typical me!!!

After a long time I reached home. After a long time time I am writing a post.

To get rid of the unnecessary expenditure I decided to to travel home by train. 2nd Class sleeper and it wasn’t pleasant. Got in the train by 1140 hours and my God!, how hot can it get? and I haven’t even reached Kerala yet(the weather is even hot and humid in Kerala). So I’m sitting in the train, and before I reached a station’ Thane’, this higida(9, jhakka) comes to me asks me for money. My attitude towards them have changed since the last Christmas. I didn’t think they were that bad at all, until this guy came over. He asked me for 50 bucks. I said,” No. I can’t give you 50.” Then he starts telling that I spend Rs.20 for a 2 litre water bottle and and will(might) spend Rs.50 for chicken Biriyani( spicy indian dish), so I have to give him/her 50 rupees. I was thinking,”Damn!! the next time he’ll probably explain me the ‘e=m(c*c)’ way as in why I must give him a 100 bucks.” I said, No, I will give him 50 cucks( I said the same sentence cos I can’t figure out another sentence to tell him in Hindi, but I can understand it). So this guy threatened me saying that he’ll bring in the whole gang. I stayed motionless(actually I was shit scared inside). Then I gave him 10 bucks , he walked away, with the money of course.

The rest of the journey was boring and hot again. The train was 1 and half hours late also. Finally the next day I reached Cochin at 1530 hours and the first thing I had in mind was not to catch the another train and go home, but to go buy a set of DVDs and then go home.

Bought Once, 3:10 to Yuma, Ratatouille, Zodiac, Knocked Up, The Good German and Sweet Land. Something to keep me occupied for the holidays.

Anyway, You folks have a happy holidays. Merry Christmas too.

It was one of those (as usual) boring days, so I decided to go out and (as usual) buy some DVDs(pirated). The thing about pirated movies is that you just can’t predict anything. You hope its good, and when you go back home and play it…dang…not even worth 10 bucks. But there are some movies you see among other bad movies and wish that it’d be a good print. So I bought it…..and it was a good one. So, how is the movie?

What would you get when you have two great actors and a good Director working together in a movie? Goose bumps. Especially when both the names come together I think of the oscars they recieved. I always felt that Denzel Washington deserved the oscar for The Hurricane at the time when Russel Crowe got it for Gladiator and Russel Crowe deserved for Beautiful Mind when Denzel Washington got it for Training Day. I was kind of excited before starting the film especially after finding the print was good, but the only problem was that with all the Diwali celebrations hapenning around, it was difficult to follow the dialogues therefore making me wish that I should have rather waited for the movie to release on theaters over here. It would have hit the spot, but then I’d have to wait for a long time for this movie to release in India.

American Gangster reels the life of these two real life characters. Frank Lucas(Denzel Washington) and Richie Roberts( Russel Crowe).

Frank Lucas- Heroin Kingpin from Harlem. Former driver of Bumpy Johnson. After his boss’s death, Frank reforms himself and gets heroin smuggled into the country from Vietnam during the war, sells high quality heroin for a cheaper price to the people therefore becoming a very competition for the other drug dealers. He with the help of his brothers runs the business around in Harlem in a very non-suspicious manner.

Richie Roberts- New Jersey detective. Has and follows his personal ethics, inspite of the corruption around his fellow mates. Divorce e. Juggles between the life of a cop and night law school classes. Goes to the end of bringing down every drug lord and crooked to Justice.

Powerful performances by Denzel Washington and Russel Crowe. Unlike other movies which has multiple star casts, there are no over-the-top exchange of words between these two actors. Normally paced and finishes in a normal manner. Other performances worthy of mention are Chiwetel Ejiofor(Children of Men, Inside Man) and the special apperance by Cuba Gooding Jr. (” Show me the Money”- Jerry Maguire)

As I was just looking across the Mumbai Mirror( supplement paper of the ‘The Times of India’), I came across ‘That’s weird’ section

New York: Dancing Dentist Injures Patient

Apparently a dentist got excited and started dancing to Rose Royce’s 1976 hit disco song, during the process of drilling a woman’s tooth. The dentist nearly drilled her eye while dancing.

Virginia: Judge sacked over coin toss verdict

I’ve always wondered if the Judges over here do the same.

Iowa: Woman puts breast milk for sale

It seems she didn’t want it go waste. (sigh!)

Here’s another one..

UK shopping centre gets it 12 Santas on a workout regime to slim down for Xmas

London: Fat Santas have been told to slim and set and elfy example to kids…..

Yeah right, All my life I’ve looked upon Santa Claus as a fitness idol. What’s next, trimming down Jesus Christ’s beard and hair to set an example of neatness to christian kids.

After two weeks of waking up early, studying(tried to..also its been a très long time), my GRE exams turned out to be a FIASCO( had some use of learning new words though)

So I took the rest of the day off and went to see a Fantasy genre movie. Stardust. After reading the reviews of the movie earlier, I realized that I still like fantasy genre movie. I used to think that I passed that.

Adapted from the Neil Gaiman’s Graphic Novel, Stardust, The movie takes you in a journey to the other side of the wall for those who are willing sit through it. From the way I see it, Neil Gaiman gave a fantasy story with the usual ingredients, like man taking on a wild journey to bring his love a gift, witches seeking ever lasting beauty, unicorn, pirates et al, except trolls,dwarves, elves and dragons…but I’m sure we had enough of them. Stardust reels around a young man, Tristan who crosses the other side of the Wall( The Wall separates a different kind of world which lives in the time of vagabonds, witches, kings ) to get a fallen star to prove his love, only to be encountered with different kinds of people and situations. Yeah almost everything and Matthew Vaughn(Layer Cake), takes us to the other side of the wall with good characters, great cinematography and gives us a small notion of nostalgia( or maybe not). It does have some bloody, groovy(’gory’ actually) scenes.

Stardust: *ing Claire Danes, Michelle Pfeifer, Robert De Niro, Sienna Miller, Charlie Cox, Jason Flemying, Peter O’Toole.

***3/4.

Amazing, the best sequel released this year.

I can still remember the time I went to see The Bourne Identity back in my college days, not having a clue what kind of a movie it was gonna be. At that time I couldn’t connect the dots between Matt Damon and action movie. I liked it. The Bourne Supremacy was even complicated and better.

The Bourne Ultimatum seemed more clever, neat close shot stunts, good editing IMO and had an amazing cast, some of the best actors from my list of good actors, David Strathairn(Good Night and Good Luck), Albert Finnney( Big Fish, Miller’s Crossing) and of course Matt Damon and Joan Allen( The Upside of Anger) too. Shaky camera shots I didn’t mind which by the end I thought it fitted well with the context of the movie making it more original unlike other action movies. Paul Greengrass delivered with very much of ruggedness and style, making this movie pretty much a good experience.

As I mentioned, out of all the sequels released this year this was the best.

****1/2

P.S Well prestidigitator pointed out that it needed more credit than being compared with sequels or movies this year. Maybe the review didn’t hit the spot.

Bourne Supremacy is already there in my top 20 Action/Adventure list along with Star wars series, Die Hard 1, The Matrix . The Bourne Ultimatum also deserves to be in the list.

Even though I abhor the idea of Cricket being watched in every house, every time( mostly because I can’t watch other programmes during that time), I couldn’t help but be excited that Yuvraj Singh had hit six sixes in an over. Finally it was good to watch India bat, every batsman did their thing, but right there when India started to bowl, my mind reached the hate cricket mode. Even though India did win the match, it was a hopeless victory.

…and in the news was about the new ShahRukhKhan movie much hyped up multi cameoed ‘ Om Shanti Om’, was about two distributing companies who bagged the distributing rights for a very large sum of money attracted the Income tax people, and the usual that happens, happened. Apparently ShahRukhKhan underwent physical training to build up a six pack Abs for the movie. Everybody watches the ‘monkey faced’ King Khan, all WOW’ing and OOH’ing like they’ve never seen another guy with six pack abs, both men and women. If one goes to construction site, one can see many men with them. How come they don’t get all that? And mind you, it was the same ShahRukhKhan that made fun of Salman Khan(not in a bad way though) in a Clinic Plus ad.

Last weekend I saw a Malayalam film, ‘Arabi Katha’, which is a story about a communist “cuba” Mukundan. Mukudan will do anything for his pary “The Communist People Party” and will do nothing to bring a bad name to his party.According to him the promised land are Cuba and China, where communism still upheld. But when something terrible happens, he has no choice than to go to Dubai to work. Hence the name “Arabi Katha” (An Arabian Tale) . The movie sends across mixed views to one’s mind about keralites working in the gulf countries. Even though this movie is no heights of Film making, it’s got it’s humorous side and some good characters.

Cast: Nikki Blonsky, Zac Effron, John Travolta, Christopher Walken, Michelle Pfiefer, Queen Latifah, Britanny Snow, Amanda Bynes, James Marsden

My Rating : **** 

Tonight’s show with Jay Leno had Cuba Gooding Jr. and Zac Efron as Guests, that’s when I realised that I didn’t write the review of Harispray. Ususally I don’t fancy anything that is over enthusiastic. Hairspray didn’t turn out to be that, it is a totally energetic musical with a cool cast. Hairspray is a about a young light hearted girl’s dream to make it to a popular dance show, Corny Collins Show and a fight against racial discrimination.

Good songs, good performance by the cast and a special mention about Christopher Walken’ s witty performance who always put a smile on one’s face even though we don’t get to see him dance like in the Fatboy Slim video, but he does dance. John Travolta, did not live up the expectations ( that’s the thing…even though of his previous movies, i still expect him to perfom well everytime). A typical movie to ease off one’s mind.

 Schwarzkopf wanted to raise money for charity, so last Sunday at Infinity Mall, Versova, Mumbai they assembled all their hair stylists for anybody who wanted for a sum of 500 ruees only. They started at 1000 hrs and went on till  2000 hrs. Now 500 bucks is a lot of money for a haircut and I was very surprised at the crowd’s response to this event. You could see from the photographs that there were a lot of people. In a way one could think that they are gaining some thing by the donation. All I can think of is “haircut” and “500 bucks”. Damn.

Now that would be a pretentious way to put it…bench. The good thing is that I have free net access since I’m still in the Project pool. Browse and then I’d draw

Finally…. After almost three months of waiting, the movie has released over here. I think the master print of the DVD must be out.

Unlike Fight Club and Se7en, this David Fincher movie is not about thrills. This movie is based on the book by Robert Graysmith, which he wrote based on the case files, who happens to be the main protagonist in this movie played by Jake Gyllenhaal. The movie reels around three characters Paul Avery, crime reporter(Robert Downey Jr.), Dave Toschi, a police detective (Mark Ruffalo) and Robert Graysmith, a political cartoonist(Jake Gyllenhaal) who in their own ways are obsessed about the then serial killer, Zodiac.

The investigation starts off when The San Francisco Chronicle receives letters and ciphers from the Zodiac killer, who wanted the news of his killings to be in the Front page. Paul Avery, a writes the articles regarding the Zodiac. Robert Graysmith, who also works in the Chronicle becomes interested in the ciphers send by the killer. Detective Dave Toschi, comes close to solving the case by catching the suspect, until the Department realizes that the handwriting from the letters and from the suspect does not match.

Robert through his obsession decides to write a book on the Zodiac case files, continues the investigation, getting help from the people who before investigated about the Zodiac.

The case went on for 25 years. The case still remains unsolved. The Zodiac committed 5 murders and took credit for the other killings which he did not commit.

Good movie. Stunning soundtrack. Commendable performances by Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr., and Mark Ruffalo. Made sit at the edge of the seat for two and a half hours, even though slow paced.

I’ll give it ****.