praveensg.com » Movies

Stills from Three Idiots’ movie shoot

praveen — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 23:00:25 +0000

A friend of mine forwarded a few pix from the forthcoming Aamir movie 3 Idiots. The movie is based on Chetan Bhagat’s blockbuster novel ‘Five Point Someone‘ and the crew was shooting at IIM Bangalore. Seen here is Aamir eating dinner while playing a game of chess. This is one movie I wouldn’t want to miss in 09. It’s a Rajkumar Hirani movie after all!

Click on pix to enlarge.

The Money Experiment – Netflix Downgrade

praveen — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 03:25:51 +0000

I and Khushi are major movie buffs. We see at least 3-4 movies every week and NetFlix has been one of our greatest movie resource over the past 2 years or so. Recently we got a great deal on AT&T UVerse’s 200 channel program and honestly, we haven’t been able to keep up with all the movies out there. To make things worse (or better?), ATT gave us a free upgrade to their U300 program. That meant even more movies. The movies that we used to get from Netflix just started laying around for days together, if not months! I was enrolled on their 2-at-a-time program for 13.99 a month. Usually, that meant 2 movies over the weekend during our cable-free life which was too good a deal. But now, with all the choice available, it didn’t make much sense. So today I downgraded to their 1-at-a-time program for 8.99 which I’m not sure is gonna get used that much either. Still this means a 5 dollar saving every month which translates to $60 a year.

Money scraped this month = $5.

Excuse Me Mr Kandasamy

praveen — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:52:10 +0000

Tamil song topping the charts these days. Quite an addictive number I must say

Vaaranam Aayiram – Looking good

praveen — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 03:36:47 +0000

This is a forthcoming Tamil movie making news in the South. Music by Harris Jayaraj is catchy and cinematography looks really slick. It’s being directed by Gautham Menon of Minnale fame. Check it out if you’re a fan of South Indian cinema. It’s coming out on Nov 14.

Things about Rajnikanth

praveen — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 21:41:51 +0000

Stumbled upon this doing a Google image search. Don’t ask me what I was searching for. Enjoy!

Raja Sen – Master spoiler

praveen — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 21:54:19 +0000

It had been a while since I’d checked out what was happening back home. The first site I go to to get my dose of desi news is www.rediff.com and since I’m a huge Bollywood buff, the movie section in there is my all time favorite. Well, to my surprise, there wasn’t much news on the site only to later realize that it was a holiday back home for Good Friday aka Easter. I am having to work my ass off on a Friday living in a Christian-dominated country and our Indian brethren get to celebrate Good Friday? Talk about being secular! I’m just jealous Anyways, without digressing. There were a few headlines spread here and there and one of them was the review of the latest Abbas-Mustan offing, Race. I have always liked AM movies for they are only guys who exclusively are dedicated to making action/suspense/thriller movies back home. And Race seemed to be exactly that, only this time around, they have gone bonkers with the budget and also have like the three hottest girls of Bollywood (1, 2 and check this one out 3).

I have always been a great fan of Raja Sen, the ace Rediff reviewer and usually go by his advice when it comes to Bollywood flicks. He is a no nonsense reviewer and does seem to suit my taste. However, this time around, his no-nonsense behavior went a little too far. As I proceed to read the article, behold, the first sentence I see, he gives away the climax. Seriously, I’m not kidding. The whole damn climax, right in front of your eyes. And he looks pretty damn confident in giving it away. I know, he must not have liked the movie which is why the 1.5 stars. But that is not the question here. The question is about moral ethics of a responsible scribe. You would at least put a spoiler alert in there. I think Raja wanted to look ubercool this time and he tried to come up with a really bold review. And what better way to look cool than to spill beans right off the bat. But Mr. Sen, this was not cool at all. In fact this is totally irresponsible behavior from a well-respected journalist like you and for this behavior of yours, you do owe an apology to your readers as well as the producers of the movie. Agreed, the movie might have sucked beyond imagination but do you realize how much work might have gone into the making of the movie? Producers spend millions and there is a whole crew that slogs its ass for years together to come up with a movie and you just write it off in what, 30 mins? C’mon, give us a break. I’m not sure how many people even read your reviews but I’m certain you have managed to change quite a few minds today; one of them being mine, to not read your reviews anymore that is.

For the ones who missed Raja’s review and do not know the suspense yet, I’m going to point them to a review that is more balanced > Taran Adarsh’s review

Sunday Movie Review – Vantage Point – Pointless

praveen — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 19:59:26 +0000

The movie says 8 vantage points. However, after almost 90 minutes of onslaught, I couldn’t find even one. This is my first movie review here and I wanted it to start on a positive note but turns out that destiny had different plans. I was given a few movie passes by my employer the other day and I wanted to put them to some good use. I and Khushi had one of the best Thai lunches ever and we wanted to complement it with an afternoon movie. But damn misfortune, we chose Vantage Point. When it comes to movies, I’m not too picky. I will pick a movie by reading a couple of reviews or just by counting the stars next to the title. And 9 out of 10 times, I like one or the other thing about the movie. Vantage Point, where do I begin? OK let me try by saying that VP is the worst movie I’ve seen in recent times and most probably a long time to come. I really do not want to waste my energy writing a full-fledged review since there is nothing to talk about for this movie, I’m serious, zip, zilch, nada, zero, nonka. The only motive behind writing this post is to save you from the misery that I’d to undergo watching this joke. I beg you, do not waste your money on this piece of *#%$ even if someone gives you a free ticket (like I was). This is the worst movie of 2008 since I’m more than confident there will be not as bad a movie as this one coming out for the rest of the year. I know I’m repeating my words, but that is how pissed after watching this movie. There is no script whatsoever, the writer I guess got bored after writing a couple pages or maybe joined the writers strike! The characters are half-baked, almost all of them out of place. And at the end of it, you’re left completely frustrated and cheated after all the initial buildup. The actual footage for the movie is about 20 minutes which has been repeated at least ten times over and again to cover the entire length of the movie. WTF?! The whole rewind concept (where the director chooses to rewind actual movie footage in real-time) falls flat on its face. What was Pete Travis thinking? Do not listen to any of the reviewers on other sites who have given the movie big thumbs ups and A pluses. Either they slept through the movie or they just want you to undergo the same misery as they did. Save your money and watch something else. A biiiigg F