Author Archives: thoughtsamok

’96 Movie Review: Some Reflections…

SPOILER ALERT

96 is a bittersweet amalgamation of the ‘BEFORE‘ series – chiefly ‘BEFORE SUNSET‘— by Linklater, beautifully mapped onto the Indian landscape by contouring out the emotional crests and troughs of childhood love, its extensions, and its sustenance. It is a triumph for one of the most interesting actors to emerge out on the Tamil screens, Vijay Sethupathi, who brings his own brand of ‘casualness’ to his act, yet segues it – mainly in the second-half – into a fine act embodying a character who pretends to be living in the ‘moment’ but is really living in the past savoring moments of first love which are, obviously, momentous to him. [In fact, the film opens with a song ‘The Life of Ram’, with the lyrics and visuals expounding on the loneliness that’s part of Ram’s existential crises, as well as the thread he hangs onto to continue his existence. It shows him living life as a travel photographer, but travelling alone, and seemingly enjoying the independence—(he pulls a cart for an old man in Calcutta; drives in circles in his car onto a vast, open field; sits staring at the horizon on a beach, and runs on sand-dunes in Rajasthan, while the lyrics convey his feelings that he hasn’t understood the world yet though his hair has greyed..)— that a relationship-less existence provides, but that’s actually a facade.] There’s a nod here to Ranbir’s characters from Ali’s films portraying his alone-self in a populated world that’s hard to miss.Continue reading “’96 Movie Review: Some Reflections…”

The ‘I’ word

This whole business of Aamir, an actor, and a citizen as IMPORTANT as you or me – irrespective of the class he enjoys – saying something and the way people are reacting has truly reached a circus-stage where you have carnival-barkers standing in front of every freak-show with their own costumes and placards. It is as if people have nothing ‘constructive’ to talk or write about and are using this episode to vent their frustrations: some genuine, most knee-jerk.Continue reading “The ‘I’ word”

Dhoom 3 Movie Review: An Inconvenient Marriage

The best shot of Dhoom 3 remains the way Aamir’s character as an adult is introduced. He wakes up perturbed from a night-mare and the camera only focuses on his bare-essentials. This is the most unheroic, uncharacteristic, but really exhilarating introduction of an arch-villain in a full-blown, frivolous ‘franchise’ of a movie. This introduction soars one’s expectations – especially of one who is an admirer of the way an artiste like Aamir places emphasis on the entire movie-making process rather than the parts of the whole sum. And then a reel later, one sees the introduction of the cop-duo, with a wonderful intro of Ali first and then Jai in a rick-shaw! What a wonderful proceeding, one thinks – Aamir all subdued running down the walls of a bank in Chicago and Abhishek’s Jai all ‘desi’ in a rickshaw in a slum-colony! This is going to be one great, multiple time-pass viewing, one thinks! Little did one realize that Aamir’s Saahir running down the bank’s building would turn out to be the one and only grand metaphorical shot in the film – of the film only going downhill!Continue reading “Dhoom 3 Movie Review: An Inconvenient Marriage”

The Colors of Raanjhanaa

*Mild plot-spoilers*

Raanjhanaa-Poster‘Raanjhana’ connects with utmost honesty when the situations are Benares-centric. If there is one thing that can be unequivocally said about this outing from Anand Rai, it is the fine encapsulation of Benares in its hues and colors – saffron, green, and all the other remaining colors of human life untainted by the aforementioned primary religious colors. It is only when these colors shift to the political streets of New Delhi that the film starts to mildly lose its bearing, steam, and of course, the colors.Continue reading “The Colors of Raanjhanaa”

G.One with the wind eh!~

In Ra.One, Shah Rukh Khan (SRK) the performer is faced with a different kind of challenge – that of going from being an over-actor to a wooden video-warrior. Now we all know that Mr. Khan can be quite a hamster, but wooden, he definitely ain’t. After watching Ra.One, one (no, this is us, the movie-watching folks; not another ‘one’ in the ones of this game-movie) does get the feeling that there are many other challenges that SRK’s product faces – one of the main ‘ones’ also being of sustaining the viewers’ interest for its running-time of 2.3 hours.Continue reading “G.One with the wind eh!~”