Remembering the Oscars

The Oscars are around the corner. Are they seriously going to include Avatar in the list?

Sigh.

Remembering that last great year of the Oscars.

Slumdog Millionaire

Before the media launches on to the Globes with a tag like Slumdogmania; before we link our weird notion of patriotism with an Irishman’s grit and grime take on the “real” India; before we sit outside the Taj Mahal and start praying for an Oscar miracle (as seen on Independence Day) – just hold on. And watch the movie.

Alas. It’s got nothing much for us Indians – since we know the story better. We know that slumdogs do not speak in faint-British accents, we recognize bad acting from good (the middle Salim is so blatantly a rich kid trying too hard to slum-dunk his way through) and we know India.

After reading all the reviews, I sat to watch the movie with the intention of liking it. I didn’t end up hating it in the end; but it left me indifferent. It was like watching a movie where one of the key themes is the indecipherability of Hindi to a foreigner – which it is not fo me.

Having read Q&A last month, the problem is that even the founding script of this movie is weak. The book is built on what we used to call (during skit writing sessions in engineering college) fatte. What if the questions in a quiz show are answered by your life?

Unfortunately, though a short-story might survive on a single fatta, you need moe than a dozen to sustain a novel.

The book, though written in effortless flair, gets quickly tiring after the first two questions – and too predictable. And it’s a book obviously written keeping the white man in mind – sample this dialogue where a satta player explains the game to the young Jamaal – “It is another name for illegal betting. Satta is organized by powerful underworld syndicates in Mumbai with a daily turnover of millions of rupees –“
Sounds more like an edification by a guide to a fat American in shorts and a videocam – doesn’t it?

Coming to the movie, the movie is just a glorified Bollywood love story. As far as the grit goes, the trial-through-shit scene falls flat (a director’s desperate attempt to recapture the glory of his most famous scene) and the realism has been captured better in Mithun flicks. When the young Jamaal breaks into a dance for his Lathika, the thought that went in my mind was that clearly the director had never seen a slum kid dance.

What holds the movie together is Rehman’s juggernaut of a score – shifting moods in a blink. The acting is mostly good – despite the accent, Dev Patel is good (I figure that our own chhora Shahid Kapur might have fancied a chance and shudder at the thought); so are the rest – especially Anil Kapoor (but then where Anil Pappu Kapoor shines as one of the best actors speaks volume about its grittiness – right?) Mahesh Manjrekar is cast as a gangster but thankfully he underplays it – I guess in a Bolly flick he would have hammed and screamed the curtain apart.
Watch the movie, leaving your baggage of reason at the same spot where you leave it when you go for masala flicks. But don’t expect either a Salaam Bombay or a TrainSpotting.

Stepaway from these brothers

Some of the greatest scripts start off with the question – what if? Unfortunately, so do the worst.
The prime example in recent times would be Adam Unfunny Sandler’s Click where the scriptwriter raised the cilched question – ok what if life could be controlled by a remote? And the monstrosity followed

Step Brothers apparently starts with the pairing of rather similar body-structured John Reilly and Will Ferrel. What if we got them together as retarded brothers?
If the 80s, outside the Monty Pythons, marked the acme of Hollywood comedy scripts (‘All of me’, ‘A fish called Wanda’), the 2000s must definitely mark the nadir.
Sample the comedies it’s delivered – The scary movies series, the ‘teen date’ type flicks, and movies like ’40 year old virgin’ and anything starring Katherine Heigl in a comic turn. In fact, a decade where comedy has been dominated by the likes of Ben Stiller, Adam Sandler and Rob Schneider.
It all started with Something With Mary. The hair-raising scene gave licence to just locker-room talk pass for comic timings. Genitalia and the various so-far private affairs that come along with owning one became plot plodders. Be it the stuck zipper in something about Mary or erections in Road Trip, Scary movies and 40-year old virgin. In Step Bros, of the 1hour 20 minutes movie, almost five minutes are spent on a scene where one guy threatens to bang the other’s drums with his balls and is then explicitly shown to do so (prosthetics, I assume; and hope).
When I was churning comic scripts in college, it became a challenge to get the laughs without sexual innuendoes. Not that I was a prude but simply it was too easy. Have Anil Kapoor mouth a ‘Teri maa ka...’ and then trail off and 90 times out of 100 you would get a laugh. Heck, even fardeen khan might register that average. And then ask Fardeen to deliver something really funny and count the laughs.
Risqué turns have always been a major theme in comedy – and no one has handled it with as much hilarity as that genius - Woody Allen. Everything you wanted to know about sex has got to be the best sex comedy ever. The last episode is entirely about a man making out and ejaculating and it’s HILARIOUS.

But there’s a line between risqué and tasteless, unfunny and funny that is as thick as Reilly and Ferrell together.
Step Bro never judges the line, the script and the direction waste two very good actors.
Reilly is no Jeff Daniels and Will Ferrell is no Carrey. And this is certainly no Dumb and Dumber.
Avoid this one unless you think one-minute long farts in interviews is the funniest thing you have ever seen.

On a side note, as soon as I saw this guy in a guest role, I knew that there was no rescuing the movie anymore.
With classics like Knocked Up, 40 year old virgin, zack and mimi make a porno under his belt – he makes Ben Stiller look like Chaplin.

The unfunniest man since Jinnah, someone please put the likes of him to sleep!

Billy Wilder

I just can't make up my mind about this guy!
every movie i see of his follows a definite pattern - atrociously mawkish and melodramatic followed by sheer brilliance.

His worst that I have seen rank as -
1. Stalag 17 (1953) If Shawshank Redemption is the best prison-life movie and The Great Escape the best jail-break, Stalag 17 is the worst of both of them. You have to see this movie to realize that B grade humor and melodrama is not exclusively a Bollywoodian heritage. (Of course, Holloywood gave us the biggest B-bull of all time - Independence day - as full of cliches as a gutter full of cockroaches.)
2. Witness for the Prosecution (1957) Comes with the tag line of "Once in 50 years suspense like this!". It was as suspenseful as watching water-buffaloes block you car and shit along the way. Charles Laughton, as the quintessential Briton, plays it in quintessential Churchillesque cliche. The dialogues, intended to capture the British wry humor, are self-conscious and as forced as a man on a bog with constipation. You can see the "suspense" coming from a mile off and if I had been part of the royalty, that was sworn into keeping the "secret" by Wilder before the screening, I would have gotten him drawn and quartered thereafter.
3. The Apartment (1960) If the otherwise redoubtable Jack Lemmon had gotten a tad more sweeter, I would have had a sugar attack. Btw, this one swept the Oscars - another example about how the Oscars is hardly a benchmark of excellence.

Brilliant
1. Sunset Blvd. (1950) Besides the heart-wrenching performance by Gloria Swanson, if ever there was a movie lifted from good to greatness by its last scene alone, this is it!
2. Double Indemnity (1944) saw it yesterday and the reason for this post. Despite any visual violence and the murderer confessing to his crimes at the very beginning, the movie keeps r fingers gripping the edge of your seats for the whole 1 and a half hours. Edward G. Robinson is so brilliant as the hard-nut-to-crack actuary that even a 2-minutes speech on the subtleties of actuarial statistics keeps you as locked as Jack Nicholson's "You can't handle the truth!" in a Few Good Men.

Of course, Raymond Chandler's screenplay was the best reason for the noir-cult classic Double Indemnity.
But if I dismiss that, how do I account for the fact that the same guy can make such tripe and cinema-defining classics?

I am reminded of the missing-for-a-long time Pankaj Parashar, a man who could serve you the best and the worst on any given day.

Freaky

Last week, I saw Michael Clayton and was surprised to see Sydney Pollack in it. I had somehow confused Kubrick's death with his.
I went to the IMDB and confirmed that Yep! Hes still there and going strong given the performance in MClayton.
This must be on Saturday.
Today he's dead.

Freaky.

Duvall on Godfather III and Brando

Watching an old classic again

I think it's every cinema buffs favorite pasttime to scout for movies where the truly greats come together. Even Hoffman and DeNiro, perhas at their worst, in MeettheFockers can run a chill up your spine when you see them there together on the sceen and the entire oevres and history behind.

"On the Waterfront" - offers three greats - at their prime!
Lee J Cobb (Jury2 in 12 Angry Men and the legend of his Willy Loman that I have only heard about)
Brando, of course
and the brilliant Rod Steiger (In the Heat of the Night, Dr. Zhivago, Oklahoma - from my limited exposure to his works).

And I haven't even mentioned Karl Madsen!

Raw, brilliant, brave, groundbreaking, relevant: backed by acting of this class.
Watch this movi if you haven't. Also, read about its social context - why and how it was made.

Three movies you might have missed

This is my 100th post in this blog. :)

Upside of Anger

Having been raised in a family of primarily daughters and mothers, the dialogues of this movie are some of the best I have heard in a long time. The scenes between the four daughters and Joan Allen are so natural tha you almost forget that you're watching a movie.

And what a performance by Joan Allen - what a performance!The scenes where she tells the daughters about their father's infidelity and the cheshire cat smile she puts as she imagines decapitating the 50 year old DJ (the director of the movie) sleeping with her 18 year old daughter should have brought the Oscars at her doorstep. Shame.

Watch this movie for her, the so so good Kevin Costner and a brilliant script.

Pity. Terms of Endearment - that had nothing to offer besides Jack Nicholson - with bad cinematography, tardy script, over-the-top and highly self-conscious fare by the leading ladies - should have swept the Oscars and this movie be ignored.

The Ice Harvest

The problem with this movie is taht it wastes its best portion for a cheap tawdry "twist" narrative. Cusack sleepwalks through his cool ordinary guy thing; but I can see him do that till eternity:). The half an hour of Oliver Platt and Cusack together , from the bar to the Christmas dinner to the bar again (Platt's confrontation with the jockey BF was too good!) to the apartment - is good enough to recommend this movie.

Little Children

The lives of two lovelorn spouses from separate marriages, a registered sex offender, and a disgraced ex-police officer intersect as they struggle to resist their vulnerabilities and temptations. - IMDB

I used that because I really don't know how to describe this tour de force. I might say it's about middle age crisis, our insecurities, adult world, everything. But I think it's really about how we have complicated everything for ourselves and can't even scream - and taht's when we're touching middle age.

The persepctive of the movie comes from people who ae going down under the system - successful in absolute terms - but underachievers in terms of themselves - part of which stems from the fact taht they really don't believe in the sanctity of the system but are too small an weak to do anything about it than fail. Something I can relate to.

Forget her nude scenes, the numero uno reason for the movie's success for many, watch Kate Winslet for her lost Sarah. My only grouse was that Connelly was wasted and Sarah's hubby and the panty thingee was too much of a 2D caricature.

But the Oscars be damned for denying Jackie Haley his due as the sex offender for the not very impressive (to me) Tom Arkins(?) for Little Miss Sunshine. Haley's performance - his watery and hungry eyes - make me do something that not even Lolita could do - empathize with a child molester. Entering midway into the movie - he takes it by the fine hair and chews off the heavy star cast - Right from the pool, the date scene to the scene where his mother dies. His own tragic story had a deep impact on his performance - and that is so evident.

This is a masterpiece - not to be missed.

The new Rambo

I did not see Rocky Balboa.

In fact the last time I paid to see Stallone was in the atrocious Specialist: and in my sex-starved teens, he was not the reason that brought me to the Mayfair that evening.

I went to Rambo dreading that the new Rambo might not have grown amore mature and realistic political perspective; and might just be an excuse for another body count flick of the 90s; albeit with the special effects advances post-Terminator 2.

Alas! My fears came true.

I can't help compare Stallone right now with two other actors who went on to become directors: Eastwood and Mel Gibson.

While Clint debunked his own Blondie myth in (my opinion) the greatest movie of all times, Stallone is the Hollywood Mr. Bharat and DevAnand reincarnaton and can't seem to get over the fact taht world might have passed him by. He seems to have suddenly woken up to the fact taht Neo and Bourne might have displaced his legends of Rambo and Rocky. I can almost see him grunt the script out to an erstwhile KingOfPop in a PulpFiction-esque restaurant who, in turn, thumps out his latest beats for his re-re-launch featuring the coffin of Brando.

Grow out of it, Stallone.
First of all, your politics is as naive as Bush's (remember the Russian boxer in RamboIV and the America-loving mujaheddins in Rambo3 ?) . And, thankfully, the world has moved beyond the days of the DeerHunter-esque screaming Indochinese butchers in a raining Cambodian jungle. Throwing in a few screaming old women, kids being buggered and villages being wiped out ala ApocalypseNow might have passed muster for realism in 1972: but this is 2008.

Our economies as stronger enough too to protest this farce of humanism to portray a blood bath of bodies, heads and limbs being ripped off landmines, mortars, sniper guns; when not being hungrily devoured by pigs. Do you really know, and care, about Burma and what's happening there?

In fact, Stallone is a perfect example of the UnglyAmerican : a prescient book of the 50s followed by a great movie starring Brando, about the damages taht American ignorance is wreaking in international politics.

I never liked Stallone. But I didn't hate him: he did write the Rocky script after all.

But tonight I pity him. Someone much past his expiration date who needs to be put to sleep immediately: along with all the SouthIndian "legends", Dev Anand and Manoj Kumars.

Look at what Clint Eastwood and Mel Gibson have offered us in the past few years - Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby, Braveheart, Passion of the Christ, Apocalypto and the amazing Mystic River.

Look at what Mr. Stallone has offered in the past one year - memorable lines like "It ain't over till it's over" and this - Rambo 2 Redux.

I pity him because he's the guy who had his peak 32 years ago - bolstered by heavy marketing gimmicry that sailed it past the Oscars overcoming (hold your breath) TaxiDriver!

In the last scene of this movie, Rambo walks back to his father's place in Arizona.

I can only hope that the old man has strength enough to lift a shotgun, steady his aim and blast the head off this "legend" for once and for all.

Otherwise, if not the screaming jungles of Cambodia, Thailand or Burma (all the same to Mr. Stallone), we might see him again killing a few thousand mujaheddins from Iran to Kashmir and suffering from a paper-cut - a stroke of genius wherein the human side of Rambo is finally shown.

Tango and Cash

Last week, I saw two movies. Cash and Gandhi, My Father.

Anyone who knows me would have a good idea of how I would trash Cash, so I won't go there. Enough said that I was dragged to the show and even managed a small nap in between.

Gandhi, my father is definitely a flawed attempt. Great idea but the execution could have been better.

First, the bone structure of the series of conflicts could have been given the flesh of some character development beyond the scope of the conflict. Imagine watching a movie on Gandhi with no Nehru, no Jinnah, no Patel. Harilal's fall could have been shown more gradually. He appears as an inebriated beard-sporting Muslim, re-converted clean-shaven Aryan Samajist and a wild, bearded inebriated beggar in successive scenes.

Second, yes Akshaye Khanna was good blahblahblah. But such intense roles require trained actors. I have always argued that why tolerate a B grade actor when you wouldn't want anyone less than a maestro in other performing arts of this scale. Bollywood has lowered our standards of expectations so much that one-trick ponies (a trick he could never repeat beyond English August) like Rahul Bose are claiming to be thespians! Acting is not about tones only, there are layers and layers of undertones. Akshay has acted well in depicting the effect of a mahatma father in his life but the undertones of his own academics shortcomings, inability to execute and wagairah wagairah are not etched out so well.

3. Lastly, the background music is very uninspiring. In a movie which is explicitly not about the Mahatma in India( remember the missing Nehrus and Jinnahs?) but the father who had to be a Mahatma, the music could have drawn inspiration from quarters other than the expected Vaishnav jan. It might not be Beethoven, but RDB Shakti did a far better job!

All said and done, the effort is commendable and the movie worth going.
Given me 10 "Gandhi, my father"s for every Cash!

Birth of a Nation

I can't believe what I am seeing!

Buffalo soliders with the monomania of defiling the purity of celestially virgin white damsels (Posed, of course, by white men with badly-applied polish on their Nordic faces), a congress of the newly-freed slaves being portrayed as a bunch of chimps mulling on relativity, a nation misgoverned because the man in charge is in the vice like grip of a mulatto mistress.

Birth of a nation is a good argument for political correctness. Such trash stereotyping can have devastating effects. As it did indeed. Leading to the revival of Klu Klux Klan and fifty years of unmitigated barbarity against the American Blacks with the infamous milestones of several lynchings, Scottoboro and Mississippi Burning trials, and the assassinations of several reformists from Luther King to Malcolm X to, possibly, Rob Kennedy.

As the story justifies the terror tactics of the Klan, I would like to see a new version of it - justifying the Islamic terrorrism.

A disgruntled Iraqi soldier as the Southern hero - Cameron.
Gus - the negro who tries to violate his sister - transforms to Lynndie England.
The new congress - the "Alliance against Evil".

You get my drift.


How funny. Hundred years on, despite its blatant and strident black/white portrayal of history - in fact, because of it - the movie justfies the need for stridency in the very liberalism and equality it shrieks to denounce.

PS - In the next few posts, I will talk about the lynch era a bit more.

Cruel Intentions

Of all the shitload of teen movies to come out in the recent years, it is this adaptation of "Dangerous Liasons" that has interested me. The film revolves around the amoral duplicity in the lives of super-rich kids and their games.
See it if you stil haven't. Nice treatment and an amazingly good-looking cast.

Oldboy

This, along with(The Bicycle Thief) is the most impactful movie that I have seen this year. Like"Requiem for a dream" and 'Matrix", the style redefines the movies of today. A lot of reviews have dismissed this movie as too much Tarentino ( http://marksteudel.wordpress.com/2006/09/05/oldboy-2003/) and KillBillish, relying on style over content and too much gore.
Firstly, I believe this is far superior to Kill Bill. Tarentino is good, but a bit overhyped. And I don't think his #1 forte is style but dialogues.
Second point - Bullshit. The movie made me think. Not many can claim to do that these days. A lot of us suffer from the misconception that if something is delivered in a cinematically cool package, it can't have any substance.
Third - I think the gore was necesary. Even the violent copulation scene between Oh-Dae-Su and Miko.

I don't like to dissect movies that have made an impact in me. The essence of the impact is in the whole and not parts. To understand the lack of impact, maybe, you need to dissect it.

But some scense that clearly I enjoyed the most stylistically ( and don't feel guilty about it)-

1.tha passage of time by world events unfolding on the TV.
2. Dae-Su coolly walknig to a gang, plucking the cigarette from one's lips and having his first puff after 15 years. And the small fight after that where he questions whether 15 years of self training can really prepare you for the real world and the two line answer - It can.
3. Of course, the fight scene in the passage which I feel has been inspired by video games layouts like Ninja.

I have watch the movie 5 times now and still watching...
Some more blogs on Oldboy http://unrealcity.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!32C26870C88B5120!434.entry
http://zforce.blogspot.com/2006/09/movie-review-oldboy-2003.html

High Noon

Am watching one classic after another these days.

High Noon is amazing. Set against the background of McCarthy witch hunt, the allegory is a leap of genius. The shot of the rising tensions in all the lead actors and the rail road at the last minute countdown to the coming of Frank Miller is c.l.a.s.s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Noon