Nasty Little Thing Productions

Update the blog, I must

I didn't post in the last few days as I was occupied with watching movies, or with the assignment given by TCS, or with meetings with friends.  Anyway I thought I should post this because I am leaving to Mumbai on the 26th.

I will be in Mumbai for 17 days, attending the initial Induction programme of TCS, after which I will be informed about my final posting.  I am not sure what internet facilities that will be available during those 17 days, so I may not be able to update regularly during that time.

Anyway, on to the movies I watched recently:

• Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (20 May): I got to see this in the theatre on the day it was released here (night show).  While I love the classic Star Wars films (Episodes IV, V, VI), I thought the new prequels weren't as good.  I particularly did not care for the economics/political background in Episodes I and II, and though they both had some great action and adventure scenes, they weren't as much fun for some reason.  Not so in Sith.  Obviously, this was the most important film in the prequel trilogy, and there was no doubt as to what would happen at the end, but it was a great experience to see how they tied up the story and linked the two trilogies together.  The movie shows us how Chancellor Palpatine poisons Anakin Skywalker's mind, causing his transformation into Darth Vader.  We also see how the evil Galactic Empire is born out of the old Republic.  The movie is dramatic and action-packed, and is certainly the best of the prequel trilogy in my opinion.  I must also make special mention of John Williams's superb music score for the movie, which seemed to really enhance certain scenes in terms of dramatic intensity.  Apart from the expected references to the classic trilogy, I was overjoyed to see musical references to the other films in the series here as well (for example, "Duel of the Fates" referenced in a battle between Yoda and Darth Sidious, "Leia's Theme" playing as we see the infant Leia)!  Bottom line, I loved the movie.
• Naina (22 May): Watched this in Prasad's Multiplex (along with Rupak, Arun Gopal, Ramakrishna and Gaurav Sukhija — the historic meeting in Hyderabad that Rupak and me had planned finally came to pass!).  I think this is the first time Bollywood is beating Hollywood to a remake of an Asian horror movie (this one is adapted from the Pang Brothers' The Eye, which I have not seen)!  It is the story of a 20-something old woman, Naina (Urmila Matondkar) who was blinded as a child.  She now undergoes a corneal transplant, after which her sight is gradually restored — the scary part is that she also starts seeing spirits, and has visions of people dying!  A doctor, Sameer (Anuj Sawhney) helps her investigate.  Technically, it's a very well made film — the "look" and the visual effects are on par with a Hollywood production.  There's also one very well handled explosion scene.  Still, I wouldn't call the movie a great one, though it was quite good!  The movie did have a couple of gory parts, and some good scares.  I don't know how much of the movie was lifted from The Eye.  This is director Shripal Morakhia's first feature.
• Night of the Living Dead (22 May): George A. Romero's 1968 horror classic has a group of people barricaded inside a house, while flesh-hungry zombies try to get in.  While I didn't feel it was very scary, it was certainly very creepy and tense.  The low-budget black and white look added to the atmosphere.  I downloaded this from the Internet Archive (apparently, the movie passed into the public domain because of no notice of copyright on it!), I got the file that's about 600 MB in size.
• Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) (19 May): John Carpenter's original thriller about a street gang attacking a closed-down police precinct.  I loved Carpenter's music score for it, and I liked the movie.
• Eraserhead (18 May): I don't know whether this was a good or a bad movie.  It's an unclassifiable movie about Henry (Jack Nance) who is informed that his girlfriend is pregnant.  The child is born and turns out to be hideously mutated.  Jack tries to care for it though.  The movie contains bizarre imagery (which, with the combination of the sound and music used in the movie can make the viewer feel uneasy) and it's certainly the weirdest movie I've ever seen.  The film itself is totally open to interpretation, as director David Lynch himself has left it up to the viewer to make sense of it.
• The Machinist (17 May): A brilliant thriller from writer Scott Kosar and director Brad Anderson.  Trevor Reznik (Christian Bale) works in an industrial plant.  He hasn't slept in over a year, due to which he is frighteningly thin and pale, and gradually seems to be losing his mind.  After an accident at the workplace, he thinks there is a conspiracy against him, which may or may not be true.  Amazing, atmospheric movie, with an outstanding performance by Bale (who lost about a third of his body weight for this film!).

The first ten shorts in the Star Wars: Clone Wars animated series also, recently I watched.  Very good, they were.

Heh... Yoda's odd sentence construction reaches its peak in Revenge of the Sith, with his line "Not, if anything to say about it, I have!"

Came across this interesting article on Hungarian Notation yesterday.  And this article, which was linked from Wikipedia, is one of the most hilarious things I've ever read!  Both of those articles might not make sense to you if you are not into programming though.

posted by Karthik Abhiram @ 1:23 PM