This spanish Tarantino-Rodriguez school of quirky-funny-action fare called The Two Tough guys. Pretty straightforward kidnap gone haywire plot, but it does end up being very entertaining. This is doing the rounds on utv world movies now.

Speed Racer

Apart from the car racing sequences, this is pretty much an Indra Kumar movie with the most harami bhosda child actor of all time. The racing sequences can get pretty cool in parts, this movie should have been in 3D.

Saw Blue Umbrella yesterday - very nice movie based on Ruskin Bond's novel. Awesome acting all round and on the whole a very entertaining deal.

Also caught Les Triplettes de Belleville. This one is a fantastic, surreal animated affair revolving around a grandmother and her dog trying to rescue her cyclist-grandson from the clutches of the French mafia. Why the French mafia kidnap cyclists - to build a virtual Tour de France circuit and gamble on the outcome, of course. The Triplets of Belleville are singers from the 1930s who help the duo free the grandson. There's a sad [accordion + hall music] soundtrack to go with the entire thing fitting right in with the steampunkish, gritty, mafia-rife city.

On the reading front, Fragile Things by Gaiman was a great collection of short stories, poems and other oddities. My favourite was this 5 page short story called 'Other People' which describes the rituals of torture between a demon and a new entrant in Hell. [where else?]

Finally got down to watching Paanch. The opening credit roll was fantastic. Call Anurag Kashyap what you want to, but this guy knows his design, and detail. As for the movie, i didn't like it. What got my goat was that none of the actors knew what to do with the musical instruments. At around 3 hours, this was too long, and could've been chopped by an hour or so. The ending was pretty lackluster. However, i really can't understand why this movie hasn't been released yet. It will sell.

At the same time, Vijay Maurya was completely believable as the cowardly Pondy. The cam work is slick, although shaky at times, especially when the characters are high/drunk. Offbeat music that's well used - acts as a precursor to the almost perfect music based edit and flow of Kashyap's Dev D. Sharat Saxena is a badass.

Saw Zombieland today and I loved it, despite not expecting to so much. It again makes a lot of zombie movie and other pop culture references, but never to the extent that it gets irritating. The pace is laidback and the actors are wel-suited to their parts. Shall I say here that I like it a little more than Shaun of The Dead?

Yeah, I too said something to that effect and got bitchslapped (lightly) by Ravi, so you can join the crew.

Between Ninja Assassin and this movie I see Suresh's taste in films and awareness of what exactly constitutes 'genre aware wankery' going straight down the tube. But then has he given a negative review to anything he's seen on his 50 inch TV? Maybe that's making all the difference. *-)

Started watching some shitty movie called Skinwalkers about squabbling werewolves. Was utter crud. Gave up in some 20 minutes.

Commando- Escape From Singapore

Finished reading Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones after having my interest sufficiently piqued by a premise and potential that the movie, allegedly, fails to realize. The book does an admirable job of keeping from jumping off the cliff considering the depressing subject. Though the resolution seems a bit hurried, there are moments of loss and longing that, to all visible intent, keep repeating themselves through the story but never reduce to the level of platitude or sentimental overkill.

Will start with Vernor Vinge's The Peace War sometime over the weekend.

Welcome aboard Gore D!

Managed to catch a couple of films over the weekend

Paranormal Activity – assholes in the audience notwithstanding this turned out to be a great watch. Despite clichés aplenty everything was extremely well done and managed to keep my attention while maintaining an atmosphere of escalating tension. Very worthwhile and would've gone down a lot better if idiots in the audience didn’t carry on pointless conversations which included “Mummae! Bas hall mein pickchur dekh rahan hoon. Aap bolo…...”. Will probably try to catch this again before it disappears from screens everywhere.

Sherlock Holmes – was effectively a buddy cop movie set in the late 1800s. The good thing here is that the movie isn’t actively bad. However, it isn’t good either and falls into the category which don’t actively offend while not doing much for me.. Probably not worth watching in the hall and not worth watching at home if you have something more interesting lined up.

Also read, Terry Pratchett’s Unseen Academicals. After reading the first few pages I was somewhat disinterested and had shelved this for a bit. Finally picked it up again and resumed reading this over the weekend. Thankfully, the book got more interesting this time around. However, my reaction was a bit similar to that for Soul Music in the sense that there were some threads were quite interesting while the rest left me cold. This didn’t really have a satisfying ending either so overall springing 700 bucks for the hardcover really wasn’t worthwhile (even with the discount).

Just saw Kalifornia and it was great for most part. It's about an annoying wannabe author (David Doucheovny) who decides to do a murder tour of America - visiting all the places serial killers glocked their victims en route to California, hoping to get a book out of this ghoulish road trip. He's accompanied by his photographer girlfriend who takes terrible pictures (in a post deviant art world, I'm guessing all of know someone who is a LOT like this and that's just incredibly saddening). Along the way he picks up a couple of white trash rednecks played very convincingly by Brad Pitt and Juliette Lewis. To Douche's dismay (or it would have been if Douche had the chops to portray an emotion like dismay - as such he just stands looking stoned and disengaged), Pitt is swinish and kill happy turning most of the film into Redneck Rampage on route 66. Pitt and Lewis seriously steal the show here - Lewis who would do an almost identical role a year later in Natural Born Killers is very convincing as the dim witted childlike girlfriend and Pitt is I daresay even a few shades better than Woody Harrelson's very impressive Mickey from Natural Born Killers. Its easily his best performance I've seen to date. The end is a kind of cockup as was expected but for the most part, this is a very worthwhile film.

Kalifornia was alright, it's no Badlands. Probably the best killing-spree/road-trip kind of a film.

Currently reading A Brief History of the End of the World by Simon Pearson and The Book of Nothing by John D. Barrow. The former is a look at the ubiquity of apocalypse and end-time mythos across religions and cultures. The Book of Nothing is apparently a comprehensive look at, well, nothing. Zero to quantum vacuum. Promises to be interesting enough.

Almost done with the 5th season of House MD and should be finally getting around to the 3rd and 4th seasons of Dexter soon. Managed to sneak in a couple of documentaries/movies in last week as well:

Anvil!The Story of Anvil - It started off well enough but the band seemed to be hamming it up for the camera as the docu progressed. The one thing I DO agree with is that this band simply does not get enough love.

The Hangover - Fun to watch once.

Started off on the BBC documentary Who Wrote the Bible?. It's been quite insipid so far and hasn't told me anything I don't already know so...

Edit: Bummed 2 corporate memberships to the British Council library. Awesome or awesome? :D

Also, whoo, GoreD is here!

Not awesome at all. Personal libraries FTW. And oh yeah, no contest on Badlands.