Monday Motivation

Pitching Up – Interesting!

Pitching Up is an endearing portrait of the small town, focused on how introducing immigrants and first-generation Irish to traditional Gaelic sports has helped them integrate into the community, while at the same time preserving the region’s distinctive culture.  –  How Gaelic sports became a culturally binding force in Ireland’s most diverse town

WftPoftA

When we went to the Odeon Cinemas, the self-service Ticketing machine shows the above as the movie title and it took a while for me to figure it out.  I was worried if the movie, War for the Planet of the Apes, was already out of that cinema given that it wasn’t even a week since it was released. Seriously, can’t they just have it as Planet of the Apes – 3 in case the title was too long?

Mr M hadn’t watched any of the prequels so I had to fill in him on the happenings of the previous movies even before we went in. But I needn’t have bothered because they give you a brief two line synopsis along with the name of the movies. That was clever. And from there the story starts. There is never a dull moment. Humour relief is brought by one new introduction, who introduces himself as the ‘bad monkey’. It is like the life comes a full circle in this movie. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I ain’t going too much into the story because it might spoil it for you. The Colonel’s story line is such that you find yourself thinking if he is right as does Caesar.  Titbits that include the current situation like ‘the wall’ finds its way into the movie which is also very clever. You know that it will have its own cliche moments. But that is acceptable. That is what this movie was all about. But it does have its own twists and turns.

Mr M also enjoyed the movie even though he thought it a little weird (having seen the old Planet of the Apes movies) but at least it kept him awake and indulged and that is a big plus 😉

All in all, a very enjoyable and a technically very well done movie. Andy Serkis has done a brilliant job. I sincerely hope that they stop the sequel or prequel to this saga here and now. Do not want to corrupt a nice series and dilute the strength of the story and its characters.

Tuesday Tunes

Now for some books and movie

I think it is time for some books and movies in this blog. Been a while since I wrote about any of them. Last month I read a book called “The Sound of Rain” by Gregg Olsen. I absolutely loved it. I did an all nighter which Mr M wasn’t very happy about. But then I did not have an option. I was so involved in the book I just couldn’t keep it down. I had to finish it off else I wouldn’t get any sleep. But then I did finish it off and ended up not getting any sleep 😀 There were twists and turns until the very end. Drove me doolally (a word I learnt from Mr M) for a bit and surprised me at the end.

After that, I ended up going through some romance novels because I had to relax and not strain myself by missing more sleep. But when I travelled to India, I was already jet lagged and with so much work that was pending, sleep was something that was foreign to me for a couple of days. So I decided to pick up another one that was on my kindle library and decided to use my sleepless nights to finish it off. This one was called “The Sixth Window” by Rachel Abbott. Good that I picked it up during my sleepless nights. Otherwise, I would have had to do one. Another gripping tale. A little bit more disturbing than the other one and scarier too in terms of child abuse and stuff like that. But the culprit was again someone I had least expected. These two books surprised me that way. After reading so many mystery books and watching such series you tend to think a little bit in those terms and usually, I am at least 70% correct with the guesses. These two threw me for a loop.

I would definitely recommend these two if you like mysteries. Now to the movie of the week. Bahubali 2. There is a lot of controversy going on with this one. It is a sequel to Bahubali. I liked the first one too (except for the heroine) and that ended in a cliff hanger. This one tells you the back story (which takes up most of the screen space) and how the story concludes. We know that the good triumphs over the evil in these historical dramas. So it is not the end that is the surprise. It is the how and why. It was close to 3 hours or so, but I wasn’t bored. I like to see such pure masala entertainment now and then. The graphics in this movie was amazing. I absolutely loved it. Wasn’t too cheesy. It was more dreamlike. Storywise it isn’t anything different from what we see in many other movies. Except that it has some historical background to it and all the grandeur attached to it. The songs were picturized very well. If only the dialogues in many places weren’t dubbed in Tamil from Telugu it would have been brilliant. I hate watching dubbed movies or scenes. Anushka was good in her acting and so was Ramya Krishnan. I was glad that I could enjoy it with my family members and the kids enjoyed it too (even though my nephew became too emotional when Bahubali gets killed – it isn’t a spoiler alert. We know he gets killed even in the first movie)