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

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 …

So much software …

Who would have thunk there was so much software out there? I’ve been setting up a server for my friend and it’s been one stream of software joy :p First, I had to decide on Apache and figured I might as well go with Apache 2.2 since that was the latest. Then of course, there was the decision as to PHP – I decided to go with 5.1.2 since I wanted to be able to use some of the latest PHP features. Then, there are all the libraries that you need to get PHP installed. So it was a fun bout of software installing.

Once all that was done, I learn that one of the sites to be put on that server needs Apache 1.3 and that 2.2 would not do :p So, it was back to downloading and installing Apache 1.3.34. Now, it feels to me as if PHP 5.x is a bit more slower than the 4.x variety when I actually try using it and so, I find myself wondering if I should perhaps switch to PHP 4.x instead … Not sure if I really want to do that yet though. Sometimes there can just be too much software to deal with :p

In other news, over the last couple of days we’ve been catching a few movies when we had the time. We watched "Aeon Flux" and I’m still not sure what to say about the movie :p They had some really stupid (from a logical perspective) stuff in the movie – like an assassin who goes out on a mission at night wearing all white :p I guess from a stylistic perspective it made sense since she wore white and all the guys she went against wore black but do you honestly think any assassin or thief worth their salt would wear white at night? 🙂 The story itself was OK but I was mostly left questioning the weird stuff in the movie – such as a pool which is supposed to be their monitoring system and another assassin who has hands on her feet (yes, I kid you not) … But given that there appear to be slim pickings for science fiction movies these days, I guess I can’t really complain :p

Spank the panther

We watched "The Pink Panther" yesterday (yes, the new one) and if you are thinking of watching the movie, let me save you the trouble – don’t :p It is one of the most idiotic, mind-numbing, utterly stupid and totally mindless comedies that I’ve seen in a while. I don’t think even my five year old nephew laughed at more than a few scenes. Can you say that I didn’t like the movie? Yeah, I guess you can say that …

I haven’t seen the original Peter Sellers movie and now I really feel the need to watch the original to see if it was just as bad as the Steve Martin version was or if they managed to somehow take the original, drain all the humour out of it and then serve it up as a new movie. In fact, "The Emperor’s New Groove", which I’m watching now for the fifth or sixth time because my nephew Ike loves it, seems to have more humour in it even on the sixth viewing than "The Pink Panther" did on the first.

The problem seems to be that they were just trying too hard. Steve Martin’s stupid French accent, instead of being amusing, was just annoying. Most of the jokes depended just too much on slapstick and the plot was just a bit too stupid for it to be funny. Come on, Chief Inspector Dreyfus is just as stupid as Inspector Jacques Clouseau (if not stupider) and he is supposed to have become chief of police while Clouseau stayed in obscurity? (OK, fine, maybe that one is just true to life and not stupid :p) As far as I’m concerned, most of the movie did nothing for me. The end where Clouseau has to rise against the odds and prove himself was kind of nice but then again that bit was just a predictable attempt at drumming up sympathy.

Even the cameo by Clive Owen as Agent 006 was only slightly amusing – it felt just tired and lame rather than fresh or amusing. Ah well, maybe I was just in a bad mood or maybe this was just one of those really bad movies :p

Heavenly movies and other stuff

I am a sucker for a good love story – anybody who’s read these pages for long enough knows this :p Despite all the bed-hopping that would put an Olympic-class bedbug to shame, Hollywood still manages to put out a good love story every once in a while that leaves both the Bollywood and Mollywood movie industries combined in the dust. "Just Like Heaven" is such a movie.

We got the movie just a couple of days ago and we went in not knowing anything about it. In fact, we got the movie mostly because it had Mark Ruffalo and Reese Witherspoon in it. We watched it last night and I was enthralled. Sure, others might call it a typical, run-of-the-mill romantic comedy or something but to me, it was a beautiful, funny and moving cinematic experience :p

There wasn’t anything spectacular or though provoking about the story or the movie. Nothing which makes you sit up and think about stuff. But still, it tells a story about characters that are real – or can be real, in a believable way. I liked the central characters, their mannerisms and the way they interact with the rest of the world. Once you’ve got good, believable characters that you are invested in, the rest is all the way downhill :p If you like a good, solid love story with some good bits of humour thrown in, "Just Like Heaven" is one not to be missed 🙂

In other news, I’ve decided to do a release of Blog 8.0 beta 5 sometime today or tomorrow 🙂 I’ve finally managed to spruce up the Blog page so that it is consistent with the look of the new Bytes page. I have to do the same for the other application pages but haven’t gotten around to doing so yet :p But eventually, I should get that done too. In the meantime, I want to release this beta of Blog since it is at a stage where I feel comfortable about the functionality. However, I must confess that most of the stuff that I’ve been working on these days have been related to XMLRPC-based posting rather than classic Blog posting. But the classic stuff should (hopefully) work fine too 🙂

Is Kong king?

We watched "King Kong" a couple of days ago. I wanted to write about the movie then but other entries intervened :p However, I’ve been reading a couple of other reviews of the movie since then and they, to say the least, were rather gushing. Since I was bored to death (and annoyed) by most of the movie, I decided to go ahead and present my opinion of the movie.

I have not seen the original though I know it has cult status. I had a basic idea of what the story line of the original was but I had never considered the fact that the movie was more horror than action/adventure. So I went into this version of "King Kong" expecting an action/adventure and received a mishmash of horror, romance, action and adventure. Of course, that’s not a fault of the movie. I don’t fault them for the mixture. But I do fault them for not making any of it actually work for me :p

I was in actuality on the edge of my seat till the ship got to Skull Island. The story was gripping till then and while I did know that they’d get to Skull Island eventually, I still was kept wondering as to what would happen next. But once they got to Skull Island, it was mostly downhilll from that point on – in fact, I believe I actually yawned a few times through the rest of the movie :p It was just a lot of (unnecessary to me) footage of Kong running through the jungle clutching Ann in its paws like a rag doll (let’s not even go into how she survived Kong’s grip and the break-neck hand movements) and way too many instances of strange creatures popping up and getting bashed all across the landscape by Kong.

I liked the performances of quite a few of the actors but Naomi Watts annoyed the heck out of me. Somebody wrote that you could see a range of emotions on her face. But to be honest, all I could see were two buck teeth that would have put both Bugs Bunny and Chip ‘n’ Dale combined to shame :p I kid you not, in all of her shots, all you can see of her mouth are two teeth, try it and see if I’m wrong 🙂 And the screaming, oh, the screaming! I know that the role of "Ann Darrow" is supposed to be a screamer but boy, couldn’t they tone it down a bit? She screams and the whole island seems to hear it. Heck, at one point she screams on the island and the people on the ship seem to hear it. I’ve heard of suspension of belief but they are to need anti-gravity lifts to suspend belief like that!

They say that Peter Jackson was initially unable to make the movie back around 1996 but the studios pulled the plug on the project. He was only able to make the movie after the success of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy assured him he-can-do-no-wrong status. If the failure of "Lord of the Rings" would have assured that we’d be spared "King Kong", no matter how much I liked LotR, I wish it had tanked :p

Not so fantastic

We watched the "Fantastic Four" yesterday. Or rather, we watched most of the "Fantastic Four" but didn’t get to really see the ending due to a really bad DVD disk which skipped during certain scenes and then got totally stuck towards the very end. However, it was enough for me to go on a rant – so mission accomplished :p

I normally do not watch live versions of comic book movies because they inevitably ruin the magic of the comic-book and the characters for me. I still have not watched most of the Superman movies, have seen only one Batman movie (and that too because that was the only thing on in the flight I was on) and have not seen X-men or Spider-man. However, I did watch the Hulk movie because Ang Lee directed it and I was rather disappointed with the final result. I’ve also seen all the Blade movies but since I never read the comic, I can’t really comment on it one way or another except to say that I liked the movies.

The Fantastic Four? That’s a different kettle of fish altogether. The Fantastic Four aren’t my favourite Marvel characters, not by a long shot. However, I’ve been reading the Fantastic Four for ages and I feel as if I know them really well and there have been certain periods in the writing of the book that I felt really close to them. The best periods that I remember are the ones from just after the whole pocket universe thing when the FF returned to Earth and there were some brilliant stories which emphasized the family aspect of the Fantastic Four.

The movie actually had some of these elements and I really liked the interaction between the different members of the Fantastic Four – the ribbing, the humour the insults. All of that seemed to be spot on. What I hated was the whole Dr. Doom bit. They ruined Victor Von Doom’s transition into Dr. Doom and in the process they also made some major characterization blunders – at least that’s how I see it. In the comics, Dr. Doom wears the mask and the metal armour because of a laboratory accident – unless of course, the story has been retconned and now it is supposed to be something else :p It makes sense for him to wear the mask because he doesn’t like the horrible appearance of his face. In the movie, Von Doom relishes the powers he gets and he doesn’t have metal armour he becomes a man of metal. Why would somebody who relishes his new "godlike" powers want to hide his metal face behind a metal mask? That just does not make sense to me.

Other than for the whole Dr. Doom bit, I enjoyed the movie and it appeared to stay true to form. Except, for one major alteration – another peeve I have with Marvel and their movies. The change? Alicia Masters is now black. I don’t really care whether a character is black or white or purple or grey. Their colour makes no difference to me. What matters is who they are. However, it annoys me when a company goes and changes a story just to be "politically correct". I don’t remember any other black characters in the story at all – maybe some of the firemen that the FF rescue are black, probably some of the waving people are black. But are any of the major characters black? No. Are any of the supporting characters (like Victor’s assistant) black? No. So why go make Alicia Masters black except as a token gesture and perhaps to say that "black people *get* being different"? Do you mean white people or brown people or yellow people or Martians don’t actually "get" what it is to be different? To me that is more racist than telling a story as it was originally told. That means that you feel guilty about what you did before … But then again, YMMV :p