Unruled Notebook

Flaunting book-lists in our blogs doesn’t qualify us as scholars. Presenting a movie list doesn’t make us one either. Such lists perhaps convey only the narcissist identity crisis the list-maker unabashedly conceals in the stated sharing.

There, I have come clean of my motive. Allow me to present a list of movies I watched in part or full in the past three months. Not all of them are new movies and the listing is random in order with few comments wherever I could muster them.

Before the list, a note on my tastes. I am a sucker for comedy and gentle humor. Gentler the better. Next comes adventure and romance, including all sorts of action slam-bang but I stop short of glorifying violence and human depravity. Bitter-sweet is fine, but sweeter the finer. I watch movies (or attempt an art) to enjoy and feel inspired. Not to get depressed and pessimistic with life.

My recommendations carry a [*] next to it. Your judgment should still save you.

• Jacques Tati
  • Jour de Fete [*]
  • Mr. Hulot’s Holiday [*]
  • Mon Uncle [*]
  • Play Time [*]

Humor is at its best when made from life events, without being preachy or hurting anyone directly. It brings out a spontaneous laughter that ends in a reflecting smile than a sickly jeer or a helpless guffaw. Having watched the movies of Tati, I know I have watched some of the best humor.

The theme is always the same; the incongruity and conflicts between small town life with simple lifestyle and the forced industrialization and mass production that France was subjected to during the decades after the World Wars.

I stop here. A separate review is required for this director and his vision.

• Jim Jarmusch
  • Coffee and Cigarettes [*]
  • Down by the Law

Years back, couching with my Romanian friend with Italian wine and charred spiced okra as companions, I watched the video tape version of  Night on Earth from this director. It had five episodes of night life on various parts of Earth with some poignant and funny moments. I was scrounging for that movie but could locate only the above two. But Coffee and Cigarettes is better than Night on Earth. It is a collection of short episodes, nuggets I should say, of wry humor and poignancy conveying the reverberation of human thought in loosely repeating conversation between different people involved in different situations. Jim Jarmusch is one American director who can do something different every time and makes most of them enjoyable.

I am surprised Kamal Haasan’s recommendation list in screenwriting didn’t include a movie from this director (Kamal is now encouraging us to participate in a contest for script writing for short films on Chennai alias Madras).

• Alfred Hitchcock
  • Murder [*]
  • Psycho [*]

Murder is one of his earlier and lesser known low-budget movies. It has a plot resembling those in the mysteries of Ngaio Marsh. There are some trite cinematic scenes but there is enough polish and tautness of script. Present also is the obvious ability of Hitchcock to screenplay a story at breakneck speed without allowing the audience to pause and think of the plausibility to ridicule.

By the time his Psycho was released, Hitchcock was almost beyond comparison in his perfection of the genre.

• Federico Fellini
  • 8 1/2

The movie does stretch aspects of movie making and story telling but – in the eyes of the critics – perhaps not as much as his other movies (like La Strada) did. Critics will hail the movie with cryptic remarks like the genius of the movie is in its confusion, but I chose to watch it and like it because this is perhaps the least depressing of his movies.

• Akira Kurosawa
  • Seven Samurais [*]
  • Yojimbo
  • Rashomon

The first two movies in the list set precedents for action sub-genres that are discussed in detail in their respective Wikipedia pages (Magnificent Seven, Fist Full of Dollars). The Japanese villages and the milieu (like the agriculture dependent people and their attire, sentiments of the virgin girl and her father, the scenting of her wet hair with incense smoke, even the farmers song in the fields while they sow in The Seven Samurais) portrayed in these movies are not too different from what we have in South Indian villages. Even today, some of them are intact and alive, living in bygone times. Which perhaps suited Kamal Haasan when he made his successful Virumaandi as a diluted adaptation of Rashomon, another of Kurosawas’ better movies (It is present in Kamal’s screenwriting recommendation list mentioned above).

• Billy Wilder
  • The Seven Year Itch

Known more for the blown-up virtues of Marilyn, I liked the movie for what it is meant to be; a gentle comedy of a married man’s torrid time with his conscience and over-imagination, in the absence of his wife and child. All ends well and the faithful husband remains as one. Marilyn remains unconquered.

• Ingmar Bergman
  • Wild Strawberries

Should try out his other movies before commenting on his style.

• Mel Brooks
  • The Producers [*]
  • History of the World Part 1 [*]
  • Blazing Saddles [*]
  • Silent Movie [*]

Much has been said about Mel and his movies. Producers is from the young Mel, starring Zero Mostel (the burping Caesar in History of the World) and Gene Wilder both of whom are brilliant. I confess years back I have searched the country in vain for the Part 2 of the History of the World. Just as I did for the Vol. 2 of the Traveling Wilburys (Vol. 2 was never released by Bob Dylan, to honor the death of Roy Orbison after vol. 1; They went on to release a Vol. 3). Such is art. Many times rather than playing on you, it plays you. Makes you go Nuts, N V T S, Nuts.

• Blake Edwards
  • The Party [*]
  • Pink Panther series

If you have ever wondered where Kamal Haasan gets his acting subtleties and comic timing, watch The Party. The Pink Panther series is good, establishing Peter Sellers as a comic force. But The Party is where he is in his brilliant best. A humorous, touching movie (which does make the Kamal Haasan’s recommendation list in screenwriting).

• Around the World in Eighty Days [*] (produced by the greenhorn Michael Todd with Kevin McClory and directed mostly by Michael Anderson)

With the classic book in mind I watched this movie. A mistake. The adventure, is modified  at places from the original (including the initial balloon flight sequence and the bull fight to accommodate the real Latin hero Cantinflos donning Fogg’s sidekick character, Passepartout), but is enjoyable. David Niven has gone on record the lead character he played is his dearest. The movie has some jarring racial typecasts.

• Mira Nair
  • Monsoon Wedding [*]

Five love-stories told with enough mush, music, melodrama, murk, masaala and mast. The eagerness to portray the darker sides and the pretension of a Salaam Bombay is gone. Here is the party-hard Punjabi in well rounded human sides and shapes. As one of the dialogue in the movie goes, You Punjabis are so ostentatious; and you Bengalis are so pretentious… Not sure who is taking a pot shot on who, but it is definitely of Indian by Indian and (also) for Indians.

• Ramin Bahrani
  • Man Push Cart

A depressing movie portraying a slice of us who go nowhere with wasted opportunities weighed down by past guilt and responsibilities, seeking solace in the mundane with daily struggle as our safest achievement. This is how far positively I can write about the movie, which has a documentary feel with the protagonist looking more like a fool at the end depriving of my initial sympathy. To complete the cliche I am sure it should have won some artsy awards.

• Oxide and Danny Pang
  • The Eye

A commercial horror flick where the horror source is the borrowed eyes. I don’t know why this is touted. There were some sequels too. A Tamil bad-copy starring Sneha scared one guy because he was the only guy in the theater. Talking of commercial horror, I better enjoyed the recent Tamil movie Yavarum Nalam directed by Vikram K. Kumar starring his friend (and smart-alec co-producer) Madhavan, where all the horror happens in broad daylight.

• Few action adventures (sometimes with enough comedy to bungle it all)
  • Loose Cannons (Gene Hackman)
  • License to Kill (James Bond duh!)
  • Casino Royale (the spoof starring David Niven)
  • Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
  • National Treasure
  • National Treasure – Book of Secrets

All are time-pass, enjoyable and perhaps not worth watching again. Until you feel jobless – which is every weekend.

• Supposedly Kid Movies – all are much recommended
  • Ant Bully
  • Finding Nemo
  • Dinosaur
  • Bug’s Life
  • 101 Dalmatians (1961 version)
  • Jungle Book (1 and 2)
  • Toy Story

With such feel-good, positive, adventurous, humorous, snazzy and stylish animation classics made exclusive for them, I envy the kids in us. Why bother growing up and understand the interpretations of a La Strada?

Yes, I haven’t listed many Tamil movies. I gather new releases from Kamal Haasan or Mani Rathnam is not due this summer.