Movie Review: Sucker Punch

This is an awesome adventure of a movie. Spectacular on the screen. The movie is from the director of 300 and Watchmen. He transformed from directing music videos to such awesome movies.

SUCKER PUNCH is a great movie set inside an abusive mental hospital where a girl fantasies about escape along with other girls. The fantasies come real and the girls dance and fight their way through a different mental dimension toward freedom. The female protagonists are really well played by the actresses. Their grim tale of decadence and their plight in physical and mental imprisonment is displayed in beautiful camerawork and special effects. Their struggle comes alive in vivid fantasy displayed to us on a grand scale.

Lot of great music in the movie during the fight sequences - especially BJork's Army of me and altered version of White Rabbit.

Rocking movie, it will blow your brains out.

Movie Review: Planes, Trains and Automobiles

This is not your typical Steve Martin movie. This is funny and beautiful too. Steve plays a guy trying to get home in time for Thanksgiving holiday. John Candy is the fat talkative salesman accompanying him for no reason.

Steve loses a taxi, their flight gets cancelled, the train they take stops in the middle of nowhere, they get robbed in a motel, their rented car burns up,....

This is hilarious but not in a typical comedy movie way. There is more of the familial feel to it, like a Christmas movie.

Watch it with patience and by the end of it, you will feel the family love oozing out of you as well.

Written, produced and directed by John Hughes, in 1987, there is another version - a 2010 film "Due Date" starring Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis follows a similar plot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planes,_Trains_and_Automobiles

At Wikipedia, read the Production section - a lot of effort seems to have gone to make the movie possible.

Jeffrey Archer visit to Mumbai

I had the good fortune to meet Jeffrey Archer on Sunday (6 March 2011). I along with a room full of people skipped the Ireland Vs India cricket World Cup match to attend this event. Held at Crosswords bookstore at Kemps Corner, Mumbai, the eager fans had come more than an hour early to occupy the seats.

I managed to travel from home to this other side of the city to be there. Jeffrey Archer was supposed to arrive at 07:30 pm and he arrived a few minutes early to a standing ovation.

He is an energetic and enthusiastic speaker. He had the table moved away from the podium and paced as he spoke in appreciation of the large crowd gathered to meet him.

Pacing the podium, he delivered hilarious anecdotes from his life and work. He mentioned how he struggled to be popular in USA where he couldn’t get a word out about his book in talk shows. This was during the promotion of his bestseller “Kane and Abel”. Then the late Johnny Carson mentioned on his show how great that book was, welcoming his guest Jeffrey Archer to his show and then on it was history. His worldwide success includes huge sales in India as well. “Kane and Abel” was his international breakthrough novel.

Jeffrey Archer informed the crowd about his latest novel “Only Time Will Tell”. It is a first in a 5 part series on the “Clifton Chronicles”. A dynasty tale of fame and fortune and intrigue. He says he doesn't know where his latest 5 book Clifton Chronicles series is heading. He has finished writing the second book in the series which will come out same time next year.

He mentioned how he writes the books in his home in Spain where he spends 50 consecutive days writing daily to keep the flow of continuity in the story.

He also doesn’t use any gadgets – no computer or typewriter. He writes his novels in longhand.

He joked about Ireland and England beating India in the World Cup, which hasn’t happened yet and thanked the crowd for turning up in such large numbers in this cricket crazy nation of India. He poked fun in great jest with the audience while taking questions from them.

He likes "Tale of Two Cities" by Dickens, loves John Steinbeck especially "Of Mice and Men", has read Indian author R. K. Narayan, and likes Shakespeare and the theatre.

To aspiring authors he says to write what you are good at and not try to write for example SciFi or Horror just because they are popular genres.

A 70 year young man, his energy and charm was very attractive and he was very patient and keen on all the people at the event. He is clearly a good orator and knows how to get the crowd going with humour and passion.

There was a mad rush for the book signing and I wrestled my way in there with my hardcover copy of his latest "Only Time Will Tell" which is the story of Harry Clifton of the new dynasty 5 book series of his – The Clifton Chronicles.

For more news: http://www.jeffreyarcher.co.uk/

Here are a few snaps from my lousy mobile phone.









And the mad rush for book signing... he was patient with this impatient crowd and probably signed books for more than an hour. I left after I got my book signed in the swamp of fans.

Book Review: Our Man in Havana

Our Man in Havana
by Graham Greene

*****/5

"Everlasting Entertaining Classic"

This book was written and published in 1958. Yet when you read it, its as fresh as any of today's novels. It is a brisk easy read. It starts in Havana with a humble vacuum cleaner salesman who gets recruited by a British agent to spy for England. The gentleman doesn't know what to do and makes up fictional agents and fictional military/ political developments in Cuba.

This dark humour slides in great style with Graham Greene using his own experience in having travelled in various nations and having worked as a spy for England himself.

The book's freshness is unique. So many novels from that period of time seem relics of past. But this evergreen everlasting classic is as relevant and funny and entertaining as any spy novel written recently.

Allow Graham Greene to take you through a joy ride in Havana's clubs, bars, dark places and bring you mystery where there is none.

The ending too is quite surprisingly agreeable and delightful.