For everyone of us movies are part and parcel of life ( may be except for some nerds(psychos?)). There are various kinds of film goers, some are obsessive, some are passionate, some are watch-in-once-a-while and some are reviewers/appreciators. Well I am a passionate film goer. But my passion is limited to Tamil movies. Because, well that is the only language I can understand well :-). Seriously speaking, I cant relate to other language movies(atleast non-Indian), their emotions, their problems, their inventions, and finally their accent!!
Two kinds of films (rather woods :P) I know are Indian [B,K,T,M]ollywood and Hollywood. There are two basic frameworks for these woods.
Indian wood: A Hero, A Villain, Heroine(mostly villain's daughter :P). Hero loves heroine, faces problems, fights thugs, breaks plots,challenges villains, sings duet (with 1000 dancers in foreign location or an extravagant set) and finally emerges victorious.
Hollywood: Either the US, or the world is facing a serious threat from aliens/nuclear weapons/terrorists/jumbo size creatures/fancy chemicals/etc, a team of scientists led by the protagonist and later joined by a lady scientist(the love interest) are breaking their head to solve the problem and finally emerges victorious.
7 out of 10 films made in these woods extend their respective framework. OK, now you may ask why all this now??? well, after a long time I saw one English movie, "ANGELS AND DEMONS" and just wanted record my opinion about the movie here.
ANGELS AND DEMONS : I knew that it was a book written by Dan Brown and thats that. I generally don't read novels and I haven't bothered to hear this one's story too. Balaji, Veerakumar, Ramarajan and myself decided watch this movie at the Imax.
When we entered, the film had already begun and a team of scientists were seriously discussing something in an unknown language. The team was researching on creating something called as "Anti-Matter". They finally succeeded in creating it and had it stored in a charged canister. As expected the "Anti-Matter" was stolen. There is another plot, the election for the next pope;
the "4 cardinals" or the "pope-in-waiting" candidates are kidnapped and an anagram "ILLUMINATI" is left behind as the message by the kidnapper.
Here enters our protagonist, Tom Hanks, who is a professor and researcher on symbols. The Vatican police request his help for deciphering the anagram. The plots are now linked and the antagonist, has promised to kill a cardinal one at at time from 8 PM and blow Vatican and Rome at midnight using the antimatter. Our leading lady, the scientist, joins our hero here.
He is the hero, right? So he succeeds in his mission and all ends well. The film's trump card (joker rather?) is the suspense on who is the actual reason behind all this mess. To keep us guessing (??) we have a haughty, loud mouthing Swiss guard's boss, an over(re)acting bishop, queer looking guards, dull lit buildings with lot of secret doors, pathways etc.
One good thing about the movie is history, I like history and a lot of historical facts have been explained and elaborated. Other than that, well, the film falls apart. Mainly because I was able to guess what will happen next and who is the villain. Though it was just a guess initially, I was able to confirm it half an hour before the culprit is unearthed, this particular dialogue gave it all away "Do you have the news to make me immortal??" .
The climax was intended to be spectacular but ended up being funny. The leading lady keeps emphasizing every other scene, about the power of the "Anti-Matter", but our bishop takes the canister, which is about to lose charge and explode, in a helicopter as high as possible, makes it to explode there, the huge crowd recovers after being "blown away" by the energy generated, while our bishop lands in a parachute.
When the entire land wants the bishop to be crowned as pope, our duo finds out from recorded cctv's footage that bishop is the actual culprit (yawn!!) and he immolates himself fearing arrest.
A lot of questions are left unanswered, If the antimatter is so powerful, how can it cause only a small effect when it is exploding at an height of say jus 25000 feet? Why is the antagonist so dumb to leave the cctv footage accessible, when he plans the murders so meticulously, with lot of attention to detail?
Balaji said the book will be too good and everything will be explained and connected in a brilliant manner. This is the risk of filming a novel. Not all the emotions of the writer can be translated onto the screen. The camera, editing and background score were good. This particular camera angle on zooming in on a shoe from the bottom and panning up still further up showing who was standing there ( :-) ),was just innovative. On the whole, a pat on the back for capturing historical facts and connecting them, but the screenplay could have been a little better especially in the climax.
Bottomline : Anti matter, Sappa matter :P
Two kinds of films (rather woods :P) I know are Indian [B,K,T,M]ollywood and Hollywood. There are two basic frameworks for these woods.
Indian wood: A Hero, A Villain, Heroine(mostly villain's daughter :P). Hero loves heroine, faces problems, fights thugs, breaks plots,challenges villains, sings duet (with 1000 dancers in foreign location or an extravagant set) and finally emerges victorious.
Hollywood: Either the US, or the world is facing a serious threat from aliens/nuclear weapons/terrorists/jumbo size creatures/fancy chemicals/etc, a team of scientists led by the protagonist and later joined by a lady scientist(the love interest) are breaking their head to solve the problem and finally emerges victorious.
7 out of 10 films made in these woods extend their respective framework. OK, now you may ask why all this now??? well, after a long time I saw one English movie, "ANGELS AND DEMONS" and just wanted record my opinion about the movie here.
ANGELS AND DEMONS : I knew that it was a book written by Dan Brown and thats that. I generally don't read novels and I haven't bothered to hear this one's story too. Balaji, Veerakumar, Ramarajan and myself decided watch this movie at the Imax.
When we entered, the film had already begun and a team of scientists were seriously discussing something in an unknown language. The team was researching on creating something called as "Anti-Matter". They finally succeeded in creating it and had it stored in a charged canister. As expected the "Anti-Matter" was stolen. There is another plot, the election for the next pope;
the "4 cardinals" or the "pope-in-waiting" candidates are kidnapped and an anagram "ILLUMINATI" is left behind as the message by the kidnapper.
Here enters our protagonist, Tom Hanks, who is a professor and researcher on symbols. The Vatican police request his help for deciphering the anagram. The plots are now linked and the antagonist, has promised to kill a cardinal one at at time from 8 PM and blow Vatican and Rome at midnight using the antimatter. Our leading lady, the scientist, joins our hero here.
He is the hero, right? So he succeeds in his mission and all ends well. The film's trump card (joker rather?) is the suspense on who is the actual reason behind all this mess. To keep us guessing (??) we have a haughty, loud mouthing Swiss guard's boss, an over(re)acting bishop, queer looking guards, dull lit buildings with lot of secret doors, pathways etc.
One good thing about the movie is history, I like history and a lot of historical facts have been explained and elaborated. Other than that, well, the film falls apart. Mainly because I was able to guess what will happen next and who is the villain. Though it was just a guess initially, I was able to confirm it half an hour before the culprit is unearthed, this particular dialogue gave it all away "Do you have the news to make me immortal??" .
The climax was intended to be spectacular but ended up being funny. The leading lady keeps emphasizing every other scene, about the power of the "Anti-Matter", but our bishop takes the canister, which is about to lose charge and explode, in a helicopter as high as possible, makes it to explode there, the huge crowd recovers after being "blown away" by the energy generated, while our bishop lands in a parachute.
When the entire land wants the bishop to be crowned as pope, our duo finds out from recorded cctv's footage that bishop is the actual culprit (yawn!!) and he immolates himself fearing arrest.
A lot of questions are left unanswered, If the antimatter is so powerful, how can it cause only a small effect when it is exploding at an height of say jus 25000 feet? Why is the antagonist so dumb to leave the cctv footage accessible, when he plans the murders so meticulously, with lot of attention to detail?
Balaji said the book will be too good and everything will be explained and connected in a brilliant manner. This is the risk of filming a novel. Not all the emotions of the writer can be translated onto the screen. The camera, editing and background score were good. This particular camera angle on zooming in on a shoe from the bottom and panning up still further up showing who was standing there ( :-) ),was just innovative. On the whole, a pat on the back for capturing historical facts and connecting them, but the screenplay could have been a little better especially in the climax.
Bottomline : Anti matter, Sappa matter :P
thambriiii.... u fall into the reviewer category with this post of yours..... btw, we have onething in common, I amnt interested in non-indian too. My movie scope is restricted to Tamil and Hindi :)
ReplyDeleteDirector Ovaru Scenum Sedhiki Irukar Pola Iruku
ReplyDelete@Danny Boyle : anna namaku hindi kooda varadhu na.. hindi movies strictly wid subtitles :P
ReplyDelete@Laxman : "vadivamichirukar" da :)