total timepass...

Saw the movie 'Trance' by Danny Boyle recently and was not impressed. The movie is a thriller, with too many overlapping sequences that gets you confused between reality and dreams, present and the past. So what could have been another Memento or Inception turns out to be just a poor copy of it. The premise of the movie is very interesting; an art house employee steals an expensive work of art and then forgets where he hid it. Hounded by his fellow partners in crime, he uses the help of a hypnotist to delve into his mind to find where he hid the painting. What follows are a sequence of thriller chases, ego clashes, betrayals, dreams mixed with reality and so on till the final curtain on the truth opens. The climax is quite unexpected, and would have made it a great movie, except that it was lacking on clarity, Maybe if the storyline had been clearer, the movie would have been worth watching. The acting was good, the action sequences thrilling but the confusion killed it

The Iron Lady is no more. And parts of UK are celebrating her death! Other than being a very sad thing to do, it makes you wonder about her, what kind of a person was she; how extraordinary would she be (not necessarily good or bad) that her death brings out such kind of emotions in some people. Hearing about it led me to research her views, her actions and her decisions, to understand how can people either hate her so much or not hate her (I still haven't found people who love her yet, but think its the same as don't hate!). And so I realised how split the country is when it comes to her. On the one side, there will be a ceremonial funeral for her (something rarely accorded to politicians) and on the other side, there are street parties on her death. Just goes to show what an extraordinary woman she was! And as I learnt more about her, I realised what she stands for, is taking decisions, and bold ones at that. They might not necessarily have been all correct (this can

I guess a movie not in Hindi or English is foreign cinema, isnt it:)? Anyways Harishchandrachi is a Marathi movie on the making of the first Indian silent movie, 'Raja Harishchandra' and of course the start of the biggest film industry in the world. It is such a beautiful and positive movie, its actually surprising! Most of the non-mainstream movies in India seem to focus so much on the depressing aspects of life, this movie would actually qualify as an exception! And it was India's entry to the Oscars in the foreign film category too! As a friend mentioned, he kept waiting for tragedy to strike at any point in the movie which eventually doesn't! Harishchandrachi is the story of Dadasaheb Phalke or Khepla as he prefers to be called while making this first Indian movie. I might have used the words, of the 'struggles' of Khepla to make the movie, but its been shown in such a positive way, that using the word struggles doesn't do justice to the tone of the

Another in the series of foreign films, is this masterpiece, 'The Lives of Others', a German 2006 movie which details a period of the GDR's(the Communist East Germany's) history. When you see this movie, it affects you and leaves you moved. But when you later on think about the movie at leisure, you see so much more than you initially saw, so many more layers, layers after layer of human behavior portrayed in various states.. A truly touching and intelligent movie... I don't really know where to start, first the story. The background of the movie is the GDR, where the government had total control over the lives of the common man, with the Secret Police, Stasi keeping track of all their activities. The movie starts with a Stasi Captain, Weisler setting up a house surveillance on a writer assumed to be loyal to the Communist regime, Dreyman. Presumably, the surveillance is to discover any acts of treason Dreyman may be committing, but it turns out the real reason

Vitus is a Swiss-German movie, and probably not one of the most watched movies in the English speaking world. Such movies motivate me to expand my horizon and watch other language films more than what I usually do. There is a huge treasure of such undiscovered and brilliant movies out there! Vitus is the story of Vitus, a boy genius who plays chess and the piano as a kid and is more intelligent than all around him. What does he go through when his parents put pressure on him to be what he is, an outlier and a genius. Does he like it or does he miss being 'normal'? How does he deal with his extraordinary qualities? He ends up going through the entire circle, enjoying it initially, then hating it and finally accepting himself for what he is. In his earlier years, Vitus finishes school classes much before his age, learns piano from the masters and generally is good at everything he does. But at some level he yearns to be normal and so pretends to be one after an accident appa