Day 10 Movie 10 (July 9th)

Almost Famous:

            One of my all time favourite movies..."Some people have a hard time explaining rock 'n' roll. I don't think anyone can really explain rock 'n' roll. Maybe Pete Townshend, but that's okay. Rock 'n' roll is a lifestyle and a way of thinking... and it's not about money and popularity. Although, some money would be nice. But it's a voice that says, "Here I am... and fuck you if you can't understand me." And one of these people is gonna save the world. And that means that rock 'n' roll can save the world... all of us together. And the chicks are great. But what it all comes down to is that thing. The indefinable thing when people catch something in your music." I do love collecting quotes from movies... I have pages and pages of them scribbled down in pretty little notebooks...when i was younger I would love to quote from movies when I was trying to explain something...Its funny as I grew older I slowly got out of the habit...I am not sure whether movies have stopped carrying lines worth repeating or life has become so different that the quotes are of no use...I love this movie because I remember the first time I watched it...I was just getting into rock music...I idolized Kate Hudson...wanted to be her...wanted to follow a band...wanted to be hurt by the lead singer(as weird as that may sound...melancholy is one of my favorite emotion.). 

Day 9 Movie 9 (July 8th)

Prayanam (Journey):

               Of the lot of movies that I have seen so far, by far the best indian movie. I went expecting nothing, some good reviews but none that I trusted. The movie was hilarious. Truly different from most of the telugu movies I have watched. The entire movie is shot in the KL airport. Its hard to maintain peoples attention with a very small cast and uninteresting locales but the director did it. The movie is a cute love story with enormous doses of good comedy by Brahmanandam and a bunch of unknown actors. What I liked most about the movie was that it was very real...very real in that we all have this tendency to behave in a filmy way. So we can believe that in 2hrs we can make someone fall in love, it takes some conversation and one grand gesture. It felt so good to watch some really good comedy in telugu...nothing raunchy or in your face...very clean slapstick humor. The hero and heroine take sometime to grow on you but in the end they definitely win you over and have you rooting for their romance. The smaller actors are so funny...no one in the movie looks extodinarily good...they all look like regular people you could meet and have a good conversation with...I had a really good time watching this movie...probably one of the lucky few who saw it considering I was only one of the ten people in the theater.

Day 8 Movie 8 ( July 7th)

New York:

     I really did not want to see this movie...instinctively i knew that i was not going to like it...but my brother said i would enjoy the movie and so I went...I made sure to get the reclining seat so that I wouldn't feel too bad even if I didn't like the movie...but even that couldn't help me tolerate the movie. I hated it. This is one of the pretentious films that I dislike...everybody seems to think it is so different and new...I could not find one thing about the movie that made it stand apart...rather it was complete nonsense...I have nothing against movies that are made to entertain and I have nothing against movies that require mental work...this one is neither...there is nothing entertaining about it and there is nothing intelligent about it...I really dont understand what any of the characters were thinking...motivations were not clear...the movie could have been good but it isn't!

Day 7 Movie 7 (July 6th)

Khambakth Ishq:

      I went for this movie simply to indulge in my love for shoes and bags...And I was satisfied with the outcome. She wore beautiful clothes, super shoes...somehow i cant remember her bags but i am sure they were nice...the movie...ummm i cant really remember the story or the dialogues...but i vaguely remember i laughed a lot...also this is the first movie i saw sitting on the super comfy recliner chairs...so I think this made the movie less painful than others are making it out to be. I on the whole thought the movie was quick and had enough entertainment for me to not get bored.

Day 6 Movie 6 ( July 5th )

Oy!:

    I will confess that I am big Siddarth fan...Maybe not so much of the movies he's done but as you will notice a pattern about guys i like that they multi task well...He also sings, was an assistant director to Mani Ratnam( who I LOVE!), he acts, writes scripts and looks great while doing all this...So this movie I thought was Ok! I mean its not got much going for it other than Sidharth...the heroine was ugly and did nothing more than annoy me...the story we have seen a million times...and we seen it done better a million times. I have always wondered about this love at first sight thing...I mean all Telugu movies, most hindi movies and some english movies always have that scene where the the heroine is doing the most mundane thing yet the hero always singles her out and realizes she is the one for him. Along with a friend, I tried to garner that kind of attention from a hero looking guy...but obviously it never really worked out. Its so weird how every single time filmmakers expect us to believe that this scenario is close to reality...

Day 5 Movie 5 ( July 4th)

Eat Drink Man Woman: 

     This is a Taiwanese movie my dad recommended. Its directected by Ang Lee( Crouching tiger hidden dragon, brokeback mountain...). I love this movie. Subtlety is key. The movie is about a father and his three daughters...Each one of them is in a different place in their outlook towards love. And wierdly enough you can relate to each of the characters without necessarily understanding where they are coming from...I love that the director uses food to kind of make metaphors...the father is top chef who has lost his sense of taste...how he reacts to that, his children react....how the father comes to terms with letting his daughters go...its very similar to me this aspect of tiawenese culture and indian culture...i know it takes a lot of effort for my mom to let me do things that she does not approve of but still has to let me do because the times they have a-changed...Watch the movie :)

Day 3 Movie 4 (July 2nd)

Evaraina Epudiana (whoever Whenever): 

    My best remedy to fighting jetlag is to stay up all night after landing, stay up all day and then sleep all night. It works like a charm. What better way to keep myself awake than watching a movie at the peak of jet lag. So decide to go to Evaraina...before I went for it I was warned by many a people that it was terrible. My sisters friend who like me can watch even the most trashiest of films walked out of it in 30 mins. I almost took it up as a challenge to go  sit through the entire movie. I lasted exactly 45mins. I take comfort in the factt that I sat a whole 15mins more than the friend. So basically the little that I watched of the movie was a typical boy sees girl falls in love and by so many random coincidences he is put in constant touch with her...for thirty minutes the movie revolved around the guy being an ass, but the girl is immune to all that...thats all i got from 30mins of the movie...and i really am not curious to know what happened for the next two hours....

Day 2 Movie 3 (July 1st)

Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2: 

   Still on the plane...tried watching EMI and Yuvraaj but just couldn't bring myself to go past the first 15mins so I watched STP 2. Wasn't much of an upgrade but at least I could figure out what was going on...the movie is BORING! I saw the first one on another plane and obviously I didn't remember the boredom i went through then because I saw the second installment. Four girls trying to middle schoolish in college makes a worse story than them pretending to be middle schoolish whilst in high school! The one major plus the first movie had was the amount of time the movie was shot in beautiful greek locales...without the great background scenery the second one is definitely not worth putting yourself through essentially adults acting like 13 yr olds.

Day 1 Movie 2 (June 30th)

Rock On: 

     Also a second time watch for no particular reason other than to drool over Farhan Akthar. I am Fan...what can i say the guy can direct, produce, act, sing and do all this while looking fantastic! The movie overall is average...nothing about it really jars but nothing really strikes a chord either. There are so many movies that i feel similarly about...I watch them, come home and forget about them. They do absolutely nothing more than keep your attention for a couple hours, leave you feeling good and ready to take on reality with a little smile...

Day 1 Movie 1 (June 30th)

Jodha Akbar:

 I will admit that this is not the first time I have seen this movie and it probably wont be the last. I adore re-watching movies and I don't discriminate between the kind of movies i repeatedly watch. I have definitely watched some of the worst movies over and over again. But Jodha akbar is not one of those. I really like the movie and there is a particular reason as to why I watched it on the plane when I did have other ones to watch. I recently read Salman Rushdie's Enchantress of Florence which to an extent revolves around the relationship Jodha Akbar share. In the book Rushdie talks about Jodha as being the perfect wife who is a part of Akbar's imagination...its interesting to contrast that with the film version where Jodha is very real and the whole relationship begins with problems and nothing about them is perfect.  Other than that also its a movie I quite enjoy...I have not been disappointed by any of Aushotosh Gowarikars films and this one is no different.

The Begining

 I have been a movie buff ever since I can remember...I am not sure how it began when it began...and the truth is I cant really call myself a critic ever because I like too many movies...movies that have been ripped apart by the media, crtics and the public in general, i usually enjoy. I was having a serious conversation with my dad one day and he goes...Sanju you enjoy alternative movies, commercial movies, abstract movies, movies which make no sense, movies that are in your face...is there any kind of movies you dont like? We both thought about it for sometime and finally came up with one category of films i seem to dislike...i dont like movies that claim to be "art" cinema but are actually commercial and stupid (eg. Madhur Bhandarkar films, New York, Black...you get the picture.). So in my movie list expect to find a lot of trashy telugu movies i would have thoroughly enjoyed, serious world cinema (if i get around to it :p), Disney/Pixars (i love!), and any random movie that catches my attention...

p.s. I began thinking about doing this on 20hr flight back from india and got started on my movie watching...but as i am lazy things will not be very up to date...spurts of movies will appear...