Oscar Review- Silver Linings Playbook- A soulful romantic serio-comedy

***1/2
As Promised I am going to cover the reviews of films nominated for the Best Picture.You can catch the review Life Of Pi 3D below.

Silver Linings Playbook is a soulful  romantic serio-comedy about  Pat(Bradley Cooper) who has just returned from a stint at a mental institution to live with his parents (Jackie Weaver and Robert DeNiro), to reconcile with his ex-wife. Things get a wee complicated when he meets recently widowed and an unstable and unpredictable Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence).The story takes a turn where Tifanny and Pat enter a dance together.

SLP is gifted with two leads who share a great chemistry together,especially in  the conversation about the meds they have taken.The movie also gifted with great acting from all the characters  be it Anupam Kher who potrays the role of Pat's therapist or Chris Rock, a friend of Pat from the looney bin.

The humor is a bit dark and black but not LOLy,which is a welcome change of pace.

The film is beautifully written and directed by David O Rusell who is fresh from the sucess of The Fighter.

The film ultimately belongs to Jennifer Lawrence whose portrayal of enigmatic Tiffany just steals the show.

There are films that do not deserve even to get nominated forget win(I am looking at you Slumdog Millionaire) but SLP deserve the awards nomianted. Heck Jennifer Lawrence deserve the best actress award but she is getting serious competition from Jessica Chastain and Emaneulle Riva.

SLP is  good film and deserve a watch. I am giving it 3 and a half stars out of possible four.

Golden Globes Award- My Pick; Who will win and who should win

The awards will be announced soon and I am here to make my last guesses for the main movie categories.
The datd is taken from the HFPA site http://www.goldenglobes.org/2012/12/nominations-2013/
The bold and Italics marked are the nominess who will win
The red marked are the nominees who according to me should win.
There may be names which are both bold and marked and they are the ones who will and should win.

The list is:

Best Motion Picture Drama

1. Argo
2. Lincoln
3. Life Of Pi
4. Zero Dark Thirty
5. Django Unchained

Best Motion Picture Comedy/Musical

1. Les Miserables
2. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
3. The Moonrise Kingdom
4. Salmon Fishing In Yemen
5. Silver Linings Playbook

Best Actor  (Drama)

1. Daniel Day Lewis(Lincoln)
2. Richard Gere(Arbitrage)
3. John Hawkes(The Sessions)
4. Jaoquin Pheonix(The Master)
5. Denzel Washington(Flight)

Best Actress (Drama)

1. Jessica Chastain
2. Helen Mirren
3. Marion Cotillard
4. Naomi Watts
5. Rachel Weisz

Best Actor (Comedy/Musical)

1. Jack Black(Bernie)
2. Bradley Cooper(SLP)
3. Hugh Jackman(Les Miserables)
4. Ewan McGregor(Salmon Fishing In Yemen)
5. Bill Murray(Hyde Park In Huson)

Best Actress (Comedy/Musical)

1. Jennifer Lawrence(SLP)
2. Emily Blunt(Salmon Fishing In Yemen)
3. Judi Dendch(The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel)
4. Maggie Smith(Quartet)
5. Meryl Streep(Hope Springs)

Best Supporting Actor

1. Alan Arkin(Argo)
2. Leonardo DiCapiro(Django Unchained)
3. Philip Seymour Hoffman(The Master)
4. Tommy Lee Jones(Lincoln)
5. Chirstopher Waltz(Django Unchained)

Best Supporting Actress

1. Anne Hathaway(Les Miserables)
2. Sally Field(Lincoln)
3. Amy Adams(The Master)
4. Helen Hunt(The Sessions)
5. Nicole Kidman(The Paperboy)

Best Animated Film

1. Brave
2. Frankenweenie
3. Hotel Transylvania
4. Rise Of Guardians
5. Wreck It-Ralph

Matru ki Bijlee ka Mandola review- A political satire which is not everyones cup of tea

***1/2

As a word of caution-please read the title that it is not everyones cup of tea. The language is part Haryanvi and part Sharanpuri and Yamunanagri and I could understand every dialogue.Moviegoers not familiar with these dialects may not get every joke and a few dialogues could be gibberish.

The title may suggest that the story chronicles around three charecters Matru(Imran Khan), Bijlee(Anushka Sharma) and Mandola(Pankaj Kapur) but Vishal Bharadwaj has made a political satire about land grabbing scam in the village Mandola. Factor in a greedy CM( Shabana Azmi) and a greedier son (Arya Babbar) and his minions of greedy and corrupt bereaucrats. Also Factor in a marraige between Anushka and Arya, we get an amalgamation of a film with rustic tones and catchy music and a well made but a wee bit long film.

I would not go into the details of the story but would want to comment on that Pankaj Kapoor plays a borderline schizophrenic and a chronic alsoholic charecter who has a dual personality:- one of  a despicable land grabber Harry and a one down to earth Hariya. His favorite brand is Gulabi Bhains. Once he decides to refrain from alcohol he gets hallucination of a pink buffalo or Gulabi bhains (got it!!!). Ther is also a misunderstanding that i would not spoil, but it is a LOL movement

Another LOL sequence is when a news reporter interviews a blind child donning blue aviator shades as an eyewitness.

Technically the CGI bhains is good and a treat to the eyes and the script drags a bit in the pre-climax portion

Coming to acting department- the films belong to Pankaj Kapur and Anushka Sharma. Imran Khan is good and Shabana Azmi hams her way most of her screen time.

I would recommend watching it if you like political satires and have 155 minutes of spare time, else you can wait for DVD.

Academy Awards

The nomination list is here.
And the nominations for the best picture are :

1. Amour
2. Argo
3. Beasts Of the Southern Wild
4. Django Unchained
5. Les Miserables
6. Life Of Pi
7. Lincoln
8. Silver Linings Playbook
9. Zero Dark Thirty

Out of these I have seen a few and will start reviewing from tomorrow.

You can catch the review of LIFE OF PI 3D in the blog.

I will also give the list of my pick for the winners of Golden Globe and will update the list of my picks once I see all the contenders.

I will start giving the reviews of T.V episodes and series soon.

Meanwhile Enjoy Lohri and Sakranti everybody.

Hobbit : An Unexpected Journey(3D 24fps version) review- A tiresome journey but is watchable

**1/2

The hobbit is a roughly 300 pages novel and Peter Jackson(Lord Of the Rings Trilogy) decide to "stretch" it to a 9 hr journey. The book cannot be compared to LOTR trilogy, as the latter has more characters and plot point to cover 9 hrs but the former is a children fable of good vs evil.

The tale is simple. Bilbo Baggings (Martin Freeman) helps a band of 13 dwarves to reclaim their home from the dragon Smaug. He is helped by the wizard Gandalf the grey (Ian Mckellen). In the journey they encounter trolls, wargs, orcs and goblins and also Gollum and his precious.

As noted earlier the journey is tiresome and it took an hour to begin it. The new characters are mostly one note and the dwarves are interchangeable (except for Thorin).

Going to technical presentation, the film was shot in 3D and with the intention of 48 frames per second but Ahmedabad does not have a single theatre equipped so that it could show it at a higher frame speed so I have to be content with the normal speed. The 3D was brilliant and was one of the better use of the third dimension(the best is Hugo and Life Of Pi).

The film is a must for the fans of middle earth, for the rest they can skip it.

Life of Pi- The visually damning film struggles a bit in the writing.

Life Of Pi Review

***

Based on Yann Martel's Booker Prize winning novel was in the development hell for the last 10 years and has seen numerous director changes form M. Night Shyamalam (Signs, The Sixth Sense) to Alsonso Cuaron (Children of Men, Harry Potter and the Prisoner Of Azkaban) to Jenne-Pierre Jenuet (Alien Ressurection, Amelie) to finally Ang Lee( Brokeback Mountain, Lust Caution). The book , considered to be unfilmable and unfathomable, proved to be a good read.
                     

The film begins with a reporter (Rafe Spall) taking an interview with Piscine Molitor Patel or Pi, the adult version played by Irrfan Khan, who tells his story. Piscine got his name after a swimming pool in France but became a laughing stock of his classmates who called him Pissing Patel. He changed his name to Pi, the irrational number which is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to the diameter. The name somewhat signifies the irrationality of the protagonist  Born as a Hindu, Pi juggled one religion with another and finally accepting bits of part of all religion. His father worked as a zookeeper and when he turns 16, his father decides to transfer all the animals and zoo to Canada

The real story does not begin until about an hour when the ship he and his animals are going to Canada shipwrecks. Pi jumps on a lifeboat with three other animals:- A wounded Zebra, an Orangutan , a Hyena and finally Richard Parker, a Bengal Tiger. After the hyena kill the zebra and orangutan. Richard bludgeons the hyena to his death. All that is left is Pi and Richard Parker.

 The film is a visual marvel and is a must watch in 3D. I found the movie similar to last year's Hugo. The 3D was well used, not only to throw things at you but also to give depth . Richard Parker which was part CGI and part real was excellent but the real flaw is the script written by David Mague. The film takes a lot of time to reach the shipwreck and also gives a feeling of distraught right in the middle act.

Overall the film deserves a better script, and I deem it as atleast one time watch and in 3D.
I'll go with 3 stars out of a possible 4.

Looper review- Oh Why? Oh Why

Looper review

*

The trailers were so amazing and the reviews declared this mindbending thriller as this generation's Matrix but the end result seemed to me a convoluted mess and makes the highly underwhelming final installment of The Matrix Trilogy, Citizen Kane in comparison.

The basic plot is that In 2044 there are hired guns called Loopers who have to report to a certain location where they have to wait for someone who has been zapped from the future and kill them in exchange of silver. Your loop completes when you kill your future self. But for Joe(Joseph Gordon Levitt and Bruce Willis), his loop or his future self escapes when he is zapped and then trouble comes to Joe's doorstep literally.

Sound's ice, doesn't it????

The film was one of the projects which looked great on paper but the execution was bad.( I am looking at you, The Island)

The film is slow and when I say slow, my pet turtle could overtake the pace of the movie and mind you, he hibernates for almost all the time and for a second or so he comes out of the shell to say that I'm alive.

The film was marketed as action in the vein of Inception but except of a scene in the club which doesn't come untill the final act, the film does not have any action

The concept of the movie is nice and throw in the mix some T.K.(Telekinesis), but the film just does not give justice to a very strong concept.

Kudos to the make-up artist to make Joseph look like a younger self of Bruce.

Did I forgot to mention that there is a plot involving Emily Blunt as a single mother with an unstable child. I might have dozed off while writing this review.

The three words that came in my mind after seeing the movie and that was WTF.

Skip It

I am going with one star out of four