The man who ate the banana...

I have my weekly group meeting on monday noon. This means that I am quite busy preparing my slides on monday before noon AND there is no time for the usual going out for lunch.. so, I try to take something that keeps me full till 2pm, when I can think about proper lunch.

Today, I decided to take a banana.

I came in, put the banana on the shelf above my computers and started to work. There was a lot of work. 2 things were being juggled together. Results were being calculated and slides being made simultaneously. Absolutely no time to even stand up, let alone thinking of the banana, even though the tummy had started to grumble. Finally, at 11:45, I found some time for the pre-lunch snack that was waiting for me in the shelf above the computers.

I looked up.

There was no banana.

"hmph! that's funny! I could've sworn that's where I had kept it!
Maybe on the other shelf?...
Nope! Not there either..."

It was then, as I sat there wondering where exactly my notoriously bad memory is failing me this morning (Did I forget to get it from home? Is that distinctly visual memory of keeping it there just a reconstruction from  what I expected, rather than real?)... so, it is then that I felt a slight banana-ish taste on my tongue. It took me aback!

"Surely, I haven't eaten the banana and absolutely, completely,entirely, as-thorough-as-is-possible-ly forgotten it!..."

And then it struck me! Aha! If I had eaten the banana, where's the skin, eh? (Let's not think about the taste on the tongue for a while.. it is too traumatic to go near the possibility that I really might've eaten it and forgotten it) There was clearly no sign of the possibly-eaten-but-more-likely-vanished-into-thin-air banana's skin as far as I could see (which isn't much when you sit in what can only quite generously be called a cubicle).

This was a riddle, the only solution to which was that not only did I completely forget eating a banana, I also had no memory of getting up from my seat to throw the skin in the small trashcan in the corner of the office. So I, reluctantly, and very apprehensively (along with perhaps Bernard Hermann's music from a Hitchcock movie playing in my imagination) got up and took 3 steps towards the trash can.

There it was on the top. The unmistakable skin of the lonely banana from my fridge that should've been on the shelf above my computers covering the banana that I clearly had eaten but have no memory of eating.

What will happen to me when I am 60? or even 40? *shudder*

The obligatory oscar post

Last year I had published just 1 (yep... One...) post on this blog. That was because I just couldn't not make my obligatory oscar post. With that sort of history, and my recent claim about reviving my blog, there is really no way out this time either. So, here goes... as usual a hurried post, but an oscar post nevertheless.

Only writing about the categories about what I have any opinion one way or another. Bold is for "probably going to win", italics are for "my choice among the ones I have seen" while * means "still have to see this movie".

Best Picture: The Artist, (The Descendants or Hugo could also win.. though The Artist is the frontrunner), Hugo (Loved it!), *Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Best Lead Actor: Jean Dujardin (though I won't be surprised if Clooney wins... I'll actually be pleasantly surprised if Oldman wins, but perhaps that's not going to happen). *A Better Life

Best Lead Actress: Viola Davis (Streep might win it too.. I haven't seen 3 movies here, so no strong opinion anyway) *The Iron Lady, *My Week With Marilyn,  *Albert Nobbs

Best Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer (I'm not sure if she is really the frontrunner, but she really elevated The Help by her performance.) *Albert Nobbs, *Bridesmaids

Best Director: Hugo (Perhaps The Artist is the frontrunner.. but i don't know... maybe they WILL give it to Scorsese.. if the do, I'll be happy.. I actually will also be pleasantly surprised if Terrence Malick gets it for The Tree of Life, but that is probably not going to happen)

Original Screenplay: A Separation (I don't know who will win. haven't seen Bridesmaids, and I didn't think Margin Call was THAT good.. any of the others won't be a big surprise but I REALLY want A separation to win, as you might've guessed by my last post :) ) *Bridesmaids

Adapted Screenplay: Moneyball (perhaps this will go to The Descendants, and I won't mind that too much. Though Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was pretty good too) *The Ides of March

Cinematography: All beautiful movies here! But I prefer The Tree of Life and War Horse  over others. Maybe they'll give it to The Tree of Life.. or perhaps it is going to be the day of The Artist.

Original Score: The Artist had to breathe through its score, and it was really good. Though all the other contenders were really good too.

Foreign Language Film: A Separation (though I haven't seen any of the others.. still, a movie will have to be awesome to beat A Separation, and that can only be good! Another great movie to see! But I really do think that is probably not going to happen.) *In Darkness, *Footnote, *Bullhead, *Monsieur Lazhar

Animated Feature: Rango (not seen 3 of the contenders, but I'll be surprised if Puss in Boots beats Rango.. and mildly surprised if even Kung Fu Panda 2 wins.. no idea about the other two. They might actually be good enough to win) *Chico & Rita, *A Cat in Paris

Live Action Short: No personal favorites really. All were nice. Though perhaps Tuba Atlantic and The Shore might be more 'oscar like' and might win.

Animated Short: The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore (Though Pixar's La Luna was pretty cute too, and might win.. all the other 3 were nice enough actually.. but TFFBOMMLessmore (phew!) was easily my favorite among all 5. 

A Separation

I had almost completely given up on my blogs. Every once in a while something would make me think of writing a post, but the more time a blog is dead, stronger is the reason that is needed to revive it. After a while, almost nothing seems strong enough. Not even year-end lists. I actually did make a "best hindi songs of 2011" for my own amusement, but even that didn't get me to finally publish something here.

And then, I saw "A Separation".

I saw it on 18th (my birthday), but waited for some days because a) I wanted to give myself some time so that the initial euphoria can die down and b) GG has been asking me to start blogging again, so now this can also count as her birthday gift! :P (Happy B'day GG!) :)

Anyway, for those of you who don't know about this movie, A Separation is an Iranian movie about a couple in contemporary Iran and some extraordinary circumstances that they find themselves in. You can see the trailer below, and it will tell you enough about the movie's plot and genre etc for you to decide whether this sounds like something that you'd want to see.

I was quite looking forward to this movie because it was easily the best reviewed movie of the year (95 on metacritic! no. 1 on Roger Ebert's year-end list..). The trailer increased that excitement. This was obviously the kind of movie that I normally like. When we found out that it is releasing in St Louis the day before my birthday, we really didn't have to think twice about what we were going to do to celebrate my birthday - Go and see if "A Separation" really is as good as we were hoping it to be.

It was. It really was. A lot of times when I go to see a movie with high expectations, there is a danger of me underrating it just because it didn't live upto the expectations. This movie not only lived up to them, it surpassed them. I was quite excited after watching "Hugo" recently, and "Black Swan" last year, but I really don't remember feeling THIS good about a movie after watching it for the first time since, probably, "The Lives of Others".

The movie is quite verbose. And completely devoid of any background score (which made me think of Satyajit Rai.. apparently he didn't like using music to guide and enhance emotions in movies.. a sign of inadequate storytelling skills). If you look at the trailer, it essentially seems to be about a family's troubles. Perhaps a tragic family drama, one would think. But it is really about much more than that. At times, it plays like a mystery and keeps you hooked because you want to know what the truth is. Then again, it raises Rashomon-like questions about truth itself. About morality. About letter and spirit of the law. About right and wrong and most things that are neither. And it touches you because you really do care about all of these characters. You think about those big questions BECAUSE they impact the lives of these people who really are trying to do their best given the situation they are in. The overall feel of the movie also made me think of Dekalog. Perhaps because while the movie is about big questions, it never feels that way because those things are translated so incredibly well into the lives of simple, ordinary people with seemingly simple lives.

It really is a triumph of storytelling and performances. If the trailer makes this movie seems anything like the sort of movie that you like to watch, then DO NOT miss it whenever you get an opportunity to see it. 

Oscar Nominations 2011

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

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...

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)

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

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

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.

1. 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. 
2. 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. 
3. 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. 
4. 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.... 

1. 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. 
2. 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
3. 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. 
4. 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... 
5. 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. 
6. 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...

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....