Good that you finally watching it.
I liked PKS very much.
Simran & Sneha are too good in this movie.

Kamal & his Grandpa talking is funny.

I personally loved Mani Ratnam sir’s Kannathil Muthamittal even though some believe it offered nothing more after dissecting terrorism in Roja ,Bombay and Dil Se. Mohabatein and Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, classic examples of how deep somebody can fall from the heights of DDLJ. Anjathe from Myshkin (or Mr.Skin what ever his name is) offered nothing more from his earlier work Chithirum Pesuthadi. He just replicated his style. My personal favorite (for the lack of correct vocabulary) is Dhurai. In 2000 he directed Mughavari, a very good movie and heard nothing ever after. Sources say he directed Simbhu starred Thotti Jaya, but I can’t buy that info.

Thanks Satish Kumar for picking up Bourne Ultimatum. May be a coincidence that I re-saw Bourne Ultimatum over this weekend to stay away from Terminator Salvation. Paul Greengrass (Bourne Supremacy, United 93) directed it. I have never seen the usage of handheld camera so perfectly in a movie. Greengrass is basically an English documentary maker. Bourne Identity directed by Doug Liman (Mr&Mrs Smith) was mediocre. What I find most striking about the Bourne trilogy is the versatility of Oliver Wood, the cinematographer for the series. I beg you to all to watch Bourne Ultimatum one more time and concentrate on camera work. Can you spot at least a minute when the camera is idle? But at the same time the work of art doesn’t seem amateurish but look realistic.

(Cinematographer to director – sir, heroine is jumping to the pond, where do you want me to keep the camera?; Director – Let the camera jump with her! – Chinthavishtayaya Shyamala (Malayalam movie – recently remade into tamil with Karuna Das as hero and Karthika as heroine, can’t remember the title though)
Please excuse me (and when you excuse some body you don’t use filthy words) if this post reached you earlier. there seems some mishaps with the server.

SearchIndia.com Responds:

You write: I would have avoided Prabhudeva from the list. We are talking about directors here and not dancer turned actor turned director turned …when you turn too much you loose ‘direction’!

Classic (the second sentence above).

SearchIndia.com Responds:

You write: second place for a movie in the Terminator franchise on opening weekend should see some people get fired

From your lips to God’s ears. What a mediocre movie.

It’s rated R and it’s a remake of the 1974 original (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072251/). I doubt that this movie will save an already disappointing summer.

The safe bets are Transformers 2 and G.I. Joe, which can bring in more crowds..

SearchIndia.com Responds:

Saw the previews of Transformers 2 and Pelham 1 2 3 during Terminator Salvation. Didn’t think much of Transformers 2. Also, getting tired of hulking machines.

Definitely trash compared to the more compelling and engaging Casino Royale before it. That “fuel-cell hotel in the middle of nowhere” that was used as the setting for the climax was utterly ridiculous in its conceptualization.

“don’t give the credit to prabhu deva for pokiri, if you watch the original version in telegu, tamil pokiri is already stupid.”

Touche!

BTW, Terminator Salvation only pulled in $56.4 million over the Thur-Fri-Sat period. Considering the $200 million budget, that’s rather disappointing for an opening “weekend.” Even a shoddy movie like Wolverine took in $80 million plus over the Fri-Sat weekend.

Unless GI Joe, Pelham 123, and Transformers 2 really bring in the crowds, consider this the “summer of flops.”

SearchIndia.com Responds:

We’re betting on Pelham 123.

But I dont complain A&D, i found it very good, as the whole movie is set on few hours of incidents.
I liked it so much, gonna watch it again.
It had the blend, no drama is the plus I found.

don’t give the credit to prabhu deva for pokiri, if you watch the original version in telegu, tamil pokiri is already stupid.

As per me, the most directing disasters vis a vis promising earlier works are:
Marc Forster – Stay is an exceptionally well made movie, Monster’s Ball is gripping but Quantum of Solace was a total waste
Sam Mendes – American Beauty was classic. Road to Perdition lacked all the beauty that American Beauty had. Jarhead, did some one else ghost direct it? Haven’t seen Revolutionary Road.

Would love to see what SI has got to add on to this list.

P.S – Jean Pierre Jeunet’s name came to my mind. He directed Alien Resurrection followed by ‘Amelie’ and ‘A very long engagement’. Both are classics. Amelie gave us the best actress of our times, Audrey Tautou. A very long engagement is the first non-English movie produced by Warner Bros. Both are must watch, please.

SearchIndia.com Responds:

You write: Would love to see what SI has got to add on to this list.

Offhand, we can think of Ron Howard.

After the acclaimed A Beautiful Mind, came mediocre movies like Da Vinci Code and recently Angels & Demons.

Prabhudeva:

After the hugely successful Pokiri, we got the revoltingly bad Villu.

SearchIndia.com Responds:

Seen the Transformers trailer a few times. Wasn’t impressed.

SearchIndia.com Responds:

Scoot.

I don’t know about the “upping the romance angle” between Wright-Blair the attachment most likely was used only as a precedent for John Connor to remind Blair that Wright’s not a “HE”, but an “IT.” This is again an ode to a brilliant deleted garage-scene in T2, shortly after Sara Connor’s rescue from the asylum, when John and Sara Connor remove the chip from T-800’s head so that he can re-boot and re-learn, which forms the basis for the T-800 learning some human emotions. Sara is about to smash that chip with a hammer, and John prevents her saying that they need “HIM” and she says “IT, John…not HE.” Besides paying ode to that scene from T2, I didn’t see any need for their “romance” to develop.

That said, for all the talent Bryce Dallas Howard has, she was under-utilized as Kate Brewster and I was disappointed. I expected to see her develop from the Kate “you remind me of my mom” Brewster we saw in the last half of T3.

SI said: “Our favorite review line is from Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times:

It gives you all the pleasure of a video game without the bother of having to play it.”

Yeah, that Ebert’s review is pretty spot-on. It ended up looking like a Michael Bay film. Like I said, as a summer action flick, it delivers, but as a legitimate entry to the Terminator saga, it fails.

SearchIndia.com Responds:

Now, our most anticipated movie is The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (John Travolta & Denzel Washington). – June 12.

T-X was the lamest among the three terminators sent to kill Sara/John Connor. T-1000 kicked major ass!

SI said: Worthington’s character didn’t hit us like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2 where he plays the hero.

Yes, I agree. If you actually see the director’s cut of T2, you get to see a lot more dynamic interaction between T-800 and John, and why he has this bonding with a machine. However, I think people have ripped apart any further continuation of the saga beyond T2, so I went without such bias. As a stand-alone flick, it’s good summer action fun and Worthington delivers.

That said, I agree the story was weak and it’d been tackled differently. I think a better story would have been John Connor and Kate Brewster journeying to form what would give birth to the human resistance and encountering the mysterious Marcus Wright in their journey. In T2 we saw John Connor finding an emotional attachment towards a machine and in T3 we were made aware that this very emotional attachment was the one that led to his death (he was killed by the Arnie T-800). So, now you have a John Connor who is conflicted in the way he views machines and you have an equally conflicted Marcus Wright, who is a machine but believes he’s human. This set the stage for some dynamic character interaction between Connor and Wright that the writers of TS failed to exploit. Such pity!

Lastly, whether you like it or not, T5 has already been announced for 2011 . I just hope it’s not McG directing, but who knows.

SearchIndia.com Responds:

Besides failing to exploit the John Connor-Marcus Wright confrontation, the writers could have also lifted the Wright-Blair romance angle up one or two notches. As it stands, way too brief and failed to have an impact.

T5? – Boy, they really need to work on the script if it has to have any impact.

Our feeling is T4 would end up a dud but for the Memorial Day weekend.

Our favorite review line is from Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times:

It gives you all the pleasure of a video game without the bother of having to play it.

SearchIndia.com Responds:

Added Pammal K Sambandam to our Netflix queue.

SearchIndia.com Responds:

Let’s see how Kambakkht Ishq (Akshay Kumar, Kareena Kapoor) turns out.

According to Wiki, Hollywood stars Sylvester Stallone, Denise Richards and Brandon Routh appear in cameos in Kambakkht Ishq.

The sequels shoudl unveil some unexpected knots in the story… so the story becomes the center point not the action.. this is why each of the sequel in Matrix campaign was successful.

Terminator II was the perfect blend of action and stunning story.. a perfect sequel.. then it lost track … and concentrated only on action..
and as you rightly said for Arnold the ‘machine’ role suits well as no need to ‘act’ much in this role which makes his life easy…