Happy Wednesday! I have still only seen Bahubali 2 once and I am beginning to question all my life decisions.
Besides re-watching Bahubali 2 in my head (check out my scene by scene breakdown here), I’ve been re-watching As Time Goes By, an incredibly soothing British sitcom while I pack boxes (still no apartment, only 3 weeks left in my current lease).
I’m also sloooooowly continuing to make my way through Thugs of Hindostan/Confessions of a Thug. I’m eager to finish it because once I’m done, as a special treat to myself, I get to read the two prominent non-fiction tomes on the historical Thugs and whether or not they actually existed. Exciting!
And I am thinking about how there are still no apartments on the horizon and I tweaked my back moving boxes this weekend.
dontcallitbollywood 
I’m really surprised that finding apartment in Chicago is so difficult. I had no clue. I hope you’ll find it soon, and in indian neighbourhood as you wanted.
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It’s not really hard, compared to most other large cities. That’s one of the best things about Chicago, that it is still so affordable and easy to find a place. There’s a nice mixture of people living in each neighborhood, because anyone can live anywhere. I just have a very specific idea of the apartment I want (price, size, location), so I am being picky. But 3 weeks from now when my lease expires, I may go back to just taking anything I can get!
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Will be watching Guardian of Galaxy 2 and Dulquer’s Comrade in America (CIA). This weekend.
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Report back on CIA! I can’t tell if it’s going to be a smart mixture of comedy and serious, or a failed mixture of comedy and serious.
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Seems like this is a “previously scheduled” post, right? Because now, you *have* seen Bahubali 2 a second time…
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Correct! I wrote this yesterday afternoon, before I lost my mind and decided to see B2 on a work night.
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I watched Bahubali 2 on MayDay, and though I didn’t love it as much as the first part, I found it more interesting in terms of characters and plot. I just read ur review now and, as usual, awesome!
Here’s my take
I then watched Happy Bhaag Jaayegi. A not-bad film and a fun watch. But I think I found Happy a bit underwritten, so I didn’t really get why everyone loved Happy so much. I did love Momal Sheikh though. In fact, I found all the supporting characters more interesting than Happy.
I also rewatched my first Telugu film – Happy Days. I had watched the Malayalam dubbed version as a kid, and remember loving it. Now, after all these years, I still liked it on my rewatch (this time in Telugu with subs). It’s a feel-good college film, and one of Tamannah’s first films.
Am planning to watch Enakkul Oruvan tonight.
And I did miss your Tuesday Tamil/Telugu post this week!. 😦 Can I expect one later today, or tomorrow?
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It’s all bahubali this week! If i do an intermission, it will probably be Hindi, since that seems least likely to share an audience with Bahubaali. Any ideas on what I should write up? If it’s hindi I’ve probably already seen it, so anything is possible.
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I don’t mind a full Bahubali week. Even I’m reliving the film in my head and your posts are always a great way to do that.
On a separate note, I watched Mr Perfect yesterday due to my Prabhas hangover from Bahubali….and it left me with such conflicting thoughts. As much as I agree that one needs to compromise and adjust a bit in life, I can’t help but echo Prabhas’ views that if Kajal sacrifices all her interests and habits, would sge be really happy in the long run? If you ever write a post on this film someday, I’d surely be interested in reading it!
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Oh right, I forgot I watched it before I started blogging! It might be one that I can pull my old emails to friends about it and turn them into a blog post, that might be an interesting Bahubali week intermission option.
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I would love to read your thoughts on Mr. Perfect!
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I will put review of Punjab 1984
It is a must watch movie for Diljit’s fans. I would say that it is breakthrough for Diljit. Prior to this, Diljit was only considered good for comedy movies. But he delivered a brilliant serious performance
It is a story of a young man Shive who gets falsely arrested for terrorism charges. It is actually based on several real life incidents. This happened a lot in 1980s. One of my father’s friend was also arrested like this. He had to bribe policemen to get away.
First half of the movie is told through Shive’s mother point of view(Kirron Kher). I find it a good way to get emotionally connected. First half is told actuallyin flash back. We get to learn about Shive’s life. He is a common youngster. He goes to college with his best friend Bittoo, plays hockey for his college, loves neighbourhood girl. All this changes, when his father dies in operation bluestar. He is unable to perform last rites of his father. We see a change of character. He gets emotionaly broken. I wont spoil the movie by telling what happens next. But Diljit’s characterisation was praised by even Amitabh Bacchan.
Second half changes things. Now mother is not POV because flashback ends. We get to see Shive. His point of view. It also shows corruption amongst terrorists. How they are misguiding? We see Shive questioning things
Lets talk about character
Shivjeet: He changes a lot in this movie. He is normal youngster at first, then a victim, then a misguided youth, then someone who questions his direction
Shivjeet’s mother: SHe is adorable. She is a nice lady. You immediately sympathise with her. In the beginning, it is said that she goes to police station everyday. She treats Shive’s best friend as her own son. Kirron KHer does justice to her character
Inspector Rana: He is a corrupt police officer who brands innocent youngsters as terrorists and kills them for promotion. He is responsible for everything that happens in Shive’s life.
Bittoo: He is Shive’s Hindu best friend. After SHive is gone, he takes care of his mother. And does everything he can to help find Shive. He is a likable character. It shows that friendship is beyond religion
Sukhdev Singh: A terrorist recruiter. He appears as liberator as first but we see his real face towards the end
Performances
Diljit: Diljit is absoluetly perfect in this role. We see a goofy, serious, sad, angry person. There is one scence when Bitto dies, His character is watching Bittoo’s last rites from a distance. We dont see him crying or saying anything. But we can tell how distraught he is at the death of his best friend It is obvious that he processed initial shock and now can not just express his emotions. Amitabh Bacchan praised Diljit and said this kind of acting is actually very difficult
Kirron Kher: She is great in this movie. She perfects the role of broken mother.
Pavan Malhotra: He is always that guy that from all those movies. He also does justice to his role as a corrupt police officer. You can hate from starting.
All other actors also do justice to their roles
It is a must watch for Dilji’s fans. It is a great movie. It was great to see a good emotional during that time when I was unable to connect with any movie.
It is in your list. I suggest you to move it a little higher
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This weekend I saw The Rock after a long time. I asked only one thing ” what the hell happened to Micheal Bay?”. This movie was only pleasure, nothing guilty about it. Perhaps, only Nic Cage movie that i actually liked. It is his best movie. I do enjoy his movies like Armageddon. 13 hours. But these are only guilty pleasures.
It story is good. A vilain with whom you actually sympathise. First 5 minutes tells us the motives of Villain. He is not maleovalent. He only wants benefits to be paid to the family of marines died under his command. He tries legal methods but nothing happens. He risks his glory carreer for this. We see this in just 5 minutes. His entire character gets developed in 5 minutes.
We also get to see an old James Bond. Sean Connery’s character is definately an old james bond. It can be called lazy . But John Mason would have been compared to James Bond no matter what. It is good to develop a character like this. I was wondering whether there will be an unofficial confirmation. We get an entire character whose main aim is to tell how badass he is. Even when is chained, we are told that he is trained and lethal. There are several nods like He is trained by SAS, he is british intelligence. Although it is a Die Hard Knock off, It can be called best Bond movie on 90s along with Goldeneye. It is also last good Sean Connery movie
It can also be called best Die Hard movie since Die Hard :with a vengeance.
It is a movie for people who like action movies of 80s and 90s.
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As planned, I completed my rewatch of Shah Rukh’s 1996 works with English Babu Desi Mem and Chaahat. I really, really dislike English Babu Desi Mem, but Chaahat has a few good moments. And I saw Baahubali 2 in Telugu! I really enjoyed it, and would love to see it again, but have a weekend retreat coming up, so will not have as much free time. The my last day of classes in next Thursday, and then I intend to ramp up my movie watching, having subscribed to the Indian movie channel on Amazon Prime. Also, in exquisite timing, Netflix has added a boatload of Indian films to its list! So very exciting.
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Don’t watch Robot! Or do, but keep your expectations low. It was just added to Netflix, and I was not exactly blown away.
Glad to hear you didn’t like English Babu. I saw it once, 12 years ago, and didn’t pay as close attention as I usually do. Ever since then I’ve felt vaguely guilty and thought I should go back to it, but I really really didn’t want to. And now I won’t!
Oh! And Chaahat and Bahubali 2 in the same week! Did you recognize the Queen mother in Chaahat?
On Wed, May 3, 2017 at 11:11 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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No, but now I do! Her seduction fanatasy in Chaahat is amazing.
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Last week I finished Thattathin Marayathu, watched YZ and begin Kali.
YZ, a marathi movie, was not bad, but unfortunately I think I’ll remeber only one scene, when our corpulent hero wears something like men version of saree. Really, I think my life was better before I saw that.
And Kali, what I can say? I watched half of the movie, but nothing important happened as yet.
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Kali is amazing, partly because nothing important happens in the whole first half! And then the second half is so much more stressful because of it. Be prepared to watch sitting on the edge of your chair.
On Wed, May 3, 2017 at 12:13 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Thanks for giving me a reason to continue Kali. I almost lost all my will to go on.
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Oh just you wait! It turns into one of the most edge of your seat thrillers I’ve ever seen. Although, that is partly reliant on already caring about these characters so you get scared when they are in trouble. So it may not be as edge of your seat for you if you aren’t that interested in them yet. But it’s still scary! And a completely different kind of movie.
On Wed, May 3, 2017 at 1:58 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Now I’m really interested and scared too. But it’s not very scary, right?
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Hitchcockian. So, if you can handle North by Northwest and To Catch a Thief, you should be fine.
On Wed, May 3, 2017 at 2:28 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I watched a nice sweet Rajshree Tamil film from 2001 called Rhythm. It had Arjun (from Mani Ratnam’s Kadal) and Meena (from Drishyam) as two Tamilians falling in love in – where else- local trains in Mumbai.It reminded me a lot of Raja Rani in that both the leads had a lot of baggage from the past.But these two are more mature and the love story felt more realistic and the performance was more grounded. He’s new in town,does not speak Hindi and has a soft corner for a fellow Tamilian and woman.She speaks Hindi fluently, has been living in Mumbai for quite some time ,quietly confident, does not need his help and comes off a bit stand offish.It’s because ‘help’ for a single woman comes with a lot of strings and she’d rather nip it off in the bud.She makes him work for it. He does not have any compunctions confronting her and letting her know that she’s taking things a bit too far -avoiding him -to the extent of getting out of the train when she sees him.He was just being helpful and has no romantic aspirations.
As you can tell, I loved the movie.It’s not quite as much removed from reality as the Hindi movies from Rajshree.The songs (from Rahman) are nice but more fantastic to make up for the lack of fantasy in the rest of the movie.Plus there’s a cameo from Jyothika.
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This all sounds really nice! If I ever finish my Bahubali summaries, I will have to check it out.
On Wed, May 3, 2017 at 12:44 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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This is a vacation week for all of Japan in which we get a bunch of national holidays in a row, and I have been scrambling to finish work/home stuff so that I can actually take the time off. I finally finished everything at about 11 at night and watched 3/4 of a Bengali film called Iti Mrinalini before conking out. It has Aparna Sen as an older actress and Konkona as her younger self, as well as Rajat Kapoor. The film would have been more enjoyable if there were not a child prominently featured. I know I sound like a grump, but when there is a child in a movie the child has to be able to act, and a lot of children can’t act. This one sounds like she was dubbed by a grown woman trying to sound like a little girl and it’s a really false note in an otherwise fairly realistic movie. Speaking of dubbing, they listed the guy who dubbed Bengali dialog for Rajat Kapoor right there in the credits. (Like: Rajat Kapoor (dubbed by—-)) I don’t recall having seen that before and I’m wondering if it’s usual?
In exciting news, Netflix Japan finally got Dear Zindagi, right on time for the holidays, and I’m gonna watch it! Woot!
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Yay, Dear Zindagi! you can work your way through my very detailed slow discussion of that film at the same time everyone else is working through Bahubali 2.
On Wed, May 3, 2017 at 8:43 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Just finished watching dulquer movie Comrade in America (CIA). Good movie but not extraordinary. Similar in structure to Kali. First half was avg to above avg where nothing happens. Second half was good but not as thrilling as Kali.
CIA was better than the other two comrade movies released this year ie, Sakhavu and Mexican Aparatha.
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Okay, I won’t rush around and look for it. But maybe when it come sto Einthusan.
On Fri, May 5, 2017 at 6:31 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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You may like it. It is about immigriants trying to illigally enter USA from mexican border, just before the us election which saw Trump got elected. It is shown that it is based on a true story. Dont know how much is true.
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I watched Baahubali 2 once and loved it! I wasn’t able to go a second time this past weekend but I am most likely going this upcoming weekend.
The reason that I haven’t been commenting much these past few days is because I was busy finishing Parks and Recreation. I started rewatching it before Baahubali came out to take my mind off of the movie but ended up finishing the entire thing. I love that show!
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I love that show too! And I am so glad it is on Netflix, so I can just cycle through and rewatch it every few months.
And I am so glad you liked Bahubali 2!
On Mon, May 8, 2017 at 8:38 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Netflix is such a luxury since it allows you to binge watch a show. Until last summer, I only watched shows that were finished and on Netflix. Then I started watching New Girl which is still running. I tried to follow the latest season on TV but it was just too hard to wait a whole week just to get another episode. I eventually gave up and decided to rewatch and catch up on the show when the latest season reaches Netflix.
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rumor has it New Girl might be ending after this season, or possibly after an abbreviated next season to tie up loose ends. So you can finish the whole thing on Netflix!
On Mon, May 8, 2017 at 8:50 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Noooo! It’s not my favorite like Parks and Rec or How I Met Your Mother but it’s still quite fun. I would be sad to see it go. Well, on the other hand, I can finish the entire thing on Netflix then.
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