Tuesday, February 24, 2009

12 Angry Men

Well, This is not a review of any sort. I personally don't want to call it a review in the first place. So, It's up to the guys who are reading this to call it a review or not.
I started writing this exactly 2 seconds after the movie ended. The movie called "12 Angry Men".
Well, for starters, It's easily by any stretch of my imagination THE BEST MOVIE I've EVER SEEN.
Probably this post might be too long for you guys to read it out. But I don't think you can't write anything less for this. The running time for this movie is about 94 minutes and for 93 minutes, you get to see and hear only 12 people who are in a room. (The movie is very very old : Released in 1957 to be precise). This movie was suggested by my friend and he too had the same feelings as I have now which I am going to share with you all.
Premise of the movie: An 18 year old Hispanic, downtrodden ,poor boy is being charged with the murder of his father . The trail of the case has been going on for 3 months and everyone is convinced including the judge that the boy is guilty and requests the members of the jury to come to a final verdict on the case. Well, for those of you who don't know how the American judicial system works, you can have a look at it @ : http://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/gov/overview1197.pdf . Well It's 3 page pdf which gives you a pretty much decent know how of the system is. I can't go on telling about the system here. But , all I can tell is that , the 12 member jury selected by the judge and the prosecuters + defendant lawyers are normal people from across different sections of the society with no celebrity status attached to them.
Well, here goes the story (Or rather a part of it, because I want you guys to watch it). The boy as told earlier is charged with murder of his father and the reason for this act is defined to be that the father hit the boy several times and in a fit of rage he stabbed his father and ran away.
Now, there are clinching evidences against him with a woman across the street seeing him kill his father and an old man living exactly below the apartment , hearing all the screaming from the boy that he is going to kill, then hearing the thud of a body falling down on the floor and then actually seeing the boy running away.Another evidence was that of a shop owner 2 blocks from the house of the scene that he had sold a very unique kind of knife with an unusual bottom handle which according to him is the only one available with him and the boy had actually purchased it from him, the previous night.All that the boy had to say to defend himself was that he was not in the house at that time and the knife which he used had fallen off the hole of his Trouser pocket while he was going.
That said, it's now the time when the jury members come in to decide and give a verdict which if the boy found guilty will be sentenced to death, otherwise of course acquitted.
All the jury members gather around in a room and start with a simple process of voting for the decision. Now, one would assume that all of them would vote for the boy being guilty. Well, actually that's the thing that happens...almost. 11 of them vote for the boy being guilty and only one guy abstains from voting the boy as guilty. Now, before you jump to any conclusions, he doesn't tell that the boy is not guilty. All he tells is, that he doesn't know for sure. He can see clearly that the evidences are sufficient enough, but what if there's a doubt in any corner of the case? what if the defendants did not gather sufficient information. He is ready to vote as the boy being guilty, but he just wants to have a discussion before coming to a conclusion.
Phew!!! That's long isn't it. Well, that's all I can disclose about the story line of the movie. You see the rest.
Now, coming to the point of why actually I am writing this blog, I was so impressed by the characters being portrayed, the way the each guy's individual character comes out and how they reason about the case is impressive to say the least. The variety of jury members you have is amazing, one is a watch maker, one works at an ad-agency,other is an architect, another one a retired old man, another one is a painter who earns 3$ per day painting houses, another is a guy who comes from a poor background, another one guy is an ill-tempered man whose son had run away from the house after having a fight with him , another one is a man who firmly believes in facts and talks about the case by presenting nothing but facts, another one has baseball tickets and wants to go and watch the game, so he is always with the majority, since he wants this thing to be over asap , another is a grumpy old guy who is terribly rich and always believes that people from slums always lie, steal and kill . Given this wide charecteristics, they go on presenting their reasons and arguements as to why should this boy be punished.
It's hard to miss out even a minor scene in the movie, like, when the guys take a break and head to the loo, you feel that there's going to be nothing worth watching in there, but as you begin to think , one of the guys makes an important statement. It's that gripping.

I end with this , so that you feel something incomplete about this post and go and watch it. Well, this is my opinion. You may or may not like it. But all I can say is: I liked it a lot. Watch it, let me know if all the things I said were worth it .


Chao!!
Auf Wiedersehen!!

P.S : Pardon me for any grammatical errors. With the post being as long as it is, it was difficult for me to check it thoroughly. If you find any, lemme know :)

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Delhi-6, The hoopla - The Hype - The bad review

Strange as it may seem, but that is exactly what I am feeling about the movie right now. Oh my Gosh! The publicity was simply amazing. The cast and crew of the movie were all over the place, globe-trotting to be precise, for the premier of the movie. The hype had to be of that extent, given that the music & songs were already a big ... NO...HUGE hit ( Yes, I am a fan of AR Rehman), but come on, you would have heard the songs, they are awesome rite? Abhishek was planning on a Guinness record by visiting most number of places in one single day for the premier of a movie, all the talk about Masakali (the white dove), which ,I believe it received more hype than Jr.AB himself :) but, when it came to the actual day of the movie release, with people eagerly waiting to see how it fares at the Box office, it all came down to a grinding halt. No one was seen around on the evening of the release. No news about Jr.AB's record, no dove...all that were heard of the movie were the reviews from the critics, some said it was pathetic, some called it below par, some average, a few called it good. But not even one review was praising the movie. Why does it happen?? Why on earth do these guys go overboard for the publicity? what do they earn from it? ( I think they would in fact loose more money by travelling) ,It has been the case of so many movies in the past, Chandini Chowk to china, Billu Barber, Tashan, Ram Gopal Verma ki aag to name a few of an ever growing list. Meanwhile, movies which have hardly given out pre-release publicity have done well, in fact done really well. Movies like A wednesday, Aamir, Jannat, Jodhaa Akbar,Rab ne bana di jodi, Rock on, Race, et al. Now I think you guys might come out saying that Rab ne, Rock on and Race are all big banner and had good pre-release publicity. Yes, they had come out for the publicity, but not to that extent of the movies like Delhi-6. However, there are a few exceptions like Ghajini, Jaane Tu ya Jaane Na ....
I guess, as the saying goes, Too much is too bad applies to the movies as well, It's only time before the movie guys realize this and don't kill it even before it's born.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Another one of those classics :)

I should say..Very Typical (Source: XKCD)

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Oh No..Not Again:)

What in the world is wrong with me? Why am I doing things which I hardly used to do earlier?? For those of you reading this, Not to worry... coz the thing which I'm speakin about is my blogs. For the past few weeks there have been many posts . Something which was not the thing with me earlier. Anyway, keeping things aside, I suggest all of you out there : Go and watch "Arundathi" . It's a telugu movie, based on a supernatural theme with loads of spooky stuff.You will be amazed to see such technical brilliance in an Indian movie!!! For a moment I had to convince myself that I was watching a Telugu movie. Go and enjoy it!!
I think as I type these words about what to write for the next few lines..and the brain seems to be in a stand by mode with the current time being: 12:41 A.M CST . Gosh!! How do people come up with soo many blogs?? You should see Amitabh Bachchan's blogs. He writes every single day and writes awesome. Wish I had such talent. Speaking of talent,I don't seem to have any:( Well, In that case, I can call that a talent in itself. A talent of having no talent!! Howzzat???
Adios Amigos...Time to sleep!!!
(Oh Man...what's with these exclamation and question marks..I seem to be using them a lot!!! There you go again)
Alright..That's the end of a totally worthless blog (Started out writing something and ended up something. Sigh!!!)

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Uncertain Time ...Uncertain Feeling

The world is coming to a grinding halt. Millions and Millions of people losing jobs, getting homeless having to take care of family ,salaries being cut down (Except cricketers in IPL) .Where are we headed to?? Yesterday, even Yash Raj Productions announced job cuts. I mean, is the market that bad , even for the movie tycoons? During all these chaos, Here I sit in One corner of a Room ,filled with nothing but Hope. Hope that I get a job, Hope that I will be able to get through these tough times, Hope all the problems end and the economy of the world gets better, Hope people get back their jobs, Hope that we go back to the good old days of cases where companies had hard time finding people to hire. As they say, HOPE IS WHAT KEEPS A MAN ALIVE.

Don't lose hope!!!