The Movie Post

Things are completely lopsided with me. A whole year passed by without me finding time/energy/inclination to blog about anything. 10 months ago I didnt even have time to blog about the top movies of 2006 and the Oscars and now I am feeling this incredible urge to blog about 2007 movies because the golden globe nominations are about to come out.

So, here is the deal. I have not seen many movies this year. But, as usual, I know about most of the ones that came out and have a good idea about the awards buzz. So, here goes... a little overview of the notable movies of this year and my comments based on whatever I have seen of them (just the trailers in some cases) or heard about them.

No Country For Old Men: #15 on IMDb top 250. a rating of 8.9/10. Perched at no 1 or 2 on most critics top 10 of 2007 already. 2-3 Best picture/best director/best supporting actor awards in the kitty. But more than anything else, WOW! what a thrilling movie! Its not usual for a movie to get such unanimous Best Picture/Best director buzz and it not being, in a certain sense, an art-house movie ( i.e. a great movie which seems not too "massy"). No Country is FAR from being "arty". It is as thrilling a movie as I have seen all year, a movie that could pull in today's college crowd as well as top critics and make all of them enjoy each and every scene of the movie (except, maybe, the last one). I haven't read the novel but everyone is saying that the movie is exceptionally true to the book with most of the dialogue taken verbatim from the book. It is to the credit of Coen brothers then that I find that almost unbelievable. To me, this movie played as if it was written to be made into a movie. Some of the scenes just COULD NOT have worked as well in any other medium. Its the atmosphere, the pauses in action when you are waiting for something to jump at you from some corner.. its just perfect at times!
sureshot nominations: Best Picture (Drama), Best Director, Best supporting actor (drama), Best adapted screenplay
also, probably Best cinematography, Best editing, Best supporting actress (Drama)

There Will Be Blood: Nearly unanimously being hailed as one of the top two english movies of this year (along with No Country). Topped some of the critics list. Got some Best Picture awards already. And its already 9.1 on IMDb (its not even in limited release yet!). One look at the trailer, and you can see it getting Best Actor and Best Cinematography nominations (if not awards). But even the trailer didn't prepare me for the sort of reviews it is getting. It remains to be seen whether everyone is getting so completely blown away with Daniel Day Lewis's acting that they might be overselling the movie itself. Is it really THAT good? we'll see... hopefully it will be..
sureshot nominations: Best Picture (Drama), Best Actor, Best Cinematography
also, very probably Best Director, Best adapted screenplay, Best supporting Actor, Best Music (and possibly others like music, editing, art direction etc..)

Into The Wild: A BEAUTIFULLY shot movie directed by Sean Penn. I thoroughly enjoyed it, even though it is possibly a little slow at times and maybe a little too sad for a lot of people. Emile Hirsh is definitely going to get an oscar nomination for this. Go to see this movie if only for watching Hirsh or some truely breathtaking visuals of nature.
sureshot nominations: Best actor (Drama)
also, very probably: best adapted screenplay, best cinematography, best supporting actor (and possibly music and direction)

Atonement: Not much idea about this movie yet. I havent even seen the trailer. All I know is that it is the new offering from "Pride and Prejudice" people.
probable nominations: Best picture, screenplay, cinematography, actress, costume etc.

Before The Devil Knows You're Dead: New movie by Sidney Lumet, and it seems he is in form. That should be a good enough reason to go watch this. An amazing trailer only adds up to the excitement.
probable nominations: original screenplay, direction

Juno: This year's year-end comedy-ish light movie that takes everyone by surprise at how well it is written. Possibly the analogue of Little Miss Sunshine, Sideways etc for this year.
almost sureshot nomination: Best original screenplay

The Diving Bell and The Butterfly: the french movie that is sweeping everyone off their feet. And unless I'm very wrong, it was passed over by France as its entry for best foreign picture oscar. A sureshot foreign language movie nomination for Golden Globes. And even in oscar, if it is ineligible for foriegn picture category they'll honor it with some other nominations. Maybe even in some major categories (Cinematography definitely, maybe acting nods too).

Persepolis and Ratatouille: This year's animation masterclasses. I've seen Ratatouille (of course! its pixar! what do you expect? I even own the DVD now! :P ) and I didnt think any other movie could stand a chance of getting best animation oscar this year. But Persepolis is a french animated movie that was deemed good enough to be nominated for best foreign language movie by france! And that's a huge vote of confidence. So, chances are that it will give a good fight, if not beat, Ratatouille for the animation oscar.

sigh! didn't think this is going to take so long to write. So, maybe I'll just mention other notable movies of the year without writing much about them...


4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days : The trailer is very reminiscent of The Lives of Others, and if this is anything like that movie, then I'm sold already. The Lives of Others was easily one of my favorite movies of last year, alongside Pan's Labyrinth and The Departed and this one looks pretty good too.
The Kite Runner: best picture, director, adapted screenplay possibly
Michael Clayton and Starting Out in the Evening: Best actor nominations. George Clooney for Michale Clayton is a surely. Frank Langella for SOinE might be nominated too. It is too small a movie though. So maybe not.
3:10 to Yuma, The Bourne Ultimatum, Lust, Caution, Gone Baby Gone: will probably not be nominated for anything, but very watchable. I can vouch for Bourne and Lust, Caution as I have seen them. Lust, Caution would get a best actress and cinematography nomination if I had the authority to decide. But it probably won't get any nomination because a) it wasn't eligible for a foreign language oscar and b) it is rated NC-17 and nobody gives awards to NC-17 movies. Hopefully I'm wrong.
Eastern Promises
Enchanted: definitely a lot of nominations and awards in Golden Globes. because they have separate "comedy/musical" categories
Away From Her:Best actress... sureshot
La Vie en Rose: possible best actress.. though this is a foreign language movie, so..
American Gangster: quite a good watch. Might even get Denzel Washington another best actor nomination. But probably won't.
The Great Debators: directed by Denzel Washington.
Zodiac: great ensemble acting. a bit overlong, maybe.. but really good!
Across the Universe: most of the "sense" awards... cinematography, music, art direction, costume maybe..
Waitress: came early enough in the year that it probably wont be nominated for anything but at the time of its release it was considered the Little Miss Sunshine (again!) of this year.

documentaries: No End in Sight, Sicko, In the Shadow of the Moon

will probably be back sometime to refine this list and come up with some sort of "my favorites" list. too premature right now.

Update:
forgot about The Bucket List (Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, together! should've been a best actor/supporting actor bait, but the Golden Globes nominations that came out this morning didn't seem to think so). Also Once which was a well reviewed musical that came out earlier in the year. It should have some "best song" nominations if nothing else. I thoroughly enjoyed Hot Fuzz too, though it probably wasn't made for oscars. But if you are a fan of Snatch or Lock Stock then you'll probably at least like this one (if not absolutely love it!). The Host was an entertaining monster movie (from Korea, I think). Some parts of that movie are really funny which is not something you expect from what is essentially a monster movie. In that sense it is very much like an indian commercial venture with everything from comedy to family drama to action to thriller genres thrown in. No wonder it was a monster (heh heh!) hit in Korea.

Heaven!!!

What do you do when you are dead tired, not having had much sleep for last 3 days because of a presentation that you have to give in half an hour from now. You don't feel like reading anything, there is no time for a practice run-through of the talk, there is no one to engage in idle chatter with...

Well, you turn on your own personal heaven. your ARR-gems playlist. and play "Ennavale Adi Ennavale".

As I said... Heaven!

Saawariya!!

This absolutely stunning looking teaser of Sanjay Leela Bhansali's next movie "Saawariya" is so good that I just can't keep it to myself. Hence this post on this now-almost-dead blog. See it to believe it. He might not be a great storyteller, but he has an amazing sense of visuals (and music too, but we shall judge that after listening to the album). What a trailer! Not once does he show the faces of the two protagonists, yet it is as compelling an introduction as any.

Spider Makkad Man

Funny!! if you can play flash movies and if your speakers are on, click here...
http://www.makkadman.com/

Tintin!

Seems only BIG news/rumours can get me to blog these days. (We'll not discuss why I didn't consider things like World Cup as big enough news items to blog about... then there is the little issue of no Oscar post... anyway, no comments there...)

So, what made me think about blogging today? This rumour (probably confirmed... I'm not sure yet) that a Tintin trilogy is in the works with Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson set to direct one each. The movies are going to be motion capture CG. I can't wait! Now, all they have to do is announce that Brad Bird is going to direct the third one and I can die peacefully.

Pixar Pics...

For the pixar fans among you who, like me, have been waiting for Ratatouille to release, there is now more to look forward too. Pixar unveiled their next project - WALL E - in january this year and today some new images have surfaced online. Look at this image!




It will seem even more cute when you read the synopsis given here. I can't wait! I want to see this one NOW!!! :)

courtesy character design blog.

Oscars delay

Oscar awards (and HP book releases) have been the highlight of my blog-year since the beginning of this blog with nomination predictions, nomination themselves, award predictions and the award night all having multiple posts related to them. This year was different. First, I still have to catch up on my 2006 must-watch list, which means that I havent yet seen at least some of the major awardees. But the major reason for not having even a "I'm happy Scorsese finally won" post is that I was in a conference for last one week. There was a serious danger of me missing the awards completely, but I managed to catch most of the ceremony live.

Anyway, back in Rochester (from balmy, beautiful and busy St. Simons Island, GA) and the oscar post will come soon. It won't probably be as elaborate as I'd have liked, but it will be there.

Patience.

The Illusionist

Around september last year the trailers of both The Illusionist and The Prestige hit the net and the two movies resembles each other so much that most people thought they'd eat into each other's business by being released so close to each other. Movies set in a late 1800s-early 1900s with protagonists that are magicians don't come along too often, so it is understandable why everyone seems to compare them with each other. I had loved The Prestige when I saw it, and I got to see The Illusionist yesterday. I was more interested in The Illusionist initially mainly because I am a big fan of Ed Norton and even Paul Giamatti excited me more than either Christian Bale or Hugh Jackman did (at least before I had seen The Prestige). Anyway, turns out that the two movies aren't alike at all! Both of them are "twist" movies ( a la The Sixth Sense, The Usual Suspects etc) where the ending explains a lot of things but while The Prestige is more of an edge-of-your-seat thriller where you see the rivalry of two magicians, The Illusionist takes the love-story angle of the plot a bit more seriously making it more of a laid-back movie. Not to say that it doesn't make you anticipate the explanations at the end, but you are not quite as anxious to see the answer as you are in The Prestige. This, however, is not necessarily a problem with the screenplay. It is just that they are different kinds of movies setting out to do different things. The Illusionist tries to make you care about the story and the characters a lot more and doesn't worry much about the magic, the tricks, even the twist till very late in the story while The Prestige is all about these things right from the very beginning. This means that the sets, the cinematography, the music and even the performances of the actors becomes much more important for The Illusionist than for The Prestige. This is not to say that these things were not good in The Prestige, just that you don't seem to notice anything other than the actual screenplay (except, maybe Christian Bale, some of whose scenes were quite brilliant).

Anyway, for someone who started with saying that these two movies aren't alike at all, I've spent a lot of time comparing them! And it is probably clear that I liked The Prestige much more than The Illusionist. Coming to the movie itself, I haven't been able to decide how much of the plot I can write about without spoiling the movie. Lets just say that its a movie about a magician (Ed Norton... this guy is going to be as big as De Niro or Al Pacino, though not necessarily on evidence of this movie.. the character here probably doesn't give him too much range to perform... he's brilliant in whatever he gets to do though.. ) living in the latter 1800s in Vienna. His love story crosses paths with the powerful crown prince of austria (and, as a consequence, with the prince's chief of police - the ever reliable Paul Giamatti) and his magic has to cross paths with tragedies, conspiracies and a murder. And that is about as far as I can go without putting in spoilers.

I know, I know... Not a great review. But then I always have this problem with movies where one has to be worried about giving away anything. That is probably why I call them my "review/brief comments" rather than my reviews! :) Maybe I should just call them my "ratings" and be done with it! In which case I could just have written "The Illusionist: 7.7/10".

What will you be doing on July 21 this year?

I know what I'll be doing. Reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows!

A very premature "best of 2006" list....

As I posted previously, I still have to see a lot of worthy movies of 2006, so it probably doesn't make much sense thinking about a "top 10" list at this point. But looking back from this point, I can still figure out some sort of grading among the movies that I HAVE seen till now. Not ranks, which don't mean much anyway, but grades. Notice that Pan's Labyrinth seems to be doing great! This might be due to the recency factor (as it is the last movie I saw) or, more likely, due to the great "aftertaste" of the movie. Some of the scenes of the movie have been running through my mind since writing the review and I must say that I probably undersold the movie in that review. Anyway.. here is what the list looks like, as of now...

A+: The Departed, Pan's Labyrinth

A : Lage Raho Munnabhai, The Prestige, United 93, *V for Vendetta

A- : Babel, Cars, Inside Man, Little Miss Sunshine, Omkara, The Queen, Rang De Basanti,

A-- : Dor, *Guru, Thank You For Smoking

The reason all of them are called A's is because all of them were pretty good and should probably not be missed. It was quite difficult, considering that I didn't want to spend too much time mulling over an essentially premature list, to rank movies within a given grade, so they are presented in alphabetical order.

One more thing - it is heartening to see so many Hindi movies in this list. 2006 was a great year for hindi movie industry both in terms of economics and quality of the movies. I tend to think that these things aren't as independent of each other as people seem to think.

* - V for Vendetta and Guru aren't 2006 movies strictly speaking. But V for Vendetta didn't really go into reasonably wide release till well into 2006 and Guru was only postponed to 2007 at the very last minute, so it is difficult to recondition my mind into thinking of it as a 2007 movie.