Agent Vinod

A nuclear bomb which can be activated by Ummar Khyyam's Rubiyyat has been acquired by a terrorist group who are planning to detonate it in New Delhi and thereby triggering a nuclear war between India and Pakistan. The plan is intercepted by a RAW agent, who is killed before he can pass on the full information, which brings Agent Vinod on this case.  You will get all that is expected of a spy movie with bomb blasts, shooting, guns going bam bam, lots of running, bike chase, auto chase, everything.  Movie has a fast pace, so it will keep you engaged.  Saif has done a good job as an action hero, he has spotted a stubble (more than a stubble) throughout the movie perhaps in an attempt to look macho.  Kareena looks great.  Prem Chopra, Gulshan Grover, Shahbaz Khan are the other baddies.  The only spoiler in my case was a guy sitting beside me who kept on saying "yeh bakwas movie hai" to his girl friend.  I wonder what more he was expecting in a movie named Agent Vinod.

THE HELP

The help is a drama movie based on a novel of the same name by Kathryn Stockett. Movie attracted me because I read in newspaper this movie received four Academy Awards nominations. So curiousity made me watch this movie and it was worthwhile.

The movie is set in Jackson, Mississippi during Civil Rights era in early 1960s. The movies revolves around Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan (Emma Stone) and 2 maids, known as Helps, Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis)and Minny Jackson(Octavia Spencer).

Skeeter has moved back home to her family's plantation after graduation from University of Mississippi. Back home she find that her childhood maid who raised her, Constantine, has quit job at her home. She is quite upset about this because she thinks Constantine would have written to her.

She finds job as a homemaker columnist with Jackson daily and for that she takes help of maid of her friend Elizabeth, Aibileen who is a middle aged lady who has been raising white children all her life from the age of 14. She knew she would be a maid because her mother was a maid, her grandma was a house slave. Skeeter feels uncomfortable the way her white friends treat their Helps, especially Hilly Holbrook Bryce Dallas Howard) a strong racist who has proposed a bill to provide separate bathrooms for black maid because they carry different diseases to white people.

Skeeter eventually tells her plan of writing a book from the Help's percpective to Aibileen to which she refuses telling it will cost them their life because of the law in Jackson. Later Aibileen changes her mind when she realizes that white children they raise are growing up just like their parents hating colored people. Her friend Minny, who is outspoken but with excellent culinary skills also join Aibileen. She was thrown out of job from Hilly Holbrook's because she used their bathroom during a tornado storm night. Hilly poisons all other families and Minny is left jobless and her daughter drops out of school to work as a maid.

Aibileen helps Minny find job with Celia Foote (Jessica Chastain) who is married to a rich socialite Johnny Foote (Mike Vogel)who also is ex-boyfriend of Hilly Holbrooke. Celia being from a working class is not accepted by Hilly and group even though she is white.

Skeeter send stories of Aibileen and Minny to Miss Stain, an editor for Harper Row in New York, who thinks it as interesting but needed a dozen more. But no one was willing to come forward until Medgar Evers, an Civil Rights Movement activist was brutally murdered and following arrest of Hilly Holbrooks' new maid for pawning a ring because she was not given loan by Hilly for helping maid's children go to college. The Helps realize that this book will give them an opportunity for their voices to be heard. Minny shares a last story so that no one will reveal the book was about Jackson, Mississippi. She as a revenge for firing by Hilly, bakes a chocolate pie and presents it to Hilly. After she finished 2 slices,Minny informs her that her own shit was baked into the pie. Skeeter wanted to add her own story and confronted her mother who told Constatine was fired by her to save herself during a reception. But when later they went to bring her back home, they knew that she passed away heart broken as soon as she was thrown from Skeeter's home.

The book is published and became a huge success. Skeeter shares the royalty with each maid and Skeeter got job with a publishing company in New York. Her boyfriend but breaks up with her when he comes to know about the book. Hilly make Elizabeth fire Aibileen and Aibileen denounces Hilly as a godless woman and leaves the job to start a new life and Skeeter leaves to New York.

Excellent acting is done by Bryce Dallas Howard as Hilly Holbrook, the extreme racist,we cant help hating her. Viola Davis as Aibileen, Octavia Spencer as Minny, Jessica Chastain as Celia Foote.

Wall E

Nobody likes to be lonely, not even Wall E, a robot, who leads a lonely existence on earth.  Earth is covered with litter and human beings live in a large space ship in outer space.  His job is collecting waste (e-waste), and compressing them into cubes and then arranging them.  The year is 2775 and 700 years ago, human beings left for outer space in a giant ship called Axiom.  This ship is controlled by machine "Auto."  Human beings have still not lost hope of living on a planet, and so send probes periodically to other planets to check for signs of life.  One such probe robot named Eva lands on earth and Wall E is head over heels in love with her.  He befriends her and invites her to his home and shows her his latest collection, a young plant that he has discovered.  Eva immediately places the plant inside her and goes into sleep mode as her mission is accomplished.  Wall E tries to revive her but to no avail.  When the mother ship comes to collect Eva, Wall E also jumps on it and thus reaches Axiom, where he sees human beings for the first time.  Human beings are now obese, fully machine dependent, unable to walk.  Wall E befriends a few of them.

The captain of the ship is happy on seeing Eva’s finding on earth, and decides to take Axiom back to Earth but Auto, the machine, which controls the Axiom is against it and a mutiny ensues and how Wall E, Eva, and his friends overcome this major obstacle forms the rest of the story.

The movie touches many aspects of life such as friendship, loneliness, environmental degradation, too much dependence on technology, artificialness of virtual life.

Direction, screenplay, and story by Andrew Stanton, this is yet another winner from Pixar studios. A must watch even if you are no animation buff.

Beautiful is Beautiful !

I went to watch V K Prakash's 'Beautiful' by default because I couldn't risk taking my wife to a late night show of 'Dirty Picture'. Vidya Balan in the posters was the only other woman in the entire Cinema complex. Hence we decided to watch 'Beautiful' and I must say, we came back reasonably happy.

Let me begin with the minus points. First of all there are some gaping loopholes in Anoop Menon's story and screen play. Most important being how John, the character played by himself fails to recognize Stephen [Jayasurya] as his childhood classmate till he stumbles upon an old photograph. This is baffling considering their age when they parted during primary school days.

The second point I found awkward was why does John walk away with the Police when a case of attempted murder was foisted on him when he knew very well he has done no wrong. What happens after that is too sudden a twist, perhaps to keep the movie under 140 minutes.

Coming to the positives, let me begin with the character 'Anjali' played by Meghana Raj. She is 'Beautiful' and oozes tonnes of oomph even while fully clad. She does full justice to her role. Jayasurya and Anoop Menon strike a nice male bonding. They bring the best out of each other. Both have given fabulous performances.

Jayasurya as the millionaire paraplegic goes on to scoff at Sanjay Leela Bhansaali's 'Guzaarish' and declares life is to celebrate. Even if he can't move a finger, he still loves to enjoy looking at 'Beautiful' things in life. In an interesting scene, he derides a TV host about our love and admiration lasting only a few minutes. Anoop Menon too refuses to sympathize with the paraplegic because he has seen worse. These moments add to the wholesomeness of the movie.

Rest of the cast has given commendable performances. The movie is easy on the eyes and ears with nice photography and background music. The twist in the tale at the tail end comes as no great surprise because there are enough tell tale evidences of where we are heading. But it still has been handled reasonably well.

This is a feel good movie about positive attitude. This is also slightly philosophical without being preachy. There is male bonding and there is romance with two ill defined love triangles. One involving John, Stephen and Anjali and the second involving John, Anjali and Meera.

None of the relationships are explored below the superficial layer because a lot of time is consumed by minor incidents like those involving the ashes of Kamalu's father. And finally there is a twist with a rather abruptly handled suspense angle. Thus even though we feel we have watched a 'Beautiful' movie, we still are left with a little bit of incomplete feeling.

I don't know if this movie is inspired from some Hollywood Cinema or Korean movie. Even if it is, I still would appreciate the effort that has gone into the making of the movie. Definitely worth a visit to the cinema.