Yes, the movie with the extra ‘k’ in the title is set for release in 2012. Kareena and Imran make for a novel pair, and the trailer reminds me of “What Happens in Vegas”.
The music is by Amit Trivedi, and I like what I have heard. While watching the scene where Kareena and Imran compare their assessments of each other’s butt, I felt as though I was eavesdropping into the couple’s private conversation.
As the sibling was saying, Imran Khan plays the westernized rom-com character well. My question is - will Kareena play Julia Roberts and deliver a huge hit?
When I watched the movie today and later spoke to my mother, she excitedly asked me, “Did you enjoy the movie?”
She knows that I am a huge fan of Tom Cruise. Yes, I have forgiven him for the incident at Oprah Winfrey’s show.
At the age of 19, I have stayed up till 11:30 p.m. in order to start watching "Jerry Maguire" on TV (in my household, sleeping post 2 a.m. was unheard of in those days) and have meticulously noted down all his movies so that I could tick them off my watch list. I have written about him earlier here.
Last year, there was news regarding how he has been displaced by Leonardo diCaprio as the most bankable star in Hollywood. I received the news with a twinge of sadness. To give a tennis comparison, it was the equivalent of Sampras losing to Federer at Wimbledon. I knew that I was going to rate Federer higher as time passed by, just as I rate Caprio higher than Cruise.
Hence when Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol kept me engrossed, I felt thrilled. This post is not exactly a review, and I am going to leave you with a series of thoughts.
My order of recommendation of Mission: Impossible movies: 1, 4, 3 and 2. The second movie is close to Bollywood fare, and left me disappointed except when Cruise was scaling the Utah cliff. That’s seriously good stuff.
I have watched two movies in this series at the theatre (Mission: Impossible II and Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol)
Cruise makes sprinting and scaling the Burj Khalifa look jaw-droppingly good. At 49, this is impressive.
Jeremy Renner is immensely watchable, even when he shares screen space with Cruise. Watch the scene when both of them run alongside a train. Renner has intrigued me enough to want to watch “The Hurt Locker”.
Anil Kapoor should have said no to acting in this movie. His character is a buffoon, and he had hardly any screen time.
Samuli Edelmann, the actor who plays Wistrom, reminded me of the F1 racer Nick Heidfeld.
If you are a fan of the theme music used in the first movie of the series, you will be happy to know that this movie has interesting music too. It mirrors the mood in different locations, and features a track by Eminem.
Locations that feature in this movie include Budapest, Moscow, Dubai and Mumbai. I was scheduled to visit Moscow when I was in school, and the trip didn’t materialize.
The political backdrop in this movie doesn’t get much attention, however the ideas proposed are interesting. In reality, would the USA and Russia ever become friends? Which country would unleash the nuclear war, if at all?
A thought that was troubling me for the past three days miraculously left me when I watched the movie. Yes, cruise magic still works. Watch it unfold below.
The sibling is away in Chennai for a long break and I find myself in the midst of an unmemorable sporting weekend – there is no F1 race, India lost in pathetic fashion to England in the third test, and Roger Federer lost to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga for the second time this year.
Last night, I was channel surfing while having dinner and landed on “The White Balloon”.
This is a story about a 7-year old girl and her brother. It takes you through her day on the eve of the Iranian New Year, and tells you what she does when she loses money that her mother has given her to buy a goldfish. What stands out is how the movie looks at everything from the child’s point of view, and the sensitivity. This could have been the story of any child who struggles to get what he/she wants. Other characters include snake charmers, shop owners, shoppers and a balloon boy from Afghanistan.
The scene I enjoyed the most is when she interacts with the soldier. When he tells her that she reminds him of his younger sister who is 5 years old, she jumps up and says that she is 7 and not 5, goes to school, gets straight A-grades and stands first in her class. The precise articulation by the child makes him smile, and I mirrored his reaction with a difference – I had a wider smile.
Watch it for the expressive girl – she is a delight.
I had watched “Luck by Chance” over two years after its release and I was keen on not missing Zoya Akhtar’s second movie. One look at the trailer and I knew that I’d definitely watch this movie in the theatre.
One weekend, the sibling and I didn’t get tickets and so we watched "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2". I recommend the movie for Potter fans – the 3D movie is made very well. The next day, the sibling went and watched ZNMD with her friends. She asked me to come along, and I declined her offer.
She smiled and let it be.
As the week progressed, she reminded me that I am yet to watch the movie, and got my ticket online. I remind her for work that needs to get done, and she reminds me of my hobbies. She was feeling really bad that I was going on my own, despite knowing that I enjoy watching movies on my own as well.
I suspect it is because she wanted to watch the movie again.
It wasn’t raining when I left, and I collected the ticket without much ado. Among the families and couples, I noticed a lady who looked like a fellow movie buff. I stepped away to buy something to eat and on my return, she smiled at me. Like me, she was on her own. She sat through the entire movie – people had started walking away when the credits were rolling and the last song was playing. Did they see what Kabir (Abhay Deol) did?
The movie is about three friends – Kabir (as mentioned above -Abhay Deol), Imraan (Farhan Akthar) and Arjun (Hrithik Roshan). I liked the non-preachy tone of the movie. The colours are vibrant, the men are interesting and the story is well-told. Given my previous experience of watching Zoya’s work, I was prepared for a detailed and slow narrative. This movie is better paced.
The movie has four beautiful poems recited by Farhan as voiceovers. I am quoting one of them, the one that is meant for his character.
Jab jab dard ka baadal chaya
Jab ghum ka saya lehraya
Jab aansoo palkon tak aya
Jab yeh tanha dil ghabraya
Humne dil ko yeh samjhaya
Dil aakhir tu kyun rota hai
Duniya mein yunhi hota hai
Yeh jo gehre sannate hain
Waqt ne sabko hi baante hain
Thoda ghum hai sabka qissa
Thodi dhoop hai sabka hissa
Aankh teri bekaar hi nam hai
Har pal ek naya mausam hai
Kyun tu aise pal khota hai
Dil aakhir tu kyun rota hai
Imraan would be pleased to know that Hermes is present in India. His love for bagwati is touching.
The sibling liked Farhan and Katrina. Both of us are fans of Hrithik and while he didn’t surprise me the way he did in “Luck by Chance”, his performance as Arjun is competent. I liked the way his character reacted to the experience of deep sea diving - tears gently rolled down his eyes. The absence of melodrama was soothing. On the other hand, his exuberance at the sky diving experience and the tongue-in-cheek reference to “Top Gun” were both welcome.
I loved Abhay Deol’s Kabir. He has been given the role that holds the movie and the friendship between the three men together. In real life, he comes from a family that is known for its macho men. He has two things evidently in common with his family – he is good looking, and he can’t dance for nuts.
There is a gem of a scene when the character called Salman tells Kabir, “Kya aap itni sharafat se hamesha pesh aate hain?” I find Kabir’s attitude infectious. He thinks of people other than himself, is secure and has a relaxed attitude to life. He seems to have an interest in psychology and knows how to say the right thing at the right time. One can say that his life has been easier (Kabir has one uncomfortable truth to deal with and Arjun has several of them), but I’d say that even if he faced those situations, his attitude would have made him deal with them differently.
Another nice scene is how he resolves the long-standing fight between Imraan and Arjun. He doesn’t hesitate to hit the nail on the head. I think it came with the clarity associated with wanting to enjoy his bachelor trip with his close friends. Having fun can be more rewarding than moping around?
Kabir also faces a realistic challenge towards the end of the movie. Watch the movie to see what it is. For now, I am going to leave you with this.
James Dean was 24 when he passed away, and I get reminded of him during the Formula One season – he was a movie actor who liked to race, and he died while racing. He went to the legendary Lee Strasberg acting school and received two posthumous Oscar nominations.
If he had been alive, he would have turned 80 years old on Feb 8.
I must have been 10 or 11 years old when Levi’s advertisement featuring him came out and I went gaga over his looks. Recently, I saw a sparkle in the eyes of the 60+ lady who works in my office when I mentioned him.
From present days, an actor who reminds me of James Dean is Heath Ledger. He was 28 when he died, and was awarded an Oscar posthumously. Incidentally, Heath’s father is a racing car driver.
I had earlier written about what attracts actors to negative roles – there is speculation that Ledger’s role as Joker resulted in his untimely death. Additionally, do a few young men have intuition that they will not be around for long and hence want to try all that they can before their time is up? James Dean was experimental and had sexual relationships with men and women. Ledger was always thinking and had difficulty sleeping – he resorted to medication finally.
Talented, good-looking, well-appreciated – both of them had it all. Their untimely death will forever make us think of their untapped potential. If they had been alive, what else could have been possible?
“The Social Network” is about how Facebook was conceived as an exclusive club first, how the idea grew into something much bigger and continued to rate high on the coolness quotient, how Mark Zuckerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg) became the youngest billionaire in the world, how he cheated on his best friend Eduardo Saverin (played by Andrew Garfield, who has also acted in the interesting "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus"), and how he has dealt with lawsuits.
At Harvard in 2003, a boy of above-average intelligence thinks what he does is the best thing in the world – there is little respect shown to his girlfriend’s intelligence or subject choice. After getting rejected by her, he decides to write an algorithm that compares the photos of girls in his college and gets those who know them to rate the photos. He blogs when he is drunk and compares women to farm animals. He meets two rich twins and their business partner after the photo-comparison application becomes hugely popular. He doesn’t hesitate in asking his rich Brazil-born best friend to sponsor his idea and later doesn’t oppose diluting the best friend’s stake to 0.03% from 34%. He falls for the vision shown by Sean Parker (played by Justin Timberlake) and agrees when he says,"Drop the 'The.' Just 'Facebook.' It's cleaner”. He knows what it is like when things don't go in accordance to his wishes. He looks disinterested while he is processing and retaining every bit of what is being said. He feels left out of exclusive clubs. He loves Facebook.
The movie has everything going for it – perfect casting all across, a tight storyline, dialogues that are intelligent and raise uncomfortable questions that linger, and characters who are of similar age as me. For the record, I really enjoyed Jesse Eisenberg’s performance as Mark. He confirmed one thing to me – I can deal with the arrogance of investment bankers better than the arrogance of technology geeks.
The movie also reminded me of the issues I had with facebook initially – the trivialization of relationships and ease of rejection, the ability to establish independent personas – one in the real world and one (or more) in the world of facebook, the disappearing boundaries between personal and professional worlds, the manifestation of negative behaviour like stalking and lurking.
Facebook is now valued at $65 billion. While watching the movie, I wondered what Mark felt about having an Oscar-winning movie made on his life so early on. He is 26 years old and is still growing the company. He has only dated Priscilla Chan – the movie paints a different picture.
The sibling had watched the movie soon after it was released and had excitedly told me to watch out for the twin brothers in the movie. I watched the movie yesterday and told her that it was the same actor who played the role of the Winklevoss twins. His name is Armie Hammer. You should read about how he played both roles here – there is a model who stood-in for some of the scenes, and then his face was digitally replaced with that of Armie.
Technology makes the impossible possible?!
I am going to leave you with two thoughts. The first one - you might want to read this review. The second one -
Marylin Delpy: What are you doing?
Mark Zuckerberg: Checking in to see how it's going in Bosnia.
Marylin Delpy: Bosnia. They don't have roads, but they have Facebook
The movie is based on the Jessica Lall case. This is how the case progressed. Put briefly, Jessica Lall was shot dead in April 1999 because she refused to serve a drink to the hotheaded Manu Sharma, the son of a politician. Manu Sharma was arrested and later released on bail. Media intervention began much after the case was declared as shut. The case was reopened and Manu Sharma was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Jessica was killed and Manu is going to spend his life behind bars - all for a drink.
I found the movie to be a good mix of reality and fiction. Vidya Balan does a competent job as Sabrina Lall, and I liked the way the investigating officer and Shayan Munshi were portrayed by Rajesh Sharma and Neil Bhoopalam respectively.
Who has delivered a knock-out performance? It is Rani Mukerji (her surname reads this way now?). She is awesome in her role as the foul-mouthed investigative journalist. She swears in English mostly, prompting laughter from me when my father remarked in a perplexed fashion, “The censor board allows language like this in movies now?”
It is an odd proposition to play the character of a woman lacking pluck – you mouth dialogues that might make you cringe, and then perhaps you start believing in them? If Rani had not played that silly character in “KANK” (or “Baabul” for that matter), my feeling is that this talented actress would not have lost track. “No One Killed Jessica” is exactly what she needs, and she is wonderful. “Yuva” had given me an indication of the strength that she is capable of bringing to her character, and this movie reemphasizes that.
Amit Trivedi has come up with an engaging composition. I had noticed the title song when it first started playing on channels because Delhi features prominently in it.
The movie makes a reference to the lecherous behavior of the average Delhi man on the road (or perhaps the difference in attitude of the two sisters). Sabrina and Jessica are walking down their street in broad daylight, when a pillion rider on a bicycle pushes Sabrina and she almost falls. Sabrina doesn’t object to the behavior, and Jessica does. She runs behind the cycle, pulls the man off the cycle and hits him.
It is not a coincidence that the Rani of Jhansi hailed from the North.
