Before they were BEAST, BANSHEE, MYSTIQUE and HAVOC....

My god this looks good. I have such a thing for Nicholas Hoult and James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender that this film might (hopefully) be the death of me.

So in an hour, my all-deciding, all-surpassing, all-important results come out. And this is exactly how I feel right now.

I can't remember other films...but yes I am very very scared.

"Now, what we got here is a little game of show and tell. You don't wanna show me nothing but you're telling me everything." ~ True Romance

        Great scene... yet another Quentin Tarantino-Christopher Walken gem. This was a fun film. How QT manages to write this kind of well, magical stuff is what amazes me the most about the man-genius. I loved the romantic aspects of this film as much as I loved the violence, and the supporting cast iss to die for. Also Patricia Arquette has such a dreamy voice, doesn't she?? And I kind of miss Christian Slater. He does have 10 films-in-production, according to IMDb though, so I guess we haven't seen the last of him yet. 


        You know what I would like? Have everyone in this film to work together again. Ouie?!


        Fun Trivia- The dopey director Lee Donowitz, played by Saul Rubinek, is the son of the Bear Jew from Inglorious Basterds. Something tells me he wouldn't have been so proud.

"You know what your problem is, it's that you haven't seen enough movies- all of life's riddles are answered in movies." ~A LIFE IN MOVIES BLOGATHON

There is a new blogathon going on, spurred on by Fandango Groovers Movie Blog in which we choose our favourite film from every year since the year we were born. I found it quite interesting and decided to do it, but it was rather difficult to choose because of two things- my favourite and what I think of as the best in a particular year differed on a few occasions, and also that I have never been able to choose a favourite film for anything. The latter was was especially terrible because I felt so guilty for leaving out the other shortlisted films in every year, and choose the one I chose. But for the fun of it and what I think now, here are my favourite films since 1992 (missed Silence of the Lambs by that much)

1992- Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

This one was difficult, but as much as I love Aaron Sorkin, I just love John Hughes more. Add to that possibly the cutest child actor ever, with one heck of a character and two mental villains...this film was just brilliant.

1993- Sleepless in Seattle

I must say that I love this film more that the original itself. It has this kind of magic, and belief in possibilities that only films can provide us with. Sweet, funny and oh so romantic. And ofcourse I love the leads.

1994- The Shawshank Redemption

This was one of the bad years- from Forrest Gump to Pulp Fiction to Four Weddings to Natural Born Killers, but I had to choose Shawshank. This film is at the top of the IMDb 250 list, and with good reason. The way this film makes me feel, so hopeful and right and happy, very few others can.

1995- To Die For

Another great year, especially with Kevin Spacey (Se7en, The Usual Suspects), but something about Gus Van Sant's To Die For makes me choose it instead. I can never say no to a black comedy, and Nicole Kidman's Suzanne Stone was irresistible. People went nuts for her- her clean-cut housewife image with a blind ambition and something deadly inside...wonderful- no wonder it was selected as one of Premiere Magazine's greatest performances of all time. 

1996- Trainspotting

My personal favourite Danny Boyle movie! It's crazy, it's funny, it's trippy as hell. Also one of the best beginnings EVER.

1997- Titanic

I don't care what this makes me. I will forever love this film and love both of them (especially Jack). The only film which can still make me cry like a baby despite having seen it like a hundred times.

1998- Rushmore

I love this film...I really do. My favourite Wes Anderson film by a mile, and Jason Schwartzman is just so adorable and relate-able as Max Fischer. Also having Bill Murray is a huge bonus.

1999- Fight Club

There was a lot this year- American Beauty, Being John Malkovich, The Virgin Suicides, but this film...what can I say about David Fincher's Fight Club? About Tyler Durden and the gang?? Changed my life forever... that's all.

2000- Almost Famous

This film just makes me soo happy. Another great music-related film came out this very year- The John Cusack-starrer High Fidelity (And American Psycho too - Hip to be Square!)...but I think the feel of Almost Famous, the time, the ideas is much more close to the heart. 

2001- Moulin Rouge!

The year of the franchises- from Harry Potter to Lord of the Rings to Ocean's Eleven. But as a favourite film, Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge! has always been the one closest to my heart. The Bohemian ideals, the songs and pop-culture references, the look, the feel and obviously the two leads- Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman enchanted me in this film so very thoroughly that I fell in love with them forever.

2002- Igby Goes Down

My go-to film for when I think my life cannot get any worse. Then I see Igby Slocumb's life, his uber-dysfunctional family and I feel happy. Feel good anyone?!

2003- Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

The film that launched a legend. Capt. Jack Sparrow is and will always be one of the greatest film characters ever, and being fueled by Johnny Depp only makes him so much more brilliant. The best film of the series by far, my god even Will and Elizabeth were tolerable in it.

2004- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

My second favorite film in the series, but still pretty awesome. This was the year of things like Mean Girls and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but I think with Alfonso Cuaron's darker direction and the addition of cast members like Gary Oldman and Emma Thompson (and the best Harry Potter hairstyle ever), HP3 was better than the rest. This was also the first Harry Potter film I saw in the theatre.

2005- Memoirs of a Geisha

The summative beauty of early 20th century-Japan, the kimonos, the make-up, the dancing, and ofcourse some of the most stunning Asian women ever makes this film one of the most enthralling to watch.

2006- Pan's Labyrinth

One of the most mesmerising films I have seen, this film with it's characters and visuals and music settles inside a part of your heart forever. The poignant beauty of it all, one which makes us happy and sad both at the same time is incredible. Also one of the best World War- related films according to me.

2007- Ghost Rider...no I'm kidding- Ratatouille

My favourite animated film (well one of them anyways). The concept just blows my mind...a rat who wants to cook. I mean they really do have the most creative minds working in Pixar, don't they? This film has everything- the city of love, good food, comedy, the underdog-story, romance and most importantly a lot of heart. Transplendent I tell you...just transplendent!

2008- The Dark Knight

My favourite Christopher Nolan film. This is an action thriller at its very best and along with that, it has some of the most remarkable characters ever to grace the silver screen. The most notable ofcourse is the late Heath Ledger's electrifying portrayal of The Joker.

2009- (500) Days of Summer

This film brought romcoms back...with a bang and a twist. The closest thing to Annie Hall in years, it has it's own brand of innocence and cuteness and heartbreak. And Joseph Gordon-Levitt just melts my heart.

2010- The Social Network

Did anyone possibly think I could choose anything else?! I love this film to bits...more that sanity allows.

Year 19...here I come.

"I am a false prophet! God is a superstition!"

       
          It is the beginning of the 20th century and Daniel Plainview is a silver prospector who while working in a mine strikes oil. He starts an oil drilling company, in which while working one of his co-workers accidentally dies. He then adopts the man's infant son and names him H.W.  Almost a decade later, we see the Plainviews are richer and their business is in full swing. It is then that a young man named Paul Sunday comes to them with information about oil under his property in a town called Little Boston, California. Daniel and H.W venture there and find out that Paul had been true to his word. Daniel decides to buy the Sunday farm and it's owner, Paukl's father is more than happy to do so. Except then Paul's twin brother Eli, who is the pastor of the Church of Third Revelation there, asks for more money to fund the church. The deal is made at the former price and along with the Sunday estate, Daniel buys all the available land in the area, save that belonging to a certain Mr. Bandy.
           Oil drilling begins in full swing but for the two accidents in the beginning, a man dies during extraction and then an explosion in the mine causes H.W. to lose his hearing completely. Around this time an unspoken feud starts between Daniel and Eli which continues till the rest of their lives. Also a stranger name Henry appears at the Plainviews' footstep claiming to be Daniel's half-brother. He takes him in and starts showing him the ropes but H.W., on reading his diary, finds some discrepancies and tries to kill him by setting him on fire to protect him and his father. The fire is stopped in time and Daniel, angered by H.W.'s act, sends him away to San Fransisco. While rival firm Standard Oil tries to buy him out, Daniel decides to go with Union Oil instead, which requires him to build a pipeline to the Californian coast, but it can only be done by striking a deal with Bandy as it has to run through it. It is at this time when Daniel finds out that Henry is not really his half-brother but rather a friend of him. He had died and by reading his diary he had gathered information about him, and had decided to come to Daniel for company and a comfortable living. Enraged, Daniel shoots him in a drunken stupor and then buries his body.
             In the morning, Bandy confronts him and says that he will only sell Daniel his land if he joins the church and washes away his sins. This gives Eli a chance to take revenge for a previous fight between Daniel and him, and he humiliates him while washing him in the blood of the Christ, making him repeat that he is a sinner and has abandoned his child, a painful memory that stays with him forever. Still his oil work is soon well on the way, and H.W also returns with a sign-language specialist, Eli goes away for missionary work and all seems well.
             Then the story forwards to 1927 when H.W. marries his childhood sweetheart Mary, Eli's sister. He comes to Daniel, now a rich and powerful man, to say through his interpreter, that he is moving to Mexico with Mary to start a company of his own. Daniel flies off the handle at this, screaming at H.W. for various things- starting from the fact that he now becomes a competitor, to the interpreter being there, till he finally reveals to him that he was an orphan he adopted to make his appearance look better to clients. Angered, H.W. leaves. It is after that, when he is lying in his very wooden, very polished bowling room, drunk, that Eli return to him. At first he tells him that he has a radio show and is doing very well, and wants to sell the Bandi farm to him as he had died. In return, Daniel asks him to make two statements- "I am a false prophet. God is a superstition."
           Now despite having said the whole plot, I will not reveal the ending. Just know that there will be blood.

           After watching P.T. Anderson's Magnolia and hearing all about how brilliant his There Will Be Blood is, I had to see it too. So I did...and I agree with the common consensus...it is one fantastic, eerie, lovely film.

         The story is loosely based on Upton Sinclair's novel Oil! and was written for screen by Anderson himself. It is a story about greed, religious fanaticism, rise of capitalism...but in the end it is the story of one man- Daniel Plainview. I have written once before, give me a flawed hero and I'll give you a devoted Nikhat. And Daniel was flawed...so much so that to see any redeeming qualities was nearly impossible. But I don't think so... I see a man who raised another man's son with a lot of love, but because he hated others more, it was masked by it. I think he was an excellent businessman. He was so lonely that he chose to accept a stranger, Henry, in his life- remember he had earlier threatened Paul about investigating him if his information regarding the oil was false, and he didn't attempt to do so with Henry. But of course there were blaring flaws- this man is the modern man...a man of the 20th century, which brought with it progress and industry, but also environmental degradation, religious cynicism and an insatiable greed. A common saying that money is the root cause of all evil is truly explored in this film. Daniel becomes a sinner because of his avarice, and not the blood of Christ but rather from a source much more sinister proves to be his salvation- "I'm finished," he says in the end. The hatred that had grown in him, little by little, over so many years, seeing the worst in people- in his own words, so much that he thinks that every one else also sees him in the same way. Magnolia started with the song "One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do" by Three Dog Night. Those people were lonely, but none as much as Daniel Plainview.

           To say that Daniel Day-Lewis is an outstanding actor is an understatement. Originally British, he adopted this American-western accent expertly. I've read in other reviews about how it's like John Huston's accent- I have never seen any of his films so I cannot say. For me it was very unique- gruff yet eloquent. The first time we hear it was 14 minutes after the title card gad been shown, and it stood out immediately. I had originally not wanted to see the film because Johnny Depp had lost the Oscar to him, and being the completely mad fan I was back then, I was very pissed off. I'm still a mad fan but I do know that Sweeney Todd wasn't the greatest of films or Depp's performances, and Day-Lewis was the rightful winner. The ambition, the wrath, the greed, the pain, the loneliness, and the hatred- everything is as clear as the day on his face. Yes Daniel Plainview was never a man to expose his feelings, but Daniel Day-Lewis is. It was glorious to see him on practically every shot of the film.

            The other person ofcourse is Paul Dano who played both Paul and Eli Sunday... and god he has such an interesting face. Ebert described it as pudding-faced, but I really don't know what that means. The first time we see him at work- in his little church, he looked to me like a total rockstar, "My dear Mrs. Hunter... dance with me... dance with me." But he is just so menacing. A debauched man, who uses the blind faith of others to get what he wants- attention, revenge, money. I think I would have found it harder to side with Daniel were it not for the absolutely unattractive character of Eli Sunday. And Dano did such a great job. He was vicious with such a smile on his face that The Joker would have felt scared. H.W. who was played by Dillon Freasier reminded me so much of Stanley from Magnolia. Both were these meek kids, used to amuse adults, who eventually stand up to their fathers. He was especially good after the explosion scene as we, along with him, understand the horror of what has happened to him. Kevin J. O'Connor, who played Henry, too was good, but I couldn't help keep remembering him as Beny Gabor from The Mummy. They were both liars, weren't they?

         Now I never knew that this was a film where visuals played any role. As said earlier about my anger towards it because of Depp, I had never so much as seen a trailer of it. I only knew vaguely about it. So you can understand what a surprise it was too see these stunning graphics. The wide deserted lands, the oil drills, the smoke from the train and obviously from the explosion filling the horizon. Robert Elswit won the Oscar for his cinematography and like Day-Lewis it was very well-deserved. Another thing was the music. It was odd, but so very apt, like I cannot fathom the film with any changes made in it. My favourite scene in the film is that of the explosion, and the run that Daniel makes with the traumatized H.W. The sound of the bursting oil slowly tones down, along with the screams of all the other men. Then comes this weird music which sounds like it is being made from all these different instruments and all these different surfaces and all these different sources and when H.W. reveals that he cannot hear his own voice, it shows that it's all these different things which he will never be able to hear again. The sound editing was very good too. There were always things being built and everything could be heard distinctly.

          I haven't really gotten my head around what I think of P.T. Anderson as a director. He is very good ofcourse, even a fool could say that. But Magnolia and There Will Be Blood were very different. Speaking of the latter alone, I really like the way that he used both the man and the surroundings. He got a breath-taking performance out of the already fabulous Day-Lewis, but also a creepy and intense performance out of the "silent" Paul Dano. The film is of a Western-ish genre, but so much more dramatic and believable. I really like the flow of it...there is a continuity, but the film only seems to grow from the beginning to the end. Throughout the film I felt that something greater is going to come next. It is suspenseful, but for what I am yet to fully grasp- maybe to see Daniel's final success, or to see what he does with himself, or to see where his greed took him, or if he let go of all the hatred, or maybe just to see whether there is blood, but I really was biting my nails (metaphorically) till the end. And what an ending... "I'm finished," he says.

        This film gave me a lot to think about...here are some random musings that resulted from there:

Random Observation which May or May Not have any Basis- Now I have heard a lot about how this film is alot like the great Citizen Kane; it is- in a grittier, less fashionable way. I had also personally thought that The Social Network was like Citizen Kane, Zuckerberg's Facebook being Kane's Xanadu. This ofcourse made me compare There Will Be Blood with The Social Network. They are similar, aren't they. Just character-wise- the lonely Daniel is like Mark, the betrayed H.W. is like Eduardo, hell both films have twins! And ofcourse the treacherous Henry is like Sean. There were barely any women in the former...someone failed the Bechdel Test bad (!), but I don't think it mattered all that much. And though The Social Network didn't end with any blood, it is Fincher and one can dream.

Random Dream regarding Paul Dano- Don't you just dream of a film where there can be actors like Paul Dano, Emile Hirsch, Patrick Gugit, Kieran Culkin etc. all together? Like a big under-appreciated kick-ass actors film with a lovely kooky story. And the director...not the Coen Brothers because I'm a little sick of them but maybe someone like Jim Jarmusch...and Bill Murray can be like the patriarch and we can throw in Steve Buscemi somewhere. Yes? No?

         
          Anyways, I will say again that There Will Be Blood is a cinematic jewel and Daniel Day-Lewis' performance is as good as they come. And as it was recommended to me, I must recommend it to anyone who loves good cinema and hasn't seen it yet.

Update

        I'm back!!! From an unnecessary, prolonged blogging vacation. Whatever little I did read of the LAMMY's was through a friend's tiny Blackberry screen and it all sounds very exciting but I'm very out of loop. I probably will take part in it next year when I have a clue of what's going on.


      In the last 25 days of internet-less existence I managed to see 51 films, some for the very first time...for example the absolutely wonderful musical Once, whose soundtrack I had downloaded three years ago, but kept on postponing the film itself...blunder much? I must also say that what I had imagined the songs to be like in the film was pretty much the furthest thing from the real deal. And the Falling Slowly sequence was really to die for. When it was ending, I knew this film will ruin my life forever like Before Sunset did, but I loved it loads nonetheless.

       I saw Chaplin's City Lights after about 12-15 years...it really is magical. One of the best things that I have heard about it is from Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers (I went through a The Dreamers-phase too...again), when Theo says "You remember the last shot of City Lights? He looks at the flower girl, she looks at him and don't forget, she'd been blind...so she was seeing him for the very first time. It's as if, through her eyes, we also see him for the very first time. Charlie Chaplin, Charlot, the most famous man in the world... and it's as if we've never really seen him before."

      A certain TV channel was showing the Die Hard films, The Day After Tomorrow and Moulin Rouge practically on a loop, so I saw a lot of that. Similarly another channel showed Rob Marshall's Memoirs of  a Geisha some five times, and I watched it everytime as I cannot help myself around that film, it's just so enchanting.

      I finally finished watching A Streetcar Named Desire...what a film eh?! I'm so convinced I'm gonna become Blanche DuBois, it's scary. Also the scene between Marlon Brando's Stanley and Kim Hunter's Stella, when he calls out to her and she walks down the spiral staircase to fall into his embrace has to be one of the most erotic scenes I have ever seen in a film.

      One of the most startling films I saw for the first time was P.T. Anderson's Magnolia. I haven't ever watched any film of his completely, and like Once, I keep postponing downloading There Will Be Blood. But Magnolia was something else... it really scared me for some reason. And the plot twist, was the weirdest one I have ever seen. I am still trying to get my head around it in all honesty...I've never been perplexed by a singular scene like this.

       The two films I saw in the theatre, yet, were Rio and Scream 4. I loved Rio... it was very colourful, very cute and I just love Jesse Eisenberg. Scream 4 was fun... really loved Courtney Cox and Emma Roberts. I thought there were some great one-liners there, best being "First rule of remakes, don't fuck with the originals!" I saw Scream again after that...god I love Matthew Lillard!!

       The time of summer blockbusters is upon us now...I will be watching Thor soon. Hopefully I like it enough to review it (I doubt it). Also going to my Youtube subscriptions I saw various films have released their trailers like Transformers: Dark of the Moon (oh so bad), The Help (Gotta love Emma Stone!), 30 Minutes or Less (As much as I love Jesse E., it looks little bad) and of course this...

       I am an unapologetic, rather proud Potterphile/maniac and my world has officially begun to revolve around this. I do think this the trailer could have been a little better...like why would you show Fred dying? I was hoping the films would change that and kill Ginny instead...but to say that I am SUPER-DUPER EXCITED and at the same time facing a nervous breakdown to think this could ever end...would be a gross understatement. 

       S0 I think now I am up-to-date. Let the blogging begin.