Just Watched: Black Swan There are times you are forced to watch a DVD screener of a film despite the fact that you are a sucker for good quality prints, and if the film you watch like this is something that has been brilliantly made, you start cursing yourself inside your head, to no avail. Something similar happened to me when I watched a screener of Black Swan two months back, only because Arko insisted I had to. I just wasn’t able to watch it at a stretch because of the fact that the print wasn’t as clear as I would like it to be. Obviously, I would have loved to watch it on the big screen but that wasn’t possible then, and then we have the wonderful Indian Censor Board which simply doesn’t understand how aesthetic sensibilities work. So when the film was released in Ahmedabad multiplexes right after Natalie Portman won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her fantastic performance, Arko and I had to make a run for Ahmedabad with Rohan (Thomas) and at the end of the film there was only one thing to agree upon – you haven’t seen anything unless you have seen it on the big screen, censorship notwithstanding. Darren Aronofsky has been one of the three most enigmatic filmmakers in the modern era for me, the other two being Wes Anderson and a certain Christopher Nolan. With Black Swan, Aronofsky creates a world of strange horrors which are bound to make you feel claustrophobic and, worse, schizophrenic. Therein, however, lays the beauty of this film. Based on the famous ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, this film about the extreme emotions of a ballet dancer under stress is without a doubt one of the very best films to have come out last year. Natalie Portman is superb as the troubled Nina and honestly I don’t think any other performance deserved the Oscar this time. I can say this confidently despite having seen only one of the other films nominated in this category. Mila Kunis is wonderful too in a rather restrained role. It’s a pity that she didn’t get a best Supporting Actress nomination. Vincent Cassel is very good too and so is Winona Ryder, who, thankfully, retains most of her usual grace. Barbara Hershey is almost terrifying as Nina’s mother, and that is a compliment of sorts. Raising her daughter the way she does in the film is very scary considering the lengths she goes to ensure that her daughter becomes nothing but the very best. The music by Clint Mansell is brilliant. Too bad that he didn’t garner an Oscar nod as he had attempted to make radical changes to Tchaikovsky’s original ballet. Oh, well. Aronfosky has, once again, managed to come up with yet another masterpiece with this ode to the passion for perfection. Gujju audiences need to use their heads though, and that isn’t something I am hoping to see in the near future. Looks like the applause after Inception (Click here for my post after watching Inception) only happens once in a very long time. Till then, we can all continue to aspire to be perfect, as long as we are able to set the limits. Personal Rating: 9.0/10
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Just Watched: Black Swan

There are times you are forced to watch a DVD screener of a film despite the fact that you are a sucker for good quality prints, and if the film you watch like this is something that has been brilliantly made, you start cursing yourself inside your head, to no avail.

Something similar happened to me when I watched a screener of Black Swan two months back, only because Arko insisted I had to. I just wasn’t able to watch it at a stretch because of the fact that the print wasn’t as clear as I would like it to be. Obviously, I would have loved to watch it on the big screen but that wasn’t possible then, and then we have the wonderful Indian Censor Board which simply doesn’t understand how aesthetic sensibilities work. So when the film was released in Ahmedabad multiplexes right after Natalie Portman won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her fantastic performance, Arko and I had to make a run for Ahmedabad with Rohan (Thomas) and at the end of the film there was only one thing to agree upon – you haven’t seen anything unless you have seen it on the big screen, censorship notwithstanding.

Darren Aronofsky has been one of the three most enigmatic filmmakers in the modern era for me, the other two being Wes Anderson and a certain Christopher Nolan. With Black Swan, Aronofsky creates a world of strange horrors which are bound to make you feel claustrophobic and, worse, schizophrenic. Therein, however, lays the beauty of this film. Based on the famous ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, this film about the extreme emotions of a ballet dancer under stress is without a doubt one of the very best films to have come out last year. Natalie Portman is superb as the troubled Nina and honestly I don’t think any other performance deserved the Oscar this time. I can say this confidently despite having seen only one of the other films nominated in this category. Mila Kunis is wonderful too in a rather restrained role. It’s a pity that she didn’t get a best Supporting Actress nomination. Vincent Cassel is very good too and so is Winona Ryder, who, thankfully, retains most of her usual grace. Barbara Hershey is almost terrifying as Nina’s mother, and that is a compliment of sorts. Raising her daughter the way she does in the film is very scary considering the lengths she goes to ensure that her daughter becomes nothing but the very best. The music by Clint Mansell is brilliant. Too bad that he didn’t garner an Oscar nod as he had attempted to make radical changes to Tchaikovsky’s original ballet. Oh, well.

Aronfosky has, once again, managed to come up with yet another masterpiece with this ode to the passion for perfection. Gujju audiences need to use their heads though, and that isn’t something I am hoping to see in the near future. Looks like the applause after Inception (Click here for my post after watching Inception) only happens once in a very long time. Till then, we can all continue to aspire to be perfect, as long as we are able to set the limits.

Personal Rating: 9.0/10

Just Watched: Hot Fuzz Coincidences are a strangely funny thing, and I’ve been known to make a big deal out of them, so much so that I label even seemingly random occurences as coincidences. When I returned from the weekly gig at Café Buon Giorno last night, little was I to know that a film I will watch will end up hitting me like a ton of bricks in the ‘lame coincidences’ department. When Arko mooted the idea of watching the film calling an out-and-out action flick, I gave him the go-ahead. About an hour into the film, I felt that the director had cluttered up the film with too many unnecessary characters, something which had kept driving me up the wall as the film had progressed. Arko kept defending the film for some reason, and I kept disbelieving his claims about the film’s supposed awesomeness. However, he managed to ensure that I don’t stop watching the film, something I often do when a film annoys me. I am thankful that he did this, for what came after the absolute WTFness phase in the film was not just awesome, but utterly epic. This is one of those films that just blows your mind away, almost literally. Some brilliant acting only ensures that you don’t stop watching the film, even as it starts out pretty slowly. Simon Pegg is absolutely brilliant in a role that makes you think of the film as a situational humour piece for most of its first half. He also happens to be the co-writer of the wonderful screenplay. Nick Frost is quite annoying, but when you realize that there is a reason to his madness, you are left quite awestruck. The star of the show, though, is the fantastic Timothy Dalton, who is, well, a supermarket manager. Writing more about his character will skin the body that is this film. As the end-credits rolled, I felt that the director’s name seemed familiar. When I looked the film up, I realized that Edgar Wright was also the director of the film that I had just seen about 24 hours back (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World). If that wasn’t enough, the release date of the film was four years back to the very day. Well, that is quite lame from the sound of it, but there’s more, and it’s not the numerous film references made in this film. In fact, even Arko was shocked after we read something about the film; the film happens to be the second film in what is called the Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy a.k.a. the Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy, a series of three films created by Wright and Pegg, and starring Pegg and Frost. Apparently, each film in the trilogy is connected to a Cornetto ice cream flavour. The use of the three colours of Cornetto is a reference to Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colours Trilogy. Arko happens to be a huge fan of Kieślowski’s films and he was left speechless when he came to know this. Also, this film was referenced in a recent episode of Psych, which continues to be one of my favourite TV shows. Also, one must watch out for the cameos, for they aren’t really in-your-face. Hitesh shouldn’t have fallen asleep. He has no idea what he has missed. This film is the perfect guy film that can be watched on, er…, Valentine’s Day, at least it was for us. By the power of Greyskull, this is one amazing film. Oh, and a look at the time this post was published may just tell you how I have to control coincidences sometimes. Yarrp! Personal Rating: 8.7/10
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Just Watched: Hot Fuzz

Coincidences are a strangely funny thing, and I’ve been known to make a big deal out of them, so much so that I label even seemingly random occurences as coincidences. When I returned from the weekly gig at Café Buon Giorno last night, little was I to know that a film I will watch will end up hitting me like a ton of bricks in the ‘lame coincidences’ department.

When Arko mooted the idea of watching the film calling an out-and-out action flick, I gave him the go-ahead. About an hour into the film, I felt that the director had cluttered up the film with too many unnecessary characters, something which had kept driving me up the wall as the film had progressed. Arko kept defending the film for some reason, and I kept disbelieving his claims about the film’s supposed awesomeness. However, he managed to ensure that I don’t stop watching the film, something I often do when a film annoys me. I am thankful that he did this, for what came after the absolute WTFness phase in the film was not just awesome, but utterly epic.

This is one of those films that just blows your mind away, almost literally. Some brilliant acting only ensures that you don’t stop watching the film, even as it starts out pretty slowly. Simon Pegg is absolutely brilliant in a role that makes you think of the film as a situational humour piece for most of its first half. He also happens to be the co-writer of the wonderful screenplay. Nick Frost is quite annoying, but when you realize that there is a reason to his madness, you are left quite awestruck. The star of the show, though, is the fantastic Timothy Dalton, who is, well, a supermarket manager. Writing more about his character will skin the body that is this film.

As the end-credits rolled, I felt that the director’s name seemed familiar. When I looked the film up, I realized that Edgar Wright was also the director of the film that I had just seen about 24 hours back (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World). If that wasn’t enough, the release date of the film was four years back to the very day. Well, that is quite lame from the sound of it, but there’s more, and it’s not the numerous film references made in this film. In fact, even Arko was shocked after we read something about the film; the film happens to be the second film in what is called the Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy a.k.a. the Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy, a series of three films created by Wright and Pegg, and starring Pegg and Frost. Apparently, each film in the trilogy is connected to a Cornetto ice cream flavour. The use of the three colours of Cornetto is a reference to Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colours Trilogy. Arko happens to be a huge fan of Kieślowski’s films and he was left speechless when he came to know this. Also, this film was referenced in a recent episode of Psych, which continues to be one of my favourite TV shows. Also, one must watch out for the cameos, for they aren’t really in-your-face. Hitesh shouldn’t have fallen asleep. He has no idea what he has missed.

This film is the perfect guy film that can be watched on, er…, Valentine’s Day, at least it was for us. By the power of Greyskull, this is one amazing film. Oh, and a look at the time this post was published may just tell you how I have to control coincidences sometimes. Yarrp!

Personal Rating: 8.7/10

Just Watched: Avatar After numerous failures in planning, I finally managed to watch this with Shacko and Arko (both of whom had already seen it thrice) in Ahmedabad, and surprisingly, in 3-D, and boy, was I in for a treat? I would like to maintain that the story wasn’t anything too great but James Cameron can surely take a bow for this visual extravaganza. The performances by Stephen Lang, Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Joel David Moore and Michelle Rodriguez were superb. It’s just the perfect film to celebrate the coming of the 3-D technology. As I said earlier, there isn’t much of a story here, nor is unheard of. The uniqueness lies in the film’s technical brilliance. Am speechless, more or less. May even go to watch it again, if I feel like it. I shouldn’t even mention that it is a must watch. Ouch, I actually just did. Scown (skxawng), I am. Personal Rating: 8.1/10
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Just Watched: Avatar

After numerous failures in planning, I finally managed to watch this with Shacko and Arko (both of whom had already seen it thrice) in Ahmedabad, and surprisingly, in 3-D, and boy, was I in for a treat? I would like to maintain that the story wasn’t anything too great but James Cameron can surely take a bow for this visual extravaganza. The performances by Stephen Lang, Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Joel David Moore and Michelle Rodriguez were superb.

It’s just the perfect film to celebrate the coming of the 3-D technology. As I said earlier, there isn’t much of a story here, nor is unheard of. The uniqueness lies in the film’s technical brilliance.

Am speechless, more or less. May even go to watch it again, if I feel like it. I shouldn’t even mention that it is a must watch. Ouch, I actually just did. Scown (skxawng), I am.

Personal Rating: 8.1/10