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How the fuheck does The Merchant of Venice get labeled a comedy? Sure, it gets a bit farcical at times, and mercy (apparently) triumphs over revenge in the end and what not, but seriously? Didn’t Shylock deserve the right to kick Antonio’s butt seven ways to Tuesday? The key moment, for me, is his wonderful…
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What is this fascination for intelligence officers in mainstream Indian cinema these days? There was Agent Vinod, a secret agent who seemed to get caught so often and in so many countries that he clearly ought to have picked a different line of business. And Ek Tha Tiger, whose ridiculousness was redeemed by the fact that the…
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A CIA agent manages to help six Americans stranded in Iran by making them impersonate a Canadian film crew scouting for locations for a Star Wars-esque sci-fi action extravaganza named Argo. Now, this is Iran at a time when Khomeini has just ascended to power, and anti-American sentiment is at its peak. And these guys…
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Caution: Mildly spoilerific. Is there a better Bond movie theme song than Skyfall? Tina Turner’s Goldeneye comes a very close second, but I think that’s about it. Adele’s voice singing This is the end… is as mesmeric as Nancy Sinatra’s Bang Bang (He shot me down) in Kill Bill Vol. 1. And the visuals! As soon as I…
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There were moments during Skyfall when I wondered: How did they ever manage without Judi Dench? How many actresses can you think of who can recite Alfred Lord Tennyson and say “Take the bloody shot!” with the same amount of gravitas? George Orwell once said something to the effect that by the time he’s fifty, a…
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There is so much in Student of the Year that falls in the spectrum between blech and meh that it is a pleasant surprise when something manages to grab me by the short hairs. That moment comes towards the end, when Kayoze Irani lets his teacher have it with both barrels. It’s not so much…
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… appears in a Rajni movie called Kazhugu. The film itself contains such wonders as human sacrifice conducted in a large room containing massive statues of Rameses (looking like he’s undergoing a colonoscopy), fistfights involving large men seemingly made of steel (imagine a cross between Jaws from The Spy Who Loved Me and Fat Bastard from Austin Powers: The…
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Dear S. S. Rajamouli Apparently, Snoop Dogg reconnected with Bob Marley’s spirit on a visit to Jamaica and is now Marley reincarnated. In other, possibly related but equally weird news, he’s renamed himself Snoop Lion. Not only do you now have the basis for a sequel to your successful recent venture involving bigger animals, you…
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Here’s the thing: I suspect Christopher Nolan didn’t want to make this movie at all, or even if he did, I don’t think he wanted it to be about Batman fighting the bad guys. Long passages in the film feel like a meditation on the nature of superheroism. The tone is so bleak, only thing…
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You know that black screen with white lettering that appears before nearly every movie these days? The one that tells you that smoking and drinking is bad for you? Cocktail is the first one I’ve seen where, not only does it say there for a while, there’s actually a voice-over that reads it out. And…
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