What is up with the movies? Well, the last movie I watched was Die Hard 4.0. It has been two weeks since and I haven't seen any. Faced with the question what the F will I blog,( I really don't care if anyone is reading this or not),I decided upon writing upon the trailers of the movies I missed, wanted to watch and couldn't , or I probably I never wanted to watch,or the ones I watched and never wrote about.

Movies I saw, and didn't write about until now.
To start with POTC-At World's End.

NextUp: Sivaji.The Boss. Aah.I did watch Sivaji, with a Telegu guy who knew elementary Tamil I sure did ruin his movie experience by asking him every 5 mins about the plot.
Well, you really dont need to know Tamil to enjoy Sivaji. Especially, with an audience which starts whistling at the mere sight of Rajni's shoes. The jokes, oh, I couldn't get em, my incapability, but the crowd seemed to love it. Rajni earns hundreds of crores abroad by working as an IT professional ( VISA Power, go get it!). Comes back home to set up a medical college. Bad guy doesnt want him to. Corrupt guys ask more moola.Rajni shows "thenga" (That's the Indian PG Version of the Middle Finger) and sweeps all of them off their feet, in a very unromantic way.His lady love on the other hand wants him to be get Fair and Handsome , or else the relation is over. Tormented Rajni goes in the pool of Multani Mitti, has Papaya facials, puts on Manish Malhotra desinger jackets,and fights the goondas at his ladylove's music store. Throw in some Rahman scores, 20 different hairdos including a bald look,and catchy lines like---Coool, Finisshh...whats not to like or love?

Some of the movies I didn't see and why?
Ck2MK-Chain Khuli Ki Main Khuli. Puhleezzz, I prefer to refer it as the dialogue from Satte pe Satta
The Train-Catch Ya Never,coz, Some Lines should Never be Crossed. Sure, the threshold of the screening room playing the Train.
Premonition-Premo who...????Sandra Bullock. Next please
Fool N Final--Already have downloaded the video Ye Dooriya. So , am good.
Shootout at Lokhandwala - hmm. I wanted to see it, but I got affected by the virus of Vicky Pollard, the symptoms being frequent uttering of " yeah but no but yeah but no but yeah but no..."""""
Red Swastika: When is Mithun Da's next releasing?

Some of the movies I really had to NOT see.

JBJ: When the promos were out, and AB Sr. did a Jack Sparrow on a Bhangra No. by Shankar Ehsaan, with the Yashraj films Banner gleaming below,first reactions were, no matter what, even if its crap, I will go to watch the movie. At Least for the songs. I got the soundtrack, and fell in love with Bol Na Halke Halke, sung by Rahat Fateh Ali Khan.
Friday Came, and my friend called. You are watching this movie over my dead body. I had no other options.
Apne:hehahahahaha..Kutte Kamine...I felt scared..what if the Deols teared the screen open..I mean for God's sake it ain't one..not two, but all three of 'em.
And Sunny Paaji playing Rocky Balboa for Papajee. I think, I'd better settle for Ghayal's DVD.

Aap ka Suroor: I didn't like the spelling mistake. I couldn't believe that a movie of this stature with an actor like Himmesssss could be released with spelling mistakes in its promotional posters.I felt let down.Yeah,on a serious note, primarily because , I ,being a responsible citizen of this nation, wanted to protect my fellow countrymen from the possible torture they call: Aap ka Suroor,the Sequel to the Reaalll Love Storyy.And I have failed to do so. Even after holding myself down and controlling the curiosity I had to watch Himesss on big screen, curiosity got the better of millions of my fellow countrymen,and yes, the sequel is happening. Aaj, khusshh to bahut hoge tum. Himess , you must be proud to have yur pic on me blog. Haayy

Awarapan: The Paki Music Techno Remix didn't work for me this time.BTW, I havent watched Zeher,Wo Lamhe and even Gangster.

Naqaab: Please No. Abbas Mustan are the biggest cost cutters, do you know. I wont watch their movie until they change their attire. They have been wearing the same white shirt, and white pant, I mean the same, since Khiladi was released. The VHS tape of Khiladi has got all the reels demagnetised and Wada Raha plays backwards, Ayesha Jhulka is now on Telebrands, but Abbas Mustan still haven't changed their white dress. Has TIDE sponsored all of their movies?

Bong Connection: Simply because, it isn't getting released in Pune.But I am sure that I'll catch it in Kolkata.


Harry Potter: Bachho ne Sab Tickets le liye. No tickets for me. Boohooo

That is what I would like to call it.Doesn't make sense, but it rhymes!Anyway, going back to the movie,the good thing is it is worth all of the 60 bucks I spent on it on a Saturday morning. But was it worth of me waking up on a Saturday morning , hungry and sleepy, rushing to the multiplex,braving the rain of Pune, which left me drenched .Well to some extent yes,coz it was money's worth. Now that I have started sounding like a baniya, lets just tell you, that this is a movie solely for those who swear by the Masala Hollywood Potboilers, and for those who go to the theatres to watch a piece of magnificent moviemaking, I'd rather recommend them to stay indoors, get hold of a Spielberg DVD instead, and just get cozy with their remote. For others like me, its nostalgia revived and its time to say hello to 'Detective' John McClane(Bruce Willis, did I actually need to mention it),well for the 4th time.
The plot: based upon an article from Wired entitled "A Farewell to Arms"by John Carlin,is as simple as one could be.It's actually about confusing the entire audience about how technology can take a toll of the entire functioning system of a country and how crooked minds ( moles in FBI and hired Russian chamche) can use it to blow up their bank balances.Hmm, sounds quite original.Lost in this digital chaos,is our very analog ,good old McClane who is trying to make sense of it all,with the help of a Hacker,Matt Farell(Justin Long) and fatty accomplice Warlock(Kevin Smith) to save America from the wrath of ex-Fed Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant, last seen in Girl next Door, remember the guy who planned about the shooting of prom video Version ahem.ahem!!!).
Anyway,assisting Gabriel is hot chi(n)ckie Mai Lihn (Maggie Q) who kicks some serious McClane Ass ,kung fu style, while deploying some serious code simultaneously.I never knew geeks( Geeks here do not necessarily mean people who are "Geeks",you know, more like a Techie)could be hot as well.Well, none that I know of. At the end of it, McClane manages to save the day, and after a whooping 2hrs and 40 mins roller coaster ride,McClane survives with a few scratches and a shoulder shot and also manages to find a Techie(won't use Geek this time)future son-in-law .See, who said only Karan Johar said "It's all about loving your family".
The problem: I personally enjoyed every bit of every green dollar spent on this movie. Because it all showed on the screen.Cars banging each other, Old-school, bare-knuckle, wham-Bam sequences, Fighter Planes exploding , our Hero and his sidekick being hunted down in Dark Tunnels, Cars being thrown on them,SUVs on a Lift, Concrete Bridges breaking, Cars bringing down Choppers, and of course John McClane bringing down armies of assasins with just a handgun.
But after a while, it stats getting on you. Simply put, you start drawing parallels between McClane and our very own Mithun Da or Rajnikanth Anna (no offense). It is too much action happening around you, and McClane still manages to survive through each and every obstacle as if hopping through turtles in Super Mario.
And well, not to mention ,the many cliches attached to this genre.The geeks know it all,the villains are supergeniuses and also have been trained in combat fighting, Russians are always bad hackers, carrying MP5s ,no matter what, there is always a good hacker who can encrypt everything up and show an "up-yours" in a decrypted way,Hackers always type on the keyboard very fast and never use their mouse,the FBI is dumb and arrives late, Operating Systems of the Computers have lovely User Friendly interfaces to make even Macs burn with envy et al. But well, perhaps , I am too much complaining.
John McClane is supposed to be like this,and so is Die Hard. The amount of hair on Willis' scalp has seen a downward trend , but the action, the charisma and the power of John McClane has been sailing the skies. The chemistry between the Brute and the Brains in the movie clicked, and well , I do miss the Rupa Banyan Look of John McClane, but I am happy about one thing and that is, the Geeks/Techies have still a way with the ladies... :P
My Rating: 3 on 5

Fantastic Four:Rise of the Silver Surfer. I don't know who made this movie, except for the fact that Stan Lee has been having cameos in almost all the Superhero Movies lately. Just as I had started getting cozy in my seat , I could see the fast turning of pages of Marvel Comics, and of course the Trademark 20th Century Fox Studios Opening. Okay, I don't need to go that level of detail. The point is, with movies like Fantastic Four, or X-Men or Spiderman, we do not expect Award-winning performances. All we expect is money-worth entertainment and trust me, I got more than just that.

Silver Surfer delivers every bit of it and much more. The plot ain't very complex and any child would be able to predict what would happen next. Something that looks like a meteor is flying all over the world, confounding weather patterns. In Japan, the sea turns to ice, and snow falls over the pyramids in Egypt. Electricity goes out all over Los Angeles, and everywhere this energy ball goes, it creates craters. It's strange enough that people start thinking this might be the end of the world. Come to think of it, that's not a bad guess.Meanwhile, everything is cozy with the Fantastic Four. Mr.Fantastic is about to get married to Elasti-girl(is it?). The Thing is happily engaged to his blind love and the Torch is enjoying the life of a New York bachelor.They are urban dwellers, like all superheroes, and so when Reed and Sue opt for an outdoor wedding, they hold it on a rooftop. Or maybe they do this out of plot convenience.

Before the rings are exchanged, the meteor flies by -- only, on closer look, it's not a meteor. It's a silver man on a silver surfboard, who looks like an Oscar statuette in motion. He has access to a seemingly unstoppable supply of energy, and he's sowing destruction everywhere.The actions involved are definitely noteworthy and enjoyable, and well the transformation is spellbounding and very easy on the eyes. What can I say, the illusion is done!

Von Doom shows up, like someone too mean to die, oozing menace and that very word called "kamina-pan"(English is too fancy a language to have a synonym to it).There are oblique attempts at making the film topical: For example, the Army brings in a torturer to interrogate an alien, because the alien has no "human" rights. Anyway, where was I? Yeah, I was here to praise the movie, so here I go. Its all about popcorn and edge of the seat action sequences. The ones which should be mentioned:battle between the Torch and the Silver Surfer,battle in London, which endangers the Millennium Wheel, to the outer-space scenes,and the ultimate climax in which a creeping darkness threatens to cover the earth.

At 92 mins, its much crispier than the previous average attempt on the Marvel franchise, and of course to a huge extent a better one.Well, to say more, Jessica Alba has definitely stopped doing that thing she did throughout the previous "Fantastic Four" movie. You know, that thing in which she'd speak a line and then look around nervously to see if she'd fooled anybody? Alba doesn't do that anymore. She's just fine now -- and so is the new "Fantastic Four" movie.To say that "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer" is better than the original isn't enough.

Of course :FF3 would be there. Von Doom isn't gone yet. My rating: * * * / 5

Adman R.Balki's directorial debut "Cheeni Kum" is ,as the name suggests, less on sugar-coated entertainment and high on satire, unlike mainstream Bollywood cinema, and for a change, treats the audience maturely, which is a welcome change , by not spoon feeding every detail about the characters, their relations, and their emotions . Cheeni Kum tells us a story about Budhha( Amitabh Bachhan) , a perfectionist chef of Spice 6, an authentic Indian restaurant in London. Budhha takes pride in his eye for details, and in his work, and also claims his restaurant to be the best and the most authentic Indian restaurant, unlike other fake ones, which serve Indian food, directly copied from Indian recipe books.

Budhha lives with his old mother(Zohra Sehgal), has a deep affection for his 8 year old neighbour whom he calls Sexy, and his life sums up between his restaurant and his home. The main plot starts when Budhha is challenged by a customer, who sends back Hyderabadi Zaffrani Pulao back to the kitchen, complaining it to be "sweeter" than it should be. Buddha offended by the act, goes up to the table , and says that his recipe is authentic , and rudely tells the customer to ask their parents back home in India about the recipe of Zaffrani Pulao. The customer here, is Neena(Tabu), who is very much offended, and to prove her point, sends back a plate of Zaffrani Pulao, the next day. Buddha discovers that the fault was of his chef, and to apologise to his customer, asks her out for dinner.

But Buddha is so much surrounded by his own ego and self-righteousness, that he fails to say " I am sorry". What begins as a bittersweet acquaintance between Buddhadev and Neena soon transforms into mutual attraction and love blooms . Meanwhile, Budhha's mom keeps nagging to him about joining the gym. The irony in 'Cheeni Kum' is that the romance and the love angle between the main characters is often met with the contrasting story line of the tragic leukemia patient Sexy who keeps asking Budhha to bring A-rated DVDs. Budhha and and Neena finally decide to get married , but circumstances forces Neena to get back to India.

This leaves Budhha with no choice , but to ask Neena's father's (Paresh Rawal) permission for them to get married. The catch here is, Neena's diabetic father is 6 years younger to Budhha, and the eternal struggle between the two and how they come to terms, is what forms the second half of the movie.

R.Balki's treatment with the entire narration of the plot is absolutely fresh, almost something unseen in Hindi cinema. The satire, specially with the Sardar chemist, " Chacha ko Chatree Chahiye" was well thought of which left the entire audience roaring with laughter. Of course, not to forget, the dentally challenged waiter with his wonderful rendition of " Hyderabadi Zaffrani Pulao", and also his categorisation of chatree as" dotted,ribbed, strawberry, banana..et al". The movie is filled with likeable moments like the ones when Tabu discovers that Budhha is a vegetarian and calls him "Ghaas Poos", and in return Budhha calls her "Tangdee Kabab". But well, some scenes could have been done away with , like the Tree Chase scene, and well, the subsequent scenes that followed, where Bachhan tries to pursue Tabu to "do it". I mean, c'mon, who are we kidding? Mr.Bachhan , you are a wonderful actor, but you are no Kevin Spacey, or Al Pacino. Please act your age, and remain a respectable role , and please do not show us shades of Sexy Sam. It almost disgusts me sometimes. Paresh Rawal as the Gandhian diabetic is just ok. We have seen much better performances from him, so this is just passable. Tabu as Neena is nothing brilliant nor ordinary. The role seemed to easy for her in fact. The only character that made a deep impact on me , was Zohra Sehgal's .

It was such a wonderful protrayal, especially in the scene when Neena reveals that she wants to get married to Budhha. The smile on her face, and the way she says," Do din Gym gaya to usse tu mila hai."( He just went to the gym for two days, and he got you. )And of course the scene at Qutub Minar, when she starts singing a Bhangra number filled with claps and merry making. Simply brilliant. Swini Khara, however as Sexy comes across to me as the extra smart, Sayanee Ladkee who has riped before age. I just do not like such kids, who know their meta physics before revising their rhymes. Illayaraja's comeback score of the movie is very easy on ears, but that is it. The title track "Cheeni Kum hai..Cheeni Kum hai.." keeps lingering every now and then, and you start thinking, whether your ears are echoing or is it that the filmmakers did actually put it in the soundtrack.

All in all, R.Balki's "Cheeni Kum" is praise-worthy for its overall entertainment value, its wonderful writing, and its narration. I will wind up with 3 out of 5.Check it out at a theatre near you. If not, wait for the DVD to be out soon.

Still struggling to get over the hangover of my last torturous tryst with the Big Screen, I was expecting a better date with the Friendly Neigbourhood guy in the Blue and Red Speedo. I have actually grown on an overdose of Stan Lee's creation right from the days of the Amazing Fantasy to the many renditions of the imaginative world of the Spiderman by different authors. It had been a thumb rule in the world of Hollywood Cinema that a comic book movie would always land up being like a Joel Schumacher's cheap treat of the Dark Knight. All that changed when Spidey swinged to the tunes of Sam Raimi .

The first Spidey movie had the innocence of a nerdy high-school teenager who wants to be cool, just discovering the comfort of getting rid of his carbon frames and also defying gravity at the same time. Clubbed with first love in an upside-down fantasy kiss in the middle of a dark Manhattan Street still wet with the rain, and of course serious ass-kicking action scenes against the very green and very evil Goblin. Spidey one was my favourite Superhero Movie.

Not until Spidey 2 came out. Spidey now was dealing the real evils of reality of making both ends meet, juggling his time to save the world along with delivering pizza , and also getting enough sleep to wake up and prepare for the next lecture's assignments. Simultaneously, our hero had to deal with his love, Mary Jane slipping away , as she demanded more attention. Oh, I forgot to mention, Alfred Molina's wonderful portrayal of Spidey's nemesis Dr.Octavius. Spiderman 2 had it all, in exactly perfect doses making it a brilliant recipe, in fact a real treat. When Spidey-3's teasers got released on the internet last fall,you know what kind of excitement it generated in the minds of people like me, a whole generation of people like me who swear on the Marvels of Marvel and DC. And then to add to the franchise, the wallpapers and the online streaming of trailers revealing that this time around , its gonna be not one, not two, but three separate baddies fighting against our Spidey. It was getting really heated. So heated up, that when I could not get the tickets to the Saturday's shows , I cursed everyone around. Not to mention, I went ahead and read the spoilers at wikipedia.com. But still, my spirits were all high and my eyes grounded on the screen as I entered the auditorium. Somehow, as I entered the hall, I could sense , this movie will not live up to the extremely high expectations that I had almost framed in our mind.I don't know how, but I did sense it.

The Plot:Opening scene-an unusually happy and content Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) is reveling in how well things are going for him -- his relationship with Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) is rock solid, he's at the top of his class at the university and he's about to go from freelance status to staff photographer at The Daily Bugle.Simply put, picture perfect . But evil begins to reassert itself on several fronts.As Peter and Mary Jane gaze at the stars from their spider-web hammock overlooking the city, a modest "War of the Worlds"-like meteor crashes nearby and emits a gooey black silk that slithers and slides of its own accord.A hard-outside/soft-inside criminal ,Flint Marco(Thomas Haden Church), who turns out to have been responsible for the murder of Peter's beloved Uncle Ben, escapes from prison and, through a process that defies comprehension but is undeniably eye-catching, turns into a shape-changer named Sandman who can blow through the caverns of Manhattan or become a giant hulk with fearsome pummeling power.

And then there is Harry Osborn (James Franco), who, still blaming Spider-Man for the death of his father, decides to emulate the great green one by engineering a new designer Goblin outfit and flying board and taking to the skies to avenge his old man.Peter acquires yet another adversary in the person of Eddie Brock (Topher Grace), an aggressive street photographer who vies with Peter to capture the revelatory shot that will reveal Spider-Man for who he really is, a coup that will land the winner a full-time job from editor J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons) at the Daily Bugle. The rivalry turns into outright war when Eddie morphs into one more Marvel supervillain, the fanged Venom, whose skills eerily match those of Spidey.Early going is enlivened by a couple high-wire action sequences, a Goblin attack and especially a vertigo-inducing scene in which an out-of-control construction crane demolishes part of a nearby skyscraper, sending platinum blonde Gwen (Bryce Dallas Howard), a classmate of Peter's, heading toward the pavement, only to be saved at the last second by guess who.But the dramatic temperature is brought way down by Mary Jane, who's become a real drag. Fired, in a poor scene, from her Broadway play, she pathetically begs for attention, becomes petulant when Spidey plants a public kiss on Gwen after saving her, then seeks solace from Harry. What happens in the climax is everybody's guess: Mary Jane gets kidnapped (yet again) by the baddies, and Spidey manages to kick their asses with the help of an old (accomplice) foe. Nothing inspirational.Oh did I forget to mention, Aunt May speaking about volumes about how Ben Parker proposed to her.Yeah, I paid my ticket to see that.

The problem:The problem with most third movies in a film franchise -- be it Star Wars or The Godfather, Batman or Superman, Indiana Jones or The Matrix -- is that the primary reason for their existence is greed. It's not that the filmmakers aren't trying to make a good film. It's just that, unless you're dealing with source material rich enough to warrant three separate pictures (like The Lord of the Rings), all the best ideas have already been spent on the previous two installments.The only reason to go back, then, is to wring a few more bucks out of a proven success. This is why most part threes are, with precious few exceptions, so disappointing. Spiderman 3 is in fact not one of those exceptions. It repeats all the tried and tested character insights scripting done previously in Spidey 2, to an excessive extent that it becomes painful enough to bear the pain of Aunt May and ageing Mary Jane. No wonder, Peter wanted to break up with her.

Even longer than its predecessors, 3 piles on the series's usual comedy scenes and action sequences while adding some black slime from outer space and a few new actors (Thomas Haden Church, Topher Grace) to the more familiar faces (Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, J.K. Simmons, Rosemary Harris). And a pile is what it feels like, especially when two superheroes ultimately join forces to defeat three supervillains. Given how bogus the movie is whenever it departs from formula, it's not surprising that the funniest bit (in which Peter Parker becomes a disco smoothie) is stolen from Jerry Lewis's The Nutty Professor or that the best special effects, involving a gigantic Sandman, dimly echo King Kong. Director Sam Raimi tries to pump some life into this dutiful enterprise but seems more than a little bored himself, especially when he's getting mushy about Spider-Man's moral decline and regeneration. It feels like the end of Sam Raimi’s big-screen comic-book adaptations. (Ready or not, the studio is talking about a fourth.) Aesthetically and conceptually wrung out, fizzled rather than fizzy, this latest installment in the spider-bites-boy adventure story shoots high, swings low and every so often hits the sweet spot, but mostly just plods and plods along, as if its heart were pumping tired radioactive blood.Maybe it’s middle age.

In fictional terms Spider-Man a k a Peter Parker a k a Tobey Maguire looks like he’s pushing 23, but there’s something about the guy that shrieks midlife crisis. Peter is still hitting the books and still snapping photographs for The Daily Bugle, run by the flattop blowhard J. Jonah Jameson (J. K. Simmons, in clover, as usual). It’s a living, kind of, enough for an enviably situated dump in Manhattan with artfully peeling walls and a fabulous picture window through which Peter regularly bounds into the air in full superhero drag. (The neighbors in this part of town evidently always keep the blinds drawn.) It’s a calling, sort of, though it’s also started to feel a bit like punching the clock.
The programmatic screenplay credited to Mr. Raimi, his brother Ivan Raimi (a third Raimi brother, Ted, plays a tiny role in the picture) and Alvin Sargent certainly feels more like work than play. The only selling point in “Spider-Man 3” is that Spider-Man or Peter or some combination of the two discovers his so-called dark side when an inky extraterrestrial glob (a symbiote in Marvel-speak) spreads its gooey tentacles over his body, turning his suit and soul black. Though there’s something dubious about the idea that black still conveys evil in our culture, pop or otherwise (tell it to Batman and Barack Obama, for starters), the idea of messing with Spider-Man’s squeaky-clean profile, smearing it with dirt, a touch of naughtiness, seems too good to resist. I would have loved to see a bit more of Spidey-the Dark Man, or shall we call him Peter Darker. May be , he could end up killing Gwen or Mary Jane perhaps, rather than playing the piano or grooving to the Jazz.

But then, having said enough of how Spidey 3 did not meet much of my expectations, people at Sony have the cash bells ringing continuously, without giving a shit about what the critics say.Left dangling for the past three years, arachnophiles everywhere finally have cause to celebrate.
The biggest (with a production budget due north of $250 million) and longest (clocking in at 139 minutes) and quite possibly the capper of a trilogy featuring the current talent lineup, "Spider-Man 3" has done it again.Certain to please the geek squad by remaining ever true to its comic book roots while retaining that satisfying emotional core that has registered with equal numbers of female fans, "Spider-Man 3" has all its demographic bases covered.Having already received its world premiere in Tokyo in a nod to piracy concerns, "Spider-Man 3" premiered in a good portion of the globe ahead of its May 4 North American bow. And the opening weekend collection is a worldwide highest breaking the feat of POTC-Dead Man's Chest.

Factor in those additional Imax screens, and the Columbia Pictures blockbuster should spin a worldwide web that should build substantially on the $1.6 billion already brought in by the first two installments.And so , it doesn't matter if Spidey got a little way too much emotional on this one, and Aunt May was high on her Prozac,neither if Mary Jane desperately needs some face lift, as far as the cash is flowing, Spidey 4 is very much on the cards. Early speculations: Carnage could be the next villain.My Rating: 3 out of 5, just for the extra-cool, hyper special effects worth 250 million $. Money speaks.

Extremely depressed after a long,working week, Friday Evening was the time when I had to go and watch a movie and unfortunately , there were no other tickets available for me other than for Eragon.What can I say?It is movies like Eragon which are made, to make one realise that high budget Hollywood Special Effects can also fall flat on the face. It sets an example of how exactly movies ,should not be made.No matter how much bucks you thrown into, you definitely can end up creating absolute crap if you don't have the craft.

George Lucas' Six Star Wars, Peter Jackson's LOTR Trilogy, and well the four Harry Potter Movies. After being a witness to all these fantasy movies (some masterpieces like the Return of the Jedi and LOTR-Return of the King, and some not so much -the Harry Potter Series), when I am subjected to such a big screen torture for almost two hours , I cannot help but cry. Cry out loud,"those are the two hours of my life gone wasted".If you are still wondering what is there to complain about the movie,well, let us go the other way round by jotting down what I actually liked about the movie. To start with the name of the Dragon "Saphira". Sounds much like Shakira, but more elegant and well, sounds somewhat related to Sapphire. Whats next? Umm, the beautiful outdoor locations and spellbounding aerial shots of Hungary. It did remind of the New Zealand of LOTR.That's it.That is all I liked about the movie.

Everything else in the movie was completely ordinary to pathetic at times. The narrative-slow, the dialogues- could have been written by me in a much better way, I guess.I could have spiced up the movie by giving it a touch of Tenacious D in the script. The actors, do not get me started on that. And I do not care if it is based upon some fantasy bestseller by some Paolini. I demand an explanation for making such talents like Djimon Hounsou, Jeremy Irons and Robert Carlyle all gone waste.As far as Rachel Weisz's voice is concerned , it is not very recognisable like Cate Blanchett's(LOTR, remember).

No wonder, when we entered the theatre, the torch guy said, "Sit anywhere Sir, the hall is yours". Me and my friend, chose our seats. From reel 1 to the end, my friend demanded, " Yaar!! c'mon show me a kiss at least". Because there was nothing else that could rescue our Friday evenings. He would frequently comment " Bloody , ek dhang ki bandee nahi hai movie main, itna paisa kaha kharch kiya, aur naa hi ek kiss dikhaya, at least LOTR main Liv Tyler last main ek mast wala kiss to deti hai". What can I say? Some people do have complaints that neither IMDB nor Rotten Tomatoes would register.

Rating: I wish I could give it a negative rating. But because of the Visual Hungary Tourism Brochure, I m gonna give it a 1. But it came to me for 140 bucks. Screw it. Minus 5. Wanna still watch it?

Here is the List of all that I have written about in Magnum Opus.

Aaja Nachle
Om Shanti Om
Jab We Met
Superbad
RGV ki AAG
ScreenFixed 2
Monsoon Wedding
Dil Dosti etc.
Johnny Gaddar
Loins of Punjab Presents
Transformers
Ratatouille
ScreenFixed
Die Hard 4
Fantastic Four :Rise of the Silver Surfer
Cheeni Kum
Life in a Metro
Spiderman 3
Eragon
Little Miss Sunshine
Bheja Fry
NameSake
300
Pick of Destiny
Water
Apocalypto
Dhoom 2
Bhagam Bhaag
Casino Royale
Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna
Rang De Basanti
King Kong
Hazaron Khwahishein Aisi
Harry Potter :Goblet of Fire
Parineeta