Prime Time Viewing

We got the Amazon Prime Free Trial and watched two movies. The first one was the Ponniyin Selvan Part 1 which I was so apprehensive about and the other one was No Time To Die, Daniel Craig’s last movie as James Bond.

Ponniyin Selvan Part 1

Translating a 5 book story into two movies is no small feat. Especially when it is historical fiction with loads of characters spanning two or three generations and loads and loads of plot twists. I knew that Vikram would do justice as Aadhitha Karikalan and he has. He made it look easy, maybe because he has done similar roles in the past with shades of grey. He does get a mention because he is one of my favourite actors 🙂 Jeyam Ravi as Ponniyin Selvan has done a decent job, which surprised me as I have seen him mostly in romance movies. Karthi is apt for Vandhiyathevan oozing trouble and charm and so is Jayaram as Aazhvaarkadiyaan. I don’t know why in my mind, Aazhvaarkadiyaan was someone shorter and fatter as described by Kalki but Jayaram fits too. Aishwarya Rai Bachhan as Nandhini and Trisha as Kundhavai has got the meaty role as the whole story revolves around them and with the surprise about Nandhini at the end of Part 1, we know Aishwarya landed a hefty one. They have all done their jobs very well. The songs are already popular and are good. But, I am not sure I want to hear so many of them while watching the movie. I wonder if there were fewer songs would there have been time for a bit more of the background story in its place? Mr M found the movie alright and interesting without knowing anything about the story (not for a lack of trying, mind).

Now to the story part. I am not entirely sure if I liked how the story is cut from many places and stitched in other places to get the essence in place. It works and they have done a good job but as a person who loves the books more than their movie adaptations, I think I preferred the elaborate thinking process that is involved in such a complicated drama. What was going on in Karikalan’s mind when he decided not to heed Nandini when she begged for the Pandya King’s life? What was the reason for Kundhavai’s move to bring back PS home? I also missed the romance between Vandhiyathevan and Kundhavai which in the book is very subtle, humourous, and cute. Vanathi’s role is reduced to a couple of scenes, sadly. It is hard to switch your inner critic while watching the movie especially when you love the book so much! I really really tried very hard but in the end, I decided to see it as another good movie and not bother to look at it as a translation of the book into its screen version. That is the only way I will be able to convince myself to watch Part 2 now. There is no pleasing some people I tell you 😀 Mr M thought I was being very harsh and I was or rather I am, but it is what it is. Over time I might forget it and be happy with my book. When I read it again though, I wouldn’t mind having Karthi take over as my Vandhiyanathan and Vikram as my Karikalan but I will replace others with my own representation.

No Time To Die

Daniel Craig’s last movie as Bond not necessarily 007. Now that was interesting. Here is a woman as 007. What does that mean for the next movie? Will there be one? Will be a Bond movie anymore given how this one ends? It was slightly bittersweet. I might have missed a lot of clues that they have used throughout the movie as a homage to Bond (like the song at the end, the one-liner that Bond says about having all the time etc.) if not for Mr M who remembers those old ones. This post is more about what I felt when I watched the movie rather than about the movie. While watching it, I realized how much the Bond movie changed when Daniel Craig became Bond. I got introduced to Bond movies when Pierce Brosnan was Bond and he is like our Rajnikanth, all style and full-on Hollywood masala and such, which called to me and I absolutely loved him as Bond. Over the past couple of years, I have watched the rest of the Bond movie and have got to notice each one’s style (I think Pierce Brosnan imitates Roger Moore a lot). But Daniel Craig’s style is unique and so is his Bond. They have more depth to them, more emotional, and have some continuity in their stories (not all, but some). There is still those small pieces of Bond charisma and the blowing up of places when they so please but beyond that there is something more human. May be it is the passage of time, the change in culture, the emphasis on diversity, equality etc. Honestly, I wasn’t too happy with Daniel Craig in his first Bond movie because I was having withdrawal symptoms from Pierce Brosnan, but as an actor I have come to appreciate him in Bond. It’s not an easy role to fill with so much expectations already set by his predecessors. I think if I ignore the fact that his movies are Bond movies I will enjoy them and with this one I thought I kind of miss the silliness of the story line, the blowing up of stuff, the fancy gadgets and Bond just taking those for granted, the mindless way Bond shrugs off the dust after the whole place is demolished and not just that he emerges without a single scrap on his self etc. It is like reading a romance novel because I know how it ends, I know that there will be a set formula and I don’t have to invest my brain power to think too much and I need that in between my intense murder mysteries and thrillers, which render me sleepless most of the times. I do miss the old Bond formula. But the ending was somewhat unexpected (I have managed to not read about it so far) and that left me with “what are they gonna do now? what were they thinking? why then were there so many news articles about a new bond?” etc. etc. Can’t wait to know more about what’s gonna come next.

Now that I have got my free trial, Amazon Prime has started bombarding me that I am missing out by not listening to their music, not watching their recommended shows etc. etc. I hate that part. Can you not just leave me alone. I will watch what I want to watch, when I want to watch it. If I got Amazon Prime only to watch two movies, that is my perogative isn’t it? Every single commerce site is now doing that. I just wish there is a way to turn them off (unless I unsubscribe which most of the times don’t really work) . If there is an option to turn off recommendations, kindly let me know. I will also have a nose around their website.

That’s it. Rant and opinion sharing time over 😉 It feels nice to let it all out rather than just whinging about it to all the time to Mr M. I missed writing about my whinging and sharing my unwanted and unwarranted opinions. I hope this year I will be able to do it at regular intervals.

The TV and the Drama

I remember one time (and I am unlikely to forget the incident ever) when a student (year 6) in my school in London asked me if I had seen some TV series on Amazon Prime and I responded that I don’t subscribe to Amazon Prime and so I haven’t. They then asked me which platform I watch my TV on? Netflix maybe? I responded in negative saying that since I pay my TV license I stick to good old BBC, Channel 4, ITV, Channel 5 etc. for my entertainment. A few students who were listening in on the conversation looked at me in horror and this student commented that I live a very sad life. I burst out laughing and told them that I am happy with my free views and they are welcome to enjoy their various paid subscriptions (although is it a free view if I am paying for the TV license? that is a thought for another day…not that it makes any difference to me now mind…).

I knew that in India, it is not possible to watch any TV in prominent cities (at least it was 5/6 years ago) unless you get a DTH service and that is why when I was in Bangalore I had to subscribe to either Sun DTH or a local DTH provider based on what language programmes you are likely to watch more. Now it seems that Netflix, Amazon Prime, Airtel XStream, and Tata Sky are the key players (anyone else I missed?). My siblings have both Netflix and Amazon Prime and my nepotes are bored when they come to my home because we have so far refused to subscribe to any of these. I know that I don’t have much time left because just like paying for a TV license in the UK, I have to subscribe to one or more of these services to get my normal TV too, which is very sad indeed. But it is what it is. Now the problem is though, these providers are so smart that we can never find what we need in one of them. We end up subscribing to at least two or even more to switch between the stuff we might end up watching. In this day and age, that seems to be a smart business move but hurts the consumers badly and we are not up for it. I am forever trying to find ways to circumvent the problem. For now, we watch our news and other stuff through the free channels available from Roku (Al Jazeera, Sky News, Wion, Plex etc.)

When I finally decided that it is time to watch Ponniyin Selvan Part 1, it was already out of theatres. It took me a long time to even convince myself that it is ok if they mess up the book which is my absolute favourite one (the first name of my pseudonym is a strong female character from that book…) and just watch it as another grand movie. But it was now available only with Amazon Prime. I have to get a 30-day Free Trial to watch this movie. Whenever my siblings and their children come home, they strongly suggest that I get Netflix. We had already done a free trial of it while we were in the UK, but we didn’t find many programmes that we would watch and it was very American, which Mr M wasn’t very keen on 😀 If we are to get this free trial for Amazon Prime, it would help us check out its contents and see if we would watch any programmes in it at all apart from the odd movies now and then.

Oh! Why does it have to be this hard and so much drama (and money to shell) to watch some good TV heh?

Before I Go to Sleep (movie) – ***

I read this book in 2013. Here is a post where I talk about the book. I remembered it after all this time. That was how effective the story was. I guess I went to sleep after that and woke up only now to watch the movie that was made out of that book. The movie was made in 2014 and I got to see it yesterday because I didn’t feel like doing anything else (aka the online course that I was trying to complete over the break, of which only two weeks are left 😦 ) Since I had opted for Amazon Prime, I picked this as the random movie to watch. And I was instantly hooked. I was trying so hard to not read the book overview as and when the movie was progressing. I remembered the main story but missed the bits and pieces. From the perspective of someone who read the book and got around to watching the movie 4 years later, it was good. Decent enough to keep me engaged and well done too. I am not sure how my views on the movie would have been if I had seen it when the book was too fresh on my mind. But this is better. I got to enjoy it and not feel bad about any discrepancies from the book 😉 Win-Win.

2 books & a movie

I know, I know. I have been writing about books a lot recently. But with Kindle Unlimited subscription, it is inevitable. But that is gonna stop for a couple of weeks. Have some other important stuff to finish, not to mention my long weekend trip 😉 during the Good Friday weekend. Yay!!!

So here are a couple of books I had finished but haven’t told you about it (not that I write about every book I read but still). And I also managed to see a movie which was on my watchlist for a long time. So here it goes.

a) Ineligible Bachelor by Kathryn Quick:

Now, I don’t watch TV especially the reality TV (watching YouTube versions of XYZ’s Got Talent or The Voice etc doesn’t count), so I wouldn’t know about the various reality shows that go on in them. But recently I saw a news article about Jimmy Kemmel and his (in)appropriate questions to the couple, who were the winners of the show ‘The Bachelor’. Now imagine my surprise to read that news article when I had just finished this book the previous night. I was like ‘what are the odds’. So I guess the whole drama of how the eligible Bachelor chooses his partner with the help of his very best female friend, who was the reason he got into this show in the first place, and how they are all rigged may or may not be true. It also goes a little further than that I guess because this female friend’s attempts to make this eligible bachelor see her as more than a friend totally backfires especially with all conniving and very pretty women out in the show but fate plays a game in the end. It was a quick fun read and since I haven’t seen the show I was intrigued. I am not sure how it would fare with those who already knew about these. I wanted a quick fun read and that this book was. 3 stars.

b) The Bette Davis Club by Jane Lotter: I chose this book because I liked the cover. Simple logic 🙂 That car, that hair style, the old 70’s-80’s look come on, doesn’t it look cute? This was again a fun read. This is about a middle-aged woman (anyone between 35-55 according to my standards) who is bankrupt, goes to her step sister’s daughter’s wedding, finds herself in her dad’s old MG car to retrieve her eloped niece, who also happens to have her father’s scripts (her father was a screenplay writer), not to mention the counterpart in this chase, who happens to be the groom, who is as old as this woman and how their journey takes them across places (and states may be) and the fun and various new things that they learn in the process. It was a different story line I should say. It is not your usual romance. Yes sir, romance it is. But with lots of humor. I enjoyed the storyline and the fun that came with it. Gave it 3 stars.

Both are HEA books. There, I finally gave away a spoiler for both 😉

Next comes the movie:

The Book Thief: Unfortunately my intention of reading the book and then watching the movie didn’t last in this case. I finally ended up watching the movie because it was free on Amazon Prime (Jee…Wonder what would Amazon do without me and my subscriptions!!!) It is a very very cute movie. It is a sad one (spoiler alert) but not in the way you think. Yes, death is a sad thing, but more for the ones who are left out. We know that people die even in the beginning because we hear the voice over of Death telling you about this cute little girl who loves to steal books and read them and introduced you to other characters and their last thoughts before he sucked in their souls. I am not going to give away anything else about this movie. It did not make me cry, wasn’t even sad. Wonder why. I was able to see this movie with an understanding that people are gonna die no matter what, but what goes on between this girl and them during their lives is what is important. Maybe because it was the introduction of the movie by the Death himself (or herself) that prepared me for this. No idea. But I loved the concept, the execution, the acting, the cinematography and the art direction in this movie. Not sure how close to the book it is, but nevertheless enjoyable as a movie too. If you are an avid book reader, you will relate to this girl in one way or the other.