Indecent Proposal

Indecent Proposal is a 1993 movie featuring Demi Moore, Robert Redford and Woody Harrelson.  Before writing this blog I checked online, as that feature is easily available these days and found out that Woody Harrelson had been given the Worst Actor Award in the Razzies and the movie itself was nominated for Worst Movie Award. Well, it is not such a bad movie at all. Demi Moore especially sizzles in the movie. She looks beautiful those youthful days. Woody Harrelson in fact has done a fine role. I am sure those who gave him the Razzies would like to change their opinion. Its an uncomplicated story of a millionaire wanting to sleep with a woman for 1 million dollars, which those guys need desperately to fund their dream housing project. He has got money to spare and she has got the assets but what is not reckoned with is the emotional content. I am sure there must have been a shameless copy in Bollywood by somebody with all the songs and dance in it and too much of emotional drama baazi with moms and in laws and bua's and what ever fucking not characters. 

Dallas Buyers Club

Dallas Buyers Club is a 2013 American movie based on a real life story of Ron Woodruff who is diagnosed with AIDS but does not get the medicines because FDA has not approved of them. These are early days of the AIDS treatment and the research is still picking up on what is the best medicine for AIDS. Mathew McConaughey has brilliantly played the lead role of Ron, for which he won the Best Acting Oscar. Jennifer Garner as the supportive doctor has also played a superb role. The more I see of Jennifer Garner acting, the more I feel that she is developing in a fine actor in the mould of Meryl Streep. So Ron does not get the AZT because they are still on trial, but he goes to Mexico and gets dDc and peptide T, which is a protein from a local doctor there whose licence has been squashed. He brings a bootful load of medicines masquerading as a padre who requires them for his cancer treatment. Meanwhile he starts selling the medicines to fellow AIDS patients who are similarly denied the AZT treatment and forms the Dallas Buyers Club. His activity prompts other cities to form similar clubs like Florida Buyers Club which is mentioned in the movie. Ron gets into business with a transgender and sets about charging $400 as membership fee for the Dallas Buyers Club. But FDA confiscates his supplies and then IRS sets about investigating his activities. Meanwhile Jenifer is forced to resign from her post because she is seen as supporting the Club activities.

I liked the way this difficult subject was treated in the film. In India we don't see these kind of autobiographical movies which are even slightly controversial. We have sports and politics bio pics which are far away from truth and which are more like goody goody movies with a lot of song and dance. 

Badlapur -

Sriram Raghavan made two excellent movies in Ek Haseena Thi and Johnny Gaddar, both of them taut with good scripts, fast paced, never a dull moment. But he slips in Badlapur which has a weak script, confused ending, weak acting, all in all a big let down from the man.

Raghu's wife and kid are unfortunately got caught in a bank robbery escape attempt and both of them get killed but the distraught man plots revenge. The real killer is caught but he keeps playing the cops around like one of Robert de Niro characters. Jump forward 15 years, revenge still simmers on his mind but here the plot then starts getting wayward without any real meaning. There are more killings, threats galore but it ends up on a totally confused note. The Dhawan guy goes through the entire movie with a single expression and overall acting is tepid to say the least. The plot does'nt rise above a certain level but people like Sriram Raghavan should not accept such hackneyed scripts for direction. 

Bhag Milkha Bhag

Bhag Milkha Bhag is a biopic of a man who was the first athletic sporting hero of a newly independent India and I would say about 30 years late in the making. He gave up running in the mid 60s, Tokyo Marathon of 1964 being probably his last major championship. Bio pics were never popular in mainstream Indian cinema popularly called as Bollywood except as documentaries by the Indian government channels. It is only recently that few bio pics are being made which is closely resembling the lives of the protagonists otherwise they make movies "loosely based on somebody's life". Either ways, the directors take extreme liberty with the true content of the person's lives introducing elements that are never there in their real life. Bhag Milkha Bhag is therefore the story of Milkha Singh's life. It is also a sad story of Bollywood's obsession with sex, skin show, six packs and songs. Even if the four S were removed yet the story would have been beautiful enough for people to connect to the person's life who is venerated as a God in sporting circles in India. Of course in India any yadav, kumar and shinde who knows how to hold a bat or bowl a long hop is also venerated in a mad cricket crazy country. So the story is about his uprooting from his village in Pakistan, butchering of his parents, brother and sister in front of his own eyes and his traumatic train travel to India as an orphan where he has only his siblings to take care of him at a tender young age of 10. His early life in the village involved trekking to a school 10 kms away by going through sand dunes which must have been the major contributing factor to his athletic prowess in latter life. The narrative of the movie does not follow a linear format and therefore it juxtaposes from one situation to another. Army was where he first came into contact with running and the recognition from winning at running gave him the impetus to furiously pursue his pursuits. They allowed a few inaccuracies to creep up such as his breaking the world record in 400 metres which as per this Wikipaedia entry here does not show any such record in his name. In the movie they have depicted that he lost the 1960 Rome medal due to his angst and anguish at the loss of his parents and siblings in Pakistan but that was already erased in the Indo-Pak friendship series which took place in the mid 50s where he decimated the Pakistani athletes and extracted succour for that loss. Bollywood's obsession with six pack abs is almost delusional. Probably the movie makers think that anybody who has a body with huge muscles is a champion in every sport forgetting that every sport does not require huge bulging muscles. Why should an athlete have a sick pack abs with huge bulging muscles - They should have done their homework properly. This youtube video here shows that Milkha started off fast but started fading in the later stages of the 400 metres final in Rome Olympics - a case of tactical, strategic error rather than angst at his loss in Pakistan. The same tactical strategic errors continue to be committed by later Indian athletes such as Sriram Singh who had a devastating first lap in the 800 metres final of the 1976 Montreal Olympics only to fade to finish 7th in the race which was won by Cuba's Alberto Juantorena in a then world record time. Juantorena later acknowledged that he was able to break the world record only to the initial burst of speed by Sriram Singh. With all these inaccuracies and the formula system of Bollywood, the movie is well made with decent performances by all the actors including some bravura performance by Divya Dutta and Pawan Malhotra as the sister and coach respectively of Milkha. Sonam Kapoor as the love interest of Milkha has done a delightful cameo role. An absolutely must watch by all the youngsters of India, all athletes irrespective of whether they are runners, shooters, wresters, boxers. Too many songs perhaps elongated the movie to little more than 3 hours. Farhan Akhtar in his six pack has done a decent role as Milkha Singh.