For Amrita Rao fans...

and also any Shahid Kapur fans that might be lurking about... a still from Vivaah. Can't say I'm looking forward to the movie, though.



pic courtesy: Sandhya Iyer/Naachgaana.com

Gulzar! Rahman! Ratnam!

jaage hain der tak, hamein kuchh der sone do..

thodi si raat aur hai, subah to hone do..

aadhe adhoore khwaab jo poore na ho sake,

ek baar phir se neend mein vo khwaab bone do..

ek khwaab toot jaane ka ehsaas hi to hai,

thodi si raat aur, sehar paas hi to hai

I want Guru's album. NOW!

Exciting times!

I'd been keeping extremely busy due to work ( and just a little play) over last one month. But two movies are screaming to be blogged about, so here I am.

First, a movie that is easily the most exciting among the near-future releases. Guru is about to release. The trailer is out with the Diwali releases (Don and Jaaneman) and is now up on the official site of the movie. Looks to be inspired by Ambani and knowing how good Mani Ratnam is when he makes these icon-biopics (Iruvar and Nayagan e.g.), I think Abhishek Bachchan might just have hit gold. If he is even half as good as Mohanlal, Prakashraj and Kamal Haasan were in those other Mani Ratnam gems, then this movie will catapult him to great heights. And the trailer really DOES seem to suggest that! More than anything else, though, is the fact that the music will probably release very soon now. I'm already hyperventilating with excitement! There has been no buzz about this music, and chances are that given the subject it will be understated a la Iruvar. But that means that quality-wise it should be mind-blowing. This is clearly Iruvar territory and not Dil Se territory. But then, Iruvar's music was amazing too, wasn't it?

Secondly, go and watch Dor today, if you havent already. In this amazing year of Rang De Basanti, Lage Raho Munnabhai and Omkara, Dor is another addition to great hindi movies. It's a remake of Perumazhakalam and I don't really know how much creative addition Nagesh Kukunoor has done, but it seems he has done enough to get a lot of credit for this great movie. There are some problems with the movie, but nothing that can't be explained away by budget constraints. You can find more about the movie online if you want to, so I won't say much here except that it is a must watch. Go and see it!

random.....

A lot of things to do but absolutely no mood to do anything right now.. :( what to do? (blog, of course!)

Considering that this blog has always been predominantly about movies, I think it won't really be appropriate if I don't tell you people that I have seen two of the best movies of this year during last two weeks. Little Miss Sunshine and The Departed.

For those of you who love light comedies (as in, well made plot/dialogue/character based comedy and not actor antics based physical comedy) Little Miss Sunshine is a must watch! Easily one of the most funny movies I have seen in some time.

As for The Departed, I don't see how anyone could've gone wrong with such amazing plot. I had already seen the original chinese movie (Infernal Affairs) and loved it. And I had been VERRRY excited when I came to know that Scorsese was planning to remake it (that too with Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon and Jack Nicholson!). But I was concerned that for someone who has seen the original, will he be able to hold the attention much. Turns out that he can! The Departed follows the original movie's screenplay a LOT. So much so that on a lot of occassions it seems as if you are watching the same movie again. And yet, against all expectations, it is actually BETTER than the original. Scorsese has changed some things. The movie is set in Boston, and that does a lot to change the overall "feel" of the movie. Some interesting characters have been added and Jack Nicholson's role has been expanded a lot (if it wasn't I'm sure Jack Nicholson wouldn't have wanted to take it up! :) ), and a lot of humor has been added through dialogue. I don't know if I should call it more engrossing than the original as the original was as engrossing as any movie you'll ever see, but it definitely doesn't lose any of the original's strengths while adding a couple of good things to it. I don't know if Scorsese should get an oscar for what is essentially a highly faithful remake, but he definitely has made a verrry good movie. Easily one of the best movies of this year so far. If you haven't seen the original, you'll probably want to give the oscar to Scorsese rightaway!! :) I'd urge you to wait though. There are quite a few movies coming up. Not least of them Flags of Our Fathers.

All you lovers of Luna Lovegood!

Here is a still from the movie. Its amazing how they translate her "dreamy-eyes" expression onto the screen. She really DOES look like Luna Lovegood of my imagination! :)

Pic courtesy Mugglenet.

linking park....

Today's links... A hilarious post on India Uncut, here. Amit Varma rocks!

A superb trailer that has made Little Children one of the most anticipated movies of this year for me, here. Mark my words, you'll hear this movie's name a lot of times on the Oscar night. (yes! just the trailer is enough to tell me that! :P )

A wonderful blog containing movie reviews and movie related interviews mainly, here. The latest post is a glowing review of Nagesh Kukunoor's Dor. What a year this is turning out to be for Indian movies. wow!

Hi-resolution pic of Imelda Staunton as Dolores Umbridge in HP5, here. Must say that she looks much less evil/intimidating that the Umbridge in my mind's eye. Then again, it might just be because I find it difficult to separate Imelda Staunton from her amazing portrayal of Vera Drake. It is impossible to imagine anything remotely evil related to that role.

(melodious) song of the day

I am a shamelessly proud fan of A R Rahman. And there are some times when I wonder myself whether there have been cases of me liking a Rahman song just BECAUSE it happened to be a Rahman song and whether he REALLY is as great as I like to think. In such rare moments of doubt, all I need to do is play any one of my favorite songs, close my eyes and lose myself in the immense pleasure those sounds bring to me. There are many many songs that have such an effect on me and a lot of them are famous enough so that most of you would've heard them. So, let me recommend one that you might've missed.

Two of ARR's most underrated albums (aren't they all underrated? even the most hyped probably deserve to be hyped even more! :P ) are Sangamam and Taj Mahal and its a pity that people who aren't exposed to tamil songs will probably never listen to these songs. They probably won't even be dubbed in hindi simply because of the tamil folk touch that most of these songs have. To people who are willing to invest 15-20 minutes of their time based on my recommendation, I'd suggest they listen to "Karisal Tharisal" from Taj Mahal. Play the song, increase the volume to the level that you enjoy most, close your eyes and relax. Try to ignore the fact that you don't understand tamil if that's the case. Then play the song again (you'll find that ignoring the tamil part isn't even an issue after the first listening). And once more. If you find even half as much joy as I get from this song, you'll thank me (and ARR, of course) for that!

strict instruction: don't even try to listen to the song on Raaga/Musicindiaonline etc. If you can't find it anywhere, send me a mail. It'll probably be within the realm of possibility to convince myself that I am not encouraging piracy by sending a tamil song to someone who wasn't going to buy a tamil song anyway. If I can convert even one person so that he/she then goes ahead and buys some tamil albums, I think it will be worth it.

strict instruction 2: don't blame me if you don't find the song great after the first hearing and decide not to listen to it again. "3 hearings before verdict" is the ARR rule. Follow it.

Movie Geek heaven!

Peter Jackson's enthusiasm for his projects is contagious. I wasn't too excited when I heard that his followup to LOTR series was going to be a remake of King Kong but watching the production diaries on kongisking.net got me so excited that it became one of the most anticipated movies of the last year for me. And now this freewheeling interview on AIC has got me all excited about The Lovely Bones (his next directorial venture), The Dambusters (he's producing it) and the Temeraire series that he just bought the rights for. I still am not THAT keen on the Halo adaptation that he is producing but reading the interview has made me at least wait and make up my mind after having a first look at posters/trailers as and when they come up.

Read the 5-part interview if you consider yourself a movie fan (even if not a Peter Jackson fan). The fifth part hasn't been published yet. The other parts are here (1 - about the Temeraire series), here (2 - about The Lovely Bones), here (3 - about Halo), and here (4 - about The Dambusters). If nothing else, read The Dambusters section. I don't know about you, but I am already looking forward to this one (and they haven't even completed the script yet!!).

Let's be lazy....

what do you do when you intend to post something but don't have the time/inclination to post something new? well, you can either just post a link to someone else's post OR just copy paste your own post from some other place!! :)

so, here is a little summary of non-indian movies that have been released in US this year and some of the highly anticipated ones for the rest of the year... I had posted this as a comment on a related post on Naachgaana, so it doesn't have the "feel" of a blog post. But that is still better than nothing, right?

V for Vendetta, The Proposition, Inside Man, United 93, the squid and the whale and Cache were all really good! (Though the last two were probably released last year, as someone pointed out later). Cars, as a movie, was just good enough to watch but include the absolutely ridiculously beautiful animation and it probably becomes one of the must-see movies of the year so far. You have NO idea what you have missed by not watching it on the big screen. Then there were reasonably good/watchable ones like A Scanner Darkly, Thank you for smoking (really hilarious in parts) and An Inconvenient Truth.
Others that I have yet to see but have had good reports are Little Miss Sunshine (easily the clearest oscar bait for the next year, as of now), Clerks II, Road to Guatanamo, A Prairie Home Companion.

As for forthcoming movies The Departed has been one of the most anticipated movies for me for some time now, but the trailers left me just a wee bit disappointed. It seems too much of a copy of Infernal Affairs for my taste. I loved Infernal Affairs, but watching exactly the same scenes in the trailer of the Scorsese remake put me off a little bit. Jack Nicholson is AMAZING in the trailer, though! Easily the strongest point of the movie for me, as of now. And that is saying something considering that I've become sort of a fan of Leonardo DiCaprio over last few years.
And I JUST saw the trailer of Flags of our Fathers and it is ABSOLUETLY fabulous. the japanese trailer for the twin movies was superb, but this english one has made me insanely excited. And that is even though I am normally not a very war-movie kind of person.
I LOVED the sounds and visuals of the last two Zhang Yimou movies and I worship Gong Li's acting prowess, so Curse of the Golden Flower is another movie that I am eagerly waiting for.
Aronofsky's The Fountain HAS to be included in any list of the anticipated movies for 2006.
The trailer of The Last King of Scotland is great too, though it might turn out to be too reminiscent of Hotel Rwanda.
The Last Kiss is very exciting for anyone who liked Garden State (I did!). And even though the first trailer is too weird to say anything for or against it, The Science of Sleep might turn out to be another great movie from Gondry (though without Charlie Kauffman this time!)
Then there are others like Babel, Volver, A Good Year, Stranger than fiction, Apocalypto, The Children of Men, The Good Shephard, The Good German and Dreamgirls all have something or the other going for them and are interesting. Hopefully at least some of them will turn out great. Otherwise this is going to be a very disappointing year indeed.

Rising from the ashes...

like a Phoenix! lets see how long this stretch of blogging goes...

lets start with some quotes I ran into today.. forgot about the sources, so the credits will probably come later..

first, a funny quote (but when you REALLY think about it, quite insightful too), "A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg."

then an interesting one (though possibly incorrect), "If the brain were simple enough to be understood, it would be too simple to understand itself."