a blog about a lot of things

Sing Street: A Review It’s hard to resist comparisons to Once with John Carney’s new film. They’re both set in Dublin and have romance and creating music as central themes. But really that’s where the similarities stop. Once is a film with a limited focus telling a story of two people over a few days. It’s an excellent film because of this limited scope which is then aided by the low budget, home style camera work. Sing Street is much broader in focus. The central story is pretty simple: boy creates band to impress a girl. But there’s a lot more going on in this film. Set against a backdrop of his parent’s crumbling marriage the film also touches on sibling comradery, difficulty with changing schools, the transformative power of music and the limits of possibility in a small city. The film itself is halfway between a gritty kitchen-sink drama and a fantasy story where dreams come true. It doesn’t sound like there should even be a possible middle ground between those realms...

Sausage Party: A Review Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg have now collaborated on Superbad, Pineapple Express and This is the End . Every single one of these films can be a strong contender for one of the best films of the year they were released in and Sausage Party keeps this tradition going (only The Interview, while still decent, doesn’t hit the high level of the other films they’ve written). At some point if this output and quality continues, critics are going to mark this duo as a new wave of comedy. Comedy films are underrated to the point where it’s become a stereotype of awards ceremonies that the comedy role won’t win any awards. In Sausage Party (and Neighbours 2: Sorority Rising, the other film the duo wrote this year) there’s been a secondary theme of addressing more serious issues. This can have the potential to derail all the fun of the film, as in Sausage Party, the serious theme being addressed is religion but the writers never allow the film to get away fr...

Jungle Book: A review Many children count The Jungle Book as a childhood favourite, myself included. So my expectations for this film were perhaps unrealistically high, especially as the 1967 film was also one of my favourite films (we had the VHS copy). It’s perhaps impossible to expect any film to hold up against such idealistic standards of nostalgia and The Jungle Book indeed does not match my nostalgic aspirations. It far surpasses them. This is not a film that is grounded in the past and limited by its source material. The movie is instead revelatory in every sense. The movie is revelatory while being faithful to both Kipling’s original and to a lesser extent, the 1967 film. There is definitely a slight feeling of classic spirit about the film which is inevitable in a story which we all know. One of the most striking themes about the film, which I never really got in the original film, was of how much Mowgli is stuck between two worlds. It’s pretty much the central...

With Woody Allen films, at least in recent times, the viewer either gets a movie that’s instantly forgettable ( Magic in the Moonlight, Irrational Man) or instant classics ( Midnight in Paris, Blue Jasmine). Café Society breaks the trend by falling between these two categories by being neither a classic nor unmemorable. Drenched in nostalgia like many of Allen’s best films the movie never really seems to come off as a film instead of incredibly well-crafted idea and so at times it’s possible to lose interest. The movie is theoretically about emotion and passionate love but surprisingly (considering the director) never really manages to find the right chord that makes it seem like this passion is felt. Jesse Eisenberg is the latest actor who seems to be playing the onscreen role of a young Woody Allen and easily nails the role. His scene with the prostitute may be the best Woody Allen scene not actually starring the man himself. The film is separated into two main arcs ...

Selection Day: A Review Aravind Adiga has a reputation as a chronicler of the ambition of the Indian masses to bridge the gap of inequality. In this, his third novel, the scope is once again on the effort of members of the lower classes trying to make it into the exclusive world of privilege but this time the author goes about it by focusing on modern India’s great love: cricket.  Few things are more representative of the aspirations of the Indian masses than the dream to be a cricketer. IPL success stories capture the entire nation's attention and this allows the writer to detail another familiar Indian character, the entrepreneur who sees brilliant opportunities everywhere. The cricketers are Radha and his younger brother Manju, both exceedingly talented and continuously bullied by their father, who has made a contract with God that his son’s will be the best and second best batsmen in the wold. They make a less divine contract with Anand Metha who sponsors them ...

Richard Linklater’s films always make the viewer conscious of time, whether it’s the years represented in Boyhood or the hours that go by in Before Sunrise. Everybody Wants Some details the weekend before the start of semester for a group of college baseball players. Linklater has stated that he considers the film to be the spiritual sequel to Boyhood but in tone and style it definitely reminds one of Linklater’s 1993 comedic masterpiece Dazed and Confused. The film is quite light on plot but overall follows freshman pitcher Jake as he interacts with his teammates and navigates his first college weekend. It’s extremely heavy on the conversation and as expected for the director (possibly the best writer of dialogue in current cinema?) the characters go over ideas of varying magnitude which seem to be relevant on a universal level. Sure, the characters aren’t discussing the biggest ideas in the world but the philosophies somehow seem to be profound. There’s no real story...

With films that are shot in one take the majority of focus tends to be on this fact and the difficulty of achieving such a feat. This is understandable as the difficulty of achieving this has made the production of any one-shot film an impossibility till the fairly recent past and the development of digital movie cameras. In 2002, critically acclaimed releases such as Russian Ark and Irreversible were released and while there was sufficient regard for the technical aspect of the films being shot in one-take it was only until Birdman ( edited to seem as one take, not actually one take) in 2014 that it could really be said the one-shot entered the realm of regular film criticism. The posters and trailer for Sebastian Schipper’s Victoria regularly reference the fact that this film was shot in one take. It remains an impressive feat even if they do tell us a lot. Filmed in a couple of hours in the Kreuzberg and Mitte neighbourhoods of Berlin during the early hours of the mornin...

Suicide Squad seems to be an attempt from DC to make a film that’s more subversive and nihilistic than its previous releases. It’s inevitable that comparisons with Marvel films be made and the closest comparison for Suicide Squad seems to be that it would try to capture (some of) the feeling of Marvel’s Deadpool. One of the recurring criticisms of Batman v Superman was that the tone was far too dark and depressing. DC seems to have overcorrected in this film by going too much for quirky.   In a film where the squad is meant to be anti-heroes and “the worst of the worst”, it’s telling that the only character who seems even slightly scary is Federal Agent Amanda Waller. Waller, played by Viola Davis and Jared Leto’s Joker are easily the strongest characters in the film closely followed by Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn. The problem is that the film is filled with characters all competition for screen time and as most of them are badly written or just caricatures, a lot of ...

Copenhagen is an easy city to love. Maybe it’s the fact that I went in June when the temperature approached 27°C and the sun shone so brightly that several of my colleagues were the colour of London buses by lunchtime on the first day. But as I’ve never heard anyone who’s visited the city say they dislike it, no matter when they’ve gone, I’d be inclined to city it really is just a lovely city. London is a hard city to love, even if you live there. In fact, it’s hard to love especially if you live there. Paris is either loved or hated by everyone that has visited it. These cities bring about strong emotions in people. But Copenhagen, when I was there, brought a general feeling of calmness and comfort. The pace of the city was very slow which probably had a lot to do with the weather but also the lack of crowds in the city. We stayed less than 10 minutes from the central station and there was none of rushing and general busy attitude one would expect from such a central ...

Constanta lies around two hours east of Bucharest, on the Black Sea. With a foundation date of 800 B.C., it is the oldest continuously inhabited city in Romania. Formerly one of the largest ports in Europe, the container traffic has reduced since its heyday in the 1990s but it remains the largest port on the Black Sea. Conversations with locals have confirmed the suspicion that the population of the city varies greatly with the season. In the spring and summer the population of Constanta swells significantly, especially on the weekends, by people flocking to the beaches and boardwalks. When I visited in March, the presence of tourists was not immediately obvious. The rail station lies about 2 km from the waterfront (about 7 lei by taxi) and has the feel of a building that has seen no changes at all for several years. This is a building which doesn’t feel neglected or unkempt in any way but one that’s static. The largest building on the boardwalk of Constan...

It’s been almost seven years since 500 Days of Summer was released. Every year since that release date I’ve watched the movie at least once. I’m still convinced that the film is one of the masterpieces of the millennium and manages to be overcome of the most difficult challenges of any film (or artwork). Namely, the film is both popular and appealing to a wide audience without seeming formless or pandering. Too often films that are made for everyone end up being films for no one. This isn’t the case in 500 Days of Summer. Only in hindsight have I realized it’s a film for everyone. When I’d first watched it, it seemed quite straightforward. Tom was good and hopeful and Summer was evil. This is the kind of analysis I was able to do at 20. And of course, completely lacking the grounding to realize there’s another perspective to the film, I was convinced the narrative I’d seen was right. Much like in Love in the Time of Cholera (another favourite of my teenage self) I’d missed...

Football- 2006 World Cup – Trinidad On November 16 th 2005, Trinidad and Tobago created history by becoming the smallest country to ever qualify for the World Cup. By beating Bahrain (who would have been the smallest country had they qualified with a similar population of 1.2 million) 1-0 at the Bahrain national stadium, they provided Trinbagonian  fans with a once in a lifetime moment for many. Supporters were understandably circumspect about the possibility of qualification. In 1989, needing just a draw to qualify for Italia ’90, the national team, dubbed the “Strike Squad’ had been paraded across the entire country as heroes. The team bus to the national stadium for this final, all-important match was at the back of a slow moving motorcade to allow the fans to see their “World Cup heroes”. They lost 1-0 to the USA, who qualified for the World Cup for the first time in 50 years. They have been to every World Cup since then and 1989 is generally considered the turning po...

Two Years, Eight Months and Twenty‑Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie - review  Salman Rushdie’s name on the cover of a book comes with baggage. Because of the history of the author’s previous works, there’s the inevitable desire to compare with the old books. Midnight’s Children especially weighs upon all of the author’s work because of the stature of that novel. However, it’s not just comparison but expectation. The reader expects the protagonist to be from the subcontinent and the novel to be peppered with historical and contemporary references. There is the expectation that the novel will reference and compare Eastern and Western histories. The historical fiction is expected to be accompanied by magical realism. These expectations can also weigh in on the evaluation of Rushdie’s new novel. And, if the reader is expecting to find all those things, they won’t be disappointed. Two Years, Eight Months and Twenty‑Eight Nights is an unwieldy name which references ...

Best Picture Most likely winner :  Alejandro Gonzalez  Iñárritu,  Arnon Milchan ,  Steve Golin ,   Mary Parent ,  Keith Redmon   for   The Revenant.   A chance for  Iñárritu to win back to back Best Picture and Best Director Oscars for this superb revenge film. Heavily carried by the strength of Leonardo DiCaprio's performance set against beautiful backdrops of Western Canada, the film seems to tread a path of literary stature in the tale of struggle and vengeance. Backup Pick :  Brad Pitt ,  Dede Gardner , and  Jeremy Kleiner  for  The Big Short .   Hard to adapt to screen with a sprawling cast and disparate stories, directed by a director taking his first foray into more dramatic material. Comedy-drama is a hard field to stand out in and do successfully because of the conflict of these two styles and they can seem to detract from each other (comedy taking away from the seriousness, primarily). B...