Deepika Padukone – "My Choice" video review

Thinking of a superlative form of 'desperate'; (thinking, thinking)..Nah...nothing comes to mind. Let me give you an example- 

Deepika Padukone – "My Choice" video (picture source: everydin.com)

Ever asked yourself what drove a no-nonsense hardcore professional actress to the realm of  "woman-power" in the real sphere? Social awareness? The idea of doing good for others? Or was it cheap publicity before an imminent release. Or maybe the quest of a launchpad that imitates other actors in the industry who take to the idea of "social welfare" to promote their films. Whatever the reason, it's one video that goes bonkers over the idea of whatever it was meant to achieve.

Once again, like many of her films, this video starts to choke itself on its length after 1:30 and crawls towards the 2:30 mark. Again,  much like many of her films, it's unintelligent, opinionated and unsuccessful in talking to the audiences. Today, times are such that if you share a Facebook status with the tagline "Empowering the women", it will receive quite an engagement, let alone a 1080p HD video on YouTube with celebs like Anupama Chopra, Deepika Padukone and Adhuna Akhtar in it. To be completely honest, I opened it with what you may call "expectations" given such names and the direction of Homi Adajania but to be even more honest, it was an utter and shameless letdown.

The makers seem to think that they will put anything they want into the throats of the audiences and they will gulp it down because it supposedly contains a 'message' aimed at betterment of the society radical feminists to do their 'thing'. Hear out Deepika's narration; seems like the closing statement of  a primary school play and that too being read from a script by some replacement because the other girl was sick that day. Okay then...the visuals, a sort of a rip-off of the classic revolution Ingmar Bergman brought to the screen. Now, the 99 women shown in the video are supposed to be powerful and so the only thing the director saw fit to do with them is to play horror themes with their entrances, let their hair fly off like the iconic sequences of the movie Raaz and show dark shades along their faces...OOOOHHhh...scary.  Soon the video forays into scenes that remind you of Black Swan although it might be a complete 'co-incidence' or better yet an 'inspiration'.

Finally, the choice. Ask any rational, thinking, unopinionated woman in India or even outside India and she would tell you all that is wrong with what has been said about it. Maybe I could have done it; but then again, I am a sexist hog and a tool of patriarchy. Right? 

Bandwidth Verdict: It's high time the precious bandwidth of the country is stopped being spent on trash like this.                                                                                                                                   

Top 10 Mind Bending Movies

Top 10 Mind Bending Movies 

Source: mindblowngifs.tumblr.com/

Cinema started with the idea of amazing the audiences. From then to now, we have moved from surprised to perplexed to stupefied and to flabbergasted with some films. Hence, here we are listing down movies which either require multiple viewings to understand or leave you shell-shocked with a single viewing. The list is my own (therefore in my preferred hierarchy). And the list begins-

#10-The Man from Earth-  

"A talking snake made a lady eat an apple, so we're screwed."

source: pbs.twimg.com

It is surprising how a movie set in a single room and based largely on dialogue has produced a genre for itself at Hollywood. If you are really going to watch this film, please do not visit any sort of synopsis pages to know about it . Let me tell you whatever you want to know. It's protagonists? The actors don't matter. How long is it? 87 minutes. Why watch it? Because it is a work of fiction that will blow your mind.

#9-Perfect Blue- 

"If Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch collaborated for a film, the result would be something like this" - watchmojo.com

source: anime2you.de

Few films need to be so simple in order to be so engaging. Japanese films, particularly Anime has proved animation to be much more than the generally perceived notions. This psychological thriller seems almost impossible from the 10th minute of the movie and creates thin lines between reality and dream. What's hidden beneath the layers is easy and difficult to know at the same time. To not give away any spoilers but to tell you what I mean, let's say that for some, the film ends at 62 minutes while for some, it does at 78.

#8- 2001: A Space Odyssey-  

"Open the pod bay doors, HAL."

Source: francescastephens.com

Before anyone starts cursing me for keeping 2001 at such a low rank, let me make it clear that it is the greatest sci-fi ever made and makes to my top 10 all time greatest movies, let alone this list. But why it is at such a spot here is because excluding, what might be the greatest ending in Cinema history,  the movie is not that mind boggling. The visual effects, the story-line, those frames of evolution, those long shots moving over the spaceships are all classic material but that is not necessarily what we are discussing here. You completely understand what is happening in the movie the whole time and the end is open to be deciphered by the audiences which somehow easily came to me. You watch it again for those aesthetic scenes and not for the meaning. Hence the spot.

#7-Predestination- 

"What comes first, the chicken or the egg?''

Source: filmacizle.com

Predestination is a film that can't be written unless the writer bleeds his hands off while doing the screenplay. Although a keen movie watcher figures out the secrets somehow, the sheer paradox value it provides within 97 minutes of its run-time is unmatched. A loose sci-fi base doesn't mar the excellence of the movie which is an accolade in itself. It does't really deal with deeper truths and ideas like other films on this list but has an entertainment quotient equal to all others.

#6-Strange Circus- 

"The skull was placed on a plate and given to a girl,who then presented it to her  mother."

Source: watchbox-content.s3.amazonaws.com

There are still few films that only Japan can create. You might not have heard of this flick but once you watch this mystery thriller, you will never forget it. It is one movie that takes themes of extreme pain and bewilderment to humanity to their very peak and makes the audience jump off it. Darkness and Circus will have a new meaning for you once you watch it.

#5-Mulholland Drive-

"Just forget you ever saw it. It's better that way."

Source: pbs.twimg.com

When people actually came to understand the brilliance of LH, they loved Mulholland Drive. David Lynch once again was there, not to be tested by the audiences but to rather test them. So he began by building a nice sweet room around two beautiful people and then he crumbled the walls and tremored the grounds. There may be several interpretations of the movie and then again, none of them may be correct.

#4-Upstream Color- 

''As a united whole, humanity no longer has a use for a God who doesn’t care'' - Niki Boyle

Source: Amazon.com

With Upstream color, Shane Carruth graduated from $7k to $50k and from a dark sci-fi that amazes to a bright drama that questions. Without doubt, it does require a second viewing but only when you have solved most of the puzzle in your head in the first viewing. To top its difficulty level, the film goes deeper into similar questions as Persona and questions the legitimacy of lives being controlled by someone. Is that person wrong in doing that and does he need to be punished? The movie does give an answer but you may not like it.

#3-Persona- 

"The human face is the great subject of the cinema. Everything is there."

Source: offscreen.com

 Ingmar Bergman is some Director and Persona is some film. When things boil down to the debate of Idea vs. Execution, this is one film that can win it for the execution side. Beginning with a simple but enthralling story, it throws you exposition when you can't see it and breaks you to a point of absolute disbelief with its ever so famous face morph scene. Although towards the end, you may get a grip of the story but the deeper questions of what actually is our identity and what defines our persona leave you in want of answers for years.

#2-Lost Highway-  

"Funny how secrets travel..."

Source: queenmobs.com

To say something childish here, You literally feel lost the first time you watch Lost Highway. It's later that you try developing some sense out of it and then too aren't sure if it is right. Truth is, David Lynch doesn't really expect his audiences to formulate objective opinions about his movies. As such, with its matchless cinematography, the first 40 minutes of it are as good as any movie ever filmed. And it keeps on boggling your mind till the very end and beyond.

#1-Primer - 

"If you ditch work this afternoon, and promise to do the few small things I ask you; I will in  return show you the most important thing that any living organism has ever witnessed."

Source: yelotv.be

When Shane Carruth made this sci-fi masterpiece in a budget of $7000, little did anyone know that it will prove to be the toughest (for lack of a better word) and most difficult to follow film of all time. After 3 viewings along with some exposition, I could say I was able to grasp the 10 timelines in the movie. And what's the best part? When you see it for the first time, you feel like it's a single solitary linear flick. How about that for a movie ?

Bandwidth Verdict: There maybe films that I have left out because these outdo others for me. As such, all of them are must watch for all serious movie fans. If you people know any good films like these, please comment to share them with everyone                                                                       

Hunterrr

Source: Filmihungama

With the way things have been going about in Bollywood, a film like this was certainly due in the mainstream cinema. What actually surprises the audiences is that for a large part of it, Hunterrr is not a Bollywood film. The boldness and downright lurkiness of the protagonist and its depiction on the celluloid isn't something Indian cinema produces everyday and thus is a consequence of Hollywood influence.

As the theme goes, the central character of the film is Mandar (Gulshan Devaiya) who is a vasu i.e. a player. He has learnt and pretty much mastered the act of being a hunterrr since his boyhood with help from his cousin Dilip (Sagar Deshmukh). When this addict finally decides to get married after he realizes he is old enough for his age to be 'unclish', he gets rejected by several girls when he mentions about his past affairs. Enter Trupti (Radhika Apte) who herself has had affairs in the past and our hunterrr seems to have found an ideal match for himself. The story then is about his frustrations and his longing to be completely honest with the girl he has fallen for, for the first time in his life; And his fear of rejection at that for the first time in his life too.

The story progresses in a highly non linear fashion but there isn't any confusion created and so much credit goes to the screenplay. By doing this, the film talks about the events that have shaped Mandar's character and things he has kept bottled up through his life. You know that at some point, this 'adult-comedy' as people are calling it will get serious and you will get that necessary dose of 'Indian-ness' that is obligatory in a movie. And you do get it; but with a finesse and subtlety that makes you applaud the way the actors and the director (Hashvardhan Kulkarni) find a solution for doing that without much hue and cry. The best aspect of this film is how it catches the mentality of the macdonalds generation of the country and shows them in a light that despite all their shortcomings, you tend to care about them.

Although there isn't much attention dedicated to the technical aspects of cinematography or makeovers, there are some superb background tracks that keep up with the tone of the movie. The performances of most of the actors, including our hero, have been either kept to a minimum so as to depict the sexual aspects of their personalities as the dominating forces or maybe because it is the best they can act. But look at Radhika Apte and look at how far she has come from Rakht Charitra to Badlapur to Hunterrr. She is the perfect balance between an outgoing metro girl and a 50s bollywood heroine and she even acts to that level. Whatever Gulshan lacks in his words, Radhika makes up for it, bringing about actual, intense and dramatic sequences whenever she gets the camera. Hunterrr is thus, although unintentionally, the birth of a future star.

Bandwidth Verdict- Apart from some uselessly incorporated sequences, it could have been a must-watch film. But if you can handle that, this just might be your cup of tea.                                        

Interstellar

Source: Bizarro

The greatest advantage and the gravest disadvantage about a science-fiction film is that they are mostly based on a premise that defies common sense and may not even be possible. Much like Modern Physics and the theories of relativity that defy what we perceive as common sense. But it would be ignorant to say that they aren't true and it would be ignorant to say that Interstellar is complete fiction.

If I were to be completely frank, I would say Interstellar is pretty much another 2001: A Space Odyssey without the mind melting finale it gives. It is a captivating film with visual effects to kill for, a lot of which is shot in IMAX, capturing beautifully the horror of the cosmos. Much like 2001, it talks about man's place in the universe and makes a solid statement at that towards the climax. It tries to juxtapose emotional, scientific, rational and survival instincts, each of equal significance and asks the characters to choose between them. It looks like a pretty easy choice to the viewers but the film shows how reality is far more different.

At a rudimentary level, Interstellar is a lot of science but a lot more of fiction. It addresses paradoxes of time and space but leaves much to the 'magic' of a five dimensional world. So let's leave the science to the explanations of the films in documentaries and talk of it as just a film; and not just any film, n 'All Time Great' film.

Look at Matthew McConaughey, the male protagonist Cooper, who pilots a spaceship carrying a crew to a different galaxy via a wormhole created by some 'higher beings' to search for a planet where the inhabitants of a dying earth can survive and flourish. McConaughey is one actor who takes his role seriously enough to give it his everything. Similar is Cooper's character and so they tune in nicely. Another notable performance comes from Michael Caine (but of course) who plays Professor Brand, a physicist trying to device a theory in order to make it possible for all the earth people to reach the new planet. Caine, undoubtedly, looks intelligent enough to pull this through. Anne Hathaway as Cooper's partner on the ship and Brand's daughter has been given less work than she can actually take. A particularly solid character is that of Cooper's daughter that brings the right amount of emotional mix into the story. All this coupled with time dilation and black holes makes for one hell of a movie to watch.

The best thing about Interstellar is that it is intelligent and silent at the same time. Of course when you incorporate actual science in a movie, you throw in some exposition then and now into the scenes but look at those serenic pauses that it provides you to let the reality of the havocs inside the ship sink into the quiet of the outer space. The movie even succeeds at finding reasonable importance to the melodrama it throws at some points which I initially hated but later pardoned; because the overall excitement and thrill of the movie is awesome enough to complete it without any higher morality or supernatural phenomenon or any brain frying ending.

Bandwidth Verdict: It is an 'All Time Great'. But if you haven't seen it at a theater or in an utterly high quality, you haven't seen it at all.

NH-10

Source: filmibeat

It's a crude comparison to make but in the finale of the epic 'Invasion' story-line of WWE (then WWF), Shane Mcmahon himself fought in an elimination match to save the alliance that he owned then. The move was described as "putting his body where his money was" by Jim Ross I guess. Anushka has done the same as a producer in NH-10.

Anushka Sharma is the Nicole Kidman of Bollywood. She is a professional actress; and that is not a generic word in Bollywood because too few actresses are actually professional enough. Anushka knows how to be the talk of the town and that too for respectable reasons. She knows how to make powerful statements at the right time and how to shed away any weights that might hinder her ascent to the top. And it is safe to say that if she does not fall into any dreams of marrying a businessman and living a life far from B-Wood with charity institutions, she could very well become the Greatest Indian Actress of all time.

But I don't write all this simply because of NH-10. It is a good movie though; dark, speedy and most importantly real (mostly). The credit for all that goes to the director Navdeep Singh to have pulled all this in a convincing and believable fashion. If you forget for sometime that you know Anushka, it may look like a real story unfolding in-front of you. That is until the climax where the Heroine emerges from ashes and lets the audiences know of Woman power. It is a story of a couple Meera (Anushka) and Arjun (Neil Bhoopalam who is 'discount Rajkumar Rao' ), who are caught witnessing an honour-killing crime with Satbir (Darshan Kumaar) as the main villain. It is this old old story in an old bottle and yet it feels like a fresh one.

With the country charged with emotions of Woman power, the film tries to exploit the problems the 'woman of the metro' faces today. Things like that do turn boring sometimes but what's good about this film is that it never makes an issue out of it. There are no moral preachings by Anushka's character, no long monologues trying to depict her predicament even though it would have been good to see Anushka acting those things out. But she tries to do all that with emotions and not words and does a good job at that. Rest of the times, Meera means business.

You will not find any good music in the movie nor any picturesque sequences from a cinematographic point of view. The characters have no make-overs too; they act what they want to look. Look at Deepti Naval who plays a Sarpanch in a village. She doesn't look like one until she speaks and after that she looks nothing else. Except for this, there is no real acting in the movie. By this, I don't mean other actors haven't acted well but that it doesn't feel like acting and it appears they really are those characters. That however, is not a compliment.

All in all, NH-10 is nothing new except for a believable and real protagonist in Anushka.

Bandwidth Verdict: If you are an Anushka fan, watch this. If you are not, watch this to become one.