KarishmaModi
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Se7en
When people talk about a movie being scary, i really wonder what genre they're talking about. Because it's pretty impossible to find horror movies really scary after you watch a thriller that could really have happened/be happening in real life. And Se7en is that movie. That scary movie that shatters your faith in Samara's ability to terrify and any other maddening creature's mastery over the art of the successful scare. Retiring Detective William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) has to train up his replacement, Detective David Mills (Brad Pitt). They start with a case together and hope to progress from there. But the cracks start to appear early and Mills is assigned to another case. The whole series of events gets bigger and better when the two murders begin to connect up together and the Detectives find reason to believe that the two were only the beginning to a set of murders along the lines of the Seven Deadly Sins. The first one was Gluttony. Then came Greed. Sloth came next...
kudos(3) | visits(15) | comments(2) | Nov 21, 09
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
With the sort of reception to the first, Hellboy II seemed to be a success even before it hit the screens. Featuring the skills of Guillermo del Toro behind the lens once more, the sequel is really as interesting as the first installment. The characters make themselves more distinctive and endearing with this one and there's a new entity (i cannot call him 'man') on the block: Johann Krauss is there to see to the administration of the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defence (BPRD). And he's not going to just blow away when Hellboy wants to relax the standards around the place! The cast includes all of the old people and certain new additions. There's Princess Nuala (Anna Walton) and Prince Nuada (Luke Goss) the good-bad (respectively) twin pair that decide the fate of the Golden Army and the magical creatures that are living under the heel of the humans. The story follows the crown that controls the invincible Golden Army that the elf king Balor had commissioned...
kudos(1) | visits(11) | comments(1) | Nov 20, 09
Hellboy (film)
Guillermo del Toro seems to be a visionary for real. He's managed to take a great comic book and make it into a great movie! And that is rare. The story of Hellboy is brilliant in the fact that there's very little sugar coating of a character that gives 'bad boy' a whole other definition. The character of Hellboy, essayed by Ron Perlman, is not the quintessential hero that you would find in the movies. A demon from another world summoned by Nazi forces in the Second World War with the assistance of the infamous Russian mystic Rasputin (Karel Roden), Hellboy is raised on the American side of the war and becomes a part of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defence (BPRD), to safeguard the USA from the paranormal forces wielded against the country. The BPRD's star Professor Trevor Broom (John Hurt---you'll recognise his voice first, if you've seen V for Vendetta, that is) is Hellboy's 'father' but the two have had a falling out and the former refuses to speak to the latter. A...
visits(9) | Nov 20, 09
The Miraculous (?) Half Man
Brandishing a newspaper with a very disturbing image, my neighbour walked into my home and proceeded to show all of us resent the picture of the Half Man. Peng Shulin's body was cut in half after he was crushed by a large transport truck way back in 1995. And people thought that he would not survive. He has, admirably. And now he walks too. Imagine an egg-cup. There's a giant one of those holding what is left of his torso and connecting them to bionic legs. And he's standing again. But now he's only two and a half feet 'tall'. He basically looks like one of the misshapen sidekicks of th evil villain in one of those sci-fi movies. But he's alive, right. The man is nothing more (physically) than a barrel chest, two very strong arms and legs that are not thicker than a couple of 2-inch pipes. And that's all. He's going to be the next man on the block, targetted for the way he looks. And if you believe in the Utopian world where nobody's head turns to see a...
kudos(4) | visits(26) | comments(1) | Nov 20, 09
The Cold November Rain
And the rain fell from the sky. And washed the winter away. The years that had passed marvelled at the mists that had gathered over the town caught by surprise. There was something mysterious and fairy like about the roads draped in misty veils that danced back worriedly as they were approached by the shafts of light. Cutting through the thick white day, the sun too felt out of place and receded back behind the clouds that were taking over the sky. And then the rain cam again. The cold became wet and the wet started to glaze over with the glass of a night illuminated with only the light that seemed to have no source but still managed to seep through the blankets of water that were enveloping the land. Streetlights had long gone out and homes were dark from spending all the electricity that they had saved up. They had not anticipated a power outage that lasted two days and an entire night, had they? The night was cold and filled with the wails of the...
kudos(3) | visits(28) | comments(1) | Nov 19, 09
My Own Little Town- III
The seventh of November was a day that was remarkable for me. My little town came alive for me. Its true, that we live in a beautiful paradox of a corner. The markets and the ancient poor were my fare for the morning while the evening led me into the embrace of the new-age aristocracy of money. This time, it was all about 'culture' with entirely different connotations. The 'culture' that has become a part of our lexicon only with the coming of the English. This culture is all about protocol and the ways of the 'intelligentsia'. It's all about the outer lives and the secret lies of the glitterati. The whispers and tidbits of gossip that float between mouths eager to slander and ears eager to devour. This is the world of the fiercely social man and women that would rather make a grudging appearance than not be seen at the right place, in the right attire. There are the intentional social butterflies and the celebrity...
visits(21) | Nov 12, 09
My Own Little Town- II
My little town has not yet ceased to amaze me. For the record, these posts have been inspired by a Heritage Walk that we took through the littler by-lanes in the very centre of Pune, where this wonderful place began....not chronologically but in the sense of the evolution of an identity so unmistakable that you cannot help but do a double take when you really get to the bottom of it all. Ringed 'round the market, as if in radiating circles, vendors sat there with the most enticing array of wares you ever dreamed of. Flowers piled high against the troubled grey of a busy road and chillies set in contrast with tomatoes all found a spot of place that made it look like they were all posing for pictures. Potatoes, camouflaging with the dusty colour of the jute sacks that they were crammed into and great, tumbling stacks of pink onions, glowing with the pungent colour and the bright smells (intended) that can never be dissociated from these wondrous veges. ...
kudos(1) | visits(24) | Nov 10, 09
My Own Little Town- I
The old woman was falling asleep. Her alert manner was slipping. The baby was growing inside her. Waking, it saw her face; there were wrinkles and age-spots; it looked like the desert landscape from a dream. The child thought, without really thinking, 'like a barren wasteland that was once lush with life and colour. She looks like she used to be alive.' Within the trembling heartbeat of the old woman there was the resounding pulse of a child growing bigger and stronger as each day passed. That's how i see Poona as a city. Our heritage lives and breathes the same air as our present. The life of the past collides with the times of today. Old wadas built of the thin, beautiful brick that no one cares for anymore stand leaning on the shoulders of younger buildings that look crass and out of place in the shadow of the cool dignity that the former exude. Stately balconies with wrought iron railings, trying to deny their origins by riveting a bust of Shiva ji Maharaj where...
kudos(3) | visits(41) | comments(2) | Nov 08, 09
Sleepy Hollow
From Tim Burton, the director of Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Corpse Bride, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and soon, Alice in Wonderland, Sleepy Hollow was another one in the long list of Burton-Depp collaborations. Yes, Johnny Depp, the man who has pretty much come to possess the role of Captain Jack Sparrow. Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow has provided with the fodder and our director has taken it from there, in true blue Burton style. The film is practically all grey and makes the story of the Headless Horseman seem more grizzly than it has ever been before. Ichabod Crane (Depp) was the pebble in the shoe of New York City's police department. He was too enthusiastic about science and reason and made himself a 'pain' to the city administration. So he was packed off to the little hamlet of Sleepy Hollow in 1799. He is to deal with the mysterious, multiple murders of some of...
kudos(2) | visits(30) | comments(2) | Nov 05, 09
A little dose of something old
The man made his wife a tool. He used her as a weapon against mortality. She was the sole defence he had against oblivion and he was certainly not going to waste time on propriety. There was something hypocritical about his exacting demands on her and it was all socially sanctioned; it was not right to rape a woman but it was not wrong to rape your wife. It was not condoned to be an adulterer yet it was condemned if you were an adulteress . The line was so blurred and patchy, there were so many means for him to tie her to himself with the obligations of a marriage and yet she had no way to have an opinion of her own. If he sat her down at breakfast and told her that he had a mistress, then it was still her duty to continue at her seat and listen to him remind her that all he asked for was loyalty and a son. She was a cat without claws, left in a sack that was closing in on her as she swelled up with the hateful rage she rightfully felt....