Spanglish

It is the love we have for ourself and the selfless love for others that defines us. Nothing can bear testimony to the love of a mother to her children. Yet, it is this love that we always fail to communicate to our loved ones.

We get used to those around us, those that care for us, those whom we love - that we forget to express our love to them. We take it for granted.

Spanglish is a testimony to a mother's selfless love to her daughter. It is fun, romantic, beautiful, and touching. Touches so many aspects of life.. yet is simple in its delivery and creation leaving the spectator feeling good and in bliss.

I wish we had the courage to live our life in love.

Spanglish stars Adam sandler, Tea Leoni, and Paz Vega directed by James L. Brooks.

Watch it here.

Scent of a woman

Many a times life seems meaningless and there seems to be no hope, no point in going along with life, no values to stand up for..

this I believe happens when we loose ourselves in the act of living.. most of the time we live for the wrong reasons...

life is beautiful.. there are no words to describe it.. it is as beautiful as the laughter of a baby, as beautiful as the smile of a woman, as beautiful as the blue sky, the green grass, the blue ocean...

Scent of a woman (1992) gives the viewers the sweet smell of life itself. The movie is uplifting and brilliant.

Finest performances from all the actors, Al Pacino, Chris O'Donnell and James Rebhorn directed by Martin Brest, won an Oscar (didn't know this).

Watch it here

Batman begins

There never will be a movie like this.  A movie which on first look I hated and on second look absolutely loved.  At one point in the movie, Bruce Wayne, the billionaire protagonist tells his childhood friend that I am not what I seem to be, deep underneath there is more to me..  That is true about this movie as well.  I remember watching this movie at Sreedhar in Kochi and cursing Tracer bullet who had goaded me to watch it.  He had seen it once, but still had some doubts and being a die-hard batman fan that he is, had lured me (a die-hard spidey fan) into watching this movie.  There was some problem with the audio, I believe, because I could not make out most of the dialogues.  My other concern was that I came to see a caped hero who made his entry only at the interval and there also his fights were not clear...I could not see him throwing one solid punch....what the hell.....but all these points are where this movie scores heavy brawny points compared to any other such movie.  It is not just about the man, it is about an idea, about instilling fear, fear in the minds of those who do crime.  Chris Nolan's Batman growls and snarls when he becomes the dark knight, although Bruce Wayne is all style, pomp, and show off.  And all this can be felt only if one knows about the character and if he at least understands the way story moves forward.  The director has chosen nonlinear story telling, which I think confused me a lot on the first viewing, but which nicely explained everything on second view. 


Batman is a very old character, i.e. he was published first in the 1930s.  Although the reason for Bruce Wayne becoming batman has always been the same in different stories, i.e. he witnessed his parents death as a kid, the dark sombre mood which should underlie such a character was absent till the 1980s when Frank Miller and later Jeph Loeb, Tim Sale etc completely turned around the character and made him what he is today.


Similarly, all Batman movies (may be Tim Burton's may have been an exception) were just costume dramas which told the story of a billionaire playboy, who used to wear a mask and becomes a vigilante by night thrashing goons and lumpen elements on the street.  Why was he doing that, night after night, what drove him, his paranoia, his fierce determination, the trauma which he turned into a crusade against crime....all this has been captured brilliantly only by Chris Nolan in Batman Begins and needless to say I have lost count of  how much times I have watched this movie.  Thanks Tracer for all the goading that day....;-)

The Matrix

I love to read spiritual books and martial arts have always remained a favorite, so the movie which brought both of them together for me was The Matrix and I have loved every bit of it.  Even though I am no fan of dystopian literature, The Matrix and V for vendetta (have only read this one) remain the exceptions.


The questions of who am I and why I am here, why is the world like this, bugs all of us and all of this has been dealt in a different way in The Matrix.  The Matrix as explained by Morpheus is a simulated reality created by machines and humans are not able to understand this simulation and mistake this for reality.  This line of thought corresponds well to the philosophical lineage of Vedantam and allied philosophies which hold the world as a "mithya" or an illusion.  The liberated beings like Morpheus try to get those shackled to the Matrix see and understand the reality like self realized seers in the real world do.


The action and gun fights are a treat to watch.  For action movie buffs, there is breathtaking action and camera angles, for people looking out for uncommon stories, this certainly is a watchable movie and for those who love both of the above mentioned qualities, this has to be in their favorite movie list.  Starring Keanu Reeves as Neo, Carrie-Ann Moss as Trinity, and Laurence Fishburne as the enigmatic Morpheus, this is indeed an awesome stuff from the Wachowskis brothers.

Good Hair

Good Hair (2009) is a documentary directed by Jeff Stilson stars Chris Rock, Maya Angelou, and Al Sharpton.

Hair is something that each and every one of us is proud of. We take great care of it, spending on the best products to keep it healthy and shiny. For men, when the hairline starts receding we can’t help but have a tough time finding solutions to prevent it from receding or find a fix. Only few embrace it (Bruce Willis). For women it is a part of their beauty and man, do they spend a lot for it.

Good Hair is a movie that revolves around the hair of African-American women (as Chris Rock puts it). The movie is a documentary.

It is funny and an entertainer besides being informative and eye opening.

Howl's moving Castle

There is something about this movie, which I found very attractive, was it the crazy idea of a moving castle, was it the elixir of fantasy and spells, was it the background score, was it the romance involved, am not still sure, .........may be a mix of all of these.

Based on Diana Wynne Jones's novel by the same name, Howl's Castle is a Japanese Animation movie made by Hayao Miyazaki.


The movie tells the story of a girl named Sophy, who is a very serious girl unlike other girls of her age, and who under the spell of Witch of Waste, becomes an old woman.  The journey she undertakes to regain her youth forms the crux of the story.  Howl is a young Wizard, who is the hero of this story.  He sounds very batmanish as Christian Bale voiced this character.


Although I feel the story as told in the book makes more sense, but perhaps the story would have become cumbersome and complicated when seen in the limited time frame of a movie.  Nevertheless, still worth a watch.

Raincoat

Kisi mausam ka jhoka tha, jo is deewar pe latki hui tasveer tirchi kar gaya hai

Gaye saawan mein ye deewarein yun seeli nahi thi


Na jaane is dafa kyun, inme seelan aa gayi hai, dareerein pad gayi hain,

Aur seelan is tarah behti hai jaise khushq rukhsaron pe geeli aansoo chalti hain.

It was back in 2004, that I came across the Raincoat trailer on television. It seemed so murky and forlorn then, that I never once bothered to acknowledge it. The movie didn’t make it big and was listed under the flops of the year category, as far as I could remember. Though the exclusive music in the movie did make it to the news and I always had my ears for it.

Just last week did I come across the song (Mathura Nagarpati) from my messed up hard disk that I decided to watch it on YouTube. The music video felt inebriating and I went for the whole movie successively.

And as for the review.

You have the sheering rain. The simplest of dialogues. The alcoholic vocals of Shubha Mudgal. A raincoat. And two estranged lovers who will convene to play around with a game of words. That’s all Rituparno Ghosh took to create a sheer brilliance of a motion picture. It won the National Award for Best Hindi Film in 2005.

Adapted from a short story (The Gift of the Magi) by O Henry, comes this hauntingly beautiful movie that will intoxicate you within its landscape of moist Calcutta.  The subtleness of the movie brings in that inciting feeling of goose bumps throughout and not to mention the enrapturing of senses by Aishwarya Rai’s eloquently formidable performance. I loved the movie. And I repeat, I loved the movie. And I ask you of this:

DO NOT view any music videos from the movie.

DO NOT read any other reviews on the movie.

DO NOT even bother to Google the movie.

Just WATCH THE MOVIE in solitude.

YouTube has a copy of it. Get ready for a ride into darkness. Into the world of words that will cry in damp truths and sullen lies.