imeanSURAJ

A Perfect Finish Score: 8/10 The film takes colours from different films, mythologies and history.  It starts with showing how a few apes have already sided with the humans losing all hopes of winning a war against their modern weaponry. Caesar tries to keep it calm until a betrayal begins a chain of events that leads to having his family killed. The whole 140 minutes relies on Caesar’s journey to Colonel to avenge his family, their capture and a war that eventually makes the earth a planet of apes. The realism carried in the character sketch of the ideal leader Caesar, his slogan, his war keeping up the moral integrity at the same time carrying an emotionally deep understanding to his motivation is a straight reminiscent of Moses leading Israelites to freedom from slavery. Woody’s character as the colonel with a cheeky maniacal fashioned avatar talking with convincing statements on his actions reminds you of the Brando’s much more demonic and psychotic Kurtz in A...

I have used the word “last letter” many times before, I know. It is something to do with you though, I keep coming back and write you one more letter. I have “Desperately” by Don Williams playing in the background as I write this letter, the song which we used to sing for each other, only this time it is our memories who is singing. We met on the fateful night of 21 st  February, 2007, to change each other’s life forever. I have probably impacted your life more than anyone. I’m sure John (current boyfriend) will leave me behind in a couple of years or possibly, already has. We started our roller coaster ride which touched more lows than highs. Through them all, what kept us together was the new feeling we kept experiencing, it was beautiful and it was refreshing, even the fights. But it finally reached a point beyond repair when I thought calling it off is the only good thing. Life is strange, it still kept making us meet in the most unbelievable co-incidences for sometime...

Today, as I was having my lunch, my eyes went to a well drawn tattoo  almost completely under the sleeves on his triceps,  of my colleague sitting across the table. The tattoo was of a horned gigantic male sheep, ram. I asked him, what importance does it carry in his life and he was more than happy to explain it to me, giving an impression that not many must have asked him the question. He told me, when he was growing up, his family owned a lot of rams in the village, and that, he considers them very brave and powerful. This took me immediately to the time my dad used to come to me doing “hmm hmm” when I was as young as only 6 years old until I was about 16. He used to come to me some days when I was studying, and make “hmm hmm” sounds, squeezing his lips inside his mouth and pressuring my finger nails with his tight fisted knuckles. It was around my early adolescence I suppose, I once asked him, “Why do you keep doing this pappa? The sounds you make and the pressure to ...

The film doesn't really carry a full fledged narrative with a conclusion, instead it just follows the life of a little girl who wants to be a part of the dancing team where one after another everyone is having fits. She slowly feels the fear creeping in, until she finally gets the fits as well, after which she feels free. It is more of a philosophical commentary depicted in an over-simplified manner, with flawless acting.

This is possibly the most in depth stories one may have ever heard related to the expeditions of the 2 scientists who traveled the Amazon to study their culture and tribe extensively, ultimately for their selfish goals, though never getting there. Its also a beautiful study of human character, how the greed has eaten up the earth and how the lives of the tribal population can teach us a handful of lessons on how to keep in sync with the nature, at least in these times of global breaking point of the environment.

Like his previous film, uncle Bonhomee, even this carries a story telling which includes many scenes with cryptic social commentary on thai politics. This film, is like being in someone else's dream, there is an image of one guy taking a dump, now one may wonder how does that help. As Sheila puts it, "This is the potential of cinema, to show us experiences that lie beyond words. There is value in conventional narrative, and value in a good story told well. But being prescriptive about what cinema is, or what a good story needs in order to be effective, contracts the possibilities of the medium."

This film is refreshingly new, it has a fantastic mix of humour and horror. The plot keeps serving surprises until the very end when you sure are going to have a smile after all the thrills, wait did I say thrills, yeah it’s also a thriller. It’s one of the only 6 films ever to have a super high of 99% RT score (The Wizard of Oz, Metropolis, Toy Story 3, LA Confidential and Finding Nemo). The best part is, it doesn't serve a specific audience, and it serves people with any kind of taste. It was made at a meager budget of $4.5 m and went on to earn $189 m, 42 times its budget. Could I be more convincing?

The film hardly builds up anything in the 1st half, but picks up well in the 2nd especially towards the end. There aren't plenty of jokes or even as funny as 1st one, but the film still stays enjoyable with the fantastic playlist from the Sony Walkman that keeps playing in the backdrop and the baby groot which also seemed to be the focus for mischief away from Rocket this time. The over saturated palette used for the graphics could have been reduced a notch to help us realize we aren't watching a video game recording, for some scenes particularly. It's still definitely watchable.

Obama has come to Cisco, Bangalore, as a part of inaugurating a certain technology department. So I go there as well hoping to catch a glimpse. Once all the fan fare is over he quietly goes out from the back and sits on the floor in the balcony staring at the stars, expecting no one. I accidentally bump into him and apologize. As I am about to go so that he could have his privacy back, he asks me to stay. I stay and we make a small talk, but fantastically the small talk snowballs into a good conversation. He asks me, do I want to have dinner with him, I say sure. While we are walking by the backdoor exit, we find a good corner to sit and have our dinner, he opens his brief case and apparently his wife has prepared him a ham sandwich. I tell him, I haven’t brought my dinner from home, so he shares a bite with me. We finish our dinner and he thinks of breaking the protocol a little more, he says lets sneak out for a walk. I just keep nodding along for whatever he asks. And as we ar...

Sleep is the act of letting go and letting things be. During the day when we start off, we slowly take off in our graph of consciousness and subsequently our control over things that we want to be right. At the start of the day we tend to walk loose. Slowly with time we start taking control of our walk and walk straight, then take control of our expressions which was loose like our walk at the start of the day. We take control of the words we speak, we take control on the way we move our hands and we become more aware of our surrounding. So with time our control as well as our consciousness increases.  Sleeping is the act of letting it all go. Hence falling asleep is much easier for the ones who don’t take control on a lot of things and are casual about relatively more things than some other guy who falls asleep late. Because taking control is like tightening our fists with as many fingers as the number of things we take control of. So the act of letting go is taking off o...

This film only reminded me of why I should stop watching Bollywood, except for the few that come out once in a while. The film is ridden with gaping loop holes and laughable sequences of action (like when Rohit's character and Hrithik's character have a go at each other, turn by turn). The dialogues are written as if the actors are dialogue writers themselves, or they just watch a lot of Bollywood to be so cheesy to give out such punch liners even when they could shoot directly instead of fighting with dialogues after every hit. The film has very superficially etched characters and a plot line so predictable, even the girl i watched with could predict from half a mile (excuse my sexism). The usual over stylized Sanjay Gupta film. A generous 4/10 from me. Hrithik has improved in his acting, but the benchmark of a good acting is good acting, not the actor himself, after all.

The film is collection of cliches if you ask me. Plenty unnecessary scenes, very sticking out comedies which doesn't mix well in the subtlety of the story and an ending that every sports film has had, the person in the ring remembering the training session which has a lot of emotional nostalgia attached. The only thing good about it, is the wrestling choreography well executed by the actors and the overall acting. A potential good film turned into a mass movie compromising art. I am not saying its wrong, but I will only be a critic here. For me, its not as good as it has been hyped, strictly 6/10. P.S, Chak De! India is still the bloody best sports film, for its restrained acting, cutting through so many issues without steering the whole film towards that direction, editing, hockey cinematography, more authentic sports politics and no unnecessary forced humor.

If you look at the rich and sophisticated, they always emanate a very limited set of expressions and movements with their body language. The rich, though practice that, with time and surrounding. But how is a limited expressive nature considered a better virtue? It generally attracts more praises than when being over-reactive to things does. The more the places and the people you meet, the more one gets used to various kinds of experiences and the deeper one's understanding of life; hence, naturally eliminating the element of curiosity/surprise/shock from various scenarios and also, thus generating a cold sort of response. When a person doesn’t react much he is deemed as matured because normally it is a case of “been there/done that”. When a guy A in a club, shows off his BMW M6, and all his friends react with an open mouth, shaking their hands in its awe, except one. This guy B stays just the same, only nodding his head in acknowledgement. Naturally, guy A will respect guy B...

This feeling of anticipation coming from something which is fast advancing towards a certain goal of action always ignites a certain amount of tension. For example if a window is shutting down due to the wind, and we are at a distance watching it get closer and closer towards getting shut, at a good speed, it will give us a chill, a tension, because there is an anticipation towards the whole action which can be determined by the flow of the events. If the window closes with a strong shut without our attention, we will probably look at the window once and carry on, but if we keep looking at it advance closer and closer, we get a mild tension. It is in fact the predictability that gives the whole chill. Alfred Hitchcock Another example, when a couple is having sex and the male partner slowly advances his hands touching her stomach towards her vagina, it will give her a stream of electric shocks even before a few inches of getting there making her take a deep sigh. The antici...