Arundhati
Telugu "campy horror meets bad CGI" lulzfest. A heroic princess reincarnated in a modern day must grapple with the sex maniac ghost of the sex maniac brother-in-law in her previous avatar. Lead girl Anushka is a hottie and tries gamely but can't really pull off the presence required for her part - A dubbed voice offers no help either. Sonu Sood as the pyaasa shaitan and Sayaji Shinde as a Muslim tantrik (do Telugu actors work any more in Telugu films?) chew massive amounts of scenery...that's all right, most of it was green-screened anyway. Fair amounts of cartoony CG gore, and you can't not like a movie in which a character is killed by being repeatedly bopped on the head with coconuts.

Watched Red Dawn, a movie I loved as a kid because it was such a kick ass tough school kids taking on the invaders movie. And it was such an over the top violent action movie. It still is and I was entertained, but now I understand how right wing this really was. No matter, a good movie is a good movie.

Also watched this Ricky Gervais borefest called The Invention of Lying that sounds like an Adam Sandler type movie idea - worth only a 140 character tweet these days but actually given a proper full-length hollywood romcom treatment. This was dull and unbearable on all counts.

I've got a mostly free weekend for a change, shall catch up with some movies I've been meaning to for a while.

ravenus wrote:
Arundhati
Telugu "campy horror meets bad CGI" lulzfest. A heroic princess reincarnated in a modern day must grapple with the sex maniac ghost of the sex maniac brother-in-law in her previous avatar. Lead girl Anushka is a hottie and tries gamely but can't really pull off the presence required for her part - A dubbed voice offers no help either. Sonu Sood as the pyaasa shaitan and Sayaji Shinde as a Muslim tantrik (do Telugu actors work any more in Telugu films?) chew massive amounts of scenery...that's all right, most of it was green-screened anyway. Fair amounts of cartoony CG gore, and you can't not like a movie in which a character is killed by being repeatedly bopped on the head with coconuts.

I was amazed at how violent this actually was. There was this scene where a blind dancer gets raped/murdered which went on for like half an hour. Cant believe stuff like this gets mainstream release and actually is a hit whereas movies like "Paanch" get stuck with the censors. Not that i am super fond of "Paanch" - i just mention this as an example.

Agree @Invention of Lying. Could not finish the movie - incredibly dull.

I have been watching "The thick of it" - the series on which "In the loop" is based. Much in the same vein - like it quite a bit so far. But its amazing how vicious and draining a comedy can be. Quite difficult to watch more than one episode in one setting. People who have watched this will know what i mean.

@Red Dawn:
Was this the movie with Charles Bronson and Toshiro Mifune?

Clash of The Titans
As I expected this was a mostly joyless experience with tons of boring speech-making and leftover models from LoTR and Pan's Labyrinth. They could have called it Conference of The Titans. Last 20 min gets significantly better though, with a pretty good sequence in Medusa's Lair, and some parts of the Kraken attack scene show you the tantalizing potential of a big-budget Cthulhu movie before they bring up the stupid growling ape-head.

That's Red Sun, a very average western. This is the 80s action movie by John Milius starring Patrick Schwayze, Charlie Sheen and Powers Boothe.

I watched a couple more subpar movies. Ninja Assassin could've turned out ok if not for so much time spent on the atrocious backstory. Pity really.

Tamil movie Nadodigal tries its best to be cool and different, but was at the end of the day your regular tamil movie about dudes who're all about friendship and love, and unemployment.

Pasanga, a tamil movie centered around a couple of small-town govt. school going kids who dislike each other. Great attention to detail, and quirky and funny often enough to make it worth a watch. If only wasn't so ham-fisted when it came down to resolving their conflict at the end. Actually, this could've been a very good 90 minute movie, but I would recommend it nevertheless.

Naan Kadavul

Towards the end the film seems to be cut somewhat abruptly (censorship?) but that notwithstanding, totally brutal and surprisingly uncompromising film with tremendous performances from all concerned. I just hope Aamir Khan doesn't see this and decide on a remake. The rip I have is unfortunately out of sync with the subs I found so some bits went over my head (like the comic interlude in the police station and some of the wisecracks made by the freaks).

I too (and finally) saw it in the afternoon, while I did like it overall, and agree about the brutal bit and he neatly does a Jodorowsky of sorts with the characters (well except the protagonists who just have bad makeup*) I do not think this movie is entirely great. Mainly, the ending where this guy goes all Anniyan on the evil guys was a disappointment.

ravenus wrote:
Naan Kadavul

Towards the end the film seems to be cut somewhat abruptly (censorship?) but that notwithstanding, totally brutal and surprisingly uncompromising film with tremendous performances from all concerned. I just hope Aamir Khan doesn't see this and decide on a remake. The rip I have is unfortunately out of sync with the subs I found so some bits went over my head (like the comic interlude in the police station and some of the wisecracks made by the freaks).

you can sync your subtitles to the movie here www.allsubs.org/subtitles/synchronize-subtitles

Saw Pitch Black again a while back on TV and it's still hugely entertaining and this made me want to watch Chronicles of Riddik again and the whole Conan in space thing is still totally entertaining. Maybe a bit too long but overall super fun.

Then saw a new Ed Norton movie called Leaves of Grass which was really good. Norton plays twins where one brother is a super smart professor of philosophy and the other is a super smart grower of marijuana. the movie plays out like a gentle comedy about life but with a surprisingly high body count. I liked this one a lot.

Watched Blindman last night. A stylish Spaghetti take on the Zatoichi character with a copious amount of noodz and Ringo Starr playing the main antagonist's brother.

Saw Kaliyattam, a very faithful adaptation of Othello with mallu superstar Suresh Gopi playing Othello as a small-pox marked folk-dance artiste who is instigated into suspecting on his bride. Not particularly great overall (Omkara's working of the Iago character as played by Saif Ali was better IMO), but has its several decent moments - mainly in Gopi's performance and some deftly edited visuals.

General Knowledge wrote:
you can sync your subtitles to the movie here www.allsubs.org/subtitles/synchronize-subtitles
I have a sub syncing utility (vobsub) but even if I adjust timings it doesn't work consistently. I think there's a PAL/NTSC type frame-rate issue.

saw The Girl With the Dragon Tattto. At 2 hours and half hours this movie is too long. But I read later that this is one part of a trilogy so they probably try to get too many things in one movie. Overall this is a decent mystery thriller and the main plot is engaging enough. It has some unnecessary rape and torture scenes. The female lead with all her emo gadgetry comes off as slightly annoying.

Greenberg: Ben Stiller in an indie comedy-romance. Has the usual quirky characters you come to expect in independent films with some mildly amusing scenes. Overall, just OK.

Lady From Shanghai
Another Orson Welles film with a troubled production history, but I thought this came off quite well. It's like Raymond Chandler but without a prominent detective character. Like with the Marlowe stories, the whodunnit aspect is kinda loose and not particularly relevant to the experience. It's more about the increasingly bizarre and perverse characters the protagonist comes up against. Apparently Welles' original cut was about 2 1/2 hours long. I don't know what kind of material was there in the 60min that was chopped off for the release, but I'm pretty happy with what I saw.

Also re-watched the first Hellraiser film. Good fun.

Saw Descent II yesterday. This was after three hours of travel to get to KC's house and on arriving there we bickered in an old women like fashion about which movie we ought to watch. I finally outshouted the competition and we began Descent II and half an hour into this film all of us knew it was the right one to watch. While skirting past the group dynamics of film one, this one gets into straight up balls out action pretty quick. The monsters come thick and fast and kill and are killed in gruesome inventive ways. Absolute enjoyment start to finish. No points for originality and all but frankly when you have a film this rivetting things like that shouldn't matter.