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Entertainment

Two good movies

By ⋅ February 6, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

It’s not often that you see a movie and want to write about it. But recently, I watched 2 that are worth mentioning…

There’s magic in the air

LucyThe first one was Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia, a really well crafted fairy tale by CS Lewis and equally well ren­dered onto the sil­ver screen by direc­tor Andrew Adam­son. I’d say it’s a must-watch inspite of its ‘Hindi moviesh’ length. The act­ing over­all, was espe­cially good and the one char­ac­ter that I par­tic­u­larly loved was young Lucy Peven­sie (Georgie Henley).

It also brought to mind an impor­tant ques­tion. What do these young peo­ple eat while grow­ing up? They’re def­i­nitely feed­ing them things we never ate. She’s 5 and acts like a total pro! And she has the most beau­ti­ful eyes. What a dar­ling. Appar­ently Adam­son gave all of them i-Pods once they had fin­ished film­ing and she thanked him pro­fusely before turn­ing and ask­ing: “What is it?”!

CS Lewis’s mag­i­cal tale is brought to life in true tech­ni­color glory by Adam­son who recre­ates a world where ani­mals talk and where the land­scapes are over­whelm­ingly stark but beau­ti­ful (the ice cas­tle looks over­whelm­ing!). The war scenes with myth­i­cal crea­tures like the half men-half horses and those huge birds all seem to come to life on screen draw­ing us into a world, where you can’t help but believe for a while that there is magic everywhere!

AslanAnd the lion : voiced by Liam Neeson… Wow, what can I say? Being a lover of cats, I have a soft spot for all ani­mals in this par­tic­u­lar fam­ily, includ­ing the lion. What a majes­tic crea­ture. One for­gets after a while that it’s “talk­ing” lion and actu­ally begins to believe it is really talking!

This is only one of CS Lewis’s nov­els in the series. There are quite a few more (per­haps enough to keep Adam­son occu­pied for the rest of his career!), and since this one has been brought to the screen suc­cess­fully, we will no doubt see the sequels…

Pub­li­ca­tion Order:
1. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
2. Prince Caspian
3. The Voy­age of the Dawn Treader
4. The Sil­ver Chair
5. The Horse and His Boy
6. The Magician’s Nephew
7. The Last Battle

Chrono­log­i­cal Order:

1. The Magician’s Nephew
2. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
3. The Horse and His Boy
4. Prince Caspian
5. The Voy­age of the Dawn Treader
6. The Sil­ver Chair
7. The Last Battle

(Source: Wikipedia)

Adam­son is now work­ing on the sequel, Prince Caspian slated for release in Decem­ber 2007.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Also, caught up with the much talked about Rang de Bas­anti.

rang de basanti

The act­ing: Unlike what was expected, Aamir didn’t hog all the atten­tion. It was well divided between all the friends. I espe­cially liked Sid­dharth & Kunal Kapoor. The whole first half exuded such vibrancy that you couldn’t help but be affected by this group of friends and espe­cially their humour, which was so relatable.

The story: The his­tor­i­cal parts inter­spersed with the present inte­grated well into the sto­ry­line. The end yes, it has been much debated. Despite its extrem­ity, in its defense, I have to say that it makes one think and that’s more than what many movies these days do. After hav­ing watched and reviewed many crappy movies I must say this one def­i­nitely stood out in all aspects : whether it was cin­e­matog­ra­phy, music, edit­ing, act­ing etc.

On the down­side, it is hard to digest what they do in the end as a fea­si­ble solu­tion and I’m not sure why Rakeysh Mehra decided to go with this par­tic­u­lar end­ing. Was it opti­mistic? Was it pes­simistic? What was it try­ing to say to the youth? I, for one, wasn’t really clear. Espe­cially the whole crack­ing down scene on demon­stra­tors, and the finale at the radio sta­tion seemed like tak­ing things too far. I know the direc­tor has cre­ative licence, but I did won­der since oth­er­wise the movie unfolded so well.

Was such an extreme step nec­es­sary? Couldn’t there have been an alter­na­tive if Mehra’s point was to show that the youth are respon­si­bil­ity for mak­ing sure the coun­try moves in the right direc­tion and not just sit around and com­plain. Per­haps a more fea­si­ble story, to an oth­er­wise really sane, inter­est­ing and youth­ful film would have gone down well.

And on an end note, the songs I think were quite bril­liant. They not only wove them­selves into the fab­ric of the film, but also con­veyed a sense of vibrancy that nearly had me up and doing the bhangra along with the rest of them. All in all, I’d give it a 8/10 from my side. What’s your take?

Discussion

24 Responses to “Two good movies”

  1. Hi Anita.

    Saw Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia yes­ter­day and enjoyed it very much. Might even think of see­ing it again. :)

    (I wish I could get a voice-over gig in one of these movies…)

    Posted by MadMan | February 7, 2006, 11:01 am

  2. RDB’s cli­max seemed a bit exag­ger­ated. Lovely movies, both of them, though! :)

    Posted by Nero | February 7, 2006, 2:47 pm

  3. Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia was so fabulous..First half I I watched it like thise kids as if the events were unfol­gin right there in front of me.. :-)

    Posted by Sangita | February 7, 2006, 3:04 pm

  4. 8/10 for Rang De Bas­anti from me too…I think the end is justified…had those guys been let off, it would have meant glo­ri­fy­ing the means they used…so it was log­i­cal that they die.

    Posted by Ullas | February 7, 2006, 3:29 pm

  5. This was vin­tage AnitaB­ora, a post long over­due.
    I loved both the movies, and if it wasn’t writ­ten about in 70% of the blo­gos­phere, i would also have given my 10 paise bit. The end was very much a pos­si­bil­ity in our Raj. And Killing a mantri is not a new phe­nom­e­non in Bol­ly­wood a la Deol family.

    Posted by tony | February 7, 2006, 3:53 pm

  6. Oth­er­day I saw the inter­view of Mehra’s regard­ing RDB..Mehra’s point is that RDB makes young­sters to think..He told he is influ­enced by fall of Berlin wall…Message to young­sters is to think..thats all what Mehra try­ing to tell..Overall I agree with you on 8/10..

    Cool

    Posted by Manohar | February 7, 2006, 4:18 pm

  7. mad­man: why don’t you try for an audi­tion for the next one, prince caspian ;)

    nero: exag­ger­ated i can under­stand. but some­how i felt that they could have done a bet­ter job with the end. else, no complaints!

    san­gita: truly fab­u­lous. it just amazes me no end as to what they can do these days!

    ullas: i agree. but couldn’t they have been brought to jus­tice in a proper fashion?

    tony: thanks! i know its been writ­ten about widely but i thought i’d pitch in anyway :)

    manohar: that he was def­i­nitely suc­cess­ful in doing, i think. at least it has gen­er­ated a lot of debate amongst folks, includ­ing bloggers :)

    Posted by Anita | February 7, 2006, 4:29 pm

  8. saw RDB.….have same opin­ion wrt the end.…..songs r D BEST.…..

    Posted by Mehak | February 7, 2006, 4:58 pm

  9. 10/10 for the songs and cinematography…

    Posted by aqua | February 7, 2006, 5:07 pm

  10. I gave Range De Bas­anti a 4 star rat­ing @ my blog.

    Posted by Kapil | February 7, 2006, 11:21 pm

  11. I com­pletely agree with the direc­tor on the end of RDB. RDB tries to draw the par­al­lel between the story of Bha­gat singh et al and these young boys. The direc­tor lets the par­al­lel run right till the end where these young men just like Baghat sigh & co. kill the enemy and are them­selves killed/executed. But what fol­lowed the death of Bha­gat Singh et al was the inte­si­fi­ca­tion of Indian free­dom fight and the inde­pen­dence itself. Sim­i­larly, the direc­tor wants us to get inspired after this movie and then inten­sify our fight against the cor­rupt & pop­ulist politicians.

    Posted by sathish | February 9, 2006, 4:41 pm

  12. The first movie sounds inter­est­ing. As for the sec­ond, the end was very imprac­ti­cal although the for­mat of the film and the way it was pre­sented was unique and inter­est­ing. One has to look for deep rooted long term sus­tain­able solu­tions instead of sym­bolic incidents.

    Posted by Hiren Shah | February 10, 2006, 5:40 pm

  13. I saw CofN yes­ter­day. Agree with you — loved it.

    Posted by Kirubakaran | February 13, 2006, 12:28 am

  14. Saw RDB. Felt like I got my money’s worth (all 8 dol­lars I mean!!!) Looks like Aamir and team may once again be the front run­ners for an Oscar nom­i­na­tion atleast among the domes­tic picks. I liked the songs, but still feel like com­plain­ing a lit­tle bit about the extent to which they have been used,was it a tad bit loud? None of the char­ac­ters were wasted (even the par­ents). Hats off to Aamir for shar­ing screen space equally with the oth­ers despite his super-star sta­tus.
    And finally dunno how much it will serve to inspire India’s young to actu­ally start another “revolution”,but I for one am surely inspired to get a good book on pre-Independence India and refresh my mem­ory about things we stud­ied back in his­tory classes..any sug­ges­tions???
    Anita, on a more per­sonal note,good job with ur blog, I am from Ban­ga­lore, cur­rently in Dal­las. Shoot me an email and maybe we can meet someday?

    Posted by Deepa | February 13, 2006, 9:42 am

  15. @ Anita

    You have a point but isn’t it the sheer inad­e­quacy of the judi­ciary and law that led the five guys to do what they did. Could the same sys­tem have pun­ished them while it failed to pun­ish the defence minister?

    Posted by Ullas | February 13, 2006, 12:38 pm

  16. Thanx for the review and view­points of all here for the RDB.…I’m plan­ning to watch it soon.

    Posted by Ricky | February 13, 2006, 7:09 pm

  17. Hi anita…wanted to request y to boy­cott google on valentine’s day…this is to sup­port free­dom of infor­ma­tion and protest google’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with the chi­nese govt. i sound like a rabit polit­i­cal activist no? :)

    Posted by aqua | February 14, 2006, 11:17 am

  18. The cli­max was bit well planned. Rakesh Mehra tried 2 keep the view­ers heart heavy so that some­think­ing goes into the minds of the watcher. If it wud have been some thing like Yuva. It does­not give viewer any thoughts when they exit out of the movie. What say?

    Posted by Tenali | February 16, 2006, 11:01 pm

  19. Saw Nar­nia with the kids yes­ter­day. We thor­oughly enjoyed it. Was in Ban­ga­lore for a few hours recently. How do I con­tact you the next time I am there?

    Posted by Danto | February 19, 2006, 4:32 am

  20. Hi,

    Saw Rang de B—-.
    I do not know why every­body is crib­bing about the end.Is it not liked just because Amir died in the end, then its a faltu objec­tion, if not ‚then with the sim­i­lar­ity with bha­gat singh and Azad et el would take the sto­ry­line as it is.
    Sure an oscer win­ner.
    real

    Posted by real | February 22, 2006, 11:10 pm

  21. About RDB’s end­ing, as well as the protest scene… I think it would be what any gov­erne­ment would do. Extreme mea­sures would be under­taken in order to silence prop­a­ga­tors of anti-government pro­pa­ganda, as long as they can do it under the guise of some­thing else. In this case, they would have wanted “no sur­vivors”, becos’ oth­er­wise, they would have got press band­width, which would have only made things worse for the pow­ers that be.

    Posted by JJ | February 23, 2006, 8:57 am

  22. 9/10 for rdb from me. i don’t think that the end should always be right. infact, the guys don’t even jus­tify them­selves, it’s just that they felt frus­trated at their friend’s death and did so.

    Posted by Amit Srivastava | February 23, 2006, 4:09 pm

  23. i had finally been able to see the movie in dhaka and thanks to piracy.
    i was moved enough to write and rave about the movie. in my opin­ion the cur­rent events spe­cially public’s sup­port on jess­cia lal case shows that movie has some impact on peo­ple.
    i only hope that effect remains there for long enough to set chain reac­tions in motion.

    Posted by krishna | March 10, 2006, 6:44 pm

  24. RDB is a gr8 movie n i wish this movie gets all the awards in 07 coz the movie deserves all the awards from best actor 2 best new­comer .……
    i request mr. mehra to con­tinue mak­ing such films but plz no mat­ter whoso­ever the main actor is,plz cast kunal kapoor in ur movie.plzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

    Posted by simran | April 1, 2006, 9:59 pm

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