"Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown" or should I rephrase it "Forget it, it's CIA"

I  recently saw the movie "The Ghostwriter" made by Roman Polanski. It brought  my memories of Polanski's other movie "Chinatown".This blog is not a review but is about  interesting observations and similarities i found in these two movies and style of Polanski's narration.

 "Chinatown" was a classic political drama with a unique story telling in the film noir genre. 25 years have passed and "The Ghostwriter" somewhat possessed a similar storyline. The politics of real estate was transformed to ever-controversial Iraq war in this movie. Both the movies contained part mystery and part political drama.

Ghostwriter, played by Ewan Mcgregor, was hired to complete the memoir of Ex-British PM Adam Lang,played by Pierce Brosnan, when the previous writer and PM's aide dies in a mysterious circumstances. Ghostwriter reaches the island where Lang is staying currently at that moment. At that moment Lang is accused of  handing over suspected terrorists who were also British nationals to CIA. International Criminal court accepts the criminal case against Lang. Through memoirs and other clues left by his predecessor, Ghostwriter suspects that Lang may be a CIA agent since 70s.

Ghostwriter is similar to character Jack Nicholson played in Chinatown who unknowingly becomes part of sinister plot and refuses to let it go. Olivia Williams,  Lang's wife  in "The Ghostwriter" and  Faye Dunaway's character in "Chinatown" were developed in same manner with both getting involved romantically with the Lead Character. These female lead characters were strongly written and developed. The antagonists had a limited screen space but the way John Huston played Noah Cross in "Chinatown" made it to be considered as one of the hated villain characters in history of cinema, which couldn't be replicated by Tom Wilkinson in "Ghostwriter". However the twist in "Ghostwriter" is revealed at the end while "Chinatown" reveals the plot in the middle.

Both the movies ended  in the same pessimist note and somewhat reflected the style of Polanski's works. He always explored the psychological side of all the characters. His characters were always close to reality and storyline is inspired from actual events. However it is difficult to attain cult status like Polanski's movie like "Chinatown" and "Pianist".

Polanski is one of my favorite director of 70s' along with Martin Scorsese. I hope i can write on Martin Scorsese one day.

Review : UP IN THE AIR

10 million miles is too huge distance is too huge distance to travel. How much time you need to travel that distance? Ask Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), he knows it since he had done it.

 

Ryan Bingham's firm has expertise in firing the people from their jobs. Company which want to get downsized gives contract to Ryan Bingham's firm to fire people without creating any hassles and complications for that company. Ryan Bingham travels for 321 days across the country firing the people and enjoys the luxury of preferential treatment he gets while traveling. His target is to attain mileage of 10 million air miles. In one of his assignments, Ryan meets Alex (Vera Farmiga). Their meeting leads to a casual relationship between them. One day, Ryan's firm decided to adopt cost-cutting measures by grounding all its on-road employees. Now the company wants to use the technology to fire people just by sitting in Omaha, the location of Ryan's office. This idea is brainchild of Natalie (Anna Kendrick) who has just joined the company. Ryan doesn't agree with this idea since it is difficult to connect with to-get-fired employees emotionally and psychologically through internet. Ryan's boss tells him to take Natalie with him in further assignments so that she can learn the tricks.

The best moments of movie begin from here with Natalie's boyfriend breaking off with her through text message. More hilarious moments follows. Also it appears that Ryan and Alex’s casual relationship is leading to somewhere. After few downsizing assignments, Ryan's boss decides that Natalie has learned enough to do the job herself. So it is the best time for Natalie to use her idea of technology in doing the assignment. Since Ryan has been grounded, he thinks of all his relationships and tries to reconnect with them. He attends his sisters’ marriage along with Alex and also tries to give a surprise to Alex by visiting her home in Chicago.

The end part of the movie begins here with unraveling of twists leading to interesting climax.

 

All the characters were well sketched. Each of the main actors deserves an Oscar nomination, though it is tough for them to win, due to presents of strong contenders. The role of Ryan Bingham was tailor made for Clooney. Vera Farmega underplayed her character and did full justice to it. Anna Kendrick was awesome and most likable character of all.

First half of movie was funny and sarcastic. It helped to build the second half. Second half was more intense. It builds the sympathy for the character of Ryan though everyone want to hate him for job he does.

The music and the songs were beautiful, especially the song shot during the Ryan's sisters wedding.

The dialogues and screenplay was brilliant. Some of the dialogues will become cult. The one dialogue which will always remain in my mind is “Loyalty is not cheap”

My Rating: 3/5

ISHQIYA- Review

Vishal Bharadwaj has been referred to as India’s Quentin Tarantino. But figuratively speaking, in ISHQIYA , the writing of Bhardwaj is 'hatke', but no way closer to Tarantino's style.

The structure of the film is as follows:
Act1: Setup
The film begins with Krishna (Vidya Balan) who is married and in love with Vidhyadhar Verma. One night a gas cylinder bursts in their house killing -Verma. 
Faraway, Khalujaan (Naseeruddin Shah) and Baban (Arshad Warsi) escape from the clutches of Mushtaqbhai and run away with the heist money. They reach Gorakhpur  to take Verma’s help to cross the border. They stay as a guest in Verma 's house on request of his widow, Krishna. However, Mushtaqbhai traces them and gives deadline to return money. Krishna coaxes them to be part of a kidnapping plan she has devised.

Act2: Confrontation
They plan to kidnap an industrialist for a ransom and successfully kidnap him. Meanwhile both of them fall in love with Balan. This causes friction among the duo. Krishna ditches them both when they were fighting with each other.

Act3: Resolution
If I narrate this part, I will be guilty of playing as a spoilsport. I found this part of the movie to be weakest among three. In any other film this climax could be called as great but here it is not up to the mark set by previous 2 acts of the movie.

Every character in this movie has been sketched brilliantly with each character  having subtle gray shade.
The movie was not a conflict between good and evil. Instead it is a conflict between wronged person and wrongdoer.

Naseeruddin Shah is brilliant as always.  Post-Munnabhai, it is one of the best movies of Arshad Warsi. Vishal Bharadwaj's movies always have strong leading women. Vidya balan is seductive as well as docile.

The movie is directed by debutant director 'Abhishek Choubey' but not in the single frame of the movie, his inexperience could be found out. The song  'Dil to baccha hai ji' is brilliantly shot.

The dialogues are funny, though some are crude. All the characters are talking in MP-UP accent.
The music is incredible and the all the songs have become hit.


My Rating: 3/5

IMDB: Every "Movie-Watcher" Counts

Generally in every decade, film institutes, film critics and magazines list out the “best films of decade”, “best films of all-time”. Lists vary from each other, though some films are common to all those lists.  Not all those films are commercial hits, nor films which are the viable commercially are present in those lists. So many movie-watchers (not necessarily the followers) remain skeptic of those lists.

If the film is released today, do we have to wait for another decade to know the where does the film stand in comparison to other great films. You may argue that released movies are rated in the first week itself my multiple critics. Though movie is rated, it is not ranked. The movie may be great for that summer or that period, but can that movie be compared to the great cinema of past or withhold its greatness with passing time.

The movie is declared blockbuster purely based on their box-office success. The box-office success is nothing but is somewhat proportional to the people who have watched the movie in theaters. This means, the movie-watchers of future generation will not be able to contribute to its box-office success. So we can say, the decisive power to declare a movie great lies with the people who have time and ability to watch it in theaters when the movie was released. Does it appear fair?

People have to pay first, then are allowed to watch the movie. This means, irrespective of movie, they are contributing to its greatness. Instead, if people are allowed to pay after they watch the movie proportional to their liking, then this will help to judge the movie in true sense, though it sounds foolish.

So, there is a need for a system, where movie viewers must have the power to judge the movie after they watch it and make their voice heard. The system should have ability to allow the recently released movie to be included in their overall ratings and ranking.

Have you heard about IMDb?  IMDb stands for Internet Movie Database. It is the database in real sense as it has information nearly of all the movies made. It allows the registered users to rate any movie. The users vote gets counted, if they have at least voted for 5 movies

The formula for calculating the ratings of movies by using  Bayesian estimate :  (Source:www.imdb.com)

       Weighted Rating(WR) = (v / (v+m)) * R+(m/(v+m)) * C
where

• R = average for the movie (mean) = (Rating)
• v = number of votes for the movie = (votes)
• m = minimum votes required to be listed in the Top 250 (currently 3000)
• C = the mean vote across the whole report (currently 6.9)

(For the Top 250 movies, only votes from regular voters are considered.)

The advantage of this system is that it considers serious voters, and also has no time frame for voting. It allows voting for any movie any time. It periodically (thankfully, not a decade) refreshes the list, after considering new votes. As number of votes increase, the movie drifts toward its nearly true rating.

Each user is entitled to one vote only for each movie. he has the liberty to change it whenever he thinks so. Because ,the viewer may like particular movie instantly and give higher rating, later he may realize that particular movie is not entitled to such high rating. Similarly, viewer initially may not understand a movie and give lower rating but as his understanding of movie increases, he may want to increase the rating.

This rating system gives decisive power to people who have seen movies in DVDs and television. So this list is not a mere reflection of list of high-grossing films (Blockbusters).

Thus this rating system can be considered to be closest to what can be called as people's choice. Not Surprisingly, this list and "critics  choice" list has lot of common names as compared to "blockbuster movie" list and "critics choice" list.

If you rated a particular movie will low score but it  is present in top movies list, don't get disappointed, because your vote may have contributed in bringing down the median score of that movie.

Note: I am not a PR guy for IMDb.I was inspired to write this blog when I came across few discussion forums in imdb.com where people were discussing the credibility of list since their personal favorites were not in the list. 

Individual rating counts, but only when it is a part of overall rating.