Its official. There is something decisively wrong with me. Why on earth would I not like the movies the whole world can't seem to stop raving about?? Last time I checked, I used to be a movie buff averaging 2 movies in the theater a week. But then..that was a long time ago, a time when I was earning, and movies were a great mix of unwinding & catching up with friends...Movies weren't really about movies.... but then as I said..that was a long time ago :)
Coming back to recent times, here are a few of the heavily over rated (in my opinion) movies that I have seen in the past few weeks
Paa
Seasoned stars, brilliant performances. and definitely a fresh break from the different flavors of love stories we have been fed to death! But the other day I got this email that said that Amitabh's make up used to take 8 hours to put & take off everyday. and that he was given special dentures so that the lisp that he talks with is natural. Great work! The indian movie industry is definitely growing up. But then, with such brilliant make up that you can't recognise the actor, or his voice...you can't make out his facial expressions, or voice modulation...his emotions are depicted more by the camera movements than by themselves, ... it just makes me wonder if this role couldn't have been done by some one else just as well. the industry is definitely not short of great budding stars these days, and given that Progeria patients usually have small & frail bodies, a 6 ft tall relatively healthy actor...naah!!
And why Paa exactly? I mean this could easily have been titled Maa as well...in fact given that the movie had more of mother-son relationship, than father-son; and the "Paa" doesn't come into the picture as "Paa" until the last scene, ..Maa would have probably made more sense. Or may be "Auro" , given that the movie is about the character more than anything else. Or given that the movie is about progeria, around progeria, and 50% of the budget seems to have gone in putting that make up to simulate progeria...perhaps progeria would have been the best ;)
Makes the whole Amitabh-Abhishek "father-son-son-father" tag line just a publicity gimmick to draw the crowds..ya ya you have to do that coz movies have to make money but I don't know..just one of those movies where I failed to see why people are going nuts about it...perhaps the Indian audience have such low expectations of Indian movies, that it will them even longer than the industry itself to mature into serious movie goers!
Avatar
James Cameron's masterpiece. 10 years in the making. An epic story! deserved to be seen in 3D.
Really???!! I mean seriously..seriously?! 10 years?!!! Doing what??!! the movie definitely had no story, no novelty, no originality of any sort. It is the East India company stealing from, destroying and colonizing the Red Indian villages... in the year 2154, on another planet where natural skin color is blue.
So the blue color takes care of racism I guess. And if definitely makes the cliched face and skin make up look more fancy. Honestly guys..really..look at the facial features, the makeup, the attire, the ornaments, the rituals, even the language of the so called Pandora Na'vis ...am I the only one who has seen too many old English movies about the Red Indians? Or seen Discovery's discoveries on the Mayan civilization?
Watching it was like, okay so they themselves got fed up of the theme of one American saving the Earth, so one American is now saving another planet. or may be it is the American who got tired of trying to save the Earth, decided to try his luck at another planet for a change ;)
okay, yeah the special effects were great, all those plants n trees with enhanced colors that reminded of the flourescent accessories that people wear to discotheques..and the trees that seemed to crawl all the way to your brain and suck them out to transfer to another body...all of that was great, even if a little creepy.
And why on earth..sorry, on Pandora, can human beings advance enough to live on another planet, set up huge research labs, even clone Na'vis & mine their rich reserves, but their aircraft radar technologies haven't moved in practically 300 years and still can't function in high EM activity zones?!
But still, 10 years???? If only a certain Mr. Cameron had paid 10% of what he must have paid to his special effects team, to his writers as well... they would have at least come up with a more original name for the planet.. rather than calling it "Pandora" !!
But of course, leaving all your thinking faculties aside, special effects were great, and my male friends did find the Na'vi tribal princess, a.k.a Zoe Saldana "too hot"! Although I would still say Transformers (part I) had better special effects, and Harry Potter has more creativity than Avatar, still in 10 years, at least something turned out right! ;)
Inglourious Basterds
Loved the performances! Honestly...the best acting I have seen in a really long time. Truly stellar...definitely Oscar deserving!!! I can't say this enough. A little too gory for my taste, but thats okay. People have a high apetite for this kind of stuff. And until the very end, I was feeling truly impressed. Until the end i.e. Until I saw Hitler and the rest of the Top SS brass gathered inside one movie theatre, and burnt down by burning a bunch of nitrate films. What an end to WW II. Simple, quick & efficient...why didn't anyone think of this at the time...Duh!!!!
sigh...what a waste!! Even if you must make a movie on WW II, which is as over used (understatement) as the first-love-lasts-forever theme in Hindi movies... and even if you must make a completely fictitious movie on such a monumental historic war, with no historical base whatsoever.... must you give it such a completely ridiculous end??!!!! the end..killed the movie..totally!!!!
3 idiots
Honestly, I have less disappointment with this one. May be because I hadn't even expected as much. I am not a big fan of Chetan Bhagat's work, which I think is the bollywood masala movie contemporary on Indian English literature..Indian English work i.e. for you can hardly call it literature. But still, nice, fun, easy to see, good timepass.
Amir Khan however, exceptional though as ever, I think is getting a bit too old to be playing a17 year old. About time he realised that. I don't know why in Indian movies the so-called stars live is such gross self denial of their age.
And delivering a baby with a vacuum cleaner...inspiring an engineering application as the writers / directors may have thought it to be... it made the entire movie fall back into the most ridiculous, melodramatic and nonsensical hindi movie scenes league!
And why is there such dearth of good writers in the Indian film industry, that they have to reuse jokes from email chains and mentos ads to make people laugh..is beyond me. Didn't the writer strike end like a million years ago??!! Feels like the Indian film industry takes the "reuse-recycle" idealogy, noble as it is, too seriously.. and implements this idealogy in ALL of it in its scripts, stories, music, and star casts.
To me personally, the "engineering" college set up in Ladakh in the end [ minus the 400 patents in 10 years for 1 scientist..yeah right! ] ... was the only display of genuine novelty; and an impressive one at that, ...at least I haven't found the original source of that scene yet ;) :P
Disappointed, disillusioned and seriously doubting my own capabilities of appreciation, I finally tried my hand at "Alwin & the Chipmunks II " . A movie that openly declared its ridiculousness. And voila! I actually enjoyed it! I had liked the first movie much better, but at least I didn't feel cheated. At least it didn't claim to be any more sensible (or senseless) than it really is.
Another 2 movies that I have liked in more recent times, Morning Raga & Schindler's list. Old movies, but I saw them recently. And Capitalism too [ except for the extremely biased view]
Next Stop: Sherlock Holmes..I still haven't given up all hope on me! I will try to leave my thinking faculties back at home though! :P
Else I will become an example of " Those who can't act, criticize" critics. :P
But to be fair, its great to see people trying to new things, especially in the Indian film industry breaking away from the endless love stories. And all of these movies are a great watch, at least once.... :)
Coming back to recent times, here are a few of the heavily over rated (in my opinion) movies that I have seen in the past few weeks
Paa
Seasoned stars, brilliant performances. and definitely a fresh break from the different flavors of love stories we have been fed to death! But the other day I got this email that said that Amitabh's make up used to take 8 hours to put & take off everyday. and that he was given special dentures so that the lisp that he talks with is natural. Great work! The indian movie industry is definitely growing up. But then, with such brilliant make up that you can't recognise the actor, or his voice...you can't make out his facial expressions, or voice modulation...his emotions are depicted more by the camera movements than by themselves, ... it just makes me wonder if this role couldn't have been done by some one else just as well. the industry is definitely not short of great budding stars these days, and given that Progeria patients usually have small & frail bodies, a 6 ft tall relatively healthy actor...naah!!
And why Paa exactly? I mean this could easily have been titled Maa as well...in fact given that the movie had more of mother-son relationship, than father-son; and the "Paa" doesn't come into the picture as "Paa" until the last scene, ..Maa would have probably made more sense. Or may be "Auro" , given that the movie is about the character more than anything else. Or given that the movie is about progeria, around progeria, and 50% of the budget seems to have gone in putting that make up to simulate progeria...perhaps progeria would have been the best ;)
Makes the whole Amitabh-Abhishek "father-son-son-father" tag line just a publicity gimmick to draw the crowds..ya ya you have to do that coz movies have to make money but I don't know..just one of those movies where I failed to see why people are going nuts about it...perhaps the Indian audience have such low expectations of Indian movies, that it will them even longer than the industry itself to mature into serious movie goers!
Avatar
James Cameron's masterpiece. 10 years in the making. An epic story! deserved to be seen in 3D.
Really???!! I mean seriously..seriously?! 10 years?!!! Doing what??!! the movie definitely had no story, no novelty, no originality of any sort. It is the East India company stealing from, destroying and colonizing the Red Indian villages... in the year 2154, on another planet where natural skin color is blue.
So the blue color takes care of racism I guess. And if definitely makes the cliched face and skin make up look more fancy. Honestly guys..really..look at the facial features, the makeup, the attire, the ornaments, the rituals, even the language of the so called Pandora Na'vis ...am I the only one who has seen too many old English movies about the Red Indians? Or seen Discovery's discoveries on the Mayan civilization?
Watching it was like, okay so they themselves got fed up of the theme of one American saving the Earth, so one American is now saving another planet. or may be it is the American who got tired of trying to save the Earth, decided to try his luck at another planet for a change ;)
okay, yeah the special effects were great, all those plants n trees with enhanced colors that reminded of the flourescent accessories that people wear to discotheques..and the trees that seemed to crawl all the way to your brain and suck them out to transfer to another body...all of that was great, even if a little creepy.
And why on earth..sorry, on Pandora, can human beings advance enough to live on another planet, set up huge research labs, even clone Na'vis & mine their rich reserves, but their aircraft radar technologies haven't moved in practically 300 years and still can't function in high EM activity zones?!
But still, 10 years???? If only a certain Mr. Cameron had paid 10% of what he must have paid to his special effects team, to his writers as well... they would have at least come up with a more original name for the planet.. rather than calling it "Pandora" !!
But of course, leaving all your thinking faculties aside, special effects were great, and my male friends did find the Na'vi tribal princess, a.k.a Zoe Saldana "too hot"! Although I would still say Transformers (part I) had better special effects, and Harry Potter has more creativity than Avatar, still in 10 years, at least something turned out right! ;)
Inglourious Basterds
Loved the performances! Honestly...the best acting I have seen in a really long time. Truly stellar...definitely Oscar deserving!!! I can't say this enough. A little too gory for my taste, but thats okay. People have a high apetite for this kind of stuff. And until the very end, I was feeling truly impressed. Until the end i.e. Until I saw Hitler and the rest of the Top SS brass gathered inside one movie theatre, and burnt down by burning a bunch of nitrate films. What an end to WW II. Simple, quick & efficient...why didn't anyone think of this at the time...Duh!!!!
sigh...what a waste!! Even if you must make a movie on WW II, which is as over used (understatement) as the first-love-lasts-forever theme in Hindi movies... and even if you must make a completely fictitious movie on such a monumental historic war, with no historical base whatsoever.... must you give it such a completely ridiculous end??!!!! the end..killed the movie..totally!!!!
3 idiots
Honestly, I have less disappointment with this one. May be because I hadn't even expected as much. I am not a big fan of Chetan Bhagat's work, which I think is the bollywood masala movie contemporary on Indian English literature..Indian English work i.e. for you can hardly call it literature. But still, nice, fun, easy to see, good timepass.
Amir Khan however, exceptional though as ever, I think is getting a bit too old to be playing a17 year old. About time he realised that. I don't know why in Indian movies the so-called stars live is such gross self denial of their age.
And delivering a baby with a vacuum cleaner...inspiring an engineering application as the writers / directors may have thought it to be... it made the entire movie fall back into the most ridiculous, melodramatic and nonsensical hindi movie scenes league!
And why is there such dearth of good writers in the Indian film industry, that they have to reuse jokes from email chains and mentos ads to make people laugh..is beyond me. Didn't the writer strike end like a million years ago??!! Feels like the Indian film industry takes the "reuse-recycle" idealogy, noble as it is, too seriously.. and implements this idealogy in ALL of it in its scripts, stories, music, and star casts.
To me personally, the "engineering" college set up in Ladakh in the end [ minus the 400 patents in 10 years for 1 scientist..yeah right! ] ... was the only display of genuine novelty; and an impressive one at that, ...at least I haven't found the original source of that scene yet ;) :P
Disappointed, disillusioned and seriously doubting my own capabilities of appreciation, I finally tried my hand at "Alwin & the Chipmunks II " . A movie that openly declared its ridiculousness. And voila! I actually enjoyed it! I had liked the first movie much better, but at least I didn't feel cheated. At least it didn't claim to be any more sensible (or senseless) than it really is.
Another 2 movies that I have liked in more recent times, Morning Raga & Schindler's list. Old movies, but I saw them recently. And Capitalism too [ except for the extremely biased view]
Next Stop: Sherlock Holmes..I still haven't given up all hope on me! I will try to leave my thinking faculties back at home though! :P
Else I will become an example of " Those who can't act, criticize" critics. :P
But to be fair, its great to see people trying to new things, especially in the Indian film industry breaking away from the endless love stories. And all of these movies are a great watch, at least once.... :)
Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now keep it up!
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