Spoiler Alert: The Avengers – entertaining, not excellent
So there it came to an end, whatever excitement I had felt towards watching The Avengers. Don’t get me wrong; I liked it a lot, I actually loved it and will watch it again when I’m in the mood. Perhaps my issue stems from the fact that I didn’t enjoy it as much as I had expected; I had very high expectations. Plus, most of you might not agree with me, but this really isn’t the sort of movie that makes a huge impact. It isn’t exactly what you would call ‘motivational’. Where do ...
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The Hunger Games: Stimulate your mind
If the best games stimulate the mind and the body, then The Hunger Games belongs near the top of the pile. Adapted from a novel bearing the same name by Suzanne Collins, this first installment in a trilogy is a superb dramatic action film, which engages the grey matter on various levels, thanks to its rich depth in characterisation, as well as a subtle multi-layered narrative. Set in a dystopian future in North America, things start with 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), who feeds her little sister Primrose (Willow Shields), and her widowed mother (Paula Malcomson), ...
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Demi Moore and our fear of ageing
Demi Moore’s recent divorce from her younger husband, Ashton Kutcher, and subsequent trip to rehab for drug and alcohol addiction have been documented all too well in the tabloids. We read the headlines, and exclaim our shock and horror at Moore’s “pathetic” behavior. Unable to keep her much younger man, losing the battle with Mother Nature, guilty for beginning to show her true age, Moore reportedly turned to substance abuse to keep her fledgling self-confidence afloat. We can balk as much as we want at Demi Moore’s troubles, but how long can they distract us from our own insecurities? With the deluge of bad press ...
Read Full PostContraband hits and misses
Directed by Baltasar Kormákur, Contraband is an unremarkable heist movie, which features little in the way of action, and instead tries hard to build tension with narrative. The film stars Mark Wahlberg (Chris Farraday) as a former smuggler, who has given up the crooked life to live honestly with his wife Kate (Kate Beckinsale) and children. The movie shifts into second gear when Chris’s brother-in-law Andy (Caleb Landry Jones), who also happens to be a smuggler, is forced to dump his consignment of drugs from a cargo ship in order to ...
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84th Academy Awards: Predictions, tweets & snubs
The Oscars are a time when fans, TV anchors, stylists, live bloggers, tweeters and seat-fillers (the lucky people who sit on celeb’s seats while they’re visiting the bathroom or the bar) satellite around A-list stars in the celluloid constellation known as Hollywood. Die-hard viewers host Oscar parties at home while Hollywood’s B, C and D-listers try to attend as many after-parties as they can (since they’re naturally not invited to most awards shows). It’s fun for all, whether you’re watching the show live at the crack of dawn in Pakistan’s time zone (and heading off bleary-eyed to work), or watching the ...
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What MI 4 taught me
In a weak moment, I decided to watch Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol. I got roped into watching this movie despite the fact that I am not a fan of MI3, and I haven’t even seen MI1 or 2. Yet, sometimes in life you just have to sit back and be grateful; I am grateful that I watched MI4 because it taught me a few invaluable lessons. Please find below a list of things I learned from this movie (in order of appearance), and note that a few of these might be spoilers. American agents can plant/overtake ...
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Bollywood, give us something new!
The Indian film industry just copies ideas from wherever it can. Be it from China, Arab countries, Pakistan or the USA, Bollywood has turned in to mere replica. This is why I had to stop watching Indian movies. What happened to the good old days, when a movie was just based on a good story line and didn’t have fancy animations? Recently I saw low-budget movies like ‘Dou Dunni Char’ and ‘Love Express.’ Now these films really have substance. They don’t rely solely on dance and songs. Even high-cost comedies do not have any content these days. It is the low-budget ...
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Puss in boots: A kitty with claws
If you liked Shrek, you’re going to love Puss in Boots. This is the story about the orange tabby cat, first introduced in Shrek 2, another cat, and an egg. It delves in to the exciting life of Puss before he met the green ogre and Donkey. Watching Puss in Boots made me realise three things: 1) Cats are funny 2) Self-obsessed Spanish cats in high-heeled musketeer boots are even funnier 3) Vain Spanish cats voiced by a husky Antonio Banderas are flat-out hilarious. The movie starts with Puss escaping a bounty hunter. He learns that the magic beans he has been searching for are ...
Read Full PostThe Three Musketeers: Ridiculous, not ridiculous fun
Very early on in The Three Musketeers, the servant Planchet (James Kimberley Corden), in a scene that falls distinctly flat, is discourteously awoken while sleeping on the balcony, by loads of pigeon droppings on the face. In more ways than one, this failed scene sums up the entire film; not only does The Three Musketeers stumble clumsily from passage to passage, but on the whole, for viewers, feels like having pigeon poop dropped on one. Directed by Paul WS Anderson, whose career highlights include mediocre video game based films like Mortal Kombat (1995), ...
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Old movies and how cool they are
Call me old-school, call me outdated, but one of my ideas of fun family entertainment is watching classic movies. My sheer fondness for these movies is both appreciated and made fun of by people my age. I developed this fondness early on, when my dad made me watch Citizen Kane. Citizen Kane, he told me, is considered the Mount Everest of Hollywood classics along with Gone With The Wind and Casablanca, or in simple words, the greatest of the greatest. Back then I was completely uninterested in watching something in black and white since it clearly implied being old-fashioned (or so I thought). As a little ...
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