Show it short and sweet!!!

Irrespective of the format, whether its a 200-500+ paged book or a 2:30 hr movie or a short film of < 5 mins, a love story is always pleasant to read, hear or watch. But among all the three formats, the last one, short films, is the trickiest, according to me. To deliver a punch in such a short span of time requires more creativity. Here is a list of such movies I got to watch recently.

Oktapodi (English) : A short film about love and action. Its very very cute. Even in 2:26 minutes you can show and tell so much of action? Wow… The two octopus are just too cute. – The best of the lot. I was dumbstruck after watching this for some time…. very good job 😀

The Lonely Bachelor:  Story about an unrequited love and how he turns from a lonely bachelor to a lover.

 

Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania

I was sort of emotionally blackmailed to see this movie ‘Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania‘ to give company to a friend. The things we do for friendship 🙂 I had totally a very bad perception about the movie. And I teased my friend by calling it the Humpty Dumpty movie. But after a sumptuous brunch / breakfast in another nice and untried restaurant (pictures will come later) we went to this movie and I sort of ended up having a good time. I am not going into the story here because there isn’t much to say and it sort of mimics Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (DDLJ) except that the girl does everything in this which the guy does in that movie.

Don’t go looking for logic and if you go without any expectation (may be just one: it is a very cheesy rom com movie) and you will enjoy the comedy in it and some emotional elements too. The hero of this movie Rakesh Sharma aka Humpty Sharma is a total emo sort of guy who sheds tears at the drop of a emotional scene. He falls in love at first sight with the girl Kavya, who is already engaged to an NRI and is in Delhi (her town is Ambala) to get her perfect designer wedding dress. They get to know each other, he helps her friend from a tight spot , she starts having a soft spot for him..and you know how the story goes until the intermission. After that the story shifts to Ambala where he goes to win her back. Sometimes during the movie, we could even recite the next line of the dialogue. But some really took us by surprise. And the gay angle to the story. That was a welcome change. Not done too cheesy and not at all offensive, it shows how people are becoming open minded about it. But too many references to the DDLJ’s movie dialogues. Songs were OK OK. Nothing really stood apart except for the ‘Saturday song’ (which is below and which gets played during credits). Alia Bhatt is good looking and the place where she has to act to seduce a guy, that was so hilarious. Varun Dhawan, not my favorite up coming actors, but he did the job for this movie. I thought his friend Shonty (Gaurav Pandey) looked much better than him. If you don’t have any expectations of what the movie would be about and how the execution or the logic of the story is and all, you can have a good laugh and good time pass.

Her – Interesting and Scary

I now know there was a reason why I did not pursue Artificial Intelligence, even though it used to intrigue me as hell. It would have scared and scarred me actually. At least from what this movie, Her, tells me 🙂 OK. I am exaggerating a little bit here. But seriously, I am so confused as hell right now after watching this movie.

Let me start again.

I did not have any high hopes from this movie, with the premise that I had heard (I did not read the Wikipedia or any other comments about this movie before I watched it, except may be a few lines I had heard during the Oscar’s. I thought I will be bored soon with this movie. Surprise Surprise. It kept me engrossed till the very end and made me think too much in the process too. And I seriously could have done without that , especially today (with very less sleep and still feeling groggy). No wonder it won the award for the screenplay. It was definitely very very good. I am not going to go into the story here, just my views and reactions to it. This guy Theo falls in love with an OS, not only him , a lot of people do. Even though it is s&&t crazy to assume something like that, how is that any different from any of the addictions people have towards anything else ? Am I any different from him except that I pretty much land myself in an imaginary world everytime I am engrossed in any book. Yeah, so may be I don’t talk to them or don’t have them respond to me. I am a mere spectator in that imaginary world, but is that any different at all ? Would having someone to respond to make it difficult ? In that case will it even matter if it was an OS or a real human ? (Bear with me, I might be very incoherent with my thoughts … I told you it left me confused) How is his relationship any different with that of his ex-wife ? Was it because this OS person can’t hurt him ? or rather can’t he hurt by his inability for real emotions ? Is that why he got hooked to her ? Why do we tend to search for something in something that is not in our spatial plane. The movie does seem to mock our social loneliness and yet tells us at the end, it is still upto us to ‘feel’ what we really want to feel. Be it non-human entity, humans you connect through a virtual space or real humans. Its not any different. Its us trying to handle our emotions. I should say Scarlett Johansson’s sexy voice was nice to hear. Joaquin Phoenix was too good. He really did very well. I know I don’t believe in this kind of fiction, irrespective of whether it is possible or not. Because I am scared of machines trying to think like humans (and have always been). But this movie questions a lot of our current scenarios, our reliability on things connected virtually, our dependency on them, the loss of human touch in everything (s&^t they even delegate their letter writing and those people don’t even type it or write it, they have a software to write it when you tell them to… whoa!!!! ) , to figure out how real is real…

For a movie, which I thought will never keep me hooked to my seat, it did a way better job of it with its amazing screenplay and execution and acting (even if it was just the voice for Samantha).

In flight entertainment

Another thing that I love during my flights (other than the obvious ‘flying’ experience) is the In Flight Entertainment. I love how we get to watch all those new movies (obviously the cost of it might have been included in the ticket price). So during my onward journey to Madrid with a one hour break in Dubai, it was almost a 10-12 hrs journey. And yet I continued to watch quite some movies , in spite of me being tired (had to get up too early) and had vowed (to myself) that I will take that nap in the plane. So here they are

a) Frozen:

One movie that I wanted to watch for sometime now. I love Disney movies or rather animations, especially if it involves magic, fairies, princes, princesses …blah blah blah..you get it 😉 The good part of this is that its about two sisters. More than a romance (which is there in small parts) its about how two sisters find their way back to each other. I am not going into the story because most of them would have seen this movie by now. Even though it had that usual cliched villain it was still good to watch them sing all through the movie. Especially the ‘Let it go’ . If you are an elder sister and you are pushed with responsibilities then it might make a little more personal contact to you, that song 🙂 It sort of felt a little long but it was fun to watch too. So yeah, am glad that I got to watch that movie during my first leg of the journey. 

 

b) Rush:

One movie which was suggested to me but I missed it last year was Rush. Thank God, they had it in the in-flight list. I was so glad to start with it once my animation craving had been satisfied. Now I get to feel the adrenaline rush of car racing. I am not a very avid fan of racing and I don’t follow it also but I love driving or rather fast driving (not rash). I always have this rush in me when I am in a car (irrespective of who is driving) and suddenly all these scenes outside the window goes vroom vroom vroom. OK, I am digressing here. But this movie is not only about that, its about two people involved in it. Surprisingly there is no protagonist and an antagonist. Its the biography of two formula one drivers who are neither enemies nor friends. Its such a different and strange relationship they have. They seem to gain motivation from each other and give it in return too, along with respect for each other. It was a such a different story that I started recommending it to my other friends to definitely watch it. Its so worth it. Now I understand the surprise of other people who suggested this movie about why it did not get nominated for Oscars ? That is too sad. It was such a good movie in all aspects. The actors were too good, the screenplay was neat. Its sad that some good movies get missed like this. But definitely a very worthy watch.

 

c) Austenland

Since I was done with my adventure, I switched to Romance and I chose Austenland. How many movies have been actually made on Mr Darcy and Austen by the way ? I keep stumbling upon them one too many times. Some day it is going to put me off Darcy I think. I like  Mr Darcy (the character actually) myself, but not to the extent of being crazy or anything. But here is this girl who sort of lives in a fantasy land thinking of all things Jane Austen. So her sister is hell bent on making her take the trip to Austenland , a land where you get to feel the era of Austen and her characters. But sometimes somethings are better left in dream and fantasy. They may not have the same appeal in real life. That is what happens in this movie too. She sort of hovers between real and reel and suddenly when the lines start blurring and is confused as to whom she is actually attracted to and why and if they were doing their role or if they were really into her, she runs back to real life and to her sanity, only to find that some things from the reel life followed her to make it real for her. Yeah yeah, it happens only in novels (from where the movie was adapted) and in movies and although it was very cliched and worn out line, it did make for a HEA (happy ever after) ending 😉 Not a great movie per se, but if you want to relax a while it will do. 

 

During my return journey, I had a book to finish so I forgot all about the movies and concentrated on my book and missed out on some which I could have seen. But just like my blog name, for me books always come before the movies 😀