Hit and Myth

We watched "The Myth" (or "San wa" which is the Chinese/Hong Kong title I believe) yesterday and it was an interesting experience. It was a Jackie Chan movie but a completely different JC movie than I’d seen before – there was the usual JC style physical comedy stuff, but there was also a bit of science fiction, a historical story, fantasy elements and even a love story. The problem was that it tried to be way too many things in one movie :p

In fact, it played out a lot like two separate stories – one set in the time of the Qin dynasty, two hundred years or so before Christ and the other set in the modern day in what looks like Hong Kong. The historical story is about Meng-Yi, a general in Emperor Shi Huang-ti‘s army, who finds himself in love with the emperor’s concubine. The modern day story is about an archaeologist named Jack Chan (I bet you won’t be able to guess who plays him :p) who remembers bits and pieces of Meng-Yi’s life as the story progresses.

Jackie Chan drops the usual cop role that he plays all the time and assumes the guise of an archaeologist with gusto reminding one of a modern day Indiana Jones with those fluttering fists and flying kicks in place of the whip :p The frequent references to tomb raiders makes one think that Lara Croft is right around the bend somewhere but Jackie never comes close to looking as good as Lara :p The fight in the glue factory with Mallika Sherawat gradually losing her clothing probably would keep some entertained while the sheer comedy of the fight in the glue factory will keep others in stitches.

The transitions between the modern story and the historical story were jerky and not very well done. The way the story unfolded, you only got glimpses of the historical story and you never are sure if they are in chronological order or not and if there was a relevance to some of the flashbacks (like the fight with the Indian prince) except to move the story forward. The fantasy bits with the immortality pill and the hidden underground city were a bit too much and stretched the suspension of belief to it’s utmost limits. And the ending was rather flat.

It’s an enjoyable movie and an interesting experience because of the multi-national, multi-lingual (you get Cantonese, Korean, English and probably Malayalam) aspect of the movie. The fights were interesting and the humour pretty good at times but the story seems a little bit too thin overall. But still, you might enjoy it for the sheer novelty factor 🙂

Roll thunder

Ray Bradbury‘s "A Sound of Thunder" is a short story that I have remembered even after many many years of reading it. Of course, today, I don’t remember anything much of the plot. All I do remember is the basic premise – that somebody goes back in to the past, steps on a butterfly and causes cataclysmic changes in the future. Of course, I realize that I remember these incidents probably because they have somewhat of a connection to the "Butterfly Effect" – another favourite theory/hobbyhorse of mine 🙂

I got reacquainted with "A Sound of Thunder", albeit in a slightly modified version when we watched the movie version of the story a couple of days ago. The movie version started off pretty much the same way I remember the short story to have been though to be honest, I don’t really remember much about the short story. The story is about a business named Time Safari’s which sends people from the future to the time of the dinosaurs so that hunters from the futures can bag the greatest game that ever walked the earth, or something like that. The Time Safari people take great pains not to introduce anything from the future into the past or to bring back anything form the past back to the future so as to prevent any time paradoxes or alterations to the timeline.

The movie continues on from where the short story ends and in true movie fashion, finds a heroic solution to the whole issue and the protagonist ends up saving the future and putting and end to the time travel menace in one fell swoop. But I gotta tell you, the movie was downhill all the way after the original short story bit ended :p In fact, the movie would have been great as a comedy but it was laughable as a science fiction flick because, as Laurie likes to put it, "there were plot holes big enough to drive a galaxy through" :p

Leaving out the really bad special effects and the extremely timely deus ex machina fashion accidents and saves that happen frequently in the movie, let me move on to the more absurd points. Apparently, Time Safari goes back to the same time in history for their dinosaur kills – that is part of the plot. However, except for the final scene when the protagonist goes back to stop the butterfly being killed, the Time Safari people never meet themselves. Strange? I would think so :p

Then there’s the outlandish "time waves" :p The butterfly being killed in the past introduces changes to the future. But one would think that the changes would be immediate. But no. These changes come in waves. And you can actually see the wave rolling over the landscape. And the wave (of time, mind you) causes actual physical destruction like flipping cars over or flinging the protagonist all over the landscape like a child’s rag doll 🙂

That is just the tip of the iceberg. There are the strange mutated plants which somehow had evolved over 65 million years to be more vicious because a butterfly was killed. Boy those plants sure must have loved that butterfly :p Then there’s the strange baboon dinosaurs who just make me laugh. I can go on and on and on but why bother? If you haven’t seen this movie, don’t go in expecting good SF. But if you do want a good laugh, this one’s just the ticket :p

Syriana, pollyanna, somebody give me a banana

We watched "Syriana" yesterday and I have to ask, what’s all the big fuss about this movie? :p A lot of people seem to think that this is a brilliant movie and a telling tale of our times or something. For me, a movie has to be first entertaining and this was not an entertaining movie at all. In fact, quite the opposite. This was a movie that was totally devoid of life. In fact, it would even put a dead man to sleep :p

The story, what there is of it, just meanders along trying to make a whole lot of points but not really making anything clear. There are so many little things happening which apparently have nothing to do with the main storyline. It looks as if all these little vignettes of life are supposed to make some sort of statement but all they end up doing really is to confuse you and to leave you scratching your head going "what the heck?" What was it all about all the Pakistani guys in the movie living in whatever Gulf state the story was supposed to take place in? They apparently are laid off work and their visas expire but they have some sort of colony of their own and they plan to bring their wives/mothers over? Is that even legally possible? Where I’ve worked in the Middle East, when your work visa was cancelled, you were shipped home. If you decided to stay back illegally, you had to dodge the law all the time.

And what was the point of the police beating up the guy in line for speaking while in line? Is that supposed to make some statement about the oppressive regime? We still live in the same world where Rodney King was beaten up by police officers after a traffic stop. So what exactly is the point there? That brutality is everywhere? That when we humans get a little bit of power, it seems to just go to our heads stronger than the strongest intoxicant?

The problem to me was that the movie makers appeared to be trying to send out some sort of a message instead of simply telling a story. Sure a story has a message of its own. But when you try to twist a story to tell your message instead of letting the message come out naturally from the flow of the story, it just goes nowhere. At least, that’s how I feel 🙂 I came out of the movie wandering whether the movie was supposed to be the voice of the left or the voice of the right? When we as humans can’t see straight does it really matter who is right or what is left anyway?

Walk the walk

We watched "Walk the Line" yesterday and I must say I was enthralled 🙂 However, there are two facts that you need to know first – I don’t much care for Joaquin Phoenix as an actor but I do love music from the ’50s and ’60s (for that matter, I love music from the ’70s and ’80s too :p)

So what do the two facts above have anything to do with "Walk the Line"? A whole lot actually 🙂 Leaving Joaquin Phoenix aside for the moment, as I said before, I love music from the ’50s and ’60s and sometimes I think I was born in the wrong time period because of this love for music from a bygone age (sort of :p). The movie is full of the music of this time period – you get Jerry Lee Lewis, you get Elvis and you get a whole heap of Johnny Cash. So what’s not to like?

As for the main actors, as I mentioned, I haven’t particularly liked Joaquin Phoenix in any of his portrayals before. Not so much due to the actor but due to the roles he’s played. In a way, I guess it is a testament to his acting perhaps – if you don’t like his characters, maybe he played them so well that you were compelled to see the characters for who they were? This argument perhaps might be true of his Commodus in "Gladiator" but I’m not so certain that it holds true for his Merrill Hess in "Signs" :p Be that as may be, he was simply brilliant in "Walk the Line" as far as I was concerned. I loved his acting and his singing (yes, apparently he did all the Johnny Cash vocals in the movie as did Reese Witherspoon for June Carter) was just unbelievable 🙂

As for Reese, I kind of dither back and forth about her acting – I was ambivalent about her in "Pleasantville", hated her in "Election" but have liked her in almost everything else that I’ve seen her in since then. But again, like with Joaquin, it was the characters which drove me and in her case, I believe it is the acting which drove the characters to be liked or hated 🙂 And in "Walk the Line", she portrays a character that I really loved.

In fact, the only thing that I didn’t like about the movie perhaps was the fact that it was so realistic and not sentimental. The movie is supposed to be based on Johnny Cash’s autobiography and if so, Johnny must have been an unforgiving (and accurate) biographer since he seems not to make any excuses for himself. The drugs, the infidelity and the family troubles are laid bare without any excessive blame throwing. In fact, most of the characters in Johnny Cash’s life come out looking good except for he himself. It seems a sign of character but it also makes him seem less than I had come to see him through his music. But then again, the public persona and the private one does not always gel does it?

Essentially, the movie says that he was a good kid who lost his way due to fame and fortune. But he had the good fortune of having friends who helped him through that stage and the courage to get out of the mess he’d gotten himself into. Would I or you fare any better if we had all that attention, money and publicity thrust upon us? That’s what I keep wondering about …

Reel romantic relationships

We watched "Taxi 3" yesterday. This is the third instalment in the French "Taxi" movies – the same one which inspired the so much less funny "Taxi" starring Jimmy Fallon and Queen Latifah. Of course, the third part of the series wasn’t as funny as the first two or as exciting but that’s a different story. What did strike me while watching the movie was the fact that this is the third part in a series of movies and all the main characters were still with the same partners they started off on the first movie! And they say that Europeans are loose :p

What did strike me was the fact that not many Hollywood movie series actually keeps the same love interest in all the movies. About the only notable exceptions that I can think of are "Lethal Weapon" and "Die Hard" but then again in both those movies, the relationship angle actually took a backseat to the rest of the story line. If I recall correctly, Riggs does not fall in love till "Lethal Weapon 2" and in "Die Hard", McClane divorces his wife by the "Die Hard 2". However, in movies where the love story (sic) does play a part, they have the guy changing girls faster than he changes shirts :p Two classic examples would be "American Ninja" and "The Karate Kid".

Why exactly is that? Is that simply Hollywood saying that you have to have a new girl in each movie to keep the audience interested? Or is it a more subtle message which says that it is OK to not be faithful to your partner? Or that things change and that love is only an illusion? I am not so sure and am also not so certain that Hollywood actually understands the message that they send when they do stuff like that. On the other hand, if you listen to the conspiracy theorists, Hollywood knows exactly what it is doing :p

The weather-vane of life

We watched "The Weather Man" yesterday and if I was asked to describe the movie in one word, it would be "disappointing" :p The previews looked kind of good, it had Nicolas Cage and Michael Caine and so, I was like "what’s there not to like?" But as the movie progressed, I realized that there was a lot not to like …

The biggest problem for me was the fact that David Spritz, Cage’s character, was really anaemic. He just had nothing going for him that made him interesting. He was just a boring, bumbler who just seemed to have no clue about what was going on around him. I believe they were trying to do a "realistic" movie about a "real" guy. But the thing is, I watch movies to be entertained. Not to watch some idiot make a fool of himself over and over again and then be told that this is life, accept it.

I like Michael Caine as an actor. I love watching some of the characters he plays. Here, I liked his Robert Spritzel but not entirely. There seemed to be cracks in the character, things slightly out of synch. For instance, when he says "this shit life, we have to chuck some things" I’m not sure if it’s the character Robert who has trouble saying words like "shit" or if it is Caine himself. But then again, that part might be just my own perceptions rather than anything else.

Overall, the movie seemed like an apology for the current path that the world in general and America in particular, seemed to be taking. It seemed to say that it was OK not to be a good family man, that things would work out as long as you had money, that you didn’t have to try to change yourself because after a while you became who you were destined to be. It was full of a lot of concepts which were just apathetic and self-satisfied. When I watch a movie, I like people to beat the odds, put one over the system, to survive all that’s thrown at him/her or at the least, come out of things with a new understanding of themselves or the world. This movie had none of it and the only entertainment I found was when Shelly said "camel toes are tough" :p

Holt comes to a halt

One of the biggest problems when you start writing yourself, at least for me, is that I can’t be as critical of other authors as I would be if I wasn’t writing :p Or maybe it’s just that I spend more time being critical because I write as well but don’t actually get anywhere 🙂 See, in the old days when I wasn’t watching what another writer wrote, I’d simply read a book, decide if I liked it or not and then move on to another book. If I liked the book I’d just read, then I’d read more by the same author, if not, then that is that. Now, there are so many shades of grey :p

I just finished Tom Holt’s "Here Comes the Sun" yesterday. I’d read his "Expecting Someone Taller" sometime before and I loved it. So, when I came across a bunch of Tom Holt’s a while back while book shopping, I had no hesitation in buying them. However, "Here Comes the Sun" kind of disappointed me. The thing is, it’s kind of difficult to put my finger upon it. Tom Holt writes well and there are many instances when I stop and say "Hey, I wish I could have come up with that" but the thing is that his way of being funny is kind of repetitive. The book is littered with funny sentences which go something along the lines of "he quivered like a bunny rabbit with a fever sitting on top of a running washing machine" (I made that up – that’s not from Holt … too lazy to get up and get the book :p). Individually, those statements are funny and I wish I could write half as well as that. But when you run into he did something like blah and she did something like blah and it was like blah over and over and over again, it becomes a bit monotonous. I still enjoy the individual sentences and the wit contained in them but overall, the book becomes a bit tedious. In fact, the book took me probably six months to finish :p

No, I’m not that slow a reader but I took a long break in between and then recently finished the last five chapters or so. IN doing so, I actually disocvered the best way to read the book – in small doses 🙂 I read a chapter each every day and finished it in five days! I will read the other Holt’s I’ve bought to see how his writing progresses since I believe "Expecting Someone Taller" was the earliest book and "Here Comes the Sun" comes next in order of publication. The other books I have from Holt are even newer. (Oh yeah, the title of the entry does not mean that my reading of Holt’s books have come to halt – just that my reading of "Here Comes the Sun" has come to a halt because I finished the book :p) But for the moment, I’m moving on to Pratchett again and am "Going Postal" :p

Investigations of CSI

We love CSI and CSI: Miami 🙂 In fact, we are so addicted that we bought whatever we could find of both series on DVD and watched it all day after day – notwithstanding all the blood, gore and spilled guts :p We were all caught up on the regular series up to season five but were missing season three of CSI: Miami. So imagine our joy when we found both season three of Miami and season one of CSI: New York on DVD recently :p

We decided to give CSI: New York a spin first since we like Gary Sinise (at least I do :p) and also probably because Laurie doesn’t like David Caruso that much :p Besides, it was a new show and we thought it might take a different direction. Take a different direction it did but so far, not in an enjoyable way.

For starters, the show has a really dark look. It’s probably supposed to reflect the grim and gritty reality of New York life and the lighting in the show is supposed to reflect the mood. It just doesn’t work for me, that’s all. True, I’ve never been in New York and so can’t say if this reflects the mood of the city or not. It’s just that as a show it kind of comes of gloomy and there just doesn’t seem to be as much of a sense of people as there was with the other two CSI shows.

On top of that, the stories seem awful. Sure, we’ve only seen about four or five episodes and I sure hope that the stories pick up later on. But so far, it looks as if they took the rejected ideas from the other two shows, the third-stringers who would have had to sit out the whole game, and put them into CSI: New York. I haven’t seen one story which was as absorbing as the stories on the other shows. Or maybe I’m just coming to New York on a bad day … :p

Integrity of imagination

As I mentioned yesterday, we have been watching a lot of television lately. I found myself wondering if this was perhaps because the quality of entertainment available when it comes to movies. Is it just me or does there seem to be a dearth of imagination (or rather a lack of originality) with most Hollywood (and Bollywood) offerings these days?

If you take Hollywood, you mostly seem to get either remakes, adaptations or re-imaginings. There used to be a time when a move based on a comic book character was rare – except of course for "Superman" and "Batman" and the occasional (really bad) "Captain America" :p But then came the Marvel invasion when Hollywood suddenly discovered that there was a whole bunch of already tried ideas and a rabid fanbase behind them. You got "Spider-Man", "X-Men", "Blade", "Hulk", "The Punisher", "The Fantastic Four" and a whole heap of sequels and other movies based on marvel characters. Then there are all the book based adaptations like "Harry Potter", "Lord of the Rings", "Five Children and It" and "Narnia". Not to mention re-makes of old television series such as "The Avengers" or "Bewitched".

On the Bollywood side, things have become even more drastic. Sure, Bollywood has never been known for having very complicate plots :p It used to be boy meets girl, boy and girl falls in love, parents oppose the union, they go through tough times and finally it all works out. Of course, after about 40 years of different variations on the above theme, people began to get a teensy, weensy bit tired of it. They then began "borrowing" from Hollywood movies but were a bit circumspect about it. They wouldn’t "borrow" from well-known Hollywood movies or the latest ones. Instead they’d borrow from older movies or ones which were not so well-known. I’ve seen Bollywood remakes of "Coming to America", "Roman Holiday" and "Big", to name a few. The stories weren’t always quite the same as the Hollywood version and they always managed to add a love story, songs and a few fights in there.

However, there’s a new breed of Bollywood movie today – probably because the Indian audiences got tired of the rehashed Hollywood stuff. The new movies aren’t really "borrowing", they steal lock, stock and barrel and from the latest and most well-known stuff too :p They are dropping the songs and dances and going for a much more Hollywood like feel. At first, I kind of liked the new and slick production values but when you start getting the same old Hollywood movies in a Bollywood format, you begin to get tired of it.

In the past few months, I’ve come across not one but two variations on "The Usual Suspects" – "Dus" and "Chocolate". Then there is "Kaante" which rips off a little bit from "The Usual Suspects" as well as a lot more from "Reservoir Dogs" and "Heat". At the moment we are watching "Ek Ajnabee" which is almost a scene for scene copy of "Man on Fire" though they do say that the ending is different – we haven’t finished it and so we have no idea 🙂 We’ve also got "Main Aisa Hi Hoon" which looks very much like a remake of "I Am Sam" …

So my question is – are the major movie industries of the world just becoming lazy? Or are they just learning from each other that they can make more money by "borrowing"/adapting existing properties that they know have been successful elsewhere or in another medium? Or are we actually witnessing a decline in originality and imagination? Either way, this seems to be a rather sad state of affairs …

Hooked on the tube

Laurie and I have been watching a lot of TV recently – on DVD :p In addition to "Lost" which I mentioned before, we’re also watching "Mind Your Language" (the first two seasons I believe – I thought there were only two seasons but have just learnt that there was a third), "The X-Files" (we’ve got seasons 1-5 at the moment) and "The 4400". In fact, we just finished watching the second season of "The 4400" just yesterday and I still have the show running through my mind 🙂 In a sense, the show has elements of other shows which preceded it. You get glimpses of "Taken" (of course that might just be because Joel Gretsch was in both shows :p) and "The X-Files" and sometimes the storylines seem way too familiar.

And yet, "The 4400" has an air of optimism, of hope running through it that "The X-Files" lacked. If you watch "The X-Files" again from the beginning (which we are in the process of doing at the moment :p) you will note that the second and third seasons were different from the first season. The show became much more darker and almost moved into the horror territory from second season onwards. There’s a lot of blood and gore around and a lot of people end up killing themselves. "The 4400" on the other hand, is much more cheerful and hopeful. When "The X-Files" influence makes you think that a tragic event is about to take place, the show somehow finds a happier and lighter resolution. In most respects, I like "The 4400" much better. Of course, that doesn’t mean that I’ll stop watching the rest of "The X-Files" (and even buy the rest of the seasons on DVD) … but I’m also waiting for the unfolding of "The 4400" in the coming seasons 🙂