Frost/Nixon - Langella/Howard

I watched the Frost/Nixon movie directed by the much loved Ron Howard who gave us exciting dramas like the Apollo 13 and Beautiful Mind. Midway through the movie i felt so much captivated by the performance of Frank Langella that it left me wondering why had not anybody given such a brilliant actor a chance to prove his prowess earlier. With his deep voice and mesmerizing charisma, he dominates the movie even when he is put down on his knees. Gives us a very new perspective on Richard Nixon and proves the point that President of the US had a quality. A very good contender for the Oscar best movie category, it already has bagged Golden Globe and SAG nominations. More than the movie Frank Langella is the top choice for best actor. Supporting actors like Michael Sheen, Sam Rockwell have done their part very well. Overall the movie is extremely good.

Dark Knight - Close call!!

With the Motion Picture Academy deciding to reverse the decision on the eligibility of the Music Score of Dark Knight, it is back in the line to bag the maximum awards. I believe the music score is one of the greatest and deserves an Oscar. Hans Zimmer with already an Oscar and James Newton Howard composing the best in the recent few years have done a great job. Way to go fellas!! See you at the red carpet. 

P.S. For those wondering what happened, the score was rejected for being named with more than 4 composers.

Top Ten Action Movies of all time!

Here is my list of ten hard action movies. I have left out movies which have super heroes, is a science fiction or is a thriller. The movies are pure action and stunts.

1. Die Hard

2. Bourne Ultimatum

3. Kill Bill series

4. Rambo

5. Gladiator

6. Lethal Weapon

7. Enter the Dragon

8. Brave Heart

9. Lord of the Rings

10. Rocky

It was pretty easy to make the list because i had already filtered the rest based on other genres. I believe Die Hard is the best action movie.

Comic strip!!

My first comic strip creation. Characters have no name. It is just me and my roommate.

Michael Crichton (October 23, 1942 – November 4, 2008) - The greatest!

It was a warm sunny afternoon in the streets of Nanganallur, a well developed temple suburb of Chennai city. I was scooting down college road with the shops lined on either side of me. As i passed by the savories shop i slowed down a bit wondering if i should stop for a bite. But something told me to keep going and i reached my public lending library. It was a shop around the corner and i ran inside to the Crichton section while i threw my old books near the librarian. I had just finished reading "The Terminal Man" and i was excited to read the next book of his. A few years ago i had watched Jurassic Park and had read the book later that year. Michael Crichton had changed my reading material forever and i got out of the boyish adventure novels like Hardy Boys, The 3 investigators and started reading thriller novels. With the next novel of his in my hand and with a few Archies, which i always used as buffer material in case i ran out of mainstream novels, i ran to the friendly librarian and back home. I passed the savories shop yet again but not even turning to look at it because i had the greatest treasure in my hand. Michael Crichton is one of the greatest and will be remembered for ages to come.

A strive to become IMDB regular voter!!

As we all know that IMDB is the foremost source of info about movies and the film crew. And the IMDB ratings are top notch and give us a pretty good view of a movie. But to become a regular voter or somebody whose rating is considered by IMDB for the movie to get into the top 250 he/she has to have voted for at least 1300 movies. And my aim is to become one of them. I have voted around 460 movies and still looking for old movies that i could have watched but have not voted. Here is a link to the list of movies and also TV shows.

http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=38522895

Please inform me of any movie that needs to be voted.

Top Ten Sci-Fi films

Well, i am a movie buff but i was brought up learning science and i love it. Put them together and what you get is pure entertainment with lot of wit. So here is my list of top ten sci-fi films that i have watched.

1. The Matrix
2. Jurassic Park
3. Star Wars Chapter IV, V & VI- A new hope, Empire strikes back & Return of the Jedi
4. Minority Report
5. Alien
6. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
7. 2001: A Space Odyssey
8. V for Vendatta
9. Donnie Darko
10. The Prestige

Interesting Facts; our grand old film maestro Satyajit Ray had written a script to be called The Alien back then in 1967. It was an adaptation from a Bangla science fiction book by Bankubabur Bandhu. The earliest sci-fi movie from India was a Tamil-American co-production called "Kaadu" (The Jungle) in 1952.

Top Ten actors of all time

Well, i had previously posted my top ten movies. Here is my list of top ten actors. This is purely based on my likings and not on any ratings. But believe me, for me to like an actor he has to be good. There is no order and i like them all in their own way.

1. Tom Hanks
2. Leonardo DiCaprio
3. Jeff Goldblum
4. Robert DeNiro
5. Jack Nicholson
6. Al Pacino
7. Dustin Hoffman
8. Denzel Washington
9. Russel Crowe
10. Morgan Freeman

Phew, that was tough to choose. There are so many others who i wanted to put in this list like Brad Pitt, Tim Robbins, Matt Damon, Sean Penn, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Greg Kinnear, John Cusack, Nicolas Cage, Bruce Willis, Mel Gibbson etc. but if it is top ten then it is TOP TEN.

Snatch- Worth the watch!!

I had been postponing to watch this British film not knowing its cast and the director for a long time. Finally when i watched it it took the breath away from me. Directed by Guy Ritchie the cast includes Brad Pitt, Jason Statham, Stephen Graham and a lot others. The movie has a good storyline and does not loose speed at any point of time. Comedies are subtle and are efficiently delivered by the actors. As usual Pitt takes the role of a invincible man with lot of muscle and brain. He does well in the Irish accent and gives us a lot of exciting moments in the film. Statham plays a normal guy's role and does a good job too. I specially liked the African American trio who provided a lot of funny moments. Though the film has no great message nor tells us any great story it has been well directed and well presented and deserves the #161 place in IMDB top 250.

Ratings

Direction: 8/10
Acting : 8/10
Background Score: 7/10
Overall: 7.7/10

Top Ten movies of all time

Here is a list of ten movies which have made an impression on me. There are a lot more that are amazing but i believe these 10 are the best and i would watch them any number of times and at any time.

1. The Shawshank Redemption
2. A Beautiful Mind.
3. One flew over the cuckoo's nest.
4. The Dark Knight
5. Apocalypse Now
6. Schindler's List
7. Jurassic park
8. The Matrix
9. The Lives of others(Leben der Anderen, Das)
10. Fight Club

Miracle at St. Anna - In for a surprise

Miracle at St.Anna is directed by Spike Lee, the director of the big movies like Malcolm X and Inside Man. Based on the novel by James McBride the movie gave a lot of hope and expectations to the audience and also to me. I decide to watch the movie in a theater and was prepared for the 2 Hr and 40 minutes of WWII story. What came in was a surprise to me. Comparing to other WWII movies that i have watched like Saving Private Ryan, Windtalkers etc. this stood no competition. But i sat along for the mystery to be unfolded that they had promised. The cast was all new and the African American team were entertaining but i do not believe that they had the same accent back then in 1944 as they have now. I distantly felt that Snoop Dog and 50 Cent were rapping the dialogs in the back. The story dragged a lot in the middle and i would not give a "thumbs up" for direction either. I did watch Inside Man a few years ago but do not remember it well and hence could not gauge the Director's style. I felt that the background score was kind of ripped away from the movie and i heard it separately in my head.

Ratings

Direction : 5/10
Acting : 6/10
Background Score :4/10
Overall :5/10

Form here on....

For a long time i have wondered what my real passion is? I tried doing everything possible and lost interest in the middle of it or in most case just in the beginning. But to my surprise i have never gotten tired of watching movies. I moved from moderate Indian Tamil/Hindi movies to a much better Hollywood movies only to find out out that Hollywood do not make the best movies in the world. So i ventured into other indie movies and later in German, Italian and Brazilian movies. I was stunned at their direction and storytelling ability. But i did visit my native movies quite frequently. So i have decided to start blogging on movies and also soon come up with my own rating system. From here on i would be discussing about one or more movie in my blog posting. I may also blog on older movies. So here it goes......

How i stopped worrying and learned to love the american food.

It was my first week in America and i was scooting across Marshall street looking for a place to eat. Fatigue had hit me and i badly needed carbohydrates. I came across this food outlet called Augies and went in quickly realizing that this seemed like an inexpensive place to eat. Being a vegetarian all my life had never been a problem in India. There was always a Adyar Ananda Bhavan or a Shanti Sagar to the rescue. But this was a different place and i had read about the massive amount of beef these people consume. Everything under the sky revolved around beef here and i was a bit unsure of the menu in the place i went. To my rescue there was cheese pizza and i happily munched away the food.

Slowly i eased into the American system of nourishment and started trying different vegetarian dishes. Sometime it was terrible and sometimes it was awesome. I had always read in people's profile that they love Italian food, so i tried pasta and other such dishes and hated it. I guess salt has still not been discovered in Italy and spices are like alien contact for them, something in the future. I also once went to a middle eastern restaurant and loved the food there.

Once i was in JFK and was extremely hungry and in a state of hurry ordered Japanese rice and got so sick that i had nightmares during my flight. Chinese food is safe bed for rice lovers but i always get the idea that something from the dish is going to come out and sting me. Maybe it is just my imagination let loose but i still believe it is quite possible.

Braindrain...in people!

Recently i was conversing with my old roommate and he told me a strange story. It goes like this. He told me that during a group discussion with his classmates who constituted of students from various places like India, China, America and Africa, a student from Bombay surprisingly came up with a doubtful remark saying that Chennai is the capital of Karnataka. Enlightening the readers is my duty that the student is doing his/her Master's in Information Management and is a potential employee of the (God knows what) Big Four. I believe it is a sad demise of human thirst of knowledge and the beginning of a new wave of trend called moronism. I fail to trace the time when this all started, the divide of India as North and South. There has been a imaginary line drawn and everything that falls below Bombay is termed South. Now having said that, it is surprising that some of them take this to the next level. How can someone call Chennai the capital of Karnataka. Did they not read their texts?

Chennai has long cultural tradition and was noted as the gateway to South a few years ago. It has the one the India's oldest modern Universities, University of Madras who's alumni include the two Nobel laureates Sir C.V. Raman and Subramanyan Chandrasekhar. It has an Indian Institute of Technology and other notable Arts and Science colleges like MCC, Loyola and Presidency. Indian culture was always portrayed with the symbol of Bharatanatyam, a product of Chennai and Carnatic music which was popularized in Chennai. In a sentence "Chennai is the seat of culture in India".

Chennai is the home to much of the automobile industry and is the second largest producer of Software Technology only behind Bangalore, which i believe falls below Bombay.

Mumbai has long cultural tradition too. In fact it was considered the Gateway to India. It has the other oldest university, University of Bombay. It is India's largest city. It has the BSE which is the oldest stock exchange in Asia. It is the birthplace of Indian Cinema. It is the perfect example of a Metro in India. And according to the 1991 census 3% percent of the population include Tamilians. There is more outstanding facts about Mumbai which i expect the readers to go research.

I take a pride to be associated to both these cities and I would suggest to all those who are ignorant of these facts to read History properly. There is more to Chennai and Mumbai than what you think is.

Team work....i dont want it!!

"Well, what do you think of Team Work?"...asked a potential recruiter to me. I replied, "Team Work is unavoidable in the real world of labor but responsibilities of participating members must be clearly defined and there should not be overlap of tasks". He replied, "That is good, we will get back to you if we find you suitable for the job". That was the last i heard of him. Did i say something wrong about team work? Is it blasphemy if you disagree that team work ain't the best thing on earth? Well, thats my opinion. Last time i worked in a team, i became the team at the end. Last time i saw my friend working in a team, he told me the same thing. I think the meaning of team work has been adulterated so much that it has been misinterpreted and wrongly implemented by amateurs. Maybe i am wrong because i am a fresher and never worked in a company but i am getting scared of the word team work and its implementation already.

Narnia: Prince caspian....Hahahaha

All said and done, i am a movie buff. I watch movies because i like to watch them. Because, thats my way of saying to this world..." Ok...step away. I wanna rest". But there is a movie that comes once in a while that changes the meaning of movie making and hits me so hard that i get scared to watch another one. Well i always thought that England has produced the dumbest people on earth except that they gave to this world some of the best actors and music artists. But Narnia, a profound example of bloody British doltish attitude takes me to a newer low. Accepting the fact that directed by a New Zealand director and produced by Walt Disney it overflows with British actors and stupidity. The screenplay sucks and the script was probably written by a 10 year old. If you are between the age 18-25 and watching the movie you would probably feel like killing the four kings and queens of Narnia. But ironically Aslan the lion, who is expected to show some action is the worst disappointment ever. He does not appear almost till the end of the movie and is the worst fighter in the entire war. Almost throughout the entire movie the focus is on a mouse which fights with a sword that is the size of a needle and ties up a cat....who on the god's earth would watch that???
Prince Caspian has to be the director's son otherwise he would not have got a chance to act in a movie. The only character that made a little impact on me was the Professor of Prince Caspian. Since most of his face was covered with hair i have no idea if he had any expressions but did deliver few good lines in the movie. To sum it up if you feel that you have an enemy and want him to die, get him a ticket to Narnia and make him watch it alone.