Perspectives and perceptions

So like I said in my last post, here are short snippet reviews on the latest K-Dramas I've watched on Netflix: 4) Chocolate - I kept seeing promos/recommendations for this show so I just started watching it one day. The storyline is quite beautiful. It's not a romantic drama even though there's some of it. It's primarily a drama about human relationships and life in general. The two main characters are of a young boy who grows up to be a neurosurgeon (I later watched another show where also the doctors are neurosurgeons, makes me think this is a popular aspirational speciality) while being one of the heirs of a rich family who owns hospital chains, and of a young girl whose life was touched by this boy as a child who grows up to become a chef and their journey is the drama's plot line. This show also focuses a lot of episodes in the context of a hospice. It's shown in a very humane way, but those episodes touched me the most. I was practically crying each time ...

This year has been an interesting year for me so far. Not just because of the coronavirus situation but because of my new found passion for Korean Dramas! So, in February, I decided to watch 'Crash Landing on You' on Netflix with my husband and literally since then I've just immersed myself whole heartedly into everything Korean! I'm right now at the 'obsessing' part, hopefully it'll mature and I'll find a healthy balance soon (or maybe not!). Quick recap of what I've done so far: After binge-watching CLOY multiple times, I joined a Facebook Fan Group for the show, joined Soompi and started reading the CLOY Drama thread and the Hyun Bin & Son Ye-Jin thread . I posted a link to my blog on the FB group and had 1000+ views with 10+ comments. I've shared the blog with multiple friends and family members, all of whom loved reading the blog and most of them then watched the show as well! My husband brought me soju + beer at home and I'm ...

I think all of us remember our first love, we remember what it felt like to have our hearts beat that much faster, the butterflies in our stomach, the obsessing about the words we spoke or didn't speak, and other million details that come along with it. Watching a romantic comedy is supposed to evoke some bit of those memories and just fill you up in this warm, fuzzy feeling that feels like a comforting bear hug (if you like hugs!). A while back I was reading this article about the dearth of good romantic comedies nowadays and it's true, when was the last good romantic comedy you saw? To me the evergreen You've Got Mail, Kate & Leopold, Notting Hill, Sleepless in Seattle are still the classics (yes, I think I crushed on Meg Ryan a lot!). In Hindi movies, I know this divides a lot of people, but I do genuinely think Sonam Kapoor has figured this out. I absolutely loved her Khoobsurat with Fawad Khan. I thought it was funny, contemporary and their chemistry was left me...

Hello you!  It's been a really long time since I blogged. I think I have probably forgotten how to do write in the first place but sometimes when the subject matter is so strong, you can't stop, so here I am, plunging into the water all over again. Maybe this will signal my coming back from the forgotten bookmarks, or maybe it's a one-off thing, but I'm just going to let this play out as it does. :) Happy New Year to you too! :)  I got back from my holidays and my friends made a plan to go watch this movie on the first day of it's release in Singapore. Yup! It's been a while since I've done one of those. The second was they decided that it was high time I got introduced to The Projector ! In the last 1.5yrs since I've been in Singapore, I've never once been to The Projector. If you're from Bombay, think of how Gaiety-Galaxy look like as theatres compared to the flashy multiplexes and combine that with the vibe, character and aesthetic b...

Spoiler Alert: I may talk about scenes from the movie. If you haven't seen the movie, one line advice, go see it. Don't do it alone unless you're the types who watches horror movies because you think they're funny. So, the movie... For some background, I'm not a horror movie person, I haven't seen The Ring or any of those movies, no, not even the Scary Movies (though my friends tell me those are not meant to be classified as "horror"). My last actual horror movie was "Bhoot" which you'd agree was more sound effects than anything substantial. My friends insisted on me watching the interview before the movie, but I thought it would be better to not psyche myself before watching the movie and so I went in with no prior knowledge of what this was about, except that there's a family who moves into a new house and that house is haunted. The movie is excellently made. And you have to know me when I say this, because I was horribly ...

I finally saw this movie! :) Everyone in my circle has been raving about this movie and I've been meaning to watch it for a long time, and today, with my mom in town, we finally ended up going for it! Like the many friends who faithfully kept their end of the bargain and didn't divulge anything about the movie but the fact that I must go and watch it, I find it hard to actually tell you why you must watch it! But have no fear. This review is not going to spill the beans. So what the kahaani of kahaani is you have to find out for yourself because you're not getting that here. At least not for another month till most of you have seen it and it's gone out of the theatres. The movie is set in Calcutta, and not Kolkata, because it is set in those parts of Calcutta that in my eyes can never be called anything else. Thanks to V I've got this fascination for that city and for Bengali, which basically means, I had a silly smile plastered on my face for most parts of the ...

Frankly I have other movies to write reviews on; After Agneepath I've seen The Descendants, Ek Mein Aur Ekk Tu and The Artist, two of which I thoroughly enjoyed and want to write good reviews for (no points for guessing!) but today's movie (the one on which this post is centered) was just sooo bad that I had to write a review on it. Even though it's past midnight and you've probably never even heard of this movie before. Anyway. Taking a deep breath. I shall proceed to tell you in not too much detail about why you should NOT ever ever watch this movie! In my hall of shame, this movie is down there with the likes of Transformers 3! I mean seriously! So, Speedy Singhs (featuring Anupam Kher, Russell Peters and Vinay Virmani) I hadn't heard of the later but he's kind of cute. But that's where it ends. Story? (Haha really? You want to know?) I'm going to try and not be so sarcastic but I so badly want to. I want to stand in front of Anupam Kher and hear so...

I've been on a tremendous backlog of movie reviews having suddenly seen so many of them in quick succession! Bare with me while I attempt to jot down all that I wanted to say about these movies, however late I might be. :) So first up, Agneepath. Unfortunately I haven't seen the original or at least I don't have any memory of seeing it so I'm not going to be able to do a fair comparison of this vs that, but then again, maybe that's a bonus point for the new movie because I've gone in with no expectations and no biases. Though to state the obvious, every person I've spoken to about this movie, says that the original was better, but the remake is quite good too. Storyline? Family of three, mother, father and son living in Mandwa, a tiny village at the coast of Maharashtra. The father's a progressive masterji and runs the school in the village, encouraging the villagers to stand up for their rights and protect themselves against the general tyrannies...

Rarely have I gone and seen a movie on the first day of its release. By chance yesterday it was MI4. To give me the benefit of doubt, I haven't seen the previous movies but I'm guessing that shouldn't make my review biased. On the whole, I felt the movie was a lot of brawn and no brain. And the action was great, but I didn't come out feeling wow. First of all, my expectations were dashed when I booked tickets for an Imax screen, expecting a 3D experience! :P Clearly I didn't read the poster too well. That apart, the movie was fast-paced, kept you hooked, had some punchy dialogues here and there, and around average acting from everyone else. Tom Cruise was good, I mean he was great, but somehow my response was more on the lines of, 'At this age, he's doing this stunts, that's a WOW' Maybe I'm being scathing, maybe I'm being overcritical, maybe you would like it, but I was not so happy. The underlying plot without revealing much is that Tom...

Sitting at home, watching a great fun movie on a lazy Saturday, what could be better? Perfect life. Today I saw Chillar Party. So many months after it had released and boy what a movie! Absolutely loved it. A fun, light-hearted (though the amount of tears I shed are contrary to that), kiddy movie with a sweet purpose. It was like watching Stanley Ka Dabba only it was a lot more fun. :) Bunch of kids with nicknames staying together in a colony get introduced to a new kid who's come to wash their parents' cars. Only, this kid has brought man's best friend along with him, bhidu , an amiable stray. The kids whose team is called 'chillar party' begin to view this intrusion as precisely that and proceed to being mean to him. When one of their pranks go a little too far, they feel guilty for their mistakes, and they apologize. After that, the team has a new member, Fatka. Together they play, and they win many battles. Whether the battles were to make the kids realize the...

After the first two movies, I guess I had some high expectations. Big mistake. The second movie was obviously an exception. Sequels never work. (Except when they're in the form of HP or LOTR, except in both those cases, the story was already laid out! So it wasn't so much the director's thought process that made it work, anyways, will try not to digress) This movie seems like a product of a late night drinking session amongst some buddies, okay let's throw in some autobots that we have, let's bring back megatron, lets throw out megan fox, and replace her with someone, okay now that sam's done with college, we must show some progress, okay let's make him jobless. oh and where are his parents? let's send them on a tour and have them stop by for a drink! Hmm... so what should the story be? Ah, Independence Day was a success years ago, let's try and recreate that! I mean seriously, what was this movie?! Ideally it doesn't even deserve space on my...

My close friend warned me not to see this movie alone, she knew it would get to me in some weird way and I was stupid not to follow her advice. If you have any iota of self-doubt, if you have any streak in you of a perfectionist, don't watch this movie alone. Very few movies manage to leap out of the characters, out of the story and get to you. They grip you like nothing ever has, and they just sort of hurt you for real. This movie does precisely that. The movie starts in a dream that Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) has. She's playing the white swan. Nina is a ballerina in a dance company. Her mother, a failed ballerina herself, drives her daughter relentlessly in the hopes of having her life her own dreams. Ballet, is a dance form that requires years and years of effort and because of this, it requires not just physical strength from the dancers, but instead immense emotional and mental strength. To be able to stand on your toes might be easy, but to stand all the pressure, th...

So thanks to some prodding from my friend Shri, I decided to go watch this movie today. I'm not upset I did, but I'm certainly not happy. It was sort of like watching Love, Sex aur Dhokha in a way. Graphic, very close to reality, and loud. The movie begins with Anurag Kashyap saying that it's a just a movie and that he doesn't support the use of drugs, drinking and driving and that it's a fictional story which is debatable because like Dev D he used an actual incident as one of the pivotal moments in the movie, in this case the moment is when 5 kids high on coke, drinks, and generally on life, speed across town and in one of the turns end up killing two people who were on a scooter. They were driving a Hummer. Anyways, to come back to the timeline of things, the movie begins by shocking you. I know I've watched a number of movies which involve sequences of kisses in front of my parents / relatives without flinching. But I would not be able to watch this movi...

Okay so I've been on a rom-com movie watching spree lately. I have these mood swings in which I can't stand to watch anything non-fictional. I love watching happy endings and feeling all mushy-mushy. So I had this movie and hadn't seen it till now. I read up some reviews on IMDB and it sounded like my kind of a movie. The movie transcends through time and is told in a very beautiful fashion. About the lives of two lovers who meet when they were 17-18 and talks about how their lives span out. Allie Hamilton, beautifully essayed by Rachel McAdams, is the only daughter of a millionaire who comes to the town of Seabrook to spend her summer break. Noah, played by Ryan Gosling, is a worker at the local log factory. He happens to see Allie at the carnival night and finds himself immediately attracted to her. He pursues her and finally wins her over by getting her to agree on going out with him. He shows her what it is to be really free, to do things because you want to do the...

I'd had this movie for many months and for some reason it never seemed like the right time to watch it. Today, after having a lazy day... It seemed like the right time to watch a musical. What a beautiful movie! I'm kind of disappointed that it was over so soon. For those who haven't seen it, here's what it is all about. The movie is based on the book by Margaret Landon, Anna and the King of Siam which was later turned into a successful Broadway musical which ran for some 4000+ shows and a movie, which is The King and I. There have been many versions of this movie and I saw the 1956 one with Deborrah Kerr and Yul Brynner. The movie opens with the arrival of an englishwoman Anna Leonowens (Deborrah Kerr) and her son Louis to the land of Siam, now Thailand in the city of Bangkok. She has been appointed by the king to tutor the royal children in a scientific and secular education in which the tutors before her had failed. She's shown to be a beautiful, strong woman...

Yes I'm one of those people who hadn't seen this movie up until today! My roommate gave me the movie to watch just today... and I saw it! What a movie! I've always loved movies which take the base of sports to convey something more than just sportsman spirit... Like one of my all time favorites is Remember the Titans. Another favorite is The Miracle. This movie brought to light so many things that I wasn't aware about before... It made me go back to Wiki and read up on Nelson Mandela, on the Apartheid, on the struggles, the massacres and the growth of that nation. They've gone through so much in the last two decades, it's amazing! Morgan Freeman has won my respect and admiration all over again. He's such a perfect actor for almost all roles. But in today's movie he was the best. He fit the bill. He was inspirational. The time when Matt Damon walks into the prison at Robben Island, it was so moving to see the kind of circumstances in which he spent 18...

Today thanks a friend of mine I watched this beautiful animated movie Waltz with Bashir and what an amazingly well made movie. It's set in the times of the Lebanon Civil War and the Sabra and Shatila massacre . Directed by Ari Folman it's actually his true story. The characters in the movie are real people with whom Ari fought in the war. It talks about the post trauma disorder in a way because of the kind of memories that have been left on the characters in Ari's life. Depicted with animations which are more like comic strips and the use of dark colors, the mood of the film is very dark. It starts with one friend who comes to Ari talking about the nightmares he's been having and how they're related to the kind of things he'd done while being out at war. That sets the ball rolling in Ari's head where he's trying to piece together his role in the massacre, because although he has images of that, he does not recall anything to do with that day. He then t...

I must've been in school, maybe 13-14 years old, when I first saw an episode of Charmed. I used to follow it regularly always trying to avoid missing any show. The show was about three sisters, who are actually witches in the modern world and must learn the witchcraft in order to protect innocents by fighting off demons and other evil magical creatures. I think I must've followed the series for about a year and then lost track of it. I kept trying to hunt for it, but to no avail. Until I came to Hyderabad! Why, you might ask? Well because I discovered SurfTheChannel.com thanks to my friend at work, Anaisha. :) And voila! There it was 170 episodes with links to either Megavideo / Tudou to watch them. It took me nearly 7 months to finish these episodes mind you. :) Haha! But I did see them all. Though as the seasons went by there were fewer links available and a lot of times they just didn't stream. I'm planning to buy the complete DVD series, but I think I'll hold o...