategies. He leads a team of underdogs in a scare competition. Victory in the competition would allow him to be a scaring major in Monsters university. A stepping stone to further success in his career. Along the way he manages to convert Sully, who is introduced as a complete douche into the nice guy Sully we know from Monsters Inc.

The climax of the movie is what makes it better than your run-of-the-mill david beats goliath kinda movie. Though Mike leads his team to victory he does realise that he is not a monster born to scare. He simply does not have the ability and how much ever he may try he is not going to make it as a scarer. He needs to be pragmatic and choose a path that will help him use his immense talents in a field that his close enough to his dreams but not quite what he wished to do. That I believe was a very strong message and one that was translated beautifully onto the big screen. Most underdog movies end up being cliches but trust Pixar to come up with something to surprise you while still warming your heart!