Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Shutter Island is Awesomely 'Dark & Demented'


Martin Scorsese has mastered the art of presenting some of the most cinematic psychos on celluloid screen. You gotta believe Marty has got those element in himself!

Shutter Island runs with mysterious pace from very first moment as you see a ship emerging out of dense fog, giving you a clear indication about what to expect for next two hours.

Two US marshals Teddy Daniels and Chuck Aule have come to the Shutter Island to investigate a case about the missing patient named Rachel Solondo. She is alleged of drowning her three children to death. Teddy is told that Rachel “just disappeared from her room suddenly, like she just evaporated through the walls” The only trace about Rachel they find under a loose floorboard; ‘The law of 4, who is 67?’ Teddy interrogates patients and staff members and he finds no body is authentic. “There are many mysteries on this island, do you think she just escaped by her self? Everybody here is involved!” says Teddy to his investigation partner. ”Why would somebody try to heal the most dangerous mental patients on this secluded island? Even when most of them are involve in brutal murders? Some thing is going on here that we need to know and tell the world about it!”

There is a pretty good cast on this Island; Leonardo again gives a heartfelt performance as Teddy Daniels, an ex marine with nightmares of world war experience and his wife’s death in a mishap. Ben Kingsley plays as Dr. Cawley, who is one of the leading staff members of psychiatrics on the island. All the characters are perfectly realized with typical Scorsese peculiarities.

As the movie proceeds towards to the climax, Martin plays with your mind in such a way that you will start to feel agony of being a mental patient. Teddy’s past makes him a perfect candidate to loose his mind on this crazy island with mysteries. “I am not Teddy, I am Laeddis!” “No I am Teddy, I am pretty sure about it!” What the hell is going on here!! Is it really going to happen?

What is wrong with Shutter Island? You won’t believe, but the only negative part of this movie is script itself! The storyline is fine but too intricate to its own good. Even Martin Scorsese won’t be able to answer about the big holes that he left while he was preparing the path to this Island. Everything jibes together perfectly fine until the climax, which is actually a surprise twist. Instead of blowing you away it just puts a puzzled expression on your face. You will feel that somebody tried to be smart with you.

Martin somehow got away with his talent of making great movies but this time he could not control the dimensionality of the story line. But let’s just welcome this master to the new genre! He has done perfectly fine job here, giving us one of the best films in 2010!

Watch it if you like true horror mysteries, which do not come with cheap sound effect scares!

Rating: B+

Rated R for disturbing violent content, language and some nudity.

Run Time: 138 Minutes


Deep Panjwani

FORESHADOW PICTURES

universalexperiment@yahoo.co.in

Thursday, March 11, 2010

1984 by George Orwell

“But how can you write about books on the blog? The blog is meant explicitly for movies and movies only.”
“Because I firmly believe that movies and books are intricately inter-related to such an extent that both of the arts are utterly inextricable.”
“Well, you may continue. Nobody reads your articles anyway. See, you never get any comments. It always shows ‘0 comments’. ”
“Thanks for your honest opinion.”
“Then let me be honest completely. You know, your style of writing depicts that you don’t care for the readers. Your elements of humour are always bland and mundane. You never beautify your article with attractive images. And your conscious attempt, to deliberately use the toughest words of the dictionary in order to make your article look impressive, insulates the article from majority of the readers. I think if you abandon your frivolous attitude and try to write in a serious style then we can talk.”
“All right. I’ll try to write in a serious style today.”
“Go on. I am watching.”

The ‘serious’ article starts:

1984 by George Orwell



Genre: Fiction (But nothing like the moronic recent fictions)
Pages: 326 (Very much finisheable)

Surfing through the Internet, I came across the legal Oxford-definition of the word ‘literate’. It went on as follows:
literate (adj.): a person who is able to read, who is able to write, who is sensible, who is educated and who is knowledgeable.
I think Oxford people won’t object if I add another ‘who’ from my side:
literate (adj.): a person who is able to read, who is able to write, who is sensible, who is educated, who is knowledgeable and most importantly who has read 1984

If you read any newspaper carefully, I assure you that you will find terms such as ‘Big Brother’, ‘Doublespeak’, ‘Room No.101’, ’Vaporised’, ‘Orwellian society’, ‘dystopia’, etc recurring at least once a week. These were coined by George Orwell in his magnum opus 1984. Very few fictions have changed the way of thinking of people and 1984 has radically overhauled the outlook of society since its publication.
Written in 1949, Orwell delineates an image of a futuristic world in the year 1984. He imagines that in future there will be only three countries in the world, each one of them being a totalitarian State. The State will have such a tremendous authority over the individuals that even if you dared to think anything which was ostensibly against the State, you would be immediately confiscated by the ‘thought-police’, you would be charged under ‘thought-crime’ and then you would be vaporized! Orwell inarguably alludes to the Soviet Union and entire communism in general since the Cold War was at its peak when he wrote it. My favorite part of the book is when the protagonist reads ‘the book’ and comes to know how the State justifies its ubiquitous motto: “WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH”.

Written in a lucid style, 1984 is a satire in its most extreme form. There will be many occasions in the book when you will want to stop at a line and take a moment to exclaim, “Wow!” Open any list of top 100 books of all time and you will find 1984 sitting right there. (Well, that is not my reason for eulogizing it! Of course not!) I can continue to elaborate various aspects of the book interminably but I’ll have to restrain myself over here. (Read the other details on Wikipedia.)

“1984 is one of my all-time favorite books.” – Steven Spielberg

I think I don’t need to praise it any further. To put in Newspeak parlance, “1984 is ‘doubleplusgood’!”

The ‘serious’ article ends here

“You just cannot write an article. Your serious style sucks!”
“Okay…. That was brutally honest.”
“You should quit writing. You… you are an ass-hole!”
“Well, I was not aware that we were allowed to use such vulgar expletives on this blog… Anyways, I’ll have to check it out.”
“Was that a pun?”

Paritosh Bhole
FORESHADOW PICTURES
paritoshbhole@yahoo.co.in