Problem hi Problem...

Once a decade, an event occurs that changes the outlook of a whole generation. An event so profound that everything else that happens in the decade pales in comparison.

I am talking about the release of a decade-defining movie.

Some movies come immediately to mind, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (DDLJ) in the nineties, Dil Chahta hai in the 00's. These are movies that have made someone as lazy as me get off my butt and go watch the movie in a theatre in the first few days of its release. So DDLJ was seen in the first week while DCH ranked a second show on the day of its release (ah, that legendary movie-bound bunk of Prof. Alok Kumar's class)

But yesterday I saw the first movie of my life in the first day-first show.

Yes, the holy grail has been achieved. The movie that will define the next 10 years has hit the theatres! 2010-2019 has had that slot already filled up. No, no I do not think there is going to be any movie that can even show a light to the movie I'm about to describe in this post.

Sigh, but I just don't seem to be able to begin. Much like iconic movies of the non-chronological genre like Pulp Fiction (the greatest ever) and Memento (well, it was mostly in reverse, but had some interesting cut scenes) the Movie'10, as I shall refer to it from now on, also follows a non-chronological order. The great thing about Movie'10 is that you can come into the theatre at any time, start watching the flick from any point, and you would not miss a thing about the plot. It would raise the same emotions in you whether you watch it from the very beginning, or manage to catch just 10 minutes of the climax scene! Brilliant, ain't it?

Movie'10 also seeks to display the histrionic abilities of many stars. What better could we, the humble audience, ask for? Much like the intense multi-starrer, Reservoir Dogs, Movie'10 also brings together a motley crew of stars that you haven't seen in the theatre for a long time. This great multi-starrer has it all - a former Miss Universe, a former Munna bhai, a former '24' star, a former 'action' hero, a former villain and a former I-had-hair-once-upon-a-time guy. What else could you hope for?

Coming back to the plot, as with most really deep and intellectual movies the plot is difficult to decipher and comprehend. In fact Movie'10 is so deep and intellectual that try as much as I could, I could not find any plot at all! Can you beat that? How brilliant is that, right? A complex cornucopia of sub-plots and set pieces. Gags randomly scattered in a collage of forced 'jokes'. The director was obviously mocking at the crass and low-class humour that seems to be gaining popularity amongst the cinema goers of today. What a brilliant ruse - pretending to have made a crappy, crass, loud and clueless movie while actually he wants to show the error in our ways. Hats off Anees Bazmi! Truly, you are a philosopher of the highest order.

The movie I am talking about, and one that should be on your must-watch list immediately, is No Problem. What are you waiting for? Go, run. Get the tickets and come out of the theatre thanking me!


PS: I have to put a note here for the small part of my reader base that isn't quite playing with a full deck of cards or I couldn't live with myself.

This is a sarcastic piece.DON'T WATCH THIS CRAPPY MOVIE!

PS 2: Always, always read till the end!

17450

Umm..so why did Karthik call exactly?...

Just came back from an impromptu movie evening. PS and I went to see Karthik Calling Karthik.

This is a movie from the iconic director cum actor Farhan Akhtar who made his mark and gave indelible memories with his first movie Dil Chahta Hai (First day second show after all of us bunked class - remember?). Prior expectations from the movie were therefore quite high. Of course the official and word of mouth reviews of the movie were very harsh. There was actually a lady on one of the numerous news channels who panned the movie so badly it seemed Farhan may have been her estranged ex-boyfriend or something.

With the slew of such reviews we were a bit apprehensive about going for the movie but in the end decided to bite the bullet and see for ourselves.

And what a brilliant decision this was! The movie is a super exciting thriller with edge of the seat suspense and nibble-your-nails-to-the-bone mystery. Unfortunately, the only mystery we could perceive was whether Farhan Akhtar had actually chosen this script and made this movie! And if yes, WHY??

Easily one of the longest drawn out, cliched, rambling, unintelligent, factually incorrect movies I've seen in a while - and that's saying a lot (http://swappinglives.blogspot.com/2009/09/weird-movie-week.html ).

Karthik is a bumbling loser (if anyone misspells 'looser', i'll kill him / her) in life who despite a good education works as a sort of pseudo clerk/sales person in a construction company (?). (Obviously people born with a silver spoon in their mouths should not try to create realistic workplace scenarios). Anyway, you have all the regular stuff about people dumping work on him, boss screaming at him, pretty-young-thing-who-he-loves-not-being-aware-of-his-existence, office peon making snide remarks at him. And then some more shit happens and he is publicly humiliated and fired - the good thing being that the pretty young thing finally gets aware of his existence before promptly forgetting again while canoodling with her in-office-in-your-face-goateed-boyfriend.

K goes home devastated and tries to commit suicide. But just as we were all going to be spared more KcK torture, the phone rings and it is Karthik calling Karthik to save him from himself (see? so smart)

Anyway, the guy on the phone advises him and after a series of unlikely incidents K is installed in a corner office, makes a lot of money and gets the pretty young thing (PYT) (Incidentally the boyfriend is shown to be a married guy. Now how unlikely is this? K was in awe of this girl for 2-3 years and isn't it far more likely that she actually got a perfectly normal boyfriend in the meantime? But Nooo, the hero HAS to get the girl. I think in such makeover movies the guy should get another nice girl rather than the same one - far more likely).

Of course things cannot run smoothly as K still gets hour long calls from K. He tells PYT and his psychiatrist. Lots of unlikely doodah happens till the mystery is finally revealed. Now i'm not giving any spoilers here but trust me, you're not missing much...

One good thing I liked about the movie was when some scenes faded into black & white with some colour element accentuating the change. Like the window with the red light flashing across it in the Cochin scene. I thought aesthetically that was very interesting.


Dil Chahta Hai, Lakshya, Rock on....Karthik calling Karthik - really? What's happening Farhan?



13255

But I don't want to hear about the Morgans!

Just got back from S and R's place. I'd gone there ostensibly to help out H with making a pitch for some funding he's trying to raise for his venture.

So after exactly 6 minutes discussion where we created one slide on what should go into the pitch, we started watching this movie called "Did you hear about the Morgans" on their big screen TV (pause for jealous rants about the TV)
.
.
.
What a fake movie!

It's one of the most predictable attempt-at-a-romantic-comedy I've seen in a while. And that is also forgivable if the movie is well made! I mean, was this the same Hugh Grant who gave us that iconic Notting Hill? He looks old and jaded. Which is ok, years and the high living he does will get to a man, but he looks like he's doing the movie because he needs the money! He's been through similar roles for most of his career and this last one has him looking bored and uninterested. The dead pan lines in the Brit accent are there but are so predictable that you groan rather than laugh at most of them (a couple are good though)

Sarah Jessica Parker is the female lead of the movie. Now I'll have to admit that I do enjoy watching Sex and the City. I mean I don't follow it religiously but don't mind watching it. Sarah is quite good in the show but here she looks like she's made of plastic. She's just playing a whole bunch of stereotypes which she associates with being a city woman. And to top it all she's looking haggard in most of the movie.

Mix together a million rom-com cliches, add some more stereotypes about 'evil' city people and 'good yet simple' country people, a few cowboys, some shallow emotions - blend together.

No, no - don't bother blending too well. Any which way is fine.

And the result is a weak movie relying more on hope is produced.

Very weak movie.


Joke of the day: You have to read this! :
http://www.mid-day.com/news/2010/feb/100210-mns-vice-president-valentines-day-hindi-music-album.htm


2812

Half Dud Prince

What in Merlin's beard was that? All the excitement and expectation and THIS is what we get at the end of it all?

It's almost like picking up an ear wax flavour bean from a giant pile of Bertie Bott's every flavour beans. or a vomit flavour bean. Or the Dependal like ice cream my Mom bought me when I was staring and staring at a street urchin eating it on our trip to Ooty (1995 I think).

Some facts -
Fact 1: I love the Harry Potter series - the books, not the movies. I've liked the movies but they just can't match the magical world that our imagination creates when reading the books.

Fact 2: The director had a tough job right from the beginning. The half-blood prince is not the most exciting of the Harry Potter series. It serves as the second part of a bridge leading up to the grand finale of Deathly Hallows. So some benefit of doubt is in order for the director. Plus it is always a difficult job to translate some thing magical (and not just in terms of the contents of the beek) to film.


But I still went into this movie with a lot of expectations - afterall I'd been sneakily checking out the movie reviews after the premier of the movie when I should ideally have been working and all of them spoke very highly of the movie. It was supposed to be the best HP movie till date with the characters really coming into their own and getting comfortable with their roles (from a review I read- the Telegraph, I think).

Really?

I thought the only actors that seemed comfortable had fledgling roles- Severus Snape, and Draco Malfoy. Harry Potter, Ron and Hermione just don't have any chemistry between them. The camaraderie scenes seem so fake and the laughter and romance is forced. Ron provides a bit of comic relief but Harry, especially after drinking Felix Felicis, goes into an overacting spree that is only overtaken by the evil Peter Parker dance in Spiderman 3 for it's stupidity and out-of-place-ness.

Snape is always awesome. His brand of subtle menacing evil is wonderful. But really, for a book that revolves around Snape's character and the book Harry finds, he hardly has any screen time! Snape being the Defence against Dark Arts teacher is not a minor thing that can be just mentioned in passing. Atleast a couple of scenes where Harry suffers at the hands of Snape in the DADA classes would have really hit the spot.

This movie was quite a let down and suddenly raises a very important question. When the movie(s) for Deathly Hallows comes out, should I really go to watch it? Every single movie has been a disappointment till now and after watching each of these movies I see myself going back to the books and rereading (yes, I finished Deathly Hallows again today)

What will I read if the last movie is bad as well??

Wolverine - Movie or game?

I was at Sid and RPM's (hehe) place yesterday evening. They've got this awesome new big screen tv a month back. And of course movie downloads etc. are also going on fine.

(by the way if you haven't seen a HD movie on a 40 inch LCD tv, you've missed one of those little elements that makes human existence the good thing it is. Somehow I haven't been able to be at any of the scheduled HD movie screenings at their house and have only seen parts of Top Gun http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_gun and Dark Knight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Knight_(film) there. And the picture clarity is just mind boggling. Combine it with a kickass surround sound system and the experience would be just breathtaking. The colours literally leap out at you. Actually, the images looks like - you know when there have been a couple of gloomy rainy days, or just before a sandstorm is about to come - and then there's a bit of rain and the sky clears up, dust settles down and you see the world suddenly all bright and clear in sharp focus. The colours seem more defined and crisp and objects look very sharply defined and boundaries of objects just..just..come out in a way I can't put into words. )

Anyway moving on.

So the crux of this entire rambling story is that I saw Wolverine the movie yeaterday evening.

Also, last weekend I went to another new office colleague's place. And on his big screen LCD tv (Seriously, am I the only one with a regular 21 inch cathode ray tube tv?) and PS3 I played Wolverine: the game.

So movie vs game, I'd have to say the movie didn't quite live upto the build up. I really don't like movies which try to go into the past and show how the characters became what they were. I'm not a big fan of such stories - yes, X-men are awesome and cool - I really don't want to know how each of those characters evolved and grew into their characters. No, really, I'm just not interested. I'd rather see them battling newer, stronger, more devilish villains than going into their past and the angst that turned them into what they are now. (Except Star Wars, but the past was an intrinsic part of the story there)

Bah, not interested.

So Wolverine follows the same path that's standard in such movies. Most of the time was spent in showing the trauma of the hero's childhood and his early years. And only a small part of the movie had any great action. Also, the much hyped super-villain (Spoiler alert: A guy with a lot of mutant powers put together) was really lame ass. He lost almost effortlessly.

I loved the X-men trilogy. And this one just didn't make the cut. Hugh Jackman as Wolverine is awesome when he's playing a game-changing rebel in a bigger plot but alone in a movie with really weak villains he just doesn't come across powerful enough.

a 3 on 5 at most.

The game however is a whole different ball game. I only saw the demo version but it had some really cool moves and brilliant action cuts. Wolverine's feral moves like the lunge and the slashes and throws are pretty good. Of course I didn't get a feel for the emtire game play and the plot in the demo version but on first look it looks really really good.

Dev-eD

IT HAS TO BE SINGULARLY THE MOST AWESOME MOVIE MADE THIS DECADE!!

Dev D is freakin' awesome!

(bows down to Anurag Kashyap and Abhay Deol)

A lot of movies claim to be different, avant garde and what not but this is one movie which does absolute justice to all these terms. In all facets of the movie the team did something or the other which was never attempted before.

Take the music for instance. I bought the album a day after I watched the movie and was fascinated to realise that there were 18 songs in the movie. But the songs were so brilliantly integrated with the movie that they did not feel like an encumberance. They seemed to blend beautifully with the scene and without ostensibly being present they set the mood for the scene. Infact as I listen to the songs (as I write now, all the time when I'm driving :) ) I see myself recollecting what was happening when the song was playing in a movie. This is just phenomenal for any album and shows the success of the music for the movie.

The songs themselves are extremely psychedelic. Yes, and you never thought that 'psychedelic' could ever be used to describe music?

Just sit in a dark room and listen to the songs full blast with your eyes closed. You'll understand what I'm saying. The music transforms the space around into a particularly degenerate club with an awesome DJ mixing weird elements into basically simple songs, neon lights from the cluster and a lot of smoke- and not your basic tobacco smoke at that!

The sounds are amazing. One song starts with a sitar ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitar ) and then mixes electronica beautifully with it.

Ok, moving on from the music (Also because the first part of this post I wrote alomst 5 days back - since then work's been killing me)

What I also loved was the unapologetic way in which they show Dev's various addictions. There's no justification given about his drug abuse, or alcoholism or no emotion involved sex. This is what he is. He gives no explanations and doesn't give a rat's ass if society wants it. Like the bus-ticket scene with the old aunty. That was simple and silent but showed the contempt he felt for societal norms amazingly. Like the way he stalks and fools around with his former paramour's sister-in-law just to get back at her and to stalk her and see her suffer. But at the same time he also suffers agony whenever he sees her happy.

The movie is peppered with moments that have layered meanings when you go back and think about them but the funny thing is that when I came out of the hall I couldn't recall any particular scene but was absolutely in love with the movie.

And what do I say about Chanda, played by Kalki Koechlin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalki_Koechlin ). I've become a fan. In fact while Abhay Deol reinforced his position on my i'm-a-fan list, Kalki made a great debut at number 1 on it. Playing the innocent school girl embroiled in a life altering event (by the way the show down scene between her parents and her - simply amazing. Especially the anger and frustration of a child suddenly realising her pillar of strength was not actually on her side) to the hardened adult who hides her sadness to the innocent girl re-discovering her hope for love - she played it all with elan.

All in all this is one movie you cannot afford to miss - and that too in a theatre.

Small warning though - you'll have to be careful about company as you need open minded people who don't get perturbed by some explicit dialogues and thoughts in the movie.

Mr. Khan Disappoints...

Went to watch Ghajini today and have come back severely disappointed. This is not a movie Aamir Khan should be associated with. A B-grade action hero would’ve been great in this role.

A slight rewind, a few days ago I re-watched Memento in anticipation of this movie. And how could I not get caught up in the hoopla being created by the movie marketing machinery at the disposal of the producers. Plus, when you see the reclusive Aamir Khan coming out and giving intelligent sounding interviews and exciting appearances all over the place you automatically get drawn into the web. Expectations from the movie were at an all time high for me because even though Memento may not have been one of my favourite movies but I really enjoy interesting experiments with the chronological flow of a movie or even any other experiments in movies. Thus Memento’s reverse order, Pulp Fiction’s muddled chronology and even Dus Kahaniyan’s 10 short movies in one movie have been very interesting for me.

That’s precisely why I wanted to see how Aamir Khan would incorporate the non-chronological play in a movie meant for the general Indian population (including me) who love their song and dance and happy ever after stories. I thought that the man who thought of stories that no one gave any chance of success and turned them into humungous super hits without compromising on his vision would treat this challenge in a unique and unprecedented manner that would draw out a gasp of appreciation from me (This is a sad but true – I get completely engrossed in movies when I see them in a theatre. I am told I have a silly grin on my face and exhibit all the emotions that the movie conveys traipsing over my face as I watch it. I have also been known to clap my hands and guffaw on some silly joke onscreen, much to the chagrin and embarrassment of those accompanying me.)

Sadly, he managed it by ignoring it. A few clichéd diary based flashbacks is all we get. A three hour movie which has a huge chunk wasted on a love story between the a pretty but irritating do-gooder girl and a business tycoon who apparently sends his executive assistant with a brood of other senior officers in a bunch of BMWs to get permission to put up a hoarding on the heroine’s terrace (puhleez!). The love story undoubtedly was cute but was not really essential to the plot (Actually it probably was for this movie because the short term memory condition was casually treated as a by-the-way-did-you-know-the-hero-suffered-from-some-brain-problem-ji in Ghajini.).

So the first half was reasonably breezy and quite frankly if they’d have closed the movie immediately after the interval with Asin accepting Aamir’s proposal I would’ve been the first to doff my hat at Mr. Khan for a making a beautiful, light romance. But it was not to be as he had to force in the memory loss and the laughable action sequences. Now the action he did in Ghulam had the crowd getting behind him and egg him on and cheer his every punch. Here you could hear laughter whenever Khan threw a punch that turned a goon’s neck around towards his back (!). And people went out to get more popcorn as a gang of thugs prepared for Aamir’s arrival by their boss attacked him haphazardly with sticks and fists rather than, you know, guns!

And I never thought I’d ever write this, but the perfectionist Khan was overacting like crazy and except two brilliant scenes when he suddenly blanked out. The action sequences were laughably staged.

Sigh, oh Aamir, Oh Aamir, how could you do this to your die hard fans?

Some interesting things:
1. The group of cars AK traveled in were numbered 1111, 2111, 3111, 4111 – this was quite cool
2. Was the iphone that the villain used available in 2006 – I’m not sure? If it wasn’t then it’s a really big gaffe
3. Why would you name a movie on the villains first name – imagine if that movie (whose name escapes me right now) was called ‘Mogambo’ ?

Quantum of Wha...

Come ON!! You can't call THAT a Bond movie! No siree, you can't.

Where was the customary visit to Q to load up the latest awesome gadgets?

Hell, where were the gadgets? (Yeah, yeah Sony Ericsson phones are cool (I have one too - the G700) and the Microsoft Surface http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_surface in M's office is very nice. BUT YOU CAN'T KILL PEOPLE OR GET INTO BED WITH BOND GIRLS USING THEM!! {hmmm, the Surface and Bond girls...could lead to some interesting things. Pause for imagination to run wild a bit here...back?..no..pause some more...back? ok, we resume}

Where are the pun-ny double entendre names for bond girls (Holly Goodhead,Plenty O'toole, Pussy Galore)?

Where is the nuclear weapon / world domination attempt / oil field / world war 3 initiation centered plot?

What is this? A watered down Vin Diesel flick?

Actually, when you think about it Vin Diesel would've done a way better job as the lead in this movie. After all this movie would've been right up his alley. All Quantum of Solace has is a line of chase sequences strung together with two bit dialogues and flashes of skin. The chases are damn good, no doubt. And they cover all modes of transport as well. So you have a chase on foot, in a car, in a motorboat (Ok, so how does a beat-up fishing boat beat down two state of the art motorboats with sub-machine gun toting goons?) and, to top it all, an aircraft chase (Again, a beat up transport aircraft beats a fighter plane. I mean, seriously, what were they thinking?)

And the pseudo bond-girl's revenge story was a straight lift from numerous Mithun da movies. Has the Bond brand come to this!

The villain would have to be one of the most non-sinister loser of a villain of all Bond movies...ever... even the ones that haven't yet been made. I mean the guy started off thinking that he'd play an evil-incarnate megalomaniacal callous villain. But when he read the script (spoiler warning) and realized that he'd be plotting all his terrible (?) plans around water resources in far off Haiti to get a freakin' utilities contract for his company, I guess his enthusiasm fizzled out. Quite correct too. In the end it seemed that the guy was doing the movie only because he signed the contract earlier and was ruing every second of the shooting.

And Daniel Craig? He's no James Bond. Give me the measured smoothness of Pierce Brosnan or the twinkle-in-the-eye panache of Sean Connery any day. He had the chance of recreating the suave one liner status of Bond with the 'She's sea sick' line (You've seen it in the trailers - Bond walks up a pier with a girl in his hands and tosses her into a confused helpers arms with a wry dialogue). But he did that terribly! It sounded like he was reading it from a cue card. Trust me, that line could've become legendary (or legend...wait for it..dary as Barney Stinson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barney_Stinson would say)if Pierce Brosnan was delivering it. It could've become the iconic signature line of the movie ('Kitne aadmi the...' - Sholay, 'Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn' - Gone with the Wind)

All in all, not worth a trip to the movie hall late at night with the road dug up and no parking available and sitting in an awkward corner. You guys rent out a Vin Diesel movie instead - way more fun.

Foreign Discovery...

My parents have gone for a two week vacation to Italy and some parts of Europe. Yes, they haven’t taken me along and that’s got nothing to do with how I behaved on our Goa vacation where I went with my parents and granny. {NO I wasn’t staring open-mouthed at those girls playing volleyball. I was..I was yawning, yes yawning. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!}

(Actually, it wasn’t quite the most adventurous Goa vacation anyone can have – think about it, parents and granny, not the ideal recipe for Goa type fun. You can stop snickering NOW. I finally did have a good Goa holiday with friends near Diwali 2006.)

Anyway I digress. So my parents called me up a couple of days back from somewhere near Rome to gloat talk to me. They’re having a wonderful time there and are planning to go to Venice, see the leaning tower of pisa (they could’ve come to my place to see the leaning tower of pizza --- boxes but no, they had to go all the way there…hmmppff) and maybe even Paris (What? You can see Paris on most gossip channels almost every day. And our Bangalore Times gossip columnists seem to have a dedicated group of Paparazzi just for her)

(* too many digressions again today but I just have to tell you this. I’m never going to forgive a colleague of mine for wasting one and a half hours of my life that I’ll never get back. He gave me this absolutely lame ass movie called Paparazzi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paparazzi_%28film%29 . His movie collection is quite good and so I kept myself fixed to my seat hoping against hope for an interesting plot twist. It is easily the most imbecilic movie I have ever seen. The two line plot is as follows – you’re going to thank me that I gave enough spoilers to prevent you from even thinking about watching it.

Bo is an upcoming movie star whose family is hounded by 4 paparazzi guys who cause an accident in which both his wife and kid get hurt. He then hunts down and kills 3 and frames the fourth one for the murders. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that’s it. The movie ends.

Aaarrgghh if they have so much spare money to make a movie like this they should probably just give it to a charity. And the producer of this movie is Mel Gibson. )

Anyway, my parents encounters with different cultures has set me thinking whether I’m missing out on being a global citizen because of continuing to stay in India? Does the fact that I’m not even looking for options to go out of India mean that I will develop a closed outlook towards other cultures and languages and customs and lifestyles? Without interacting with and living in different conditions will I ever find out many intrinsic things about myself? I claim to be anti- racism and prejudice and extreme religionism, but maybe that’s just a theoretical take. Would I really ever know unless I work with people from other races and religions and lifestyles in pressure situations?

Hell I’ve just been out of the country once, to Canada and that too only for a few days (Yeah yeah, my parents say that I’ve been to Nepal when I was an infant but that doesn’t count, does it? Besides they don’t have any photos proving their claim. Mysterious circumstances don’t you think?).

Hmm what do you think? Is it important to have stayed in different countries to really know yourself?

Dus Kahaniyan and other Wicked Stories...

I went to see the latest release "Dus Kahaniyan" (Ten Stories) yesterday.

Interesting concept - basically 10 separate stories, directed by different directors, one after the other. The stories were, as short stories are wont to be, in the Saki mold with sudden twists in the end. Also, the stories were a nice mix of drama, action, humour, mystery and even the bizarre.

I quite liked the concept except for the fact that many of the plots were quite predictable. In fact on atleast 3-4 occasions during the movie(s) I spoke the punchline dialogue with or before the protagonist (Yes, I am not a good person to watch a movie with :)). This is nothing to do with my immense intellect, but rather the obvious nature of the stories. Maybe some more obscure or strange stories could've been chosen.

Incidentally I was recently reading this compilation called "The Rupa Book of Wicked Stories". They've been compiled by Ruskin Bond and comprise of his favourite bizarre stories by some known, some unknown masters of the genre. So you have short stories from Saki, Ruskin Bond himself and Mark Twain rubbing shoulders with some authors that I hadn't heard of before but who Ruskin calls masters in the foreword of the book (Do you read the foreword of a book? I've found myself reading them a lot recently. Typically in an appetizer way, to whet my desire of reading the whole book) like Ambrose Bierce, E H W Meyerstein and Ralph Strauss.

All the stories were quite good, (Theres something about Ruskin Bond - whatever he does or write or say or compiles always seems to come from a child with wide open eyes and a clever smile. The other indian author who conjures up an image for me is Khushwant Singh- that of a barely pubescent boy with fluff on his upper lip and a leer on his face [oh, you noticed that I don't like whatever i've read of him. Incidently its that image that prevents me from reading 'A Train to Pakistan' where I am told he's done some excellent story telling]) but I was still left with a feeling that some of the stories in the movies could be replaced by stories from this book.

But all in all a laudable effort by the producers. Its so nice to see people trying different genres and techniques. Thank God for the multiplex revolution, we're getting to see some interesting cinema.


PS: I'm writing this post on the verge of ending my vacation in Delhi and leaving for Bangalore early tomorrow morning. I'm writing this because I tend to get irritable and clammy when I'm about to leave Delhi. At such times I try to be out of my familys way as I get too short with them. Hence, this is a straight forward and solemn post with no efforts at humour. Trust me, it would fail miserably today.

Spidey 3, one word review...bleh...

After three days of superb strategy, immaculate planning and excellent execution I was finally able to go watch "Spiderman 3" today. (Yes, getting movie tickets in Bangalore is nothing short of waging a war. In fact i'm thinking that if I settle down in Bangalore, I'd do well to ensnare the movie hall usher's daughter in my love-web [Spidey related post, so 'love-web'...didja get it? didja?...smart, huh? :)]and marry her, if only to be able to watch movies in the first week of their release)

And the movie, one word - bleh; and another - What??!!; and another - Why??!!

They've killed my spidey for me. You guys have heard many of my ramblings so you deserve to hear the whole story (No, no..not a long drawn tale, not another please...well, boo hoo, you've come so far, so you'll have to listen to the entire story)

...flashback...

8:30 am - I bounced off my bed, wrists extended, pointing to the ceiling and the fan, my mouth making 'whisshhh, whisshh' sounds. No i'm not psychologically imbalanced- that was just me impersonating spiderman. (Note: the point of this is that I was really excited about watching this movie. Jeez guys, do I have to explain EVERYTHING?!)

9:40 am- Pounding on RB's door as he finishes a rather elaborate and relaxed saturday morning brunch (well 9:30 is technically breakfast time, but dude, you're going to see Spiderman 3, you HAVE to get up early). Anyway, I managed to get him and KS bundled in the car and start for our 'friendly,neighbourhood movie hall' (ha, yet another Spidey reference pun - Spiderman is our "friendly, neighbourhood" spiderman. See, two spidey puns already! I should write at 3 am more often. The creative juices are just dripping right now) {SO? a piece of parantha was hanging from RB's disgruntled yet slack, sleep laced jaw. Dude, this is Spidey 3, we should've been camping outside the hall since the night before, instead of just reaching a miniscule 10 minutes early}

10:15 am- DISASTER. The movie starts.

Instead of having a typical action-chase-fight sequence start, we have the lovely Kirsten Dunst singing some crappy song about love being wonderful (Now don't get me wrong, I believe in love and its wonderfulness, but, hello? Right thing at the right place at the right time, for heavens sake?? I WANT some web slinging, adrenaline pumping, bone crunching, face scrunching, solar plexus punching action at the start of the 'action adventure of the season', not some sappy, sugary, maple-syrupy number about oh-love-is-so-awesome.[not even a passionate kiss to tilt the start even slightly favourably, bleh]

So then the movie starts in earnest,
Evil villains, scheming nemesis' your doom is nigh,
Spiderman shall tear you without so much as a sigh

(Poetry?! about a movie, Man, this 3:30 am posting sure has its merits! )

[Poetry, that was poetry, you must be kidding. The idiot actually has the audacity to call that juvenile rhyme a poem. Well, pffft even Keats and Milton must've started some time. And i'm sure their first attempts were not as good as the spidey poem i've written. Er..Swapnil, their first attempts were at 3-4 yrs, not at 25...well YOU shut up]

But NOOO, Mr. Sam Raimi has become totally obsessed with the love-jealousy angle in this movie. He shows how Peter Parker wants to propose to Mary Jane Watson (include an absolutely flat and predictable scene where Aunt May gives advice to the kid about how he should be able put the woman's feelings first if he thinks he's ready to marry..sniff..can you pass me a handkerchief? No, I don't have one, the spidey suit I bought for an astronomical price to come watch this drivel doesn't have any pockets )...[Incidently, does anyone know if Mr. Raimi is undergoing divorce proceedings? Maybe he's projecting the mistakes he made in his marriage onto Peter. I dunno, but there just HAS to be some sort of Freudian explanation behind someone trying to make a movie like this!]

And no, the absolute tosh doesn't end here. After a rather well choreographed (er...digitally choreographed) fight-chase sequence with Harry Osborn (a.k.a. Junior Goblin), Harry conveniently bumps his head and forgets all enmity with Peter/Spiderman (aaarrggghhh).

Simultaneously, three tracks are also running.

A meteorite crash releases a symbiote (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbiote_%28comics%29) which attaches itself to the spidey costume and changes spidey's personality into a spiteful, angry and aggressive person (The microscopic slide that a professor studies to determine the 'aggressive' character of the symbiote is positively hilarious - it shows a dark blob bumping away light coloured blobs. I mean, for all the high end special FX, is that the best you could come up with? seriously, guys lets hold up the ball a bit. The story sucks but you could atleast make the technical aspects breathtaking!)

Marko Flint, the actual murderer of Ben Parker, Peter's father-figure uncle escapes from prison, where, apparantly he confessed to this heinous crime(He was in for armed robbery, but he confessed to murder - harebrained). While escaping from prison he accidentally falls into a 'particle physics experiment' that converts him into...drumroll...SANDMAN, an entity that can take any shape and form (by the way, the special effects in this scene- awesome. Did some other team do the blob-bumper scene?)

Also, Eddie Brock Jr., a cub photographer in Daily Bugle steals Parker's thunder and with the aid of a faked composite photograph showing spiderman robbing a bank/empire state building (?) lands a staff job with the bugle. But Peter, in his more spiteful persona due to the symbiote, exposes him and humiliates him. This leads him to church, where he happens to chance upon the ultimate weapon of mass destruction (I really wanted to use WMD in one of my posts. Now I've done it :)) the treachourously tortuous symbiote itself. And he becomes Venom - an absolutely pathetic villain. An absolute caricature, seriously, really bad.

The rest is so bad that I can't bring myself to write about it. Lets just say that he had three villains, one love interest, plenty of money for special effects; and he blew it. All the "super-villains" looked like harmless caricatures who were defeated with effortless aplomb. Some good sequences towards the end, but seriously, I was looking to get my ass out of the hall asap by then.

Biggest regret: Got up at 8:30 am on a Saturday to go watch this drivel.