first time when i watched it on tv,i did't like it too much but next time on my pc i loved it,really a heart touchable story.everyone should watch this film to see the limit of our own cinema.
Monday, 28 February 2011
Ramchand Pakistani===A film that describes the entities of indian cinema,a beautiful work
A 7 year old Pakistani boy and his father belonging to the untouchable Hindu caste accidentally cross the border and spend years in an Indian jail while the mother on the other side doesn't know what has happened to them.
first time when i watched it on tv,i did't like it too much but next time on my pc i loved it,really a heart touchable story.everyone should watch this film to see the limit of our own cinema.
first time when i watched it on tv,i did't like it too much but next time on my pc i loved it,really a heart touchable story.everyone should watch this film to see the limit of our own cinema.
'The King's Speech'-----MY selection as BEST PICTURE for this year OSCAR
"The King's Speech" reminds us that although everything can go wrong with a film before it gets to the casting stage, and often does, a couple of marvelous performances can elevate solid, well-carpentered material and make it something special.
This juicy, witty historical docudrama stars Colin Firth as Bertie, the future King George VI, and Geoffrey Rush as his "speech defects" consultant, an Australian living in London by the name of Lionel Logue. The actors, predictably, are superb in roles shaped by screenwriter David Seidler, and directed by Tom Hooper. Yet they are unpredictably superb as well. Naturally ebullient and sometimes shamelessly scene-stealing, Rush has never given a more contained or moving screen performance. Partly it's a response to the director's visual strategy: Hooper keeps his slightly distorting fish-eye-lens very close to his subjects, high-born as well as common.
To some this lends the picture a gratifying, un-stuffy immediacy; to others, it'll just seem odd. Either way, from that intimate camera-to-actor perspective the tiniest lift of an eyebrow registers very, very clearly.
Firth, by contrast, is by performance temperament a minimalist, and surely he is comfortable slipping into the skin of a fundamentally shy human being. Because his character labors, mightily, with the burden of a severe stammer, his role entails considerable technical challenges. How much to recreate the stutter? How little? In what ways does an actor suggest not only the moment-to-moment agonies of speech, but the gradual, inspiring improvement under Logue's unconventional tutelage?
Seidler, himself a lifelong stutterer, began "The King's Speech" as a play, and many of the most effective scenes retain a simple theatrical dynamic, one character playing a metaphorical tennis match against the other. Firth is exceptional at capturing the future king's imperious yet melancholy air, the underachiever waiting to be prodded into something more. The surprise, both in the writing and the performing, is how deftly we learn of the factors contributing to the stammer. No clunky flashbacks; little sentimentality.
Firth and Rush are surrounded by a first-rate ensemble, chiefly Helena Bonham Carter as a warm-hearted Elizabeth, wife of King George VI; Michael Gambon, fearsome as George V, a man to whom it would never occur that "Get it out, boy!" does not work with stutterers; Guy Pearce, dashing yet slightly pathetic as the king who had the bad luck to fall for a Baltimore divorcee; and Jennifer Ehle, glancingly comic as Logue's wife, who cannot quite fathom why her husband's waiting room is taken up with English royalty.
Some aspects of the film feel routine, or facile, or too heavily underlined. Certain performers ( Timothy Spall as Winston Churchill most glaringly) fly straight past character into caricature. I suppose there's a kind of "Educating Bertie" quality to "The King's Speech." But I refer once again to the actors at the center. Watching Firth, in particular, create a mass of empathetic connections and paradoxes in the service of a fully rounded portrayal…well, this is why "The King's Speech" transcends the ordinary, even the ordinary within its own framework. And it's why Firth will likely add an Academy Award to all the other prizes he's won, and deserved.
mythmohit@gmail.com
This juicy, witty historical docudrama stars Colin Firth as Bertie, the future King George VI, and Geoffrey Rush as his "speech defects" consultant, an Australian living in London by the name of Lionel Logue. The actors, predictably, are superb in roles shaped by screenwriter David Seidler, and directed by Tom Hooper. Yet they are unpredictably superb as well. Naturally ebullient and sometimes shamelessly scene-stealing, Rush has never given a more contained or moving screen performance. Partly it's a response to the director's visual strategy: Hooper keeps his slightly distorting fish-eye-lens very close to his subjects, high-born as well as common.
To some this lends the picture a gratifying, un-stuffy immediacy; to others, it'll just seem odd. Either way, from that intimate camera-to-actor perspective the tiniest lift of an eyebrow registers very, very clearly.
Firth, by contrast, is by performance temperament a minimalist, and surely he is comfortable slipping into the skin of a fundamentally shy human being. Because his character labors, mightily, with the burden of a severe stammer, his role entails considerable technical challenges. How much to recreate the stutter? How little? In what ways does an actor suggest not only the moment-to-moment agonies of speech, but the gradual, inspiring improvement under Logue's unconventional tutelage?
Seidler, himself a lifelong stutterer, began "The King's Speech" as a play, and many of the most effective scenes retain a simple theatrical dynamic, one character playing a metaphorical tennis match against the other. Firth is exceptional at capturing the future king's imperious yet melancholy air, the underachiever waiting to be prodded into something more. The surprise, both in the writing and the performing, is how deftly we learn of the factors contributing to the stammer. No clunky flashbacks; little sentimentality.
Firth and Rush are surrounded by a first-rate ensemble, chiefly Helena Bonham Carter as a warm-hearted Elizabeth, wife of King George VI; Michael Gambon, fearsome as George V, a man to whom it would never occur that "Get it out, boy!" does not work with stutterers; Guy Pearce, dashing yet slightly pathetic as the king who had the bad luck to fall for a Baltimore divorcee; and Jennifer Ehle, glancingly comic as Logue's wife, who cannot quite fathom why her husband's waiting room is taken up with English royalty.
Some aspects of the film feel routine, or facile, or too heavily underlined. Certain performers ( Timothy Spall as Winston Churchill most glaringly) fly straight past character into caricature. I suppose there's a kind of "Educating Bertie" quality to "The King's Speech." But I refer once again to the actors at the center. Watching Firth, in particular, create a mass of empathetic connections and paradoxes in the service of a fully rounded portrayal…well, this is why "The King's Speech" transcends the ordinary, even the ordinary within its own framework. And it's why Firth will likely add an Academy Award to all the other prizes he's won, and deserved.
mythmohit@gmail.com
Thursday, 24 February 2011
THE SEA INSIDE-----oh mama/'''surprise of life
The Sea Inside has Spanish filmmaker Alejandro Amenábar's (Open Your Eyes) auteuristic grip all over it. Besides directing, Amenábar also co-produced, co-wrote (with longtime collaborator, Mateo Gil), scored and edited this saga about a true-life quadriplegic who campaigned for 30 years against Spain's judiciary for the right to end his life. Paralyzed after a diving accident, Ramón Sampedro (Javier Bardem) is reduced to lying supine in a room of his older brother José's farmhouse. Day and night, year after year, Ramón is vigilantly cared for by José (Celso Bugallo), and his small clan. The slow grind of Ramón 's existence, salved only by his family's devotion, eventually wears the patient down to where he feels euthanasia is the only dignified option left.
Ramón's outspokenness wins the interest - and the affections - of a pair of women: Julia (Belén Rueda), the terminally ill lawyer who helps Ramón build his case, and Rosa (Lola Dueñas), a single mother drawn to Ramón out of loneliness and her admiration for his strength. But while the sensuous Julia, herself coping with illness, fully sympathizes with Ramón 's cause, the feisty Rosa sulks and frets whenever Ramón so much as breathes a word of his intentions.
Julia and Ramón 's efforts are aided by a lawyer-activist pair, Gené (Clara Segura) and Marc (Francesc Garrido), both exuding the tireless, unflappable gravitas we all associate with those lawyer-activist types. Meanwhile, on Rosa's side is the curmudgeonly Jose. But, being a boorish farmer, he can only express his moral chagrin through snarls and half-uttered denunciations. More eloquent are the rantings of a paralyzed priest who demands that Ramón drop his case on grounds that his appeal for death oversteps his religious bounds. That particular scene in which Ramón and the priest holler at each other - Ramón from his bed and the priest from his wheelchair downstairs - as they debate the Meaning of Life strains for seriocomic poignancy. But the strain is too great for Amenábar and Gil's prosaic, largely by-the-numbers script, and the scene falls flat.
Indeed, The Sea Inside is a not-so-subtle polemic on the subject of one's moral right to die. Amenábar and Gil's script is content with tracing Ramón's ordeal and his personal relationships in monochromatic shades. Ramón, for example, mentions how humiliating and degrading it is to be living in his condition, but Amenábar never ventures into those dark and private corners of his existence - the lack of personal control and dignity, the yearning for sex and physical adventure, and the very terror of immobility - to show us why his struggle is so crucial to him. The movie, instead, relies on dialogue littered with moral and religious bric-a-brac. But these are just words, after all, batted back and forth between characters, never managing the emotional resonance that a more sensitive, imaginative approach could've yielded.
As a director, Amenábar verges awfully close to the sappy, stilted tactics of any Hollywood hack. His soaring aerial shots, meant to convey Ramón's dreams of flying out his window to freedom (smacking of the cinema of Penny Marshall), his glib handling of Ramón's tender, profound relationship with Julia, and his deploying of his frequently saccharine score all collude to keep this material tediously superficial.
At every turn, the movie wants to wring heartache and tears, but its too contrived to elicit anything like real feelings. The sense of presumptuousness that steeps the movie's script and direction also infects its cast. There is an earnestness in the movie's performances, an over-eagerness to shine in the spotlight, orchestrated from a desire to win acting awards. To be fair, Bardem and the rest of his cast are generally fine, but they're far too comfortable in this material, never giving it the immediacy and edge that it deserves. Bardem is eminently watchable, but the best actor alive might've heard that label once too often. One wonders if he's taking the hype to heart.
In his past projects, Amenábar has proven himself a talented and capable filmmaker. But that's little consolation here. The Sea Inside is but a vanity project that, from top to bottom, proves unequal to the task of unlocking the existential truths at the heart of Ramón Sampedro's story.
Sunday, 20 February 2011
VERTIGO- "INCEPTION" of its own era.
Vertigo is the masterwork of a great director at the very peak of his talent. If I could come up with any more superlatives then I would shower them upon this film because it’s one of the most beautiful, moving, provocative and emotionally insightful works that the cinema has ever produced. Needless to say, it flopped on release and then vanished from sight for the best part of twenty five years, leading some to claim that its reputation was based more upon its unavailability than any superior intrinsic quality. That this is not the case has become clear since its re-release in 1983 and is even more obvious now that the film has been painstakingly restored to its original visual splendour by Robert Harris and James Katz. When he made it, Alfred Hitchcock was 59 years old and everything he had learned about cinema in his 38 years in the business is poured into Vertigo with a painful emotional intensity and visual passion that is unlike anything else he ever directed. Fans may argue about their favourite Hitchcock. Indeed, I often think that the Hitchcock movie I like best is either Notorious or North By Northwest. But the one I keep coming back to, in the certain knowledge that I will find something new while experiencing the same thrill of cinematic discovery that I felt on first seeing it, is Vertigo. 
Friday, 11 February 2011
Do Dooni Chaar -----really a film dedicated for middle class of delhi
Rating: ****/*****
Alfred Hitchcock once said ‘To make a great film you need three things – the script, the script and the script.’ ‘Do Dooni Chaar’ drives this point straight home, demonstrating that one doesn’t need a fancy superstar or a monstrous budget to make a good film. Garnished with moments that seem straight out of real life and played out earnestly, writer-director Habib Faisal seems to have found his recipe for success.
Santosh Duggal (Rishi Kapoor) is a simple schoolteacher, who like most teachers in our country is underpaid, undervalued and over worked. Even after putting in twenty years of sincere service, the math’s teacher, who rides a rickety old scooter, struggles to make ends meet. His good-humored better half, Kusum (Neetu Singh), is a typical middle-class Delhi housewife, who capably runs the house on a shoestring budget. Living off Duggal’s frail income are a teenage tomboy daughter Payal (Aditi Vasudev) and a son Sandy (Archit Krishna), who through a secret betting habit, lives beyond his means.
Like most middle class families that are lured into higher aspirations via slick advertizing, the Duggal’s too find themselves running the race for consumer goods. It all begins when the family is forced to arrange a car to attend a family wedding. The hilarious events that follow, cement the fact that to have respect in society, Mr.Duggal has to buy his own car.
The usual--advance salary, down payment–EMI route to buy his car fails as he learns that a poor schoolteacher is not a good candidate for a bank loan. Desperate to win his families (and his neighbors’) respect, will Duggal take an unethical & immoral route to fulfill his family’s aspirations?
Debutant director Habib Faisal deftly portrays the life of a middle class family and its challenges. Although the film is a comedy, there is a strong undercurrent of emotions that help you sympathize with its endearing characters. The scene where the Duggals buy several cartons of washing powder to win a lucky draw with a new car as its first prize is particularly well executed. Banking on Duggal’s ‘theory of probability’, the four eager hopefuls spend the entire night cutting open packets, but win zilch! The scene is both funny and heartbreaking and brilliantly exposes a futile consumer culture.
Rishi Kapoor delivers a stellar performance as Santosh Duggal. He sinks his teeth deep into the soul of the character and doesn’t let go till the very end. With superb body language and an amusing Punjabi accent, Kapoor is extremely believable as the devoted family man. The scene where he discovers his sons gambling habit and instead of berating him, uses a clever and loving approach to teach his son a lesson, is sure to bring a tear to the eye.
Incredibly, the twenty-odd year gap in her career has left no rust on Neetu Singh’s talent. She switches from being brittle and tender to being tough and protective, and wonderfully holds her family together. She sulks to get what she wants and when she gets it, a mischievous smile emerges on her face.
Rishi Kapoor and Neetu Singh light up the cinema screen like dynamite, playing extremely grounded characters. Archit Krishna as Sandy is excellent as is Akhilendra Mishra who plays the neighbor Mr. Farookhi who grudgingly lends the Duggals his beloved car.
In fact, the film is a lesson in good casting as it delivers great performances from the entire (relatively unknown) supporting cast. Also worth mention is the realistic production design that takes us into a lower middle class world which some of us left behind years ago, and some of us aspire to get out of today.
Pre-Climax though, the script reveals its weak spot. Right in the middle of facing his moral dilemma, Duggal chances upon a doting ex student, who reminds him of how he always stood for good values, helping make up Duggals mind; a little sudden & manipulative for a sincere & organic script.
Also, this film deserved a tighter pace, especially in its second half and also had scope for better music, like its Delhi middle-class predecessor ‘Khosla Ka Ghosla’. Yet, the cast & crew manage to hold together this unusual cinematic enterprise. The end result is an effective, yet understated comment on the strength of a united family, surviving in a competitive consumer-driven world.
‘Do Dooni Chaar’ is a highly recommended family outing.
Alfred Hitchcock once said ‘To make a great film you need three things – the script, the script and the script.’ ‘Do Dooni Chaar’ drives this point straight home, demonstrating that one doesn’t need a fancy superstar or a monstrous budget to make a good film. Garnished with moments that seem straight out of real life and played out earnestly, writer-director Habib Faisal seems to have found his recipe for success.
Santosh Duggal (Rishi Kapoor) is a simple schoolteacher, who like most teachers in our country is underpaid, undervalued and over worked. Even after putting in twenty years of sincere service, the math’s teacher, who rides a rickety old scooter, struggles to make ends meet. His good-humored better half, Kusum (Neetu Singh), is a typical middle-class Delhi housewife, who capably runs the house on a shoestring budget. Living off Duggal’s frail income are a teenage tomboy daughter Payal (Aditi Vasudev) and a son Sandy (Archit Krishna), who through a secret betting habit, lives beyond his means.
Like most middle class families that are lured into higher aspirations via slick advertizing, the Duggal’s too find themselves running the race for consumer goods. It all begins when the family is forced to arrange a car to attend a family wedding. The hilarious events that follow, cement the fact that to have respect in society, Mr.Duggal has to buy his own car.
The usual--advance salary, down payment–EMI route to buy his car fails as he learns that a poor schoolteacher is not a good candidate for a bank loan. Desperate to win his families (and his neighbors’) respect, will Duggal take an unethical & immoral route to fulfill his family’s aspirations?
Debutant director Habib Faisal deftly portrays the life of a middle class family and its challenges. Although the film is a comedy, there is a strong undercurrent of emotions that help you sympathize with its endearing characters. The scene where the Duggals buy several cartons of washing powder to win a lucky draw with a new car as its first prize is particularly well executed. Banking on Duggal’s ‘theory of probability’, the four eager hopefuls spend the entire night cutting open packets, but win zilch! The scene is both funny and heartbreaking and brilliantly exposes a futile consumer culture.
Rishi Kapoor delivers a stellar performance as Santosh Duggal. He sinks his teeth deep into the soul of the character and doesn’t let go till the very end. With superb body language and an amusing Punjabi accent, Kapoor is extremely believable as the devoted family man. The scene where he discovers his sons gambling habit and instead of berating him, uses a clever and loving approach to teach his son a lesson, is sure to bring a tear to the eye.
Incredibly, the twenty-odd year gap in her career has left no rust on Neetu Singh’s talent. She switches from being brittle and tender to being tough and protective, and wonderfully holds her family together. She sulks to get what she wants and when she gets it, a mischievous smile emerges on her face.
Rishi Kapoor and Neetu Singh light up the cinema screen like dynamite, playing extremely grounded characters. Archit Krishna as Sandy is excellent as is Akhilendra Mishra who plays the neighbor Mr. Farookhi who grudgingly lends the Duggals his beloved car.
In fact, the film is a lesson in good casting as it delivers great performances from the entire (relatively unknown) supporting cast. Also worth mention is the realistic production design that takes us into a lower middle class world which some of us left behind years ago, and some of us aspire to get out of today.
Pre-Climax though, the script reveals its weak spot. Right in the middle of facing his moral dilemma, Duggal chances upon a doting ex student, who reminds him of how he always stood for good values, helping make up Duggals mind; a little sudden & manipulative for a sincere & organic script.
Also, this film deserved a tighter pace, especially in its second half and also had scope for better music, like its Delhi middle-class predecessor ‘Khosla Ka Ghosla’. Yet, the cast & crew manage to hold together this unusual cinematic enterprise. The end result is an effective, yet understated comment on the strength of a united family, surviving in a competitive consumer-driven world.
‘Do Dooni Chaar’ is a highly recommended family outing.
Tuesday, 8 February 2011
UDAAN------Unwelcome at School, and at Home, Too
A coming-of-age story, “Udaan” is an impressive debut feature by Vikramaditya Motwane that covers familiar first-film ground with emotional conviction and freshness. A kind of Indian cousin to Truffaut’s “400 Blows,” “Udaan” follows the fortunes of Rohan (the sweet-faced Rajat Barmecha), an aspiring writer whose horizons shrink when he’s kicked out of prep school. He is sent home to Jamshedpur, an industrial town in northeast India, to live with a father he hasn’t seen in years and a 6-year-old half brother, Arjun, he didn’t know he had.
More About This Movie
Rohan immediately squares off with his father (Ronit Roy), a petty tyrant who demands to be called Sir (as in, “Sir is waiting”) and thinks nothing of stomping on Rohan’s dreams or using him as a punching bag.
“Udaan,” the first Indian movie in seven years to be an official selection at Cannes (in this year’s Certain Regard category), is at its best in loose, picaresque scenes showing the restless bravado of Rohan and his going-nowhere pals as they drink, brawl and joy ride. (The opening prep-school sequence is a classic of the boys-will-be-misbehaving-boys type.)
The father-son plot — the story’s motor — is stickier, occasionally relying on contrivance to move ahead. Part of the problem is that the father is too much a fairy-tale ogre. Mr. Roy gives him a military bearing and an unbending self-righteousness (even as he drinks himself silly). But while the movie wants to suggest he’s something more than a monster, it can’t say what that might be. (Why, for example, does sentimental music run under a scene in which the father, drunk, threatens Rohan and calls him a girl?)
Still, Mr. Motwane has an ability to present melodramatic material without the Bollywood-style melodrama. He shrewdly has his actors underplay, especially Aayan Boradia, the adorable little boy who portrays Arjun. This way, Mr. Motwane knows, tears lie.
“Udaan” means “to take flight.” That’s what you wish for Rohan and Arjun. And with this film Mr. Motwane gives himself a leg up.
Friday, 4 February 2011
Armadillo-A Great movie on war
This is a documentary. As such it tries to show the reality of camp armadillo in the Afghan Helmand province. Armadillo is the most forward of the allied camps, and as such the one with the most fighting, and the least civilian work. Taleban territory is 800 meter from the camp - and peace is not something that the locals dare hope for.
Some people seam to think this movie is an argument against the war. I beg to differ. This movie simply shows us what war sometimes is: Young men, without a clue about why, leaving their tearladen family to fight in a country far away. AT great personal cost. Sometimes the greatest. Maybe - something good will come out of it, even though it can seem hopeless.
The movie shows us the different coping strategies the soldiers uses. The sense of brotherhood, the porn, the adrenalin, the dark sarcastic humor. It shows us how the soldiers doesn't always have time to ask before shooting. And it shows us how different the soldiers are.
It's a sober movie. Filmed at the front line, with images never before seen from the actual war in Afgahnistan. Beautiful camera work, sublime editing makes this a very good documentary.
EDIT: What I miss - and why I don't give it a 10: I am actually a bit surprised by what the soldiers do not say. In these circumstances I would expect a much more racist tone/humor. But there is hardly any of that. The few soldiers I have met in real life, have all had very complicated/nuanced/many faceted feelings towards the local culture: Admiration and disgust at the same time. I get the feeling that this movie have actually edited the worst lingo out of the movie. I think it would serve everyone good to know, that if a returned soldiers refer to someone as a camel-f***er - this is not always because that same soldier cant feel a deep respect for said camel-******* culture, customs, language and persona.
Also: A soldier 'snitches', and talks to his relatives back home, about a certain incident. Since everybody is talking about brotherhood in this movie, I would suspect that having a "snitch" in the brotherhood, has led to some interesting frustrations, misgivings and suspicions. This is not shown, which is disappointing.
But still: fantastic camera-work, and very sober war movie. 8/10
Some people seam to think this movie is an argument against the war. I beg to differ. This movie simply shows us what war sometimes is: Young men, without a clue about why, leaving their tearladen family to fight in a country far away. AT great personal cost. Sometimes the greatest. Maybe - something good will come out of it, even though it can seem hopeless.
The movie shows us the different coping strategies the soldiers uses. The sense of brotherhood, the porn, the adrenalin, the dark sarcastic humor. It shows us how the soldiers doesn't always have time to ask before shooting. And it shows us how different the soldiers are.
It's a sober movie. Filmed at the front line, with images never before seen from the actual war in Afgahnistan. Beautiful camera work, sublime editing makes this a very good documentary.
EDIT: What I miss - and why I don't give it a 10: I am actually a bit surprised by what the soldiers do not say. In these circumstances I would expect a much more racist tone/humor. But there is hardly any of that. The few soldiers I have met in real life, have all had very complicated/nuanced/many faceted feelings towards the local culture: Admiration and disgust at the same time. I get the feeling that this movie have actually edited the worst lingo out of the movie. I think it would serve everyone good to know, that if a returned soldiers refer to someone as a camel-f***er - this is not always because that same soldier cant feel a deep respect for said camel-******* culture, customs, language and persona.
Also: A soldier 'snitches', and talks to his relatives back home, about a certain incident. Since everybody is talking about brotherhood in this movie, I would suspect that having a "snitch" in the brotherhood, has led to some interesting frustrations, misgivings and suspicions. This is not shown, which is disappointing.
But still: fantastic camera-work, and very sober war movie. 8/10
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