Movies...

Armageddon- Decentish movie with all the expected thrills and chills

Zodiac - Average, thriller about a real life serial killer

The renaissance man - Hmm, Danny De Vito plays a English 'professor' trying to teach a bunch of dumb army cadets, not very impressive

Hannibal Rising - badly done prologue about Hannibal the Cannibal

Music and Lyrics - sweet and sugary romance, I like Hugh Grant so did not mind this a lot

Analyse This - BAD BAD BAD yuck puke

December Boys - A coming of age movie about 4 orphans who hope to get adopted one summer vacation. I quite liked this.

City of Angels - Nicholas Cage hams his way through an otherwise decent plot :)

Valkyrie - Loved this movie, despite watching it in a London Movie hall (Watching a movie in a theatre in London is one of the worst movie experiences one can have)

RockNRolla - Guy Ritchie, decent, not as good as his previous ones, but not the worst either.

How to lose friends and alienate people - This comedy could definitely have been better made.

Three to Tango - hmmm, not too nice.

Constant Gardner - Slow, but I really like Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Wiez so well I liked it quite a bit

Conspiracy Theory - Pathetic!

Big Lebowski - Overrated, emperor you are making a habit of roaming about naked

Ronin - Another overrated movie, this action thriller did NOT thrill me one bit.

Curious Case of Benjamin Button - See Post below

Road to Ladakh - Irrfan Khan and Koel Purie star in this short film about 'love', this 50 minute movie leaves a lot to be desired.

Meet the Fockers - As one would expect it to be.

To catch a thief - Cary Grant and the very beautiful Grace Kelly star in this Alfred Hitchcok classic! Fantastic!

Old Boy - Fantastic! Brilliant and a definite must watch if you like action and don't mind a bit of weirdness (Eating of live octopodes for example) in return for truck loads of style !
This was remade into 'Zinda' in Hindi, but the plot was defintiely changed a lot.

The Curious yaaaawn case of yaawn Benjamin Button

Well, I had heard so much about this movie, about how awesome this was and how its brilliance outshone the sun etc etc

Well Sorry Emperor, but you are err naked !

Well I found the movie bad in almost all the criteria by which I judge the movies I watch. This was like watching Forrest Gump in reverse, the plot had one idea, a guy lives his life backwards and that's it!

There was no development of character, there was absolutely no substance, it was almost as if the makers had bet on how good Brad Pitt looks riding a bike with the wind blowing in his face or how pretty the full moon looks!

When it comes to movies I have quite a bit of patience, but the last time I was so bored in a theatre was when I watched Salaam Namaste by mistake!

Cate Blanchett I hated, there was almost no romance between Brad Pitts character and Cate's character.

The lamest scene was where Benjamin describes how the heroine would have missed being hit by a car if even one thing had changed. Man!

The only good parts were the CGI, the costumes and to some extent the cinematography

I have this director marked, I am not going to waste anymore time of my life on his movies.

The enigma that is Nicholas Cage

On a long flight back home I happened to watch 'City of angels', A nice plot for a romantic movie :) but what struck me was the enigmatic Mr. Cage, now here is an actor who has movies of various genre under his belt, and yet has managed to get through them all with the same expression on his face.

Now that is enigmatic.
How Nicholas Cage can romance Meg Ryan (City of Angels), Run about on 'The Rock', sit around with a group of convicts (Con-air) , Try and ferret out a snuff film maker (8mm), hot-wire cars with Angelina Jolie (Gone in 60 seconds), Sell ammo (Lord of war) all with the same look on his face !

People may describe this expression as 'wooden' or 'stonefaced', but to me this more of a 'I-swallowed-a-stress-ball-this-morning-and-it-is-stuck' kind of expression

I know you think I am exaggerating, hell! When I started off this post I thought I would exaggerate a lot of stuff in this post, but after some rigourous research around Cage and his movies, I can assure you none of what is out here is an exaggeration.

Here is some proof:

Consider

Exhibit A: Cage in "Lord of war"


It is quite obvious that during the filming of this scene, cage has zonked out, and this very moment (where his character is supposed to be trying to sell arms and weapons of mass destruction), the expression on Cage's face seems to suggest he is thinking of whether he has fed his pet panda this morning.


Exhibit B: Con-Air


From his expression I do not know whether he is checking out a chick on the beach or whether he is trying to solve the problem of rounding up escapee convicts (well if you are still wondering, its supposed to be the latter)


Exhibit C: Leaving Las Vegas


While Elizabeth Shue seems to be quite happy 'Leaving Las Vegas', our pal has managed to get his brilliant expression on the movie poster!!


Exhibit D.1 and D.2: Gone in 60 seconds




We can see only half his face in both the captures, but given previous evidence I am quite sure that, front on, the expression on his face has not changed.
The first picture is where they are hotwiring a car and the second is an intense romantic moment between the protagonist and the leading lady, one would never have guessed.

Exhibit E: City of Angels



Our man has fallen in love with Meg Ryan, or at least that is what his expression in this scene is supposed to indicate, but it remains "I-swallowed-a-stress-ball-this-morning-and-it-is-stuck"

I rest my case

p.s: Despite all this I thought, he was pretty much at his best in 8mm and his worst in City of Angels and Ghost Rider

Mission: Paint the door - Episode 1

Amu and I have decided to paint a door in our room, we mulled on this decision for a couple of weeks and yesterday got down to actually starting off on the project.

Phase1: Decide how we want the door to look...
The door is a long and narrow canvas, hence deciding what to paint on it was a little confusing. Should we draw a giraffe? A trapeze artist? or some colourful blotches and call it art (ala M.F. Hussain), we just could not decide, Hussain seemed to be the easiest way forward. :P

But finally in a moment of epiphany, we decided we wanted to have a door painted on our door with a little girl and her cat peeping from behind it. :D

Phase2: Some initial sketch work...





We started sketching the door at 11pm last night, and surprisingly it came out quite well :)
Got dad (who is a professional artisit), to look at it and he said it was quite nice :D

Yet to come: buying paints and starting the paint job...