* Revolutionary Road – And you thought suburbia was a peaceful idyll, far removed from the hustle and stress of the city. Wake up kiddo.
Set sometime in the 1950s, Revolutionary Road (based on the novel by Richard Yates) is a well-crafted movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and British actress Kate Winslet.
Go for it.
Nice lines from this lovely movie:
Our whole existence is based on this great premise that we are special and superior to the whole thing. But we aren’t. We’re just like everyone else.
It is possible that Parisians aren’t the only ones capable of leading interesting lives.
* Death Note – For some reason, we expected this Japanese movie, derived from one of those Manga comics, to be a stunningly beautiful movie.
Alas, it was not.
What happens when a young college student gets hold of a magic Death Note book that lets him kill anyone by writing the name and visualizing the face of the victim. Does he turn into an ‘angel of the underworld’ or does the extraordinary power overpower him into becoming a plain murderer.
Tatsuya Fujiwara does an adequate job as Light Yagami, the protagonist of the movie who lays his hand on the Death Note.
Some SI readers like shadowfax_arbit felt we should have seen the anime Death Note movies first. Maybe, they are right.
Revolutionary Road and Death Note added by SearchIndia.com on
View all posts by SearchIndia.com →
Is “We” missing in the first quote?
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Yes. Fixed it.
Thanks. 🙂
Once you are finished with the movies you have on hand, I suggest that you watch a few movies of master director Alfred Hitchcock. Apart from suspense etc, the thing about his movies is that you get as many clues to the mystery as the protagonist himself/herself gets. There are no tricks, and that keeps you engaged.
You can start with `Dial M for Murder’, if you havent seen it already.
The whole movie has been shot inside a house (almost), and yet you hardly notice it. It has your favourite Grace Kelly, but watch out for the guy who plays her husband.
And be careful while checking out the movie in Wikipedia, since it reveals the full plot.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
1. You write: I suggest that you watch a few movies of master director Alfred Hitchcock
Will do.
2. Plan to watch Double Indemnity later today. The 107-minute movie can be streamed directly to TV from Netflix via the $99 Roku box. No need to wait for the DVD to come in the mail.
3. BTW, we’ve always wanted to ask someone in India this question. Are the online movie rental services popular there? We remember reading about three or four such services in India and that instead of the DVDs arriving by mail they are delivered in person.
As you are most likely aware, Netflix is hugely popular in the U.S. (One of the reasons, Blockbuster is now in such a dire state.)
SI:
BTW, we’ve always wanted to ask someone in India this question. Are the online movie rental services popular there? We remember reading about three or four such services in India and that instead of the DVDs arriving by mail they are delivered in person.
Ans:
About 20+ years back (1986-1991), the ‘video cassette library’ was a very popular thing. Those days, Doordarshan was the only source (for a vast majority) to watch movies, and that too was, mostly 2 movies per week (one regional + one Hindi). It was then, that you could rent a Video Cassette Player/Recorder and video cassettes from these ‘libraries’. These cassettes were officially released by companies such as Venus, Tips, Time, etc (for Bollywood movies).
A few people owned VCRs and would rent only the video cassettes.
Then came the cable television.
This led to an explosion of movie channels (in Hindi and regional languages) and an overkill of movies.
The whole thing is going on even today, and watching a movie on TV (any channel) is a hellish experience, due to the commercial breaks.
Over the past 5-6 years, even ‘super-hit’ movies too appear on TV channels within 3-6 months of their release.
The movies that dont do too well at the box office appear on TV channels even faster.
Piracy has taken a hold as well. You can almost get the pirated DVD in a few days of release of the movie.
All this makes it appear that there is hardly any market for online movies, although I am no expert on this. I read sometime back, that Rajshri Films did offer free online Hindi movies. The number of movies in the collection, though, is very less.
Just now I googled, and found names like MovieMart, BigFlix, CatchFlix and OneIndia.
In some cases, they send you the DVD by courier etc.
Some of these let you download movies against a rent.
But I cant say these are popular.
I have seen legitimate DVDs being sold in bookstores
like Odyssey or Landmark in Chennai, which have OK-sort of DVD collection.
You still have local DVD libraries, akin to the video cassette libraries of the yore.
So, online renting of movies, or paying online and downloading movies, is not yet a happening thing in India.
Movie theaters and multiplexes have made it an exorbitant affair to watch a movie (Rs 100 to Rs 300 per ticket in Chennai). This seems to have further fuelled the piracy of DVDs. I have seen hawkers selling pirated DVDs in trains (say, Chennai-B’lore Lalbagh Express), just like they sell other chota-mota stuff.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Thank you so much for the elaborate explanation.
BTW, Rs 300 for a movie ticket seems way too high. It all starts with the greed of the stars and the producers who pander to them. As Clint Eastwood says in one of his movies – A man must know his limits.