Departed!!!!!
Well, my first reaction was shock, then amazement, then I accepted the fact that the academy people had finally lost it. I do not say that The Departed is a bad movie, it was definetly one of the better movies of the year yet not the best!
Maybe the following points will make it clear why I said the above.
BABEL : Death is the greatest leveler
Well, thats the message from the movie. Death or almost something very near it.
The near death experience of Cate Blanchett creates enormous amount of ripples through four countries and three continents.
That one act rekindles the dying marriage of an american couple in morocco, completely destroys a moroccon shepherd's family, rips apart the career of a mexican lady in america, yet reuniting her with her family in mexico, ignites the debate of terrorism in morocco and totally screws up the only chance of a dumb and deaf japanese girl to get laid.
Death is definetly the greatest leveler, but with a theme as gloomy as this, the movie was bound to get depressing and dark, yet somewhere in it you could spot the message it tried to deliver.
The Queen : "Tradition prepared her. Change will define her."
"The Queen" isn't one of those self-important projects that constitutes a duty rather than a pleasure. It's an elegant mixture of deft, lightly impudent high comedy and human-scaled drama. Dame Helen Mirren gives a stellar perfomance. Of course, it's unlikely any of us will ever read the following sentence in any review: "Helen Mirren disappoints in the title role."
The Queen situates its title subject slightly off to one side without lessening our interest. This film is a tale of two leaders. The queen represents one image of England, the Classical image. The new prime minister, Tony Blair, represents another, fresher image, the New Labour Party in action. The Queen alternates between scenes of the royals cloistered away in their Scottish hideaway, wondering what the worldwide fuss regarding Diana's death really means, and scenes of Blair and his wife, or Blair and his cabinet. The PM must finesse a tricky week with the public and a trickier one with a woman who puts no value on public expression of sorrow. "Restrained grief and sober, private mourning," the queen says--that's the civil approach, "and that's what the world has admired us for". That to me is the defining moment of the movie, a moment in which The Queen takes in everything that tradition taught her and tries to re-invent herself in these changing times.
Little Miss Sunshine: A situation comedy that rescues the very meaning of the phrase
You want to hug the Hoover family, which is surprising given how cranky and ill-fitting they seem at the start. They're middle-class suburbanites hanging on by split fingernails: dad Richard is an unemployed motivational speaker desperately trying to turn his nine-step "Refuse to Lose" program into a book deal and a national brand. Mommy hoover is the breadwinner ready to relegate her patience and understanding to the back of the crisper drawer. Teenage son Dwayne is a sullen ghost who reads Nietzsche and has taken a vow of silence until he's old enough to escape to flight school. The Little Miss Sunshine is the seven year old kiddo of the family Olive whose only aim in life is to win the pageant.
The film's most sitcom-ready invention is Grandpa, a heroin-snorting scoundrel living with the family only because he was kicked out of Sunset Manor, a befiting award to Alan Arkin for his hilarious portrayal.
But other than the dysfunctional family providing those punches of laughter now and then, I have neverunderstoof how it came to be in the contention for the BIG one. As the Hindu puts it " Its too low brow to merit an oscar".
Letters from Iwo Jima: The best movie of the year, too bad its japanese!
The movie is filmed in sepia tones, contributing to the film's depressing, ultimately hopeless view of those Japanese soldiers mired in what will be inevitable defeat. To say Letters from Iwo Jima is a heart-wrenching film is an understatement, but Eastwood directs with a simplicity that ensures the subject matter never becomes heavy-handed. The blanched-out cinematography and subtle computer effects heighten the realism instead of distract from it.
Letters From Iwo Jima gives the global audience a small glimpse into the world of Imperial Japan during World War II, and more specifically, the Japanese soldiers who fought to defend the island. Although there are some historical inaccuracies, I felt the film was very successful in expressing the Japanese soldiers' ambivalent emotions of patriotism to their country, as well as the reality that they were going to die fighting a war, which by that time, could not be won.
The movie gives a very human aspect to the Japanese soldiers by showing, through their letters, that they, like their American counterparts, just wanted to end the war and go home to their family. They were not the merciless, suicidal robots that many people like to imagine, but simply were human beings fighting for their country and for a cause which, regardless if they believed in or not, had to respect.
I feel it was better than any other movies in this category ( its a little long, and there are movies that did not get nominated, yet were good) and its the only one that truly deserves the golden statue. Its a pity that it had to be a japanese movie.
The Departed: well, its the winner!
A hugely successful 2002 Hong Kong thriller, "Infernal Affairs," provides the blueprint that is essentially a tale of two moles. Or brother rats, if you like. Departed is a direct lift off from here.
I guess al of us have watched this movie last semester!
"The Departed" is Scorsese acting accordingly — fast, fluid and light on his feet. He's helped enormously by some clever adaptation, which firmly transplants the action to south Boston. For instance, one character quotes : "The Irish are the only people impervious to psychoanalysis."
Bet that wasn't in the Hong Kong version.
Still, much of the movie is vintage Scorsese (read DESI) . A severed hand with a wedding ring still on it. Wahlberg rat-a-tat-tat-ing expletive-loaded lines with Al Capone aplomb. Conventional gangster wisdom along the lines of what Mr. French tells Billy after the newcomer smashes a bottle over the head of someone sitting next to him at a bar. "There are guys you can hit and guys you can't," he cautions, sounding like a concerned Boy Scout leader. Now in how many movies have you heard this very dialogue- hundreds!
"The Departed's" only flaw — and it is, perhaps, inherent in the concept of adapting a Hong Kong shoot'em-up — is that the film never ripens into something deeper than its splendid cat-and-rat game. Surrogate fathers and fatherless sons are underlying themes, but the emphasis remains on the guns, guts, corpses and, in this case, cellphones.
That I do not believe is worthy of an oscar. Its not a bad movie, but It doesn not deserve the BIG prize!
PS: Please feel free to hate me!
Well, my first reaction was shock, then amazement, then I accepted the fact that the academy people had finally lost it. I do not say that The Departed is a bad movie, it was definetly one of the better movies of the year yet not the best!
Maybe the following points will make it clear why I said the above.
BABEL : Death is the greatest leveler
Well, thats the message from the movie. Death or almost something very near it.
The near death experience of Cate Blanchett creates enormous amount of ripples through four countries and three continents.
That one act rekindles the dying marriage of an american couple in morocco, completely destroys a moroccon shepherd's family, rips apart the career of a mexican lady in america, yet reuniting her with her family in mexico, ignites the debate of terrorism in morocco and totally screws up the only chance of a dumb and deaf japanese girl to get laid.
Death is definetly the greatest leveler, but with a theme as gloomy as this, the movie was bound to get depressing and dark, yet somewhere in it you could spot the message it tried to deliver.
The Queen : "Tradition prepared her. Change will define her."
"The Queen" isn't one of those self-important projects that constitutes a duty rather than a pleasure. It's an elegant mixture of deft, lightly impudent high comedy and human-scaled drama. Dame Helen Mirren gives a stellar perfomance. Of course, it's unlikely any of us will ever read the following sentence in any review: "Helen Mirren disappoints in the title role."
The Queen situates its title subject slightly off to one side without lessening our interest. This film is a tale of two leaders. The queen represents one image of England, the Classical image. The new prime minister, Tony Blair, represents another, fresher image, the New Labour Party in action. The Queen alternates between scenes of the royals cloistered away in their Scottish hideaway, wondering what the worldwide fuss regarding Diana's death really means, and scenes of Blair and his wife, or Blair and his cabinet. The PM must finesse a tricky week with the public and a trickier one with a woman who puts no value on public expression of sorrow. "Restrained grief and sober, private mourning," the queen says--that's the civil approach, "and that's what the world has admired us for". That to me is the defining moment of the movie, a moment in which The Queen takes in everything that tradition taught her and tries to re-invent herself in these changing times.
Little Miss Sunshine: A situation comedy that rescues the very meaning of the phrase
You want to hug the Hoover family, which is surprising given how cranky and ill-fitting they seem at the start. They're middle-class suburbanites hanging on by split fingernails: dad Richard is an unemployed motivational speaker desperately trying to turn his nine-step "Refuse to Lose" program into a book deal and a national brand. Mommy hoover is the breadwinner ready to relegate her patience and understanding to the back of the crisper drawer. Teenage son Dwayne is a sullen ghost who reads Nietzsche and has taken a vow of silence until he's old enough to escape to flight school. The Little Miss Sunshine is the seven year old kiddo of the family Olive whose only aim in life is to win the pageant.
The film's most sitcom-ready invention is Grandpa, a heroin-snorting scoundrel living with the family only because he was kicked out of Sunset Manor, a befiting award to Alan Arkin for his hilarious portrayal.
But other than the dysfunctional family providing those punches of laughter now and then, I have neverunderstoof how it came to be in the contention for the BIG one. As the Hindu puts it " Its too low brow to merit an oscar".
Letters from Iwo Jima: The best movie of the year, too bad its japanese!
The movie is filmed in sepia tones, contributing to the film's depressing, ultimately hopeless view of those Japanese soldiers mired in what will be inevitable defeat. To say Letters from Iwo Jima is a heart-wrenching film is an understatement, but Eastwood directs with a simplicity that ensures the subject matter never becomes heavy-handed. The blanched-out cinematography and subtle computer effects heighten the realism instead of distract from it.
Letters From Iwo Jima gives the global audience a small glimpse into the world of Imperial Japan during World War II, and more specifically, the Japanese soldiers who fought to defend the island. Although there are some historical inaccuracies, I felt the film was very successful in expressing the Japanese soldiers' ambivalent emotions of patriotism to their country, as well as the reality that they were going to die fighting a war, which by that time, could not be won.
The movie gives a very human aspect to the Japanese soldiers by showing, through their letters, that they, like their American counterparts, just wanted to end the war and go home to their family. They were not the merciless, suicidal robots that many people like to imagine, but simply were human beings fighting for their country and for a cause which, regardless if they believed in or not, had to respect.
I feel it was better than any other movies in this category ( its a little long, and there are movies that did not get nominated, yet were good) and its the only one that truly deserves the golden statue. Its a pity that it had to be a japanese movie.
The Departed: well, its the winner!
A hugely successful 2002 Hong Kong thriller, "Infernal Affairs," provides the blueprint that is essentially a tale of two moles. Or brother rats, if you like. Departed is a direct lift off from here.
I guess al of us have watched this movie last semester!
"The Departed" is Scorsese acting accordingly — fast, fluid and light on his feet. He's helped enormously by some clever adaptation, which firmly transplants the action to south Boston. For instance, one character quotes : "The Irish are the only people impervious to psychoanalysis."
Bet that wasn't in the Hong Kong version.
Still, much of the movie is vintage Scorsese (read DESI) . A severed hand with a wedding ring still on it. Wahlberg rat-a-tat-tat-ing expletive-loaded lines with Al Capone aplomb. Conventional gangster wisdom along the lines of what Mr. French tells Billy after the newcomer smashes a bottle over the head of someone sitting next to him at a bar. "There are guys you can hit and guys you can't," he cautions, sounding like a concerned Boy Scout leader. Now in how many movies have you heard this very dialogue- hundreds!
"The Departed's" only flaw — and it is, perhaps, inherent in the concept of adapting a Hong Kong shoot'em-up — is that the film never ripens into something deeper than its splendid cat-and-rat game. Surrogate fathers and fatherless sons are underlying themes, but the emphasis remains on the guns, guts, corpses and, in this case, cellphones.
That I do not believe is worthy of an oscar. Its not a bad movie, but It doesn not deserve the BIG prize!
PS: Please feel free to hate me!
1 comment:
bavaa.. nice reviews!
SHINE ON!
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