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A movie and book review blog

  • Reading films, watching books,....
  • Mind candy in the dark
  • All the books left to read...

Oct 31, 2004

Kolya

Little Kolya is the five year old bundle of inspiration that carries this movie forward. I had kept myself from taking this movie because this seemed to be one of those movies about a kid coming in to the life of an adult, hitherto kid-less, then the kid change the life of this person. Well Kolya is exactly that but it is a really interesting movie, Prague just before the fall of Communism in 1989, the lives of people and all these serious things are told with a cute child in tow, no wonder it won the best foreign film Oscar in 1997

Oct 29, 2004

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

This had to be one kickass movie of its times, one of the coldest periods of cold war, 1964. Cuban Missile Crisis, assassination fo President Kennedy, the Russians getting ahead in the space race and then comes Stanley Kubrik with this funny satire about the Cold War.

The opening sequence,mid air tanking of a B-52 bomber was scavenged by the film's photographers from old stock footage from one of the studios in Hollywood and was used in the film, thus the start itself alerts the viewer of the out-of-the-box nature of the movie. Peter Sellers plays three different roles in the movie, each one better than the other. The War Room in Oval Office, is an interesting set so is the cockpit and controls of the B-52 bomber which the set technicians had to create all by themselves because the US navy refused to let them show any B-52 bombers. The War Room is equally famous, so much so that when Reagen became the President he asked his aide to be shown the War Room, to which the aide replied there was no War Room in the Oval Office, then Reagen said, "I thought there was one, they showed it in the film Dr.Strangelove!"

The screen play is crazily hilarious, it is like watching the world with your funny glasses on. The poster of the movie shown here was only released in urban centers because Columbia Pictures thought it was too artsy for commoners to understand.

Oct 27, 2004

The Searchers

This is a movie I took as a result of watching an American Movie History course which I happened to see on TV while flipping channels, the course was for correspondence students and that day they were dealing with Westerns. The Searchers they said was one of the better made westerns and possibly one of the best.

This 1956 movie is the first movie to have a feature length behind the scene documentary because John Ford kept a camera behind the camera shooting the real film so as to have video record of all the activities which went to the making of the film. But the DVD I saw didn't have this Behind the Scenes documentary, it'd have thrown light in to some more stuff.

The Searcher's is an engrossing movie, another first it has to its credit is, it is the first film to be shot in Monument Valley, Utah which later became the staple landscape of all Westerns. Great landscape, the villanious hero played by John Wayne, the simpler but more handsome young cowboy played by Jeffrey Hunter, the vagaries of life in the West, the enmity between Indians and cowboys and the story that keeps you bound to your seats makes The Searchers a true Western.

Oct 26, 2004

Did you know they make Bollywood Masala Movies in Argentina too?!!! The villain can make an effortless transition in to Bollywood filmdom, in many scenes he reminded me of Prem Chopra of a more silent kind.

The story is about a guy's hunt for his father(possibly lost in Kumbh Mela of Argentina, whatever that is), which turns in to some corrupt cops hunting for this guy all over the road, since he witnessed a murder of a prisoner in custody by the said cops. Meanwhile to keep the things more entertaining the director/the story writer decided to gift the guy with a girl friend, so there is an ample measure of romantic heat. As the hero is an innocent crusader searching for truth in all forms he gets help from Argentenian version of Hells Angels who are staunch supporters of Jesus and who pop at the right places in a police chase so as to confuse cops and allow the hero an easy getaway. Thus the story continues and all this is available in a DVD format made in MSPowerpoint.

Oct 25, 2004

Winter Sleepers

I was going to start with the sentence, "this is a very different movie", then I saw on the DVD the bold letters which says 'from the creators of Run Lola Run', well then different is an understatement. The camerawork is very peculiar, a kind of shot which is often repeated in the film is where you have a birds eye view along with the soaring motion of an ascending bird, its something to experience.

Since this movie is from 1997 I can say for sure the main theme of the much famed Memento is a straight lift from this film, where one of the characters has a short term memeory loss and takes these groovy pictures with his use and throw camera and captions them, so that he can refer back to them and recreate his yesterdays and day-befores. Kinda cool concept, huh!?

Another mysterious element of the movie is its story. The five main characters are interconnected by one accident, though none of them knows it and it is funny how they pass each other in the crucial situations not knowing that the ones they are searching for are right infront of them. Very interesting film and ultra cool photography.

Oct 22, 2004

Prisoner of the Mountains

The contrasting characters of the two soldiers are well developed, the mountain village and its unique lifestyle is something not seen everyday. I think this movie paved a way for lot of films which came later in a similar vein - like the Oscar winning No Man's Land and Kukushka. And in a way these later movies bettered the defects this one had, but still it is worth a watch.

Oct 19, 2004

A Painted House

Usually I put John Grisham in my list of paper(-back) tigers, the kind of books you take on airplanes or trains and don't really mind if you lose them during the course of the journey. But reading A Painted House changed all my perceptions of Mr.Grisham. It was simple language, a paperback with none of the pretentions of 'world class writers', but this one was definitely not use and throw, it was a keeper.

This led me to the video movie made for Hallmark channel and I can truly say the movie did not disappoint me at all, unlike many other book-turned-into-movie stuff. It is the story of a boy growing up in the cotton country of the American South at the fag end of WW2. If you want to know a thing or two about rural American culture of the forties and the fifties this is the movie, it is all the more entertaining because it is seen through the eyes of child. Cotton farmers steeped in debt, hill people(remember Beverly Hillbillies), Mexican who came every year from across the border in time of harvest, GM and Ford factories 'up North' - everyone represents the nation that once was US of A.

Oct 18, 2004

Since Otar Left

Brilliant, bloody brilliant, you have to pinch yourself to make sure that you are watching a movie, it was that damn real. It is from the former Soviet state of Georgia, where the son of the family has gone abroad insearch of job. The abroad is Paris and the son in question holds a medical degree and is working as an illegal construction worker in France, but we never actually see the son(Otar) in this movie.

It is a poignant story of his mother, who eagerly waits for her son's phone calls and letters. The other two important characters are her daughter(Otar's sister) and her daughter who shares the apartment with the matriarch in Tblisi. The movie progresses through life and reflections of these three generations of women, the impact of Otar's ultimate farewell on each of them. Julie Bertucelli has composed an everyday poem of breathtaking beauty, proving it once again it takes a woman to make a movie that'll touch every heart it passes through. The actors have played their parts extremely well, the most commendable is Esther Gorintin, the aged matriarch who is so true to life. I just read that she started acting at the ripe old age of 85 and she's still going strong. Whoa!!!

Oct 17, 2004

Oct 11, 2004

Santitos is funny, although it supposedly tells a sad story - of a mother who lost her daughter searching brothels for her missing daughter whom she thinks, has been kidnapped and sold in to prostitution.

The relationship between devout catholic women and the church in Mexico is portrayed as almost homely, like a mother-daughter relationship. The myriads of saints are their friends in need, they serve the same purpose your friend may serve on the other end of the phone listening to your sob story. The film follows the mother, Esperenza on her journey to find her daughter, from an obscure village in Mexico, to Tijuana, to LA and back to same obscurity. Although the premise is serious, the movie is witty, bold and the gritty world around us shot in a lighter vein. Impressive.

Oct 10, 2004


Nobody Knows Anybody

From the team that created Abres Los Ojos (better known by its Hollywood remix - Vanilla Sky), this is another psychological thriller starring the same leading man, Eduardo Noriega and the same mind boggling confusion between what is real and what is not, but less successful this time.

If you like architecture or is/was an architecture student(like I am/was) you'd like the detail at which the Spanish city of Seville is represented in the movie. There is even a scaled model of the entire city which plays an important role in the movie and lets not forget the famous Alamillo bridge by Santiago Calatrava which also feature prominently.

Apart from that if you are expecting the mind blowing power of Abres Los Ojos, you'll be disappointed, its just a few gamer dudes out to destroy the world. Better luck next time.

Oct 8, 2004


I don't why Denzel Washington's movies are so typecasted. He is always the hero who has insurmountable obstacles to conquer in an almost impossible situation, which in most cases involve saving the life of a child, but somehow you can be sure before you start watching the movie - that child is gonna be safe, as for Denzel it is a 50-50 chance.

Man on Fire is such a typical Denzel Washington-saving-a-child movie and for a change (yeah and we really need it), this time it is set in Mexico City where they kidnap children left, righ and center just for kicks!!! Marc Anthony commits suicide in the movie(hopefully in the real life with JLo he'll fare better) and then there is a fair measure of violence, bombings and kidnappings thrown in..thats about it and ofcourse Denzel saves the day.

Oct 7, 2004

Cyclo

Cyclo tries to tell the story of a cycle-rikshaw driver in Ho Chi Minh city, but gets overly poetic and becomes a montage of disconnected (but beautiful) imagery. While watching it I was sure it was directed by the same director who directed "The Vertical Ray of the Sun", because both movies emphasized much on the imagery and bits and pieces of random poetry than on the cohesiveness or the script of the film which rendered it tedious to watch in the long run.

I was not wrong, a search in IMDb has revealed that it was taken by Anh Hung Tran the very same director of "the vertical..." Most of the movie is like a guessing game, characters don't speak much, there are abrupt actions, random insertions of poetry, haunting imagery akin to moving paintings but without any connection to the plot. This goes on for a while till you grow tired of guessing and decide to sleep. I am not that arty-farty yet.

Oct 5, 2004

Back and Forth

Back and forth between a rock and a hard place - the situation in the movie can aptly summarized in those words. Filiberto is an illegal migrant Mexican worker who has just returned home to Mexico, after working in the asparagus fields in the US.

It makes you realize that poor all over the world are trapped by their circumstances, from which there is no escape except perhaps prison or hard labor. This is a film about the social realities that exist in the gritty bloody world of the poor and the downtrodden. The world which, through some quirk of fate or blind luck of birth, we didn't have to cope with, but Filiberto has to.
Movies narrated by children have always been a sure success with me, starting from the 'To Kill A Mocking Bird' to this latest one from Argentina. Valentin is the story of a 8-9 year old boy, named Valentin growing up in a city in Argentina somtime during the early sixties with his grandmother. His parents are separated, he tries to find parent-figures in every adult he meets and in turn he touches their lives in his own special way.

It is said to be semi-autobiographical film by writer-director Alejandro Agresti, who also plays the role of Valentin's unreliable father in the movie. It is a beautiful story of childhood, written in a heart tugging way that only a child's innocence can achieve. Rodrigo Noya who plays Valentin in the movie is an absolute darling and carries the whole film on his small shoulders, successfully.

Oct 4, 2004

The Ox

This movie by Sven Nyqvist has a line-up of the best Scandinavian actors - Stellan Skarsgaard, Max Von Sydow and Liv Ullman. The movie starts with "a murder" of an ox, which becomes a turning point in the life of the protagonist - played by Skaarsgard, and his family.

Its funny how the remote rural areas in the globe has the same value systems, the same attitude and the same set of characters, whether it is the Nordic north or a remote village in rural Brazil. It is an interesting movie, a learning experience.
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