Well, this is the latest song that caught my fancy. I can't get this out of my head, the tune keeps playing back in a ***king loop.
Song : Summer Wine
Artists : Ville Valo in a Jack Sparrow inspired beard and Natalia Avalon
OST : Das Wilde Leben (The Wild Life)
This song is from the Original Sound Track of the movie Das Wilde Leben, a german film released in english as Eight Miles High. Achim Bornhak's movie focuses on the restless life of Uschi Obermaier, the icon of the 1968 movement in Germany and groupie. At the age of 16, Uschi is bored by her job in a photo lab, but soon becomes the "it girl" of Munich's club scene. When she gets to know Rainer Langhans, they move to Berlin and live in "Kommune 1", the first politically-motivated commune in Germany. While the other occupants claim she isn't political enough, Uschi just wants to have fun, works as fashion model and leads international music stars in temptation...
The movie is an utter waste of time, but this song is pretty good, Mr.Valo's voice makes it so.
yours truly, RA
Genre : Drama, Mystery, Romance, Thriller
Director : Neil Burger
Music : Philip Glass
Cast : Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti, Jessica Biel, Rufus Sewell
Release Date : September 1, 2006
Run Time : 110 min
Storyline:
A young boy in Vienna who is obsessed with learning the art of magic falls in love with a girl who belongs to Austrian royalty. Although the parents forbid them to see each other, they cannot be split apart. Until one day they were found together and separated, causing the boy to leave. He travels the world to learn all that he can of the magic arts. The boy comes back to Vienna, 15 years later, and becomes famous as Eisenhiem the Illusionist. During one of his shows, he meets up with Sophie, his childhood love, who is now the Duchess Sophie, engaged to the Crown prince of Austria, Leopold. When Sophie tells him that her engagement to the prince is not of her choice, and that she still loves him, Eisenheim plots to be with her, even daring to take on the power of the Crown.
The Point is...
A wonderfully acted, nicely polished piece of entertainment, but not made with the passion and drama it deserves. It's hard to say exactly whats missing - the performances are very good, especially Edward Norton is amazing, as well as Giamatti. With an outstanding score by Philip Glass, it is entertaining in an old-fashioned, mystery type of way, and it's beautifully shot. This film will not make cinematic history, win an academy award or even be lauded by the critics, but when compared to the majority of films out there right now, it stands out as good solid entertainment. It does what Hollywood does best, taking you away from all the tiresome simplifications of complex everyday worldly issues and letting you escape, enjoy yourself for an hour and fifty minutes.
Read the full review of 'The Illusionist' at the Popcorn & Cola blog...
Genre : Action, Thriller, Romance.....I don't know, I'm really confused
Director : A.Rajasekar
Music : Harris Jeyaraj (unbelievably bad score)
Cast : Vishal Reddy, Kota Srinivasa Rao, Upendra, Nayantara(why she is in this movie, i'll never understand) and many insignificant characters played by Sudha Chandran, Senthil, Bhramhanandam etc
Storyline
A honest cop who has a bad habit of spewing idiotic dialogues and being accompanied by cheesy 'heroic' background score, has to capture an assassin who keeps killing a line-up of chief minister hopefuls one by one. Along the way, he also has to battle and mouth more dialogues against corrupt politicians, while trying to look clever in his attempts to do so. In the midst of all that, the hero also finds time to strike up a romance with a heroine with whom he has absolutely no chemistry, sing and dance like a fucking idiot in a line-up of crap songs and also do a supposedly comedic scene lifted straight from an earlier super hit Tamil film.
The Point is
Absolute waste of Rs.150 and three hours of my life. If you must watch this piece of crap, download it from the internet.
If you still dare, read the full review of 'Satyam' at the 'Popcorn & Cola' blog...
yours truly, RA
Movie Makers have always seen the potential of sequels, and sequels of sequels. And rightfully so, even a decade back, there have been a good number of movies (or should I say, movie franchises) which have made use of this.
Case in point :
The Friday the 13th series, the Godfather series and who can forget the Star Wars franchise.
But it is only in recent times that movie studios have come to make full use of the sequel mania. Every major Hollywood studio is into making sequels, trilogies and whatnot. Disney, Newline, Revolution, everybody is making them. Why, the Terminator franchise, supposedly the most successful movie franchise till date is gearing up to make a Fourth installment of the Human Vs Computer War.
Even the Indian film industry has woken up to the money machine that the making of movie series are. Granted, you can count on your one hand the number of sequels/trilogies/series ever attempted, but there is definitely an effort, feeble as it may be. One reason for this state of affairs may be the budget, or may be the lack of it. Making a movie series, or the very least, a sequel means serious money, and though budgets for Indian movies are getting higher and higher, they are nowhere near than the typical Hollywood product.
A prime example of this would be the recently hyped to sky high and released "Dhoom 2". The first installment "Dhoom" was itself neither original nor groundbreaking. But it had some things going for it, namely a somewhat taut storyline, good casting, great music and slick editing. While this was the case, one would expect the sequel to be even better, especially as it boasted of a much bigger budget, better music and a fantastic star lineup of A-list actors, bollywood's best. But unfortunately, the movie sucked big time, riddles with so many plot holes that you would think it is a sieve. And some of the characters had no place in the story, wafer thin as it was. The only thing that the movie had going for it was the rocking soundtrack, everything else was just eye-candy, nothing more. And to make matters worse, the makers are planning a third movie in the series.
What I am trying to say is that when everybody and their second cousin is making sequels and trilogies, not everyone is cut out for it. While Hollywood has gotten pretty good at this art, the Indian film industry has a long way to go. Doubly so as in the case of most mainstream Indian movies, they are simply a mish-mash of a pool of Hollywood films or in some cases, a straight copy-paste product. Making sequels/trilogies or a movie series is more than big budgets, big stars and bigger SFX sequences. It is a labor in art, where only a very minuscule percentage come out on top. It would be a favor to us all, and to the grand institution that is cinema, if movie makers realize this before they even think of embarking upon one.
For more, visit the PopCorn & Cola blog.
yours truly, Ar'Nath
