Mr. Darcy and the Single Man

So I'm a little late catching up on my 2009 nominated Oscar movies and roles but better late than ever. This lazy afternoon (we have the week off from work so it's awesome to be a couch potato in this cold weather) I received my Netflix movie and it was "A Single Man" directed by debutant director Tom Ford. Now I have to be truthful and say that the main reason I watched this movie is for Colin Firth who in my mind will forever be THE Mr. Darcy (no matter how many men have played and will continue to play this character). I was also curious about the movie because it seemed so far from the genres that I usually watch. This was an out and out "art film" - an "art film" is a term we use in India to describe a movie that is not meant for the masses. The pace was super slow but I don't see how it could have been any faster but all said and done I liked the movie - hated the ending...

**Spoilers ahead** Colin Firth plays George, a university professor, who has recently lost his partner of 16 years Jim. The entire movie takes place on 1 single day - Nov 30, 1962. George wakes up with a start after dreaming about his dead partner's body. George lets the viewers know that he is considering suicide because he cannot endure life after losing Jim. He chats with his friend Charlie played by Julianne Moore, fellow English ex-pat and tells her that he will meet her in the evening. He then goes to his class as usual and ends up chatting with one of his students Kenny who seems to be very interested in George and seems to want something beyond a regular student-teacher relationship. During the course of a day he also meets a young male prostitute Carlos who is surprised to be treated so kindly by a stranger. George then heads to Charlie's house where we see that Charlie wants to have something more than a platonic relationship with George. He leaves her place angry. He runs into Kenny again and the 2 go swimming together - we then see that Kenny is sleeping in George's house in a different bedroom and George sees that Kenny is sleeping with the same gun that he wants to use to kill himself. George then sees that suicide is not his way out and decides that life is worth living after all and tears up the suicide notes he had left behind. And then ironically he dies from a fatal heart attack.

Colin Firth was amazing. His acting was subtle and his grief palpable. He transforms himself from the young dashing Mr. Darcy to the older, proper University Professor with ease. Julianne Moore is awesome but then she always is - I just couldn't stomach the accent from her though... but that's just because I know what she really sounds like in other movies. Tom Ford I thought, did an absolutely wonderful job - from fashion designer to director - the transition appears super smooth.

So to sum it up, this movie is not for everyone - watch only if you can be patient and allow it to slowly unravel.

Koffee with Karan

Breaking my blogging silence. I know its been a while since I wrote in this space but something I watched on Sunday jolted me into writing again - and jolted not in a good way...

Many of you know that I have been a huge fan of Koffee with Karan - I like his wit, and sparkle and how he uses his friendships with the celebrities to make them reveal to him (and the audience) more than they intend to. Season 3 began Nov 7, 2010 - 4 long years after season 2 ended. So to say that I was awaiting the premiere eagerly is an understatement. I set my DVR to record the show, told the hubby not to watch it without me (not that he watches it anyway), made some chai and snacks and plonked myself in front of the TV to soak in as much Koffee with Karan as I could...

The guests were Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan - I was of course not thrilled... I have never been a fan of Aishwarya Rai on talk shows. She is very giggly, and comes across as completely fake and studied - if you don't believe me watch any of her old interviews on youtube especially the 2005 60 Minutes appearance (I cringe even today!!). However, on this particular episode while she was tolerable (perhaps because I had low expectations of her to begin with), the person that made her look more genuine, sadly, was her husband Abhishek Bachchan. I have always thought of Abhishek as poised, in control and tolerably intelligent as a conversationalist from watching prior interviews of his. I was less than impressed with him on this show - the initial 10 minutes after his entry on the show were almost too hard for me to watch. His attempts at humor failed miserably and he came across so completely different than he usually does. While I must admit that it definitely got more bearable as the interview went on, I was hugely disappointed. When will actors learn that they don't have to don a role for an interview - an interview is to talk to the "real" person behind the face. I suppose that they have been "actors" for so long that they can't help but act (and to be honest I do think everyone "acts" a little bit to put their best foot forward - be it for friends or business colleagues). I think little B should take a page from Big B's book. Senior does not have to rely on gimmicks and poor jokes to get his point across - he always comes across as uber-elegant and suave in almost all interviews; all the while looking like he does not have to make an effort. That is the charisma of a true star. Some other desi celebrities who give a good interview are Bipasha Basu, Katrina Kaif, Lara Dutta, and Aamir Khan. I watched an interview of Kangana Ranaut with Koel Puri ("On the couch with Koel") and even Kangana, despite her less than average grasp of the English language, conversed with Koel Puri so intelligently and with so much dignity, that I was hooked and watched the entire show.

The next week's episode of KWK promises to be better with Imran Khan and Ranbir Kapoor as the 2 guests. These are interesting talented young men that seemingly have the whole world at their feet - it will be a treat to see them in action on Koffee with Karan as Karan tries extract their deepest darkest secrets as only he knows how ;) - there I go again, expecting the world from a talk show... Here's hoping for a season that is as good if not better than the first 2 seasons!!

Emma redux...

From childhood I have been a Jane Austen fan - I particularly loved Pride & Prejudice and Emma. I re-read them as often as I could - everytime I didn't have a new book in my hands, I automatically gravitated towards Jane Austen for yet another read (I was a compulsive reader in my youth). So when I heard that Emma was being remade as Aisha in apna Bollywood, I was stoked. I loved the Hollywood adaptations with Gwyneth Paltrow in Emma and Alicia Silverstone in Clueless so obviously I had high expectations of the Bollywood adaptation as well... but alas. That was not to be... but we jump ahead of ourselves.

Aisha stars Sonam Kapoor in the title role and Abhay Deol as Mr. Knightley or in our version he's Arjun, Aisha's family friend for many years and now Aisha's sister's brother-in-law as Aisha's older sister is married to his older brother. Aisha and Arjun are more like buddies and have fun hanging out and teasing each other. Aisha is a self-confessed matchmaker and believes that she is a great success at it... Aisha's friends' circle includes her BFF Pinky (played by Ira Dubey, Lillette Dubey's daughter) and Randhir (played by Cyrus Sahukar) and newly inducted Shefali (Amrita Puri). Shefali is Aisha's new project in her matchmaking scheme and she tries to push Randhir and Shefali together but it backfires badly. She then tries to push her towards Dhruv (her maasi's stepson) and that too fails. Arjun is the voice of reason and constantly tells Aisha to stop interfering in people's lives and do something worthwhile with her own. Does Aisha succeed in finding romance for Shefali? Does she find her own happy ending? This, in essence, forms the basis of the movie.

I thought the cast of the movie was pretty good overall with the exception of the lead. I did not like Sonam as Aisha which is probably why I was disappointed because Aisha is the basis of the movie!! She does not have the combination of the well-meaning charm and innocence of Alicia Silverstone in Clueless and she is sorely lacking in acting abilities in this movie... and I do think Sonam can act but for whatever reason she plays Aisha in a one-dimensional way - the same tone of voice for all dialogue delivery. The redeeming factor was that she and Abhay Deol share pretty good chemistry. Abhay Deol was awesome - he plays his role effortlessly and is a complete charmer (love those dimples!!). The surprise package of the film though for me was Amrtia Puri as Shefali - the pretty actress completely pulled off her role as behenji trying to become modern and keep up with the pace of big city life. I hope she gets good roles after this and makes it in the big bad world of Bollywood. Ira Dubey was also decent.

Loved the soundtrack - especially Suno Aisha and Gal mitthi mitthi bol. The style quotient of the movie rocked... everyone looked suitably attired and glamorous especially the girls. It's a decent movie for a one-time watch especially on DVD. It could have been way shorter and crisper but we can't get everything right all the time!!

Eclipse

Eclipse is my second favourite book after Twilight in the Twilight series. I finally watched the movie this afternoon (to avoid the long lines that inevitably accompany a Twilight movie during its first week) with the hubby in tow - he now claims that I owe him big time after he sat through the film. In reality, the third installment was actually better than the first 2 - Summit finally appears to be increasing the budget for these films after experiencing the huge returns. However, the third installment is also the one that deviates the most from the book.

In this movie Bella (Kristen Stewart) faces up to the fact that while she belongs with Edward (Robert Pattinson), she definitely has feelings for Jacob (Taylor Lautner) as well. Victoria (the mate of the vampire that the Cullens killed in the first movie/book) wants revenge and decides to go about building an army of newborn vampires to fight the Cullens and achieve her goal of killing Bella. In the meantime Jacob decides to reveal to Bella just exactly how he feels about her - while Bella is deciding between Edward and Jacob, the army of vampires advances to Forks to kill her. Is Bella safe? Does she finally make a choice? That forms the rest of the movie.

The chemistry between Taylor Lautner and Kristen Stewart appeared to be much better than that between Robert Pattinson and Kristen (however I wonder if there is any truth to the observation made by Joey to Chandler in Friends... if someone is a couple in real life, the chemistry on screen or on stage is not as great) - don't get me wrong, I am completely on Team Edward but I felt Bella and Jacob were more believable. I want Edward and Bella to be more passionate and I don't think the lead couple did that - I feel their performances were too restrained. Edward does look very handsome in this movie. In other Twilight news, they have broken the next movie into 2 parts - that is the best decision because the book is almost 800 pages long and has a lot of material to cover which would be next to impossible in 1 2-hour movie.

So the verdict: you will enjoy this movie if you are a Twilight fan. If you are not acquainted with this series, I would suggest reading all 4 books by Stephenie Meyer and watching the first 2 movies before sitting down to watch this one. Enjoy the rest of the weekend!!

Blast from the Past

This afternoon, I was deciding between a nap and watching a movie and of course movie won. I decided to watch one of the oldies and decided on the amazing casting coup that was Silsila. Silsila is the only movie where reel life sort of imitates real life what with the Jaya-Amit-Rekha triangle being played out on the big screen. But more on that gossip later.

The movie starts out as a story about 2 brothers Shekhar and Amit (played by the handsome Shashi Kapoor and Amitabh Bachchan) who are very close in age and more friends than brothers. Shekhar is an airforce pilot and is in love with Shobha (Jaya Bhaduri) while Amit is in love with Chandni (a very beautiful Rekha). Shekhar is killed in a plane crash leaving behind a pregnant Shobha... out of a sense of moral duty, Amit gets married to Shobha (these were times when being an unwed mother was the worst taboo ever - it is probably still the case in most of India except for the big cities). This news devastates Chandni who goes on to marry a doctor played by Sanjeev Kumar. Shobha loses the baby - Amit and Shobha who got married for the child now have no reason to really be together - at some level Amit also resents the fact that he had to forget his dreams to be with Shobha. Amit and Chandni then cross paths and despite being married, start having a secret affair. What follows makes up the crux of the movie - will Amit stay with his wife or will he leave her and be reunited with Chandni.

The movie has beautiful songs - some of my faves are the title song "Dekha ek khwab" and "Ye kahan aa gaye hum" and of course the famous "Rang Barse". The movie had me in splits at some scenes where Rekha is jogging looking absolutely glamorous with a scarf to boot and her long hair flowing loose, there was another shot with Amitabh and Rekha jogging together and Amitabh wearing this really tight black pair of shorts - but all in all it was a pleasure to watch the sizzling chemistry between Rekha and Amitabh. We all know that in real life Amitabh stayed with his wife and has never spoken publicly about his rumoured affair with Rekha where as she has been more forthcoming in many interviews and has spoken about her respect for Amitji (she always refers to him as "Him") and the reason I know this is because I was an avid reader of Stardust (India's premier gossip mag in those days) in my teen years. The movie surprisingly flopped at the time of its release - I don't think many people could understand the ending and why the main protagonists did what they did. Yash Chopra achieved a brilliant casting coup with this movie. This was also the last movie that Amitabh and Rekha did together thus ending the iconic reel-life pairing.

Rajneeti

My brother told me that Rajneeti was a mix of the Mahabharata and The Godfather - I decided to see the movie for myself to see how good or bad of a job they had done - and the verdict - not too bad at all. It was a tad too long but kept me engrossed for the most part except that I still cannot quite believe that politics in India is such a dirty business... that may be my naive side talking. I mean I have no illusions that politics is this super clean world but in this movie they take it to the next level - people killing people in cold blood with no remorse at all, barter of personal relationships in the name of politics... basically anything goes - the end justifies the means.

The plot definitely borrows heavily from the Mahabharata with the daughter of a major political figure getting pregnant through a brief affair. In efforts to cover up the scandal, her brother takes the baby and abandons him - the baby grows to be Ajay Devgan whose foster father coincidentally works for his biological mother's family as a driver (Kunti and Karna anyone?) Arjun Rampal and Ranbir play brothers - half brothers of Ajay Devgan (whose character is named Suraj) in the movie who ends up on the opposite side of the political play with their cousin played by Manoj Bajpai. It borrows from The Godfather with the younger son (Ranbir's Samar) who initially is far removed from the family's world of politics and ends up slowly becoming the main player and the brains behind the party despite his older brother being the face of the party. Katrina plays a family friend's daughter Indu, madly in love with Samar. However Samar has a girlfriend in the US and only agrees to marry her to have her father finance their party - her father however wants her to marry the older son because he will be CM. For whatever reason she agrees to the match and marries the older son. It is soon revealed to the family that Samar has a girlfriend and she comes to live with him in India.

As Samar is drawn deeper into the world of lies, cover-ups and deceit that is politics Sarah insists on leaving because she cannot bear to raise her as-yet unborn baby in that environment. Samar decides to leave with her but a bomb sets off (ostensibly set by Suraj and their cousin) and she and the older brother end up dead. Samar is once again required to step up to the task of running the party and the family ends up anointing Indu as the candidate for CM. A lot of blood and gore later, the movie ends with Indu becoming Chief Minister and Samar deciding to go back to the US leaving behind the murky world of politics.

On the whole, the movie was pretty decent but I found it a tad too long and all this without the usual unnecessary songs that usually make up a typical Hindi movie. Some of the scenes in the movie were unintentionally hilarious - there is a scene in the hospital where Samar's uncle ends up having a heart attack and they are trying to use the defibrillator and it is just hilarious - I have watched enough ER and Grey's Anatomy to know at least how the process should look and this movie did it no justice at all. The nurse just barely touched the paddles to him. An added bonus was that I watched the movie with the sub-titles on and the translation was atrocious. I honestly believe that reading the sub-titles is more entertaining than the movie these days.

All the characters do a decent job overall - I liked Katrina Kaif better in this movie than all her movies with Akshay Kumar. Ranbir Kapoor did a good job as usual. It's now expected of him. Arjun Rampal is getting much better as an actor... he is finally leaving behind his modeling days and his non-actor label :) Manoj Bajpai and Ajay Devgan were good too. There was nobody in the main cast that let their characters down.

I would say this is a DVD watch because you can forward through a few scenes rather than sitting through the whole thing. Some scenes are very violent but what is a hindi movie without some masala...

American Idol - the end of an era

Blogging after a long long time. All in honor of Simon Cowell and as Ryan Seacrest put it, "The End of an Era" on American Idol. Today saw Lee Dewayze crowned as the American Idol over the judge fave Crystal Bowersox. More importantly, today marked the last time Simon Cowell sits on the judging panel of American Idol.

Kris Allen opened the show - am sad to say I still don't know why he won over Adam Lambert - he was good but I must admit that I fast forwarded through most of it. That performance was followed by all the judges poking fun at Mr. Cowell - they brought Paula back for a bit - it was fun to see her again. Siobhan and Aaron sang "How deep is your love" and were joined by the 2 remaining Bee Gees - it was awesome to see the 4 share the stage - I loved the performance for the most part (except for where all 4 them sang the line how deep is your love - there was something wrong in the way they sounded - like someone was off-key). But I loved seeing the Bee Gees singing again. Big Mike took the stage once more singing with Michael McDonald - over the season I must say that I have taken a strong dislike to Big Mike - not sure whether it was one of my colleagues who absolutely hated him or if I developed it on my own but I just cannot stand him all smug on the stage. Dane Cook followed that up with all the insults Simon has delivered over the years... as a nice touch they brought some of the AI rejects back on stage - things got a bit crazy there as people fought for the mike and I can almost imagine the producers' panic as they went to commercial break.

The top 6 girls performed "Beautiful" by Christina Aguilera... they were joined by the lady herself for the second song "Stronger" - she also sang a number from her new album. She was good - there were no gimmicks - it was just her and the mike - and boy did she sing her heart out!! I don't always like Christina's songs but there's no denying her talent - there will never be any lip-syncing here. Ricky Gervais dropped in via satellite - he was funny as expected. The top 6 guys then took the stage - am not sure what song they sang... it was a treat to see Casey on stage again singing "she's a maneater" - the boy is cute :) They were joined by Daryl Hall and John Oats (I admit I had to look up their names on the Internet). They brought a dash of the 80s with them. It's awesome to see the newbies sharing the stage with veteran artists. Crystal sang one of my favourite songs Ironic and was joined by the original songstress Alanis Morisette - it was fun to watch them together on stage - you could tell that they were having a blast. Don't see Alanis enough!! Carrie Underwood performed next - am not sure I liked it very much - it was just okay for me (maybe I'm channeling Simon :))Ford gave the 2 finalists their own Ford Fiestas. Casey shared the stage with Brett Michaels next - they looked like they had fun jamming with their guitars. At this point my DVR has caught up with the live telecast - bummer - have to watch all the ads now...

Lee performed a medley with the band Chicago... Lee looked like he belonged. I think he has a long career ahead of him. From selling paints to sharing the stage with Chicago - he has come a long way. Pants on the ground was back... right after a funny Simon snippet. I know what I am going to be humming all day tomorrow - Pants on the ground... he was joined by - surprise surprise - William Hung (yes of "She bangs" fame). Paula reminisced about Simon and their friendship on video. Then she was on stage looking more coherent that she ever has before. It was great to see Kelly Clarkson on stage with Reuben, Fantasia, Carrie Underwood, Jordin Sparks, Taylor Hicks (remember him?), Kris Allen (no David Cook surprisingly) and a number of other Idol contestants. Janet Jackson joined this season's Idol contestants after Simon's speech. Her soft crooning initially reminded me of Michael Jackson... she looked fabulous - I don't think this woman ages. She got a standing ovation from the audience when she was done.

Lee and Crystal shared the stage one final time singing "with a little help from my friends" - I have always loved this song - never knew who the original singer was and today he shared the stage with Crystal and Lee - Joe Cocker - they were awesome. Then there was nothing left to do but crown the new reigning Idol - in another American Idol upset, Lee won over Crystal. This season was by far the worst in Idol history. And now Simon is gone too. I'm not sure I am going to be tuning in next season but all said and done I absolutely loved this finale tonight. I did however lose my office pool :(

That was one long post - phew!!!!!!! Good night!!