One more Sunset!

Your name is Justine

'Your name is Justine' is a very touchy movie of the disturbing kind. A polish movie directed by Franco de Pena and produced in Luxembourg in the year 2005, has the debut of the actor Anna Cieslak who played Mariola, the lead character. Movie shows, how a jovial, happiness seeking, beautiful girl from a suburban Poland, thrown into forced prostitution in Berlin, Germany; seduced, betrayed and sold by her boyfriend.Lacking the courage to suicide, failing in all the attempts to escape, She tries to adapt to the new way of life.  Mariola takes her vengeance by killing her boyfriend and comes back to her freedom after three years of imprisonment. As expected from any cross-border movie, 'Your name is Justine' makes its own passive and silent political statements.Portrayal of Mariola, with her journey from a beautiful adolescent life which she shared with her loving grand mother, to the violent sexual captivity in a foreign land and there on to a miraculous freedom by not accepting the defeat, was brilliant. When this performance's coming  from an actor who was donning the greasepaint for the first time in her life, its definitely great. The name of the movie came from a scene when the ruthless German buyer of Mariola does a forceful christening saying, 'Your name is Justine'.'Your name of Justine' has striking visuals especially on the scenes where Mariola realizes she has no chance to escape as she was locked up in an abandoned building in a remote and disconnected locality. One of such scenes can be seen in the poster.

Raavanan: Vikram’s tribute to Mifune?

 
Manirathinam attempts a Kurosawa with his bilingual flick ‘Raavanan’ and just like Kurosowa’s Man Friday Toshiro Mifune, he has got Vikram to bring in the less explored, human wild side into reel life. The Tamil version ‘Raavanan’ got at least some attention from the critics and the cine goers where as the Hindi version ‘Ravan’ was rejected equally by all fronts. I thought watching the Tamil version will be the right thing to do as the director himself had expressed his regret for making the Hindi version.

[Toshirō Mifune as bandit Tajōmaru in Rashomon (1950)]

Let’s talk about the theme of the movie. It’s a bold attempt to revisit the epic Ramayana with a different perspective and in modern settings. That means, bringing out the Rama out of wrongly projected Ravana and Ravana from the shell of much hyped out Rama where Rama and Ravana represent the good and evil in that order to the Indian consciousness. The Story shows how a bandit/Tribal Leader who has both his evil and good side in him, kidnaps the pretty wife of a Police Superintend as he seeks revenge for his wronged sister in the hands of police, and how she gets rescued in the end. The movie spends most of its time in showing the good side of bad guy and the bad side of good guy and has got this anticlimax where the wrong villain being killed by the wrong hero.

[M.T.Vasudevan Nair.]

The idea of altering and retelling a commonly accepted myth is not a fresh idea even in Indian cinema, as I can recollect how convincingly the Malayalam writer and Jnanpith award winner MT Vasudevan Nayar re-told one of the famous ballads in Kerala with reversal of roles, ‘Oru Vadakkan Veeragadha’ which brought laurels to Actor Mammootty and director Hariharan.

Kerala had an ancient tradition of settling out the disputes of the riches and the royals with a staged combat between two traditional martial art (kalaripayattu) experts with deadly weapons, the culmination of which will be death of one warrior. The ballad was about two such legendary warriors, Aaromal the hero and Chanthu the Cheat.

[Mammooty as Chanthu the traitor from the movie, Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha. he bagged national award for his performance.]

With his much successful and one of the best movie scripts ever written in Malayalam, MT Vasudevan Nayar transposed the Cheat into a hero and the hero into a coward. As this script what MT wrote was amazingly original which baffled millions of keralites when he successfully reversed the roles of most famous villain and hero of our ancient history, Mani Rathinam cannot say his was Original.

There are plenty of literature works in India, already attempted it and there was always a minority in India who believed in the goodness of Ravana and evil coward side of Rama and the Epic Ramayana itself suggested this fact, clearly visible to its non-religious admirers. BR Ambedkar in his book about Rama quotes from Ramayayana itself to list out all evil things committed by Rama and questions the logic in worshiping him. The Ancient Tamil Version of Ramayana, Kamba Ramayana suggests that Ravana was a teetotaller and man of heroic qualities and Sita actually admired Ravana.
Let’s come to the ‘Movie’ side of the Movie Raavanan. The Script itself is not good enough for a movie of this class intention. Manirathinam movies always suffered such silly but cancerous hyper melodrama which would remind you of some school dramas. Let’s look into some examples from some of his movies.

(a) Protagonist of the movie ’Roja’ shows his patriotism in rolling over a burning Indian flag to save it from flames.
(b) Hero of ‘Dil se’ hugs a woman suicide bomber with whom he is in love with, to let the bomb explode killing themselves, with a noble intention of saving hundreds of people.
(c) ‘Bombay’ with such loud straight out of comic strip characters of religious fanaticism.
(d) ‘Yuva’ with impossible and unrealistic dreams of the success of a young political party(Whole style of the movie was seriously inspired by Kurosowa classic Roshomon)

Raavanan has the following characters directly related to the epic Ramayana.
(1) Rama, ‘Dev Prakash’ Played by Pritviraj.
(2) Ravana, ‘Veeraiya’ played by Vikram
(3) Sita, ‘Raagini’ , Aishwarya Rai Bachan
(4) Hanuman, ‘Gnanaprakasham’ , Karthik
(5) Vibishana, ‘Sakkarai’ , Munna
(6) Supranaka, 'Vennila', Priyamani

[Abhishek Bachan as Ravan in Hindi and Vikram in the Tamil Version]

Apart from the characters which can be mapped directly, there are numerous wanted or unwanted characters like, ‘Singarasu’ the elder brother of ‘Veeraiah’ (Possible match from the epic is 'Kumbakarna', younger brother of Ravana)  ,as usual mishandled by Prabhu. Prabhu has got the miserable magic of turning any serious character into a mere clown as he did in ‘Kalapani’ and numerous other movies. Priyamani who played the sister of ‘Veeraiya’ was perfect though her role was short. She doubtlessly outclassed Aishwarya Rai, who has got the burden of her beauty and has not improved as an actress ever since she appeared in manirathinam’s Iruvar. (Iruvar, no doubt; is the best movie he ever made) where she performed much better.
Manirathinam’s unquenchable penchant for hyper melodramatic climax killed the quality of the movie, which also exposed the serious gaps in the script. For example, when the SP dev and his special task force enters the wild forest in hunt for Veeraiya, they are spotted early, distracted or caught by Veeraiya’s men but, in the climax, Dev marches with his well armed battalion straight up to Veeraiya without any obstacle. Script questions the intelligent quotient of the movie goers by making Karthik’s ‘Ghanaprakasam’ to do monkey styled acrobats on trees to show that he plays Hanuman, the monkey god who was Lord Rama’s original messenger on his Project Ravana. There are miserable scenes like the one where the modern monkey god tells to Raagini (Sita) that he had brought a sign from Dev(Ram) as he spots her in the forest.
So what are those things which make you watch this whole movie with that school boy’s script and a former Miss world’s useless charm? One of the ingredients which would make you to cling on to your seat must be the cinematography by Manikantan and Santhosh Sivan in the beautiful locales of Karnataka and Kerala forests.

Remember that beautiful areal view of the boat-crash-kidnap scene in the beginning and also the Ravanan’s big dive from the cliff. Vikram almost did a Toshiro Mifune (though subtlety and originality of the latter was impossible to reach at, )with those wild grins and grunts. This is the best performance of him as an actor so far. Raagini’s attempts to escape from the captivity and the scenes of her physical duals with the strong macho antagonist, before she falls prey to the so called Stockholm syndrome (“a paradoxical psychological phenomenon wherein hostages express adulation and have positive feelings towards their captors that appear irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, essentially mistaking a lack of abuse from their captors as an act of kindness” )are very much reminded of, or possibly inspired by the academy award winning Ang Lee movie ‘The Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon’ keeping in mind that, comparing the great performance of Zhang Zhui and Chang Chen in such scenes with the mediocre show of Aishwarya Rai and Vikram will be a crime to commit. Performance of Prithvi Raj who played Dev can be considered just adequate but nothing more to talk about where as Karthik's hanuman was a better show. Music and score was good and in tune to the story line.

(Zhang Zhui and Chang Chen from the movie Crouching Tiger hidden Dragon.)

To summarize, Raavanan is worthy of watching one time, to enjoy the photography and Vikram’s well executed grunts inspired by the world cinema.

"Blindman, Blindman, what did he do? Stole 50 women that belong to you."

Will we ever get tired of  watching spaghetti westerns over and over again. No, No, No way! Westerns got those magical trigger happy rogue men on their sexy horses,dust filled surrealistic ghost towns, and that crazy background score which would freeze your blood. Women? do they exist? Yeah, they surely did, in 'The Quick and the Dead'  which was a frustrated attempt to revive the long lost magic of westerns but in most of the cases, including 'Unforgiven' , they were just whores.

Legends of western;  Lee Van Cleef, Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallah; all sharp shooters with those piercing eyes. Hmm, but what about a blind man? What he can do with out even having eyes in the world of quick guns? And thats the fun part in Blindman, the 1971 Tony Anthony starrer.

Are you a 'reality' seeker? go and watch reality shows and we are happy with our blindman and his amazing action.

It was more fun this time, as i saw it in italian with English Subtitles.


"Well Sweet mama, the sun don't shine on the same dogs ass all the time."

Rain Rain Go Away……

(Poster of Ninja Assassin which showed a furious ‘Rain’. The Fury was only in the posters.)

What could be the title, if any one attempt to write a review on the 2009 Ninja Movie; much hyped-up ‘Rain’ starrer, the ‘Ninja Assassin’? ‘Cuts, stabs,flying limbs and a bath in the blood’? ‘Ninja Assassin’, no doubt is another miserable product from the age old ‘you-killed-my-father-I-take-revenge’  school of martial arts movies. Who was that, who defined martial arts as, “People Train hard for years to make the worst movies in the world”. I guess it was a witty pot bellied couch-potato's take on ‘Karate’.

Anyways, who’s going to blame the cast of this movie, when there is no story to be told in the first place. Did the movie succeed in showing the legend of ninja terror and their bloody way of life? I don't think so. Ninja Assassin portrays Ninja clans close to a comic cartoon strip. There’s a scene where the lead lady (A clichéd Caucasian female character, ignorant about Asian ways) is asked to change into a new cloth to escape from the chasing Ninjas; She asks,

( Sho Kozugi as Ozunu,  father of the Clan, in one of the beautifully shot scenes in the movie)

“You mean they sniff like dogs?”
    All what Ninja Assassin got is a pathetic cast. Except the Baddie ‘Ozunu’ played by the Jap Action Movie legend Sho Kosugi, every one acted so miserably. Lead man Rain, who won the MTV’s  ‘biggest badass star’ award for his performance in this movie was amazingly emotion less in every single scene.On the female lead (Naomi Harris)? She’s in the wrong company here, and also helps to reduce the glam quotient of the whole movie. In another words, a better looking glam-dole in her place,wouldn't have hurt.

”Expression of No-Expression” (Al Pacino in his iconic role as Michael Corleoni in Godfather 2.)

When asked about his brilliant performance  in one of the greatest movies which Hollywood ever produced, Godfather II; Al Pacino reportedly told that, it was hard to emote emotionless. He had to play a ruthless but diplomatically calm underworld don ‘Michael Corleone’ who would not hesitate to kill his own brother, in order to protect the dignity of his crime-family/Mafia.

   Al Pacino said, he tried to listen to Beethoven during the shooting of movie, to keep a calm composure to express a non-expression.
   Rain had no such problem to be expressionless as he never tries to emote anything at all. Being  one of the most influential popular Music Icons from Korea, he had had tremendous  experience in appearing in the music albums and he probably took this as one of them.
Ninja Assassin shows, how an orphan named ‘Raizo’ from a Japanese clan of assassins turns against his own family. Movie unfolds in violent details, how he grows up to become a Ninja assassin with it’s painful training methods and how he matures into a Man who would dare to turn against his ruthless mentor and say, ‘This is not my family and you are not my father’.  And there are plenty of cuts, stabs, sword play, flying Shuriken, Swirling Kusarigama and lots and lots of blood. And to summarise, that's all about the movie.
Ninja Assassin has got no grace even in depicting graphical violence. Compare this to Quentin Tarantino’s style in Kill Bill. Kill Bill had all those scenes of gory but with a class of its own.

(Christopher Lambert on the poster of ‘The Hunted’)

The 1995 flick ‘The Hunted’ was a much better effort on portraying the myth of legendary ninja assassins.  Again, despite having a regular weak-turns-strong-beats-the-evil climax, it was thoroughly enjoyable; thanks to the cast of very talented actors like, Golden Globe Nominee John Lone and Japanese Academy Award Nominee Yoshiro Harada and also to a very good extend, the lead played by Christopher Lambert with that mysterious and famous myopic stare of his.

John Lone’s negative character ‘Kinjo’ had certain depth and definitely memorable along with Harada’s Character ‘Sensei Takeda’. Remember the scene where he cuts his samurai sword with his bare hands when the Airport Officials stops him from carrying it on the air plane. Who can forget his magnificent sword play as his character massacres a big group of Ninja Assassins in a moving train, which was definitely the biggest attraction of the movie.

(yoshio Harada:Hunted: What a screen Persona!)

(‘Kinjo’ Played John Lone: Hunted)

If I could recollect, ‘The hunted’ also exhibited the much exploited sensual charm of Japanese women in a Hollywood angle.   (Kusarigama:Sickle and iron ball fixed on a metal Chain- a dreaded Ninja weapon)

A worst Ninja Movie similar to Ninja Assassin that I can recollect is ‘Way of the Ninja’ (?) which was more like a regular American Karate movie which would remind you of those old ‘Chuck Norris’ type. Here, the American hero is trained in Ninjutsu and he cleans off the baddies with this special skill for his friend; and the plot thickens when the Villain goes to Japan to hire another Ninja to wield against our man.
Lets come back to ‘Ninja Assassin’ from the memories of better/worst Ninja flicks and end this with a little nursery rhyme…
“Rain Rain Go away…”

‘A dosa that almost ate me’ or ‘The Great Kovai Surprise ’

It was beyond all my imaginations. None of those wildest surrealistic dreams of mine,  took me to anything closer to this, (Exaggerating: Never mind) which just happened in a yummier, crispier and filling manner.
  This part of Tamil Nadu was new to me though I stayed years together in other parts of it. I never imagined, a city, where most of the people spoke my language, just few miles away from my state; could give me this shock on the breakfast table.
I was driving to cochin from Bangalore and hungry like hell when  stepped into this Place in Coimbatore. Having skipped the dinner previous night,  I didn't had to think twice for placing my order for my favourite ‘Paper plain Dosa’ for a crispy and filling breakfast. I kept smiling while the waiter tried to warn me that it could be slightly bigger than what i probably imagined. At the least,  I should have realised when they placed two banana leaves instead of the regular single. 

 
    (my mother in law giving me an emotional support; sharing the question marks)


It took two waiters to bring it to my table, ensuring it would not even have the slightest damage possible,before their privileged guest touched it. The whole scene started to turn bit of embarrassing to me,when I could feel some eyes were turning to our table, probably to see, how this silly looking guy was going to devour that huge piece of edible wonder.

                              (Anandhas, Coimbatore where I had my Dosa Surprise! )

The Curse of being on ‘Bench’

You belong to the big community of IT folks and you call yourself a Software Engineer. Though most of us know what we do, and what we did so far, or even what ever we aspire to do in the future cannot even come closer to the word ‘Engineering’ , we still prefer to call our self an Engineer. I think, I am a modern IT clerk who loves the engineering side of his big clerical side of work.That's the ‘You’ and ‘I’ about that.

And here goes the ‘Bench’ Part and the main part of this post.(‘growing roots part’)

(How bored a human being can get at. ??  (double question mark points to a massive blunder in chess.) (that's a bracket inside bracket thought: the ‘inception’ perspective))

‘Bench’ (you are a resource doing nothing or unbilled) changes everything. One fine day you realise you don't need to go to your work place, you got all the freedom in the world, and most importantly you are all yours for the whole day. The Possibilities are huge. Consider the following.Browse for an interesting movie with the cheapest ticket in your city from the ‘Now Running’ website and find another ‘doing nothing’ pal of yours to go with. Find out a musical concert (even if you don't  understand the very word ‘Music’) or the latest art exhibition in the town (who cares the ‘Art’ when the need of the day is to kill time) and hit them. Recollect all your plans related to your hobbies which you preferred to  bury with in the rustic walls of your collective unconscious. Say, you go and take chess coaching from some one who is ready to teach even a moron like you and prepare yourself for a rated tournament which is to be started in the coming month. Another idea is to start blogging for yourself and read it yourself when you have lot of time. Try moving around your home with a handy camera to capture those breath taking picturesque like the sewage line behind your kitchen or a crow sitting on the fence or a dusty train which goes on the track near your home. Just imagine, what an uproar you may create by uploading such magnificent visuals mixed with Beethoven or Bach into YouTube. Thus the possibilities of a bench day are amazingly rich and interesting.
Unfortunately, in most of the cases Reality doesn't get along very well with the pretty side of potentiality.  You being a bencher realize the next morning that, all the crows and fences, the train, the sewage, (Even if they are mixed with Beethoven, Mozart or Bach) , the art exhibitions(or the visuals of somebody’s well kept inhibitions), those cheaply bought tickets of some contemporary crap, cease to be appealing to you and you are deserted with all your insecurities and all your disturbing emptiness what those gurus call ‘nothingness’ and you observe deep mourning watching silently that all your hobbies and pastime fantasies dying so fast before your eyes.
Coming Soon: ‘Nothingness: Myth or a reality? The Bench Side:’

Khosla Ka Ghosla

When you have amazingly gifted actors like Anupam Kher,Boman Irani,Vinay Pathak and Ranvir Shorey donning super realisitic roles, that definitely leads to a great comic entertainment. Yes thats true that no one probably had heard of Diwakar Banerjy before this 2006 flick of his, but this made him an interesting story teller grabbing some national awards as well.
 The movie starts with a pre-dawn Nightmare which Mr.Khosla usually gets, follows with his funny gargling which irritates other members of his family. The Laugh riot starts right there, which would remain through out the movie, still making sure they dont deviate from the main stroy.  With no parallel comic lines, no slap sticks, no unwanted characters,  the story just unfolds into a great feel good experience.

 Kher beautifully portrays the regular Indian middle class gentle man, closing to his retirement from the government service, who is trapped in the web of middle class worries and strict morality.  Boman Irani, was just perfect in the role of Land Mafia lord Mr. Khurana, with an apt body language.After all he has got this mastery of dwelling into such moulds as we have already seen in movies like, '3 Idiots', 'Darna Mana hai' and 'Munnabhai MBBS'.

Tara Sharma probably had the worst voice a female lead can probably have in a regular bollywood setup, but this time, it just sounded perfect.  Every single character, especially the entire Khurana coccus were a feast to watch.

    Khosla Ka Ghosla is definitely a good movie experience especially for all those who dealt with land brockers and dealers atleast once in their life.

Ore Kadal

'Ore Kadal' was not just any other Malayalam movie to miss. This DVD was on my shelf for more than a year before I decided to watch it. Thanks to my trip to Andhra as I got some fine free time to watch what ever it pleased. This could be the boldest attempt in the history of Malayalam cinema to show an adulterous relationship and the bitter consequences of it , in a serious manner. Story or the way of telling it, never try to glorify the relationship. Remember the way our esteemed director Mani compromised on the script, on showing the relationship between Anandan (a loose portrayal of the real life tamil icon MGR) and Kalpana ( the real life muse of MGR and another big name in the history of tamil nadu , Jayalalitha) in arguably the best movie he ever made, 'IRUVAR'. He had to come up with a foolish idea to glorify the relationship. The idea was, Anandan (who plays an actor) realizes that his new heroine looked exactly the way his passed-away wife Pushpa looked ,and develops an affection towards her. In one scene, you can even see, that Anandan urges his wife Ramani, (played by Gouthami) not to cast kalpana in his new film, despite her proven acting(dancing) skills. On the Contrary 'Ore Kadal' shows how a non-intellectual, moderately educated woman of lower middle class being seduced by the rogue charm of a socially isolated, pure intellectual who is much elder to her. This male chauvinistic protagonist has got a bad habit of denying the existence of anything except him and his ego unless it's academically or physically interesting to him. The Character Nathan or its portrayal by Mammotty never seemed to be convincing though. Even Ramya's character had nothing much to do but her character holds good, being just a female body to relive Nathan of the pressures of his carnal desires. Entire movie is driven by Meera Jasmin's performance, who played the role of the female lead. Meera could easily and successfully emote the moments of unbalanced mental equilibrium in a fine subtle way , shying away from all those stereo typical schizophrenic characters . This change was nice to watch. Another Character which looked realistic was her husbands' role played by Naren. Despite all these mediocre performances and depthless characters, Movie was a still a good experience, probably because of the strong theme and an experienced cast. The way the movie ends deserves a special remark. When the little girl (who happens to be a byproduct of the adulterous relationship)takes the stairs to her biological fathers' home, with that innocent dubious looks and tiny unsure steps, that conveys them all. The Name Ore Kadal, or ’The Same Sea' gets its real meaning there. Was It an imagery showing a small innocent girl child growing up into the abyss of endless suffering of a middle class Indian women Or was it something else, to say, ‘Searching for her Mother’ keeping the psychological meaning of the phrase in tact.