This post is not about a review for the movie, so I’ll keep it short. The movie was just about ok. First half was excellent with some good humour (if you can excuse some really bad PJs in between). Second half was at best average, too much emo and twists and turns. But enjoyable anyway. Lal (the director and producer) however has realized the power of nostalgia. Solely due to this, the movie is going to make big bucks. It works on that feeling you get when you think of the golden age of Malayalam cinema that ‘In Harihar Nagar’ was part of.

I was probably 5 years old when the original was released and I remember going to the theatre with my parents and cousins for this. My mind was too young to really grasp the full crux of all that was happening on screen. But watching it again (and again) during adulthood, made me realize how ‘real’ this movie was. The basic plot was too outrageous to be real, but what I mean are the fine details. Every silly joke in that movie, I have seen played around me or I can imagine being played around me. That was the real brilliance behind the original and why it turned out to be a cult classic in Kerala. Every person who has some ‘malluness’ in him, would know those punchlines by heart.

I have heard loads of complaints from my non-Keralite friends, saying that Malayalam films are too real (won’t say that about the recent ones though), that there is no feeling of escapism in them. Well I love ‘real’, and I think most Malayalees do too. Maybe we didn’t need that escapism, maybe it’s already provided to us by all the ‘gelf’ money, lazyness and all the booze that we didn’t need them in the movies. But ‘real’ films owned the market in Malayalam and probably that was the major reason why the recent ‘superhero larger-than-life’ films fail. They should go back to making films like they used to! Those Mohanlal ‘unemployed’ flicks, Mamootty’s family movies, Mukesh’s ‘fraud’ movies, Jayaram’s ‘how-to-escape-from-a-big-mess’ flicks, Padmarajan’s classics, Sreenivasan’s satires… aww.. it was such a beautiful world!

I got bit by the nostalgia bug again! Back to those old cds (.avi’s rather)… ;)

But I hear a lot of dissent growing against the movie. I read articles like this and this. I hear some of my friends and colleagues telling me it is bad advertising for India. Maybe it is. But are we all really blind? Or experts at putting things under the carpet. I guess every single one of us understands that these things still happen in India. It is not falsifying facts, it is just showing the negative part of the truth. Yes even I am proud and overwhelmed by the strides India has made in technology, space exploration, IT, pharmaceuticals, spirituality, business.. But doesn’t all that gloss simply hide the patches of rust underneath?

For me Slumdog is a movie that also acts as a reminder. A constructive criticism on how we manage to ignore some bare facts about our country. Take pride in glory, but don’t ignore the dirt.

I bought the book a few days later, and started reading it. The fact that I was able to finish half the book in one sitting and considering how lazy I am nowadays reading books, it speaks volumes as to how good I felt reading it. I was in quite a gloomy mood for days before, but reading this gave me instant bliss and I am not exaggerating. It is amazing how a book about the last lecture given by a dying professor tells you nothing negative but inspires you to be positive. And it really did inspire me, I would go as far as saying that it was the most inspirational thing I have heard ever.

Now, after this I did some research about this guy. He really is a hot-shot in the computer world. A major contributor to the world of Virtual Reality and even co-developed one of the best programming learning aide – Alice (try this one out, its a free download). And then I came across the original video of his last lecture, again available for free in YouTube. It is over an hour long, but I promise you, there’s not a minute of boredom in there. It is filled with energy and its not about dying, its about living. Do watch it, its even better than the book!

Dr. Pausch passed away on July 25, 2008. But what a legacy to leave behind…

Buy the book at Rediff.com (India) or Amazon

The play was called as “Always look on the bright side of Life” by a troupe called as ‘Evam’. I really didn’t know what to expect, the only thing I knew was that the theme was humour and it was inspired by the Monty Python. It turned out to be really good. It was good fun, clean entertainment keeping the audience engaged throughout. The play did not follow a conventional single storyline, instead it was presented as a series of mini-sketches like the Monty Python series. What I really caught my fancy, was the way in which the scenes were transitioned with music and dance. Three girls danced and set up the props in a well-timed seamless manner. The fact that the girls were pretty helped out too! The jokes were all mostly original (I think) and also relevant to the world around us. All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed the whole show.

It is definitely worth a try if you have some free time and the troupe is staging a show in your city. 100% recommended, even if you have never seen a real play in your life before!

For more information on ‘Evam’, show timings and their other plays visit their site www.evam.in

1. WALL-E (2008)
I have rarely been impressed by any movie like I have been with WALL-E. The range of emotions and character traits portrayed by a Robot – unbelievable. Truly one of best feel good movies ever!

2. Short Circuit (1986)
I remember watching this as a kid in the very early 90′s when it came on TV. Those days the only channel we had available was the good old Doordarshan and this came as part of a series unimaginatively called as the ‘English Film Series’ in which they slaughtered a movie into 15 minute episodes and telecast them every Wednesday(?) from 6:15 to 6:30. Wow.. those were the days! (zzz .. Back from nostalgic dreams..) I recently downloaded (oops, am I in trouble?) a print of this and have to say, I still had the same amount of fun watching this now as then. This was the inspiration behind this post too. Not as spectacularly crafted as WALL-E, but yet ‘Johnny-5′ I am your fan too!

3. Bicentennial Man (1999)
Stellar performance by Robin Williams as ‘Andrew’ the robot who ‘lives’ for 200 years. A real epic based on Issac Asimov’s novella and very underrated in my opinion.

4. AI (2001)
There has to be a Spielberg in any movie list, shoudn’t it? Haley Joel Osment as a 11 year old Robo-kid who yearns for his mothers love has done another spectacular job with this one. The most sentimental of all robot movies.

5. The Terminator (1984) and T2 – Judgement Day (1994)
Arnold with his classic punch lines – ‘I’ll be back’. Incredible plot to say the least.

Honourable mentions :
Star Wars (1977) and its se/prequels – I wouldn’t say this is a true robo-movie, so have not included in the list. But R2-D2 and C-3PO did impress me a lot!
Forbidden Planet (1956) – Robby the robot! Great classic.
I, Robot (2004) – Sonny. The best looking robot of the lot and that final ‘wink’ is unforgettable.
*Batteries not Included (1987) – A bunch of robots save an apartment block – cute!

“Yes, beautiful stars! Better see!”

We thankfully missed out on the first 10 minutes of the movie owing to a faulty ticket machine. Hmm.. but the movie began pretty well actually in retrospect. The acting was ok, but then nothing scary seemed to happen. Then again I thought they were just preparing us for that big 5-lakh rupee moment. Well, the thought and the wait persisted till the end. The general pattern was to build up some excitement, focus on some random objects ranging from a giraffe to Elmo to a pic of Lord Hanuman and then suddenly fade out to daylight without anything happening. There was just one slightly scary scene in the whole movie. Other attempts were too cheesy and the entire theatre audience was laughing, me included, during those supposed-to-be-BOO! moments. My friend, Jithin, kept defending the director (don’t understand why, but he has this habit of liking all the worst movies on planet Earth) saying that what else could he do in a horror movie? Well for starters, he could make me scared for god’s sake!

Not everything was bad. Amongst the positives the movie was only 2 hours long :) and didn’t use too many B(ollywood)-grade special effects (when RGV had a chance to actually make it worse with those added in). The real positive was the camera work though. It was just brilliant. Sad it was wasted on a poor movie. The long single shot of the kid entering school and the camera panning to crow.. well masterpiece!

All in all, I don’t recommend this at all. Quoting Arnab Goswamy from Times NOW, “If you wan’t to watch something really scary, try RGV ka Aag” but don’t waste your time and money on this! Should have stayed at home and slept!

The best thing I liked is the way the results come up on screen. Instead of going the Google’s famous sweet and simple way, the results page is more detailed, with longer content from the pages coming up. This works pretty good especially for more broad one word searches, for example : “cricket“. The results come neatly organized, presented in a visually rich manner but at the same time keeping it not too complicated. And there is a nice little info box on the right, which is pretty smart, where you can browse cricket related stuff by category.

But at the same time, try for a more targeted search like : “the best con movies“. It churns out all irrelevant results and the best you would get is a list of horror movies! You can’t go more wrong can you? Well let me give it some benefit of doubt, after all it is only 1 day old. Things should improve. And if it does, who knows it might be astalavista Google… naa, maybe not ;) Anyways worth a try, play around!

I am currently reading one of his books – India in Slow Motion. Highly recommended reading! Maybe I will post a review in a few days too :)

But it was not bad. This is one Sci-Fi movie worth seeing. The plot, set about 50 years in the future, revolves around the 8 member crew of a spaceship Icarus which is on a journey to the Sun. Their mission is to bring the dying Sun back to life, by exploding a bomb the size of Manhattan island.

The best thing about the movie is that the cast and crew have done brilliantly to make it all look real and believable. The acting is excellent by the entire cast especially Chris Evans (“Mace”) and Cillian Murphy (“Capa”). The graphics are awesome too, and to some extent it creates a world which you won’t think is graphics at all. But they have not gone overboard with all that. They are all well within the limits of imaginable reality. Same goes with the characters. They are not depicted as super humans, who either have no emotions or have too many emotions as is the case with many other Sci-Fi flicks. This one though, they do feel like real human beings, who are just doing their job, making mistakes like everyone of us do.

[[Warning : Spoilers ahead]]
Now to whats bad. The plot is excellent, the movie is excellent, till about 75% of it all. Then comes the part about the intrusion of the captain from a previous failed mission. Apparently he has gone nuts and wants to sabotage the mission. The way he is shown is all crap. Too many unnecessary effects, too much blurring, they make it bad. The limits of reality are breached here. I don’t really understand why this element was treated so. Hmm. That made it disappointing.

Generally though it is nice to watch. The movie is kind of like a mix of Armageddon and Forbidden Planet, that’s what I thought. My friend was telling, she had this triumphant-good feeling after the end of Armageddon, but with this one that feeling was absent. Well.. do you really see a Sci-Fi fiction to get this good feeling? Hmm. it all depends on your perspective.

Overall I give it a 7 on 10. Worth a watch.

There are some flashes of brilliance in the movie. The scene in which Sophie’s parent’s gets killed is one of the best I have ever seen. Kudos to Ron Howard for that shot! Technically the movie was sound and the location choices were excellent. But there aren’t too many more good things I can point out about the movie though. I would have expected much more from the team that made Apollo 13 and the likes. Well, Tom Hanks didn’t have much acting to do, just delivering long dialogues as if he was reading passages from the novel. Audrey Tautau was disappointing too. She was amazing in Amelie, but in this her acting seemed a bit artificial. Paul Bettany is an exception here. His role as Silas the albino is commendable.

The part I least liked about the novel was the over-dramatic ending. This was made even more over-dramatic and dragged out in the movie. Even the theatre audience, who have seen many a masala climax, seemed to agree with hoots, sighs and loud wise-cracks.

I wouldn’t recommend this movie unless you are die-hard fan of the book and want to see how everything translates on screen or if you can’t resist the temptations, and is too curious to find out what all the hype is about.

So my review: An ordinary movie, nothing amazing. 6 on 10 :)