It's One o' Clock at the Water Works

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Location: Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India

20 year old undergrad student.

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

I am Pinnochio

You scored as Pinocchio. Your alter ego is Pinocchio! All you want is for everthing to be real, no fake dreams or things that can't be achieved. Ironic that you are quite the liar.

Pinocchio

69%

Sleeping Beauty

63%

Peter Pan

63%

Goofy

56%

The Beast

56%

Donald Duck

50%

Cinderella

44%

Cruella De Ville

38%

Snow White

25%

Ariel

19%

Which Disney Character is your Alter Ego?
created with QuizFarm.com

Monday, November 21, 2005

Kelly's Heroes

This is starting to become a movie blog, reason being the fast approaching exams and it is this period when I see a lot of movies as every other activity on campus comes to a halt and I, for one don't like studying.

Coming to the movie, this is a 1970 war flick....no caper is the right word. lifting lines from a comment on imdb...this is Ocean's Eleven made in a battlefield or was Ocean's Eleven kelly's Heroes done in casinoes.

Anyways, the film is set in WW II after the Normandy Landing when the Americans are moving into the German occupied France. Pvt. Kelly (Clint Eastwood...yeah this is a Clint Eastwood flick) is a part of a platoon who captures a german Colonel. Kelly comes to know of German gold worth 16 million dollars locked in a bank some 20 miles behind enemy lines. Just at that time, his platoon gets orders to fall back due to incessant German bombing.

Kelly confides his secret with a few of his platoon members and they decide to go ahead with the greatest robbery of all time. Surprisingly Easwood's character is overshadowed by David Sutherland's "Oddball" who plays a hippyish officer with great one-liners.

Check out the movie for the rest. The movie has a great Soundtrack and the theme song "Burning Bridges" is now in my all time favorites.

Saturday, November 12, 2005

Ran: Kurosawa's best

It's been quite sometime since I last came here. Not that I've been busy, but just too lazy. O.K. the answer to the question in the last post was One O'Clock at the Water Works means "Your Fly is Open"...no one got it right.

Saw Kurosawa's "Ran" (pronounced raan) screened yesterday in the college Open Air Theatre. I am not a great fan of Kurosawa. Had seen 3 of his movies before this one. The very very famous and path-breaking Rashomon (which I lost patience with, too slow a movie and the subtitles were bad), Seven Samurai (was a great watch but Sholay is better any day) and Ikiru(I liked this one, was a tale very warmly told).

After these movies, Kurosawa became to me a director who only the "intellectuals" could admire. I saw nothing great in those movies.

But Ran changed my impression of me altogether. I haven't seen a more visually powerful movie than this one. Said to be an adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear (I haven't read that, so can't comment) the film is based in medieval Japan in the era of warlords.

Ran is the japanese for chaos, riot, dissension.
Hidetora, is the Great Lord of the plain and is now very old. He decides to transfer the power to his eldest of three sons-Taro. All of his men welcome the decision but for the youngest son Saburo. He wants his father to keep his position and being short tempered ridicules him for the decision. The Great Lord banishes him from his territory.

Thus begins the story of revenge and very very dark characters. Taro's wife(Lady Kaede) is the daughter of the Lord whom Hidetora had killed during his days as the warrior. She decides to avenge his death by asking her husband to pressurize Hidetora to almost live like a virtual prisoner in his own castle.

Hidetora leaves the castle and goes to his second son who treats him the same way. Having faced shock he leaves with his escort of 30 samurais for the third castle which belonged to his youngest son but was now deserted.

The two brothers decide to kill their father and send a huge army to fight the samurais who were the best in the land.

The battle between the samurais and the army is the best I've seen on screen., yes better than the Normandy Landing in Saving Private Ryan.

What happens next, I leave it to you to find out.
The cinematography is mind-blowing. Colors very apt for the film in which every character is as dark as it can be. And the background score haunting. Superb acting performances by the great lord (Tatsuya Nakadai) and his eldest daughter in law (Mieko Harada) backed with a stron message in the end.
All in all a great epic, one which took ten years in the making (Kurosawa made the paintings for the storyboards himself).

The only film that comes as close in terms of darkness is Vishal Bhardwaj's Maqbool based on Macbeth.

This film now ranks in my personal favorite. Go get your hands on this one. You won't regret it.