![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Watching Monday
Mar. 16th, 2015 08:38 pmMan, I've missed several weeks of this. Let me try and catch up briefly:
Lagaan
This is one of the only Bollywood movies to have been nominated for an Oscar, but it was mostly sold to me with the promise that if I watched it, I would finally understand cricket. Spoiler: I still do not understand cricket.
In a vaguely defined period in the late 1800s or very early 1900s, a small village in India is undergoing the third year of a drought. Because the local British officer is Very Cruel (as established in several scenes of him being laughably, mustache-twirling-ly villainous), he refuses to lower the taxes ("lagaan"). In an attempt to humilate our Loveable Underdog Hero, he makes a bet that the local villagers will not be able to beat the local British team in cricket - if they do win, taxes will be cancelled for the next three years. I'm pretty sure you can guess where the movie goes from here. The whole thing is sort of charmingly predictable ("our team will include a Muslim guy! And a Sikh! And a Dalit! Could we be a more obvious metaphor for independant India?"), but sometimes that's exactly what you want. I was surprised to realize the whole thing had been filmed in Bhuj, in Kutch, which is just a few miles away from where I lived for a couple of months, but I loved recognizing the landscape.
Focus
I really, really wanted to love a movie in which Will Smith plays a charming conman who falls in love. But sadly this movie didn't quite work for me. It was stylish and clever and very cool, but it was so concerned with fooling the audience with surprising twists – making sure you never knew when the chracters were telling the truth and when they were lying – that, in the end, I continued to not trust the characters. I mean, the movie really wants you to believe that now they mean what they say, but they haven't earned any sort of connection or emotional honesty, and so I was left feeling cold. But it is an incredibly pretty movie!
I've also started watching Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries and, OMG YOU GUYS, it's so good! Phryne Fisher is an upperclass flapper in 1920s Melbourne, and in each episode she solves a mystery, adopts a delicate waif, and bangs a random dude, all while having snarky tension with the cheif police investigator. I'm in love. I've watched the first five episodes so far, and am looking forward to more.
Lagaan
This is one of the only Bollywood movies to have been nominated for an Oscar, but it was mostly sold to me with the promise that if I watched it, I would finally understand cricket. Spoiler: I still do not understand cricket.
In a vaguely defined period in the late 1800s or very early 1900s, a small village in India is undergoing the third year of a drought. Because the local British officer is Very Cruel (as established in several scenes of him being laughably, mustache-twirling-ly villainous), he refuses to lower the taxes ("lagaan"). In an attempt to humilate our Loveable Underdog Hero, he makes a bet that the local villagers will not be able to beat the local British team in cricket - if they do win, taxes will be cancelled for the next three years. I'm pretty sure you can guess where the movie goes from here. The whole thing is sort of charmingly predictable ("our team will include a Muslim guy! And a Sikh! And a Dalit! Could we be a more obvious metaphor for independant India?"), but sometimes that's exactly what you want. I was surprised to realize the whole thing had been filmed in Bhuj, in Kutch, which is just a few miles away from where I lived for a couple of months, but I loved recognizing the landscape.
Focus
I really, really wanted to love a movie in which Will Smith plays a charming conman who falls in love. But sadly this movie didn't quite work for me. It was stylish and clever and very cool, but it was so concerned with fooling the audience with surprising twists – making sure you never knew when the chracters were telling the truth and when they were lying – that, in the end, I continued to not trust the characters. I mean, the movie really wants you to believe that now they mean what they say, but they haven't earned any sort of connection or emotional honesty, and so I was left feeling cold. But it is an incredibly pretty movie!
I've also started watching Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries and, OMG YOU GUYS, it's so good! Phryne Fisher is an upperclass flapper in 1920s Melbourne, and in each episode she solves a mystery, adopts a delicate waif, and bangs a random dude, all while having snarky tension with the cheif police investigator. I'm in love. I've watched the first five episodes so far, and am looking forward to more.
