REVIEWS
JOY
Remember those times, well which recur a bit too often during the pivotal years of your academic life where you are just waiting for your motivational gears to start running and you dream of spinning something beautiful, magical worth a million applauses and acknowledgement from your friends and family? Unfortunately spinning something out thin air is fictional, so you seek motivation and ideas from various sources- undeniably entertainment being the most preferable one. The vicarious act of playing the role of Chris Gardner of Pursuit of Happiness or the Stephen Hawking of Theory of Everything in real life momentarily gets you brimming with all the stimulus you need. Well, Joy is another such movie which gives you your lingering motivational treat.
The essence seems pretty clichéd- of a successful entrepreneur from rags to riches but don’t desert the movie just because it has the sinews of a clichéd Hollywood story-line. Joy is different. Joy invent is invent ideas, invent solutions for problems of a regular life, and invent solutions which can inspire all categories of society. Though nothing academically glamorous about the child’s brain is highlighted throughout the story, the subtle references by her grandmother to Joy’s intelligence is translated as the desire to invent and design ordinary stuff and hence you are immediately enticed to relate to Joy’s character.journeymaybe a perfect eclectic mixture of various Hollywood movies revolving around this plot but it still does have something to offer at the end of the day. What I loved about Joy was the portrayal of Joy as a sweet young child with a brain that churns designs. Joy is about a little girl who likes to invent and what I mean by
The movie may seem a bit off track in the beginning due to the frequent references to the soap opera scenes but if you look at it closely the dialogues are mere expressive references to the essence of Joy’s journey. Joy, a divorced mother of two with a highly dysfunctional family lives with her parents, her grandmother, her ex-husband and two children in New York. Joy’s dream to design and invent is shown to have ended 17 years back- something as small as this number has a perfect explanation in the story-line. Well, so after she fortunately gets a nightmare that reveals to herself that she cannot survive in this drab routine anymore which is further expedited by a painful injury to her wrist while wringing her mop leads her to get her rusted grey cells working and devise a solution – “a self-wringing mop” for the problem that caused her this injury. Her journey begins here and what follows is the portrayal of how Joy manages to come out of all the hurdles only because of her persistence and devotion to her idea.
in Joy is her grandmother and rest all is just a dysfunctional chaos which contributes to both personal and The only good part about a bit of professional prejudices as well. I cannot say Joy is one of a kind but it is definitely something you should watch – it lingers and leaves you inspired. “Well if she can do it, so can I!” As I have always said, simplicity is just perfection. Everything about Joy is plain, ordinary and simple and that’s what makes it so valid and fitting into our world. Definitely a movie you should watch- just to get those yens flowing!family
Here is some insight into Joy’s Joy Manganolife :
The Grand Budapest Hotel
The Grand Budapest Hotel is indeed, a generous masterpiece delivered by Wes Anderson, and rendered by the brilliant Ralph Fiennes and Tony Revolori.The script of this movie carefully plays with the passive and impassive tones, adding the narration and its concomitant dialogues to chug the movie forward!
A book written and narrated by the author (now deceased) introduces us to the story of the “Grand Budapest hotel” which tantamounts to the story of the Richie-rich Mr Zero Moustafa. If you are aware of the concept of “nested loops” in computer science, then in the literary sense, here, we have “nested narration” running throughout the movie. Moustafa, in a fictional state of Republic of MrAs narrated by Zubrowk of Central Europe rests a fallen “institution”- “The Grand Budapest Hotel”. Back in its glory days, it was known for its aristocratic guests and the influential women clientele, who flocked the hotel for all wrong reasons. The movie is about Gustave H (Ralph Finnes) a concierge of the Grand Budapest, notably the “infamous chic (ken) magnet” and his accomplice, Zero Moustafa (Tony Revolori) a lobby boy in the Grand Budapest Hotel. When one of the hotel’s regular customer and a “special” guest of Gustave passes away, the family or rather a “Goth band” family of the lady, frames Gustave for the murder on learning that she had bequeathed a priceless painting of the “Boy and the Apple” to Gustave in her final will.
encompasses a substantial amount of melodrama with Gustave in trial for murder, a “Frankenstein” like detective with a very preposterous working style, for instance, ripping off people’s head, clipping fingers, throwing a Persian cat out of the window and what not, a mountain chase in the Swiss The story linealps, a “line to line” rescue mission of Gustave by the “cross key society” and ultimately the vindication of Gustave from the murder charges.
This movie scales up the rating bar for mainly two reasons- though there is a heavy element of drama, one cannot deny the equanimity with which every scene has been dealt with. It seemed that every scene had been meticulously tamed to meet a delicate balance of both melodrama and comedy. Secondly, the movie emphasizes on the friendship and loyalty between Gustave and his lobby boy, Zero which eventually becomes the running theme of this movie.
Quirky, comical yet poignant, this movie is certainly a must watch!
Roman Holiday
William Wyler’s 1953 classic “The Roman holiday”comes as a pleasant delight for people who have a fetish for rom-com movies. Roman holiday exudes an adorable romance between a princess (Audrey Hepburn) and a press correspondent Joe Bradley (Gregory Peck) in the backdrop of a picturesque Rome. Here is what the movie has to offer to us. Tired by her extremely claustrophobic ,overprotective and “under the scanner” lifestyle Princess Anne runs away from her palace in the desire of doing what she always wanted to do. Exhausted and drowsy, she dozes off on a park bench somewhere in middle of Rome. Joe Bradley encounters the sleeping princess and takes her to his apartment for safety reasons where she spends the night in his room. Joe Bradely believes her to be a drunken girl and treats her roughly until he discovers that she is the Royal Highness, Princess Ann who was apparently taken ill last night.
Joe Bradely, accompanies the princess on her “once in a lifetime” outing with the furtive motive of taking an exclusive interview which he had promised to his boss for an extravagant sum of 5000 dollars. His friend, Iriving, a photographer joins him and photographs the princess from his deceptive cigarette lighter camera. Ann frolics in the streets of Rome, enjoying her fairy tale, incognito under the name “Anya”. As Ann and Joe spend more time together, his affection for her grows and desire for the extravagant reward wanes off. When her fairy tale finally comes to an end, Ann is caught between her love for Joe Bradely and her royal duties. Contrary to the viewer’s predictions, Joe and Ann seal their romance with a smile and she walks off into her palace, wiser and more sensible
“Princess Ann: I have to leave you now. I’m going to that corner there and turn. You must stay in the car and drive away. Promise not to watch me go beyond the corner. Just drive away and leave me as I leave you.
Joe Bradley: All right.
Princess Ann: I don’t know how to say goodbye. I can’t think of any words.
Joe Bradley: Don’t try. ”
And subtly shows the coming of age of the princess-
“Princess Ann: Your Excellency, I trust you will not find it necessary to use that word again. Were I not completely aware of my duty to my family and to my country, I would not have come back tonight… or indeed ever again!”
Later in the press conference, Ann is stunned seeing Joe and Irving standing with the press. In lieu of selling the photographs for money, Iriving gifts them to Ann and Joe conveys to her that her secret is safe with them. Ann expresses her love and gratitude towards Joe implicitly in her generalized speech and leaves the conference. Joe lingers around the hall for a while and leaves us with tearful eyes and overwhelming surge of empathy.
“Roman Holiday” is subtle, classy and elegant. Audrey Hepburn’s innocence and Joe Bradley’smagnetism weaves together a beautiful story of love without any intimation of vulgarity. There are moments when we are amused as well as attracted to the naivety of Audrey Hepburn. Her slender,delicate body compliments to that of the character of Anne. Gregory Peck’s charming voice and killing looks keep our eyes riveted on him. Though Gregory Peck has a notable screen presence, Audrey Hepburn steals the show and overpowers him throughout their shared screen space.
A splendid storyline, not pushed too far, realistic and simple,lays the foundation for this all-time classic movie. Topped with a top notch cast and a picturesque milieu- what else can anyone ask for?This movie surely goes into the “must watch list” as it offers to us , the best cast, the best setting and the most colourful yet heart-breaking tale of classic love written in the times of “black and white”.
Book Review "Of Mice and Men"
Ok, let me put it this way! I consider myself lucky to read this book – “Of Mice and Men” a notable work of John Steinbeck, a Noble Prize winner. Published in the year 1937, the book is one of the prized works of the author. Loved reading the book and here is my synopsis of the book.
“Of Mice and Men” talks about a very loving yet tragic friendship between two central characters George and Lennie, who are migrant ranch workers. “Friendship” is more of a family affair here, where the symbiotic relationship between George and Lennie is more like a father-son relationship. Lennie is so painfully cute that your heart aches to see a child caught in a man’s body while George is a sensible and hardworking man who adores Lennie to the world’s end and has a dream that one day he will have his own land (allowing Lennie to tend the soft rabbits on his land). Lennie has a bizarre fixation for stroking soft objects/animals which seems innocuous until he kills that animal. This fixation and resulting outcome turns out to be disastrous shattering their shared dream and threatening a painful death for Lennie. The character description of Lennie and George and their relationship is so precise and so well etched out that you can actually picture them having a dialogue, the characters so graphic and living in front of you!
Personally I felt that the language of this book is slightly profane, but then I realized that you cannot have a posh dialect in a ranch-labour setting! That would be hilarious, isn’t it? After all, it’s not in the “Victorian” setting that was supposed to be highly moralistic with straitlaced language and so on!! So this profanity-laced language is apt and in complete sync with the setting of the book.
One negative that I would like to emphasize on, is the very obvious racial slur that is highlighted in one of the chapters- calling a Black man a “coloured” man. This book was published around the time that the United States of America was surging with racial mutiny and so I wonder if this book was not perceived as one adding fuel to the fire!! It must surely have been the favourite of all the critics out there who must have banned this book for promoting racism. Also, relating to my earlier point on the language of this book, I am sure the critics must have freaked out on the vulgarity and offensive language dimension!
Also you might wonder why is the title of the book “Of Mice and Men” so un-relatable to the story? Yes, the book is about many “men” but the “mice” do not have any significance in the book. It could have been “Of Men and Rabbits” because Rabbits is all you hear in the book. Well, the title of this book is inspired by one of Robert Burn’s poems “To a Mouse, On Turning Her Up in Her Nest with a Plow” which refers to the dream George and Lenny share, of having a big ranch and rabbits that Lenny can tend to but ultimately fate had other things in store for them.
Though the book is just a 100-page one, it manages to resonate at a high emotional frequency, allowing you to immerse yourself in it and feel what the author wants you to feel- Lennie’s unadulterated love for George and George’s pure adoration for Lennie who he tries to protect from being exploited and eventually “painfully” killed.
To achieve this feat of making the reader get the “feels”, it’s common to see authors tending to stretch a novel and it then can round up to massive page-count! They say the “longer the better”- but Steinbeck clearly refuses to adopt this clichéd dictum, thus making it a “short and sweet” read – and an impactful one!