Saw Luck By Chance, the latest Fuckhtar family extravaganza and it wasn't half bad till Fuckhtar and Koko decide to pull out all stops to ruin what would otherwise have been a pretty good movie. The first half (which is all the film should have been) deals with the nitty gritties of moviemaking in Bollywood with liberal digs taken at everyone and everybody in the business. What sets it apart from something like Om Shanti Om is the fact that instead of flat out lampooning or parody, a lot of the jokes made here are pretty much the way the film industry works. The widespread nepotism, total apathy for struggling actors/technicians, producers making films with their "dil", braindead bimbo heroines who can't speak hindi for shit, distributors wanting to know more about the hero than the story, the insecurities, rivalries etc. are handled with an astute hand and far more intelligently than a Madhur Bhandarkar expose. Which is quite ironic because the Fuckhtars themselves can be guilty of most of those things. It's terrific when the struggler played by Fukhtar is shown to be a consummate asshole who would lie, cheat, fuck to get to his goal of being in films. But midway through the second half, the film completely loses its funny bone and tries to make him and Koko likeable. It's way too hard to swallow and becomes an exercise in tedium to sit through all the lame speechifying accompanied by swelling orchestral music.

It's got some amazing perofrmances, most notably, Rishi Kapoor who is absolutely fantastic as Romy Rolly, producer of big Bollywood films, Sanjay Kapoor in a self parodic role as a failed actor turned director from a film family and a hilarious cameo by Anurag Kashyap as a scriptwriter with ideas too weird for Bollywood.

Saw The Chaser after Ravi's recommendation and this is one really good movie. It has the usual Korean melodrama and not all of it is plausible/ logical but overall quite a tight story and entertaining right through. Great last 30 minutes as well.

Still going through HBO's Six Feet Under. And thinking of downloading the first season of The Venture Bros.

Also might get to see Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi today. :P

Finished reading a mighty novel that I'd been putting off for a while - Louis Celine's Death on the Instalment Plan - it's a creative confession, an over-the-top, comic tale of poverty, misery and unemployment of young Ferdinand in the slums of Paris. This book is set in the early 19'th century, where our author lives a terrifying life full of treacheries, cruelties, hunger and dark comedy.

This book, along with Journey at the End of the Night were revolutionary novels during the time they were released, Celine broke literary grounds with his conversational style, elaborate descriptions of grime infested filthy neighbourhoods, violent family dramas, whores and conmen. It would be too bleak and depressing to bear if it weren't for Celine's wit, his long-winded rhetoric flushes, scathing character dissertations and brutally ugly scenes both horrify and fascinate.

Just saw an excellent PBS Frontline documentary -Boogie Man - The Lee Atwater story. It's the story of the Republican Party's pit bull Lee Atwater who brought in and perfected a new level of political spin to campaign politics. A must watch.

ravenus wrote:
Good to know I'm not alone in thinking that Goodfellas was overrated and boring. Casino >>> GF


goodfellas , Scarface and The godfather series are all pretty much the same type of Playah and lovah kind of films.

Saw Battle of Algiers for the second time, it's one of the most subversive movies I've ever seen, it resonates very well with the post 26/11, 9/11 environment we live in, and while it's a tale told by the victorious - the Algerians and their struggle for independence, it says both sides of the story with humanity, the Algerian Muslim quarter has a terrorist group called the FLN, a pyramid type network of operatives who use bombs and guns to sow violence and chaos on the streets, but with an enigmatic professor type figure who admits he'd rather use napalm like their colonial opressors. The french side brings in a big military general to restore order in the city and Algiers very soon resembles Gaza, with barbed wire checkpoints, ID cards, and security screenings. They employ torture methods similar to what's being done at Guantanamo.

The battle is won by the french, who manage to restore order for a couple of years, but by then the terrorists have detonated their ideas and ideals in to the country's fabric, and independence is achieved.

Buggshash, you must check it out, if you haven't already.

Saw A Praire Home Companion again. The story is about the last day of a live radio show that's been running for 30 years and has Kevin Kline, Meryl Streep and a whole bunch of other people. Very cool movie with lots of country western and gospel songs and the lewd poem singing cowboys played by Woody Harrelson and John C Reilly. There's also an angel lurking around on set and the dialogues and acting is so brilliant that I never tire of this movie.

Also saw Il Boss, the second in Fernando Di Leo's Italian crime trilogy. While the first, Milan Calibre 9 was a noirish tale of the mob in Italy, this one is a straight up action movie set within the Sicilian mafia. Terrific from start to finish, it stars Henry Silva as Lanzetta, the most bad ass mob hitman ever. After taking out a cinema theater full of Mafiosi with a grenade launcher at the start, he plows his way through an entire army of them in the movie. Great soundtrack as usual, a typical steely eyed but wooden performance from Silva and this movie just rocks.

Just watched Root of all evil Richard Dawkins two part documentary on religion and I'm left with the feeling that Dawkins is a very inadequate spokesperson for atheism.

I agree with a lot of what he says, especially the indoctorination of children, but I've a feeling he's preaching to the converted. In this documentary, he meets religious leaders of various stripes and the conversations generally go thuslike.

Religious Leader: "Blah blah Jesus blah blah Faith"

Dawkins (looking agitated): "but SCIENCE!"

Religious Leader: "Yeah i respect your point of view, but Faith blah Jesus blah"

Here's where Dawkins looks very cross like a character out of an Enid Blyton book. When he talks you think he's using every ounce of self control to stop himself from jumping up and down with rage. And all the while, the other chaps look very cool and secure in their faith/delusion.

I am not sure if that's helping. The religious types are supposed to be the guys who should be put on the mat. It's them that should be jumping and looking cornered. Dawkins is abrasive but in a very wussy "if you don't stop doing that, I'm going to have to report you to the authorities" manner.

This reaches its apogee when he's in Jerusalem where he finds some American Jew who converted to Islam. As he puts it, "in my naivete" he expects the guy to have a more rational perspective. That's not naivete; that's stupidity! It's like going to a kid who stopped listening to "pussy shit like death metal cause goregrind is more brutal" and asking him for his perspectives on folk.

And the neo-Islamist is, as anyone with the slightest insight into human nature would have known, batshit insane. He goes on about how Dawkins and co need to "clean up their act. And dress up their women." At which point, Dawkins petulantly whines "I don't dress up women!" (I was waiting for the fanatic to cut in with "yeah? well you should!") But then Dawkins goes on "they dress themselves up." "LIKE WHORES!" the neo-islamist guy thunders gleefully. Dawkins purses his lips disapprovingly and looks around in vain for authorities he could report this man to.

Finished with Carl Sagan's Dragons of Eden, his speculations on the origin of human intelligence and how the brain works. Pretty interesting, mainly in his descriptions of the various experiments carried out to study the nature of compartmentalization of the brain's functions (Left side = analytical, verbal; right side = intuitive, tactile etc.).

The last 100 pages of this short book, howver, are a load of rubbish generalization and Sagan's agenda for "Science as the savior of humanity and love your fellowman yada"

Saw The Fall based on Ravi's recco and it was truly amazing. The visuals are just fantastic. I also saw it on Blu Ray which makes it even better. The Making featurette that comes with disc was very good. No Q & A's, rather just an uninterrupted view of the film making in progress across different scenes. It was especially interesting to see the way Tarsem Singh directed the Romanian kid.

Done with Wyrd Sisters (good stuff) and started on a book that a friend had lent me with his recommendation - Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind. I've probably been spoiled by Steven Erikson for serious fantasy fare; this is some mediocre shit. Like Tolkein, he takes off on random botanical trips, and even worse, his characters are seriously schizo, swinging moods at the drop of a hat. Avoid.

Was in the mood for something that didn't demand much from me (including attention) so I watched Cloverfield. Not bad, overall - the initial parts of the carnage starting were the best. After a while, the Blair Witch camerawork got annoying and even at 80 minutes, it managed to give me a headache.

Watched some episodes of House at my cousin's place. It's weird to hear Hugh Laurie with a yank accent, and even more strange hearing his character occasionally profess love for staples of Americana like baseball and monster trucks. I'm sure it gnaws at his soul.

The few episodes i saw of House did not make me feel particularly enthusiastic about it. Anyway to continue with the movies i saw when I was on long vacation. My dad was equally thrilled by all the action flicks, particularly T3 which he'd always catch midways and not be able to figure out.

Rambo 2 It struck me just how closely Rambo resembles this in terms of many plot particulars. Great fun. Rambo gets drawn out of jail to go on a mission to photograph Vietnam Vets who are still being held prisoner. Bad shit goes down. Rambo kills people by the dozen comes back and makes a choked up emotional speech. Not as emotionally involving as his getting hysterical at the end of First Blood but still pretty good.

Rambo 3 Weakest and funniest movie in the franchise. From the dedication to the people of Afghanistan to the very flattering description of the mujahideen, this film is one hilarious embarassment. Also Rambo morphs from laconic badass to wise-cracking badass; a transformation even Stallone seems a tad uncomfortable with.

Rambo Discovered some 2-4 minutes of footage had been cut by the censors. Easily the strongest and best movie in the entire franchise. Tremendously shot and definitively action packed.

Terminator 3 It's a toss up between the first movie and this one for my favourite in this franchise. T2 got a bit annoying with that asshole kid. I love the bleak way in which this film ends and glad for it. Now i can safely ignore everything that follows. arnold shows his age somewhat but is mostly a LOT of fun.

Dev D Thought the film was strictly okay. The first half dragged on and on. Also all that jabbering in Punjabi should have been subtitled. I had only a very general and loose idea of what was being said since the only word I understand in that language is Gull. It's ridiculous to assume that everyone who goes in to watch a Hindi movie is some sort of a pundit when it comes to Punju. That's of course not a fault unique to Dev D.

Too much of the humour in the first half was of the "ooh they are talking about fucking! What was that? Masturbation!!!?! ROOFL!!" variety and got really boring after a while. By the first half I was seriously pissed off and fighting sleep.

The second half was a good deal better while still being very wanktastic, self indulgent and occasionally annoying - but with some great eye candy thrown in. But all the visual quirks like 'Hotel Rand' and Chanda's head covering a sign that said Hotel till it said Ho got quite dull because Kashyap pretty much bludgeoned the fuck out of me with them.

The problem is Kashyap makes every film like its his last. This might be a great attitude for a director to have but it results in films that are really fucking long and frankly try my patience. I have this problem with every one of his films. In Black Friday, the part where the guy who eventually becomes a police informer goes from UP to Cal to UP was practically filmed in real time. (It's a different matter that I loathe Black Friday and feel it was entirely too sympathetic to the Memons, Dawood and the guys who engineered the blasts but that's another rant for another thread.)

In No Smoking there was some totally unnecessary WTFery about some guy from Havana with cigars - you could argue the entire film was built around WTFery but this felt really forced - like it was an idea Kashyap had and which he shoved in with this "chal, sab kuch daal deten hain yaar" attitude.

I'd have liked Dev D a lot more if it was around half an hour shorter, if there had been subtitles for the Punju bits and if Kashyap had not chose to overuse the more subtle sly bits of humour. I'm not all that sure about him being Bollywood's Great Hope either. There's not a single film by him that I've liked in an unqualified manner.

Santa Sangre A rewatch but a film which with its odd mixture of surreal images, over the top violence and many very wrenching moments remains one of my all time favourites. A must for slasher fans everywhere to see how an intelligent and creative mind can really lift the genre

A Clockwork Orange There are some films that are hyped to death and TCO is definitely one of them. It's notoriety precedes it and I was entirely prepared to hold it up to a very high standard, (given it was based on one of my favourite books) when i got a rip off Slashgod way back in 1993 (thanks a ton man! Almost all the stuff i got off you that day was gold). And yet, TCO totally deserves all the hype. It IS one of the most brutal and unsentimental films ever made. Even if you've been jaded by a lot of giallo and slasher flicks, chances are the scenes of violence in this film will get to you. This being a remastered DVD, the visual quality was spectacular. The documentary on the bonus disc seemed promising - Sam Mendes, Tony Kaye and the director of American Psycho talking about the film. Unfortunately they didn't say much that was particularly interesting or revelatory. The only thing I didn't know was that the book was inspired by Burgess's first wife being brutally raped.

The Office UK I prefer the US version but Ricky Gervais is very effective as a slimy bumbling incompetent boss. Am glad they had the good grace to stop after two seasons.

I'm with you on Dev D. I posted this on DC since this forum had a downtime then.

I liked the second half and the ending quite a lot. But the first half, though had some good moments, bored me, especially the (MMS scandal and the build-up of) Chanda's character. What irritated the shit out of me was songs playing one after another throughout, mixed at times even louder than dialogues. Minor peeve - making it current by tying in MMS scandals and hit-n-run case...but I'm probably getting nitpicky here. The cast was good and Abhay Deol's take on Devdas was especially splendid. I haven't seen any other Devdas adaptations, but this is a huge step-up from No Smoking for Anurag Kashyap. I think that movie would've been more watchable with this Deol chap in the lead instead of that meathead.

Also agree about the subtitles for punjabi bit. I was telling GK about that in the theatre.