I don't know if this is the right section to post this, but this is the best review of Phantom Menace I've seen.



This is part 1 of 7.

Asterix and Cleopatra

Avatar was a spectacular looking film. The 3D effects alone are reason enough to see this. Unfortunately they are also the ONLY reason to see this. The plot is a pile of horse shit. As I suspected from the trailer, this is a ham-fisted apologist crude metaphor for everything from the wiping out of the Red Indians to the recent invasion of Iraq. All the new agey crooning, reams of dialogue about 'respect' and 'culture', and yes the furry sex had me alternating between bored and nauseous. Or I would have been if I hadn't been totally taken in by the BEST implementation of 3D EVER. I was left wishing the effects of this film had been applied to something more mindlessly fun like 2012.

Thirst I am sure that shortly after the release of the film, a secret meting was called by Takeshi Kitano, Takshi Miike, Satoshi Kun, Shinya Tsukamoto, to discuss just what Japan needed to do to stop the Korean invasion. After owning Japan's ass over the last decade on electronic goods and even cars, the Koreans are now cornering the market on bizarre fucked up films. Anyone who has seen Aachi and Ssipak, and yes even Old Boy or the vengeance series knows what I am talking about. Thirst is just what the doctor ordered to neutralise faggotine vampire bullshit like Twilight - a film that's sickening, sexy and darkly hilarious in almost equal measure. The tremendously talented Song Kang-Ho (The Host, Memories of a Murder) plays a priest who inadvertently becomes a vampire during the course of the treatment of a rare disease. The priest is horrified by his condition and tires to go about living with it in as overtly non-intrusive a manner a possible, something that becomes a struggle as his vampirism gets more deeply ingrained. It also makes him do several things he wouldn't otherwise — like having a liaison with his friend's wife. To cut a long story short, she is converted to vampire by the priest only for him to discover that she shares none of his (waning) regard for human life.

HathyaSaiBaba wrote:
Avatar was a spectacular looking film. The 3D effects alone are reason enough to see this.

.amen! like i said earlier! damn the storyline etc and just enjoy the effects as you grind away the popcorn! ;)

grrr, I decide to do a longer writeup than usual and the browser crashes. Crap! Anyways...

Rio Bravo : Tense action scenes, funny one-liners, cool performances. Terrific entertainment overall.

The New World: A beautiful looking film. Tells the love story of native american girl and a British invader. Stars Collin Farrel, Christian Bale and a new actress, Q'orianka Kilcher. Recommended.

My plasma TV arrived 2 days back so I have been watching some stuff:

Saw the first couple episodes of a Japanese animation series called Paranoia Agent, which seems reasonably interesting so far. The first episode is about an artist who has designed a mega-successful doll getting assaulted by a mysterious baseball wielding vandal. The second episode focuses on a schoolboy who bears the brunt of matching the description of the attacker. There are some light surreal bits and the story looks like it might get more interesting further on.

Black Book by Paul Verhoeven (Robocop, Total Recall, Starship Troopers) is a decent if underwhelming Dutch thriller set in the last segment of WW2 about a Jewish girl trying to survive in Nazi-dominated Holland and getting affiliated with various revolt groups. The bulk of the movie is a watery Dirty Dozen take with few of the entertainingly quirky caricatures and bad-ass elements of that movie. After two-thirds the film gets more interesting and actually has a heroic Nazi figure being hunted by the rebels. Decent but not great.

Also had thrilling re-watches of Batman, Evil Dead 2, The Incredibles, Castle of Cagliostro...I am pleased :D

^^ congrats on the Plasma TV!


Asterix the Legionary

The Hurt Locker was excellent. Movie about a bomb disposal squad in Iraq which alternates between some really solid moments of suspense and action. Loved it.

Halfways now into Paranoia Agent, and it is pretty damn good if not quite as spectacular as I was initially led to believe. The structuring of the story is done very well even if the individual story arcs can be often times worn.

Anguish - a movie that tries to do Psycho (nerdy person with crazy domineering mother goes murder happy) but with the added conceit of having a "movie within a movie, and what is real". Saw some 2/3rds of it before deciding that going any further was a complete waste of time.

Re-watches: Jurassic Park. Dated but, apart from the fact that none of the characters that you want should die do, still reasonably fun. Also watched a bit of Herzog's Nosferatu before going to bed.

Commando- Circus At War

Asterix at the Olympic Games

ravenus wrote:
Prachit will shake his head derisively at this, but I finally finished watching Lesbian Vampire Killers after nodding off at halfways some months back. I feel justified about that because a) The boobs are mostly covered b) The blood is white goo c) Some of the jokes are good and the fat guy in the movie is a decent alternate take on the fat guy role played by the fat guy in the Simon Pegg movies (y'know who I mean), but really there's nothing in this movie that caught my attention seriously.
Note to self - next time only give ravenus black and white films in foreign languages with hard to obtain subtitles which have bits like a woman sitting alone in a room staring at herself in the mirror for 15 minutes while eating fries which serve as metaphors for repressed vampiric lesbianism. bleh.

Finally got around to watching Zombieland. Standout bits were the great performance by Woody Harrelson and the tremendously fun Bill Murray cameo. The other characters however weren't half as entertaining. I figure you could just cut everything else out and throw in another half hour of Tallahassee kicking ass and this would've been a truly great movie. Unfortunately this passes as only decent fare.

Recently read Nation by Terry Pratchett. Ever since I got Small Gods some 3-4 years back I've since been steadily making my way through Pratchett's entire bibliography. I finally acquired the whole lot a few months back and was left with the realisation that I've read each book at least twice. Since I didn't want to tire of reading his books I sought inspiration in JP's practice of rationing Pratchetts to one a year and Ravi's policy of "I'm buying this for when I'm old" I managed to hold off on the last purchase for a few months but I finally caved on a flight from Lucknow. And it was worth it.
The book is set on an alternate Earth where a Tsunami has wiped out the entire population of an island nation leaving one native boy and a shipwrecked Victorian girl as the only survivors. Without giving anything away this turned out to be a great read and was well worth the money spent on the hardcover edition. Easy recco for anyone who read more than one Pratchett and liked em.

Commando- Search & Rescue

More episodes of Paranoia Agent, I think I shall be done with this by tomorrow. Good shit.

Terminator 3. Fucking underrated movie, thanks to all the T2 geekboys. This one has some of the best dialog in a Terminator movie.

"Your levity is good. It relieves tension and the fear of death."

Saw The White Ribbon set in a small German village just before the start of World War I. The movie goes through the daily life of the villagers, the Baron, the priest, the doctor and the families that work for the Baron. The kids have something to hide and somebody's hurting some of the kids. Things are mostly left unexplained and the narrator has no real conclusions but for just over two hours this movie totally captivated me. Awesome.