Wake Up Sid

One reason why i decided to watch this movie is Konkona Sen Sharma...I like her very much as an actress right from Mr & Mrs Iyer.
Although I don't like Karan Johar and his production house, the only relief was that he was not directing the movie. It was Ayan Mukerji who directed the film.
The film was a good movie but it had shades of Farhan Akhtar's Lakshya.
Sid (Ranbir Kapoor), a spoiled son of a wealthy Mumbai family, takes his privileges for granted. He sleeps through studying for his final exams and winds up failing them. His father gives him a job in his firm, but he quits after a week.

This causes conflict between him and family, he is forced to go off on his own, without his parents' money.

He meets Aisha Bannerjee (Konkona Sen Sharma) at a graduation day party. She has just arrived from Kolkata and desires to become a professional writer. Despite their lack of common interests, Aisha allows him to stay at her flat; they agree to be "just friends". However, although free all day while Aisha is out working, he makes a mess and cannot cook. He learns to cook, and later also cleans up after himself.

Aisha gets an editorial assistant job at a Mumbai magazine and, through her contacts there, gets Sid a position as a photography intern. Sid slowly comes to realize what responsibility is and gradually matures and finds his own identity. As he does so, he reconciles with his parents and moves back to their house.

Aisha is upset, because she was beginning to fall in love with him. However, Sid reads Aisha's thoughts on their relationship in a printed article in the magazine that they work for and realizes that he too loves her. They have a happy reunion on Marine Drive in an early monsoon shower.

Pazhassi Raja

This was the movie that malayalam film industry was eagerly waiting for so many years. The team which created 'Vadakkan Veera Gadha'. The release of this movie was delayed many times because of various reasons.
And atlast yesterday it was released and we(chayakada group) managed to get tickets at Kairali Theatre. The movie was released in four theatres - Sree visakh, Kairali, Dhanya & New theatre.
The movie was brilliant, except for the stunt scenes. The visuals, sets, background score, sound effects all were excellent.
Sharat kumar was the surprise in this movie. With his looks and acting skills, he shadowed even mammooty. His looks reminds us of Kurosowa's samurais'. Heard that this roll was initially offered to Suresh Gopi but he rejected the offer since he thought that this role was less important than tat of mamooty's. Any way that was good for us. We didn't have to watch his OVER acting.
The movie was produced by Gokulam Gopalan. He has spend 27 crores on this movie, a budget of average ten Malayalam movies. This fim is really a magnum opus
Pazhassi who has been termed as revolutionary by the British uses techniques of guerrilla warfare against them. For this he avails the expertise of tribals lead by Thalakkal Chanthu (Manoj K Jayan). There are other people also who unflinchingly support him like Edachena Kunkan (Sarath Kumar), who is his commander-in-chief.
This film is technically several notches above the standard fare offered in Malayalam cinema. he camera work by Venu and Ramanath Shetty give the film a sleek look.

Vilapangalkappuram

This malayalam movie directed by T. V. Chandran in 2008 is based on the aftermath of the Gujarat riots of 2002. The story revolves around Sahira, a Muslim woman who flees Gujarat soon after the riots and arrives in Kozhikode. There, two doctors, Mary Varghese and Gopinath, bring her back to normalcy even while she is haunted by the problems related to the aftermath of the riots.
Not a great movie but can be watched once. The problems that sahira faces haunts our conscience.

In this movie, actress Priyanka got best actress award by Kerala government.

Quick Gun Murugan

This bollywood Comedy-Drama film is directed by Shashanka Ghosh and written by Rajesh Devraj.
The movie is based on a character created for television promos at the time of the launch of the music network Channel [V] in 1994. The character had a cult following, and made catchprases like 'Mind it' and 'We are like this only' popular. In recent years, the character has inspired a sequence from Om Shanti Om where Shah Rukh Khan does a take-off, incorporating elements of Tamil legend Rajinikanth's performances.
Quick Gun Murugun is an Unlikely Superhero (played by Telugu star Rajendra Prasad) a South Indian Tamil cowboy whose duty is to protect the world against arch villain restaurant owner, Rice Plate Reddy, who wants to create the ultimate non-veg dosa! The movie revolves around adventures of Quick Gun Murugun along with his love to-be Mango Dolly (played by Rambha) and Locket Lover (played by Anu Menon).
Murugan is a typical vegetarian cowboy who made himself into Quick Gun Murugan. The cowboy has to do something good for the world so he believes that vegetarianism is the need of the hour.
Quick Gun Murugun enters into an battle that spans time and space, from a small south Indian village to Heaven and then finally to cosmopolitan Mumbai across 25 years.. He is torn between Mango Dolly who loves him secretly and his first love Locket girl and his loyalty is put to the test.
But even with all its wit and antics, the movie is a big Box Office dud! Except spoofing typical Bollywood clichés, the movie has nothing to offer as it fails to deliver with all its overcooked storyline and overblown cinematography.

Unnai Poloruvan

I was so moved by the film "The wednesday" that I couldn't resist myself from watching its remake. It was out of curiosity as to how the two great actors can transform the movie in their way.

But the end result was disappointing. It is proved once again that classics cant be recreated.
In wednesday, there are various trivial things that moves you, but those emotions are not carried in "Unnai poloruvan"
Unnai poloruvan disappoints...especially since it is remake of "The Wednesday"
http://listofcinema.blogspot.com/2008/11/wednesday.html

Requiem for a Dream

My Rating : 2.5/5

It was rated as one of the Top 100 movies by IMDB. It was a depressing movie.

The film charts three seasons in the lives of Sara Goldfarb (Ellen Burstyn), her son Harry (Jared Leto), Harry’s girlfriend Marion Silver (Jennifer Connelly), and Harry’s friend Tyrone C. Love (Marlon Wayans). Each character is ultimately destroyed by addiction and self-delusion.

The story begins in summer. Sara Goldfarb, an elderly widow living alone in her Brighton Beach apartment, spends her time watching infomercials on television. After a phone call announces that she will be invited to be a participant on a game show, she becomes obsessed with matching her appearance to a photograph from Harry's graduation, her proudest moment. In order to fit into her old red dress, the favorite of her deceased husband, she begins taking a regimen of prescription weight-loss amphetamine pills throughout the day and a sedative at night. The pills alter her behavior, but she passionately insists that the chance to be on television has given her a reason to live. Over the fall, however, her invitation does not arrive, and she begins to up her dosage, causing nightmarish hallucinations, where she is the principal subject of the game show.

Her son Harry is a heroin addict. Together with his friend, Tyrone, and his girlfriend, Marion — who are also addicts — he enters the drug trade in an attempt to realize their dreams. With the money they make over the summer, Harry and Marion hope to open a fashion store for Marion's designs, while Tyrone dreams of escaping the street and making his mother proud. However, at the beginning of fall, Tyrone is caught in the middle of a drug gang assassination, and Harry uses the majority of the money they've earned to bail him out of prison. Meanwhile, because of the arrests and shootings of dealers, it becomes very hard to obtain any drugs, throwing Harry, Tyrone, and Marion into a state of deprivation. Growing more desperate, Harry convinces Marion to have sex with her psychiatrist in exchange for money, causing a rift in the relationship. The group continues to deteriorate as Marion begins prostituting herself and Harry's arm becomes severely infected from improper injection technique.

With winter comes the final arc in the characters' downward spirals. Sara's sanity unravels after she visits the TV studio and she is put in a mental institution, where she undergoes painful electroconvulsive therapy. Harry and Tyrone travel to Florida, where they believe they can start over, but Harry's deteriorating condition forces them to visit a hospital in South Carolina, where they are arrested. However, Harry is taken to a prison hospital because of his arm, which is amputated. Tyrone must deal with racist prison guards, hard labor, and drug withdrawal all alone. Harry has a recurring dream of Marion waiting for him at the pier at Coney Island, but awakens and realizes that he is alone, an arm amputated and in jail. Marion meets with a pimp, who makes her have sex with him for drugs and later at an orgy where she puts on a perverted show for heroin and cash.

Lost in misery, each character curls into a fetal position. In Sara's dream, however, she wins the grand prize that the game show offers and meets Harry there. In her fantasy, Harry is a successful businessman, engaged to Marion. Mother and son hug and say how much they love one another through the cheers of the crowd and the glowing stage lights.

Lucky Number Slevin

This movie was suggested to me by Shivan. This was like usual suspects but not as good as that one.
In an airport waiting room, a man in a wheelchair tells a stranger a story about a fixed horse race in 1979 that resulted in a family's deaths. In Manhattan, two bookies and the son of a Mob boss die. A young man just out of the shower answers the door to a neighbor woman and explains that he's visiting, has had a bad week, including being mugged, and doesn't know where his pal, who lives there, is. The neighbor is chatty; she's a coroner. Two thugs arrive and, believing the visitor to be the guy who lives there, take him to see the boss with the dead son, who tells him to kill the son of his Mob rival.