June 26, 2006

The Not-Yet Last Stand

I made it through X-Men: The Last Stand. It was supposed to be the last X-Men movie, the trilogy. X-Men, for me is the greatest superheroes’ movie ever, apart from The Incredibles – which was the greatest animated experience ever. (Thanks-rant: I thank Brad Bird. I thank Steve Jobs for buying out Pixar from George Lucas. I thank Javed Jaffery for an excellent dub making it the best-ever Hindi dubbed movie.)

But back to The Last Stand.

I am calling it The Last Stand, just like everyone at JoBlo’s does. Why? Because this is not an X-Men movie. Not for me. Not for the many movie and comic geeks out there. Hollywood is filled with movie makers who make the movies as in produce. They are part of a bigger creature called THE STUDIO. Now, a studio has the power to make or break a movie. It can bet huge and come out with a surprise – New Line Cinema’s greatest gamble called THE LORD OF THE RINGS. It can bet small and come out with a success - CRASH. It can also bet HUGE and fall head-first – TROY (In this case heel-first). All these amounts to a single most important part of movie business – creativity. Creativity in Hollywood is second only to probability of success. When quick-buck stands against a possible-bucks-in-future, the former wins hands down.

FOX could have waited for Bryan Singer. Apparently Singer was busy in the greatest re-incarnation in Cinema History. But they were looking for some quick bucks. When they got Matthew Vaughn on board for X-Men 3 I was all ready to forgive their urgency in pushing the movie. I love Vaughn. He just directed one movie and I love it. It’s called LAYER CAKE, See it. But as luck should have it Vaughn moved out. Instead of waiting for Singer or Vaughn, FOX goes ahead and assigns BRETT RATNER. I only saw Ratner’s Rush Hour and I can say without any reproach that it was very bad. More so, because a mumbling Black actor and an accented-asian actor hitting out on some gang isn’t my type of movie. I saw part of AFTER THE SUNSET. It didn’t interest me much even though anything with Salma Hayek would.

I am indignant. The Last Stand depends more on the mutants’ powers rather than the character itself. Most footage was wasted on CGI sequences and more on the various entries of characters – Wolverine jumping from the jet and using his claws to make an easy landing (Crap!). Storm changing weather because she was sad (Crap!), didn’t she felt bad/sad/angry in the last two movies. The movie was like, “Alright we don’t have much to tell, so we’ll put in whatever mutants we can think of”. But it wouldn’t have been that. The story was awesome. In the hands of Singer or even Vaughn the plot would have culminated to the greatest X-Men movie ever. I didn’t want to see half-assed mutants. I never want to see Storm acting up like a main character. I hate Storm. She would have been great if she died or just disappeared or whatever. I just can’t stop raving about how BAD this movie is. Not a shred of reason. No story telling at all. I don’t know how some great online reviewers found this movie good. My man, Joblo gave this sucker 5/10, which is bad but not bad enough. I can’t think of a number higher than 3.

The best part of The Last Stand was that it was very short. Clocking a little over 90 minutes, I was happy for the movie to end. The end was a bit like the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (and woman). (Sidenote: I saw LXG in the theaters, first day. Crappier than X3, I was laughing even before the intermission.) With an Indian POV I can say this movie is gonna make money that it didn’t make back in the west, LXG did. We are going to have various language versions – Hindi, Telugu, Tamil and all. And everyone will rush to see YEX-MEN in their preferred language. I can’t believe VAN HELSING (in Telugu) is still running in some theaters here. The current craze is Underworld 2 (again, in Telugu). They even change the titles of the movies sometimes. Right now, Superman Returns’ Spots are coming on the TV and the Hindi version has conveniently bumped off Returns - It’s now just Superman. But whatever the name Superman is going to Rock and I’ll be there to witness the amalgamation of an iconic hero and the best Superhero director there is, Bryan Singer.

June 20, 2006

I'm Black


I am Black.



take the which pearl jam song are you? quiz, a product of the pearljammers community.


I fuckin' love these lines:
I know someday you'll have a beautiful life, i know you'll be a star
in somebody else's sky, but why
why, why can't it be, why can't it be mine?

Courtesy: Nouman Mohammed Khan.

Random Thoughts Vol.2

Reasons are the same as before. Hence: Random Thoughts Vol.2

  • Mission Impossible 3 finally arrived in Hyderabad. Saw it releasing day - Friday. Awesome action. J.J. Abrams has made it to my list of great action directors. Tom Cruise, always brilliant. Hoffman came out as a great villain. The slight suspense was no surprise, already knew who was behind it before the intermission. Maggie Q - HOT. I was looking forward to see Billy 'Russel Hammond' Crudup after quite a long time in a huge movie. He was great too. A great movie. No bad things to say except the lack of THE THEME in the movie most of the time. But still, the music was good. The Vatican and Shanghai sequences were brilliantly shot. Will watch again this week.


  • Been reading Harper Lee's To Kill A Mocking Bird. A geniune story of innocence and human dignity. Looks like I finally found the life-changing-book after all. Will write all about it in a post quite soon. Started reading it for the second time. This stuff should be in primary education curriculum.


  • Kal El will return on June 30th in IMAX 3D. Book your tickets, I'm booking mine as soon as advance starts. There will be 20 minutes of 3D Supes. Can't wait. The reviews are good not excellent though. Some say it is more of a Chick movie. Some say Spacey wasn't used much. I say fuck off! I say, "I HEART SUPERMAN".


  • Listening to James Blunt's Back to Bedlam. Listen. Wallow in the beautiful melancholy. Also playing all live performances by Pearl Jam. Also in the loop are the Verve, Soundgarden, Fort Minor, Lynyrd fuckin' Skynyrd, Helen Stellar, My Morning Jacket.


  • Also playing Counter Strike and Condition Zero. Trying to throw a LAN party at Copy Junction, Banjara Hills. Need more friends/players.

June 04, 2006

Till Death Do Us Part

Ever read Chuck Palahniuk?

I guess not.

Read this.

June 02, 2006

Random Thoughts

Don't have anything to write about, hence: random thoughts.

  • People are always asking me, "what are you doing?" This is what I am doing these days. Go ahead and click, its an improvisation of a blogger template. It is Work-In-Progress and there's more where this came from. So whenever you need a different looking blog, catch me on Yahoo! IM.

  • Joblo gave it 9/10 and Arrow would butcher his family to see this again. And they saw it at the Cannes. It's my most awaited movie this year. Much awaited than Superman Returns. And I know it won't be released in India/Hyderabad. It's mucho-gloomy and uber-creepy. It's Guillermo del Toro's "El Laberinto del Fauno" (Pan's Labyrinth). Download the creepy trailer, already.

  • Next in line is Richard Linklater's live-action, rotoscopic-animated sci-fi, A Scanner Darkly. Three Words: PHILIP K. DICK (shame on you, ignoramus). It stars some of my favorite actors, Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., and Winona Ryder and Woody Harrelson. I believe I don't have to repeat the trailer line from above.

  • Year's biggest disappointment, Southland Tales, courtesy, Richard Kelly. I had hopes. Damn you, Richard. Please give me a Darko, again.

  • I am back on to music real hard, courtesy: iPod Nano. It's:

    • The Who's Baba O'Riley

    • Elton John's Tiny Dancer and My Father's Gun

    • Helen Stellar's Io (This time around)

    • Fleetwood Mac's Big Love (Acoustic)

    • Pearl Jam doing the Who's Baba O'Riley (live)

    • Wheat's Don't I Hold You

    • Lindsey Buckingham's Shut Us Down

    • Lynyrd Skynyrd's Free Bird

    • D-Mode's remix of Starsailor's Four to the Floor

    • Led Zeppelin's Heartbreaker

    • Beck's Guero

    and more movie soundtracks and scores. I DIG MUSIC. (whoever got it, comment. hint: tiny dancer)

  • Got nothing to read. Going for book-shopping tomorrow. Looking for Harper Lee's To Kill A Mocking Bird, David Vise and Mark Malseed's Google Story and anything minimal (spanbauer, hempel, palahniuk, coupland, camus, lee). Meanwhile, enjoying The Lord of the Rings for the don't-rememberth time.

  • I am also going back to my web devlopment basics. Learning CSS again. Learning Modularization in XHTML 1.1. Trying to learn JavaScript for the nth time. I even have a CSS Reference on my iPod. Thanks, Westciv.


That's all folks! Will return with more thoughts in the near future.