Movies

For the most part I prefer comedies (kind of in line with my reading tastes). Of late I have been watching a whole bunch of Malayalam movies, I guess that can be ascribed to my mother being here. Normally the video prints are horrible, the dreaded camera print, with half the theater forming part of the cast. The last 3-4 we have watched have been pretty decent, prints that is, not the movies themselves. Some movies that I remember as being very good in no specific order and language

Fargo

Chithram. What is the deal with the whole Soman and Lissy bit anyway?

Go

His Highness Abdullah (could have done w/o the stunts at the end)

Pulp Fiction (Go is very similar)

Mathilukal. I saw this nearly 10 years back and I think it is long overdue for me to watch it again. Everyone I know who has watched this talks about the 'green' language in this, but it is so trivial. Another appealing fact about this is that it is based on the life of Basheer whose "Sthalathe Pradhaana Divyan" is still guaranteed to crack me up.

Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron. Every time I watch this I discover a few new jokes. It is such a pity to see the depths to which Satish Shah has descended since this.

Avvai Shanmughi. Each of us who has seen this remember a different funny bit. My own favorites are the sequence where Delhi Ganesh tells Nasser to stop reciting the Gayathri because it is not Avani Avittam and the one where Meena and Kamal are in the river and he rips off his blouse to reveal his manly chest and she goes something like "Ayyayyo, Maami, Ennacchu?" The resemblance to Mrs Doubtfire is merely passing, I thought this was much the better comedy. The little girl does get a bit cloying however, I did wish on more than one occasion that she had been left to drown in the pool 

Then, there was this period I went thru when I was watching a lot of foreign movies.  I
would pick up one from the shelf at Video Update and saw some really good ones.
I guess the subtitles catered to the feminine side of me.

Eat Drink Man Woman. I am sure the title lost some meaning in the translation from Chinese but this was a gorgeous movie. Some of the school campus scenes are very similar to our schools in India.

Shall We Dance. This Japanese movie about a business man who takes up ballroom dancing is precariously close to being a chick-flick but somehow escpaes the senti- nature of one.

Antonia's Line. It was so much fun to try and make out the English sounding words in this Dutch flick.

Il Postino. This is genuinely, genuinely good. Of course, in the US they tried to hype the fact that Massimo Troisi died the day after this movie was made or something like that. Those of us unfortunate enough to watch the Olympics in this country know the absurd emphasis placed by network TV on the human interest angle. A gold medallist is decidedly less interesting than a bronze medal winner whose pet dog died of asthma. They go to enormous lengths to dig up hardship or travails from the life of the athletes failing which they try to create these 'non' rivalries. Marion Jones and Inger Miller is a good example. But, as ever, I digress. I should probably move this to my rants page.

One movie related site that I visit very frequently is the Internet Movie Database This has received so many accolades that there is no point in my adding any.