non sequitur

My Movie Decathlon

"We did it, man. We did it. We did it."
-Easy Rider
I had one of the most productive weekends in recent times. Watched three Bunuels back to back to back - That Obscure Object of Desire(1977), The Exterminating Angel(1962), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie(1972). I wanted to fit in Belle de Jour, but couldnt manage it. May be, I shall take it in the next round along with Tristana and Viridiana. The other films that were covered over this excellent weekend were L'Atalante(1934), The Tree of Life(2011), Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale(2010), The Lady Eve(1941), Five Easy Pieces(1970), Easy Rider(1969), Sri Rama Rajyam(2011).

After the first half-an-hour of Rare Exports, I thought it was turning into an Idiot Plot (Roger Ebert Movie Glossary: A plot that requires all the characters to be idiots. If they weren't, they'd immediately figure out everything and the movie would be over.) where the kid is trying to explain what is happening and the audience also knows it but everyone in the picture is doing their own thing like idiots. Just about when I was tending to get exasperated, the movie turned out to be a delightful watch where I was excitedly punching my fist in that air as it moved into the last half. The other movies I enjoyed were That Obscure Object..., The Discreet Charm..., The Exterminating Angel, Easy Rider, Sri Rama Rajyam. I found The Tree of Life to be a terribly boring art movie. God knows why it won the Palm D'Or. In a sort of divine providence or some kind of poetic justice invoking 'The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie', Saturday night I hopped 4 restaurants with friends and finally slept without having my dinner. I enjoyed the evening in the refection of the movie, nevertheless. Watch the hilarious movie to know what I mean. Sri Rama Rajyam is a big screen experience for every Teluguite. I absolutely loved it. It's a 2 handkerchief film. The separation scenes in the first half are absolutely moving. The highlight of the film is Balakrishna's performance. He has redeemed himself of all those Balayya videos on youtube and more importantly, has done his Great father proud. One must watch this film for Balakrishna's performance, if nothing else. Subtle, composed, understated are typically words that we don’t associate with him. I am sure he is going to walk away with the Nandi award next year. The special effects in the battle scenes and a few other scenes leave a lot to be desired (they look like Windows Media Player 'Visualisations'.) while they are very good in the Ayodhya/palace scenes. That was the only disappointing element of the film.

Ra.One - Movie Review

Howard Hawks once said a good movie constitutes "3 great scenes and no bad scenes". Ra.One has 3 great scenes and a movie full of bad scenes. The London chase, the train chase sequence which leads to the crumbling of Chatrapathi Shivaji Terminus and the climax have some top notch special effects. We have seen the Empire State Building biting dust in a zillion Hollywood disaster movies ad nauseam that it was refreshing to see some famous Indian monument come down like this in an Indian film. I hope this is only a good beginning and we see a lot of Indian monuments come down in future films.

The dialog writer should be shot. The movie is steeped in tacky dialogs. Allow me to provide a few cases in point. The names of 3 baddie-girls related to Bruce Lee are Iski Lee, Uski Lee, Sabki Lee. The Iron Man kind of contraptions that go into the chests of the super hero and villain are called HART an acronym that turns into something technical and is pronounced 'heart'. Random Access One is Ra.One which is Raavan, the villain in the great Hindu epic. The hero is The Good One and hence abbreviated to G.One and means 'life' via the Hindi word Jeevan. These are all High School level cringe-worthy jokes and puns that have no place in a work of this magnitude. If one tries to convince me that this movie is aimed at children then it is defying the smartness of children and the argument falls doubly flat because at many levels the jokes factor in a lot of sexual innuendo.

Kareena Kapoor gives a constant running commentary on what is going on on-screen to the extent that one might expect the movie to be converted into an audio cassette. She does a terrific turn as a villain for 30 seconds and she deserves to be in a well made full length horror movie. It's a side of her we have never seen before. A word on Rajini's cameo: He looked like something out of Madame Tussaud's. Shah Rukh Khan should never attempt things like playing a caricature of a Tamilian. It is utterly unconvincing. As a contrast, the movie itself offers a very good South Indian imitation by Satish Shah. It is a good lesson in how the representation of a stereotype works and how it doesn't. Arjun Rampal should be allowed to just stand there on screen - he should never be allowed to open his mouth. In one of the final scenes SRK catches his crown jewels and he emotes saying 'Yeh kya kar rahe ho G.One' and SRK gives a dead pan reply 'mujhe bhi nahin maloom'. It is like two adolescents 'discovering' themselves. I expect Ra.One to become a cult classic some 20 years down - so much that people will watch it in the class of movies where one says it-is-so-bad-it-is-good. The film is strictly for SRK fans.

2.5 out of 5 Stars (half star because I am an SRK fan)