Seen During March 2013 but did not find specific mention here

1. Once Upon a Time In Mumbai (Ajay Devgan, Imran Hashmi, Kangana Ranaud, Prachi Desai)
2. Chance Pe Dance (Shahid Kapur, Genelia)
3. Ajab Prem Ki Gajab Kahani (Ranbir, Katrina)
4. Paa (Amitab, Vidyabalan)
5. Zindagi Na Milegi Dubara (Hritik, Farhan Akhtar,Abhay Deol, Katrina, Kalki Koechlin)

English Movies

1. Horribl Bosses
2. He's is just not into you
3. We bought a zoo.
4. Just Go With It

Django Unchained (2012)

Seen on 28-03-2013 @ GVK
       Went all the 16+ miles plodding through the afternoon traffic and trying to figure out my way to the destination and worrying being late bec I once entered the wrong way and had to go a long  long way to retrace back to the right way.  But all this could have been worthwhile, but it ended up being an expensive misadventure for me.
        Vinay and I had agreed that this was a potboiler set in  antebellum  South, with a very gifted cast: Christoph Waltz (who went on to get an Oscar for supporting role), Jamie Foxx and DiCaprio.  I felt that while Waltz (whom I remember fr Inglorious Basterds) deserved his Oscar, I doubted if the same could have been said of Quentin Tarantino who won it for original script (it could be my fault that I failed to appreciate the merits of the script: the good points of the script were probably missed bec most of the time the accent made it strenuous and difficult to follow the conversation)

Adjustment Bureau (2011)

Seen on 25-3-13
Cast: Matt Damon and Emily Blunt
Director: George Nolfi
       The dramatic element in this innovative film comes from a conflict between man's free will as against agents of per-destination who try to force him into compliance while he pursues his love interest in defiance of their diktat.  According to these agents of destiny (remember this film is cast in the mould of a sci-fi thriller) a young Congressman named David Norris is not supposed to meet (even if by chance) and fall in love with a charming ballet dancer. So they warn him that if he exercises his free will in defiance of the fated plan of his life (which totally excludes the chance occurrence of his love), his personality will be reset by erasing all his memory.  But he persists in his desperate love by trying to find a ways to circumvent the plan of his life and its enforcers.  He wins.  This is an old concept finding a very original enthralling means of dramatization.

Just Go With It (2011)

Seen on 22-3-13
Cast: Adam Sandler, Jennifer Anston
A comedy that revolves round young plastic surgeon trying to woo a girl and in the process ending up falling in love with his own secretary!

The Next Three Days (2010)

Seen on 21-3-13
Cast:  Russell Crowe, Elizabeth Banks
          When his wife is incarcerated on murder charges and all hopes of acquittal in courts disappear, the husband desperately decides on an elaborate plan to get her escape from prison.  His attempts and his eventual success is the stuff of a riveting afternoon.

Knight and Day (2010) & Ek tha Tiger (2012)

Seen on 16-3-13 & 17-3-13 respectively
      These two are bracketed together because of similarity of theme.  In both there is a rogue spy pursued by their organizations on the one hand and thug on the other.  And in the end both the spies are taken in bec of their basically good intentions.  Both sport top of the draw actors of Hollywood and Bollywood: in one Tom Cruise & Catherine Zete Jones, and in another Salmon Khan & Katrina Kaif.  Since both were seen on two successive days, we were able to compare them and the over all impression was the  Bollywood movie was the more probable, convincing and plausible!!

Week Fr 10 to 15

1. Zero Dark Thirty (2012):  Saw it in Padmavati theater.   The sound system being good, did not miss anything of this fast paced movie.  It is all about the long drawn out investigation to track down Osama Bin Laden and it probably deserved the host of Oscar Nominations.  But equally justifiable was the only one Oscar win for sound editing it ended up with!  We certainly expected more from Kathryn Bigelow who earlier won 2 Oscars for Direction and Best film (Hurt Locker).
I was certainly disappointed that the whole climactic scene of invasion of  Osama's hideout was shown in invisible darkness; I mean, it could have been shot in visible darkness using appropriate photographic techniques.  What was the point of it if we couldnt see the most important action of the film?
2. The Interpreter (2010):  Cast: Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman.  About a UN interpreter of South African origin seeking protection from threat to her life surprising us finally by turning to be an assassin herself--one with whom we relate and resonate because she was trying to kill a visiting African dictator who wiped all her family back home.   It was a good sleek thriller.
3. State of Play (2009):  Cast: Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Helen Mirren.  Riveting.  About an investigative reporter (Russell Crowe) discovering his friend-Congressman's complicity in the murder of his mistress.  It is also about how big Corporations use Congressmenex to help them earn illegal billions in corrupt deals.  Very exciting.
4. Polar  Express:

Krishnam Vande Jagadgurum (2012)

Watched on 10-3-13 on Maa TV
           Although we had seen both Gamyam and Vedam (and liked them for their  out-of-box approach),  we didn't know at that time they were by the same director, Krish, who also made Krishnam Vande Jagadgurum.  If we had known it, we wouldn't have missed it when it was shown in the theaters. When we discovered this on the incomparable reality show, Padutha Thiyaga, we waited all week for the Sunday when it was sceduled to be shown on Ma TV.
            Although it turned out to be bit of a disappointment with its populist item numbers, violence and its loud histrionics, we could yet discern the elements that nearly made them up with its fine directorial touches like casting the protagonist in the now dying tribe of Surabhi  artist or making the movie resonate with its contemporary theme of mining mafia, etc.  Here one begins to see why good filmmakers are forced to bow to the box office concerns; after all is said and done, no one expects producers pour in millions in good cinema for nothing.  Kitsch is the tragic condition of backward places.
           But compare this we must with Krish's two earlier films we saw and the result  is not heartening.

Fair Game (2011)****

Seen on 07-03-13 on Pix
--Stumbled upon one heck of a movie.
--the movie suggests the  possibility that the invasion of Iraq might have been a costly and terrible mistake.  What if it was  such a mistake?  Well, all the thousands killed in it and the injustice of it all would force the people responsible for the decision into dock. The film version, based on books by Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson, is beautifully summed up thus by the film critic, Roger Ebert:
        "Doug Liman's "Fair Game," based on books by Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson and starring Sean Pennand Naomi Watts, is unusually bold for a fictionalization based on real events. Using real names and a good many facts, it argues: (1) Saddam Hussein had no WMD; (2) the CIA knew it; (3) the White House knew it; (4) the agenda of Cheney and his White House neocons required an invasion of Iraq no matter what, and (5) therefore, the evidence was ignored and we went to war because of phony claims."
         If the  film version of the ghastly Iraqi war was true, Bush administration fought hard to defend itself.  What comes through the film is the tension and hard battle the couple had to put up in order to defend their honor.  It was an unequal fight.  Although the Bush administration disgraced them for exposing his grave mistake, the couple had the moral victory.
         We were deeply affected by this film.

Spy Game (2001)

Seen on 06-03-13 on Pix
--until way past middle, we didn't realize we had seen this already  and liked it too. But we enjoyed seeing it again without quitting after the realist ion.
--In the CIA culture of international espionage, local help is picked up, personal relationships cultivated and treated as "assets" and, when it becomes necessary, ruthlessly sacrificed without qualms.  Brad Pitt who has  Boy Scout background is picked up in Vietnam war (for his sharp shooter skills and intelligence) to train as  a CIA operative.  He successfully performs several missions in several countries, but in the process he falls in love with a woman while in Bierut.   He also decides to quit CIA bec he doesn't like the brutal code of sacrificing the "assets" when it suits the Agency.  At this point when his girl friend is taken a prisoner in China (CIA doing?  Yes?), he goes on a personal mission of rescuing her but gets caught himself.
     It is from this point of present that the film narrative focuses on.  Robert Redford, Brad Pitt's superior who is retiring that day is under no obligation to do any thing to rescue him (bec that was a personal mission Brad Pitt went on), although he is scheduled to be executed within 24 hrs, but he does care.  And on his last  day with CIA, Redford pulls all stops, all underhand means even which could get him  court-marshaled (one of which includes forging of CIA director's signature, coupled with using all his life's savings to have his protege and his girl friend rescued from Chinese execution.
     The film is all about vindication of allegiance, loyalty and commitment in relationships in the utmost extremities of life's crises.  AND IT IS MADE VERY EXCITING.