Read-Write-Watch

Movie: English: Shutter Island (2010)

2010-07-05T15:09:00.003+05:30

I watched this because it has Leo Di Caprio and Martin Scorsese combination. And to top it, it's a psychological thriller.
I both liked and disliked the movie. I have not read the novel so the story seemed fresh for me. But it was kind of redundant in many places.
There have been many movies, dramas both in English and Asian where war hero loses his mind for various reasons (mostly guilt driven) and snaps when his life returns to ordinary. The brutal part of the war is shown in a ghastly manner which numbed me for a minute. The goth style is amazingly done and the period authenticity is well maintained.
I wish the story was not this predictable. There are traces of evidences of the real mystery all over the place and it gets evident from scene one. And later on it gets more obvious and there are few scenes added which could have been well edited. I am not sure the depth to which the novel delves into (it is on my buy-to list so I will get there eventually) which perhaps would have made me appreciate the movie more or dislike more.
Besides that, it was a treat to watch Leo. I have liked him in all his movies post Gangs of Newyork, the movie from which he lost his androgynous look and put on lot of weight and looked more of a man than a boy. The traces of that Leo is obviously not there but the intensity is signature Di Caprio. There are few scenes in the movie, the long shot of the island, the shot of watch tower and the military camp scenes which scream Scorsese.
A good watch if there is nothing on television or DVD backlogs and I watched it because I am plain sick :-)

Movie: English: Bobby (2006)

2009-06-15T23:04:00.002+05:30

A colleague referred me this movie. Three things inspired me to watch this movie and those three things were the only things that I liked in this movie.

1. Joshua Jackson
2. Shia LaBeouf
3. One scene with both Joshua Jackson and Shia LeBeouf.

The movie is quite nice actually. The way many characters come together and give you a big picture. Actually its quite the opposite. In this movie, the big picture, that is Bobby Kennedy's assassination is dissected to multiple smaller story lines. Its kind of nice but at times I did not understand the reason to introduce this many characters.
All in all, I got to watch Joshua Jackson in a movie where in he looks pretty good.

Criminal Minds: Season 4 - Episode 25,26: To hell and back

2009-05-21T21:23:00.003+05:30

Where do I start? I have been meaning to write something about the season finale which I finished watching about thirty minutes ago, but whatever I come up with looks pretty lame. This season has been wonderful; in casting, storyline, performances etc. This show has always managed to have a decent finale and I thought they cannot get better than what they did in season three which was Hotch getting blown up. I honestly had not seen this coming. The Reaper coming back to say hello to Hotch? I think this is the beauty of this show. The way characters are used across episodes and not wasting an opportunity to give a sudden twist using them.
To Hell And Back - was not really a one man's episode. In season four, somehow every episode has someone from team getting involved in a bigger way than the others. But in this episode it was complete team effort. Even Garcia flew down to the crime scene which in itself is a rare scenario. It was a lengthy episode running as long as 84 minutes which is almost length of motion picture. There were few moments when I felt that it was little slow for my taste; if you are accustomed to the speed in which the crime is solved, then this one is far longer in that aspect. It could be because of the vastness geographies of the victims and the unsub(s).
In essence, the storyline is not as great as some episodes that I have seen in past; Minimal Loss, Pleasure is my business, Omnivore, Bloodline or A shade of Gray. But the beauty of the episode comes in characterization and the clean story telling. Of course, this case is quite unique with brothers (one paralyzed from neck down and the older retarded) being the killers and having killed 89 people in past few years; the thought itself is horrifying.
Dave Rossi in this season is written very nicely. He is like the uncle that everyone in the family likes, loves and relies on. His witty comebacks though borderlines on sarcasm always hit home.
Spencer Reid has always hinted on how things are going to turn out. His transition from a brilliant profiler to an insecure and afraid young man - when he asks Hotch if things were going to turn out OK was excellent.
Emily Prentiss speaks what everyone thinks but don't speak. Her conversations with Rossi are a hoot.
This is the first episode where there is no ending note which neatly summarizes the case or the day or the type of victim or unsub that they have encountered. For the first time, Hotch speaks honest words; words of a man who stands toe to toe with sickest of minds which are capable of most horrifying crimes that one cannot even imagine.
What I loved about his monologue is that it was real. In very simplistic terms, he explained the action of one person can cause a chain of reactions among plenty even if most of them are strangers. The emotional taxing that the team take eveytime with a case like this would make them darker with each passing day. Its that look of resignation that he sports about one minute away from the ending of the show which made me realize that something is wrong; very, very wrong. In the background, Foyet/The Reaper comes out with a gun. He says, "You should have made that deal". Screen fades and we hear a gun shot.
Damn!

Bones: Season 4 - Episode 26: The end in the beginning

2009-05-18T20:06:00.003+05:30

Every season, these guys have screwed up their finale. Last season, that is season 3, people dubbed "Pain in the heart" to "Pain in the ass". It was that bad. This finale went into a whole new tangent; the one that no one saw coming. Hart Hanson, the show's creator promised during mid-season that the fans see BB in a whole new light which loosely dubbed means, perhaps, romantically. And so we did. In Booth's hallucination. I mean come on, when I saw last three episodes, I was really glad to see more lab work, interesting case, more psychology and actual growth of characters. I loved "Mayhem in the cross", which is episode 21, (I think I will do a separate write-up on that one. I will have to watch it again!) solely because, I saw Temperance Brennan the way I wanted to see her in season 2 or 3; understanding and continuously evolving. It looks as if there is a set of writers who write this Brennan I like and there are various other set of writers who are still stuck in cynical and monotonous Brennan of season 1. Its very confusing to keep up with the characterization! Well, I did not like season finale mostly because I knew from the start that it was fully fake. All the characters made an appearance on a loosely based dime-a-dozen gang based thriller novel whose authors are heavily inspired by Mario Puzo and Tom Clancy. To make the long story short, BB own a club called "The Lab" (lame!) where Sweets is a bar tender, Anjela is a hostess, Cam is a cop and Jared her partner, Clarke, my favorite assistant is a rapper, zack is Brennan's assistant, Daisy is a waitress and so long. There is a murder, whole lot of suspicions, finally find out Jared did it for some obnoxious reason and finally we see Booth awakens from coma. This is some kind of freaky dream sequence in his coma which viewers made to watch which we now know that it does not add a tiny bit to the main storyline thus wasting one hour of my time only to drop a bomb in the end when Booth asks Brennan - "Who are you?"
As if it matters anymore.

Anime: Hellsing - TV series and OVA

2009-02-12T00:47:00.003+05:30

It has been a while since I have obsessed over an anime. The last time this happened, it was for "Trinity Blood" and "Paradise Kiss". The former is a vampire based story with a semi-happy ending and the latter is downright depressing.
But Hellsing, breaks all barriers and took me to a fantastic journey of spectacular art work. The storyline itself is quite simple; a half a millennium old vampire (the one on the inset picture) works for Hellsing corporation. He (it?) changes a police girl into a vampire.
I have seen many interpretation of vampires in various media - TV Series, Anime, books, movies etc, but Hellsing offers weirdest explanation of all. It even beats Twilight's theories. According to Alucard (a very, very, very old vampire and notice that his name spelled backwards means "Dracula") a vampire can change a human only if the human is of the opposite sex and is a virgin. Thats how the police girl becomes a vampire and his fledgling.
Apart from obvious storyline (its not good vs. evil, its evil vs. eviler) and stunning artwork, its a great entertainment if one is a fan of violence and hardcore action. In this series, conversations range from witty to downright cynical. The only element that is not found in this series is perhaps, romance. From frame one, there is blood, blood and more blood. The whole series is one messy business. One might fall in love with the first scene of the series or they might switch channels after they see the first scene or they might switch off TV and try to get the image out of their head. Yes, the first scene is that gory and horror filled. Its extremely fascinating to see the perception of this hero who tries not to be a hero and is happy being a monster. He knows he is a monster and never tries to be anything but. He gives a loud guttural satisfied moan when he kills ghouls (humans bit by vampires but are not turned to vampires). His boss, Sir Integra Hellsing, is a bitch. She orders him around since he takes orders from only her as Alucard is in a binding contract with the Hellsing family for generations.
Seras Victoria, the newly formed vampire, Alucard's fledgling, is a woman torn between humanity and immortality. While Alucard is amused by her indecisiveness when it comes to drinking blood, Integra is irritated. As the series progresses, she is one character that grows strong on episode basis. She finally accepts her mortality and drinks her master, that is Alucard's blood. Alucard seems to soften around her and is always amused with her actions. For him, her point of view is interesting and entirely refreshing.
What to watch out for: All fight scenes (which thankfully makes up 95% of the show) and background music. Of course, there is Alucard; he has been given most amusing lines and sometimes most cynical ones, even for a vampire.
Many claim that Hellsing is one of the best Anime that has been released in past one decade. I am not sure if thats entirely true, but it definitely is one of the best around.

~Sookie

Graphic Novel: Sandman - Sound of her wings

2009-01-13T22:30:00.003+05:30

I was talking to an older colleague with who, whatever may be the initial start of the conversation, always end up talking about graphic novels. Today, we were talking about some presentation that had to be made and we ended talking about Ramayana Reloaded by Virgin Comics and finally, Sandman. Again. As soon as I came home, I reread this comic for the sake of my own satisfaction.

I must have read this particular piece a gazillion times. I never get tired of reading the same words over and over again. This is the first issue where Death is introduced as Dream's sister. This is the first issue where you do not get intimidated by Dream. Here he is just a man who accompanies his (elder) sister when she performs her duties; letting people leave this waking/living world and take them wherever they are supposed to go. And when she draws them close to her, there is darkness and Dream (also known as Morpheus) hears only flutter of giant wings. Just before people die, everyone seem to recognize her. Some complain going with her, some are expecting her and some even try to reason with her. But she just performs her duties.
Initially she is annoyed of Dream's monologue when he goes on about how he came to control dreaming after his imprisonment. The best part of this comic is perhaps the casual nature of Death herself and her respect for life and everything that is a part of it. She quotes Marry Poppins, she appreciates a stand up comedian and actually gives an earful of advice to her little brother, Dream.
At one point she complains to Dream that people from waking world enter dreaming without fear as compared to her, but he says that he is more terrible than her. When I read this for the first time, I thought he was simply being modest. But think about it. Dream has the power of driving a man to insanity by a mere touch which he calls - eternal waking. At that point, people actually prefer death over a thousand ideas coming in their head every millisecond.

The whole point of the exercise? Dream finally realizes that everyone has some amount of responsibility in this universe; however big or small or life altering it may be. One cannot say that after achieving a certain goal, our existence is justified for. When one goal is achieved, another should be dreamed of.

The last panel of this panel really takes the cake. Morpheus is seen smiling full of joy (never seen smiling again in 9 volumes) when he takes a handful of sand and tosses in the air and then he hears it; the sound of wings.

~Sookie

Music: Twilight (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), 2008

2008-12-18T08:58:00.001+05:30

I love this sound track. I like most of the songs in this CD and its very rare that one can find such a complete sound track. The last time I loved a complete sound track was Matrix I think and may be because it had the kind of music that I generally listened to. No, never liked the kinds of Lion King or other animation movies, since I am not such a fan of ballads. I do own those CDs but its not like I like every song in them. But Twilight, beats every other OST CD that I own. A friend presented this CD to me as a gift (belated gift for my birthday, one month ago exactly from yesterday) and I listened to this music, then watched the movie and then read the novels. How weird is that? Here are songs from the sound track and scenes from movie when its played.

1. Supermassive black hole by Muse
This song is played when cullens play base ball in thunder. I think this song is perfect for the scene with good guitar score against thunder storm back drop.

2. Decode by Paramore
Final Credit roll.

3. Full moon by Black Ghosts
Bella and Charlie are driving to Forks, Washington when she arrives from Phoenix, Arizona.

4. Leave out all the rest by Linkin Park
Credits (I think)

5. Spotlight (twilight mix) by Mute Math
This song is played when Edward and Bella make their first public appearance together, as a couple. They arrive to school together.

Bella : "Why is everyone staring?"
Edward: "Not that guy." He pauses for a second. "Oh he just did"
Edward: "I am breaking all the rules here, since I am going to hell" (I know this is a little different from the book)

6 Go all the way by Perry Farrell
This is the part where Edward and Bella first walk into the prom and see Jessica and Mike.

7. Tremble for my beloved by Collective soul
My favorite song at the moment (read obsessed). Played when Edward saves Bella from Tyler's car. Lyrics explain Edward's thoughts/mood perfectly.

8. I caught myself by Paramore
Played when girls are picking up prom dresses.

9. Eyes on fire by Blue Foundation
When Edward avoids Bella in the begining and she waits for him to turn up in school.

10. Never think by Robert Pattinson
Edward and Bella at restaurant in Port Angeles. Perhaps the lamest song of the lot as its impossible to hear what he singing.

11. Flightless bird american mouth by Iron and Wine
Edward and Bella prom dance, Edward denies to change her.

12. Bella's lullaby By Carter burwell
Orchestra, perhaps the most beautiful composition and suits the mood, the pace and the novel perfectly. This music is played serveral times in the movie. The meadow sequence is a little different in movie, but its played when they are lying around there. Also played when Bella visits Edwards house, Edward plays this on his piano.

13. Let me sign (bonus track) by Rob Pattinson
This song is played Edward sucks venom out of Bella (in the end). While saving her life there is a flashback of their life together. After few moments, Bella's lullaby picks up.

14 La Traviata by The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
This scene is exclusive to movie. Cullens wait for Bella's arrivale to their home by preparing dinner for her. The song is played when they cook till Bella and Edward arrive.

15. Clair De Lune by Debussy (The APM Orchestra)
In book this song is played by Edward in his car when they are driving back from Port Angeles. Bella acknowledges that she likes the singer too. In movie though, when Bella visits Cullens for first time, she is in Edward room, sees that he has lots of music and turns on the system to find out what he was currently listening to.
Edward and Bella dance for this song.

-- Grab a CD if you find one. Its worth your money.

~Sookie

Movie: Hindi: Ijaazat (1987)

2008-12-17T20:55:00.002+05:30

The first time I tried to watch this movie was when I was bored out of my mind and a friend recommended me this movie. After twenty minutes into the movie, I felt like pulling my hair out. In the end I had watched a teen slasher horror movie to get myself out of my self inflicted boredom. But a few weeks later, I decided to give this movie another try and I simply fell in love with the maturity in which the characters handles themselves. This is not a movie that one might want to watch to relieve themselves of boredom. This is a movie to be watched for the sake of enjoying a fantastic movie, amazing music and good acting.
A divorced couple meet in railway station waiting room to wait out the night for their next train and they get to talk. Sudha (Rekha) is engaged to Mahinder (Nasseruddin Shah) who has an affair with Maya (Anuradha Patel). Mahinder marries Sudha and its an arranged marriage. Maya is the complexity which the movie offers you as she readily accepts Sudha as her sister and yet she continues to meet Mahinder. Its little surprising when a girl like Maya, who writes amazing poetry cannot fathom the fact that once a guy is married, then she had to maintain a distance. Director gives a response for this dilemma. Maya is a free bird, an independent soul who loves wind, poetry, obscure paintings and Mahinder. He has inspired her to write poetry and in him she finds a crazy security. Sudha leaves Mahinder when she realizes that she would never take the place of Maya nor could she influence her husband to lead the life that she wants till Maya was in his life. She leaves her husband. After this the story is verbally finished by Mahinder in that waiting room (thank fully) and Sudha comes to know that Maya died in accident after she came to know that she herself was the reason for Mahinder's divorce. In the end Sudha touches Mahinder's feet and takes his permission to leave with her new husband, Shahshi Kapoor. This part threw me off because in the whole movie Sudha is one stable character and one of the most independent one and also someone who has come in terms with ground reality. She doesn't throw a tantrum when she finds Maya's stuff in her house. She doesn't yell at her husband when he comes home late after hanging out with Maya. At times it looks as if it was her resigned acceptance of the situation. But in the end it really shows that she did care when her husband neglected her. But it was her pride which had stopped her from claiming something that she knew in her heart that it would never belong to her. By touching his feet she gives him the status of someone above her as our society preaches - patriarchy. She gives him the respect that he was denied of irrespective of his own short comings. In the end she walks away with her husband and Mahinder is left gaping at the happy couple.
This is one movie where I love Rekha's acting. She has an amazing voice and in this movie it is her asset. She is poised, dignified and calm; three things that we fail to see in characters of most movies where extra marital affair is involved. When she finds Maya's items that are lying around the house, she simply hunts further and collects all of them. Of course Maya's reply is poetry to that which has this immortal song -Mera kuch samaan, a haunting melody.
This is one of my all time favorite movie and its something that I can watch any day, any time.

Movie: Korean: A man who was superman (2008)

2008-12-16T21:34:00.000+05:30

This movie was a random pick and I am very glad that I was lucky to watch this. At first glance, the movie comes off as your typical feel-good-eye-opener movie but as the movie progresses, it simply shows the reflection of a disappointed man when a series of tragedies takes place around him. The man's (Superman) name is never revealed in this movie. He wears a Hawaii shirt and a red cape. His duty: save people. The female protagonist (from My Sassy Girl - I love her acting), who wants to be the next big thing in television for humane interest stories meets with this Superman in a typical damsel-in-distress fashion. Its obvious to everyone that the man is clearly delusional (He thinks that the bad guys have lodged Kryptonite in his head) but everyone respects him as he actually helps people around him. I am guessing its a very subtle way of telling people that one can be a super hero if he truly believes that he is one. The lady manages to convince him to be a part of her new documentary which is an instant hit. Out of curiosity, she gets him to go for an X-Ray which reveals that there is actually something in his head.
The background story of Superman is an expected one. He with his family gets into an accident and he is unable to save his son and his wife. During this crisis, no one helps him. At that moment, he becomes superman.
One thing I absolutely loved in this film is the way that man believes that he is a super hero. He does not save the world, he does not fight bad guys nor he does not stop robbery. He helps a man carry his overloaded bag at an uphill. He climbs trees to get the kite out of a branch when a street urchin asks his help. He plays shuttle-badminton with a little girl to keep her entertained. He chases a purse snatcher and manages to retrieve the purse for the lady protagonist. His deeds are not dramatic nor are they very life altering. They are real. Those incidents happen all around us, everyday. He does all these tasks with a happy face. For him, its not his responsibility; its his job and thats what he does.
I think I will watch this movie again sometime later. Definitely one of my favorites!

Movie: Twilight (2008)

2008-12-15T20:07:00.000+05:30

I decided to watch this movie because the main male lead was Cedric Diggory; well, actually the guy, Robert Pattinson, who played that character at least. I am not sure what should I make of the movie. When I first watched, it looked like an OK movie. There are some fight scenes where you can actually see wires around people if you pay attention. Besides these, the movie is actually entertaining. But once I read the book, the movie fell way short of expectation. I mean, look at Harry Potter series. Its hard to cover the amount of detail that JK puts in her books but the movies come very close to the books (there are few exceptions here and there) except perhaps Prizoner of Azkaban and to an extent Goblet of Fire but more or less the script is aligned with the original novels. But in Twilight, they have deviated to an extent that the sequels will definitely fall flat on their noses. There are too many things missing, too many scenes which are totally wrong and certain characters are altogether different. The acting is decent but its the music that really blows you away. If you have read the novel, then pay attention to music. The songs actually manages to summarize the scenes very well. The best scene in this movie would be when the Cullens play baseball in thunder storm. Awesome!

Tru Blood: Season 1 - Episode 1: Pilot

2008-12-14T17:26:00.001+05:30

I was very much in need of an ego boost so I searched for "Sookie" over the net. The first seven pages in Google talked about one "Sookie Stackhouse" and the name was associated to "Tru Blood", a television serial premiered this Autumn on HBO. So, naturally, I gave in to my over curious nature of knowing all obscure and useless facts, I read about this drama on Wiki.
My initial take on this drama was a little disappointing. It was yet another human lady falling in love with vampire thing. There is only so much of Buffy that one can take, with twilight and everything going on. But Tru Blood turned out to be a refreshing change. There is no sense of rationality in the serial at all when the vampires are given an equal status as that of human. There is a synthetic blood available? I have to give the creative team a brownie for the originality at least. And then there are characters. The main reason, apart from plot line, which made me watch this series was Anna Paquin. I have seen most of the movies in which she acted as a child star, including "The Piano", for which she won an Oscar. As usual, she is brilliant in her performance with southern accent of a telepathic bar-maid. Her fixation on a 143 year old vampire, Bill, is a little too obvious plot line, but their chemistry is not. I liked this series maybe because of its lack of modesty when it comes to promiscuous nature of the characters or even portraying them on the screen and pulling it off not making the viewers think that its porn or maybe because the characters are wonderfully next-doorish, flaws and all.
I think I am going to watch the rest of the episodes of season one. Anna Paquin is nominated for Golden Globe for her role. I sincerely hope that she wins this one.

~Sookie (Ironic for this post :-) )

Bones: Season 4 - Episode 9: Conman in the meth lab

2008-11-19T16:25:00.000+05:30

I am trying really hard to fall in step with the characters. It looks as if for every one step they take in one episode, they take two steps back in the next. I was wondering if this was my problem only, but when I read Bones forum at Sidereel I was releived to see that I wasn't the only one who was annoyed with the way show progressed last week. It took Brennan five minutes to believe a stranger who tells her that her partner is a loser. That stranger may be her partner's brother himself, but she who never believes anything unless she has collected enough evidence, believes him immediately. Its annoying how writers take liberty to deviate from characterization to prove a point. I felt I was watching an episode written by a fan fiction writer with an one track mind. On a positive note, introducing Clarke was a smooth move. For me, he is representing a class of audience who think that Bones has more drama in the lab than actual cop work. How can law enforcement officers can be so flaky? I had to watch this episode twice to actually figure out the crime story. The total time actually spent on solving crime was approximately 15 minutes and rest thirty minutes had drama, drama and more drama. Did I say drama? Booth's brother, Jared, played by Brendan Fehr (I watched him in Roswell almost a decade ago. Apparently his acting skills are still to be desired for) is one dimensional and comes off as a typical character that you get to see in a lot of shows; good brother-bad brother duo going through emotional sometimes traumatic childhood together, good brother protecting bad brother etc etc. But this lame excuse itself gives a lot of closure to Booth's behavior, who was the only one seem to be doing some acting in this show.
Today, a new episode will be aired and the promos were looking very promising.
I don't even want to look at ff.net at this point as I am sure there will be plethora of "emotional" Booth stories floating around.

Again, new blog

2008-11-17T20:47:00.000+05:30

Like the way I have around 6 email accounts, all active of course, this is my third blog. Ironically some how I end up creating a new blog on my birthday. The other blog is mostly stories and this one would be for anecdotes. Hopefully this would be clear enough so that followers of other blog are not annoyed with a non-story material. Since there is no TV for quite a while, I have living off watching most television shows on internet. I must have watched about 500 and odd episodes of television mega dramas in last fortnight. Its actually good way of keeping mind occupied after a hectic day of programming and mundane meetings. Even though most of the time these dramas lack a sense of integrity, it still is fun to watch. I never had any reservations for language so I am open to dramas from all languages. I watched 100 (or was it 1000?) liters of tears which is a Japanese serial. I think that show would be a huge success in Hindi television. There is no doubt that the drama is downright irritating but there was an element of surprise in it. Alright, it was more of a shock (like you discover that your favorite character in a show develops cancer but still looks dashing) on a daily basis so I enjoyed the guessing game.