typical me!!!

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)

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.