Religulous – Review

Religulous is a movie/documentary on religion by Larry Charles who was the director of one of the worst movies ever made in my opinion, namely, Borat. For this very reason, I was a little apprehensive about watching this movie. However, the fact that it starred one of my comedy heroes, Bill Maher and that it took a negative look at one of my pet peeves, religion was enough for me to give it a try. And I am very glad I did, the movie was excellent. I had expected the movie to be very funny, irreverant and vitriolic about religions. Suprisingly it is much more respectful than I had imagined it would be. Interestingly enough, this works in the favor of the movie. And the reason it works is that you don’t need to do anything special with the religious nuts to generate laughter, they tend to say stupid things on their own. And the movie is full of such moments.

Bill Maher goes around the country talking to “religious folks” and trying to create doubt if possible. Maher looks at threeof the major world religions, Christanity, Judaism and Islam and the goal is to convince people of the absurdity of religious practices and texts. The goal of the movie is to try and convince people that doubt is OK. Not knowing all the answers about God, about our life, after-life is also OK. What is dangerous is following religions that claim to have these answers and that too with certanity when it is obvious that they don’t.

Now I have watched Bill Maher for years now and agree with pretty much everything he says. But a few things really caught my attention in the movie.

1. When he says that not having faith is a luxury not everyone can afford. This is something every atheist needs to keep in mind when we ridicule organized religion.
2. When he equates orgainized religion with mass hysteria.
3. The bit about how using religion as a crutch allows us to ignore our duties and responsibilities as world citizens. Let us not worry about oil, global warming, war, terror because some GOD somewhere is taking care of it for us.

I will not give away any more of the movie than I already have but I would HIGHLY recommend it. 5 stars.

Entertainment like never before

As the legend says, “There for the grace of GOD, goes Rajnikanth”. So without further ado, and with great pleasure, I direct you to my good friend S’s blog. Do watch the video.

http://speculator2investor.blogspot.com

Do not be fooled by the blog URL, the only thing you will be speculating about after watching the video is the laws of physics.

A little bit of Bollywood

If you remember, a long time ago I had expressed my disillusionment with Hollywood and my increasing admiration for Bollywood. Bollywood for the longest time has been making formulaic, melodramatic movies. The song and dance types. While they had their own charm, I have been more and more impressed by the new age Bollywood movies. And I do not mean the Karan Johar, Farah Khan, block-buster bullshit. I am talking about movies most people do not even know about. Movies which do not usually have big stars but have good stories to tell. Here a few of the best I have seen in the last few years.

1. Tango Charlie.
A hugely under-appreciated movie. I always thought Bobby Deol had excellent script sense (his only talent). This is a movie about the Bodo insurgency in Assam and the story of a soldier who never really wanted to be a soldier. It has an excellent script and some scenes that will shake you up. I would really, really recommend this movie with one warning. It is a little bloody.

2. Black Friday.
A very well-done dramatization of the Bombay bomb blasts that happened in 1993. It is a story every Indian needs to see and hear. The destruction of the Babri Masjid, the resultant Islamization of the Indian mafia and their role in the Bombay bomb blasts are  honestly depicted.

3. Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Limited.
A non-intense, non-serious movie for a change. Story of six couples on a road trip to Goa. Very funny, quirky and a lot of fun. As a side note, I saw this with a guy friend of mine since we could not get tickets for Black Friday. All around us were couples. Boy, did I feel gay !

4. Iqbal.
A story of a poor, deaf and dumb cricketer who dreams of playing cricket for India. This is your usual feel-good movie. What makes it stand out is brilliant direction and superb performances by the lead actors.

5.  Johnny Gaddar
A classic crime caper full of twists and turns. You have to watch it to see how good it is. Bonus points for Dharam paaji pulling a Harrison Ford, “It is not the age, it is the mileage”

6. Bheja Fry
I have never seen a movie more aptly named. Vinay Pathak in one of the greatest roles essayed in modern Bollywood. I am very partial to comedies and this is one of the best I have seen in a while

 There are so many more that are worth a mention like Chak De India, Dhoka, Hat-Trick, Ek Haseena Thi, Ab Tak Chappan, Metro, Gandhi-My Father, Manorama-Six Feet Under etc. I feel a bit sad that Bollywood is still thought of as a song and dance industry. But it is not an unfair depiction. Even today most of our big budget movies are fluffy romances with 10 songs and big stars. And no substance. Movie gems like the ones I mentioned above generally go un-noticed. Hopefully, if some of you go ahead and watch a few of these movies, this post would be worth it.

A little bit of movies

Now for a little lightness I was watching the movie As Good as it Gets yesterday. I really like that movie, even though it is of a genre I do not usually enjoy. It is a quirky, romantic, feel-good comedy with all the cliches in the world. It even has the token gay guy. I think this movie started that trend. The reason I love this movie is that rarely do you find a movie with two great actors who fit their roles so perfectly. See this movie and you will know what I mean. It seems like Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt were put on earth to play the lead in the movie.

That got me thinking of actors that fitted their characters like a glove. Here is my top 10 (12 if you count Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt)

Jim Carrey in The Mask
The greatest role ever played by any actor. PERIOD. The movie is nuts and Carrey is nuttier. It is a sacrilege that the Oscars do not take comedies seriously. Without him, the movie could not have been made.

Russell Crowe as Maximus in Gladiator.
Amazingly intense actor in the role of his lifetime.

Kevin Spacey in Usual Suspects.
Cannot say nething without giving away the surprise of the greatest crime thriller ever made.

Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones-Raiders of the Lost Ark.
I do not think anyone could have played the “academic” explorer-adventurer with the panache of Harrison Ford.

Marlon Brando in GodFather.
He was THE GODFATHER in one of the best-written roles ever.

Julie Andrews in Sound of Music.
Sound of Music was overall a brilliant movie but Julie Andrews took it to the next level.

Whoopie Goldberg in Ghost
Fitted the role of a psychic to the T. She is good at whatever she does.

Sean Connery as James Bond.
Another example of great casting.

Haley Joel Osment in Sixth Sense.
Again, a brilliant movie to begin with. He made it even better.

Leonardo DeCaprio in Catch Me If you Can.
One of the best actors of our generation. But a prisoner of his looks and the fame that came with the one of his worst movies, and I do mean the Titanic. He was brilliant in this movie though.

Eminem in 8 Mile.
This was easy. He was playing himself  :)

Do let me know if I missed some good ones.

A little bit of Hollywood

Hollywood has lost it’s marbles. I have always been a big fan, but for the last few years they have disappointed me so regularly that I have sworn off Hollywood movies all-together. Done, finito, full-stop. Movies have become more formulaic than Ekta Kapoor’s “Saas Bahu” serials and almost any movie can be slotted into the following genres.

Epics – Or as I like to call them “Fancy dress movies”. These involves extremely well muscled men in skirts in sword fights or pirates or something of that sort. Huge budgets, big stars, all fluff and nothing else.

(Comic) Book adaptations- Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Spider Man, the list goes on and on and on. You do great special effects, I get it. Enough already. Now how about working on a great script?

Sequels – Are you as tired of sequels as I am? Wolverine, Spiderman, Terminator were all interesting, but only in the first installments. Take 10 million out of those humongous budgets and give it to a decent writer. The only excellent sequel I have seen so far has been X-Men United.

Humor – Doesn’t exist in Hollywood anymore. Last good funny movie was Rat Race. The rest are absolute and total crap.

Animated – The saving grace of Hollywood. These days big budget cartoon movies are the only place where you see creativity from Hollywood. The screenplays are excellent and almost always original. The movies are entertaining for both kids and adults. Most of my favorite movies in recent times fall in this category. But you can only take so much of talking fish, talking cars, talking ogres, talking mammoths …

Hollywood still has the capacity to make stunning movies. I was blown away by cinematography in King Kong and Lord of the Rings. I loved the CGI of Spiderman 3. But in this razzmatazz they have forgotten about the one thing that really matters. The story. And that is really sad.

And if you have started thinking am getting too cynical in my old age (I seem to keep talking about the good old times way too much), wait for my next post. It will be about how much impressed I am with the new Bollywood. Hindi movies rock!