Inception : Movie Review

Inception is a chilling trip into the psyche . . . of writer-director Christopher Nolan, an Anglo-American action director who shattered the Tomatometer of mass-consensus with The Dark Knight.

Nolan's follow-up offers more muted colors, gift-wrapped themes, and GQ leading men with stockbroker comb-backs over the frowns carved in their brows—indicators of high-minded artistry, all. Leo DiCaprio has every reason to scowl, shackled with a character named "Dom Cobb." Fugitive Cobb is a corporate espionage hired-gun expert at "extraction": lifting secrets out of targets' minds. Drugging them, then joining them for naptime, Cobb can drop in to guest-star in their dreams, and there pick the locks of his marks' subconscious—often represented as an actual safebox, as everything in dreamlife is signified by genre-movie totems.

Salt Trailer and Featurette

As a CIA officer, Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) swore an oath to duty, honor and country. Her loyalty will be tested when a defector accuses her of being a Russian spy. Salt goes on the run, using all her skills and years of experience as a covert operative to elude capture. Salt's efforts to prove her innocence only serve to cast doubt on her motives, as the hunt to uncover the truth behind her identity continues and the question remains: "Who is Salt?"


Salt - Trailer

Salt - Featurette

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I : Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows featurettes

“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”, the seventh and final adventure in the Harry Potter film series, is a much-anticipated motion picture event to be told in two full-length parts.

Heading the cast, Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson reprise their roles as Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger.

The ensemble cast also includes Helena Bonham Carter, Robbie Coltrane, Tom Felton, Ralph Fiennes, Brendan Gleeson, Richard Griffiths, John Hurt, Jason Isaacs, Helen McCrory, Bill Nighy, Miranda Richardson, Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, Timothy Spall, Imelda Staunton, David Thewlis, Julie Walters and Bonnie Wright.

“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” is directed by David Yates and produced by David Heyman and David Barron, with Lionel Wigram executive producing. Steve Kloves wrote the screenplay, based on the book by J.K. Rowling.

Warner Bros. Pictures presents a Heyday Films production, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” which marks the latest installment in the most successful film franchise of all time.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 will be released in cinemas November 2010.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 will be released in cinemas July 2011.



Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I - Trailer

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I - The Story – The tale of the progression of the tale of The Deathly Hallows

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I - On the Run - The wild world in which Harry, Ron and Hermione face in The Deathly Hallows

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I - Forest Run – The hard work (and competitive edge!) from Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson in The Deathly Hallows

Iron Man 2

Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Mickey Rourke, Scarlett Johansson, Sam Rockwell

(out of 4)

By Sean Chavel

The opening episodes of "Iron Man 2" are gripping, in holding us in anticipation, gripping especially during Tony Stark's spectacular entrance (as Iron Man) where he is to deliver a speech at his grand expo on his outlook on world peace. Current world peace won't last because there are cutaways to a number of questionable evil characters. Can the baddies serve up worthy action blockbuster havoc? 
I kept waiting patiently – very patiently – for Mickey Rourke to do something terrific with his performance as Ivan Vanko, but it never happens. For all those who are fans of the cinema of agony, the ones who appreciated his extraordinary work in “The Wrestler,” it is a crushing letdown that his is the weakest drawn character in “Iron Man 2.” True Rourke followers were waiting for him to deliver something bold and genre-breaking, something diabolically twisted, something conjuring an astonishing level of evil never seen before. But his performance lacks juice probably because the character itself is a standard dry-bone villain. He has all the dimensions of Dolph Lundgren impersonating a Slavic robot. 
   That unfortunate news aside, it is still an ecstatic joy to see Robert Downey Jr. let it rip like a method actor on steroids as Tony Stark, the man inside Iron Man. The consummate actor must be enjoying the acme period of his career. “Tropic Thunder” and “Zodiac” were Oscar-worthy performances that earned him a nomination only for the former. And “Iron Man” and “Sherlock Holmes” are multi-million DVD sellers. But in film after film, he retains his indie edge with his cocky and flippant personality without flipping the finger, either. When he chews out a senator (played by wormy Garry Shandling) he does it with classic Downey SOB smart alec style, laid back but sharp with the tongue.  
Running second in the joy department are those whooshing airborne scenes. You get the sense that Iron Man is travelling 100 mph with flying in the air, maybe it is 500 mph. Whatever the speed, Iron Man has the velocity of a missile. It is still far-fetched however that Stark can get from Malibu, California to Flushing, New York in two shakes of a lamb's tail.
There are the many secondary performances, and somehow, Gwenyth Paltrow lends the film the most heart as Pepper Potts, whom possesses the classiness of the 1950's with a 2010 academic brain, becomes appointed to company CEO. Tony and Pepper have an unexpressed affection for each other. Pepper has to take upon herself all the stress of running a company while concurrently cleaning up Tony's compromised public image. Their tension is obscure, at least to her, as Tony refuses to inform her about his dangerous blood toxicity levels (Where is Tony's personal M.D.?).
And after it was told that Scarlett Johansson was not action blockbuster movie material, famously dissed by her own producers of the flop “The Island,” it must be sweet revenge for her to appear here. As Natasha, Stark's sexy personal assistant, the more limber than ever Johansson is seen stunningly leather-clad – a martial arts vixen. Her showdown against a brigade of guards is among the film's kick-ass highlights.
If you're not an avid comic book reader, you might not be sure as to why Samuel L. Jackson is in the picture, but if you cut out all the mumbo jumbo he's basically Natasha's supervisor. Don Cheadle (taking over from Terrence Howard) becomes Iron Man partner War Machine (the two of them are not drinking buddies), but the camaraderie is put on hold until Tony can cool his ego jets.
You may also question as to whether we are waiting for another sequel so Tony Stark can follow through on his dad's legacy wishes (John Slattery as Howard Stark), which is never as resolved as it could have been. Dad speaks from beyond the grave via old company promo footage. It's a subplot that could have been a way-y-y awesome major plot had it been followed through on – I kept thinking about the end to Alex Proya's “Dark City” – but now we're talking detours but that probably didn't interest the producers behind “Iron Man 2.”
The Stark Expo, the arena for the final metallic showdown – is well, a blast and boost a second, but I was raising a logical question or two as to why Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell, as the second but more white collar villain), a snotty arms manufacturer who finances Ivan Vanko, had been given permission to deliver a presentation in the first place. Regardless, Jon Favreau (“Elf,” “Iron Man”) is a fantastic action director who expertly paces his actors through some plausible motions. Favreau, too, actually gives a damn or two about human vulnerability beneath all the explosive chaos.
It might be too harsh to call this a subpar sequel since the original set the bar so high, but… Really, it pains me as much to say that it is an inferior sequel as it is for you to hear it. But as you can probably gather there are many self-contained enjoyable moments to be had (perhaps one standing bravo and a half-dozen mild cheers) despite feeling that Iron Man has no worthy adversary and that the interpersonal conflicts are, um, a bit forced. And Downey makes anything better than it would have been had it starred without him.

PRINCE MOVIE REVIEW

Starring: Vivek Oberoi, Aruna Shields, Nandana Sen. Direction: Kookie V Gulati Music: Sachin Gupta Production: Tips Music Films Prince has been in the news for more than 4 months now. Tips have left no stones unturned for this action extravaganza and its exceptional promotional plans have rightfully converted into houseful boards in almost all the theatres. But can ‘Prince’ do another ‘Dhoom’? Can this film about the perfect thief be able to garner enough mileage to propel a sequel? First and foremost Prince is no ‘Bourne Identity’, the concept of it might have generated due to the Hollywood blockbuster but the similarity ends there. Prince is about a thief who wakes up with a bullet shot in his hand and no past memory. Within minutes into the movie we come to know that two sets of people are behind Prince who seems to have stolen an artifact which is worth billions. Prince has to find the artifact or else his life will be at danger. ‘Will he or wont he’ is then told in blast-a-minute, adrenalin pumping action fest. Forgot to mention, three hot girls who are ready to shed their cloths to woo Vivek Oberoi,

and make the task even more difficult for him to concentrate (and vise-versa for the audience in regard to the movie).

Kookie Gulati can surely make a movie with style but does miss out on the substance part. Mr. Kookie making Vivek look a little tired and sad wont make for emotional moments in the movie. Another sequence to quote, would be when the superhuman hero and his perfect sidekick of a heroine finds the artifact and lets out an emotional tear of joy only to be followed by a sexy hot song. Just when we think that Prince has too much of a Batman hangover, we see a big Batman poster in Prince’s hidden bunker below his house - Nice touch Mr. Gulati. The movie is filled with twists and turns which makes it difficult to classify the acts. But Act 1 and Act 2 filled with bike chases, diamond heist, spectacular jumps from buildings, helicopter chase, the booms and the bams, do leave you with a small headache yet a satisfaction of seeing a well crafted stunt extravaganza but the act 3 just goes a little overboard and leaves us with just the headache.

But technically the movie is rich, with brilliant cinematography, decent visual effects (great for Indian movie standards), exceptional lighting, brilliant background score, thundering sound effects, and some exceptional stunts. The editing is tacky with several abrupt cuts. The music by Sachin Gupta is of chartbuster quality but the songs do disrupt the flow of the movie most of the times.

Vivek Oberoi has talent and no once can question it after seeing his Company, Yuva and Saathiyaa, but bad choices of films have crippled his journey to stardom all these years. And with such a commercial movie and a sensational performance in it, this movie can become a well deserved ticket to stardom but he does look a little clumsy in the stunts.

Aruna Shields look ravishing but finds it hard to emote, and Neeru Singh has been wasted and used only as glamour doll. Sanjay Kapoor is impressive.

Overall it’s a movie only for adrenalin action buffs. If only the script and the story had more depth the impact would have been much more
.

KHATTA MEETHA MOVIE REVIEW

Starring: Akshay Kumar, Trisha, Makrand Deshpande, Rajpal Yadav, Neeraj Vora. Direction: Priyadarshan Music: Pritam Chakraborty, Shani Production: Hari Om Entertainment Co, Shree Ashtavinayak Cinevision Ltd Priyadarshan, the busiest director in Bollywood, comes up with one more release with his ever faithful Akshay Kumar and the southern superstar Trisha in the lead. Priyadarshan has made a living in Bollywood out of Malayalam remakes and this

time he has surely got carried away. Remaking his comedies is alright but a political satire like ‘Vellanakaludae Nadu’ which has very little comedy and more of politics and pure masala is just a little 20 years too late.

The story is about the protagonist Sachin Tichkule (Akshay Kumar), a Gandhian law student turned dirty and cheating road construction contractor who has to find his way back to his ‘sathyamaeva jayathae’ route which is polluted by his corrupt brother and brother-in-laws, their friend - the Evil Politician who also marries his sister later on. Gehna (Trisha), his ex- college lover, comes back in the scene as the Municipal Commissioner only to find his once saint boyfriend as a corrupt road contractor. Will the transformation of Sachin be complete by the end of the movie? The audience surely would have appreciated if the transformation was a 30 minutes earlier..

Priyadarshan, after the sensational Kanchivaram, has given critically panned Billu, De Dana Dan and Bum Bum Bole and now has hit a new low with Khatta Meetha. The storyline lacked continuity, emotions were too over dramatized, comedy - slapstick to the core, romance was completely missing, too many continuation problem, the pace was bit too slow which all lead to a half baked climax. For a Priyadarshan movie, not even a single laugh-a-loud moment was too big a problem for the audience to digest.

Acting department is led by Akshay Kumar and as always he excels in it. Whatever he did was as per the requirement of the role but the role in itself required a bit of detailing which was very much lacking. Trisha Krishnan’s big Bollywood debut is a complete put off, she lacked the conviction to essay a municipal commissioner’s role, and her mouthing of the dialogues was never in-sync. It’s a mini disaster for this southern hottie who looked fake from the word go. Manoj Joshi was pretty good and Rajpal Yadav a delight to watch. Urvashi Sharma looked pretty and fitted the small role quite well. Aruna Irani and Tinu Anand were completely wasted. Makrand Deshpande did his part quite convincingly. There are loads of other actors in the movie but none good enough to stand out in the crowd.

The movie didn’t require any experiments in the cinematography section, so Manikandan tries to show his skills in the chase sequence pre-climax and it did come out pretty well. Art by Sabu Cyril was exceptional and hardly did anyone know which was true and which was not, something which only the best will be able to attain. Editing by Arun Kumar looked too lenient. Music By Pritam was fine with Aila re Aila and Sajde being quite popular already but bad placement in the narrative does take the sheen out of the melodies.

Leila Kanaan Directs Nancy Ajram for World Cup Leila Kanaan Directs Nancy Ajram for World Cup 2010

Young Lebanese director Leila Kanaan directs Canadian artist Kanan and Nancy Ajram for their FIFA World Cup 2010 song "Waving Flag".
The shooting of the $1 million music video took around one month and took the cast and crew to Denmark, Portugal, Brasil, Lebanon and of course South Africa.
In the clip, Leila made sure to bring out the casual and modern side of Nancy Ajram.
Nancy's wardrobe was all courtesy of Balmain, who usually dresses Madonna for most of her video clips.

In this clip, we're going to see Nancy dancing for the very first time.
Nancy practiced for the choreographed dance moves for a whole month to perfect the routine.
The clip will soon be broadcast on numerous satellite channels during the World Cup.