The Quick Gun Murugan is here

Shashanka Ghosh first created this memorable multi-layered character, a spoof on Old Westerns of the Clint Eastwood kind, and on boisterous Tamil and Telugu movies and their larger-than-life heroes, for a series of shorts/promos for "Channel [V]" in early 90's. Somewhere down the road he decided that "Quick Gun Murugan" (or "...Murugun", whatever), the "sambhar" cowboy as they're calling him now, deserves a larger feature-length movie for himself. That movie is now finally out - it released in India this past weekend and as I understand it has a mostly Hindi-English version, mostly Tamil-English version and a mostly Telugu-English version.

Trailer 1 is an international film circuit preview with mostly Tamil-English dialogues.




Trailer 2 is the mostly Hindi-English version.




Either ways, this does whet the appetite for the main course. I'll try and catch it sometime. I could use the laughs.

If you're passionate about cinema...

... Then Passion For Cinema or PFC is the place for you (see new feed on right as well). I've been a regular reader at PFC. Being a follower of independent Hindi cinema for the last many years and of movies and cinema from over the world in general, I've enjoyed the insights readers of and contributors to PFC have provided. The list of contributors include famous folks like Anupam Kher, Anurag Kashyap, KK, Khalid Mohammed, and several others. This is not just your regular movie review site, it's basically a site for cinema musings about people who are - as the name suggests - passionate about cinema. And if ever you considered yourself to be so passionate about Indian cinema, this site is going to introduce you to a whole new world.

As an example of the myriad cinema related stuff, Here's a loosely translated (from Hindi) interview of Anurag Kashyap (writer-filmmaker of recent movies like Dev D and Gulaal) in which he explains some of his early days as a filmmaker and the accompanying frustrations he faced. He also discusses how his initial setbacks at trying to make movies the way he wanted to, were compounded perhaps by his naive idealism borne out of a sense of sticking to the pure form of storytelling via movies. And he also talks about his growing realization that the same idealism also opened other doors for him and has played a part in creating an aura around him.

PFC also shows how much thought processes of and within Indian cinema have evolved and continue to do so. Suffice to say that meaningful cinema is here to stay and will continue to grow.


Also:
Some changes to the site with colors and backgrounds. Still learning and playing around with CSS. I guess I'm not done yet with the fooling around (i.e. experimentation) - so there will probably be more changes.

Movie Roundup - Titan A.E. and "W"

Just finished watching Titan A.E. a little while ago - or at least I caught the second half of the movie. Been almost 10 years since the movie came out and I had been meaning to see it since it had released in 2000. For those who haven't seen Titan A.E., it is a science fiction movie set in the future when humans live in space and stuff. It's also an animation/animated movie combining traditional cel animation (the type you see in movies like The Lion King and Mulan), with 3D computer graphics (the Toy Story/Pixar sort).

Well. I thought the second half was fun. Now I've got to wait till they show it again so I can watch the first half. Some of the themes were somewhat similar to Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within, a full length 3D computer graphics animated movie with photorealistic human characters (in lay man terms - movies without real actors but actors generated by computer graphics to look and act like real people). FF didn't do too well at the box-office, but it wasn't a bad movie at all.

Also, saw "W" a couple of days ago. Josh Brolin plays the most famous Dubya of recent times - George W. Bush. Oliver Stone directs the story of Dubya: how and why he is who he is, what possibly may have been his motivation to go for the presidency, and what drove him to commit his country into the Iraq mess. I was expecting a Bush flogging, but it turned out to be a lot more nuanced than how supposedly stupid the man was (Michael Moore did that anyway with Fahrenheit 911). There's nothing too new in the hypotheses of the movie: The man seem to be guided by his urge to find his true calling and for his desperate need to emerge from out of his father's (ex-president George H. W. Bush) and his brother's (Jeb Bush) shadows. And that his simplistic belief system (there are good guys and there are bad guys - and we're the good guys), coupled with the advice of highly motivated neo-con scaremongers (Saddam is making nukes and will sell them to the Islamic terrorists) and opportunists (America needs oil - the Middle East has it), made him invade Iraq despite the lone dissenting voice of Colin Powell.

But what we didn't perhaps know all too well was how it all went down between: Bush and his father, Bush and his staff (Cheney, Rummy, Condi, Colin Powell and Karl Rove), Bush and Laura, etc. And how indeed did he get his act together after spending a good portion of his early life doing "jack sh*t"? Oliver Stone tries and answers some of those questions. Not all too successfully all the time though. Some segments just seemed to run on autopilot - like re-enactments on the History channel - mannerisms, accents and make-up. But Brolin does a pretty decent job, as does the supporting cast for the most part including Richard Dreyfuss (Cheney), and Thandie Newton (Condi) among the others.

The presidency of George W. Bush will perhaps go down as an era that transformed the world in several ways - many of which we will only learn decades from now.

"I Liked/Like" - P II

Kay Kay Menon

Kay Kay has been around for a while. First saw him in some gangster movie - where Kay Kay plays a police office who goes undercover and infiltrates a notorious gang, but in the course of time ends up conflicted about the situation (Chhal). That story is pretty much almost staple fare across the world for action-drama movie script purposes. So no biggie there.

But he's always been an integral part of the alternative/ multiplex Hindi movie genre. He played an impressionable Marxist in Sudhir Mishra's superlative Hazaroon Khwaishein Aisi, a business tycoon who ultimately goes up and down with the dirty game that business tycoons seem to be playing all the time in Madhur Bhandarkar's Corporate, an investigative officer trying to put together the pieces of the bomb blasts in Mumbai in March 1993 and the plot behind it in Anurag Kashyap's Black Friday, a senior manager at a Mumbai call-center not averse to cheating on his wife on the side in Life In A Metro, among other parts. Did I say he was very impressive in essaying those varied roles? Well - he was.

He's been acting in commercial potboilers off late as well. So far they've been a mixed bag. In Ram Gopal Varma's Sarkar - a remake of/tribute to Mario Puzo's The Godfather (of sorts) in an Indian political setting, he played the character most similar to Fredo Corleone. He was also easily the best thing in that movie, for me at least, despite the fact that Senior and Junior Bachchan were the central characters. Can't wait to catch him in Kashyap's latest release Gulaal.

To sum it up, easily one of the best around in the acting business. Fair to say that the parallel cinema/multiplex movement would have been/be far less effective/entertaining had he not been around.

I Like/Liked.

(Note: In no particular order)

Oye Lucky Lucky Oye

Abhay Deol plays Lucky - a charming, aspirational thief who at different times nonchalantly, and/or brazenly, steals his way up the ladder of high life. His audacious exploits of daylight thievery seem to suggest to us and him that he has people figured out for the most part. Until, one day, his one weakness, that desire for some kind of recognition by society in general and high society in particular, lands him in his most sticky situation yet. Still, if this is the same Lucky you've been following through the movie, you can be sure there's nothing he doesn't back himself to not get out of.

The supporting cast is wonderful, lead by Paresh Rawal and Manu Rishi. Abhay is fast becoming the poster-boy of "multiplex", or small-budget, Hindi cinema - a movement that deserves fully to not be labelled "Bollywood". He's never going to top popularity charts like the Khans and Bachchans with their movies that either outright lift themes, situations, even whole movies from Hollywood (thereby fittingly being labeled Bollywood) or repititively, regressively and non-sensically depict a hackneyed-moralled Indian culture that perhaps only exists in their movies and in the warped minds of non-resident indians. Whatever. So What. (So ends my usual pet rant about "Bollywood" movies and actors in general - for this post only though.) Quality cinema watchers can trust movies Abhay Deol is in though.

Oye Lucky Lucky Oye is also Dibakar Banerjee's second (?) directorial venture after the fantastic Khosla ka Ghosla. Very Delhi both. Very wonderful both.

Most recently, he played the turn of the new century Devdas in Anurag Kashyap's (Black Friday) Dev D. I still haven't caught Dev D, but I plan to very soon. Something tells me, it's going to be a blast.

Mithya

Which brings us to another poster boy of "multiplex" Hindi cinema, Ranvir Shorey. Mithya is the story of a regular guy played by Shorey, who unfortunately by a quirk of fate, finds out that he's a mafia don doppelganger. Sure enough, one day, he finds himself, and not by choice, in the situation of being forced to take the don's place, unknown to most including those closest to the don - something he, in spite of looking like the don, is totally unsuited to the job. Along the way he finds true love of sorts. His life doesn't get any easier though.

Sure, we've seen similar themes in the Amitabh classic "Don", and there are shades of situations from John Woo's "Face/Off" as well, among others. But Ranvir is as earnest as independent actors can be. Neha Dhupia as the love interest is also surprisingly decent - she needs more movies like these. Mithya is reasonably well-made.

Ranvir also did a super job in Khosla ka Ghosla, and Pyar Ke Side Effects (which I finally watched recently) as well.


Vinay Pathak

The third posterboy of "multiplex" Hindi cinema. In Khosla ka Ghosla, Mithya, Manorama - Six Feet Under, the Chinatown tribute, with Abhay Deol, in Bheja Fry, and recently in Rajat Kapur's Dasvidaniya, Kapur incidentally another earnest filmmaker and actor, among others. Pathak was also in the thriller, Johnny Gaddar. He's another actor whose movie choices are pretty much spot on.


Welcome to Sajjanpur

A satirical take on life in small town India, that covers a wide gamut of socio-political issues including poverty, illiteracy, conservatism vs modernism, widow-remarriage, dirty politics, among several others.

Babel

It's been a while since I watched a good movie. I did see 300 recently, a movie inspired by Frank Miller's graphic novel of the same name and while I did think the action in the movie was shot in truly exhilarating fashion, the acting and the dialogues in contrast were unoriginal and one-dimensional bordering on being comical even and ultimately detracting from the experience. In short - pretty crappy. I do want to clarify that I haven't read Miller's novel. It does seem to me though that people who read the book were far more immersed in the movie and ultimately found it to be more enjoyable. Perhaps I should have done the same.

But this is a problem with movie adaptations of famous or great books. Moviegoers who've actually read the original book usually go on like, "Man! You haven't read the book? You should have - it would've made a lot more sense to you!" I know they say that - because I do that a lot myself!

And while deriding the book-challenged among us is all well and good, the truth is a good movie ultimately must stand on its own without having to be a companion piece to something else all the time. For example, I found the "Lord of the Rings" motion picture trilogy more enjoyable than the J.R.R. Tolkien book trilogy (Yes Raoul, Yes. I do know there's more to LOTR than "just those three" books) even though I read the books before the movies came out. Consider Frank Miller's other famous work - the Sin City series brought to life on the screen by Robert Rodriguez as another case in point. Sin City is one of the most amazing movies ever made. In both above cases, while reading the original books do perhaps enhance the experience of watching the movie, the movies themselves can easily stand alone by themselves. Ah! If only Rodriguez had directed 300.

Overall, not such a bad movie but doesn't quite live up to the hype. For a fan's review of 300, do check out Sibin's here.

This post though is basically about Babel, a movie I saw on DVD in the comfort of home a couple of days ago. Babel is directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu and among the more prominent stars of the movie are Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. The movie also stars several lesser known actors and as is often the case - these lesser known actors are exceptional.

The story (not necessarily told in a linear format) begins in Morocco with two adolescents - both brothers - minding their goats armed with a hunting rifle given to them by their father solely for the purpose of shooting away jackals. To while away their time, the brothers start to carelessly shoot at far away boulders on surrounding hillocks. Soon, the target shooting moves to moving targets, in this case shooting at vehicles passing by on the winding road below in full view from their hilltop perch - an activity only kids could possibly think of. One bullet fired from some distance by the more talented marksman among the brothers finds its way into the flesh of an American tourist in a bus full of foreign (and all white) tourists visiting Morocco. This single event then triggers a whole series of events and circumstances, actions and consequences that changes the lives of several people across four countries.

Babel could be loosely compared to Crash in the manner in which it weaves different stories within its main storyline. But where it differs from Crash is in that these stories aren't weaved tightly to one another. Babel lets the story threads run their own courses. It's pace may seem laborious and the movie may ultimately disappoint those bottom-line hunting , road-rage-suffering, ADD afflicted among us looking for an explicit payoff or resolution of some sorts fed intravenously at the end of the movie into our lazy blood streams as we are accustomed to; for the few others the superb acting on display from several actors (especially the Moroccan cast of the movie), the intricate storyline and the wonderfully captivating background score will keep you riveted to your seat.

With that I must now correct my first statement. It had been a while since I saw a good movie. At least until I saw Babel that is.

(pic courtesy www.apple.com )

Rise and Shine!

( pic courtesy: http://www.nowrunning.com )

Just finished watching "Gangster" by Anurag Basu, starring Shiney Ahuja, Kangna Ranaut and Emraan Hashmi. The only reason I watched this movie was for Shiney. He has a first name of which I'd normally be mocking by now. Except that I am sold to his acting skills - have been since Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi. And that really means that I don't really care what he calls himself. He acts and acts well. And that's all we should really care about.

Of course, I was hardly expecting another Hazaaron... All I was hoping out of Gangster was - perhaps a decent performance by Shiney, some good music, and that would be it. Not offensively bad. Not crazy good either.

Instead, I got to see a very good debut by newcomer Kangna Ranaut, and solid direction by Basu that paid attention to detail while ensuring the the movie itself worked as a whole. All that was a surprise, and a very pleasant one I might add, to me. Hashmi's presence was also not a major irritant (although his entire angle appeared the weakest link in the relatively tight script). Gangster, unlike several of those sleazy, un-original, "inspired" flicks recently churned out by the Bhatt camp (and Bollywood in general), pays a whole lot of attention to studying and exploring the relationships between its principal characters in some depth, particularly the one between the gangster Shiney and his moll Kangna. It was more than a pleasant surprise that the movie turned out to be well-crafted, even with the cursory skin show and a Hashmi lip-locking scene.

How totally unlike recent movies from the Bhatt camp! Which begs the question - which movie was it inspired by? It couldn't actually be an original story, could it? Abhishek Bandekar at efilmcritic raises the same question in this review of the movie.

And finally, how good was Shiney in this movie you ask? Well - he was good. Very, very good. And what's more, Gangster was well-worth it. Surprised? So was I. So was I.