Happy New Year with Movies ….
Haha It is that time of the year, where each of us decides at some level, "what done is done… Lets start afresh". Yups this is the beginning of another year which was ushered in with news channel screaming how bullish the market is going to be and MTV VJs pondering over who will show the maximum skin this year or have the raunchiest video. Journalists are busy noting down the good and bad points of the year gone by as if it was a homework assignment due every new year beginning. The bad points really mounted up in the last few days when the Tsunami hit South Eastern Asian coastline devastating whatever came in its way. Literaly pouring water over the pending celebrations. But as they say "Life goes on …".
So what about my new year … spent sitting like a bum at home watching for the nth time James Bond trying to explain his "Big Bang" theory to Jinx in the Ice Palace of Gustav Graves. In short watching the telecast of Die another Day on Star movies. Also in the run up and in the aftermath of this momentous occasion (in case you are wondering I am referring to the start of the new year …), I spent my time watching the following movies …
1. Annie Hall - Not my first viewing, never does this pessimistic darkly humourous and yet somehow touching tale of love lose its charm. Woody Allen rules.
2. Garden State - Directed, written and acted in by debutante Zach Braff, this is auteurism at its very best. The movie alternates between very good and very bad, downright blase to outright weird and the end leaves one with the taste that so much more could have been achieved. Decent view though.
3. City of God - Probably the best gangster movie to come out after Godfather. This brazilian flick has a rough realisitic gritty edge to its depection of violence that distinguishes it from the more suave picturization in the Coppola epic. The narrative also adds to the gritty effect. Of the class of the few films which have given me a sucker punch.
4. Before Sunset - After City of God, I was looking for a sweetner to appease the mind before going to sleep (You see I get bad dreams …). Now what I got was a movie I would rank with Casablanca as amomgst the best romantic movies of all time. A sequel to the 1995 movie, Before Sunrise, I think this movie manages to shrink the entire gamut of emotions and actions, from the gauchiness of the introduction to the rants of desperation, into a single conversation between two people in just more than 80 minutes.
An excellent review of the above movie from the current issue of Senses of Cinema is here …
So to end it all, HAPPY NEW YEAR
