A Little Bit of Heaven

Star World seems to be on a Kate Hudson spree for their segment called Movie Magic.  Sometime back it was Fools Gold.  The week before last we saw that RomCom titled Something Borrowed.  And last week it was this Romance / RomCom movie called A Little Bit of Heaven.

What Happens in Vegas

Several corny dialogues dot this RomCom that stars the vastly over rated Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher. Lets see if I can remember some.  Go get your future ex-ex-wife OR you are so lame that your father would not want to hire you.  So screenplay as you can imagine is nowhere close to being reasonably entertaining. But then one has begin to expect that from a movie starring Kutcher.  That too nearly 4 years back when he was far from being a reasonable actor that he is these days.  And the number of movies that Diaz has definitely acted in can be counted on one maybe two fingers :D.  But I am not going to ever take this away from her that she looks stunning and will continue to look gorgeous till her dying day.  And lets see – is What Happens in Vegas any different from the other movies that we have seen which feature these 2 pieces of eye candy (together or independent of each other) – NO.  It is just a normal run of the mill each and every day kind of RomCom at best really.

Joy McNally and Jack Fuller pick the best day in their lives to get hitched.  They get smash drunk in Las Vegas after Joy is dumped by her fiancé. Joy has always had this feeling that she is not good enough for the man and takes this as an opportunity to really forget herself.  Jack on the other hand is a victim of a perfectionist father who cannot find anything right in what Jack does.  Joy is a stock broker by profession with a boss who is a prick to put it lightly.  With a name like Richard Banger, what else can you expect (now you know what I mean by corny).  Jack would like to take up his family business which is making furniture.  Mind you he is quite good at it but not good enuf for his dad.  So when these 2 naïve young creatures wake up the next morning, they have only one thing on their mind – how do we get out of this mess (read marriage) that we have gotten ourselves into.  Simple – tell each other and get it over and done with right? Wrong.  Wrong when you have just won yourselves $3 million!!!!

“What Happens in Vegas” was not really worth it for me to have put some other work that I had to do on hold.  But I didn’t take much time to figure it out and hence focused my energies in getting a few of my long pending reviews out of the way.  It is the kind of easy viewing movies that you can watch like any other RomCom.  Like you would on a Saturday afternoon cuddled up with a special someone idly flicking the remote in the breaks and maybe even having enough time to do something else on the side.  Not a movie that you desperately need to see.  Definitely not the kind of movie that I would have liked to finish the year on but well what the heck.  5 on 10 for this average chick flick.  Happy New Year 2012 folks.  See you on the other side on this year.

Watch the trailer at http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi2092040473/

127 Hours

I think I have finally cracked the solution to make really really really big bucks. One has to do something that is super duper stupid under the pretext of having a “sense of adventure”. Maybe play with severely poisonous snakes or crocodiles like that guy from down under used to do. Or follow the footsteps of our protagonist and walk into the Grand Canyon. Alone. And make it a point that you don’t inform anyone – I repeat – don’t mention it to a soul as to where you are headed. They may just about prevent you from taking a step towards your first zillion. Just ensure that in the bargain you don’t kill yourself. Someone else will take all the money instead.

Aron Ralston (James Franco) in one adventure crazy dude. There is no other way I can describe him. His idea of a great time is to take off on the weekend and explore areas of the Canyon around Utah. Just random exploration. And he likes to take challenges that are otherwise not imaginable. If it has to do with the canyon then he would happily hop onto the band wagon and have a super duper time. And if he doesn’t have company – who the hell wants it anyways. He is perfectly capable of doing it on his own.

This particular weekend, he does exactly that and heads out to The Great Drop. A quick drive followed by about 20 kms on his bike and then a bit of a walk and he should be there. The bible for the Canyon has been written by Blue John (Fenton Quinn) who used to be the right hand man of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Blue John makes a brief appearance in the movie when Aron drops into one of his hallucinations). Now Blue John says it will take 4.5 hours to get to this spot but our hero would like to do it in under 3:45. And he seems to be on course. But en route some distraction of the female kind – Kristi (Kate Mara) and Megan (Amber Tamblyn) – 2 damsels in distress who have lost their way. Keeping his aim for the record aside (I would if it were him and women looked like either Kristi or Megan), he decides to show the women a good time – which he manages successfully. Soon enough he finds himself on the way back towards the Great Drop. But a few minutes later, a large, extremely heavy loose rock also finds its way onto his right hand, rendering our man immobile. The count down to 127 hours has begun.

Now Aron Ralston is no fool. After he managed to get himself out (yes that’s the good news) of his mess, he decided to write a book about it. Its aptly titled, “Between a Rock and a Hard Place”. And in 2010, one of the most over rated directors in the world, Danny Boyle, sees his opportunity to make a few million bucks by making a movie out of this example of rank stupidity. And what do you know – it gets nominated for a few Oscars as well. Danny Boyle has this knack of making his movies look and feel much larger than life like he did with Slumdog and The Beach (haven’t seen Trainspotting yet). Does he deserve an Oscar nomination over Christopher Nolan – definitely not. Is he going to give the heebeejeebies to his co-nomiated directors? Probably not. Superb editing has been the hallmark of all movies from Boyle’s table to date and that continiues. His use of brilliant sound and light is probably responsible for getting the nomination. Coming to the acting part, James Franco’s best performance to date, but it will not be able to push Colin Firth from being the favourite for the Best Actor Award. Rahman’s music is again not his best to date. Overall an enjoyable movie but not Oscar winner kinds. Above average on all counts but not the best on any. 7 on 10.

Watch the trailer at http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi768149785/