Inception is like...

Inception isn’t impossible. It has been done effectively by filmmakers and novelists for ages and now it has been done by Nolan. Modus Operandi is quite simple. Be an architect, construct an elaborate dream world with certain rules. Be a dreamer, let your subconscious project your imagination and tell a story. Be the forger and create believable characters by stealing from the collective or individual psyche. Be the point man and see that your task is carried out and you don’t get interrupted during your work. Now steal the show in the mind of the audience. The visuals and words are just your tools.
 

Nolan does exactly that. He seeded a fascinating idea into the minds of the millions of people and wowed them with extraordinary storytelling, breathtaking visuals and spine chilling thrills while feeding rich material into their grey matter. Now they are all raving about it; calling it the best movie in a decade, his best work and putting it (collectively) in the top 5 movies of all time.
 

Inception is a spectacular film which had me captivated for all its 148 minutes. It had all that can be expected from a summer blockbuster and because of all the points I made above made a compelling and brilliant film but it isn’t so brilliant that it deserves all the unparalleled praise. Inception is actually like several other films we have seen in the past in the emotions it evokes and ideas it plants. But then it is not.

Review: Sin Nombre

We are not born free. We are born into our culture, religion and the environment. Almost everyone gets carried away with the tide that has been around forever. You take whatever is handed out to you and do not question. Life is hard and relentless. Always brings you down. In some places it is more than the others. If you want to rebel, it stamps you down. If you want to run away it hunts you down. If you want to break free. It destroys your soul. Off the millions there are a few thousands thinking of the fight, a few hundred start it and eventually a handful might win. Now if one is among the millions or the thousands or the hundreds or the handful victors one knows not until the struggle is over. Only to start out a new struggle all over again.

You are born in a place where you are easily sucked into a criminal gang with a violent subculture and find yourself deprived of a life you want to live or deserve. Your loved ones are snatched away from you and you know that any form of dissidence and rebellion will only end with definite punishment. Yet in the spur of the moment when the deepest of your emotions overcome your resolve to stay sane to stay alive, you commit the ‘unforgivable’ and live with the dire consequences.

Review: The Time Traveler's Wife ('s cheap knockoff)

heTime Traveler’s Wife, the book by Audrey Niffenegger is a decent book. Not great, not bad. It starts out slowly, becomes really good and drags on with some intermittent good scenes and ends. The only reason it stands out is it being a good concoction of science fiction and romance with neither being affected. Neither are really great again but I have never seen a plot so intricately woven together that is clearly both. It was a good read.

However the movie takes is a 10 foot dive into a pool of blunt hollywoodness. All the complications in the story are removed. Forget the fringe characters, some key characters are eliminated for the same reason. The plot is trivialized and the focus moves onto the romance. The science fiction aspect of it is lamented and ignored or abused to a point of regret. Key incidents are deleted. The point of critical character building sequences and the emotions gone through by the characters is lost. With the sharp edges of the story and characters shaved off, this might as well been a Disney movie if it had some jokes put in. They dint forget to make genuine characters clichés!

They got two good actors, who were tied down by a lame script and requested to just look good and act troubled and pained throughout. That should be enough the crew must have thought. Why spend unnecessary energy on making something more personal and emotional? They must have have thought, ‘as long as we are pulling the audience’s heart strings portraying pain and suffering it doesn’t matter if there is logic and a sequence to it.  Put in a nice colour tone, neat settings and stereotypical soundtrack and we are done! No need to explain why suddenly the characters are brooding over something.’

Well if you didn’t read the book, you might have just yawned and said ok and walked away. But I did. What I found was a super crap adaptation of a mediocre book. Stepping out from the betrayed skin of the one who read it, I see the technical aspects of it were all on par and try to imagine how it can be any worse than Its Complicated. It isn’t. But how can anyone forgive a movie this bad which had decent source material to begin with.

May be decent is decent enough? I don’t know. I have seen great movies emerge out of mediocre books. They just dint try hard enough I guess. Once the book sunk into Hollywood pool it couldn’t be saved and had to go through all the punishment.

 (Poor)

p.s: The only good thing about this movie is the poster! It is mesmerizing.

Ebert is a four letter word !

This post is in response to Roger Ebert's piece on movie critics and movie criticism. The article can be read here.

Roger Ebert is considered one of the most prolific movie critics of all time and in my opinion, that statement stands as the biggest oxymoron I have come across in my life. I occasionally read his reviews, especially to get his opinion on certain movies that I found delightful, and have found myself at times sharing the same opinion and sometimes contradicting his view completely. With this premise I venture into response to Ebert's piece on movie criticism and the clear undertones of high-handedness in his writing, a quintessential quality of a critic that conditions him/her to behave the way they do. 

Ebert cleverly chooses to play the devils advocate of his profession and starts off by stating all the typical invective thrown at critics and their job. He even makes a gracious mention of a quote that I have come to appreciate from the movie Ratatouille. It goes : "In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations, the new needs friends... Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere."

Without divulging or digressing into the situations that preceded this quote in the movie, I wish to have the readers attention on the importance of the quote! "in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so." While Ebert nonchalantly rubbishes this by claiming that junk movies are only successful in conditioning the audience's mind to watch more junk movies, he conveniently fails to focus on the grand scheme of things. Movie criticism is a high paying job for Mr Ebert and he makes his living from a cinema hall. The grand scheme of things could well mean defending his reviews and criticism but to many others, it values differently.

Oscar Invisibles

Staying with the Oscar fever this week, we have a simple quiz for our readers. The quiz images are courtesy filmwise.

The images have the characters turned invisible and you have the simple task of identifying the movie the following images are from. In tune with the theme, all the movies are either Oscar winners or Oscar nominated flicks.

Biographical?

It's a sitter fellas!

                                                                        

All things sweet

All is not well in this land?

                                                           

Greatest movie intro?

Comment with your answers and if you thought this was a sitter quiz, click agree at the bottom of this article. :P

Peace!

Could you double-check the envelope please?

The 82nd Annual Academy awards are around the corner and we will witness yet another page in cinema history take a glamorous turn. Take the best of world cinema over the year gone by, have a gallery of movie veterans judge them and give the world something to cherish for another year. This is the Oscars story that has lived on for decades and has stood as the single most awaited awards ceremony in the calendar. The desire to claim the golden statuette drives a lot of artists in the film fraternity and while some are blessed with it after one tremendous performance, many have come a long way to win the coveted prize and the name that first comes to mind when one thinks of the latter is the director Martin Scorsese.

"Could you double-check the envelope please?", this was the rhetoric that Scorsese gave the world as he picked his first Oscar for The Departed in 2006. Having been nominated 5 times before, the 67 year old director from NYC is a classic example of making cinema for cinema's sake and nothing more. One look at the director's record of movies and its global reception and we are swiftly reminded of audiences and critics who have showered more praise and honor on him than the belated Oscar. So I guess the question I am asking myself is, if I look back at Scorsese's career and his cinematic achievements, should Oscar glory really mean much to him or any other artist of the film fraternity?

Now a 23 year old, my fascination with Marty's movies began with his 1976 classic Taxi Driver. Straight after the success of Mean streets, Taxi Driver established Scorsese as a prolific film maker who brought European influences to Hollywood and renewed the film noir. Contemporary cinema during the 70's saw the likes of Brian De Palma, George Lucas and Martin Scorsese who enjoyed a sense of freedom in film making. That freedom was translated into great story telling for Scorsese. Teaming up with Paul Schrader as the movie's writer and Robert De Niro (who would become Scorsese's life long friend and screen muse), Taxi Driver was beaten at the Oscars in that year by the insufferable underdog classic Rocky. An interesting observation that was made on the difference in film making of the then directors from the West coast like Spielberg and Lucas and in Scorsese's East coast movies was the assertiveness and confidence that Scorsese possessed in giving his audiences what he felt like giving while Lucas and Spielberg were more careful yet experimental in trying to understand what the audience wanted and then giving it to them. This difference sometimes stands out for me as to why the Oscars ignored his earlier classics.

Oscar Road: Best Picture Also Rans

The Oscars are nigh. In around 5 days they shall be given out. There are plenty of awards to be given away but the most prestigious one is for the best picture and for no small reason too. In retrospect, the academy awards for each year are marked and called with the picture which won. Like 2008 was the year of No Country for Old Men and 2007 was the year for Departed regardless of what other pictures were made that year.

But in this article I shall talk about those which are definitely not going to take the nameplate. It would be a titanic surprise if they do! This is the round of the most definite also rans!

The Blind Side

 
It is a heart warming story of human kindness told really well. Made out of a real life story from the South(ern America) with some of an extremely poor

African American teenager whose life changes radically after he is taken in by a wealthy white family. Unlike other such movies it doesn’t try to cash in entirely on the emotional quotient but yet makes a strong impact by getting the story telling elements perfectly right.

The performances in this movie just like the setup are natural and restrained. Everything and everyone just seems so right. Never would have I pictured Sandra Bullock in such a strong role. But she pulled it off really well playing a fine Christian woman from the South (Where the women of the family are generally strong willed and righteous). This role is similar to the stubborn boss she plays in her other movie of the year, The Proposal, but only much more central and powerful. Other than the every fantastic Meryl Streep who played Julia Child in Julie and Julia, she doesn’t have much competition for the Best Actress Oscar.

Overall it is a must see movie, something which will moisten your eyes with happiness.

Rating: 

Very Good

 
An Education

As I had tweet reviewed it sometime back , An Education is a bildungsroman of an intelligent teenage british girl in the mid 60’s. Carey Mulligan who gives a fine lead performance saves this movie from being lost in a pile of hundreds of such other movies. It is about a young girl finding interesting company and yearning to get out of her stale life due to the vastly exhiliarating and educating experiences she has in the brief getaways. We know where these kinda movies head and this one is no different. It also has a strong undercurrent of the purpose of woman’s education and the attitude of the parents and society when she has found the right match.

Quick Review: Sherlock Holmes and Zombieland

We are starting off a new feature called Quick Review. Generally a review would be several hundreds of words long and delve deep into the movie. But not all movies merit such deep analysis or maybe we just dont have much to say. For all such movies where we have an opinion but not an opinion so huge we have quick reviews! Read on!

Sherlock Holmes (2009)

If you havent read Sherlock Holmes you should! He was the definitive character mould for the 20th century. A 100 years later characters like that began to seep into mainstream cinema. Now this Sherlock Holmes essayed by the fantastic Robert Downey Jr is a comic one with knack of showcasing his plot before he actually performing it, be it at trivial one to put the opponent in a boxing ring down or catch the villain. Besides distributing his immense capacity for love between lady love Morstan and man crush Watson he has a cheeky tongue which is delightful and racy making the most uncharacteristic remarks which would make even a progressive Victorian like the real Sherlock Holmes himself widen his eyes.

Sherlock Holmes is as much fun as the movies can get with a decent plot and strong characterization. It is a fun, on your toes ride much like the usual superhero movies; only the hero here is a 19th cent. detective. But the action sequences and the chases though fun are nothing new, Mark Strong was wasted playing the maniacal villain who was the weak link of the movie.

Rating:

 Good

p.s: This movie is actually like Iron Man in lot of its ways. The wasted hero, with a guiding light in form of his assistant, who is self obsessed beyond norm and so sunk in his work that he can perceive little else. But he comes around in the end to save the day. Also they both have a nice little pad of their own where they perform experiments and are in captive for certain periods.

Zombieland (2009)

There have been ah so many zombie movies and though I have not seen many(classic case of you have seen one, you seen em all feeling) I know how it is going to pan out like. Zombies arent inventive! They are dumb almost dead people and can do nothing but try feed of the normal ones. So in every zombie movie onus falls on the real people who live and weave around them fighting for survival. They set the movie's pace and tone. Be morose and heroic like in I am Legend or poke fun and run for your lives with tongue in cheek fear like in Shaun of the Dead. Zombieland is of the latter category. It entertains superbly mixing in all that you need for a fun and timepass movie; a geeky boy, a macho dude, a sexy chic, cute child and some hot wheels with some great cuts and funny jokes. 

Woody Harrelson gave a really good performance as the hack happy cowboy. Jesse Eisenberg who was being his usual fidgety self fit in really well. What really makes this film a must watch is the small but smart things. The rules appearing in and out are a riot and being contextual and active too just ads to the fun. The slow motion sequences with some great background score are a delight. This movies lives in its moments and does them all well.

Rating  

Very Good

Best of Decade - Top 50 movies of the 2000's

It has been a great decade. Life in one decade is quite different from another but the 00's or noughties as some would like to say it. It goes with movies too. The decade which just ended had a huge diversity in the way it unfolded. The word blockbuster was redefined and the BO expectations were re adjusted to a level way up north. A major part of this was the re emergence of the superhero movies. Superheroes never really had it good outside the comics and on kids' channels but the emergence and success of Spiderman paved way for a decade full of heroes. Then there were the animation flicks which laughed their way to box office and critical success at the expense of all those people who thought they were just for kids. They have an amazing potential and next decade will be even better. And finally I should also call upon the Independent film circuit to honour them for being so brave and resilient in the face of the studio moguls spending hundreds of millions on every other flick. As like in any other decade it is the independent small budget (comparably) ones which actually deliver on the potential of cinema but this time round they had help from digital technology which has become affordable and thrown the fencing between producers and consumers in to the recycle bin. The youtube generation can deliver the punch as well as the studios. You have heard of

Paranormal Activity, haven't you? 15000$ budget & 100 million$+ gross. It was good film making coupled with brilliant marketing. This is just the beginning to all such breakout movies.

We do not know how next decade is going to pan out. What will the movie watching experience be? Will theaters still hold their pull or are we going to just be addicted to Netflix? Will Avatar truly revolutionize the industry and will 3D reach our homes and be a part of it as they predict? But we do know how the last one has panned out for movies. Here in this article I try and capture the 50 best movies of the last decade ie 2000 to 2009. These lists are tough, especially when they spread across such a long time and across the world. So

though inherently flawed I try my best to keep a level head and chalk out the decade's finest.

(update: highlighting and minor sentence and position changes)
 How did I make this list? After perusal of extensive ratings on my vote history on IMDB, reading of various lists all over the web, I took into consideration the quality of film making, my personal favourites, cultural and overall impact of the movies. Then the movies were microscopically weighed against each other and rankings in this list were determined. Ask me after a couple of years and it might be different. Such is the case with all lists.

There are more blockbusters than I expected. Of course there might be many more movies out there definitely deserving a place in this but I havent seen them yet. Sure will do someday and maybe a decade down the line I can make this list really, really comprehensive.

50. Love Actually(2003)

This is a tie between two very different romantic movies. One is an outrageous mix of several stories, some sweet, some bitter but all wonderful. One of the best ensembles cast of the decade.

Once(2006)
 Undoubtedly the contender for the sweetest movies of the decade. The latter is quaint independent movie capturing the life of two lost musicians who aren't exactly romancing each other. This movie took the industry by storm showcasing the power of the small movie.

49. Persepolis (2007)

Marjane Satrapi's digs into her own life and puts out a bildungsroman graphic novel of a young girl from Iran. The movie is unabashed story telling which has compelling visuals which seem pretty straight and simple.

Too Much Cinema Movie Ratings: What do they mean?

Be warned! This is a very self indulgent post where I try to standardize the  movie ratings I give. This is to not only give an idea to the readers but  to maintain consistency in how I rate movies. I believe all movies of a certain ratings (say 6) should be superior to those with lower one(like 5 and below)

Everyone who watches movies rates them in their own way. Some may just rate them simply good or bad while others may call them Great, good , ok, poor and horrible or in similar other notations, to each his own. It gets complicated when you write about movies and you want to give a rating. Ratings are quite important for any audience cos they give a quick idea of how good the product is. There are ratings all over, right from electrical appliances to censor board ratings to chess player or cricket team ratings. Movies are no different. 

The ratings make life simpler for the reviewer/critic and the reader/audience in the same way. When one watches or read about  hundreds of movies every year an easy way to categorize them and recall for recommendations or any other purpose is by giving it a rating. For example I could make a list like 'my movies in 2009' because I rated them all in imdb and archived them in an excel sheet. Call me a geek but without doing so it would be virtually impossible to track the couple of hundred movies I saw last year.

When I started loving movies, writing about them and rating them seemed the logical next step. Since then(almost 6 years now) I have been trying to find the perfect rating system. Each and every critics have their own. Ebert and Siskel used the thumbs up/down method, while Ebert gives a 4 star rating. Lots of publications especially the newspapers use a 5 pointer or 5 star system. Even some podcasts I know like filmspotting uses the latter. Some sites like Yahoo, AV club give an alphabetical grading system. Aggregation sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic use a 100 point score. However the one I always chose was the 1-10 ratings system as you find in IMDB. Each of the selections made sense to the reviewer or publication because of the way they approached the rating.

My 2009 in Movies

The year has been ordinary one in terms of movies. Some of the best ones were sci fi and that is the only consolation. However I am not going to make a best of 2009 list quite simply because unlike the professional critics at Uncle Sam’s place I havent been able to watch all the movies that have been released yet and anyhow in a month or so we will be counting down to the Oscars and doing a list then is best. By then most movies will be available for consumption. Since the Oscars are so prestigious, we movie people should simply give up calendar years and do our lists around it. The movies featured during Oscars often get forgotten and end up in neither lists not this year and not the year before. So i am going to take a different path. We critics are innocent folk with everyone living in their own glass doors. We can  celebrate Christmas whenever we feel like.

When it comes to me personally this hasnt been a stellar year like the year before where I could clock 240 movies (inspite of the TV shows). This year I could only clock 192 but its ok ‘cos life has changed in many ways and TV shows like Mad Men and Friends (yep it was my first time) made life richer in their own ways. The first two months were spent watching and writing about the Oscar nominees of 2009 and I was exposed to some really fine movies like Rachel Getting Married, Waltz with Bashir etc. There were a lot of classics, foreign language films and rom coms. There were a lot of indie films too. This was also the year I fell in love with Spanish movies and this was partly aided by the Spanish Film festival which happened in Hyderabad. So really as a movie buff what matters to me more than the best I have seen of this year is the best I have seen in this year. So I have compiled a list of must watch films I have seen for the first time this year and believe you too should sometime. So something like a 3rd time of Casablanca or Wall E wont count. There wasnt a single 10 this year I could see. Star Wars was the last one in October 2008. The 9’s were rare too but there were a plenty of 8’s. Here it goes!

Best films I have seen in 2009

The 9/10 ‘s

1. Waltz with Bashir

2. La Vita E Bella ie Life is Beautiful

3. Star Trek (2009)

4. In the Mood for Love

5. The Blues Brothers

The 10 most anticipated movies of 2010.

2009 has been a pathetic year in terms of quality and variety of movies. Most of the big budget ones were crappy and the best were some independent or very low budget movies like In the Loop, Moon and 500 Days of Summer. These are surprise packages and tough to predict. So like always I look at the Multi hundred million dollar, Super Star Studded, Auteur helmed movies to show us the path. Here are my top 10 most anticipated movies of 2010.

10. The Rum Diary: Johnny Depp is back serving Hunter S Thomson in another of his works after the dizzily brilliant fare: Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. Well we will take anything with Johnny Boy. Just hoping it won’t make the Public Enemies.

9. Jonah Hex: A wild Wild West where bounty hunters and Voodo practitioners are involved. Based upon a comic book with a terribly scarred anti hero it throws me back to the good ol’ days. Dont tell me Megan Fox in hot Victorian lingerie wont delight you! 

8. Arrested Development: Everyone loved the TV show. Much to the delight of the fans it’s back in the form a movie. Sex and the City worked, The X files didn’t. But I am pretty sure with its fantastic humour Arrested Development wont disappoint the fans.

7. Shutter Island: This Martin Scorcese-Leonardo Di Caprio period thriller was supposed to release in 2009 but got pushed back. We cant wait to see what Marty has to follow up to his Oscar winning Departed. Something better I hope.

6. Robinhood: Another quintessential pair, ie of Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe is back. They try to repair the joke that was the last Robinhood movie was 20 years ago. Right up in Gladiator’s alley Scott must have put heart and soul into this after the performance of his last 2 movies.

5. Kickass: This might end up being the surprise package of the year. Matthew Vaughn, who also directed Layer Cake and Star Dust makes a movie in which a teenager just decides to be a superhero though he has no powers, training or meaningful reason to do so.

Feature: Summer 2009 Roundup, Part 2

The Summer in question here starts in may and ends by mid September with the beginning of fall which brought out releases like Surrogates and Inglourious Basterds. So this roundup does come almost a month late but this situation is due to the place I live in most movies including some big ones like Up and Star Trek come several months late. There are some others like District 9, Sam Raimi's Drag me to Hell, 500 Days of Summer, Cloudy with Chance of Meatballs, Bruno, Time Traveler's Wife etc I couldnt get to see at all. Maybe I soon will when they are out on DVD's. Sometimes I feel like moving away to greener(read where movies release the earliest) pastures. Also I have intentionally skipped talking about movie like Aliens in the Attic, I love you Beth Cooper etc which have been said to be ranging from uncomfortable, nauseating to vomit inducing. So here are the rest of the movies which I got to see and are worth talking about. For here in 'Too Much Cinema' good cinema is everything.

So continuing the serial reviews from the last post:

8. The Proposal

This is the best 'chick-flick' or romantic comedy if you wish of this year. It stars Ryan Reynolds who has a knack of picking simple small budgeted yet refreshing films and Sandra Bullock who I havent seen act so well in a long long time. Well I have never seen her act well before. This movie has the usual romantic plot and twists but it has refreshingly new and bold (read adult) stuff in the comedy department. Just like The Hangover you are entertained through out the movie with one liners and sketches. By doing so this movie ends up pleasing the views who are non chalant to the chic-flicks, which is quite a big thing for such films. It has paid off well too by landing the 10th spot in the highest grossers of the year so far.

9. The Ugly Truth

Feature: Summer 2009 Roundup, Part 1

Every year in May, the biggest of movies are released by Hollywood. These movies are fitted with the hottest of stars, tried and tested formulae like superheroes, end of the world scenarios and established franchises in spectacularly explosive circumstances made possible by the embarrassingly huge budgets allocated to them. Why this specific time of the year? It is the beginning of summer in the western world (upper parts of northern hemisphere) and the attendance rates in theatres skyrocket as a result of the holiday season. The kids are free, lets give them a movie and then create merchandise based on the same lines for them to play with. That is their philosophy and usually it works. Year after year such movies come out and they make oodles of money, for a good reason too. The movies are visual treats couple with good film making. But this year they didnt do so well and again for a really good reason. No! It is not the recession, it is the sorry state of films.

2009 has been the year of impending or post apocalyptic future. Terminator, Transformers, 9, GI Joe and Star Trek all were either dealing with saving the planet or dealing with whats left after the worst has happened. This theme business isnt unique for this year as I am pretty sure all of you remember the Superhero Summer last year with Iron Man, Hancock and Dark Knight. Indiana Jones and James Bond arent any less than your average superheroes either as they have been still kicking some good amount of evil ass even after decades of existence. 2007 was the year of threequels, with Spidy 3, Bourne Ultimatum, Shrek the Third and Pirates of Carribean's third part too. Also the forgettable Rush Hour 3. Far too many 3's I say!

Back to disappointing 2009, I not only see many movie marvels coming out this year(oscar types) I have also been through the most boo..(yawn)...oring of so called blockbuster movies. They did not create any cinematic road blocks with showstopping marvel and they definitely dint bust any chops. JAWS would turn in its grave or maybe come back for the 20th part and still do better like in the back to the future movies. So with so many movies to cover I better get started.

1. Terminator Salvation:

Talking about bores; I start with the biggest one of the season. I dont know why Christian Bale signed up for this and he is still doing the sequel when he can earn as much as he wants doing other projects. This movie was made with a budget close to 200 million $ and earned only 125 million $ in US and 320 million$ worldwide and that means it has been an epic flop inspite of the "terminator" and Bale brand name. Except for a couple of pretty cool explosions sequences and the performance of Sam Worthington the movie had nothing. I almost fell asleep. I always though John Connor was a dud not THE Dude who was going to be leader of human resistance and this movie sets out to prove that despite the pain they take to portray his alleged heroism. Worthington's character Marcus was the star of the movie not some brainless punk Connor.


2.Angels and Demons

Review: Inglourious Basterds

Save James Cameron, who hasnt made a feature film in more than a decade, no director in the world creates as much anticipation as Tarantino does when he picks up a project. Inglourious Basterds was no different. The noise for this one has been around since the time he announced this movie even before he made Grindhouse. And it has lived up to its hype and people seemed to love it. I dont.

Tarantino has carved a niche for himself where he makes seemingly the most absurdest of stories into compelling tales with visual and aural splendour which lie perfectly on that thin line between genius and mockery of genius. Thats quite something. I have thoroughly enjoyed all the stuff he has made and I have seen. (Yet to watch Jackie Brown and Deathproof) My favourites among his work are the Kill Bill movies. And yes I had mentioned in the podcast episode before, though I really appreciate Pulp Fiction I dont consider it remotely even among the greatest movies ever made. Also I dont consider him among my favourite or even the best directors out there. Yes he is a brilliant auteur who has created his special place by giving the internet generation marvellous mashups of old and current popular cultures and arts from all over the world but where is the variety? His originality lies in the incredulity of his work but where is the novelty?

The best and the worst from this decade’s Oscars

When the curtain fell on the night of the Oscars on Feb 23rd of this year, the last of the Oscars in the first decade of the 21st century were given away. I had to make a list post and what better way to make lists than talk about the Oscars, the Academy’s short sightedness and baseless favouring of some movies over others. The Oscars have been long notorious for the fact that they often snub some great cinematic masterpieces for ephemeral success stories though they are often seen as the bastion for the best of world cinema. So this is the list of movies which were nominated and won (or dint win) in the Oscars from the year 2000 to 2009.
Here in this post I list out the top 5 movies of this decade which were nominated to the Oscars and yet dint get the love they deserved. These movies certainly should have won many more statuettes or in some cases won atleast something. Following that list will be another top 5 of the movies which were nominated to the Oscars but got far more awards/credit than they deserved. One important thing you need to know is I have taken into consideration only the movies which were nominated. So there might be some movies which weren't nominated at all but were very good pieces of Cinema which deserved to be. Taking them into consideration would just make the list very complex. So here they are:

Top 5 nominated movies that were overlooked

5:Memento in 2001: The classic modern Film Noir. It is not something you expect the academy voters to appreciate and sing laurels about but not even the oscar for screenplay? Are you kidding me? I coudnt believe it when it got beaten by Gosford Park. Also what kind of genius can pull off such a stunt with a screenplay that screws with your head and yet make it an infinitely repeat watch and not get a nomination for direction. Nolan only! First it was Memento then Batman Begins and then The Dark Knight.
Also Wall-E in 2009: Animation movies are no less than any other live action stuff but the people at the Oscars still think they are for kids. They have a separate category for them which is nice but they dont let the children stray into the living room. In the occasional circumstances the child(animation movie) is precocious they snub it. Wall-E is the perfect example. In a perfect world where there is no prejudice it would have been nominated for the best movie and may have beaten the dogs out of the slum.

4: Atonement in 2008: Atonement was fighting a losing battle right from the start with its competition being the likes of No Country for Old Men and There will be Blood.
What many people fail to realise is just because it is a love story doesn't make it less cinematically brilliant. It was heavily nominated but it failed to win any major ones. People will remember that year to be that of Daniel Day Lewis and Coen Brothers.


3: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in 2005: The Oscars of 2005 weren't really a great fair just like the ones in 2007. Everyone was just talking about the grand old man called Clint Eastwood and how Harry was still dirty and kicked ass just as they were singing songs of Scorsese in ‘07. In the process of crowning Million Dollar Baby they forgot the wonderful gem made by Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman. This movie is wonderful on so many different levels that there is probably no one who has seen it and not loved it.

2: Good Night, and Good Luck. in 2006: The year Brokeback Mountain and Crash were taking in all accolades there was one true gem which will stand the test of time. 10 to 20 years down the line people will look back at this movie and say wow! What a classic. David Strathairn gave a brilliant performance playing Edward R Murrow the iconic TV presenter who made modern TV what it was before it began to rot again. This movie showcases the power of the medium.

1: Road to Perdition in 2002 : Taking the trends at the Oscars, this the movie the academy’s voters should love to bits. It seems like as if it was custom made for them as it has got a great setting, well shot, good star cast and a touching storyline. However this movie was relegated to the sidelines and wasn't even nominated for the major awards. Sam Mendes’s follow up to American Beauty may not be as brilliant but it definitely leaves strong impressions.
Honourable mentions:
LOTR: Two Towers, My favourite movie from the trilogy. The love not shown to it and its predecessor was more than made up by showering on the final installment.
Requiem For a Dream: If you have seen the movie, you know what I am talking. It is just gold in terms of acting, directing, cinematography, music and everthing else. But people at the Oscars dint understand Indie then.

Top 5 undeserved oscar winning movies

5: Brokeback Mountain in 2006 : The movie of the year everyone said. Everyone couldnt stop talking about two gay cowboys getting it on in the mountains. It was Iconic, yes but only a decent film not much different from heavy straight love dramas. It was very boring too. However Hollywood loves to promote the gay cause. I do to. But not by making a mediocre film a cult.
Babel in 2007: Alejandro González Iñárritu made a wonderful movie called Amores Perros and then made 21 grams. He repeats the same intersecting story lines structure in each of his film and Babel was no different. It was slow, a bit boring and nothing more to while away an idle afternoon. This movie however got 7 nominations.

4: The Departed in 2007 : There were several good movies in 2006 but it was a dull year for the movies when you take into account that there was none of the usual one or more two movies each year which blow you away. Martin Scorsese had been snubbed by the oscars for about 2 decades when in the first place he should have won it for Taxi Driver and Goodfellas long long ago. This one was just a fast paced mafia/thriller/cop movie with heavily loaded star cast. If this movie doesnt convince you that the oscar panel is sometimes swayed by the people behind the movie than the movie itself nothing will.
3: The Cider House Rules in 2000: Thank heavens for American Beauty that year or else I fear Cider House Rules would have had its way. The movie was just all right and it was a bildungsroman of an orphan boy. It still managed to gain 7 nominations and win 2 including the best screenplay based on previously published material beating The Green Mile, Talented Mr Ripley and The Insider. For me even the Insider was a better film than the run of the mill Cider House Rules.
2: Gosford Park in 2001: This movie is at its best just a good thriller. It has a great star cast but what is the point if the storyline is just out of an Agatha Christie novel. It does do well in capturing the turmoil and emotions of the character but 7 nominations and one win! come on! And you know what that win was for ? Best Screenplay directly written for the screen which it won at the cost of Memento, arguably the most wonderful piece of screenwriting in the history of cinema. How could they?
1: Chicago in 2003: This is the only movie I havent seen in the list but still it is definitely the worst mistake of this decade for one simple reason. How can a musical however great the musical is upset movies like Gangs of New York, The Hours, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and The Pianist and win the Best Movie Oscar.
(Dis)honourable mentions:
A Beautiful Mind: Good movie but not as great as they paint it to be
Michael Clayton: I dont even know what it was doing there. So many nominations and thankfully only one win.
By the time you reach here I am pretty sure you were vigorously nodding or shaking your head on many of the mentions but hey this is what I thought. Do let me know where you think I went wrong and do mention if you think I omitted something important which belongs to the list in the comments below.


p.s: In case you want to see the complete list of winners. Check out Oscars past at imdb for 1929 to 2007 and for 2008 and 2009