I caught this movie on Netflix recently and it made quite an impression on me. It’s really the opposite of an epic; the first half of the movie is simply Abhishek Bacchan and Preity Zinta talking together while they wait for a train at King’s Cross Station.  He tells her all about how he met his fiancée, she tells him about how she met hers, they imagine together another way the two of them could have met.  Such a simple little story, but it’s in the performances (all four leads are so funny), and all the little details, where their characters are drawing inspiration for their stories as they tell them.  Amitabh Bachchan appears periodically, not to actually become part of the story but more to comment on it in a musical sort of way, getting the crowds at King’s Cross caught up in his dance.  It’s a sweet, fun little gem of a movie.  (The outtakes that run with the credits are fun too; I’ve always wondered how they could dance in those shoes, and now I know…)

I have a soft spot for Abhishek Bachchan, especially in a comedy role.  Another one to check out: DOSTANA, where for various reasons he and John Abraham pretend to be gay.  The dinner where they are trying to simultaneously come across as a couple for the immigration official, guy but available to Priyanka Chopra’s boss, and straight for Abhishek’s mom is all comic timing and flow, so good.  In JHOOM BARABAR JHOOM I particularly loved the many times he tried to gently, gently suggest to his fiancée that she tone down the swearing.

All that and a SHOLAY reference too.

Remember March? I just might, briefly.

Penn and Teller Bullshit makes a nice supplement to any critical thinking curriculum, provided you don’t mind salty language and nudity, lots of nudity. A thought-provoking show, all possible sacred cows are targeted. Penn and Teller Magical Mystery Tour is much more family friendly, as they go to Egypt to explore the history of cups and balls. It led both my boys to try to do cups and balls themselves. Plus, Teller speaks. For some reason I was expecting him to sound like Harpo, which is silly since he isn’t from the slums of turn of the century New York.

Rome Season 2 was not quite as good as season 1. There was no way they were going to get an older Octavian that was as good as the kid who was playing young Octavian, I think they would have been better served leaving the young one in. They apparently knew cancellation was imminent, as they started to rush the history a bit. I wished they could have taken the time to tell the whole story properly; it really was a very cool show, cut short. But then I do have a weakness for those, don’t I?

Shakespeare Retold is a series of modern adaptions in modern language of a few of the plays done by the BBC. I’m usually pretty snobbish about Shakespeare being in Shakespearian language, but I loved these. They feature all sorts of “oh, that’s guy from _____, and she was in _____” casting. The Taming of the Shrew was particularly well cast, but it was Macbeth set in a restaurant in Scotland that blew me away. I always was a tragedy girl.

Old Dogs starring Robin Williams and John Travolta. If not for Seth Green and Justin Long, I would have completely forgotten this movie already. Prince of Persia was surprisingly watchable for a movie about a videogame. Ben Kingsley in particular is delicious. I wished they’d gone a step further and gone full period piece with it, give it a little Peter Jackson LOTR attention to detail.

The Tourist was a not particularly good Johnny Depp film. The plot twists made it necessary to keep a distance from both of the two characters, which made it hard to care about either of them. Plot twists about characters can be compelling (I’m thinking Fight Club, The Sixth Sense), but mostly they just make me feel like I was cheated and lied to. In this case, it was obvious to me that Angelina Jolie’s character had to be more than she appeared to be or Jolie never would have played her, and the second plot twist was just stupid. IMO, and all that.

Rango, on the other hand, was a perfect Johnny Depp movie. Sharp writing, and gorgeous animation from the crusty characters to the desert landscapes. Awesome, awesome movie. Can’t wait for the DVD.

Despicable Me is mostly gone from memory now. I do remember being pleased with the three girl characters who had all sorts of layers and quirks, particularly the tomboy girl who favored pink. Nice to not just reach for the stereotype.

Too Fat for 40 is another Q&A with Kevin Smith, with one Q and a really long A. I’m not sure if Smith gets the irony of following up his “don’t go to where the puck is, go to where the puck will be” story with a story about trying to get Bruce Willis to rehash bits he’s already done.

Bottle Rocket was the first movie from Wes Anderson. I’m not sure how I’ve gone so long without seeing it, I’ve watched all of his others multiple times. I can see how he caught attention with this one, although it seems so quiet a film now.

The Newton Boys is another one I’ve been meaning to watch forever, based on the true story of the most successful bankrobbers ever. A fun movie, especially the clips that run during the credits with one of the real Newton Boys (the one played in the movie by Ethan Hawke) talks about his youth as a bank robber.

Lastly is the latest from Farah Khan, Tees Maar Khan. I loved this movie, although apparently some people have pretty strong feelings against it. I’m not sure why, I laughed out loud at several points. Akshaye Khanna in particular was awesome as the Bollywood actor obsessed with winning an Oscar (the movie is set in the long shadow of Slumdog Millionaire, but there are a few M. Night Shyamalan jokes in as well). Katerina Kaif continues to rise in my estimation; she’s funny here as the actress who responds to every direction by adjusting her hair and/or makeup for the scene. She also has an item number that’s smoking. I’ve never been too impressed with her dancing before, but under Farah Khan she really shines. It helps to start with a jammin’ song:

See what happens when you don’t blog for weeks? I’m not sure I even remember some of these movies, or at least what I was thinking after I watched them. Well, let’s give it a shot.


The Station Agent I picked up just because Peter Dinklage stars in it, and he’s great in anything. I liked his character, he was slow to warm to other people even as they desperately want to bond with him. I’m not remotely interested in trains, but I liked his character’s obsession of them; I could almost (but not quite) see the appeal.


The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest was the third in the trilogy. I think I liked the second film the best, but Noomi Rapace is very watchable. It’s a shame she won’t be in the English version of these films, but on the upside she’s in the next Sherlock Holmes.


Chicago almost made me not hate Richard Gere. The number with the journalists as puppets on strings was particularly cool.


La Jetée is the short film (almost a slide show) that inspired 12 Monkeys. It was just the sort of niche thing I’d never have seen before Netflix. Odd, but interesting.


I Hate Luv Stories is an Imran Khan Bollywood film about a guy who works in, but hates, Bollywood films. He’s also cynical about love in general and even god. I liked the set up, but my hope that he and the lovey-dovey girl would meet each other halfway was thwarted; his character had to make all the changes and in the process became less interesting. Still some clever bits in here if you’ve seen enough Hindi cinema to get the references.


October Sky was one we got to watch with the boys, about boys in West Virginia that win a science fair making rockets. It was a fun movie, although I’m not sure it helped me convince my own boys of the importance of math if you want to do anything cool.


The Machinist just made me sad. Christian Bale turned himself into a wraith for a movie that just wasn’t worth it, storywise. It felt like the writer had read some Cliff Notes of Dostoevsky but didn’t quite get what made Dostoevsky great. There were some elements from lots of different works of Dostoevsky but none of the real essence. Disappointing.


Gor I saw just because they had done the sequel on MST3K. They made the right call going with the sequel.


Catch-22 was a movie I was intending to see after reading the book, but caved and watched the movie first.


Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani is the latest from the director of one of my favorite Bollywood films, Andaz Apna Apna. This tries to harken back to some of the energy of that, and Ranbir Kapoor and Katerina Kaif are both game, but it doesn’t quite reach the same heights. I think the missing element is a buddy. AAA was a Salman Khan/Aamir Khan buddy movie, and the two of them together were more compelling than the parallel love stories. Kapoor and Kaif come pretty close to being buddies to each other, but don’t quite get there.


Machete is just what you’d expect from Robert Rodriguez: all sorts of actors doing things just
for the fun of it, and lots of improbable gun fights with cool music. I enjoyed it, but then I would,
wouldn’t I?


The Darjeeling Limited was a movie I really wanted to like. I like Wes Anderson, and I love Satyajit Ray’s films and Jean Renoir’s The River, to which this is meant to be an homage. Jason Schwartzman, Adrien Brody and Owen Wilson as brothers should be a can’t miss. Alas, there was some bit that was just missing. This was a bit of a stumble after the brilliant The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, but I think he more than made up for it with The Fantastic Mr. Fox (Oliver and I share a love of that cussin’ film).


Casanova was a BBC miniseries that David Tennant and Russel T. Davies did before they did Doctor Who together. It has a lot of the same vibe, that same larger than life zaniness. I enjoyed it.


All About Eve? Should have seen this years ago. It’s just as good as I’d heard.


Mesrine is a French film starring that guy who did the breakdancing in the museum’s laser security system in Ocean’s 12. Here he is playing France’s most notorious criminal, a man named Mesrine who did many bad things. I found this movie disjointed and a bit of a downer; new people kept popping up too frequently to keep track of, but they all met bad ends. Even for a gangster film it was a downer. But stay tuned, there was a sequel that wasn’t based on the subject’s autobiography…

Time is short, and the list is long. The Pianist and Network: two films you don’t need me to tell you are quite good. Withnail and I was strange but wonderful. I should have seen this years ago (but then the same is true of Network). The Sunshine Boys was written Neil Simon by and stars (at least the version I watched) Woody Allen and Peter Falk as a vaudeville team that can no longer stand each other but are trying to work together on one last gig. A good story and Woody and Peter are perfect.

Death at a Funeral is a perfect streaming Netflix movie. Funny enough once but I’m unlikely to watch it again.

The Royal Shakespeare Company’s Hamlet starring David Tennant was quite good. I liked having Patrick Stewart play both the father and the uncle, and Hamlet cutting his palm when he swears his oath to the ghost and having the knotted bandage there to see for the next few acts, a constant reminder, very cool.

Season 1 of Rome I liked quite a lot. My only gripe is that it’s just a shade too intense for my boys to watch it, which is a shame as it really brings the history to life.

I’ve been trying to watch more French films lately (another Netflix bonus). I quite liked OSS 117 Cairo, Nest of Spies. It’s a parody of a series of films you just know Mike Myers was looking at when he was crafting Austin Powers. The lead actor is wonderful; he does smarmy so well. My favorite scene is one where he knocks back a couple of scotches in his boss’s office, and then gets more than a little buzzed. It was well played, the slowly building sense that our hero isn’t all there that culminates in his attempt to get down the hall. How does Bond do it? I had watched this after seeing a trailer for the sequel OSS 117 Lost in Rio because a French spy film featuring Nazi luchadores simply must be seen. Alas, it was not as sharply written as the first.

3 idiots has Aamir Khan and Vidhu Vinod Chopra joining forces to tell a story about the cruel pressures of college in India. Think Tiger Mom, times ten. An excellent film. I particularly liked all of the inventions the engineering students came up with; very clever and clearly they really work.

My Name is Khan also has a few scenes of engineering inventiveness, but mostly it’s a story about how not all Muslims are bad. It also features Shah Rukh Khan as an autistic man. The filmmakers did their research, and his performance is quite good. The fact that I kept hearing Robert Downey Jr. talking about not going “full retard” is clearly just my own baggage.

Mela was apparently a box office bomb, and I’m not sure why as I found it rather fun. Aamir Khan is a traveling actor and while there’s some sort of A story that involves a woman (Twinkle Khanna in I think her last role?) who needs to avenge her brother or something, there is a lovely B story between Khan and his buddy that drives the truck. They had a wonderful chemistry together. Wikipediaing later, I see that’s probably because the buddy was played by Khan’s real-life brother. He looks more like Salman than Aamir. But I liked him; he played a good buddy. (And I think I answered my own question there; when the most interesting thing you’ve got going on is your B plot, your going to bomb in the box office. But you know I’ll always love you, because I’m very forgiving of crummy A plots. I’m looking at you The Last Legion. I never seem to remember you’re a movie about King Arthur. Aish is so distractingly cool).

Besides being one of or the last film from Twinkle Khanna, Mela also seems to be the point in Aamir Khan’s career where he decided to do movies that had some deeper value. He followed it up with Lagaan, after all. 3 idiots is a more current example. But he also produces more interesting films, such as Peepli Live, a very dark comedy indeed about farmers in rural India who discover there’s money to be had in suicide. This movie is as much a critique of politicians and the media as it is about the plight of farmers. Very sharply written.

I’ll finish up with two starring Ranbir Kapoor. Wake Up Sid is about a young man in danger of remaining a perpetual adolescent, and the friend that gives him just enough of a poke to get going. All of the characters in this one are well-written with good arcs (Sid has some pretty cool friends). A little more old school song and dance is Bachna Ae Haseeno, a movie that takes it’s title from a song from one of Ranbir’s dad’s movies. A movie I’ve never seen, so I don’t know why the song was instantly familiar to me. I must have heard it somewhere. It is quite awesome, original or remix. Love the horns. It’s worth taking a look at the original on youtube just for Rishi’s outfit, and the girls in go-go boots. But I digress. This is another very modern story about a young man who gets on the receiving end of rejection and looks up all the girls he’s wronged to apologise. It has its moments (his best friend certainly has some interesting T-shirts). Still, for me, it’s all about that song:

Our first month with Netflix, which put way too many films at our fingertips. I was warned that it could get addictive, but I’m not worried. I only have a few times a week when I can even sit down in front of the TV, and that’s all I’m expecting to do with that time anyway. It’s a tight schedule I have, no possibility for cheating. I’m just enjoying all the options with the time I already have.

Like finally seeing An Affair to Remember. I already know the story from Sleepless in Seattle and from the Bollywood version of this movie (Mann). It holds up well; Cary Grant is of course awesome as hell, and the banter between him and Debra Kerr is top notch.

Oliver putting his own name in the search box brought us to the musical Oliver! with a very, very young Oliver Reed. So that’s where that song came from…

The African Queen is another one I’ve been meaning to see since forever. I loved the little steam boat, and Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn were great.

The Maiden Heist stars Christopher Walken, Morgan Freeman and a super-buff William H. Macy as art musuem security guards who each have one specific work they adore. When a museum in Holland buys their obsessions, they turn thieves to steal what they can’t live without. It’s a quiet little movie, but has so many really wonderful touches about how subjective our reaction to art is. These guys can understand each other’s obsession but can’t quite get the focus of each other’s obsessions (I love Morgan Freeman’s attempt to replicate Christopher Walken’s favorite painting – oh, he didn’t get it at all).

Less compelling was the French film The Ultimate Heist. “Ultimate” here doesn’t mean the heist to end all heists, it just means the last one. So I went in expecting one sort of film and got another. Still, Jean Reno reading a phonebook is worth watching once just to see.

Constant Gardener was about what I expected, a deserved Oscar winner but not a film I expect will be remembered much in ten years. (From my research on slums, it’s my understanding that the slums of Nairobi are by far the worst place to live in the world, and this movie doesn’t scratch the surface of what it’s like. But then what it does show is harrowing enough).

Boondocks Season 3 was just as sharply written, just as lovingly animated, as the first two seasons. I love the way the old Peanuts cartoons’ influence can be felt, especially in the music, and the intrusion of anime elements in a suburban setting always brightens my nerdy little heart. This is one of my favorite shows.

Toy Story 3 was not as good as the first two, but still a fun show. Mr. Potato Head left sans potato, making do with a tortilla, was brilliant, and the character of Ken was a great addition (they never say metrosexual, but it’s implied). Some clever bits and the ending was just perfect, but the minimal influence of the original filmmakers was felt. Also finishing up a series was Shrek the Final Chapter, which also had some elements I liked (like Fiona rescuing herself, and she and Shrek sparring as a prelude to romance. Which it totally is). But on the final score, this is a series that’s gone a bit past it’s best by date. Time to retire it. It’s a Trap!, the final of the Family Guy Star Wars parodies also feels less than fresh, although I loved the Seth Green jokes, and when Mon Mothma shows up and suddenly Leia is no longer the only woman in the galaxy. “I don’t like her,” she says. Yeah, that made me laugh.

Bollywood, y’all. Jawani Zindagi had pretty low production values, which was a shame because I really liked the story, about how dowries suck, and not just for women.

London Dreams had a cool premise: Amadeus done as two competing rock stars in the same band. Ajay Devgan (who was awesome as the lead in the Hindi version of Othello, Omkara) makes a delicious Salieri, and Salman Khan is the perfect choice for the never serious Amadeus. Sadly, a movie with a plot built around music and who makes it well and who doesn’t needs to have really awesome music, and the songs in this one just didn’t do it. The scene were Khan’s character riffs on Devgan’s snippet of song, playing it in several styles and improving on it a la Mozart, was good, but the songs they were performing before stadium crowds just weren’t the sorts of songs that fill stadiums.

As opposed to Dabangg, which had awesome songs. Plus a sweet little love story, Salman Khan as a policeman with the universally recognized policeman’s moustache, and action scenes that show just how much Salman Khan loved Sherlock Holmes and the Matrix. All that, and Malaika Arora Khan too. There was an episode of Friends where the guys were picking out the names of five celebrities they would sleep with if given the chance and their partners couldn’t object because they were on the list (Ross laminates his, natch). My husband has just one name on his list: Malaika Arora Khan. And he insisted I put this song up on the blog (I was torn between this one and, well, every other song in the movie). It is a great number; Salman Khan looks like he’s having all sorts of fun here.