Fantastic Beasts

The first movie my husband took me to, the next day I arrived in London was ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to find them‘. Both of us are huge Harry Potter fans (I am glad to say that he joined the Wizarding World quite recently…better late than never..and oh! he is a Ravenclaw by the way) and we were glad that we were able to see this movie together instead of Skyping about how the movie was.

I am not entirely happy about all the extensions to the Harry Potter and the Wizarding World after the series ended. I am sure I am only the minority in this. I would never take up the Fantastic Beasts book series and read them. Thankfully, neither does my husband. We both have decided that henceforth we will just watch the movies and be done with it. It is quite hard to give up on them as of yet. We did, however, watch the Order of Phoenix the other day and enjoyed it immensely.

Coming back to the movie. It was not a disappointment, but it wasn’t a great success either.  Eddie Redmayne might do more loud talking instead of mumbling. I could hardly understand what he was trying to say. I think Collin Ferrell and Ezra Miller did much better jobs in this movie than the rest. And (Spoiler Alert) I so did not expect Johnny Depp as Gellert Grindelwald in the end. That was a “gasp” moment for me. I read a news article about his involvement in the project, but I thought it was only in the upcoming movies. But the best of the lot was Dan Fogler as Kowalski (Incidentally I liked the same named character in Penguins of Madagascar too and it’s a cute name too) He was amazing and very funny. He was the one who kept it all together and real for us. I would give a 3/5 for this movie. I might sound an old person who doesn’t want to get away from the original series, but that is OK. The more it goes on and on, the more it gets thinned out and there wouldn’t be any personal relationship with the characters at the end. For me, that is more important with a series. I love that personal connection, even if it is fictional. Don’t know if it makes any sense…but that is how it is.

 

Tuesday Tunes

Every hero needs a challenge

I absolutely love Dark Knight and Heath Ledger’s performance of Joker. I haven’t watched Suicide Squad yet (thanks to all those negative reviews, but it is on my to-watch list anyways) but I can never think of any other actor doing the role of Joker. For me, Heath Ledger will always be the best Joker. And I am sure a lot of people would also agree to it.

I found a video today which explains why it isn’t just the performance of Heath Ledger that makes the Joker of Dark Knight so powerful. He is, as is explained, only one side of the coin. He is the reason Batman becomes more powerful and more wiser. He is one of the best antagonist as a character goes in a story. Check out this video for more details.

Squad songs

Another music video from the soundtrack of the movie Suicide Squad. I don’t know much about the comics but I am definitely looking forward to this movie. With so many good actors and the trailer looking so sick, why wouldn’t I 😉 It is releasing in India on 5th August and I will be there by then. Until then here is ‘Sucker for Pain’

Heard that ‘You don’t own me’ by Grace and G-Eazy is also in the soundtrack but I am not so sure. I love that one too 🙂

Magizhchi!

I did mention on my SoCS post that I will be watching ‘Kabaali‘ movie with my friend. We did. Even though I was shocked to see only 5 of us in the theater in Boleyn Cinemas I am not sure if it should be attributed to the success or failure of the movie. There was a news that the movie was leaked online a day prior to its release. And Boleyn Cinemas was not a well maintained movie theater, sadly. The only saving grace was they had the subtitles for my friend, who otherwise would have had a very bad time trying to understand. Heck, I needed those subtitles for some parts of it because the slang was very Malaysian Tamil and I didn’t understand most of those words. And according to my friend, the subtitles were very well done (as opposed to some of the ones he had the pleasure of seeing in Bollywood movies where he had to focus hard to ignore the grammatical errors 😛 )

So what did we think of the movie? I am a Rajni fan, but not to the extent that I have watched all of his movies. I haven’t watched his last two movies because I knew, even from the trailer that they would turn out very bad and it did not give me the ‘you gotta see this’ vibe. But ever since I watched Kabaali’s trailer I wanted to see it. And there are a lot of good points that I really really appreciated. He isn’t romancing the heroine who is almost half his age. The romance angle was very subtle and also it shows more of when he is old and still in love with his wife and is searching for her. He plays his age. He has some scope to act when compared to his last 5 movies. It was a gangster movie. When I heard the songs separately, I didn’t quite like them, but in the movie most of them were in the background, so they went well with the story line. This was a big deal for me. I wanted a commercial entertainment movie and that is what I got. And interestingly my friend also liked it for its commercial value.

We both were a little confused with the Malaysian politics and how people kept backstabbing each other. But after some time I got the hang of it. My friend struggled to get that part especially in the first half. It is based in Kuala Lumpur and about two gangs there. Unless we are aware of what had happened with Malaysian Tamils over there, I don’t think we can appreciate it. But I am glad that someone made an effort to shot an entire movie (except for a small part in Tamil Nadu) in KL based on the life there. I have no clue why there were so many bad reviews for the movie or why Rajini was criticized so much. He is criticized not matter what he does, so I shouldn’t be bothered. I don’t really care for his or any of the movie star’s personal life. That is their own. As a profession, he, the director promised me a good time in the movies. And they kept their promise. That is all that matters to me. Magizhchi! (Cheers!)