I would start by saying that you would probably never watch this movie in the theaters.
This is because the theater owners don’t want people to see this movie. It was released last year and just hit theaters in Delhi this weekend. Even then, it was showcased in only 5 theaters across the city with all the shows at inconvenient times, late at night. Some other cities like Kolkata won’t even release this movie (though I feel it would have found a better audience there).
Why? Because such movies don’t work well in India, specially in places like Delhi where people feel that their money is wasted without over-the-top action sequences, sex scenes or at least song-and-dance routines.
Hugo is a movie which has none of the above. What it is, is a beautiful movie, a happy feel-good, steampunk-like movie with no villains. The cinematography is amazing and has an almost motion-capture feel to it. Maybe this is why it was nominated for 11 Oscars and won 5.
Now, I am not going to write a plot summary here because this movie deserves audiences to go watch it themselves. Asa Butterfield as Hugo Cabret gives one of the best performances by a child actor I have ever seen. Ben Kingsley as Georges Méliès does an excellent job as always. Chloë Grace Moretz as Isabelle, Ray Winstone as Claude Cabret, Jude Law as Hugo’s father and Christopher Lee as Monsieur Labisse have notable performances as well.
The best and most surprising performance however is by Sacha Baron Cohen as a slightly crippled Inspector Gustave. As per me, anyone who can play completely different characters like Borat, Bruno as well as Inspector Gustave in one lifetime would immediately be awarded an Oscar, without any nominations required.
My only complaint? The movie was in 3D.
I agree that 3D introduces a level of realism in movies un-attainable by 2D, but it should not be at the expense of Resolution/Definition or clarity.
Maybe movie theater equipment in India is still out-dated to show good 3D because I find all 3D movies darker and hazier than their 2D counterparts. I might never know, until I watch a 3D movie in one of the more advanced countries. Still, the 3D in this movie was much better than 3D in other movies and I came out without any headaches.
All said, this is a beautiful movie which must be cherished and appreciated and deserves to be watched in Theaters or in HD 1080p at least at home. People who download DVD rips for this movie will have their souls rot in hell forever.
3 years ago my Friend Ayan wrote a blog post about this movie, how 4 guys forget who they really were and head out into the open roads forgetting wordly concerns.
But I would not write what it is about, as Ayan has already done a better job.
This is about how the movie moved me. I remember in college days we used to just start up our bikes, head over to far off places with no worries about when to return, how late it was getting and how to wake up on time the next day.
I remember many trips to Ramtek, Boar Dam and other places far away from the city. Most of the times, we didn’t even have an idea of where we were going. I remember many journeys on the Wardha Road, going hundred kilometers at a time, only turning back when the money in our pockets and the fuel in the tanks got low. Also, we travelled on the Koradi road heading up the hills many times just to get away from the city.
Still remember when heading back, there’s a point where you are still some way up the hills and you can get a good view of the Industrial Area, chimneys bellowing smoke in the backdrop of an amazing sunset.
No, in those days I didn’t have to worry about SLAs, attendance was the biggest joke, exams were a mere inconvenience and oil stains on my jeans were a part of life. Money was something Dad provided and I had no idea where it came from.
In Nagpur, wearing the helmet was forbidden, cars were a novelty and the long awesome flyovers were always free of 4 wheelers and you could test the max-speed of the bike whenever you wanted.
Of course, all that has changed now. My current life would be understandable from the fact that my bike is 5 years old, has 50,000 kms on it, 40,000 of it from the first 3 years.
Now I know if I take my bike out, I would be stopped at least twice on the way from here to CP and looted dry by the police; who due to some reason seem to have a personal enmity towards bike riders. Cars have the right to have dark windows, screech tires into oblivion and ride over pedestrians. No one heard of a biker killing anyone on the road, still they are the ones who must suffer. Wild Hogs, no more. Domestic Swine most likely.
I feel like the guys in the movie feel. Only difference being they were in their late 40s and I am in my mid 20s.
I need a month off, a full tank of gas and the road spread out in front of me.
That’s the word that comes into your mind when you think about the movie. And explicit not in a bad way but in a bold, “there should be more indian movies like this” way. Dibakar Bannerjee has dared to venture where Indian directors seldom dare to. The movie has everything from sex scenes (blurred, but clear nonetheless) to explicit abuses to a be-heading scene. When you see this movie, you think this is reality, because when people talk in real life, they talk the way shown in the movie, not the way they show in the other movies. When someone is going to kill someone, they don’t call them kutte(dog), they use much choicier language. Also bold was the choice to have a song named Tum nangi achhi lagti ho (You look good nude); tum kali si kachhi lagti ho (You look as un-ripe as a blossoming flower) The movie follows 3 stories and one gets to know the characters well. Like his previous movies, Bannerjee shows a few good facts about delhi (people start fighting over petty matters), everyone showing off how many people they know, how much money they have etc and how ruthless they can be.
If you are going to see the movie with any expectations about how a movie should be, either drop those expectations or don’t go; just don’t sit there complaining about what type of movie this is (for you Sonal). This is not your typical movie; in fact it is not even a proper movie. But it will affect you nonetheless. You won’t get bored anytime in the movie. You will either be laughing, be afraid or be horrified; but not bored.
I’m blogging after a long time today. Today was a nice day. I saw two very good hindi movies. The first one was Gulaal which I saw at PVR. The movie is funny, shocking, meaningful and realistic, all at the same time. It kind of reminded me of Hazaaron Khwahishen Aisi which is another one of my favorite hindi movies. The character are very well defined and each one stands out on it’s own. Leaving the hall, you can’t help but feel a little sad on how things turned out.
The other movie was Ek Chaalis ki last local. This is like one of those fast paced hollywood movies. You don’t feel bored for a moment as one event unfolds after another, full of surprises. The whole movie is 150 minutes and the events in the movie are spread over almost a similar time. Actually, I’d already seen this movie twice in the theaters but can never get bored of it.
This is a goofy trailer of a movie doing the rounds on Tv these days. The name of the movie is “Deshdrohi”. It’s based on the atrocities committed by Raj Thakrey’s goons against “North Indians” namely biharis. The guy is shown to be threatened by a police inspector on the phone and called a bhikhari(beggar). To which he replies “Hey Inspector.. Mera naam rajkumar singh yadav hai.. aur yadav sirf raaja hota hai.. bhikhari kabhi nahi banta..” (Hey inspector, my name is rajkumar singh yadav. and a yadav is always a king, never becomes a beggar). He is also shown to be beaten by marathi manoos after which he starts fighting for his rights and kills manoos either by punching them in the groin or the face by the dozen. He even shoots policemen armed with sticks without remorse. Meanwhile he also finds the time to romance a girl, sing love songs with her but finally meets with an obviously very painful end alone in the dark streets.
I wonder who agreed to produce this movie and why. Maybe they thought it would be a big hit in Bihar and the bihari rickshaw wallas kicked out from maharashtra can compensate for what was done to them by watching this.
The actor Kamaal R Khan looks like an asshole and every serious dialogue he throws at his enemies with passion just causes us to laugh at him. His hairstyle is a throwback to the 50s and the emotions and expressions essayed by him are really over the top. If you are a tormented bihari kicked out from the state of maharashtra, then seriously go and watch this movie.
All the honest pleas of the makers of this movie that it has no resemblence to the Harry Potter series is very true. Only because the whole script has been stolen from the Home Alone series. Not only the script, all the scenes are almost exactly the same. Only, this movie is much much worse and the budget must have been horrendously low. The actors and actresses are horrible and the cross-eyed kid cannot compare to Macaulay Culkin. This movie ruined my entire weekend mood so much that I had to roam about on the streets for about an hour after the movie at night before I could be normal again. But this movie is not totally copied from the Home Alone series. It even has some scenes stolen from Kung Fu Hustle. I can even go as far as to say that it was worse than Home Alone 4 which was a shit movie indeed. The only thing good about this movie was that it got over in 90 minutes, including the interval. I cannot write more about it, I feel sick
Here is a list of 6 of the ugliest bitches in Bollywood(Indian Film Industry). Wonder why people still like them.
Kajol:- She’s plain ugly. She looks like a man. Her lips are a straight line and her smile is the same ways. She has bushy eyebrows and looks disgusting. Why do people like her? That I may never know.
Ekta Kapoor:- She’s so damn ugly. She has a face similar to and as big as a watermelon cut in half. What I hate more than her face is her soaps and her movies. You always have shit smeared on your forehead too.
Gauri Khan:- She is ugly, but earlier she used to be sober so it was fine. But now she dresses up like some Page 3 model and thinks she’s glamorous. She always also applies some oil on her face because it is always oily and shining.
Esha Deol:-She is clearly the result of a careless fling with a rickshawalla(George Bernard Shaw). With a nose that has been dug with her manly fingers and toes, she is the epitome of ugliness. Born with an irrepairable squint and a completely wooden body sans any form of curves, she has also been endowed with the most shrill voice which will drive you crazy to kill a puppy.
Farah Khan:- She’s the fat baby producing machine who likes to insult other people for their singing. Also produces “s” as “f”. So “suck” is “fuck” and “sell” is “fell”
Karan Johar:- She’s stubby and has a very bad hairstyle. Also, she almost looks like a man. Dresses up like one too.
Saw a goofy movie today. It was called BOXER. It starred Mithun and is the story of a guy called Shankar who’s father is a boxer. He gets thrown in the jail for theft where a boxer named Tony teaches him boxing and after coming out of jail, he becomes a professional boxer. Unfortunately in one of his fights, he gets hit in the left eye and the doctor tells him that if he gets hit there again, he may lose his life. So he gives up boxing, gets married and gets a job in a garage as a mechanic. When his wife announces that she’s pregnant, his younger brother(who’s like ten years old) starts scampering up and down the stairs like a mongoose, falls down, hurts himself in the head and becomes a brain dead vegetable. The doctor tells Shankar that he needs to get 2 lakh rupees to cure his brother. He has no other option left but to fight one last fight with the heavyweight champion.
If you don’t have the second CD of this movie, you can as well watch Rocky because after this point both the movies are almost same. The training sequences where he ties himself to a cycle and runs with his trainer sitting behind him(Rocky), where he runs along the beach with his trainer(Rocky III) and how he says goodbye to his brain dead brother before going to fight(Rocky II) remind you of the Rocky Series. The fights are quite decent but it’s quite apparent that they were filmed in normal speed and the speed of the reel increased later to make the fight look more violent and the boxers superfast. He almost loses it in the last few rounds but the brain dead brother miraculously wakes up and goes to the fight scene and cheers for his brother. From here on, shankar fights like hell and in the last round, both he and his competitor fall down. While the seconds are counting, Shankar manages to get up at the last second and the other guy doesn’t.(Reminds anybody of the last scee in Rocky II???)
Mithun had quite a good phsysique in his old days. Anyways, the movie is pretty decent considered you haven’t watched any of the Rocky movies.
