Up in the Air (2009)

The sibling is currently in town, and gave me the news that she had already watched Depp’s latest starrer – Alice in Wonderland. A look of dismay later, I zeroed down on the alternative, also based on a book.

The tickets were booked, the weather was hot, and the two of us set off with the pact that I wouldn’t buy her food or drinks. Don’t ask why.



Set in the land of frequent-flyers, Clooney and Farmiga play their characters Ryan and Alex so well that you forget that they are not for real. Their banter is witty and lively, and the chemistry is evident.

However, things are not meant to be. He realizes that her reality is far removed from his own, and falls silent when she tells him over a phone-call in a matter-of-fact way that she was a grown up, and would meet him again if he wanted to. The conversation also included this bit.

Ryan Bingham: I thought I was a part of your life.

Alex Goran: I thought we signed up for the same thing... I thought our relationship was perfectly clear. You are an escape. You're a break from our normal lives. You're a parenthesis.

Ryan Bingham: I'm a parenthesis?

There is also the character called Natalie (played by Anna Kendrick). She is from Cornell, has bright ideas on how the business of telling people that they have lost their jobs should be run, works with Ryan, gets a chance to execute her ideas, receives a dose of reality in the process, follows a boy and gets dumped by text, and moves on.

Like Alex, she gives Ryan a dose of reality too.

The movie is worth watching, more than once.

Karthik Calling Karthik (2010)

My introduction to this film was this song playing on one of the TV channels.



It gave me the impression that the film was fresh and fun.

Farhan Akthar plays Karthik Narayan, the CA – IIM graduate who works for a construction company. He has an eye for detail, and the ability to stretch. He also has the ability to never say no, which his boss makes use of to saddle him with more work. Shonali Mukherjee (Deepika Padukone) is the girl he likes. She works in the same office, and has never noticed him.

Things change when he receives a call from Karthik, and begins to stand up for himself. In the process, the viewer is shown glimpses of schizophrenia . At no stage is his disorder glamourised, and I thought this was the strength of the film. There were moments in the second half that would have benefitted from better editing.

A nice touch was to introduce Escher - his work finds a place of honour in Karthik’s house towards the end of the film.

The question on my mind is - could this be a true account?

Theories of negativity

I find that in its various forms, neuroticism is highly infectious - just like optimism - and is best stayed away from, unlike optimism. Hence I am surprised when actors choose neurotic characters to play. Does it have a simple explanation – "This role will help me win awards!” Does neuroticism increase when one repeatedly plays extreme characters?

I watched parts of this movie when the sibling and my Chinese DVD player were both around. There were also mentions of doomsday with reference to the recession. Over a year later, things look different. The sibling is away, the player has been replaced, and the recession is doing selective rounds of good byes.

What remains the same is my opinion on Wall Street – it is a must watch – and this line, “The most valuable commodity I know of is information”. Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas, is a man who believes greed is good and if something is waiting to be exploited, one must. Charlie Sheen plays the young trader who looks up to GG, and gets carried away in the process.

The manner in which Douglas played GG got me thinking of Gail Wynand.



In the movie The Assassination of Richard Nixon, Sean Penn’s character is obsessed with integrity in a convoluted fashion. The obsession leads him to leave one job after another, resulting in tumultuous times in his personal life for there is little integrity in reality. He lands his latest job by saying that he is married when he is actually separated, and performs incredibly well. However, he ends up losing his job - it was a non negotiable pre-condition that married men would be employed as salesmen as they look more stable. He then wires into his head that President Nixon is responsible for all that has happened to him and from there on, things go downhill.



What about dealing with the insane negative? Nothing less than a superhero would do.