tonymontana’s viewings (Updated)

Nayattu
Another solid Malayalam film that is extremely telling of the political nexus of India and how the police department is a mere pawn in the larger scheme of things. The lives are gambled with, and even deaths are ‘used’ to gain a political upper hand. A clichéd statement this might be, but its relevance in the India of today, with a blind public (what an astonishing final frame!) that can be so finicky based on its own bias and caste preferences while casting their vote, and a media acting jury and executioner, show how deep we have landed in a muck of social chaos.

Abzee’s Oscar predix for 2020-21

There you have it. The longest Oscar season of our lifetime yet. And it just feels wrong. The ongoing pandemic threw the whole Oscar season in disarray… we now have a 14 month long eligibility window to make up for the months lost, which means that this year’s Oscar will honour the ‘best’ of 2020 and the first couple of months of this new year too. Several rules, at the Oscars, BAFTAs and Golden Globes were changed. Some were due to the pandemic, some as a natural response to the various civil and societal upheavals that the world and especially the United States experienced this last year… and these bodies wanted to make the right noises thusly. Were these changes hasty as the odd BAFTA nominations have revealed? Were they mere tokenism as the audacious Golden Globes revealed? Or will they strike some balance of hope and resurrection as the Oscars intend to do?

tonymontana note on Joji

I don’t know if it was Fahaad Faasil’s character arc that was more effective or his portrayal, but he is spectacular and gives a performance for the history books. Dileesh Pothan not just exploits the actor’s gift of reactions and effectively utilising his expressions and body language to show dilemma, shock, impatience, helplessness, and frustration, he builds up a character that is at once loathsome and pathetic, pitiful and scary in a rather demeaning way. The actor is a gift for contemporary Malayalam cinema, and I can’t imagine what the film would really ‘look and feel’ like were it not elevated by the protagonist’s bravura act, for he, along with some stunning frames, lends much of the film its soul.

An Jo on Pagglait

On ‘Pagglait’ and the existential duty of life surrounded by death…
(Spoilers ahead)

‘Pagglait’, in a crude way, is a North Indian slang and stands for a ‘different’ level of crazy. In a way, it is the equivalent of the English language’s ‘bat-shit’ crazy: Mere ‘crazy’ is not enough to define the wide gap; like the difference between a Ranveer Singh and Mika Singh. It can be inverted and used or misused in any which way one wants. In a colloquial sense, it is used to define or stereotype someone going against the grain. Sanya Malhotra’s Sandhya Giri, then finds herself labeled the same, at least in her subconscious being, when she observes, and inadvertently, forced to see the behavior of distant-relatives/friends/blood-relatives and, well, the ‘other’ woman.

Please read rest from here

Steven Spielberg’s 20 favourite movies

Steven Spielberg’s 20 favourite movies

It’s a Wonderful Life – Frank Capra (1946)
The Godfather – Francis Ford Coppola (1972)
Fantasia -Walt Disney (1940)
A Guy Named Joe – Victor Fleming (1943)
Guardians of the Galaxy – James Gunn (2014)
War of the Worlds – Byron Haskin (1953)
Psycho – Alfred Hitchcock (1960)
2001: A Space Odyssey – Stanley Kubrick (1968)
Lawrence of Arabia – David Lean (1962)
Untouchable – Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano (2011)
The Dark Knight – Christopher Nolan (2008)
The 400 Blows – François Truffaut (1959)
Day for Night – François Truffaut (1973)
Citizen Kane – Orson Welles (1941)
Captains Courageous – Victor Fleming (1937)
The Best Years of Our Lives – William Wyler (1946)
The Searchers – John Ford (1956)
Tootsie – Sydney Pollack (1982)
Seven Samurai – Akira Kurosawa (1954)
Dumbo – Walt Disney (1941)

Rajinikanth to Be Honoured with Dadasaheb Phalke

Rajinikanth to Be Honoured with Dadasaheb Phalke
AAfter Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar announced that megastar Rajinikanth will be presented with the Dadasaheb Phalke honour, congratulatory messages filled up Twitter. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was among the first to congratulate the 70-year-old actor.

Naveen’s note on Drishyam 2

Finished watching Drishyam 2 (D2) on Prime.

Knowing that it is the continuation, i watched the Mohanlal’s classic part 1 once again.

The characters, setting and mood of Drishyam 2 is same. So watching Drishyam 1 (D1) immediately before its resumption was a good decision at the end. Mohanlal’s Drishyam 1 (dubbed in Hindi) is available on Youtube for free.

Drishyam’s resumption is about George Kitty’s family’s quest for survival despite suffering from severe anxiety. The best thing about Drishyam is that it is relatable. I mean if there are very few situations when one can take law in her/his hand is, then one of those was the reason for the murder in D1. Vaastav is the last movie which comes to my mind where one felt one needed to take law into his hands.

But D2 is not about redemption. D2 is about cinematic strategy and survival instinct of a man Vs masterful strategy, power and might of the police force.

An Jo on the real Master – Lokesh Kanagaraj

 

 

(Spoilers ahead)
One of the striking shots and, if you will see in ‘Master’ is that Vijay Setupathi’s ‘Bhavani’ has scars at the same place just above his left-chin compared to Vijay’s ‘JD’ where he sticks two small band-aids. And then there’s a scene that’s inter-cut when Bhavani kills the last opponent in his quest to become the president of the lorry drivers’ association: That scene is finely executed where the director while laying out the commonalities, spreads out the differences more beautifully and intelligently. Bhavani kills the opponent brutally – it is raw – while at the same time, JD takes out his 6-7 opponents who come to a jail cell to kill him. The skill that Lokesh possesses lies in understanding that he is working with two radically different actors/stars and that with the budget/money at stake, he cannot afford to go wrong. He does equal justice to both the actors and that’s truly the preliminary joy of this film. This is one hell of a marriage between so called ‘mass’ and ‘class’, albeit, not completely solemnized thanks to issues like length and excessive concentration on catering to Vijay’s Tamil Nadu fan-base.

An Jo On ‘Talaash’…of ‘The Vanished’

my piece on Rangan’s blog….

On ‘Talaash’…of ‘The Vanished’

(Spoilers on ‘The Vanished’ and ‘Talaash’)

Very recently, I watched ‘The Vanished’ on Netflix and was struck by the similarities of the so-called other’s presence and importance in our lives: On how the process of ‘comprehending’ an event and wiggling out of it is so difficult for some people. There is a world of difference and a perennial conflict between the way the brain comprehends, and the heart comprehends a devastating event. The heart struggles more and leaves the brain even more…helpless.

2020… the year of watching films.

And so it comes to an end. This wretched miserable year. All the plans we made for 2020 at exactly this time one year ago were rudely shoved aside by something so small and nevertheless unimaginably, incredibly bigger than our worst fears. And yet, despite the scary realization that we don’t seemed to have bothered learning much from it at all… we remain hopeful, perhaps foolishly and perhaps arrogantly, that things will turn around. They must… “Picture abhi baaki hai”, and all that. And so anyone, especially someone that loves and breathes cinema, must hold on to that crassly commercial and yet most emotionally optimistic of catchphrases. Because, one would be lying if one didn’t also acknowledge that in the darkness that was 2020, an opportunity was presented by the lockdown and isolation to view as many films as you could… Not as the communal experience that movies definitely should be (which ironically also take place in total dark), but as your own year-long private film-festival. No excuses for not having seen that film that you always meant to see for the first time or revisit, or that release from last year which you missed during its theatrical run- good or bad. This here then is a list of all the films that this year was also kind enough to give me the space and time to see… even if that did feel like Tony Stark floating away in space all by himself with audio-visuals from times past being beamed at him.

Happy 2021 (Updated)

The very best to one and all…

Movie and Series recommendations 2021

2020 Thread

Interview with Mumtaz

Link
Mumtaz is unarguably one of the most beautiful and attractive heroines who lit up Indian cinema. But it’s not easy to have a long conversation with her as she’s travelling across countries with her ever-busy hubby Mayur Madhvani. But this time we got lucky as she’s in Mumbai and importantly we reached out to her ahead of others. We were surprised when the senior actress said, “Go ahead. Shoot your questions. I am all at ease today.”

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An Jo on Parinda

Linky
‘Parinda’ released in 1989, was one hell of a crimemovie from the Bombay film industry on Bombay and one that shook and held its audiences by the throat and screamed—albeitcoveredin its veneer of ‘subtlety—a violence so unleashed, that one could feel iteven more after-the fact.
The way Nana’s Anna is introduced, more importantly, the under-belly of Bombay is introduced, is awe-inspiring to-date. Right from the topographical view of Bombay during the initial credits—with a terrific usage of ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’ piece— in its neon-light nights to graduallycutting down onto Nana’s ‘Anna Seth’ office and Rama Reddy (Kamal Kapoor) and Shiva Subramanyam’s ‘Francis’ wiping a knife decorated with blood after killing a non-decrepit man [Vidhu]; director Vidhu Vinod Chopra sets a broody, grimy, and a grisly atmosphere of the metropolis.

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References:
https://www.rediff.com/movies/special/twenty-five–poetic-frames-of-parinda/20200525.htm

An Jo on Bhavesh Joshi

On Bhavesh Joshi, a fine experiment by Vikramaditya Motwane…

This movie I think was released in 2017 or 2018; I don’t remember. I totally ignored it thanks to some horrific reviews the movie got. Overall, it was in the negative space. I left it at that thinking Motwane had some experiment up his sleeve that had massively mis-fired. On top of that, you have a bad actor like Harshvardhan Kapoor; not just ‘relatively’ incompetent as Arjun Kapoor but, terribly bad actors surviving thanks to their, well, ‘insider-trading.’

I was genuinely surprised how good a movie this is, and what in God’s mind were the reviewers/critics thinking by dismissing it altogether? This is not a perfect film; it is highly flawed. But Motwane turns it on us and plays a cunning game: Those flaws, are what make the film questionable, are highly and equally enjoyable!

Naveen on Tenet

Views on Tenet:

I managed to watch another movie within a week. Maybe celebrating my theatre viewing which is now a privilege.

Ans what a movie TENET is !!! The perfect Spy thriller to begin your weekend with.

I was surprised to see Dimple Kapadia in a very relevant role. She is a delight to watch and so is Mumbai, one of the 7-8 cities where this movie is shot.

Storyline:
In a twilight world of international espionage, an unnamed CIA operative, known as The Protagonist, is recruited by a mysterious organization called Tenet to participate in a global assignment that unfolds beyond real time. The mission: prevent Andrei Sator, a renegade Russian oligarch with precognition abilities, from starting World War III. The Protagonist will soon master the art of “time inversion” as a way of countering the threat that is to come.

An Jo on SRK

In response to SRK discussion in this thread; An Jo’s comment:

SRK was/is one of those actors who can hardly be called super-talented. But he is that star-actor who can be so impactful in certain roles, that he can make even his most ardent-haters realize that he is irreplaceable in a certain kind of role.

Naveen’s note on Laxmii

In the genre of horror comedy the best i have seen still remains Bhool Bhulaiya and most recently Stree.

I had also liked the tamil movie Kanchana which was a low budget good entertainer (timepass) despite shoddy screenplay.
Thats because Kanchana never had anytjing serious about itself. The characters, issues etc were all cartoonish so overall it worked.
To overcome those gaps in screenplay, significant and serious changes have been made in Laxmii. However the changes needed to be goofy in nature and not serious. This is where the movie goes wrong.

An jo on Ludo

LUDO: A film that doesn’t know what it’s talking about...

LUDO is such a deceiving and a bad movie at the same time that it is improbable to believe that it’s an Anurag Basu film: A person/artiste who has gone through the physical and emotional pain of enduring cancer would have greater sensitivity and insights into the human emotional-core. If one is bereft of religion, of philosophies that have been stamped on our brain, what would we be? How would we judge people and their actions? And that’s what I thought would be the premise of the film when it talked of ‘karma’ and ‘Ludo.’ Alas, it turned out to be one of the most pretentious, and pseudo-philosophical film of its times, with political innuendo like salt added to a dish.