Friday, August 12, 2005

Pune to Mumbai.. I watched Coolie

Yup, this is so much like old times. It's 3 in the morning and i'm surfing the net, and it's just an hour since i got home.

Did i have a good bus journey? Depends upon what you consider good. See, i had some cheese pav bhaji for dinner before boarding the bus. I could have easily left off the cheese, as i got more than an overdose on the bus. They played Coolie. Atrocious. Appalling. Aggravating. Absolutely lousy. This crap showcases everything that's wrong with bollywood. Insanely bad acting (everyone's hamming it up like there's no tomorrow), cringe-worthy innanities passing off for dialogues, and a plot so contrived, it's incredulous that anyone could actually have watched this without laughing their guts out atleast once.

And bollywood's trademark middle-finger to sense, sensibility and logic. One case in point - Amitabh's character uses the hawk as his election symbol. When he's on stage giving his speech, the bloody backdrop is that of a bald eagle. A bald fucking eagle. Does nobody in bollywood know the difference between a bloody hawk and a fucking eagle?

I swear, if this kind of stuff was played in our screening, i'm willing to bet some of would actually take the effort to stay awake.

Thursday, August 04, 2005

The Island

It was a Michael Bay movie alrite. But for a moment there, i actually had hope. An interesting enough plot, competent acting from all involved, and well, no faults in diection.

It's actually half a Michael Bay movie, because things start blowing up only in the second half. That's also probably when he lost all interest in what he was filming, and let it all go to hell.

See, because throughout the movie, there was this constant sense of Deja Vu, if, that is, you've seen the Matrix, or Minority Report. It's the treatment, i suppose, or maybe the story. I can't figure it out. But whatever it is, movie manages to engage you in the first hour.

Supposedly set in the future, one that doesn't really seem all that futuristic, the story (SPOILERS) is about a corporation that's raising made-to-order clones to be used as organ donors and replacements. All this while, the clones are being led to believe that they're the only survivors of some kind of holocaust - contamination, i believe, was the term used. However, Ewan MacGegor's Lincoln Six Echo (yes, his name in the movie, there's a reason for it) begins to question his existance in their perfect, sanitised world.

As for the movie title, it's not really all that relevant. It's just a snappy, catchy title for the movie to have.

There are some logical loopholes in the movie alright, and a lot of times when suspension of disbelief is needed, but if you ask me, the only major conceptual fault lay in the fact that it's hard to believe the corporation's method were anywhere near cost-effective. Just to sell a single organ, an entire underground complex was created, incredibly huge holographic shields were used to hide that fact that they were underground, and the clones had every kind of facility needed at their disposal; the health clubs and swimming pools. I find it very hard to believe that some rich people would pay such a lot for some organs, enough to keep the entire corporation afloat.

That apart, Scarlett Johansen is pretty much wasted in this movie, but you don't hear me complaining.

P.s. Steve Buscemi is still da man!!