Rahul Tyagi or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog

Oscar Nominations 2011

2011-01-25T09:55:00.000-05:00

The nominations were announced about half an hour ago, so here is the obligatory 'reaction post' (even though the equally obligatory 'my wishlist post' never made it beyond my facebook status message).

Delighted:

- for A R Rahman, of course. Twin nominations, once again! And this time it feels even better than 2009 because that year those nominations were almost inevitable, unlike this year. 127 Hours lost a lot of steam because a lot of people just weren't interested in watching it (the theme/story doesn't really make it an audience magnet). Also, right at the fag end of the year True Grit released and sort of pushed around some of the not-so-sure nominees out. I was afraid that 127 Hours might've missed the bus. But it didn't!!! :) Now I'm getting greedy. I actually am hopeful that he'll WIN one of these. Perhaps not for original score, but If I Rise must stand a very good chance!

- for Pixar, as usual. Best picture and Best animated feature were a given but I didn't think the screenplay would get the recognition. Moreover, I had completely forgotten about Day&Night being in the run for the best animated short.. so that was a pleasant news!

- for Jackie Weaver. Animal Kingdom was a movie well worth watching, and Jackie Weaver's performance essentially carries the movie through the extremely engaging last hour or so of the movie. Ben Mendelsohn was actually really good too, but one can't have everything!

- for Winter's Bone. 4 of the biggest nomination categories!! Picture, actress, supporting actor and screenplay! It was a pleasant surprise to see that people remembered this small movie even though it was released way back in the summer. (unlike The Ghost Writer, which released pretty early in the year and was completely forgotten)

- for The Kids Are All Right. see 'Winter's Bone'. except that this actually did release closer to the oscar season, and hence wasn't really a surprise.

- for Javier Bardem. Haven't seen the movie yet, but I'm always delighted whenever a performance in a foreign language movie gets such attention. He missed out on a nomination for Mar Adentro, but perhaps this will be his year again (after Anton Chigurh got him a well deserved oscar). Then again, Colin Firth (or James Franco) might have something to say about that..

- for all the obvious nominations of The Social Network and Inception. There's no way they were going to miss out on the obvious ones like best picture, screenplay, music etc... Then again.....

Sad/Dejected/Disappointed

- for Nolan. now THIS I didn't see coming. He has never been nominated for direction before (actually, before today he had only 1 nomination.. for Memento's screenplay), but this should really have been his. The guy has had an astounding decade. I think they will soon give him a lifetime achievement award (at age 45!) to atone for all these sins.

- for Inception editing! If anything could be even more disappointing and puzzling than the Nolan snub, it had to this! Inception, NOT nominated for editing! I have no idea what to think. I REALLY need to see those other movies.

Trailer Park 3

2010-07-18T04:56:00.002-04:00

Let's start with Frieda Pinto... Julian Schnabel... and Bombay Theme!

One for fun....

And the rest.... interesting for one reason or another...

2010... the awards so far...

2010-07-16T12:54:00.001-04:00

I have seen Inception only about an hour ago, so clearly this post will be unduly colored because of that. But that's ok.. we'll not consider this my "movies of first half of 2010" post, but a part of my "let me salute Inception" posts.. :)

Note: the foreign Language movies are mostly of 2009, but got proper US releases only in 2010. so....

so.....

Best Supporting Actor: John Hawkes (Winter's Bone), Guillermo Francella (The Secret in their Eyes), and Niels Arestrup (Un Prophete)
special mentions: Pablo Rago (The Secret in their Eyes), Nana Patekar (Raajneeti)

Best Supporting Actress: Priyamani (Raavan/Raavanan) and Olivia Williams (The Ghost Writer)
special mentions: Soledad Villamil (The Secret in their Eyes), Dale Dickey (Winter's Bone), Ellen Page (Inception) (well, she looked great.. and we KNOW she is a great actress... didn't have to do all that much here though.. still, they are my awards, aren't they? :P which reminds me.. I think I'll give one to Marion Cotillard too!!)

Best Actor: Tahar Rahim (Un Prophete)
special mentions: Leonardo DiCaprio (Shutter Island/Inception), Filippo Timi (Vincere), Naseeruddin Shah (Ishqiya), Vikram (Raavanan)

Best Actress: Jennifer Lawrence (Winter's Bone) and Giovanna Mezzogiorno (Vincere)
special mentions: Noomi Rapace (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), Vidya Balan (Ishqiya), Hye-Ja Kim (Mother)

Best Screenplay: Christopher Nolan (Inception)
special mentions: Michael Arndt (Toy Story 3), Park/Bong (Mother), Sacheri/Campanella (The Secret in their Eyes)

Best Director: Christopher Nolan (Inception)
special mentions: Roman Polanski (The Ghost Writer), Debra Granik (Winter's Bone), Michael Haneke (The White Ribbon), Juan José Campanella (The Secret in their Eyes)

Best Picture: Inception
special mention: Toy Story 3
slightly less special mentions: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Secret in their Eyes, Vincere, The Secret of Kells
ohh.. and some more: Mother, Winter's Bone, Ishqiya, The Ghost Writer, Shutter Island

ohh.. wait.. Best Picture isn't the last award here.. I have another...

Master of Rahul's Movie Universe: Christopher Nolan :) :)

Update:

After seeing Inception second time....

I'm replacing Ellen Page with Marion Cotillard in best supporting actress... :)

Also... needless to say, Inception takes all the technical awards... Best Editing, Best Sound Design, Best Visual Effects, Best Music Score (a very special mention to Toy Story 3 but, really, Inception's score is something else entirely), and maybe even Best Cinematography (with Shutter Island and The White Ribbon giving it tough competition... perhaps even sharing the award).

Trailer Park -2 (The animation edition)

2010-07-04T15:34:00.001-04:00

Some pretty good trailers of upcoming animated features. All of the movies might not turn out to be great, but definitely all of them do look promising to some extent.

Trailer Park -1

2010-06-30T02:10:00.000-04:00

Ok, this is a new series by me. I'll post, for the busy world's benefit, any trailers of upcoming movies that I find interesting. Some of these would be great trailers of movies that will eventually turn out to be crap. Some others will probably be crappy trailers of the movies that I have high hopes for. Hopefully there will be none that even I won't have an idea about why I posted them. Hopefully. We'll see.

So, here goes, sans any comment (and in no particular order of interest)...

Ratnam Remixes Ramayana

2010-06-25T06:57:00.002-04:00

By the time I went to catch a show of Raavan, it had already been mauled by almost everyone online. The good reviews, and I have seen many of them now, came much after I myself had seen the movie, one of them, from my favorite indian movie critic, Baradwaj Rangan. It is still easily one of Mani's worst reviewed movies yet. Dil Se had about as bad reviews as this, as I'm sure Thiruda Thiruda would've had. I don't remember how much I liked Thiruda Thiruda, but I really do like Dil Se even though the last half an hour or so is quite cringe-worthy. I have met some people who like Dil Se and don't know/remember that it got some pretty bad reviews; I've also met people who didn't see Dil Se when it released because of the universal jeers it seemed to be getting in the media at the time, but caught it on TV later and wondered why anyone would consider it to be so bad. That was the hope I was holding on to when I went to see Raavan. The hope that while some of the bad reviews might be from critics who really don't share my taste anyway, at least some of the others might be overcritical for the simple reason that this is a Mani Ratnam movie and you *do* expect him to do better than this. The rating at allbollywood was about 50% which doesn't make it the worst movie ever (it makes it about the 10th best movie of 2010 so far with reasonable number of reviews considered), it certainly is much lower than what I normally consider to be my threshold for being "worthy of a watch". Also, MNIK is 74% and Raajneeti 62%, and I considered the former to be just about watchable, the latter entirely forgettable, making Raavan sound like a horrible movie that would be unbearable to me.

All I'm saying is that I was hardly expecting that I'll be going to see this one twice.

Now, lest you assume that my watching the movie twice means that I really liked it, let me explain my "watching twice" philosophy to you. There was a time I watched almost every movie more than once before forming any stable opinion on it. But that time was long, long ago. Still, I found that there are some kind of movies that are likely to improve on second viewing - movies that are obviously "have to see it again to really get everything in it" type like The Usual Suspects, and the movies that seem annoying/awkward because of unexpected/unfamiliar/difficult stylistic choices. The latter includes films that are partially or fully slower than one expected (2001 A Space Oddysey, Dekalog etc), unfamiliar style (early kurosawa, Farewell My Concubine etc), off-putting yet intentional pace inconsistencies (Kill Bill, Rang De Basanti etc). What happens is that the first time these things happen, I'm not really prepared for them and they affect my overall enjoyment of other things that actually might've been better than I thought. Once you have already seen the movie, you know what is coming and it doesn't bother you that much. So, unlike Raajneeti where the bad parts were just bad content and not style and the good parts weren't good enough to merit a second watch, Raavan seemed a perfect candidate for being such a movie. Not that it improved to the level of being a really good movie, but certainly some of the worst things seemed much less bothersome. What were these things? Read on...

I am still to make up my mind as to what really killed this movie. There are many candidates.

A screeching Aishwarya in about 30% of her scenes that happen to be mostly in the first half. I can understand that it might've seemed a good thing to make Aish scream in a hoarse voice indicating her tortured and agitated state, but it certainly didn't translate on the screen as well as it might've been on paper. It just seemed annoying.
Abhishek's way over-the-top "mad Raavan" act in about a similar fraction of his act that was just plain annoying and unintentionally funny. Again, it probably seemed a good idea to justify the title "Raavan" by making it "ten heads.. as in ten different ideas running in the mind simultaneously" thing, but things like that are very hard to show on screen, unless you have a really charismatic performer to carry them through. Expecting Abhishek to do a Gabbar, a Joker or a Jack Torrence is hardly fair on the guy.. that sort of thing is just not his strength. I can see a Manoj Bajpai do wonders with this role.. even Madhavan would've probably made this work.... Anyway, I hear Vikram is able to bring much more physicality to the role much more convincingly in Raavanan. That itself should make the movie better by some margin for me.
Almost complete lack of "action" in the first half, and by action I mean worthwhile forward motion of the story... it is completely replaced by what we normally consider "action" sequences.. they just don't go anywhere. The way these action scenes are shot, it makes one think (and expect) that things are moving very fast but when you think about it, all that we are being shown are glimpses of a random "search in the jungle" with all the important parts of the story happening off the screen where Ragini must've done some seriously impressive stuff to muddle Beera's mind so much. I know that everyone can imagine their own effective stories about how exactly did things change in the minds of Beera and Ragini, but surely you can't blame the audience to not feel for your characters if they don't really see them doing much. This is even more frustrating because this is exactly the sort of thing that I love about Mani - two characters interacting.. playing with each other with just dialogue. As wonderful as all those jungle scenes with Dev running around look, all that time could easily have been used to use 10 pages of interesting lines for Ragini and Beera to speak.
Speaking of which, the lines that WERE spoken had hardly anything engaging about them. And this, I think, might be the single biggest factor in making the movie such a bland experience. Look at any Quentin Tarantino movie and you know that a scene doesn't necessarily HAVE to move the overall story forward for it to be interesting. All you need is some wonderful writing, and I don't mind one bit what it might be adding to the overall picture. The dialogue is one of the best things about Mani's movies. Even if some of the charm probably gets lost in subtitles, they are still pretty good. Dil Se and Yuva had some interesting writing by Tigmanshu Dhulia and Anurag Kashyap respectively and even Guru (with Hindi dialogue by the same Vijay Krishna Acharya who worked on Raavan) was actually pretty engaging througout (other than the silly climax, of course). Raavan, on the other hand, is full of simplistic, banal dialogue. It is perhaps difficult to separate banal acting with banal dialogue, and perhaps the same words would've worked had the performances worked, but I do think that they really needed some better lines here.

Phew!! Ok, so much for things that didn't work. Why did I go to see it again, then? Well... mainly because the second half seemed so much better than the first half. The first half just seemed so uneven, that I thought maybe the unevenness will be less bothersome the second time and it will make for an overall better feeling. More importantly, there were some truly good things going on. Like I said, the good things in Raajneeti were not good enough for me to want to see them again.. unlike that, the good things here were actually really good and I really wanted to see them again. So, the good stuff....

The beginning!! The 4-5 min long sequence that comes before the opening credits is a really, REALLY great piece of cinema. It reminded me of Godfather at times, and that can never be a bad thing. Perhaps it helped that VKAcharya didn't have anything to do in that sequence as it is almost entirely devoid of spoken words. This is as good an opening to the movie as one could've expected.
The photography! This one is a seriously good looking movie, even from Ratnam/Sivan standards. Ratnam has set almost the entire movie in and around jungles and waterfalls and that makes for some truly wonderful frames right from the first scene to the last. So much so that I think I would've enjoyed this movie more if it had been on mute! :D
The songs. This isn't even close to being one of Rahman/Ratnam's best collaboration, and for once Mani seems quite uninterested in spending too much time on songs. But, in this case, even a less-than-interested Mani is good enough to give some good songs/picturizations. The album itself is good enough, specially if you add the "Jaa, ud jaa re" to it, but most of the songs actually seem that much better on screen. Kata Kata, Behne De and Khili Re all worked pretty well for me... Khili Re, specially, is really well choreographed. Surprisingly, I didn't even mind "Thhok De Killi" in the movie. The song hadn't really worked for me before.. the trailer actually made it worse, but, for some reason, it doesn't seem bad at all during the movie. Perhaps it is positioned well. Or perhaps it just seemed better in comparison with some things in the first half. :D "Jaa, ud jaa re" is a pretty haunting song and it is used pretty well in the movie too.
Some memorable scenes which are vintage Mani. One scene, in particular, reminded me of something from Dil Se.. Abhi and Ash talking while he is on a boat, rotating all the while.. There are scenes in Dil Se where a similar thing happens. The actors are talking, and something goes on in the background that doesn't really have to. You could have Amar and Meghna saying the same lines without that woman continuing to pound whatever it is she was trying to pound in the background... or when they are talking in the AIR office when people are walking past and the door in the background keeps opening and closing... these things dont have to be there at all.. and are perhaps pretty distracting for some people... but the effect is memorable.. I might not remember anything about what they were talking about in those scenes, but I will never forget the visuals that were quite beautiful and distinctive...
The whole flashback with Priyamani works really well. The credit should probably go to her charming and convincing performance. That part of the movie is probably the only part where I actually cared for the characters on screen.
Govinda in some of his scenes, and Ravi Kishan throughout are quite good. Even the guy who plays the other brother of Raavan (Vibhishan?) was good, even though he only had 2 notable scenes. I think Ravi Kishan's convincing portrayal actually makes you realize even more how much better Raavan's role could've been done. While Abhishek seems adequate in most of the scenes where he doesn't have to do the 'mad Raavan' bit, you still find it hard to believe that he and Ravi Kishan's character are brothers. Ravi Kishan brings a certain earthy/rustic quality to his role that is just not there in Abhishek's performance. As for Govinda, they really could've done without the referencing Hanuman bit in his intro scene but I don't quite mind that as much as many people seem to have.

Which brings me to another point. I think some people were turned off by what they think were "literal adaptations" of Ramayana scenes, just like the Hanuman scene, but it didn't seem all that bad to me. I felt most of those things were actually tongue-in-cheek references to the epic rather than trying to force some direct references to remind people that it is Ramayana after all. Surely, it seemed to bother me to during the first watch, but something changed the second time round. And it wasn't just that I already knew that they were there. (Now what follows in this paragraph is full of big SPOILERS, so please don't read it if you havent seen the movie... ) I think that by the time this movie ended, it seemed pretty clear to me that Raavan is not a typical anti-hero here. There is nothing that they show Raavan doing which would make you think that he is the bad guy (well, almost nothing) and there is nothing that Dev does that might make him a hero. You sort of go in with those expectations because you know your Ramayana, and because Ratnam seems to confirm those assumptions by making Dev a cop and Raavan an outlaw. But, really, this is a movie where Dev really is the villain and Raavan is the hero. Seeing the movie again from this perspective actually made things much better, including the fact that I now wasn't thinking that I am watching an "adaptation of Ramayan", but more like a normal hero-villain story with some tongue-in-cheek story and character references to Ramayan thrown in. While Hanuman jumping around in the trees and the 14 days/14hours/14 min thing are direct references, almost every other reference is actually twisted around to make them interesting, rather than boring. The polygraph test reference that just seems horribly forced the first time around actually seems rather clever way of using audience expectations to hide what the real meaning of the scene is. Every other time when one sees the Ramayan parallel, Ratnam twists your expectations to make things unpredictable. Hanuman goes to meet Sita and gets caught? Next must be him giving them a slip by something like "burning the Lanka"? Nope... Ram finds an injured Jatayu on the way? He'll tend to him.. be nice to him? Nope... Vibhishan goes to meet Ram? He'll probably join them or help them in any way? Nope... Ram, the villain of this story, is never more villainous as in that scene.. Even the Surpanakha's nose thing was put in quite convincingly with her mocking the cops by saying "police ke kutte" and sniffing pointedly...

So... so many good things and bad things.. where does the balance lie? I think probably towards negatives. Raja Sen, at the end of his review, says something that I agree with.. "Raavan's deadliest sin, however, isn't in the clumsy dialogue, hammy acting or lame, oversimplified adaptation. All of that can be forgiven if the tale engages us". And that is very true. For all of the good things going on, I really was just sitting there are watching things quite passively. If only the Raavan-Ragini-Dev trio could generate in me any sort of emotion at all, this would've been a pretty good movie. But they didn't, so it isn't. I've heard good things about Raavanan, so I'm looking forward to it. But this one will be added to the list of disappointments. What else can a movie like this be, coming from the people who made Iruvar?? Does that make it a bad movie? Nope. Not even close. There are quite a few redeeming features that are way better than most other one-tone banal movies around.

I haven't seen "Robin Hood", so that part excepted, my feelings about Raavan are exactly what Richard Corliss says at the end of his review in Time: As a showcase for some of Indian cinema's most renowned talents, Raavan has to be considered a disappointment. But as a big summer epic about a forest bandit, hey — it's better than the Russell Crowe Robin Hood. And, thanks to A.R. Rahman's infectious songs, this one you can dance to.

Two down, one to go...

2010-06-19T19:20:00.001-04:00

Summer, to me, meant three movies. Two of them released on the same day and, in a flash, 2/3rd of the summer is over. Verdict? Mixed, so far... Read on...

Toy Story 3 (and Day & Night) :

Out of the three movies, this one I was least excited about. I know I shouldn't have been. It is Pixar, after all. Still, a part of me was never quite convinced that Pixar could do what Godfather and Star Wars couldn't - come back after decade(s) to make a worthy sequel. Specially, because this TS3 seemed to be a consequence of Disney taking over Pixar. One could never be sure of what direction things will be going. Is is just Disney forcing Pixar into their usual 'make box-office-hay while the sequel-sun shines' model or did the Pixar wizards REALLY have something Pixar-worthy to offer? After all, the other sequel in the pipeline is Cars 2!!! What other reason can they have to go back and make a sequel to the only Pixar movie that seems to be less than adored by everyone other than model-car loving toddlers and the merchandizing-loving Disney execs. If that is not a Disney finance-driven decision, I don't know what is. And yet, isn't this exactly what I had thought when Miramax had announced that "Quentin Tarantino's Fourth Film Kill Bill" was actually going to be "Quentin Tarantino's New Films Kill Bill Vol 1 & Vol 2". We were all cynical about it and chuckled when Quentin said "it really makes complete sense. This is a creative decision." Turned out, they were right all along. How can anyone even imagine combining KB1 and KB2 now? We learned that there are some things we should take on faith. When QT says something, listen. And if there is one thing you can have full faith in, it is that Pixar never fails. It just does not. Nope. Not possible. Having said that I am still apprehensive about Cars 2, but if TS3 is anything to go by, I need not be.

One of the reasons I was apprehensive about TS3 was that I have never really been as much a fan of the Toy Story movies as almost every other Pixar movie (other than Cars, and perhaps A Bug's Life). And I have never really understood why that is so. Every time I see TS or TS2, I end up thinking "hmm.. this was really entertaining.. why do I not seem to love this as much as the others"? I think the reason is that as good as they are, they are still probably the closest Pixar comes to making a Dreamworks' like movie. You know, an action/adventure/comedy movie targeted mainly to kids that seems to be full of pop culture references a la Shrek. The problem with that is that as great as you might make it, you can perhaps give me full paisa-vasool entertainment for my money, but you are never really going to touch the greatness reached by things like the "Carl and Ellie's life together" sequence in Up or the entire cute, touching, astounding first hour of WALL-E.. or the scarcely believable decision to make "critique of critics" sequence the climax of Ratatouille. Now, THAT is what Pixar can do. To me, the least impressive parts of Pixar movies are those fast paced action/adventure parts that they do as well as anyone else, but doesn't make them stand out in any manner. The "run from the pack of dogs" sequence in Up, the "malfunctioning robots spreading chaos in Axiom" in WALL-E.. the "chase among the thousand doors" in Monsters Inc.. the climactic battle in The Incredibles, etc. And Toy Story movies, as well as they are made, seem to always leave the impression in my mind that they are almost entirely full of just these sequences. And I find that I am wrong every time I see them again. Perhaps the other things aren't as memorable in them as in other movies. Anyway, the bottomline is, Pixar has made another Toy Story movie and it has done it as well as the first two.. maybe even better. This one is, again, just a REALLY well made and entertaining action/adventure/fun movie for about 70% of its length but it ends on a note that makes it entirely worthy of those other great Pixar movies. For about 70% of its length it seems another great Toy Story movie (and that itself isn't something easy to do... how many movies do we know where the essential charm doesn't completely vanish after the first sequel?), but what they do with the last 15-20 minutes took my breath away. And I came out of the theater entirely satisfied, and appropriately ashamed of my lack of faith in Pixar.

This isn't a review. It wasn't meant to be. It doesn't have to be. After all, all of you are going to see it anyway, aren't you? :) Rest assured that if you liked the first two, there is absolutely no way that you aren't going to love this one too.

Oh... and there is also the small matter of catching one of their cutest short films. Day & Night is as good as most other Pixar shorts (which makes it a masterpiece :P). Go, watch NOW!

Coming up next... How Mani made a disconcerting movie that seemed bad enough for me not to recommend it to others and yet intriguing enough for me to want to go and see it again....

My favorite optical illusions

2010-05-27T20:21:00.000-04:00

A post on the other blog inspired me to post some of my favorite optical illusions. Here...

1) Same Color Illusion.

Look at the image above. Which of the squares A and B do you think is the darker shade of gray? A? Well, as it turns out in every such optical illusion, the answer is - None. They are the same shade. Exactly the same shade. :) The brain interprets the intensity based on the context. Ever wondered why sunspots are dark? As in, it's not as if those regions aren't bright and hot themselves, so why do they appear dark? It's because they are embedded in much hotter and brighter regions of the Sun. This is exactly what is happening here. A seems darker because it has light squares around it. B seems light because it is surrounded by dark squares. I feel that the strength of this particular image is in the fuzzy boundary of the cylinder's shadow. This means that B's shade merges into the light square's shade seamlessly fooling the brain into expecting that B must actually be the same shade as the light squares, only that they are slightly darker due to the shadow. But same as A? No way! well, it is. :) Perhaps the image below will help in visualizing it.

2) Blue or Green?

You know what's coming. But you can't believe it, can you? The spirals that are clearly blue and green are actually neither blue nor green, but a combination (RGB=0,255,150). i.e. they are EXACTLY the same color. unbelievable? I know. This one actually makes one forget the first illusion entirely. I mean, it was difficult to believe that one, but surely this is simply impossible? Well, copy it to paint/photoshop and see the RGB values. Or, just crop some pixels from the blue and green spirals without their pink/orange context and juxtapose them. Or, if you don't really have to do it yourself to believe it, just head on to this article at the badastronomy blog and see for yourself. This really is stunning.

3) Ok, this one is fun. Look at this one. Which direction is the (apparently nude, but I digress... ) spinning? Clockwise? Counter-clockwise?

No idea about copyright, but I found it here. Anyway, once you know your initial answer, look again. Perhaps looking at the shadow of the feet will do it the first time. The spinning direction flips instantly! It is actually much easier to flip the interpretation in your mind after you succeed in seeing it once. I can do it within 5-10 seconds now, and yet it is such a rush everytime it happens! :) Specially when I focus on her face. Suddenly the hair jumps from front to the back. :) I think this is essentially the same thing as flipping the 3-D interpretation of the Necker Cube in your mind. But, somehow this spinning girl makes it much more fun! :)

4) And now, the killer. Hollow mask illusion. I don't need to say anything as they say it all in the video.

Incredible, no? I have always wanted to have one of these masks at home. Specially this next one, with einstein. But it is definitely not worth 60 dollars....

Do you have any favorite illusions? Do share in comments.

Kata Kata

2010-05-27T20:18:00.003-04:00

New trailer for Raavan. This is actually surprisingly good. Surprisingly, because I was apprehensive about this song picturization.I was thinking something on the lines of "Ek lo ek muft", but this is actually pretty well done.

Cannes via Ebert

2010-05-17T04:50:00.003-04:00

Roger Ebert has been tweeting (and blogging) from Cannes, and I'm reading every word that he types, trying to fool myself into thinking that I am at Cannes myself. :) This post (and hopefully some other upcoming ones) is to suggest everyone else who might be interested and lukkha enough that following Ebert might be a pretty good way of keeping an eye on Cannes.

For those, who are interested but not lukkha, this post and others in the series will point to whatever I find interesting. If I am able to pique your curiosity about any particular movie etc, you can always head on to Ebert's blog later.

So far he has talked about a possible animated movie nomination for next year's oscar, a french movie by the maker of "The Triplets of Belleville" called The Illusionist; an english movie with a rather intriguing concept directed by Hideo Nakata, the director of "The Ring", called Chatroom; the "Wall Street" sequel by Oliver Stone, called Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps; and a korean movie called The Housemaid.

Out of these The Housemaid seemed pretty interesting to me. Ebert mentions that some people are already speculating that it might be a frontrunner for Palme d'Or, though it is still quite early in the festival. Ebert's synopsis -

It takes place almost entirely within the huge modern house of a very rich man, and centers on the young woman he has hired as a nanny. It involves the man, his wife, his daughter, the older woman who runs his household, and the mothers of the wife and the nanny.
This is a house where living is an expensive form of art. The couple are smooth, calm, sophisticated. They value themselves very highly. The nanny forms a bind with their 7-year-old daughter, and assists the wife during a pregnancy with twins. More than that I choose not to specify.
But look at the mastery of the film's construction. The nuanced performances. The implacable deliberation of the plot. The way the house acts as a hothouse to force the growth of anger. And the film's unforgiving portrait of people damaged by great wealth. This is a thriller about the ideas people have of themselves.

The trailer is pretty exciting too. Thrilling, as the movie promises to be, with some pretty good music and interesting look.

This is another South Korean movie that seems exciting, after Mother that released earlier in the year and is one of the best movies that I have seen in 2010 so far. Hmmm... I should write about Mother one of these days...

Excitement++

2010-05-17T04:49:00.001-04:00

whoa!!! Nolan!!!

I started the summer with Inception and Raavan being my top 2 most anticipated movies. But with Raavan trailers decreasing my excitement a little, and with this trailer being so exciting, Inception is now officially the most anticipated movie of the summer for me.

Smiling lips and singing hearts

2010-05-03T16:31:00.002-04:00

I recently finished reading "Musicophilia" by Oliver Sacks, and I thought that a condition mentioned in one of the chapters is worth posting about here. It is called "Williams Syndrome".

In WS, certain anatomical features are underdeveloped or faulty. This includes certain facial features (you'll see them having unusually wide-eyed expressions), certain heart and artery muscles etc. More importantly, perhaps, specific parts of the brain are highly underdeveloped, while others are either overdeveloped or at least unusually dominate because the others parts aren't developed properly. The parts that are underdeveloped are the ones that have an important role in numerical/logical thinking and spatial sense. The parts that are often overdeveloped or seem to dominate are the ones that have roles in linguistic skills, social skills and apparently emotional impact of music (thats where "musicophilia" comes in).

So, people with WS are highly gregarious... extremely friendly and social with everyone.. they almost completely lack any social inhibitions, so that they seem to be completely comfortable in the presence of almost anyone, regardless of whether they are familiar with them. Moreover, they actually seem to enjoy such interactions and seem to be unusually clued-in to the emotional cues in other peoples behavior/facial expressions etc.

Their linguistic skills are almost always highly developed, making them highly articulate. This, along with their friendly/social nature means that you'll always find them having long, extended conversations with almost anyone. On the other hand, they find it extremely difficult to do even the most simple math problems. You could be talking on phone with someone who has WS and probably won't realize that anything is unusual (other than the person being unusually charming and friendly) until you ask him/her to tell you what 3+5 is. Chances are, they'll fumble through the problem and will probably only guess an answer, which will probably be wrong anyway. Lack of a normally developed spatial sense means that they find it hard to work with even simple geometric shapes (like the toys that toddlers play with) and can hardly draw even simple things like a triangle or a circle. In short, as Sacks says, they are almost anti-autistic in their characteristics.

Sacks talks about some people having WS that he has met. There are really interesting stories here. e.g. when one little girl's mom told her not to talk to strangers, she replied with "but there are no strangers, there are only friends"

Another girl he met (she was about 7-8 years of age) was so clued in to other people's facial features and was so completely uninhibited in front of strangers that she surprised him by sensing his slight diffidence and said promptly something like "don't be shy! I'll make some muffins for you". This, from a girl, who had never met Sacks before. Sacks had gone to her home to see her and was probably only about as inhibited as any of us would be when we go to someone's house for the first time (Well, some of us are probably more inhibited than others... my diffidence would probably be easy to sense for almost anyone. :P )

Anyway, so she went ahead and got some muffins for him. In some time, Sacks asked her (perhaps after covering the plate, though I am not sure) to guess how many muffins there were in the plate. She guessed, with some effort, "3". Then he asked her to go ahead and count them. She tried and counted them one by one and came up with 8. There were actually 13.

Another girl, a 15 year old, had an IQ of 49 - quite typical of people with WS. So, her average mental level was of around a 7-8 year old kid i.e. about a student of 2nd standard. But that doesn't mean, as I said before, that you'd be able to tell that by just talking to her. It's not as if they seem "retarted" in any sense. math/logic/spatial sense don't work properly, but they are exceptional in linguistics. They are highly articulate, which makes things difficult when they are in new company (difficult for them, sure, but also difficult for these new people). After all, none of us expect someone to be that articulate, YET having mental problems

Take this 15 year old girl with IQ 49. They asked her to tell them about what an elephant is. And her response, quoted below, is amazing in its detail. It is almost as if she is telling a story rather than answering a simple question :

"And what an elephant is, it is one of the animals. And what the elephant does, it lives in the jungle. It can also live in the zoo. And what it has, it has long gray ears, fan ears, ears that can blow in the wind. It has a long trunk that can pick up grass, or pick up hay… If they are in a bad mood it can be terrible…If the elephant gets mad it could stomp; it could charge. Sometimes elephants can charge. They have big long tusks. They can damage a car… It could be dangerous. When they're in a pinch, when they're in a bad mood it can be terrible. You don't want an elephant as a pet. You want a cat or a dog or a bird…"

So, to put it mildly, she knows something about what an elephant is. The amazing part is, after this, when they asked her to draw an elephant, this is what she drew -

(The labels were put by someone else to help others see what she might've been trying to make. She only made the figure.) Clearly, she knows about the fan like ears and tusks etc, but she can't draw any of those details at all.

The connection with music is pretty interesting actually.. all of them are strongly sensitive and emotionally attached to music. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that all of them are very good at playing music or singing (though a lot of them are). This is, as Sacks points out, quite unlike musical savants. Musical savants are almost finished articles. They will dazzle the whole world by their exceptional musical talents, yet, they might not necessarily derive as much pleasure out of music as a normal person around them. WS patients, however, invariably feel very strongly towards music.

This strong emotional connection to music, in combination with their completely uninhibited nature means that you'll find them merrily singing or whistling or playing music or swaying to music a lot of times. if you are walking on the road and they suddenly hear you even humming something they'll just smile broadly and will likely start singing along with joy. Some parents/guardians of a lot of WS patients decided to get a lot of together for a camp. Sacks describes what he saw at one of these camps and it sounds amazing. 15-20 people with WS - most, but not all, very young - sit together and talk to each other as if everyone is part of a close family. Talk about everything under the sun. And then, suddenly, someone starts humming and everyone joins in.. Some play their instruments, while others jump in and harmonize. Some just let their bodies follow the rhythm. I'd say that it is pretty sad to know about this, but it's really difficult to feel that way after reading about their joy in these camps or, indeed, their connection to music.

Kelly and O'Connor

2010-05-03T16:30:00.000-04:00

My friends on the other blog were posting some classic english song videos. So I decided to post the one old classic song I always think of when I think of old classic songs.. :) presenting... Gene Kelly.. Singin' in the Rain.

Gene Kelly - I'm Singing in the Rain
Uploaded by goldrausch. - See the latest featured music videos.

And while looking for that I ran into another amazing video from this movie. What physical talent, this O'Connor!! see this if you haven't seen the movie (starting from about 2 min, I think, if you don't have those extra 2 min to spare).

Singin In The Rain Donald O'connor Lyrics, Make Em Laugh
Uploaded by musical-films. - Click for more funny videos.

Raavan Day 1 - disappointing

2010-04-24T05:58:00.000-04:00

Ok, let me be clear. Disappointing only because this is Mani/Rahman/Gulzar. Disappointing in the same sense as Guru's music was a disappointment. After all, a Mani/Rahman album has no business having "Ek lo ek muft" and "Baazi laga" in it. Then again, every other song except those two were thoroughly deserving of being there. It is somewhat similar with Raavan too. I must say, though, that this is just the first day impressions. Chances are that a week from now I'll be posting "what was I thinking? Raavan! disappointing?"

Anyway, here is a mini-review.. just some thoughts on the songs...

1) Beera Beera : Fabulous song! The shortest song in the album, but carries the maximum punch. They thought of putting an "african" song for a maoist's introduction! well, maybe the "jungle" connection is there. The reason I call it "african" is because if I filter the lyrics and pretend that I am not listening to something in Hindi I can clearly hear something from one of the south african countries. :) The vocals by Mustafa Kutoane add so much to the song. Can't wait to hear this in ARR's voice in Tamil.

9.5/10

2) Behne De : Starts with a background of music that feels just heavenly. And then Karthik starts singing. wow! pretty good soft, slowish romantic song. The only drawback, if you can call it that, is that it seems to follow pretty much standard ARR soft song script. Makes me think of Bhoola Tujhe .But then that's not a bad thing. Also, I have absolutely no doubt that when I listen to it with more attention, I'll find little instrumental/melodic gems throughout that will be completely uniquely of this song. This IS the sort of song that ARR seems to "polish" a lot to satiate his thirst for innovation.

9.2/10

3) Thok De Killi : This is the "Ek lo ek muft" of this album. perhaps better than that, but still doesn't work for me at all. At least not till now. I noticed some instrumental turns etc that were engaging but overall this is what the cliche "situational song, will work in the movie" is used for. The song talks about this group (maoists) talking about "Dilli" thinking them as "pichhda huaa" etc. I don't see how something like this will work in the form of a song. Then again, perhaps a better song would've made it work. After all, "Chale Chalo" is such an anachronism for the time in which it is set in, yet it works beautifully because it is such a great song. This is just disappointing. I don't see it improving even in Tamil, but I hope it surprises me.

5.5/10

4) Ranjha Ranjha : Do I like this so much because it comes right after Thok De Killi? :) I don't know why, but I find it really seductive. Not that it is terribly original, just like Behne De. Reminds me of Taal's songs. Something in between "Ramta jogi" and "Kahin aag lage". And from recent songs, very reminiscent of Blue's "Yaar mila tha". It has something to do with the structure (female and male voices alternating... conversing in the song), but it's not just. There is something to do with the way rhythm seems just that bit off-expected lines and the way words seem to seem to follow the contours of the rhythm. Needless to say, Rekha Bhardwaj gives the song her own unique flavor. And it is always a pleasure to hear Javed Ali's silk-smooth vocals. As for my 'not terribly original' comment, that doesn't apply to the instrumentals going on here. ARR seems to be having a lot of fun playing around with things in this song. Then again, even THAT isn't unexpected. He can't help it. :D Good for us, I say! :)

8.8/10

5) Khili Re : Remember what ARR did to Ghazals in Tehzeeb? The singer is singing a perfectly "Ghazalish" Ghazal and ARR just adds modern instruments in the background that seemed so awkward in the first hearing. It definitely grew on me later and I actually liked what he had tried to do there. I think this is exactly the case here. Try to filter the instruments, and this seems another of his devotional melodious numbers that I have a weakness for. "Man mohana" didn't engage a lot of people but I thought it was really amazing. I could never resist its charm even though it is really such a simple bhajan. That is also true for "O paalanhaare". Trouble is, the instruments are doing something completely different here. This is ARR's Tehzeeb moment in this album, though much more subtle than that album. What that does is it makes the song seem ok, but there seems something awkward about it, something amiss. That's why what I think as of now is that it is 'sweet, but not nice enough'. However, I think there is a very good chance that this one is going to grow on me later. As of right now, the rating is..

7.9/10

6) Kata Kata : The start is absolutely wow! It is almost as catchy as Beera Beera! I have caught myself singing the first line of this song almost as much as Beera Beera since I heard the samples for the first time 3-4 days ago. But then, it sort of derails. And I suspect it has a lot to do with the lyrics here. Not the meaning of the words, per se, but the flow. Something tells me that this one was composed with Tamil lyrics first and they just couldn't do a good enough job of writing lyrics in Hindi that'd have gelled well with the flow of the song. If that's the case, this will gain a lot from a hearing in Tamil. in any case, i have noticed that I don't particularly care for hindi songs with "aunty ji chorus" :D Basically all the wedding type songs where some women are teasing the bride/groom. There is something about it that I don't like. But this only happens in hindi. I can think of a lot of tamil songs that haven't been dubbed in hindi which have similar chorus but I don't mind that at all. I am really hopeful that this song will gain a lot in its Tamil version. Like I said, overall, the rhythm is really, really good/catchy. It might catch on with junta. then again, it seems that this will be picturized like Ek lo ek muft, with the whole village dancing around (Mani seems to like this a lot). I don't see that being particularly junta-entrancing. Hopefully I'm wrong.

7.7/10

So, that's the first-day impressions. The reason i said it is disappointing is because one of the songs is just a complete let-down and two others are, as of now, not Mani/Rahman level. While the other three are really good, I think the sum of Barso re megha, Tere Bina, Ae Hairate, Jaage Hain and Mayya Mayya has to be higher than these. AND Guru wasn't even close to being one of ARR/Mani's best albums. So....

Tamil ARR songs for a non-Tamil.

2010-04-21T21:00:00.000-04:00

A friend of GG asked her to get me to send her some Tamil songs that she might like. She hasn't heard many Tamil songs before and GG tells me that she tends to like Slow/Soothing/melodious kind of songs in general (not that she doesn't like any fast paced ones.. just that if I have to make a small list, I'd do well to choose slowish songs).

So, I spent half an hour browsing through my ARR tamil albums and making a list of about 25 songs. That sounded too many, specially for someone who might not have heard many songs in a language she doesn't understand. So, Pesc suggested pruning it down to about 10, and sending the list in a mail with some comments about them. I had to take some gems out because of various reasons. I didn't wish to include any song that has already been dubbed in Hindi as there'd be a high chance she'd already have heard them. (Still, one of them is in the list... ). Also, there are some songs that I find it difficult to decide whether the movie/picturization etc add a lot to my love for them. If I suspected that, I struck them out too.

So, here are the 10.... well, 11 actually, since I added one right at the end probably because my media player decided to play that one right when i was about to send the mail and I just could not get myself to ignore it!! :) The resulting mail follows..

Nice... Soft.. Soothing... Melodious...

well.. almost all.. some of these are fast/non-soothing. But ab list mein daal diya to daal diya.. :P

So, here is the list, roughly in the decreasing order of priority.. i.e. listen to the top one first.

1) Vellai Pookal from Kannathil Mutthamittal: very soothing. Awesome song from a great movie. one of the best songs sung by ARR himself, and that's saying a LOT.
2) New York from Jillonu Oru Kaadhal: very melodious. "All time favorite Rahman song" of my roommate. Again, ARR keeps an awesome song with his own voice. :)
3) Elay from Sakkarakatti: not slow/soft/soothing. reasonably fast, but great fun.
4) Ithuthan Kadhal Inbada (female) from Pudhiya Mugham: you might have heard this already in hindi. But even if you have, well worth a revisit in its original form. A beeyouuuutiful song.
5) Ennuyir Thozhiye from Kangalal Kaithu Sei: absolutely heavenly piano in the interludes. That part itself makes this a great song.
6) Sonnalum from Kaadhal Virus: I think I especially like songs with slight Carnatic classical touch. and ARR obliges with a lot of melodious songs that have just that tiny classical touch to them yet seem so far away from classical finally. And the chorus here is to die for.
7) Enna Solla Pogirai from Kandukondain Kandukondain: Not slow/soothing but one of the most popular songs from one of his greatest albums. Shankar Mahadevan got a national award for singing this song. I could've blindly chosen almost any song from this album actually. went for the most catchy/popular.
8) Udhaya Udhaya from Udhaya: In many aspects it is like Sonnalum. a soft soothing duet.
9) En Veetu Thotatil from Gentleman: They lifted 3 songs from Gentleman without crediting Rahman, and left this gem. Perhaps because they thought it has too much of a "southie touch". They didn't know, of course, that soon that "southie touch" will take the nation by storm in Bombay/Hum Se Hai Muqabla etc... :)
10) Evano Oruvan from Alaipayuthey: Alaipayuthey was remade into Saathiya and they kept all the songs except two. One of them is this. I was aghast when I heard that they have composed a new song for this situation because, again, this is too "southie". Didn't mind in the end, because that new song was "Mera Yaar Mila De... Banjar hai sab banjar hai... ". Doesn't hurt to get another good new song, does it? :) But this one is definitely as good, if not slightly better. the female voice just melts me.. and the flute!! wow!!
11) Theekuruvil from Kangalal Kaithu Sei: Bonus song. not slow. not soothing at all. very fast actually. and perhaps a little difficult to like initially. But just keep an ear for the female singer's vocal acrobatics. What singing!!! very fun song, but really, it's the singer that makes this a must-listen.

I can see that I have written more about the songs that are actually lower in the list. :) Doesn't mean that the top ones weren't worth talking about. Just that I got into the flow of discussing in depth later in the list. :) sorry.

By the way, standard conditions apply. You are not allowed to hear any of these songs unless you are able (i.e. have the time) and willing (i.e. have the enthu) to give it 3 hearings. continuously. i.e. hear 1, then again hear 1, then AGAIN hear 1, before moving on to 2. Take as much time as you need before this condition can be met, but don't break it. Please.

And, no laptop speakers, of course. not even external speakers. good earphones/headphones are a must. :D

The youtube links are posted below, if anyone is interested but too lazy to find them him/herself. :)

Close your eyes for this next one. that is probably a good idea for all of these if you just want to enjoy the song without being distracted (positively, or negatively) by the video, but this one is actually not even the real video of the song. Someone took a song video of Anniyan and added the ARR song with it!

This poster rocks!!

2010-04-17T19:11:00.001-04:00

pic courtesy: Satyamshot

Woohooo!!!!!!!

2010-04-16T14:08:00.000-04:00

Raavan Tracklist is here... Yay!!!!

2010-04-14T22:40:00.000-04:00

Yay!!!! :) Though I wish this is incomplete. I want more songs!!!! :( Though, perhaps it is expected, I think most recent Mani movies have only 5-6 tracks, except Alaipayuthey/Saathiya. Still, hoping for some more tracks, if only instrumental themes.

Here is the list as given on bollywoodhungama.com

Behene De - Karthik
Beera Beera - Vijay Prakash
Kata Kata - Ila Arun, Sapna Awasthi & Kunal Ganjawala
Khilli Re - Reena Bhardwaj
Ranjha Ranjha - Rekha Bhardwaj & Javed Ali
Thok De Killi - Sukhwinder Singh

Hmmm... Reena AND Rekha Bhardwaj. Rekha is Palash and Vasudha's "Rekha bhabhi" of course (they consider Vishal Bhardwaj their spiritual brother). Reena must be the "Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlaata Hai" (Meenaxi) and "Main Vaari Vaari" (1857 - The Rising) woman.

Sapna "Chhaiyya Chhaiyya" Awasthi AND Ila Arun together!! Has THAT ever happened before? :D

Can never hurt to have Javed Ali sing one. And solos for Karthik and Sukhwinder sound promising too.

So, people, ARR season is here again. Yay!!!!

PS: just to be clear, the list is out, not the music!! Patience junta, patience!

(3) movies of summer

2010-04-12T21:07:00.002-04:00

Last week, in one of those free moments when I think about movies that I am waiting to watch, I began thinking of, well, the movies that I am waiting to watch. Specifically the movies that come out this summer. More specifically, the BIG movies that come out this summer (i.e., excluding all those smaller, independent/foreign language movies that I am more likely to see and like than most summer blockbusters). There are some like Iron Man-2, Robin Hood, Shrek- Forever After, Despicable Me etc that might turn out to be good, but I'm not really anticipating them nearly as much as the three listed below.

Toy Story - 3: Pixar. Probably no need to say more. :) Still, for some reason I'm not nearly as excited about this as I have been for every Pixar movie over last decade. Perhaps some part of me thinks that Pixar might compromise with their high standards in order to just continue the franchise. Then again, it's Pixar.. how bad can it be? :)

Raavan: Mani Ratnam. He hasn't really touched his erstwhile heights after Kannathil Mutthamittal, but Yuva/Ayitha Ezhuthu and Guru definitely had enough Mani moments to make them very good movies nevertheless. And, if nothing else, the music can't be anything less than phenomenal, can it? :)

No trailers yet. I heard that the first look promo will release this week (and the music within 2 weeks from now). If so, you'll find it here as soon as possible. :D

Inception: "What's the most resilient parasite? An idea". Christopher Nolan. two of his movies were part of my top 10 of the last decade. and Memento made it to the "just missed the top 10" list. His last movie is perhaps one of my all time favorites. The fact that it stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Marion Cotillard, Ellen Page and Michael Caine is merely delicious icing on what is without doubt a Christopher Nolan cake. Can't Wait!

PS: the title of this post refers to this, in case someone was wondering.

Brangan says it best...

2010-04-07T23:42:00.001-04:00

I completely relate with this sentiment on Brangan's blog today..

"I wonder ... if it’s a mere accident of profession that I’m able to easily endure — and be enlightened by– difficult movies, but fall into impatience with embarrassing quickness in the case of not-so-easy books. Would book critics feel the reverse, embracing arty books over art movies?"

For those who don't know who Brangan is - Baradwaj Rangan is easily my favorite movie critic from India. He is a writes reviews more as just a member of audience who is writing down his thoughts/feelings rather than an expert handing down movie-enlightenment to readers. This is exactly how it should be, IMO. But, more importantly, he is a superb writer.. so, it hardly ever matters whether you agree with his opinion of a particular movie or scene etc. It actually doesn't even matter whether you are interested in the movie at all, because the these reviews are pretty good pieces of writing in themselves. Again, that is exactly how it should be with any review IMO. So, to those who don't know rangan, and might be interested in movies etc, I introduce his blog Blogical Conclusion.

A tiny platform above the abyss.

2010-04-06T20:27:00.000-04:00

Clive Wearing contracted a virus in 1985, a virus that is pretty innocuous in most people (one of the many that give you sore throats for a few days) but changed his life forever. The virus infected his brain resulting in his getting one of the most severe cases of anterograde "Memento" amnesia known. He hasn't formed a new memory in last 25 years. Moreover, the virus also caused severe retrograde amnesia, meaning that a lot of his memories prior to 1985 also went away. A lot of times he seems to be living in 1960s, if you can call chunks of 7-30 seconds of life "living". That is the extent of his short term memory. Think about it. 7 seconds. What would it be like if everything in your mind gets erased in 7 seconds? It is not just a matter of not remembering what happened in his life at any time during last 25 years. As tragic as that is, one could still sort of imagine living the same day again and again if one has, say, half an hour window of memory... something like Memento. You wake up, you don't know where you are, you see your tattoos, you remember your wife was killed, you make notes, you make a plan that you might forget later but at least you can MAKE it. What can you do with 7 seconds?

He lives at a country residence with other similar "patients" with some caretakers. The caretakers encouraged him to write journals. Perhaps they thought it will give him something to do. Perhaps it would help in objectively following his progress. So, here is what you do with a 7-30 second memory. This is how his journal looks -

~~9:00 am - woke up after a long sleep.~~

~~9:15 am - just woke up~~

~~9:30 am - Really, overwhelmingly awake now~~

10:00am - just waking up, despite my other claims

That is about the extent of his thoughts most of the time. Seriously, how do you even complete a thought in 7 seconds? And if you can't, what does ANYTHING mean anymore? What does even "being you" mean?

Still, he has some memories of 40 years ago. Its not as if he has forgotten what the world around him means. And his procedural memory is intact. Which means that things that are part of a "habit" or "muscle memory", things that have become "ingrained" are accessible even if no "event memory" exists of anything since 1985. So, he talks. And he talks about the same things again and again. Because these are the only things that are accessible to him through his procedural memory. He'll talk about astronomy, Queen Victoria, electricity, etymology of words. But perhaps not a lot other than that. He'll throw in a joke. The same joke after every few minutes.It helps him to see that people around him can get the joke. It reassures him that he still has a connection with the world. He keeps talking from the same ingrained "scripts" to make a tiny platform of reality around his present because beyond that platform there is an abyss... nothingness stretching away... Thats what his wife calls it - "A tiny platform above the abyss".

And he plays music. He hasn't forgotten how to do that. Procedural memory. He even improvises while playing. He just doesn't remember that he had just played some music after he finishes. Or that he has made the same "improvisation" again and again perhaps.

And, he remembers, and still deeply loves, his wife Deborah. He remembers her even though the retrograde amnesia has taken almost all other memories from much before the time when he first met her. Oliver Sacks writes in his book "Musicophilia", where I found about Clive's case -

"... somehow he always recognized Deborah as his wife when she visited and felt moored by her presence, lost without her. He would rush to the door when he heard her voice, and embrace her with passionate, desperate fervor. Having no idea how long she had been away - since anything not in his immediate field of perception and attention would be lost, forgotten, within seconds - he seemed to feel that she, too, had been lost in the abyss of time, and so her "return" from the abyss seemed nothing short of miraculous."

Deborah writes, "Clive was constantly surrounded by strangers in a strange place, with no knowledge of where he was or what had happened to him. To catch sight of me was always a massive relief - to know that he was not alone, that I still cared, that I loved him, that I was there. Clive was terrified all the time. But I was his life, I was his lifeline. Every time he saw me, he would run to me, fall on me, sobbing, clinging."

How would it feel to be embraces with passionate, desperate fervor many times a day by someone who is honestly, sincerely, deeply in love with you. How would it feel to see in someone eyes that you were missed by with the intensity of a decades long separation.. how would it feel to see that every day.. every hour... every time he sees you. You are the only person on his tiny platform. You ARE his tiny platform. For 25 years.

The Oscar Post (Not!)

2010-03-07T13:02:00.010-05:00

Oscar day is here, and I just can't get myself excited enough to write about the awards today. Chances are that I might not feel like keeping this tradition alive in future, but lets try to continue the tradition this year too by posting *something* related to movies of last year. Since I haven't posted about my favorite movies of 2009 yet, what better time than today to do that? But first a list of movies that I didn't get to see, and are likely to be good enough to figure in the favorites list somewhere -

A Prophet

The Last Station

Where the Wild Things Are

Crazy Heart

Sin Nombre

The Maid

The Lovely Bones

The Messenger

The Blind Side

The Hangover

Zombieland

Some special mentions:

(500) Days of Summer: A story that had no business being charming, yet seems so due to the luminous Zooey Deschanel. Great cinematography, very easy on the eye.

Boond: A short film in Hindi about a futuristic Rajasthan where fresh water is a scarce commodity. Pretty good photography and mostly very engrossing.

Bright Star: A beautifully shot movie about Keats with a memorable turn by Abbie Cornish.

Coraline: A horror fantasy stop-motion animation that has unbelievable visuals (specially in 3-D). I still can't decide whether it is the imagination of Neil Gaiman or the work of the animators that give rise to the jaw-dropping visuals on the screen.

Dev.D: Too many songs in the first hour, in my opinion. But when the songs are as good as them, probably thats not all that bad.

District 9: A really well done sci-fi that does a lot of alien stuff pretty well, without losing any of its apartheid-referencing relevance. The action near the end became a bit monotonous and boring for me, though.

Gomorra: Another Traffic/Syriana clone, this time about a unique Italian underworld. Some of the stories weren't very engrossing, but still overall a very good movie.

Invictus: Morgan Freeman is worth the price of the ticket (or rental price). Matt Damon probably didn't do all that much to deserve that nomination, though.

Luck By Chance: A pleasantly surprising first movie by Zoya Akhtar. A simple, done-to-death story that still seemed so refreshing right through. Having Konkona can never hurt a movie, and Farhan looks like a natural in a role that had to have many shades.

Paa: Everything about this movie was pointing towards it being a disaster, except maybe the director. What seemed like a movie made just for the sake of the gimmick casting, poised to become nothing more than a disability tearjerker turned out to be a surprisingly charming movie with a thoroughly surprising lead performance by Amitabh.

A Single Man: Wow! What. A. Gorgeous. Movie. You can see the evidence of the eye of a great visual artist in scene after scene. As I said, Wow!

Ponyo: Hayao Miyazaki delights again by the sheer power of his imagination. While the world is going ga-ga over James Cameron's vision, I guess my tribute to Miyazaki is that to me Avatar's visuals made me think that Miyazaki would've made all this had he been enamored with visual effects rather than handmade animation.

The Road: A great performance by Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee, a great story, great photography. Something seemed missing in the way it all came together at times, but there were a lot of memorable sequences that make this a great movie nonetheless.

Which brings us to the top 15 of the year.

11-15) An Education, Avatar, The Damned United, Moon, Precious

An Education: All you remember at the end of this movie is the beautiful, beauuutiful Carey Mulligan and her performance. But there are enough other things to make this such a memorable movie.

Avatar: A great GREAT visual experience that was woefully let down by a cliched, barely adequate screenplay that was only an excuse to show those stunning visuals. James Cameron had an amazing vision and the knowhow and technology to bring it to fruition - to the tune of 2.5 billion dollars, and counting...

The Damned United: Every single movie I have seen of Michael Sheen, he has impressed me. A smallish sports movie that is less about sports and more about this man and his confidence, his arrogance, his ambition, his rise and his fall.

Moon: A very well made "hard" sci-fi with Sam Rockwell giving a really good performance and Kevin Spacey playing his version of HAL. What more do you need? :) Given that this was director Duncan Jones's first movie, I'm looking forward to his next (called "Source Code", I think).

Precious: Was perhaps a bit too sad at times but was full of amazing performances by so many actresses that I'd probably want to see it again just to see some of those performances.

7-10) 3 Idiots, Broken Embraces, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The White Ribbon

3 Idiots: Not nearly as good as Lage Raho Munnabhai, with a couple of sequences dragging and quite a few jokes that were familiar to most people already, but overall still very good. Definitely good enough to keep Hirani's reputation intact in my eyes. Lets hope he keeps up the great work.

Broken Embraces: There is no way one can mistake a Pedro Almodovar movie for anything else. A genuine auteur. And this is as good as any of his recent movies.

Fantastic Mr. Fox: This movie took me by a surprise. I knew it was supposed to be pretty good, with great reviews etc but I still didn't expect it to be so entertaining. Easily one of the most entertaining movies of the year.

The White Ribbon: As frustrating as Cache, and for exactly the same reason, but also just as memorable as that movie. Not quite as great for me as some of the reviews are saying ("best movie in decades"!) but a haunting movie nonetheless.

3-6) In the Loop, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Up in the Air

In the Loop: Another insanely entertaining movie. One of the funniest movies of the year. I'd have loved had they given the best original (or perhaps it should be adapted) screenplay of the year to this (well, either to this, or to Up... definitely not The Hurt Locker!). I described it as something like "an extended episode of Yes Minister written by The Office writers with a generous helping of profanity thrown in!"

The Hurt Locker: Didn't quite come together as a whole. Seemed like one thrilling episode after another without any overall arc to it. But those episodes were absolutely crackling! People keep talking about this being a war (anti-war?) movie while I actually see it as a thriller disguised as a war movie. And that is exactly how it worked. Some of those sequences are simple, irresistible cinema!

Inglourious Basterds: The opening chapter is one of the best short sequences written and shot by Quentin Tarantino. Totally worthy of its Kill Bill/Pulp Fiction ancestry. The rest of the movie doesn't quite live up to those lofty standards, but it still lives up to Quentin's name. Who would've expected a world war II movie that is as wordy as this? A movie about Nazis and Jews which talks about the great European directors and inflammable movie film? We knew Quentin will leave his mark on this "war" movie even though it is almost impossible to do things very differently in war movies, and yet, he just OWNS this turning it into something that had nothing to do with the war and everything to do with heroes and villains of Quentin's universe. If only it hadn't dragged in some places!

Up in the Air: Jason Reitman shows that Thank You For Smoking and Juno weren't flashes in the pan. A predominantly lighthearted movie about a serious issue that shines with the three leading performances. George Clooney never disappoints, of course, but the two ladies were both great too.

1,2) Kaminey, Up

Kaminey: Awefome! Fuperb! Vishal Bharadwaj jumped right to the top of the list of most exciting indian directors of today for me with Kaminey. He assimilated the essence of shakespeare and desi-fied those stories with so much creativity in Maqbool and Omkara and now he does the same thing to Quentin Tarantino/Guy Ritchie school. There are so many things that are so good in this that it seems like nitpicking to talk about the few sequences that probably didn't work all that well. Great music, great ensemble of actors, great screenplay. This is easily one of the best hindi movies of last many years.

Up: No point saying "Pixar does it again"... By now everyone expects them to come up with one astonishing movie after another. It will be front-page news when they next come up with a movie that is merely very good (though I'm afraid that the Toy Story - 3 trailers haven't quite won me over yet). Like their last few movies, this is also a great movie for an audience of any age almost throughout the first half or so before taking a sudden turn into children's adventure movie territory somewhere in the second half. That isn't necessarily a bad thing. After all, its not as if there are a lot of great children's adventure movies being made elsewhere. Still, like WALL-E, it is those portions that stops it from being as great as it could've been. The way this movie began, in its first half an hour or so, was just truly unbelievable. The little word-less sequence where Carl and Ellie's whole adult life passes on screen, set to a truly wonderful piece of music, is easily one of the most memorable sequences of all time. A great movie. Not just worthy of pixar's name, it actually enhances their resume. Now THAT is saying something.

2000-2009 : A shout-out to my favorite movies. Part 2

2010-01-10T21:20:00.001-05:00

The first part of the list is here.

For a small introduction to this list, see the post linked above. After having listed the 10 movies that almost made it to this list but had to be left out, we come today to my actual top-10 of the 2000s. As I told you, it is absolutely not possible to rank among these gems, and it isn't of any use either. Between these movies, the top is whichever I happen to have seen most recently! So, in alphabetical order...

City of God : Easily one of the best crime/gangster genre movie of all time. Absolutely perfect in every way. The screenplay, the cinematography, direction, performances, everything is just pitch perfect in what is essentially a movie just about guns, drugs and kids disguised as young men.

The Dark Knight : Oh, what more can I write about it. Chris Nolan took a superhero franchise and made a brilliant crime thriller out of it. A movie that easily holds its place among the best crime dramas, yet is as thrilling and exciting as any summer/holiday blockbusters you can think of. It came with some of the biggest hype you'd have seen for any movie and yet not just lived up to everyone's sky-high expectations, but went beyond it. The only question is, what will Nolan do when he has to return to Batman after Inception?? How on earth can he match this??

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind : So, how does someone with the screenplays of Being John Malkovich and Adaptation on his resume handle a love story? What can Charlie Kaufman do within the genre of romance without making it seem like the 20-a-year romcoms/romdramedies that are out there? He writes Eternal Sunshine! Who else could've written a mindbending sci-fi that twists usual guy-girl relationship story into something as funny, as sad, as engaging as Eternal Sunshine? And then they ask Kate Winslet to play Clementine! She adds her own sunshine to everything she touches anyway! :)

The Incredibles : While Up, Finding Nemo, and especially WALL-E, have some really astounding sequences, I think the Brad Bird movies were Pixar's pinnacle this decade. Irresistible fun from the first scene to last (except, maybe, some action sequences), Incredibles really was incredible! A friend was horrified when I had mentioned that I preferred The Incredibles over Million Dollar Baby that year, but now at the end of the decade I still find myself thinking the same thing. Clearly it wasn't just a fad. Over the years I have seen it probably 15 times, and it is just as entertaining as ever.

Kill Bill : After having teased us for years about his project which is the ultimate revenge movie.. his homage to martial art movies and B-grade westerns, Quentin finally gave us Kill Bill-1. And WHAT a treat to the senses it was. Right from the "Bang bang, my baby shot me down" opening through all those lady-in-yellow-decimating-the-crazy-88-killers and animated-back-story-of-O-Ren Ishii to the hyped up anticipation of the ultimate kick-ass villain 'Bill' at the end, Kill Bill-1 was an unforgettable experience. Next year he outdid himself by surpassing the impossible expectations that everyone had for his Bill. Can you think of ANY character that was as hyped up as Bill and yet surpassed it almost effortlessly by his charm and coolth, without really having to do anything other than talking?? Heath Ledger's Joker probably comes close in terms of impact. But that's about it! Also, Quentin kept saying all the while that the reason for splitting the movie in two wasn't business but creative, and everyone said a collective, cynical "yeah rrright!". But, in retrospect, he wasn't right all the while, wasn't he? These two are SUCH different movies and yet both work as well as the other.

The Lives of Others : Everyone was marveling at Pan's Labyrinth and had all but given the best foreign language feature awards to it when out of nowhere came this gem of a movie. An awesome spy-thriller that moves you better than most powerful dramas. Exactly HOW does someone make a movie like this as his first movie??

The Lord of the Rings : The trilogy that began the decade. And at the end of the century we'll probably be saying the same thing in the movies of 2000's lists. The star wars of our generation. Or maybe we'll have to say the Avatar of our generation to make the kids of early 2010s understand... hopefully they'll understand that the analogy is only in terms of the awesome pathbreaking visuals rather than the content itself, because nothing about Avatar comes close to the great work done by the writing/directing/acting team of LOTR movies. When I think back about these movies now, I don't just remember the Pillars of Argonath or the jaw-dropping Minas Tirith, but also Sam's monologue at the end of The Two Towers, and Pippin's sorrowful song forming the background score to Faramir's suicide mission, and all the funny banter between Gimli and Legolas... and (as NS reminds me) Miranda Otto's charm! :) when LOTR released, it was like no other movie before. Almost a decade from the release of the first movie, and after a decade full of wannabe costume/fantasy epics, it still remains so.

The Prestige : In the words of my phd advisor : "What a cool movie that was!!" :) Between reinventing Batman movies, Chris Nolan found some time to make this relatively smaller but just as enjoyable period/sci-fi/rivalry/revenge/mystery/thriller. If you haven't seen it yet, go and watch it NOW! So many wonderful scenes are playing in my mind's eye right now, so many quotes, and yet I can't think of a single one that won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it already. Whenever someone asks me for a recommendation for a good movie, I always have to ask them their favorite genre, some of their favorite movies etc to get some sense of their taste before I hazard any guess as to which movie they might like. The Prestige is one of an extremely tiny list of movies for which such questions seem entirely irrelevant. I have met people who have hated Lord of the Rings, The Departed.. people who haven't liked Kill Bill... who won't even give a chance to a movie because it is in a foreign laguage or was made before 1980, or is animation, or is one of those action/blockbuster kinds, or has a superhero.. or even if it seems too sad... Yet, I have not yet met a single soul who didn't like The Prestige. Not that finding someone like that would make me love it any less!! :)

Ratatouille : Brad Bird came to Pixar after making 'Iron Giant' and directed two insanely entertaining yet classy movies for them. Ratatouille followed immediately after The Incredibles and I simply could not believe that they had actually made something that made me seriously consider replacing The Incredibles as my favorite Pixar movie. The story of a rat who wants to be a chef that starts with a granny going berserk after rats in her attic and ends up making a point or two about professional art criticism? Just what else can these guys do?? Well, we know now that they can make a classic sci-fi story out of a love story between two robots with a combined vocabulary in single digits... or that they can make a movie for kids with a grumpy old man for a protagonist, showing a touching sequence about a miscarriage along the way.. seriously, what else can these guys do??

Snatch : Easily one of the funniest movies of all time. Guy Ritchie took Pulp Fiction, made it about an order of magnitude funnier, subtracted some of the serious violence stuff and made such rapid cuts that your head spins! But you don't mind because you are anyway rolling on the floor laughing your guts out. I know of people who didn't take my very strong advice of not watching this movie without subtitles and then wondering what all the fuss was about. so, I say it again. Don't miss a single word of this movie and you'll find yourself chuckling or laughing out loud months after having seen it. Pity Guy Ritchie never seemed to touch those heights again (I haven't seen any of those movies though.. perhaps it is time to check out Sherlock Holmes?)

In the end, some special mentions. These movies didn't make it to the top 20, but for some reason I have a feeling that that might be because I haven't seen some of them for a while and hence might've underrated them. These movies include -

Before Sunset, Downfall, Finding Nemo, Pan's Labyrinth, Pirates of the Caribbean : The Curse of the Black Pearl, Road to Perdition, Let the Right One In.

Also, there are movies that just came out this yar and I just got the opportunity to see them once and liked them a lot but wasn't sure whether I'll still be liking them as much after a second viewing or after waiting 2 years. I suspect, however, that at least some of these will stay with me 10 years down the line and probably will deserve to have a place in the 2000's list in retrospect. These movies are The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, and In the Loop. Also, The White Ribbon seems to be a potentially great movie of 2009 that I haven't had a chance to see yet.

2000-2009 : A shout-out to my favorite movies. Part 1

2010-01-09T03:05:00.001-05:00

It is pretty obvious that making a top-10 list for a whole decade is about an order of magnitude more difficult than doing it for a year. There are so many great movies that it hurts to leave some of them out, more than it feels good to acknowledge the best ones. There is, of course, no question of ranking among those that, for whatever reason, make the cut to the top list.

Any 'favorites' list is always highly time dependent anyway. If you ask me to make a list today, it will very likely look at least somewhat different than the same list made on any other day. Usually the difference lies near the bottom of the lists while the top is pretty robust. The problem with a decade-spanning list is that 20-30 movies probably deserve to be part of the robust top-list! That didn't stop me from going ahead and chopping the list at 10, anyway!

So, what I'll do today is to list those 10 movies that got chopped away just because I chose to stop the top list at 10. Every single one of these movies would probably have figured in one of those alternative top-1o lists that would've resulted had I chosen some other day to do the chopping.

The Just-Missed-The-Top-10 List (in alphabetical order)

2046: It doesn't look (or sound) nearly half as good on TV as it did on the big screen. But the impact of that one screening still lingers. When I see some of the most beautiful scenes of this movie on DVD, my mind instantly gets transported to that first viewing! Add in the little cameo by the brilliant Gong Li, and the coquettish turn by Zhang Ziyi, and the movie becomes all but irresistible for me. Such a beautiful, beautiful film!

Atonement: Another movie that had me completely due to its beautifully shot frames and wonderful soundtrack. The way the screenplay plays around with time and narration makes you enjoy the movie every time you see it. Does the book do that too? Saoirse Ronan is the standout in a great ensemble cast, but this really is Joe Wright's show all the way. (Maybe it has a lot to do with Ian McEwan's book, but I haven't read that yet).

Catch Me if You Can: Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks in one of Spielberg's most entertaining recent effort. I caught it in my gym twice over last year and both the times I couldn't switch to any other channel for next hour and half.

Crash : It crashed Brokeback Mountain's expected party at the oscars and deservedly so. Some people called it contrived, which it might've been, but it is engrossing throughout. Some great stories, great acting ensemble, and a message that really resonates with me. Some of the gasp-inducing moments haven't lost any of their power even after so many viewings.

The Departed : I remember liking Infernal Affairs a lot, but it is The Departed that stayed with me longer. Perhaps because I ended up seeing it many times as compared to just once for Infernal Affairs. Still, I don't think you can keep a movie with Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlburg, Martin Sheen and Alec Baldwin out of many top movies lists even if it was directed by me. This, on the other hand, was one of Scorsese's better recent works.. so... :)

In the Mood for Love : Slow motion was discovered/invented for this movie. Wong Kar Wai invaded my imagination with this movie (and continued with 2046!). I don't think I still have a clue about the ending, but that really doesn't matter. Every time I see it, I marvel at the clever screenplay. Yet, at the end of the day the thing that I can't get out of my mind are those slow motion scenes and that awesome soundtrack!

Lage Raho Munnabhai : Munnabhai M.B.B.S was good, but all the things that reminded me of old Hollywood movies always stopped me from holding it in very high esteem. What Hirani (and Abhijat Joshi) did with Lago Raho was astounding though! This was as original, and as indian as I have seen anyone get in bollywood with something as entertaining. Hirani kept talking about Hrishida and Frank Capra, but I don't think anyone would've expected him to make a movie that wouldn't have looked out of place in either of those directors' filmographies. While everyone was laughing at the jokes, I kept marveling at how they had managed to write something THIS entertaining starting with the idea of Munnabhai and Gandhigiri! This is the closest I have felt any movie has come to making me feel the way I did when I saw Dekalog.

No Country for Old Men : My roommate didn't see what was so great about this movie, and I DO think that it makes things difficult for us in the last 5-10 min by that long contemplative ending about Tommy Lee Jones. But then, I guess, there is a reason it is called No Country for Old Men. What makes it such a great movie for me is those nearly perfect scenes of cat-and-mouse and the performances of nearly everyone in the movie. There is a constant sense of anticipation throughout the movie even when hardly anything action-y is happening on screen. Javier Bardem elevates it to another level, but, really, it is the Coens that just had the perfect day in office with this movie. (or maybe it is McCarthy.. I haven't read the book).

Memento : What an entrance to the public consciousness by Chris Nolan! And then he followed it up with all those awesome movies. Easily one of the directors of the decade. How exactly DOES one write a movie like Memento?? Aamir might have found this boring and incomprehensible, but I think this really is flawless.

Million Dollar Baby : When I saw Gran Torino, I liked it more than Million Dollar Baby. The theme of GTorino was certainly closer to my heart than MDBaby. Yet, today, I must say that MDB stays with me more. It might have something to do with the amazing work by Morgan Freeman and Hilary Swank, or maybe it's just that I happened to see MDB again recently. Hard to separate, those two movies.

So.... these were the movies that lost out just because today is today. Up next, the part 2 of the list with the top-10.

Update: Part 2 of the list is here.

Albums and composers of 2009

2010-01-01T13:05:00.010-05:00

Happy new year to you all! 2010 is here, so I guess I need to get my act together otherwise I'll still be publishing my 2009 lists in march 2010!! (Which is not as rare as it should be, because there is always some potentially good movie from previous year that I don't get to see till well into the next year). Anyway... moving on to this list..

As I mentioned earlier, once I had made a long-ish list of all the more important songs of the year, the statistician in me couldn't NOT do at least a little meta-analysis to see whether the list data could be churned to come up with a top albums/top composers list that might sound reasonable when compared to my own vague impression of the year. This turned out to be more or less correct, except some little surprises. In retrospect, I could've done a better job than the highly simplistic [-rank ∝ rating points] but who cares? :) The ranks don't really matter anyway. This is just an opportunity to write about some of the good stuff of the year gone by. So, here you go...

Top 5 albums of 2009

5. Gulaal by Piyush Mishra.

An album that probably takes some time to grow on you because it is so unlike most other songs that we get to hear nowadays. I don't know why Anurag Kashyap thought of Piyush Mishra, but it definitely turned out great. How many times do we see a movie set in either the past or the not-so-urban india whose music, even if good, sounds exactly like any other movie (Asoka, I'm looking at you!)? Gulaal sounds exactly like it should. raw, rustic, and perhaps most importantly, violent! I haven't yet seen the movie, but I am told that the movie actually fails to live up to the power of the songs.

'Ranaji' was probably always going to gain early attention of music channels due to its lyrics, but it is the all-male songs of the album that give it its real flavor. Although 'Aisi saza' is a great song, you don't really think of it first when you are thinking of Gulaal's music. It is the Rahul Ram tracks (Raat ke musaafir, and Yaara maula) and the Piyush Mishra tracks (Sheher, Duniya and Aarambh) that really make this album a must-hear.

4. Blue by A R Rahman.

This was a little surprising, actually. While I really like some of the songs in Blue, I'd have thought that Gulaal would've come higher than Blue, whereas Blue actually just edged ahead in the results (a very thin edge, admittedly). On second thoughts, perhaps it was always going to come out this way because, individually I like Blue's songs better though Gulaal just has a higher overall impact due to the theme. Blue is, after all, just a fun album. Till end of 2007, Rahman hadn't done a 'fun' album in hindi for a long time. Most of his projects used to be prestige projects of major directors that were based on some serious theme or were period/costume projects. His 'fun' projects seemed to be confined to tamil movies. Since then, however, we have had 'Jaane Tu Ya.. Jaane na', 'Ghajini', 'Yuvvraaj' and now 'Blue'. It really is a pleasure to hear these songs that sound normal everyday songs when you hear them for the first time and yet, the more you listen to them the more clear it is that they have ARR class written all over them. :)

Well, most of them, anyway. 'Chiggy Wiggy' seems to be one of the exceptions. The english part sung by Kylie Minogue is catchy enough, and some of the hindi part by Sonu Nigam is foot tapping too, but the transition between them is just plain pedestrian. Thankfully, the rest of the album is worthy of ARR. I've written about 'Aaj Dil Gustaakh', 'Fikraana' and 'Bhoola Tujhe', but even the other three songs have a lot going for them. 'Blue theme' is quite fun and exciting. 'Rehnumaa' took a long time to grow on me, but it never seemed skip-worthy. 'Yaar Mila Tha' seemed the most unusual on first hearing, but after getting used to its rhythms it also is quite a fun song, perhaps mainly due to the lyrics.

I was afraid ARR might've signed a sure-shot turkey when I heard about Blue, but I forgot that he has done that a hundred times in Tamil and the end-result is only that the turkey gains class, rather than ARR doing any substandard work.. :)

3. Dev.D by Amit Trivedi.

After Aamir, most people were probably waiting for the next album by Amit Trivedi. Not many, however, would've expected an album with 18 songs most of which probably get a pass grade from most people. Regardless of what your taste in music is, you'll probably find SOMETHING to admire in this mega album. From pure desi sound of "Dhol yaara dhol" to punjabi-dance numbers like "Hikknal"/"Mahi Mannu" to the absolutely wonderful modernize, yet carnatic-evoking "Paayaliya" to an insane mix of pop/rock (and even 'wedding orchestra') sprinkled throughout the rest of the album, it has everything. I have written about my favorites from the album - Paayaliya, Dhol yaara dhol, and the themes - but most of the rest of the songs (except the punjabi ones IMO) are more than just hum-along nice. Not many songs were so great that I'll probably be singing them 2 years from now (except Paayaliya, nothing approaches the heights of Iktaara, for example), but the sheer range of reasonably good songs throughout the album is absolutely stunning. On any given day you can easily find me hearing to any of "Yahi Meri Zindagi", "Saali Khushi", "Pardesi", "Dil Mein Jaagi", "Nayan Tarse", "Ek Hulchul Si" etc and fully enjoying the experience.

2. Delhi-6 by A R Rahman.

2008 was Rahman's year all the way. For someone who was averaging about 2-3 albums a year over last 2-3 years, 2008 was a veritable deluge of albums! Jodhaa Akbar, Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na, Ada, Sakkarakatti, Slumdog Millionaire, Yuvvraaj and Ghajini! I don't think anyone could then have expected 2009 to begin with an album that was as good as the best of previous year, if not better than all of them!

Delhi-6 was one of those albums that makes a well-trained ARR fan, after the first hearing, say to himself "ok... some songs are nice enough, but most of them aren't all that catchy really. This means this is going to be a great album!" :) And great it turned out to be! There are a lot of things here that seemed 'strange' to me in the first hearing but turned out to be exactly the things that make me love those songs now - the continuum keyboard ending of "Rehna Tu", the dreamy soundscape of "Dil Gira Dafatan", the rustic/urban duality of "Genda Phool", the trying-too-hard-to-be-modern off-beat rhythms of "Delhi 6", the nice-but-perhaps-too-long simplicity of "Arziyan" etc. In fact, "Masakkali" is probably the only instantly likeable song (and it stays likeable after many hearings). Yet, over last year, I have not heard any other album nearly a tenth as many times as Delhi-6. So much so that some friends had started to detest having to sit in my car because all they could ever hear in my car were Delhi-6 songs! :) Perhaps the fact that ARR hasn't come up with many albums this year has something to do with it. Still, I had a lot of recent choices that I used to put in the CD player every once in a while (all those 2008 albums mentioned above), yet I ALWAYS used to come back to Delhi-6 because of a sudden craving for Rehna Tu or Arziyaan or Genda Phool or Delhi 6. :) All of which makes it quite evident why I myself felt quite shocked to see Delhi-6 ending up a close (verrry close) second to....

1. Kaminey by Vishal Bhardwaj

Hmm... how did this happen? How can I ever explain this?? Kaminey is of course great, but above Delhi-6?? Perhaps, in retrospect, had I rated the songs rather than just simply ranking them, then Rehna Tu and Arziyaan would've been enough to pull Delhi-6 higher (after all, it really was THAT close between 1 and 2). But I think there is more to it. Kaminey songs gained much more from the movie itself (I have written about their great use in the movie whenever I discussed any song of Kaminey) as compared to Delhi-6. I started loving Raat Ke Dhhai Baje, Go Charlie Go, and Kaminey after I saw them in the movie. Also, I find every single song in Kaminey much more impressive than at least two Delhi 6 songs (Dil Gira Dafatan and Kaala Bandar...). So, while Delhi-6 attains loftier heights with Rehna Tu and Arziyaan, overall Kaminey probably DOES deserve to be called the better album.

As I mentioned before, it is probably impossible for any composer to have this sort of synergy between songs and the movie unless he/she is also the director! Any album that doesn't turn out to be a weak link of a movie as good as Kaminey HAS to be a great album. And Kaminey's songs are actually part of its strengths. Extra points to Vishal for including a message song about AIDS without making it sound (or look) out of place in the movie (even though it IS the weakest song in the album). In a movie that is so much like a rollercoaster ride, not a single song breaks the flow or, indeed, seems less than welcome. For that fact itself, Kaminey is my album of the year!

(er... one of the top 2 anyway :P )

As for composers, I think the list above makes it pretty clear who the top 4 are. Rahman easily trumps Vishal for the top spot when Blue (and Connections) are added to Delhi-6. Vishal, Amit Trivedi, and Piyush Mishra follow in that order, with Amit Trivedi running Vishal pretty close when the awesome "Iktaara" is added to Dev.D. The last slot is easily picked up by Pritam, who had some really good songs in Love Aaj Kal and Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahaani (and maybe New York and Tum Mile, which I haven't heard). Then again, perhaps other duds like Billu, Dil Bole Hadippa and De Dana Dan should've pulled him down. :) If that were the case, Shankar Ehsaan Loy would take his place in an year when they were particularly lacking in inspiration. As things stand, I think Pritam deserves his place at 5 for some really good songs.

So, the final list of composers is..

1. A R Rahman

2. Vishal Bhardwaj

3. Amit Trivedi

4. Piyush Mishra

5. Pritam

Up next: My favorite movies of 2009.

My favorite songs of 2009 : Concluding Part

2009-12-29T04:20:00.014-05:00

Previous posts about this list: Intro, Part 1 (24-25), Part 2 (18-23), Part 3 (12-17), Part 4 (6-11)

The top 5. This will probably feel more like a countdown unlike the 6-songs-crowded-on-the-podium feel of previous 3 posts. I still can't separate the top 2 songs (and the next 2), but then there is no reason to! Who says one HAS to choose between songs that bring you equal pleasure.

First, a recap... full list till now...

#24. Aaj Din Chadhheya and Dev-Chanda themes

#18. Dhhol Yaara Dhhol; Himalaya Theme; Rahi Re; Sheher; Tu Jaane Na and Ye Dooriyaan

#16. Chor Bazaari and Fikraana

#12. Aaj Dil Gustaakh Hai; Aisi Sazaa; Bhoola Tujhe and Raat Ke Dhhaai Baje

#6. Delhi 6; Genda Phool; Go Charlie Go; Kaminey; Man Chandre and Pehli Baar Mohabbat

Phew! So.. ladies and gentlemen... I give you... my top 5 hindi songs of 2009

#5. Dhan Te Nan from Kaminey.

Remember that first promo of Kaminey? The one that instantly made Kaminey the most awaited movie of the year for everyone? Well, it worked for a lot of reasons, specially the dialogue - "तीन फ़ाल फ़े... फ़कल भी नहीं देखी मैंने उफ़्की", "अब कहाँ गयी तुम्हारी स.... स.... साइंस! होम साइंस!", "तो क्या rape किया मैंने तुम्हारा?!!", "मैं फ़ को फ़ बोलता हूँ...", "अबे फ़ को फ़ नहीं तो क्या ल बोलेगा?" - but not the least of those reasons was the PulpFictionesque trumpet in the background that explodes at the perfect moment with the song that must surely be a shoo-in for the most popular song of the year!

What an idea it was to take that quintessential bollywood action movie sound "Dhan Te Nan" and turn it into such a wonderful song for the dance floor! And, with Kaminey, it goes without saying (I'll say it nevertheless :P ) that the way it is used in the movie is purrrrfect! High on drugs and anticipation of a gloriously fun-filled life ahead, celebrating the biggest success of their lives on a dance floor, what will the two friends sing BUT "Dhan Te Nan!" :)

Sukhwinder does what he normally does with such songs, but he actually doesn't get into the mood nearly as well as Vishal Dadlani does! As for lyrics, Gulzar does his usual Gulzargiri, of course..

"आजा आजा दिल निचोडें

रात की मटकी तोडें

कोई goodluck निकालें

आज गुल्लक तो फोडें!"

"कोई चाल ऐसी चलो यार अबके,

समंदर भी पुल पे चले

फिर तू चले उसपे, या मैं चलूँ,

शहर हो अपने पैरों तले!

कहीं खबरें हैं, कहीं कबरें हैं,

जो भी सोये हैं कबरों में, उनको जगाना नहीं"

All I can say is that Gulzar only needs to be kept away from Subhash Ghai! He writes some of the most enjoyable lyrics in hindi movies almost effortlessly.

#3. Paayaliya> from Dev.D and Rehna Tu from Delhi-6.

Dev.D isn't an easy album to like on the first hearing. A lot of the songs are just so unlike "movie songs" that one gets a little uneasy listening to the first 4-5 songs of the album. And then comes "Paayaliya". You don't know what to make of it what with all the "अरज अरज करी, करज करजवा को करे हर पल बेचैन", "नींदें बिसर कर दे" etc lyrics and the voice that sings the first line giving it a rustic feeling, yet the instruments and the actual singing voice and style (not to speak of the backing vocals saying "By God" etc) make it sound so modern. And yet, nothing really sounds 'inconsistent'. You might not know what to make of it, but you like it nevertheless. This is one song where lyrics just don't matter to me at all! She could've sung this in aramaic and I'd still have liked it! Amit Trivedi got everyone's attention with Aamir last year and amazed people with the sheer range of music in Dev.D, but it took THIS song to convince me that we really are looking at someone special. The songs starts well, but it is really the tune of the stanzas that make me love this song so much. I mean the tunes for "अरज अरज करी, करज करजवा को करे हर पल बेचैन" and then later for "हो! जिया पे छाये, जिया पे छाये, छाये छाये छाये छाये रे!" The lyrics, as I said, are there just as convenient space-fillers. The might mean something, but honestly, I really never feel like thinking about them when the song is going on. And if I try to think about the lyrics later, I invariably get sucked into listening to the voice in my head that is singing the song and forget all about the lyrics again! What a song! :)

ARR seems to always keep the best (or one of the best) song of the album for himself to sing, doesn't he? :) Or perhaps it is something to do with the combination of his singing AND the genre of songs that he sings that just makes me love them.

It is a sign of a great album that your favorite song of the album keeps changing for a long time before possibly settling in on one (sometimes that stage never arrives. Every time I listen to a song from Dil Se, THAT song suddenly seems to be the best in the album). Delhi-6 is one of ARR's better albums of last 5-6 years, and yet, it took me a long time to look beyond 'Rehna Tu' when I thought about my favorite song of the album. ARR's soothing vocals, SUCH a nice melodious tune and Prasoon Joshi's romantic lyrics, wow! All we needed was a great video to go with it, but Rakesh Mehra let us down. :( I think they were going for the same thing that they did with Rang De Basanti - using the songs in completely unexpected places (no one would've expected Luka Chhupi and Roobaroo to be used the way they were). It sort of worked for a lot of people in RDB (Roobaroo didn't work for me though... I mean the picturization, not the song), but it just didn't work at ALL for Rehna Tu and Dil Gira Dafatan here. Sigh! अब क्या कर सकते हैं? We can keep listening to the song and try to keep the accompanying visuals away from our mind. That isn't all that difficult actually. Specially when the song ends with that long continuum keyboard piece, one doesn't think of any visual at all, and just listens! If I had to choose one piece of instrumental magic for this year, it has got the be the last 1 min of Rehna Tu!

Which brings us to my two songs of 2009!

#1-2. Arziyaan from Delhi-6 and Iktaara from Wake Up Sid.

Last year all year-end reports mentioned Benny Dayal as the newcomer singer of the year, whereas the REAL find was the voice of Javed Ali. Smooth as - pardon the cliché - silk. Had you asked me before I listened to 'Arziyaan' whether a song of qawwali/sufi genre would suit Kailash Kher's voice or Javed Ali's I'd have chosen Kher. Yet, every time I hear any part of this unusually long song in my mind, it is ALWAYS in Javed Ali's voice, not Kailash Kher's. Not to say that Kher doesn't do justice to his lines. Just that Javed Ali absolutely OWNS this song.

Did I say Javed Ali owns this song? That's just in terms of singing, of course. As for the rest, I don't think I even need to talk about ARR here because, after all, we anyway expect him to do wonders in this genre. Forget doing wonders, has anyone else even composed anything in that genre in last 5-10 years? The fast paced, dance floor friendly qawwali songs, yes, but not anything with a slow, soothing, sufi touch.

So, there you go, Rahman did what Rahman does - be a genius. Nothing new there. Actually, it is Prasoon Joshi who REALLY owns the song. This is a long song and the lyrics are good throughout, but seriously speaking he didn't really need to write anything beyond "दरारें दरारें हैं माथे पे मौला, मरम्मत मुकद्दर की कर दो मौला " and I'd have been sold anyway.

"प्यास लेके आया था, दरिया वो भर लाया,

नूर की बारिश में भीगता सा तर आया "

"एक खुशबू आती थी, मैं भटकता जाता था,

रेशमी सी माया थी, और मैं तकता जाता था....

जब तेरी गली आया, सच तभी नज़र आया,

मुझमें ही वो खुशबू थी, जिससे तूने मिलवाया..."

As I mentioned, it was actually 'Rehna Tu' that was my favorite song of the album for the longest time and while that song didn't go down in my estimation over time, Arziyaan went through all the familiar stages of those songs of ARR that stay with you the longest. From "hmm... nice sounding song, but perhaps a bit too generic" to "hmmm.. this is actually pretty nice.. Javed Ali sounds so good!" to "that maula-maula bit is pretty addictive, though perhaps the song goes on for too long" to "WOW! what lyrics! marammat muqaddar ki and all!!" to, finally, "too long? I could listen to this for hours!!! How long have I been continuously singing this for, again? 2 days perhaps!" :) Song of the year, without doubt.

It's that voice. Kavita Seth's voice has something in it that gives Iktaara that extra punch. From the first line of the song "ओ रे मनवा तू तो बांवरा है... तू ही जाने तू क्या सोचता है, बाँवरे" to the way she pronounces बूँद-बूँद and मूँद-मूँद... she just elevates the song so much!

As for the song itself, Amit Trivedi has outdone himself here! He thought of this song for a background piece in the movie?! THIS song?? It carries the whole album! In an year when Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy were particularly lacking in inspiration, I'm sure this song from Amit Trivedi got played more times than all S-E-L songs from this year, let along from this whole album. I think I'll wait for one more album from Amit Trivedi, and if it is nearly as good as Aamir, Dev.D or this song, I'll probably start saying that he is to hindi film music what Vishal Bhardwaj and Raju Hirani are to hindi films! :) Meaning, I'll wait for every album by Amit Trivedi as much as I now wait for Vishal's and Hirani's movies. There is always the danger of a new composer running out of all of the great songs in his mind after the first few albums, but we shall keep hoping.

That concludes this list. Up next, albums and composers of the year. And then the usual list of movies of the year (and maybe decade).

My favorite songs of 2009 : Part 4 (no. 6 to 11)

2009-12-28T16:43:00.011-05:00

Previous posts about this list: Intro, Part 1 (24-25), Part 2 (18-23), Part 3 (12-17)

Again, all six of these songs are at 6. Posting here in alphabetical order.

Genda Phool from Delhi-6. Such a nice little song! Everything about this song works, the singing, the "aye hay hay" chorus going in the background, even the call to pigeons at the beginning (that's what it is, isn't it?), the fusion between folk singing and modern-ish instruments/arrangements. AND the video. As I said, Rekha Bhardwaj elevates most songs that she sings. Great song from an album full of great songs.

Go Charlie Go from Kaminey. I didn't realize how good this instrumental track is till I saw it being used in the movie. It adds so much to that perfectly shot "Go Charlie Go" sequence. If you have seen the movie, you know what I mean. Perhaps the memory of Charlie hurtling through the corridors gives me such a rush whenever I hear this track.

Kaminey from Kaminey. "जिसका भी चेहरा छीला, अन्दर से और निकला; मासूम सा कबूतर, नाचा तो मोर निकला". Gulzar in full form. Kaminey wouldn't be half the album it is with anyone else writing the lyrics. Then again, it wouldn't be half the album it is with someone else directing the movie either. While Delhi-6 the movie pulled the album down a notch, Kaminey the movie added a lot to the album. While the lyrics, the soothing composition and the soft vocals of Vishal help the song stand on its own, its use in the movie and that image of Charlie sitting in the boat contemplating his past and perhaps looking at the future with trepidation just lifts the song to another level.

Man Chandre from Connections. I can't think of another recent slow song of ARR, or anyone else for that matter, that is so instantly likeable within one minute of its beginning. The santoor (it IS santoor, I suppose) right at the beginning followed by the amazing voice of Shraddha Pandit rightaway makes you stop whatever you are doing and pay attention. Sukhwinder then hijacks most of the rest of the song, but it sounds great nevertheless. Perhaps a little more of Shraddha wouldn't have been bad. The song probably gets a bit monotonous after a while (mainly due to the repetitive lyrics) but it definitely sounds very different whenever the singer changes (Sukhwinder or Shraddha or the chorus singing the same lines actually make those parts feel SO different to each other). The monotony actually reminds me of "Javeda Zindagi" from Anwar which also had an awesome tune repeated too many times.

Nevertheless, Man Chandre is a must-listen. Specially, as a song to be played in the background when you are doing some work.

Pehli Baar Mohabbat from Kaminey. I am afraid I'll sound too repetitive if I start talking about this. The lyrics, the visuals, and the songs of Kaminey are so in-sync with each other that it is impossible to talk about any of the songs without talking about the other stuff.

"तुझे गुदगुदाना, सताना, यूं ही सोते हुए

गाल पे टीपना, मीचना, बेवजा बेसबब...

याद है... पीपल के, जिसके घने साए थे,

हमने गिलहरी के जूठे मटर खाए थे.."

wow! :)

He used the song for credits, but it worked as a great trailer of the movie, with all those cute moments between Guddu and Sweety. The video below doesn't have the full song. The audio-only version is here.

Delhi 6 from Delhi-6. I remember not liking this song when I heard it for the first time. This is one of those ARR songs that is just so "strange" when you hear it the first time that you don't see youself liking it a lot. and yet.. after a few hearings, you can't imagine what made you think so initially! And I can't imagine that now. It really is such a foot-tappingly hum-alongingly good song, isn't it? :) I remember I got that "wow! why didn't I like this before, this is actually a pretty good song" when I saw it in the trailer.

I was glad this became as popular as it did. I guess it just became the official Delhi song for some time. Perhaps one of the few odes to Delhi in our movies (was there any at all before this?).

And what a nice job Prasoon Joshi has done! "ये शहर नहीं, महफ़िल है"!

Update: Concluding part is here

My favorite songs of 2009 : Part 3 (no. 12 to 17)

2009-12-27T16:47:00.005-05:00

Previous posts about this list: Intro, Part 1 (24-25), Part 2 (18-23)

No. 16-17

Chor Bazaari from Love Aaj Kal. Another song from the inconsistent LAK. Like I said, I am still to like any of his dance-friendly fast paced songs like "Twist", but this is one of the faster songs that I actually have begun to like. Then again, it is the fun lyrics, singing, and picturization that probably should get a lot of the credit (though Pritam does well too). I hadn't really liked this all that much when I had heard the album for the first time, but this was one of those songs that kept playing on the radio a lot of times while I was in India and (unlike "Man Ka Radio") grew on me. Seeing it on screen didn't hurt either, with Deepika Padukone's completely bindaas jumping around on Delhi's streets. :)

Again, the video isn't embeddable. See it here. The audio-only version is embedded below.

The other song at no. 16 is Fikraana from Blue. I was SO annoyed with ARR when I heard that he has signed up for THIS movie. Given that he gets to work in so few projects nowadays, it simply made no sense for him to sign something so obviously inconsequential as Blue (or later Couples Retreat) was. Yet, after listening to Blue, it was obvious that he had a lot of fun composing this. And when ARR has fun, it still means great music! :)

Fikraana is one of the more catcy recent ARR songs. The "jeete hain lad lad ke hum" part always gets me to hum along. I had expected the song to fade away after a few days, but it didn't happen. I still find it quite fun.

No. 12-15

Aaj Dil Gustaakh Hai from Blue. 'Fikraana', as I said above, is catchy, but not nearly as catchy as 'Aaj Dil Gustaakh'. I guess the video and Lara Dutta help a little, but even standing alone the song grabs your attention rightaway with the piano and strings in all those unexpected places. It makes the song sound a little strange, yet really good and foot-tapping even when you listen to it the first time. The starting "O ya sa! Maa ya sa! Saa ya sa! So ya sa!......... Chal Chal shara rara re!" was our apartment anthem for quite some time. :)

Aisi Sazaa from Gulaal. This is actually the odd-one-out song from Gulaal in the sense that it doesn't quite evoke the rural atmosphere that all the other songs do by their lyrics/singing/arrangements. Perhaps that's why this is the most easily likeable song in the album. You don't really have to pay attention to the lyrics to like the singing and the music. While the rest of the album has since grown a lot in my estimation, this is still the song I enjoy the most.

Bhoola Tujhe from Blue. Today is Blue day, evidently. :) The only song in the album that seems to be made for anything less than just 'fun', yet the sound seems to be pretty consistent with the album as a whole. A soothing ditty; a worthy addition to ARR's huge list of slow, romantic, soothing songs. Rashid Ali's voice instantly reminds one of the Jaane Tu... songs, which isn't a bad thing at all!

Raat Ke Dhhaai Baje from Kaminey. Man, what an album! Perhaps not as good as Omkaara (at least not as varied), yet SUCH a great match to the movie. Perhaps only a composer-director can make music that seems to mesh with the movie SO well (er.. maybe not... Slumdog Millionaire seems an obvious recent counter-example... Also, I don't have great expectations with Guzaarish's music.. perhaps Bhansali will surprise me.)

Anyway, in an album full of great songs, this would easily be the most fun song if not for 'Dhan tan nan'. Yet, I didn't quite like this all that much initially, specially as it seemed a climb down from the OTHER 'pehli baar mohabbat' song in the album. And then.. I saw it in the movie! Easily the best wedding song of the year! :) Rekha Bhardwaj seems to elevate every song she sings, really (not that Sunidhi Chauhan is less than good.. they form a great partnership). Full audio version is here.

Update: Part 4 is here.

My favorite songs of 2009 : Part 2 (no. 18 to 23)

2009-12-26T19:58:00.005-05:00

Previous posts about this list: Intro, Part 1 (24-25)

Again, there is no preference among the songs in a particular post. All six of today's songs are at 18.

Dhhol Yaara Dhhol from Dev.D. Amit Trivedi is easily one of the most versatile composers from the new generation. At least thats how it seems from his work till now. Dev.D itself is such an eclectic album! Will talk more about Trivedi when I post the list of composers of 2009.

What with all the REALLY attention-grabbing songs in the album, this song actually took some time to grab my attention. Now I consider it one of the better songs of the album. The lyrics aren't really all that great here but I think the singing really works. The picturization doesn't hurt either!

Himalaya Theme from Connections. As I have posted before, it is SUCH a pity that this ARR album never saw a proper release. Some of the instrumental music here is really good, not to mention the songs that would've been very popular had this been a movie album etc. Anyway, I find Himalaya to be a really soothing little track (and even considered keeping it as the background score of my wedding site! :P )

Rahi Re from Luck By Chance. Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy started the year with LBC, which was a pretty good album actually, but somehow their output through the rest of the year wasn't inspiring. While SEL's work in Luck By Chance is good, what really elevates the album is some good and simple lyrics. I love some of the lines in Rahi Re. While I already loved the song before watching the movie, its visualization has now inextricably attached itself to the song in my mind. The Michael Clayton inspired (copied, actually) end credits use of the song in what actually was a surprisingly good yet simple movie adds to the song's value really. (aside: Zoya did a GREAT job at all the songs actually... they are absolutely non-intrusive.. each song has a different character and comes alive on the screen in a way that really adds to the effect of the song AND the movie.. ). The video here doesn't have the full song, and you might not want to see it if you are planning to see the movie. In that case, the audio-only version is here.

Sheher from Gulaal. The surprise album of the year. One doesn't realize just HOW powerful these songs are unless one starts paying attention to the lyrics properly.And this song specially is nothing BUT powerful lyrics! I haven't yet seen Gulaal, but a friend of mine told me that the songs raise the expectations of raw power and violence etc so much that the movie actually struggles to match that impact. If that's true probably the songs will lose some of their potency once I see the movie, but as of now, I always have goosebumps when I hear some of these songs.

Tu Jaane Na from Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahaani. Pritam composes, Atif Aslam sings, and the song is in my favorites list! I have never had a high opinion of Atif Aslam and even this song sounds better in other singers' versions but then they used Atif's version as the primary version in promos and also in the movie itself. Now, I could post a link to those other versions, but then you won't be able to enjoy watching a delicious looking Katrina Kaif in a splendidly shot music video. The problem was that it was just that, a music video. In the movie it just comes out of nowhere so that you have to switch off the movie part of your brain, switch on the leching-Katrina-Kaif part, and then switch on the movie part again. I was annoyed! Anyway... here you go.. switch on the leching part of your brain now.. :)

Ye Dooriyaan from Love Aaj Kal. Pritam again. He had a really good year. Hopefully it also means that he has stopped lifting songs/tunes from other people and has got enough confidence in his own abilities to just go original from now on. I am still to like his dance-floor friendly songs and LAK is a typical album that way. For all the insipid "And we twist"s in the album, there are also some nice songs like Ye Dooriyaan. Then again, perhaps I have yet to find a song sung by Mohit Chauhan that I didn't like. :) Just like Rahat Fateh Ali Khan and Aaj Din Chadhheya.

Use of this song in the starting credits was probably very confusing for a lot of people. But I think the payoff later in the movie was well worth it. AND it works so much better the second time you see it (after seeing the movie). couldn't find an embeddable video, so you can see it here. The audio-only version is embedded...

Update: Part 3 is here.

My favorite songs of 2009 : Part 1 (no. 24 and 25)

2009-12-25T15:43:00.006-05:00

Introduction to the list is here.

Two songs stand shoulder to shoulder at no. 24. er.. two-ish I should say. since one of them is a combination of tracks.

First is Aaj Din Chadhheya from Love Aaj Kal. I didn't like it all that much when I heard the album for the first time which came as a surprise to me because I have liked probably all Rahat Fateh Ali Khan songs that I have heard. But the song grew on me after I saw it in the movie.

The other tracks on no. 24 are the Dev-Chanda themes from Dev.D . I have always found it difficult to separate them, perhaps because I always tend to hear them consecutively. So, I am treating them as just one track here. I could only find theme 1 on youtube.

Update: Part 2 is here

My favorite songs of 2009 (Intro)

2009-12-25T12:02:00.007-05:00

One good thing about not staying in India is that one doesn't get bombarded with every single song that releases, through movie trailers, music videos and nowadays FM. While this certainly means that I need to do some extra work in order to make sure that I don't miss out on any potentially good album/song by reading about things online and listening to anything that seems interesting, it fortunately saves me from a lot of Himesh songs. :P (I realized this while I was in India recently and had to listen to "Man Ka Radio" every time I was travelling in the car :( ). On the flip side, however hard I might try, I always tend to miss at least 1-2 albums/songs in the year that might be getting a lot of attention in India. 'Miss' in the sense that even though I might know about them, perhaps I just didn't find the time to listen to them when they released and then forgot about them. In 2008, Aamir was one such album that I discovered pretty late in the year.

This year, some of the albums that I probably didn't listen to enough times (or even once in some cases) to be able to judge them fairly were Kurbaan, New York, Paa, Tum Mile and perhaps 3 Idiots. That still leaves a LOT of albums and songs that I was able to hear properly to be able to make a long list of my favorite songs of the year. Over next few days I'll post my top 25 songs of the year, followed by a list of some of the songs that almost made it to the list. I tried to make an almost exhaustive list of all the songs released in 2009 that seemed worthy of being in such a list before ordering them according to my preference. The ordered list was then used to make shorter lists of albums and composers of 2009. I'll post these lists after I'm done posting the songs list. So, here we go....

Update: Part 1 is here.

On getting married and other such trivial stuff...

2009-12-23T18:25:00.011-05:00

Hello all!

I know there isn't anyone who reads this blog and doesn't yet know about this, but it doesn't hurt to write it down for archiving purposes! I got married! (YAY!!!) :) It took me some time, but I got married! I remember that when I was 14 (probably on the day that I turned 14) I once brooded about that fact that I still had 7 years before I could get married! (as Geet says in Jab We Met.. "mujhe na bachpan se shaadi karne ka bada shauk tha!" :) ) I had no idea that it will be 7 years AFTER I turned 21 that I'd finally manage to get someone to marry me. It wasn't for lack of trying, I tell you. Finally.. finally I was able to fool someone into thinking that I am worthy! :)

Everything was decided in a hurry. This meant that I didn't have a lot of time to worry about the wedding itself, yet I managed to worry quite enough about it during last 1-2 months. The actual event came and went so quickly that I am still wondering what all the fuss was about! The days of Nov 19 and Nov 20 merged into each other so seamlessly that I still am not sure which of the two dates I am expected to forget in the years to come. Garima says we can (and I think we should) celebrate our anniversary on both the dates. We shall always consider Nov 19 and 20 to be a single 48 hour long day! :)

I'd have loved to post some of the pictures from the more fun parts of the whole thing (the pre wedding pooja etc.. the post wedding sangeet etc), but for some weird reason I didn't get anyone to take pics of those things. Most of the pics that we have as of now are the ones from the wedding ceremony in Delhi and our honeymoon in Goa and Panchgani/Mahabaleshwar. Posting some chosen ones here.

Puneet Bhaiya (Garima's bro) and me at my 'teeka'

(I didn't realize that the tie looks exactly like my school tie!)

The wedding venue before the I showed up (more than an hour late, since you ask... Garima was all ready and waiting while I was trying to find my way through Delhi's traffic..)

With Honey (my nephew) on the 'bagghi'

Following the photographer's instructions (except the one about me smiling...)

Clearly not as happy with the situation as she was!

Doing the "round and round"

All excited about the wedding, no? :) bored and tired and looking forward to some sleep...

Back to Meerut (where my parents have recently bought a house!)

"Road Movie" and "Road", the movie

2009-09-18T02:34:00.001-04:00

Both look good..

The Road - Trailer
Uploaded by dreadcentral. - Classic TV and last night's shows, online.

Almodovar strikes again..

2009-09-18T00:02:00.001-04:00

With his muse Penelope Cruz. Pedro Almodovar's next... "Broken Embraces". The trailer looks exciting.

What's the point?

2009-09-14T05:02:00.002-04:00

What, really. What's the point to try and revive thins thing again. But the fiancee insists that at least SOME people are waiting for me to write something.... so... here... we... go... again..

Woody Allen strikes again (hopefully)

2009-05-10T20:20:00.000-04:00

Another great TED talk

2009-04-27T04:08:00.003-04:00

One of the most entertaining/funny and fascinating ones. It is about our current public education system and how schooling stifles creativity.

An amazing TED talk

2009-04-25T18:45:00.002-04:00

Must be good, because it got me out of my exile. :)

Trailermania

2009-03-06T17:07:00.002-05:00

Three of my most anticipated movies of 2009 have come up with their final theatrical trailers. Watch them in HD (on full screen). Believe me, the time it might take to buffer is totally worth it!

My final* top movies list for 2008

2009-02-28T18:37:00.004-05:00

* - 'final' only in the sense that this is unlikely to change for many weeks/months to come. The only movies that I still need to see that are likely to have any effect on this list are Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! and the oscar foreign language nominees (including Waltz With Bashir and The Class). There have been some changes from the 'almost final list' posted earlier.

First, some special mentions. Most of these are pretty good, definitely watchable movies for one reason or another. e.g. Doubt is easily watchable purely for the performances, Benjamin Button is technically awesome in every way and most of the female performers make it worth your while even though things don't quite come together as well as they could've.

Special Mentions

20) The Wrestler

18-19) A Wednesday; Jaane Tu... Ya Jaane Na

16-17) Doubt; Mumbai Meri Jaan

15) The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

12-14) Dasvidaniya; In Bruges; Slumdog Millionaire

11) Vicky Cristina Barcelona

And now, the top 10...

8-10) Milk; The Reader; The Visitor

I have already written about Milk and The Visitor. The Reader is thoroughly elevated by the two leading role performers - David Kross and Kate Winslet (a performance that probably deserved the oscar that it fetched for Kate.. probably, because I rate her higher in Revolutionary Road which wasn't even nominated!). It's also a great story which is really not as much of a holocaust movie as it is being made out to be. The central dilemma of the story is only set up with holocaust being the background, but it is still just Kate's character's extraordinary story. So, if you don't particularly like watching holocaust movies (even the one's that you think might be good), don't decide on passing on this movie for that reason. However, if you have a problem with excess nudity, be warned - there is more of it in this movie than perhaps all the Best Picture nominees of last 30 years combined! :)

6-7) Mithya; Frost/Nixon

Both of these were part of the original list, so I've written about them there.

3-5) Gran Torino; Let The Right One In; Revolutionary Road

I've already written about Let The Right One In. Gran Torino is so good that I still find it hard to believe that the academy didn't acknowledge it with even a nomination, let alone an award! And I'm not even talking about the Best Picture nomination. After all, none of my top 5 got a best picture nod, but at least one could see the reason (however unjustified) for some of them (Comic book movie, animated movie, foreign language 'vampire' movie). Gran Torino, however, is exactly the sort of movie that should've been an academy favorite. AND it did much better at the box office than most of the other nominees. I still can't believe it was snubbed so thoroughly. It is one of Clint Eastwood's best movies as a director, and that IS saying something.

Revolutionary Road was such a gut-wrenching experience for me that later I wasn't surprised to read in a lot of reviews that the movie is a bit "too sad". What DID surprise me, was that the reviewers seemed to think that being too sad is a valid reason to bring the movie's rating down! If a movie can make you sad, it really is doing something right. Kate Winslet is astounding in this movie - I think this might be her best performance ever. Or at least the best I have seen her perform. Leonardo DiCaprio is as good as he usually is, but is comfortably overshadowed by Kate here. I think I might be turning some of this movie's potential audience away by saying that it is 'too sad', but then it really did affect me very deeply at some level. That might be a very subjective thing, as things like this are probably highly dependent on one's own mental make-up, one's experiences in life etc. All I can say is, don't go by Rottentomatoes ratings in this case, specially if once in a while you don't mind a sad movie. A sad movie, but a great one.

2) WALL-E

already written about this

1) The Dark Knight

this too... :)

The post-oscars post

2009-02-27T19:11:00.003-05:00

Due to the high demand from the audience (i.e. one out of a total of maybe 5-6 readers of the blog), here is the totally redundant post-oscar post. Brief comments on the oscars (Awards themselves, and the ceremony)

1) It turned out to be one of the most predictable awards night in recent memory. The biggest surprise was Sean Penn edging ahead of Mickey Rourke, and even that wasn't entirely unexpected.

2) I'm very happy that Kate Winslet finally received one. She is one of the most consistently great actresses of her generation.

3) I was hoping for an upset win for WALL-E in the original screenplay category and was a little sad when that didn't happen.

4) the little clips of short animated features were quite good. I wish they release them in a theatre around here.

5) And, of course, the biggest screams of the night were reserved for ARR. I had been telling everyone that day that I was feeling like a proud parent! :D And I truely was. I don't know how many times I have daydreamed about him working in the sort of movie that will get him an oscar and it is unbelievable how it all transpired. This almost came out of the blue (not on the oscar night, I mean.. that was expected.. but 3 months ago, who'd have expected or even dared hope for this?)

Doesn't mean I will stop hoping for more national awards (and more oscars) :). If anything, the bigger reason for being happy at his Oscar is because it will make a lot more people sit up and notice his other great works and will hopefully get other great movie-makers to work with him. And that can't be bad, even if it happens at the cost of number of hindi/tamil projects.

6) I actually liked most of the changes that they made to the ceremony. Hugh Jackman's opening number was quite engaging and getting 5 previous winners to pay tributes to the acting nominees was touching, even if it probably took a lot of time.

7) The musical production just before the best original score was quite boring, though. Perhaps it seemed better to people more aquainted with musicals here.

8) I have mixed feelings about the original song medley. While the rush of seeing ARR perform right after winning one oscar and just before winning another was enough to make my heart race, some of the alterations that were made to the songs didn't quite work. I can understand why it might've seemed that 3-4 min performances for each song might be overkill, still mixing them and making a little medley really wasn't the best idea IMO. They can completely do away with the best song performances, but then if they are going to include a musical medley of the sort that Jackman/Beyonce etc did, perhaps performing the song nominees isn't all that bad an idea.

9) Kate has cried so much during this awards season, that I won't be surprised if many people start hoping that she doesn't win another oscar ever! :) I, however, am not one of them. This was her first win after 5 previous nominations. I'm sure she'll be much more dignified from now on. Unless her second win comes after 5 more nominations!! :P

10) I loved to see the slumdog team come out in such a large number. the kids looked quite adorable and Anil Kapoor didn't make a fool of himself! :P ARR was quite dignified during his awards speeches and Resul seemed really sincere in his speech, even though he was clearly overwhelmed by the occasion. Frieda Pinto had a great dress (though I have heard that some people didn't like it!) and Dev Patel just looked like an overexcited kid! :)

11) Ben Stiller's Joaquin Phoenix act was hilarious when it started but went a bit too far when it started taking attention away from the nominee announcement. Perhaps it wasn't rehearsed very well, as Natalie Portman almost didn't expect people to laugh while she was reading the names and seemed not to know how to react.

12) Jack Black's "collect money from Dreamworks and bet on anything from Pixar" was hilarious! :D

and 13) The "Coming this year" clips at the end is something they should stick with. It was exciting to see actual footage from the movies that we have only been reading about.

So, that was 2008 for the movies. But, a proper goodbye will come later (with the almost-final list of 'best of 2008')

Songs of the day

2009-02-27T18:57:00.002-05:00

I had mentioned in an earlier mail that Luck By Chance has some really good songs (specially lyrics-wise). Here are two songs that bookend the movie.

Song of the Day

2009-02-20T17:52:00.002-05:00

Paayaliya from Dev.D. It can't be easy for a non-ARR song to fight its way into my playlist only a month after the release of an album as good as Delhi-6. But Paayaliya hasn't just found a place there but is probably going to stay there for a long time.

The Oscar Post

2009-02-19T20:23:00.002-05:00

The Oscars never fail to get me out of my hybernation, do they? :) And this year, specially, deserves a post written at some leisure (as opposed to the last minute manic typing that I used to do during previous years!). So, here you go... The predictions, and my own wishlist.

Picture: Prediction - Slumdog Millionaire. I personally liked Frost/Nixon most, among the nominees and I even rate The Reader higher than Slumdog, but honestly speaking none of the movies really screams out loud that it deserves to be the winner. Slumdog will undoubtedly win it. The only thing that I don't want is for Benjamin Button to win this. As good as it was technically, it really failed to move me at all.

Director: Danny Boyle. Again, only the best among a weak field. How I wish they had nominated Chris Nolan! In this field, I hardly care who wins it. Danny Boyle is overwhelming favorite to win this, but I think there might be a small chance that David Fincher pulls off an upset win.

Actress in a Leading Role: Kate Winslet. Haven't seen three of the performances nominated (Hathaway, Jolie and Leo). But I will be cheering at the top of my voice for Kate. They robbed her off her deserved nomination for Revolutionary Road, but her work in The Reader is also great. After all these years of being nominated and being recognized as one of the best actresses of her generation, this HAS to be her year.

Actor in a Leading Role: Mickey Rourke. Though Sean Penn is probably breathing down his neck and might actually win. This is an amazing field actually. Every single performance (except Brad Pitt) deserves to win! Somehow I'll feel pretty happy if an upset happens in this category though. Perhaps because I didn't like The Wrestler as much as the other three movies. Richard Jenkins probably doesn't stand a chance, but I hope either Sean Penn or Frank Langella win this one for their amazing performances. Sean Penn might actually do it too, so I'll keep my fingers crossed for him!

Actor in a Supporting Role: Heath Ledger. Haven't seen Tropic Thunder yet. But out of the others, I'd have whole-heartedly supported the great Philip Seymour Hoffman for Doubt had this been any other year. Agaisnt Ledger's Joker, though, no one stands a chance. And it is NOT because of his death. He was astounding, and was about the only thing that kept coming back to you from a movie that was full of a lot of other great things.

Actress in a Supporting Role: Penelope Cruz. Marisa Tomei stands a reasonable chance to spoil the night for Cruz. I loved Cruz in Vicky Cristina Barcelona and wouldn't mind her winning one bit, but I must say that Taraji P. Henson was as good as anyone else on the list and I'll feel really happy for her if she wins it. Its not going to happen, though.

Orginal Screenplay: Milk. Haven't seen Frozen River, but Milk and WALL-E are easily the top 2 nominees here. And as good as Milk really was, I am firmly in the WALL-E team here. Andrew Stanton will be over the moon if WALL-E wins this. Pixar has consistently been nominated for its screenplay but WALL-E's first half takes it to another level entirely. How I wish that people realized that "best screenplay" doesn't necessarily mean writing great lines/dialogue. sigh!

Adapted Screenplay: Slumdog Millionaire. I think Slumdog is favorite here, but I personally find Frost/Nixon to be a much better written movie. In fact, I think it is much better than all the other nominees here. Pity it didn't attract many viewers to the theatres and will probably go home without a single win.

Cinematography: Slumdog Millionaire. Slumdog is well shot, but I loved the look of The Dark Knight and Benjamin Button much more. I hope, and I don't think it is too unlikely, that one of them wins this. Benjamin Button probably stands a better chance than The Dark Knight.

Original Score: Slumdog Millionaire. It is amazing that ARR is an overwhelming favorite in this category now, with almost every single award going to his score this season. I think both Benjamin Button and WALL-E were really good scores though (as was The Dark Knight, which wasn't nominated!.. and I haven't seen Defiance). A month ago, I was really worried that Benjamin Button might win this one (and perhaps deservedly so), but I think it is becoming increasingly unlikely now. However, there is just enough chance of an upset to make sure that the suspense will stay till the envelope is opened. I'll scream myself hoarse in excitement if it is ARR! :)

Original Song: Jai Ho. Vote splitting playing havoc with the two Slumdog songs aside, I don't see any chance that Jai Ho doesn't win this award (getting Gulzar an oscar for his lyrics that none of the voters understand!!! ). However, I hope for a miracle that somehow leads to O Sayya winning here. Jai Ho is really not nearly as good a track as O Sayya is, IMO.

Animated Feature: WALL-E. As stupid as this category is, it'll hurt me a LOT if WALL-E doesn't win this. It doesn't matter much, though, because I'm sure it'll also hurt most of the voters if that happens. The horror night at the Annies notwithstanding, I really don't see how more than probably a couple of people can think of voting for Kung Fu Panda or Bolt.

Animated Short: Presto. Actually, I don't know if Presto is a favorite to win this. After all, it is the only movie that has been seen by non-voters yet. One of the other 4 nominees might be a great movie, in which case good luck to them. I'll still be hoping for another Pixar win here.

The rest of the awards either a) I really don't have any way of deciding because I haven't seen any of the nominees (live action short, documentary etc) or b) are technical categories where Benjamin Button or Dark Knight (or Slumdog in some categories) are probably going to sweep everything and I really don't have any favorites among them.

Rehna Tu promo from Delhi-6

2009-01-25T19:34:00.001-05:00

An aboslutely great song. But really bad job of editing the trailer. This trailer and the theatrical trailer just seem like randomly put together visuals and music. This one is actually not as bad as the theatrical trailer!

Nominations!! YAY!!! (and not so Yay!)

2009-01-22T09:29:00.004-05:00

First things first, A R Rahman has, in one shot, become the indian with most Oscar nominations! :) 3 nominations! The amazing thing is that they reduced the number or nominations for 'Best Original Song' from 5 to 3 and ARR has 2 of those 3 nominations!! WOW!!

On second thoughts, however, I don't think getting two nominations for Best Song is all that good. Certainly, I loved to see both the songs nominated, but when it comes down to the actual award it will lead to vote splitting to the advantage of WALL-E. :( The good thing is that the 2 song nominations means that, unless they change the event this year, ARR will perform two songs on awards night! I just hope he also gets the award. Having said that, I will still not be happy if he gets the song award but not the actual original score award. THAT is the bigger deal. No one really remembers the song award.

In other good news, WALL-E is nominated for Original Screenplay and Original Score!! The academy, over last 4-5 years has been consistently acknowledging Pixar movies' great screenplays and musical scores. That is a good thing, but they should now grow up and start nominating them for Best picture award too.

That, however, is still a dream. Considering that they couldn't even get themselves to nominate a superhero movie for the most prestigious awards, there is little chance that they will let an animated movie have those nominations. :( The Dark Knight was robbed. No best picture, no best director, no best adapted screenplay! They gave it almost every technical award nomination (along with the obvious Heath Ledger nomination). It will most likely also win in a lot of those categories, but that's no consolation.

In other 'not so yay' news, Kate Winslet only got one nomination. They nominated her for The Reader and ignored Revolutionary Road! I thought she had a better chance of getting the award if Revolutionary Road had been nominated. I am not so sure about The Reader. She was great in both, and I'd still give it to her but I think Anne Hathaway might find it easier to pip Kate now. :( Also, this is probably very good news for Penelope Cruz and Mariso Tomei, because now that their main competition has been nominated in the leading category, their chances of getting the best supporting actress award are much better! (And yes, Taraji P. Henson got the nomination too... YAY!!)

Who will win on the big night? I think Benjamin Button has the most nominations, but it might actually become this year's Babel, winning very few award even though it got so many nominations. It might win in some of the technical awards (where The Dark Knight will give it tough competition) and it might spoil our party by getting the best original score award, but I can bet right now that it is not going to get Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor or Best Adapted Screenplay awards. Slumdog Millionaire will probably get the picture and/or director awards and it will almost certainly get the adapted screenplay award (and I won't be happy about any of those... maybe best director is OK, but definitely not picture and screenplay)

What I'll be hoping for this morning

2009-01-22T00:40:00.003-05:00

Oscar nominations will be announced shortly, and there are some nominations that I'll really want to see. Some of these wishes are so sure to be granted that the only reason I'll even think about them tomorrow morning is if they fail to get nominated. These certainties include Sean Penn, Frank Langella, Kate Winslet, Heath Ledger, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Penelope Cruz for the acting categories; Frost/Nixon for its screenplay; Slumdog Millionaire, The Dark Knight and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button for their original scores, and WALL-E for best animated feature.

This does not mean that there aren't other certainties. Some of the other certainties are actually the ones that I don't agree with. e.g. Slumdog Millionaire for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay and some major awards for Benjamin Button. Then there are others that I don't feel either good or bad about e.g. The Wrestler which I still haven't been able to see, or some nominations for Milk, which is a fine movie, just not one of my most loved movies of the year.

So, that brings me to the nominations that will REALLY make me happy tomorrow, because they are not really done deals yet and I would LOVE them to happen. They are...

1) WALL-E for Best Original Screenplay (possible), Best Sound Design (very likely), Best Original Score (possible) and, dare I say it, Best Picture and Best Director (sigh! not likely at all! :( )

2) The Dark Knight for Best Picture (possible, maybe even likely), Best Director (likely), Best Adapted Screenplay (not likely), and most of the technical awards (very likely for all of them)

3) "O Sayya" or "Jai Ho" for Best Original Song (very likely for Jai Ho... not likely at all for O Sayya)

4) Kate Winslet getting both nominations (likely... I'll hate it if she misses out on either)

5) Leonardo DiCaprio (not likely)

6) Taraji P. Henson for Benjamin Button (possible)

Also, I'll hate it if Dev Patel pips someone for a nomination. He was OK. If they HAVE to show some Slumdog Millionaire love, they should nominate one of the kids!

Breaking the Connections

2009-01-21T20:36:00.002-05:00

11 years ago A R Rahman came up with his first post-Roja non-film Album - Vande Mataram. It was a huge success and added to the Rahman legend that had been building up over last 4-5 years at that time. Since then he has gained more fans with each year and each new movie soundtrack. Who then would've thought that his next non-film album, coming after 11 years of Vande Mataram, would get a "release" only in name. Most people around who have been waiting for him to get some time to work on a non-film album don't even know about Connections, unless they stumbled across some vague newspaper ads about Nokia Connections. It is a real pity that someone somewhere had the brilliant idea of releasing an ARR album 'only on certain nokia mobile phones' as an advertisement for Nokia. Who cares about fans? They'll get their mp3s downloaded from some online sites anyway, right? EVEN if they would rather buy their own legal copy?

Or, maybe they are secretly planning to release the CD later due to 'huge demand by fans' and capture more markets. That is even more evil, specially because they have been saying at every given opportunity that this album will 'only' be available on mobiles.

Anyway, I hope someone sees the sense and realizes that an album this wonderful deserves better distribution. A proper release with normal advertisement would've made this fly to the top of the charts rightaway. Just listen to these two songs...

My Current Playlist

2009-01-15T19:59:00.003-05:00

The current playlist is actually just Delhi-6 songs! :) But once I have listened to its songs 10-15 times, it will be appended to the playlist that I had been listening to before Delhi-6 released. So, some brief comments of all these albums/songs.

Delhi-6: I've only listened to the songs 2 times as of now. But the first impression is quite good. Unlike Yuvvraaj where my first reaction was: "hmm.. this is quite disappointing.. not worthy of rahman". That impression about Yuvvraaj changed finally and even though it is not nearly his best work last year, I found it nice overall.. or at least not disappointing. Delhi-6 sounds really good even right now. "Masakkali", "Delhi-6", "Dil Gira Dafatan", "Arziyaan", and "Rehna Tu" are already sounding quite good and none of the others seem "disappointing" in the manner that "Shano Shano" did. So, they'll probably grow pretty soon too! Overall, quite a good start to the year for ARR's fans!

Chandni Chowk To China: Heard the full album, but only the two S-E-L songs ended up being in the playlist. The title song is good fun to listen to once in a while, but the other song - Tere Naina - is amazing. SMH told me that it reminded her of "Theekuruvil" from "Kangalal Kaithu Sai", and I agree. It is probably the style of female singer which reminds one of Theekuruvil, and I absolutely LOVE that song. Shreya Ghoshal is the singer here and she does her usual good job. Really good song!

Ghajini: "Guzaarish" is good, but I've never found it all that great. I don't know what is it. Maybe I find the "tune" not all that great. "Behka" is great, I loved it from the first time I heard it. Then there are the two "item songs"- Lattoo and Aye Bachchoo. Both of them have some nice hummable parts but are passable really. Watching them on screen made me like them more (thats why they are back in the playlist now). The best song, edging Behka by a small margin, is "Kaise Mujhe Tum" and its instrumental version. It took me a long time to grow out of Benny Dayal's strained vocals in this song, but watching the movie in the theatre surely helped! Needless to say, Shreya Ghoshal's part of the song is on a different level altogether. Great song!

Luck By Chance: Pretty good album by the increasingly reliable Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy. While "Yeh Zindagi Bhi", "Yeh Aaj Kya Ho Gaya" and "O Rahi Re" are top notch, even the other three are pretty listenable. Except, probably "Pyaar Ki Daastaan". It is a slow, melodious kind of song, but seems very very unoriginal to me. As in, it probably reminds me of a lot of SEL songs that sound too much like this one. The lyrics are consistently great throughout the album. Definitely a great start to the year by SEL.

Aamir: A highly underrated album. I guess some people would definitely have heard "Ha Raham" which is great, but really the whole album is amazing. I don't think there is any point in pointing to different tracks here, this is quite a good album overall. Listen to it! I have just one problem. "Haara" sounds too much like the theme music of "Requiem for a Dream" to me. The song itself is pretty good and very different from that theme but the instrumental going on in the background seems almost exactly like that. At least it feels that way. :( In any case, the rest of the album is great. Amit Trivedi is another great addition to the list of composers doing a great job in hindi movie music, specially because he followed this up with...

Dev D: ok... this is one of the most eclectic albums you will ever have heard. Delhi-6 is quite eclectic too, but not even close to what Dev D is. Amit Trivedi and Anurag Kashyap have gone bonkers here. I am sure you'd have concluded that much after hearing "Emosanal Attyachaar" in trailers, but the whole album is weird, in a very good way.. The side effect of having so many genres is that everyone will find probably some songs that he/she won't like, which in my case means that I don't think Dev D is as good as Aamir, but it might grow later on. Of the top of my head I can think of "Paayaliya", "Nayan Tarse", "Duniya", "Saali Khushi" etc that I quite like. But I am sure there are some others that are definitely good.

Slumdog Millionaire: Its a pity that all anyone gets to listen of this album is "Jai Ho". It is good but not nearly as good as some of the rest of the soundtrack is. So, if you have heard Jai Ho and think that the reason ARR is winning all these awards is just because people here in the US haven't heard 'indian' music before ina major movie, you'd be wrong. There are tracks in this album that are REALLY fun to listen to in your car, and mesh quite well in the movie too. Listen to "O Sayya", "Latika's Theme", "Paper Planes" and "Mausam & Escape" at least.

I guess the number of songs and albums I have written about is probably a bit too much recommendation for one post! Still, if you have heard some of these albums and most of these songs, you'll know if your taste matches mine. In that case, go and find the ones that you haven't heard. I am sure a lot of people haven't heard Aamir, so if this post ends up popularizing at least that one album by a little, it will make me very happy! :)

Update: Delhi-6 is now sounding REALLY good. One of ARR's better albums over last 4-5 years at least. and that is saying a LOT, right? Or maybe this will turn out the be just the euphoria phase that follows the initial apprehension. we'll see!

Delhi-6 Title song promo

2009-01-15T19:54:00.003-05:00

didn't like it all that much in the promo. But after listening to the full song 2 times, I actually do like it quite a lot! here's the promo for you..

Maula promo from Delhi - 6

2009-01-10T14:40:00.002-05:00

Again, the visuals are quite nice here. Waheeda Rahman and Om Puri look quite charming. Do I detect some Hindu-Muslim funda here? Perhaps it might just be the song and not the whole movie. After all, Rang De Basanti had its share of anti-Hindu/Muslim fundamentalism moments.

Ae Masakalli.. Ud Matakalli...

2009-01-06T04:25:00.003-05:00

What in the world does that mean? Its a catchy tune though... And picturization isn't half bad either!

Delhi 6 song promo for you...

Tintin and the zombie-comedy.

2009-01-06T04:16:00.003-05:00

AICN confirms the rumour that Simon Pegg and Nick Frost - the guys who play the protagonists in "Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz" - have been cast to play the roles of Thomson and Thompson in the upcoming Spielberg-Jackson Tintin movies.

I am sure anyone who has seen Hot Fuzz will find this an inspired bit of casting!

amtrak marketing

2009-01-06T04:13:00.003-05:00

Just saw an impressive ad for amtrak at some site. It just said - The Cure for "We never TALK anymore" ..... Amtrak

:) quite a good idea for selling rail travel in US, where no one seems to use trains for long journeys.

The (almost final) top 10 for 2008

2008-12-31T20:00:00.009-05:00

It's the last day of the year and I am almost ready with my top 10 of the year (YAY!!).. There are still some movies that haven't opened in my city yet (and some others that I missed earlier in the year) that can probably bump some of the movies in this list later but I don't expect any major changes.

Some of these movies that I haven't seen (in order of decreasing probability of appearing in the top 10) are:

Revolutionary Road

The Class

The Wrestler

Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!

Rachel Getting Married

Jaane Tu... Ya Jaane Na

Dasvidaniya

So.... some special mentions first.. And some of these will probably figure in my top-10 list if you ask me a month from now as these things are hardly ever that clear-cut. But, I am making this list right now, and they don't figure in the list right now...

15. Rock On!!

14. Iron Man

13. Synecdoche, New York

12. Doubt

11. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

That brings us to the top 10. But I must say something about the overall quality of these movies. While some of these (top 3-4) are really good and would've deserved to be in top 10-15 movies of most recent years, the others are really there because of lack of quality competition this year (or, maybe the movies that I haven't seen yet will change this impression). Anyway, to the list then..

10. In Bruges: It released quite early in the year and has probably slipped from most people's mind by now. Quite an interesting, though a tad slow in patches, mixture of drama, comedy and perhaps even thriller. Really good performances by both leads (Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson) and a nice cameo by Ralph Fiennes. There are times when it seems to meander, but by the end everything comes together beautifully. Not unmissable, certainly, but definitely worth a watch.

9. Milk: I am still not sure why this movie is so low in my list. It seemed to be quite good. Most of the parts (performances, screenplay, cinematography etc) are great and yet, overall it still left me a little aloof. As I had said in its mini-review, it is probably because it is a biopic and works within the overall framework that most biopics follow. There is no reason why it won't rise 2-3 spots in this list once I get to see it again. I would put it in unmissable category for the movies of this year, if only for the story that is worth being aware of and the absolutely amazing performance by Sean Penn.

8. Slumdog Millionaire: I've already talked about this before. Most of it is quite entertaining, but that is about as far as it goes. No real "aftertaste". It might seem amazing to non-indian critics to see hindu-muslim riots sewn into the narrative the way it is, but for indian viewers it probably seems very unoriginal. It's funny that I am actually writing negative things about this movie while including it in the top 10 list! :D As I said before, this was probably a weak year in terms of movie quality. As entertaining as a large part of this movie is, it probably wouldn't have figured in my top 10 list in any other year.

7. Vicky Cristina Barcelona: Woody Allen falls in love with Barcelona (and makes us fall in love too, with an amazing "Barcelona" song running in the background throughout). So, the best thing he could do was put some really good looking actors in that city and spin a story around them. Some of the situations here are quite funny, but really it's Penelope Cruz's and Rebecca Hall's characters and performances that make this movie as good as it is. Quite a fun movie. Penelope Cruz will probably be nominated for this and might even win it.

6. The Visitor: Talked about it here.

5. Mithya: Easily the best indian movie that I saw this year. (I should say hindi movie since I haven't seen any non-hindi indian movie this year). By all accounts, that might change once they release the DVD of Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! but Mithya clearly holds its own even against some of the better movies released in the US this year. It takes the basic concept of Don and twists it around in an unexpected manner. The movie has some funny scenes and dialogue even before this twist, but it REALLY goes to another plane after that point. I thought it was really impressive when I saw it but I didn't think I will start liking it so much even without watching it again. This is what I call "aftertaste"! :)

4. Frost/Nixon: ~~Martin Sheen~~ Michael Sheen becomes a superb interviewer and the actors around him are all in form. But all they really do is prepare a setting in which Frank Langella shines brightly as Richard Nixon. Langella will get a well deserved nomination here as should the screenplay and direction. The political-historical drama genre is something that makes compelling viewing if done well (The Queen, Good Night and Good Luck, All the President's Men etc). It is a pity that no one attempts it in Hindi cinema because they don't think it is viable. This is one of the more engrossing movies of its kind that you'd have seen.

3. Let the Right One In: Again, talked about it before. It has only gone up in my estimation since then. Along with Mithya, and possibly In Bruges, this is one of those movies in this list that you will probably not hear as much of as the other more famous movies. Yet, it is easily a must-watch. Don't reject this movie because you have heard that it is a vampire movie, or because you didn't like the trailer. This is really a gem.

2. WALL-E: Sigh! Pixar... They clearly don't get tired of living up to all of our expectations. And yet, WALL-E has shown the Pixar has its own problems. The kids/teenage targeting frachise is such a huge money spinner and Pixar quality animation is such an expensive undertaking that they end up compromising just a little here. As cute as WALL-E is, it is actually absolutely unbelievably unqualified masterpiece material during its first half. The second half has its own great moments (the definition of dance that WALL-E and EVE present outside Axiom when the captain says "Define dance!" is one of the greatest moments EVER in a film...), and yet all the running around of crazy bots and the fight with Auto are purely there for the young ones in the theatre. That this is still at number 2 for the year (and one of the best animation movies ever) only goes to show the greatness of the rest of the movie.

(aside: initial reports are suggesting that Pixar's next "UP" is probably going to be similar. i.e. it has an amazing first half where the movie seems almost like a great grown up drama but then it probably changes into something more palatable to children's taste... we'll see... if the first half as great as in WALL-E, maybe we can live with some battles with monsters etc!)

1. The Dark Knight: I can't talk about this movie. I really can't. Every time I thought about writing a mini-review, I just didn't know where to start. I can write all the great adjectives I can think of and yet will find myself feeling that I didn't do justice to it. So, maybe I'll try to write about things that I didn't like. Some of the "two-face" stuff was probably average. As was the IR-vision stuff. But that is really about it. Virtually every other scene of the movie was jaw-droppingly great. WOW!! Christopher Nolan is a genius. I can't wait for whatever he does next. Heath Ledger will get his oscar, and it will be a pity that anyone who hasn't seen the movie will always assume that his death had something to do with it. Philip Seymour Hoffman is great in Doubt, and some of the awards are acknowledging Josh Brolin in Milk, but if you ask me, no one comes even close to Heath's Joker. TDK made my year!

Brief comments on some recent movies

2008-12-18T19:37:00.003-05:00

I've just moved to a new place. Which means that regardless of how much work I might have to do, there is a lot of time to kill without anyone to kill it with. And that can mean only one thing for me... more movies!!! In any case, this is the "oscar season", which means that there are a lot of really good movies are in the theatres right now or about to release over next few weeks. November to January are my movie months regardless of the amount of free time I have on my hands.

Anyway, here are some brief comments on some of the movies that I have seen over last few weeks.

Slumdog Millionaire: I've already written about it in the previous post. Basically a really good movie overall, just not as good as Roger Ebert and others think. I have a sneaking suspicion that one of the reasons why everyone seems to be liking it so much is that Roger Ebert talked about it in such glowing terms long before most others had a chance to see it. And that puts a certain pressure on others. I don't mean to say that all the critics follow his advice or that they can't dislike a movie if Ebert likes it a lot (eg. Synecdoche, New York left a lot of people cold even though Ebert thought it was brilliant). Still, if you think a movie is quite good, if you actually like it, chances are that the fact that someone like Ebert has already hyped it up a LOT then your own review will probably add maybe one-fourth of a star to what you'd have given it otherwise. Having said that, maybe it really is that good for people here and the only reason why it didn't impress me as much as others was the language part, as I mentioned in that post.

Rating: 8.3/10

Synecdoche, New York: The fact that it is the directorial debut of Charlie Kaufman itself was enough to make me feel a little apprehensive. He writes amazing (and sometimes amazingly convoluted) scripts. So if he decided to direct this one himself, chances are this one is even more convoluted than normal. That is exactly what happened. I am sure I'll "get" more of the movie after watching it at least two more times. There were certainly parts of the movie (and the acting performaces, especially by Philip Seymour Hoffman) that were quite accessible and pretty good. Yet, every once in a while something happens that leaves you scratching your head. I am sure my rating of the movie will increase a lot once I have had a chance to see it again. But as of now it is only a 7/10.

Rating: 7/10 (tentative...)

Milk: Sean Penn is absolutely great here. Definitely Oscar worthy. A really well made movie about Harvey Milk. Filled with some other good performaces too, but I never felt Josh Brolin was as good here as all the critics awards lists seem to indicate (specially when the rival performace is Heath Ledger's in The Dark Knight). Then again, what do I know about acting? Really good movie, even if there's a certain pattern to most biopics which this follows too, making almost everything (including the supposedly sudden tragedies etc) quite predictable. I have found that now biopics don't really move me as much as they used to initially, just like war movies. Even when they are very well made, there is a certain been-there-seen-that kind of feeling to the situations.

Rating: 8.1/10

Let The Right One In: Wow! I guess the reason I was so impressed with this movie was that I went in to see it without really knowing about it all that much. All that I knew was that it was a horror movie/vampire movie that was getting really great reviews. I am not all that big a fan of horror movies as such, but maybe that is because too few of them are good nowadays. Anyway, I was really surprised by this movie. It is not even close to what one might expect from a horror/vampire movie and is much more closer to good drama movies. The story is more concerned about the relationship between two pre-teen kids than showing blood/gore/violence/special effects as most horror movies might do. In fact visuals-wise the vampire aspect of the story probably doesn't even take 10-15 minutes in total. One of the best movies I have seen recently (which might not be saying much.. considering that I haven't seen all that many movies this year).

Rating: 8.6/10

Happy-Go-Lucky: Good, but not nearly as good as some of the reviews made me expect. Performaces are good. Sally Hawkins and Eddie Marsan are great. But overall it didn't have nearly enough things to keep me interested. Not theatre-worthy for me. :)

Rating: 7/10

The Visitor: It had released much earlier in the year and had got some really good reviews, specially for the lead performance by Richard Jenkins. And I found everything exactly that way, if not better. A nice, touching, even engrossing movie about a writer/professor who has lost touch with the good things in his life - except the memory of his wife, and his interest in and ability to enjoy music - and an immigrant family that he comes across.

Rating: 8.3/10

Coming Soon : Persona; Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi; Rock On!!

Slumdog Millionaire micro-review

2008-12-17T23:06:00.002-05:00

Today is my lazy-blogging day. That doesn't mean "I am feeling lazy, so I'll blog" kind of day. It means "I am feeling lazy to write proper posts, so I'll just steal stuff from my chats/emails and paste here" kind of day! :)

Anyway, I had seen Slumdog Millionaire last weekend and I was quite excited about it because of all the critical hype here in the US. A friend asked me about the movie today and I emailed her my views. Here is what I had to write (and I know it shouldn't be called a review at all.. just some thoughts about the movie)..

yes, I liked it. But not so much as to justify all the hype here in the media right now. It seemed like a very well made indian movie actually, in a lot of ways.. which means, it is a really good movie.. just not as "great" as I had expected... or maybe that is the effect of language.. it becomes a little difficult to empathize with the characters/situations etc if you feel a little awkward at listening to them talking in english... as in, they have done such a good job at shooting, casting etc that everything is absolutely correct in terms of the setting in india/mumbai.. thats why it just seems a little awkward to see them speak in english for about half the movie.. obviously, that is inevitable as it is a british movie.. and obviously it shouldn't matter to people who only see it as a semi-foreign language movie here and it wouldn't have mattered to me if it had been a movie set in africa where characters were speaking english... but it had at least some effect on how much I could believe the characters and situations, specially since a lot of scenes evoke in my mind some scenes from great movies where the memorable lines were in hindi... It just seems a little awkward to see a cop torturing a kid and talking to him and his own subordinate in english.. specially because all of them act really well and everything but the language is quite convincing... having said that, maybe i am underselling the movie a lot... it wasn't bad at all.. as I said, it is actually really good... just not so good that I think of giving it an oscar for best picture (which it is most likely going to be nominated for...)

I won't hesitate to give it the oscar for best original score though.. :P and I'm sure it will be nominated for that...

Hopefully this will lead to some more people discovering ARR!

quick top 10

2008-12-17T22:19:00.004-05:00

I was chatting with PB (better known nowadays as VKBs karela guinea pig) right now and he mentioned someone's all time top-10 movie list. That triggered a sudden reaction somewhere making it inevitable that I come up with my own top-10 movie list. And since I couldn't have waited too long (otherwise he'd have become completely uninterested in the topic), I searched only the very top of my head and came up with this list. Obviously, in no particular order...

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

12 Angry Men

Schindler's List

The Incredibles

The Lord of the Rings (will count it as only one movie!)

Satya

Kill Bill (again.. will only count this as one movie... but Vol 2 more than Vol 1)

2046

The Godfather.

Forrest Gump

special mentions that JUST missed the list: City of God, The Dark Knight, The Lives of Others, Iruvar, Mr Smith Goes to Washington, Ratatouille.... and maybe about 20 others... :)

clearly the list is highly fluid and will probably look a bit different (hopefully not COMPLETELY different) if you catch me at any other time. But, here it is for right now!

not bad.. not bad at all...

2008-12-17T15:11:00.003-05:00

Found about this online typing speed test via this post on Prem Panicker's blog, and decided to give it a try and see how will my version of 5-6 finger typing fare at this. The result...

69 words

Typing Test

Not bad, eh? Prem is at 76 words. So, a non-journo like me whose current typing technique has evolved over 8-9 years of blogging and chatting online should be proud of achieving 69 words correct, 0 words incorrect per minute, right?

Nabob

2008-11-22T09:38:00.002-05:00

"Nabob" is the dictionary.com word of the day today. It means "a wealthy person".

Heh!

I am sure a lot of hindi/urdu speaking people will chuckle at that. :)

Behka from Ghajini

2008-11-21T12:15:00.003-05:00

I am sure most of you have seen the original promo and the Guzarish song promo of Ghajini by now. If not, click here and here. The second song promo is out now, and I must say that this one excited me more than the Guzarish promo. It might just be due to relatively less male nudity ;), but I guess the music has something to do with it too. Guzarish, while pretty good, still doesn't seem to have anything "hatke", anything "Rahman" going for it. In other words Guzarish seems more like "Tu Muskura" than some nice innovative job like in "Tu Bole Main Boloon".

Here is the trailer.

PS: increase the volume before listening!! :)

Goodbye, PhD!

2008-11-13T09:09:00.003-05:00

Yay!!!!

As I said... Yay!!!!

Trying to start blogging again, now that I might have SOME time... I hope someone notices!! :P

The Oscar nano-post

2008-02-24T15:08:00.003-05:00

Just posting because I don't want to break this blog's tradition of writing at least SOMETHING about the oscars. (For those who want to point out that THAT particular tradition had already been broken last year, I'd just say that it was just not possible for me to post anything on the oscar day last year. Conference and all.... )

Anyway, for lack of time, all I'm going to post here is a list of winners that will make me happy. I haven't seen some of the nominated movies in some of the categories, so "winner that will make me happy" is only based on whichever movies I have seen.

So, here we go....

Best Picture: Atonement (it is still at number 2 on my top 10 list for the year, even though I have now seen some more movies since that list was made). Though I won't mind too much if it goes to No Country for Old Men. What I WILL mind is if There Will Be Blood ends up winning the oscar as it really didn't work for me that well.
Haven't seen yet: Michael Clayton

Best Actor: Daniel Day Lewis. Though I haven't seen 3 of the nominated performances, so I guess I really don't have an opinion about this one.
Haven't seen yet: Michael Clayton, Sweeny Todd, & In the Valley of Elah,

Best Actress: Ellen Page all the way. Haven't seen 3 of the nominees here too, but Ellen Page was just SO good here, that I will hate it if she doesn't get it. Though I guess Julie Christie is the frontrunner here.
Haven't seen yet: Elizabeth, La Mome, The Savages

Best Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem.
Haven't seen yet: Jesse James, Charlie Wilson's War, Michael Clayton

Best Supporting Actress: Saoirse Ronan.
Haven't seen yet: I'm Not There, Michael Clayton

Best Director: Julian Schnabel. Though it will probably go to Coens of Paul Thomas Anderson
Haven't seen yet: Michael Clayton

Best Original Screenplay: Ratatouille. They HAVE TO give one of these awards to the Pixar people sometime. Not going to happen this time though. :( Juno is probably going to take it.
Haven't seen yet: Lars and the Real Girl, Michael Clayton, The Savages

Best Adapted Screenplay: No Country for Old Men or The Diving Bell and the Butterfly will both be fine with me.
Haven't seen yet: none! :)

Best Cinematography: Janusz Kaminsky though I don't think they are going to give it to him. Not that the others aren't good, I just want him to get it.
Haven't seen yet: Jesse James

Best Original Music Score: Ratatouille. Not going to happen. But I'll LOVE it if they give it to Ratatouille!

Best Animated Feature: Ratatouille . Persepolis might win it, and it might deserve it too (haven't seen it yet), but I WANT Ratatouille to win it!

That's it. No real opinions about any other categories as yet. Waiting for the ceremony to start now!

Movies 2007 - My Tentative Top Ten

2008-01-13T03:59:00.001-05:00

I've watched some of the oscar-buzz movies since writing that Movie post. And it is now somewhat clear what form my 2007 list might look like. I still have to see some movies that will topple some of the movies in the current top 10. Some of these movies that I have not yet seen but are likely to be really good, possibly worthy of a top 10 place (a couple of them are in with a chance of coming in even at number 1), are:
There Will Be Blood
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days
3:10 to Yuma
Taare Zameen Par
Persepolis
The Great Debators
The Kite Runner
Jab We Met
Eastern Promises
Once
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Away From Her
Gone Baby Gone
Black Book

The reason Black Book is included in this list even though it was part of last year's oscar nominations is because it did not get a wide enough release in USA till some time into 2007. Which means I could not have included it in last year's list. Now that I have its DVD with me, I'll probably watch it soon enough and if it is REALLY good, it might figure in this year's list.

So, a couple of special mentions first. These are the movies that weren't great enough to figure in the top 10 for me at this time, but any of them might come in at #5-#10 if you ask me to make the same list 10 days from now. :) As it often happens, except for the top 4-5 movies, the rankings for the rest are quite dynamic. So, the special mentions...

16. Hot Fuzz
15. Chak De India
14. Cheeni Kum
13. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
12. In the Shadow of the Moon
11. American Gangster

Aaaaaand, here is the tentative top 10 list. Chances are that the bottom half might drop out later on, but the first 4-5 movies will probably still be in the list even after I get to see all the movies mentioned above, though not necessarily at the current rankings. So..

10. Juno : Saw it just yesterday, and it is quite funny. Really well written dialogue throughout the movie. Very often, in a comedy/dramedy at least some of the humor does not work for me. There might be some jokes that just fall flat or sound lame to me (as is true for everyone). But I don't remember a single line in this movie where I felt that way. But more than anything else it is Ellen Page's performance. This girl is just about 20 years old, and looking at her in this movie I'm sure Roger Ebert is right about her in saying that she is going to be one of the great actresses of her generation. See this movie if only for Ellen Page. But even if you see it for her performance, I assure you you'll find plenty to chuckle about.

9. Black Friday : Finally I got to see what all the hype about Anurag Kashyap was. His screenplay for Satya was brilliant, and his Paanch never got released. So, this was my first chance to see why people keep saying that he is SO good. And even though I haven't seen No Smoking yet, and even though it was almost universally panned, I think Black Friday was enough to convince me that AK is a director who can make some really good movies in future. some of the scenes in this movie are just superb! But then again, I thought there are some sequences where he just overindulges himself. It becomes too slow at times, and for a movie that is shot as if it were a docu-drama it has some very bollywood-y scenes (specially Tiger Memon's depiction. While Pawan Malhotra performed really well, everything just felt too over-the-top about those sequences).

8. Into the Wild: A wonderfully shot movie with some amazing performaces. Emile Hirsch will probably get a well deserved oscar nomination, and I'll be really happy if this also gets at least one supporting actor/actress nomination. Hal Holbrook will probably get it, even though his charater has only about 20 minutes of screen time. But then, Atonement might get a supporting actress nomination for a 3-minute role. So... :)

7. Lust, Caution: Ang Lee's new movie that won't be able to get a foreign-movie nomination because of some confusion about whether it is "foreign" enough and, if so, whether it belongs to China or Taiwan? Again, superbly shot with some great sets and amazing leading performances. I didn't like it as much when I saw it, and I'm surprised myself at finding it in my top 10! This is what I mean by the "aftertaste" of a movie. Some movies grow on you after every successive watch, but some grow on you (or at least me) without even watching them again. I just think back to some of the scenes/sequences and I realize that I enjoyed them more than some of the other movies in the list. So, here is Lust, Caution at 7!

6. Zodiac : A really well made serial-killer movie that showed more of the investigation into the murders than the murders themselves. This movie didn't really get its due at the box office and most of the critics have probably forgotten all about it because it came so early in the year. I have always liked Jake Gyllenhall but it is Mark Ruffalo who overshadows everyone in this one. He'd have got a supporting actor nomination had this movie come later in the year, but nobody is talking about it now. sigh!

5. The Bourne Ultimatum: I LOVED the second Bourne movie but this one was even better. It is essentially a mindless action movie disguised as an intelligent spy movie. And it is done REALLY well. Fun ride from first scene to the last.

4. Ratatouille: People still have a bias against animation movies. There is still a feeling somewhere that these are "kid movies" and probably don't deserve to compete against some of the "serious" stuff. But Pixar will probably slowly change all that. The Incredibles was nominated for its original screenplay and I'd dance all night if they remember to do so with Ratatouille too. Hopefully Pixar will keep coming up with such amazing movies and we'll see a Pixar movie getting its thoroughly deserved nominations for screenplay, music, direction, acting (even if just voice!) etc in 2015. Maybe even a best picture nomination! Ratatouille rocks! It is not quite Pixar's best, but that is like saying this is not Sachin's best century. It still is a Sachin century and it probably had more gorgeous shots than anyone else's 200. So, this might not be as good as The Incredibles but there are delightful sequences throughout Ratatouille that are way better than most live-action stuff that we get to see around. As for comparing with other animation movies here in the US, you must be joking! The Shreks and Ice Ages only seem like pretenders when you come out of a screening of something like Ratatouille!

3. No Country For Old Men : I've already written about it in the previous post. Read it here.

2. Atonement: Saw it only 2 days ago, so chances are that I might be over-estimating it due to the recency-factor, but then I saw Juno yesterday and it doesn't figure at number 1. So....
I LOVE movies with great visuals and sounds and most period costume dramas are great that way (most of the good ones, anyway). But this is something more than just that. Its a great story (apparently from a prestigous and popular novel), adapted into a really, REALLY good screenplay. It moves from British family drama to war epic to love story with amazing skill and keeps you interested for every single second of the movie. I normally do not like war movies a lot, so it helps that the war probably only takes up about 30% of the screen time. And it also helps to have a STUNNING 4-5 minute long single-take scene during that war sequence. I don't know if that scene really is single-take or it is made to look that way but, whatever the case might be, I was looking at it with open-mouthed amazement. I had no idea about how good this movie might be when I went to see it. Maybe that is why I am rating it so highly, because it just surprised and delighted me throughout its running length. I can't wait to go and see it again at the first chance. And I can't wait to buy the DVD whenever it comes out (and becomes cheap enough so I can afford it! :) )

1. The Lives of Others : I almost did this movie a great injustice by forgetting about it entirely initially. It got the foreign language movie oscar last year, and so should probably be considered as a 2006 movie but just like Black Book it came to the theatres later in the year so I could not include it in the last year's list. If I had, it would be one of the three best movies of last year (along with The Departed and Pan's Labyrinth). Its a great movie about socialism in East Berlin in 1984 (the year, not the book.. but it probably is intentional). Without telling you much about it, I'll just say that it is a spy thriller/drama about an official of Stasi - the government's secret police - who is given the task of arranging surveillance of a famous writer and his girlfriend, a theatre actress. A web is then spun about corrupt officials, fearful citizens, conspirators/rebels and the protagonist - an idealist whose faith in the system of government that he is serving slowly unravels as he observes what is happening around him. And for a movie that seems to be constantly moving towards doom, it has a strangely uplifiting end.
Best movie of the year. By far.