Ghajini,Watch it for Aamir...only

Movie: Ghajini

Language:Hindi
People: Aamir Khan,AR Murgadoss,AR Rehman.
Rating: 2.75/5

So Finally I managed to get a decent seat in the theater for Ghajini , yeah it was the same ticket that we got the other day and guess what we were the first ones in the auditorium. About the movie, The combination of two AR's and one AK and one of them didn't do quite so well.

Ghajini is a typical bollywood ishtyle masala flick, boy meets girl, boys falls for her, villian, dishoom dishoom etc. happy ending . It does have a gripping begininng (inspired from Memento) keeps the audience guessing onto what happens next . The comic contribution in the first part of the movie is very much welcome .There was good on screen chemistry between Aamir and Asin, who by the way has done very well for herself in the movie especially during the terror-fight sequence .

Later on Murgadoss has juggled well with the past and the present however he was a bit too repetitive. AR Rehman's music was well, pretty good. So everything seems to be good about this movie then whats wrong? Well to begin with its a bit too lengthy. Last hour of the movie could have easily squeezed into 15 minutes or so. It has only six songs, They seem to be one too many.
May be couple of them could have been just a background score (e.g. Ru Ba Ru )

Movie promos definitely showed that it had more fight sequences than normal, but still even with that mindset the violence in the movie was a bit too much , probably came from Tollywood (I dunno if thats a term , Tamil-ollywood) . Lets face it a bollywood movie cant be remade scene-2-scene and expect it to please the audience in Tollywood, vice versa is also true . Violence in the movie could have been toned down a bit.

The star of the movie is definitely , without a doubt Aamir Khan. To start with he has really worked on his body (18 months or so ... they say) And his eight pack frame is very much seen throughout the film , not just for a song (:P) . Some critics are asking questions as to why did AK do this movie.Well the answer is, he generally does one bollywood masala flick every now and then.In between DCH,RDB,Lagaan,TZP there is one Fanaa. The kind of cinema that Aamir indulges in is what I call divergent cinema ,Its not really parallel cinema . It starts of with commercial mainline movie and diverges off to, what we call as parallel cinema. So I would recommend you to go watch Ghajini without having a mindset that its an Aamir Khan film, you will enjoy it more and If you really want to watch a movie about shaart term memaary lass the get the DVD of Memento from a video library near you.

Ghajini The Preview ... Review

Movie: Ghajini(2008) [Preview]

Language:Hindi

People: Aamir Khan,AR Murgadoss.

No, I am not going to talk about Memento , Christopher Nolan , the Tamil Version or The hair Cut. But this entry is specifically dedicated to the hype that ghajini has been able to generate. Kudos to Aamir & Co. for it.

Talking about the Hype I am not going to crunch numbers or to tell you how a certain celebrity has taken to art after watching the movie. Instead how the Hype has affected me . Now being in US , I have been watching a lot of movies on the big screen, probably one every weekend/fortnight. Big blockbusters or super duds, Hindi or English,Action or Comedy. So that narrows it down to ... well basically anything.

So after all this movie watching, never before , and I mean NEVER before it has happened to me that I have walked into a movieplex and I couldn't get a seat to watch the movie that I wanted to. Ghajini has done that to me more than once !!

Day before yesterday We walked in at 9:05 for a 9:15 show ( that's not late, that's good enough to get a seat and some popcorn) . We got the tickets (Yes!!) walked in but there wasn't a decent seat available, So we walked out thinking wow! An Indian movie has done something extraordinary. It made at least one screen in that multiplex to say "Sold Out". We got our tickets refunded , No questions asked (yeah , try doing that in India) .

So Yesterday , We planned the mission to perfection (Or So I thought) . Reaching for the same show but a good hour at hand. and Guess what SOLD OUT !! This was really something that had an unsettling soothing feeling about it. My friends and I were not gonna give up, So the battalion marched towards a another theater that was 20 miles away. We reached our new destination at 9:15 , The next show of Ghajini was at 10:50. There was a horde of people over there , which is unusual because 9:15 in atlanta is like midnight in India.

Anyways ignoring the crowd we split ourselves into three queues in hope to get a ticket, Since the queue wasn't moving I went up to the counter to check what's going on. Well a part a me might have been expecting that answer, yeah SOLD OUT again. So then the worn out soldiers went back to the original place get a ticket for today , Yes we managed to lay our hands on a ticket yesterday. Now we need to make sure today that we get a seat , Will we be fourth time lucky?

Having scribbled this stuff, It has nothing to do with the movie, It might as well turn out to be an ordinary movie .But the Hype and hoopla can only be compared with maybe a Yash raj film or could be Johar prodn but not an Aamir Khan movie. So as I said earlier kudos to the production house to create this pain for me to get a TICKET!!.

The day I hoped... that the earth should've stood still

Name: The Day the Earth stood still (2008)

People: Keanu reeves.
Language: English
Rating: 2.5/5
Another flick about aliens "visiting" earth, Another movie with govt. officers with cheap shades. Another story about ...uh ..no wait, Its not a new story but a remake of the 1951 film with the same name.Yeah, Of course its a remake!

Any Sci-fi movie tries to woo two different sets of audiences , the Sci-fi ones and the commercial audience, more often than not the movie ends up as an action movie for the latter. This one has its share of good moments and well .. bad ones.

Lets start with the good ones, Keanu Reeves, does a pretty good job as an extra terrestrial . He had to play an alien visitor with no emotions . Seemed like this character sort of came natural to him [:)],No seriously he did well , looked like he picked few of his expressions from his matrix triology.Moving on, another good part of the movie is the premise , the base ,the beginning It keeps the audience involved and guessing on whats gonna happen next ? Where is the alien etc etc.

Bad moments, I am afraid there are one too many . The movie turns out to be a thriller after the initial landing. I think there was a car chase, running, hiding , some love snippets and some
step mother- son-alien father like scenes. Director realised that he has run out of time and forgets to tell the audience some more answers about the beginning . When the movie ends you start to think if it was an alien movie or transporter4 . All in all , no need to go to the theaters for this, wait for the DVD or better wait for it on Cable , By the looks of it both will be sooner rather than later.

Now that the movie review is done , I'd like to rant a bit about remakes. I simply don't understand why do filmmakers go for a remake. The story of a film is the base on which the movie stands upon screenplay and acting comes later (and in that order) . Why would I watch a movie if I know what's gonna happen next. Yes, Some good actors can make some scenes worthwhile watching but not the entire movie. Well thats my 1 Rupee (2 cents as per todays conversion rate) .

gO eW ereH

Once your movie quotient per week increases to more than four , then you ought to have a seperate blog for movie reviews, Using the aforementioned postulate Here is my blog for movie reviews.
Now Just to show my "everyone's welcome" attitude I have decided to start with the movie that has hit the theaters near me quite recently.
Name:Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi
Language:Hindi
People:Shahrukh Khan,Aditya chopra
Rating:: (2/5)
Most of the movie critics write their their entire review without mentioning their bias/un-bias towards any actor/director. You figure it out as you go through the review. I will save you the trouble of guessing for this post , To put it mildly I dislike SRK, not just the person but what he stands for (Anyways wont go into that today).
Coming back to the movie, Now back in college once a professor had asked me a question what are the different types of compilers, I had answered "Line by Line compiler and Full compiler" Prof was sortta satisfied with my answer cause I had not used the technical terms. Well " Line by Line compiler" essentially meant you go through the program taking each line at a time and find out if its legit or not, you would have guessed by now what a Full Compiler is.So skipping the techie part now, Lets do a Line By Line Compiler technique for RNBDJ
Movie starts with typical Adi chopra DDLJ "shaadi ka ghar" setting, SRK's character is introduced as a middle class,introvert,moderate looking guy who has a crush for his prof's daughter Anushka sharma (newbee). I would like to tell you about her character but nothing much is shown about her except that she seems like the girl next door.Somehow the Prof dies (Don't worry Srk did not kill him,albeit that would have interesting) and his dying wish is that Anushka (tanni) ties the knot with SRK. From here begins their acclimatization process SRK and Anushka.SRK has acted well in this part " ji manu yeh nahi pata ki pyaar kya hota hain , maine kabhi ladies se baat bbhi nahi kii..". Movie progresses well from this point with much needed help from Vinay Pathak (who is now being seen quite frequently on the 70mm screen) .
Then comes the horrible dreaded twist which causes everything to in the movie to fall apart, Without getting into details on "how",anushka could not recognize her husband w/o a moustache and funky hair do !! How does Adi chopra expects the audience to swallow that c'mon give the audience some credit we still have some brains ..left.
Adi doesn't stop there, So SRK gets a new look fine ! tanni doesn't recognoze him ,agreed (gulp). But how does that character of middle class intrvert guy starts flirting ,smart ... basically he becomes the SRK we have been seeing for ages in all his movies ... RAJ!!!
Movie starts to strech from now on , nothing worth mentioning other that I feel for them who sat through this part of the movie without an interval (screens in US). Mr Chopra junior has come back after 8 years, If he gonna make movies like this I hope he comes back after 8 err.. 64 years. and then too please come with some new dialogues other than "Jaa jee le apni Zindagi..."