The musical is fluffy, predictable and borderline chick-flick. The cynical view would be to dismiss it a silly exercise in stringing together hits of ABBA around the barest of plots.
However, once you get past the initial 20-30 minutes dominated by cheesy teeny-bopper exuberance and awkward chemistry among the three leading men, the movie lifts itself [...]
Honeymoon Travels
The ensemble comedy about five newly-wed couples on a bus trip to Goa for their honeymoon is actually enjoyable and entertaining in a Friday night chill-out kind of a way. The couples are expectedly represented through diverse groups (in more ways than on simple ethnic lines) - stereotypes abound, but I thought were used [...]
The Oscars-nite started tepidly, gained steam with some funny acts, briefly threatened to turn into an Al Gore love-fest (mildly exaggerating here) but then ended with a Hollywood group hug (somewhat literally) for Martin Scorsese. Like I mentioned during my live-blog, it was a steady, but fairly unremarkable show last night.
The biggest news of the [...]
After a brief shift in style for the compelling drama of Match Point, Woody Allen returns to his recognizable avatar of the confused-stammering-hands flaying-self-deprecating-semi-neurotic but kind-hearted self. In Scoop, he dons the role of a small time, low-brow American magician, Sid Walterman (stage name: Splendini), who gets entangled in a murder investigation with Sondra Pransky [...]
Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Funny…….but not rolling on the floor with laughter funny; so a bit disappointed.
Some of the humor is extremely crude and unfortunately, the best jokes have been already shown in trailers. Also, I was hoping it would be even more irreverent - some of the [...]
Watching (and subsequently reviewing) the latest work of a cinematic legend like Martin Scorsese, one is faced with a dilemma; does one view the work in absolute terms, perhaps simply comparing against the genre and the contemporary films, or should it be judged against the high standards of the artist’s oeuvre? My personal take [...]
Via Amardeep and others, noticed that Boing Boing linked to a video of the ‘Ghost Dance’ sequence from "Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne" - Satyajit Ray’s musical classic.
The film highlights the multifaceted talents of Ray. As was usual for him since Teen Kanya, Ray composed the background score; he also composed tunes for all the songs [...]
Via Manish Vij, came across this interview of Vikram Chandra, who has been in news lately with the release of his book, Sacred Games. When asked about the awareness of Bollwyood in the US, he had this to say:
Ten years back, the interest would be limited to only people from Africa and Middle East or [...]
The Worlds Fastest Indian (2005)
"……You live more in five minutes on a bike like this going flat out than some people live in a lifetime.."
That was Burt Munro, the real person whose life is depicted in [...]
Short comments on some films seen recently (meaning two weeks ago).
The Da Vinci Code: I initially had reservations about Tom Hanks essaying the role of Robert Langdon, but I needn’t have worried. Hanks is a master performer and I thought he played the role to perfection. Unfortunately, that’s the only postive thing I have to [...]
I started thinking about famous/classic quotes from Hindi movies - or ‘dialogues’ as one should say since in almost all Hindi films you will find credits for ‘Dialogue’ in addition to the usual ‘Screenplay’ and ‘Story’.
However, in spite of having this dedicated person penning the dialogues, most of them are quite banal and used repeatedly in various films (e.g look here, here and here). Still some quotes like ‘Kitne aadmi the’ transcend the clichés and live in our memories. So I set out to compile the top 10 memorable/classic quotes from Hindi movies. Lists are always subjective and I am by no means a voracious watcher of Hindi films - hence I may have missed some - anyone reading this are welcome to come up with their own list or add to this.
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