Recently I have started loving writing movie reviews. You may say thats because of my inherent quality(?) of analysing things, or people to the hilt. So here comes the second one.
I saw this movie "Life in a Metro..." about a week back. And frankly speaking, I had mixed emotions watching that movie. I don't know if whatever shown in the movie is really the life we live in a metro. Yes, of course the sequence of action and the placing of the characters some where relates to the volume of bodies we have around us in Mumbai. But we hardly tread a life that is limited to only heavy sentiments and cruel idiosyncrasies of lifeless creatures. Metro is a lot more about fun, about so many small emotions, about small things that grow up to become big, about people living here, about us and our big big dreams in our big big eyes. There is no question that such characters exist here. But the question is, how often do we come across them? And if its not often, its not the life in a metro.
Of course, you may have house wife standing besides you who has a troubled married life. After watching the movie, you would always want to be a Shiney Ahuja standing at Colaba bus station waiting for rain and expect a Shilpa Shetty to stand besides you with a broken umbrella. The last thing you would want is for her to be married. At least I'm not a guy who would want to say "Agar aap Mrs. pe itna jor na de to kya main aapka poora naam jaan sakta hu?" No way.
And ya, there might also be Sharman Joshi, who would do any thing to climb up the success ladder, may it be lending his flat to his seniors wanting to plunge in the ocean of desires... very pleasurable plot by Basu, or to sacrifice every thing that he has achieved, rather garnered from favors of the seniors to save the humiliation in front of his love of life. But this doesn't work here. May be this is a thing that director Anurag Basu found out, and he made up his mind that Metro is about all this stuff. Well, then we will have to call it "rare life in a metro..."
Only characters you would want to identify is one Konkana desperate to find her perfect man and a next door uncle Irfann Khan. What attracts me more to them is the sheer simplicity that the character is shown to have. You cannot imagine any other person to play Monty and Shruti, kudos to Basu and of course to the actors for portraying a larger than life characters. Simply awesome!
Talking about performaces, I loved Pritam and his band more than any one else. Yeah, thats right, Pritam and his band have acted like a narrator. The songs, the lyrics, the melody and the timing is simply superb. I have started believing that after many long years, we have a music composer who understands music so well. I have heard Pritam saying that he cannot create the tunes without knowing the situations. No wonder why he is becoming so popular these days. On the acting front, I think Shilpa Shetty, Irfann Khan and Konkana stand out (not necessarily in the order). I found Shiney very disappointing. We expect some one of his calibre to give a better performance than what he has delivered. KK as always is as wicked and rude as he can get, and our dear Sharman is improving a lot. Kangana is forgettable. And of course there is a pair of Nafisa Ali and Dharmendra, which doesn't deserve a mention AT ALL.
Overall, I think Anurag Basu has made a wonderful movie. We may not enjoy watching that, but we dont fail to appriciate the effort. At least I was happy to get out of the pathetic cult of KANKs, the Honeymoons and the S-E-Is. My take, should watch it once if you want to learn the art of good film making and great music.
Cheers!
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Monday, May 28, 2007
The big spidey 3 review
Last night, I spent 148 minutes of my time trying to figure out whether I was watching a ski-fi super hero thriller or an emotional romantic drama movie where the lead male has some super natural powers (more so a hollywood version of Krrishh)
I'm at a loss of words to justify my decision to go for Spidey-3. The gap between what I expected and what the director delivered was larger than the distance between the sun and the last planet in the universe. I absolutely don't understand the reason for creating a mammoth movie (by hollywood standards) and brand it a thriller only to show a chocking drama for more than 60% of the air time. You really find it hard to imagine your childhood comic book hero putting his reputation at stake for the lady love of his life. It is even harder to imagine that he vies to take a revenge from almost every one who obstructs his path. The movie also really loses out on the continuity front. Although very well edited, it fails to keep the viewer glued to the screen. Who would want to see a whinning and wimping superhero? I would have been better off had the movie producers put in some song sequences in the movie. No surprises for that! And ohh yes, how can i miss the sand man? I don't know what super charger in science converts a fully grown man into sand particles by a mere electric charge, and retain the life at the same time. "Where do these guys come from?" says spidey in the movie about the sand man. I wanted to say the same thing about the writers.
Having said all that, you can not miss out on the action sequences. Although its a bit messy at the end, I'm sure special effect guys have sweated it out to do a marvellous job especially with the sand man. The first fight between Peter and Harry reminded me of the wonderful chase sequence from Matrix part 2. It is wonderfully done, although a bit hard on the eyes. Some times I wonder, have special effects really killed the actually acting talent? If half the movie is being made using the graphic abilities of some computer geeks ( take 300 for instance), why do we pay so much to the stars? And why on earth do we love them? Its not only about adding the special effects to the action scenes, its about every thing else that you see on the screen. All those who loved Keira Knightely in "King Arthur" or "Pirates.." must know that she is thinner that the partition wall in your house. They call it digital enhancement these days, you know.
Its time we love the men behind the scenes. The ones who are responsible for creating engineering marvels on screen, the ones who make us believe that what we see on the screen is real. Whether technology is killing the acting talent is a different debate all together. I'm happy to know at the moment that guys doing this are a part of the world's engineering fraternity. Cheers!
I'm at a loss of words to justify my decision to go for Spidey-3. The gap between what I expected and what the director delivered was larger than the distance between the sun and the last planet in the universe. I absolutely don't understand the reason for creating a mammoth movie (by hollywood standards) and brand it a thriller only to show a chocking drama for more than 60% of the air time. You really find it hard to imagine your childhood comic book hero putting his reputation at stake for the lady love of his life. It is even harder to imagine that he vies to take a revenge from almost every one who obstructs his path. The movie also really loses out on the continuity front. Although very well edited, it fails to keep the viewer glued to the screen. Who would want to see a whinning and wimping superhero? I would have been better off had the movie producers put in some song sequences in the movie. No surprises for that! And ohh yes, how can i miss the sand man? I don't know what super charger in science converts a fully grown man into sand particles by a mere electric charge, and retain the life at the same time. "Where do these guys come from?" says spidey in the movie about the sand man. I wanted to say the same thing about the writers.
Having said all that, you can not miss out on the action sequences. Although its a bit messy at the end, I'm sure special effect guys have sweated it out to do a marvellous job especially with the sand man. The first fight between Peter and Harry reminded me of the wonderful chase sequence from Matrix part 2. It is wonderfully done, although a bit hard on the eyes. Some times I wonder, have special effects really killed the actually acting talent? If half the movie is being made using the graphic abilities of some computer geeks ( take 300 for instance), why do we pay so much to the stars? And why on earth do we love them? Its not only about adding the special effects to the action scenes, its about every thing else that you see on the screen. All those who loved Keira Knightely in "King Arthur" or "Pirates.." must know that she is thinner that the partition wall in your house. They call it digital enhancement these days, you know.
Its time we love the men behind the scenes. The ones who are responsible for creating engineering marvels on screen, the ones who make us believe that what we see on the screen is real. Whether technology is killing the acting talent is a different debate all together. I'm happy to know at the moment that guys doing this are a part of the world's engineering fraternity. Cheers!
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