The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Movie Preview

Now if you are a book lover and a regular reader of the thriller action genre of books there's no way that you could have missed reading "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson. This book made the literary circles and the bestseller lists of the world go ga-ga sometime ago.

The plot deals with the case of a young girl who has been missing for 30+ years and how the girl's grandfather hires an investigative journalist to trace the girl. Interspersed with the fact that the journalist himself is in the middle of a career threatening situation and in the company of a maverick young lady detective, the plot has all the elements that a thriller action book should have. An extremely compelling read, and this coming from somebody who had not actually read a book completely in quite a while.

Enough about the book because I could go on and on and my opinions on the book itself could make up yet another blog post by itself, or maybe even more than one because that was how impressed I was with the book. While I first heard that they were about to make an English movie based on this book, I was piqued as the Swedish Movie made on this book was apparently quite a hit and did justice to the complex book that this actually is. The English version stars none other than our very own gritty Daniel Craig. Now with the main character of Mikael Blomqvist being played by Craig, there is no way that I can afford to miss this movie when it does come down to India.

For now the YouTube version of the trailer has to suffice -

Related links

Wikipedia link to the movie

Wikipedia link to the book

Transformers : Dark of the moon - Movie Review

You know you are in for a ride when the movie begins with a panoramic view of the Earth from the other side, the dark side of the Moon. Quite a nice touch there, using the actual dark side of the Moon to mean much more than just literally the dark side of the moon, but then, hey we aren't discussing the philosophical side of this title are we? Because if we are, then that is pretty much the topic of an entirely different post or maybe even a whole blog devoted to that :)


In any case, if you have read my earlier reviews of Transformers and Transformers : Revenge of the Fallen , you can clearly see that I am quite a fan of the Transformers franchise and the characters itself. Something about the fact that these vehicles 'transform' into these awesomely huge robots which kick some serious butt is exciting and takes me back to my teenage days. Having said, I will start this review with the disclaimer that I will tend to be a little biased probably towards making this movie actually sound a lot better than most of the world probably found it to be.


The story begins in 1961 when a Cybertronian spacecraft called the Ark carrying an invention capable of rebuilding Cybertron crashes into the dark side of the Moon. In fact the movie claims that this is the main reason that JFK put all his money and resolve behind getting man on the moon before the Russians did so that they can recover the alien spacecraft and keep it for themselves. I loved this particular distortion of history for cinematic purposes, plus it probably gives a more plausible reason as to why the USA and the Russians were in such a hurry in the 1960s to get to the Moon. It was not like there was water on the Moon in any case :)


The Autobots, while investigating Decepticon activity in Chernobyl come across a fuel cell from the Ark. This in turn leads them to the dark side of the Moon where they find Sentinel Prime, former leader of the Primes guarding the rest of the fuel cells in the Ark. He however is in a coma and Optimus Prime uses the energy from the Matrix of Leadership to revive him and brings him back to Earth.


So far so good. However, it's only after Sentinel Prime lands on Earth that the real plot begins to unravel. Giving that part of the story up in this review would spoil the entire movie for anybody who's not yet watched the movie itself. In any case, suffice to say that good ol' Megatron is back for the party, Chicago as a city is almost wrecked and we have enough and more explosions and stunt sequences to keep the kids happy till they become teenagers.


All in all, this movie turns out to be a stock summer blockbuster just like the earlier two movies in this franchise, albeit marginally better than the second one though. That being said there's nothing really memorable about this instalment though. I guess the novelty kind of wears off and the fact that there's only so many times that you can actually see robots taking each other on in urban settings and get excited about it. In fact what works against this movie is the fact that given that most action movies have these awesome stunt sequences nowadays there's nothing really spectacular or different about this movie that makes it stand out from the rest of the crowd. That being said, if you are a fan of the Transformers franchise and the characters, this movie has enough to keep you excited. What is good about this franchise is that each movie almost seamlessly picks up from where the earlier one ends.


Related links - 
Wikipedia link to the movie
IMDB link to the movie


Trailer - 

Vaanam - Movie Review

While the posters of Vaanam bandied around Anushka dressed glamorously, Bharath posing with a guitar and Simbu in various poses, it gave me the impression that this was a run of the mill masala movie with the usual mass elements such as songs, dances, fights, glamour, etc etc. However, people who actually went to the theatre and watched the movie gave quite decent reviews and asked me to watch it at least once due to the fact that it was quite a different movie, in a nice way.


However, when I did pop in the VCDs into the player I personally didn't expect the movie to be as good as it actually turned out to be. And that's probably why I felt quite refreshed and did quite enjoy the movie as well. Guess having low expectations and having them belied works well in some cases. 


An ensemble cast of Simbu, Bharath, Anushka, Prakash Raj and Saranya make the most of the limited screen time given to each of them. Five different stories of each of these characters, each of them making up a nice short film by itself, each one of them promising to be reasonably good and meaningful by itself and how they all end up converging at the climax makes for an interesting premise.


With movies like these where there is more than one single primary story line, it is quite a tricky job tying up all the loose ends and making a coherent movie. Krish more than manages to do this, and in the process ended up making a nice movie. The one single theme through most of the movie revolves around the difficult circumstances for each one of these characters. 


While Simbu and Saranya are struggling for some money, Prakash Raj is looking for his brother who disappeared three years ago. Anushka wants to get away from the clutches of her villainous pimp, and Bharath is in the process of rediscovering himself. While each one of these story lines pull their weight in the movie, the themes surrounding Prakash Raj and Saranya can probably be made into individual movies by themselves. And kudos to the director Krish and the respective actors that they bring a lot of credibility to these roles with their prowess. 


All in all Vaanam probably was the most under-rated, under-hyped and good movies to hit Tamil movie theatres in a while. A must watch movie for all movie lovers.


Related links
Wikipedia link to the movie


Trailer

Rann - Movie Review

While the buzz created around the entire "Jana Gana Rann" song in the movie Rann helped people realize that Ram Gopal Varma was making a movie around the Hindi News Media and probably also helped draw people into the theaters during the opening weekend, I now know why the movie didn't have even a decent run at the box office, so much so that even I had forgotten about this movie of his until I was reminded of it in quite a funny way, more on that later.


Now any movie which stars Amitabh Bachchan, Ritesh (or is it Ritiesh or Riteish) Deshmukh, Paresh Rawal, Rajat Kapoor, Sudeep (of the Kannada movie industry fame) naturally has high expectations running on it. Add to this mix is the fact that it is directed by RGV, and the expectations are sky-high. Putting aside all the hype and expectations from this crew, the fact that RGV is making a movie which supposedly exposes the politician-businessman-media nexus and whose tag line reads "when a voice of conscience cannot be heard & when democracy is remote controlled", I expected at least some intelligent fare.


Rann, the movie itself is quite pedestrian. And like most of the reviews read (whose links I have pasted down below), I too have to say that the movie reduces itself to the sensationalistic and jingoistic attitude of the Hindi News media which Rann portrays. All in all, this movie is a total waste of time, energy and effort spent in watching it. 


I am not even bothering to go into the plot details of the movie as it would be another waste of time, effort and the energy expended in it. Watch this movie if and only if you are a really big fan of  Sudeep, the Kannada actor. His performance is quite nice and given the level of mediocrity displayed by the rest of the ensemble cast, his performance would qualify as the 'stand-out performance' in this movie. And Rajat Kapoor seriously needs to re-think his roles. He seems to be playing too many of these suave, smooth, nasty businessman-with-dirty-political-connections kinds of roles. I know for a fact that there is more to his repertoire than just that. And what in God's name was Amitabh Bachchan doing in this movie, I fail to comprehend.


PS: Just for the record, I watched it free on Yahoo India's new Movieplex website.


PPS: If you look carefully at the poster, Amitabh seems to be imploring us not to watch the movie at any cost :-)


Related links


Nikhat Kazmi's review for the Times of India
Rajeev Masand's review for IBNLive.com
Mayank Shekar's review for the Hindustan Times
Anupama Chopra's review for NDTV Movies
Wikipedia link to the movie