Snipper: Inglorious B**tards

'Where Eagles Dare on a "Kill-Bill" Mission' ;)

Snip-in:
Couple of friends recommended this while exchanging views on recently watched movies. The Tarantino + Pitt combination appealed me a lot and hence I ordered the same on Bigflix. My lucky charm is still on with the Bigflix, as I have been getting the movies set in the queue ;). Well it's a signature Tarantino film, so do I need to say more?;). Well. Even if I've seen only a few movies of Tarantino, but what I like a lot is unique storey telling, crispy dialogues and fast paced action (with a lot of violence :(). I am sure remakes / dubbings of his movies would become super-duper hits in the South Indian languages because of the style and action (Rajnikanth / Kamala Hassan - anyone?).

Another thrilling aspect is Tarantino has coated the movie with a 'period' (I guess first period movie from him). It's drawn on the canvas of WWII. Even if it's a fiction, it invariably comes with unpleasantly true characteristics and events of the Nazi era. Like all Brit-American movies on this subject, they have literally beaten Hitler and Nazis to the death;). But at the same time many characters in the movie show an abundant and genetically induced intelligence of the 'Master (Aryan) Race'. It also is a remake of 1978 Italian film by the same name, if translated in English.

It's about the army? of handful notorious American soldiers lead by Lieutenant Aldo (Brad Pitt), who are awfully obsessed about the Nazis and Hitler. They are on just one mission - To destroy the Nazis (as Hitler was for Jews). On the Nazi side there is a detective - Colonel Hans (Christopher Waltz) who is equally infamous for his acts against the Jews. It's a feast to watch the intellect of the detectives and how they used to work with minimal / no gizmos! during the last World War around 6 decades back. The scenes depicting how these characters - the detectives of 40's used to perform their tasks is an interesting thing to watch almost across the length of the movie. One of the gun fights triggers at a local pub near Paris after an American soldier (b**tard) orders '3 glasses' of whisky. Well I (and I'm sure no one else watching the movie for umpteen times would ever get to know the reason) couldn’t understand the reason for the gun-fight, which Tarantino simplifies in the immediate sequence (for sake of the understanding of poor viewers) - The way the secret is revealed highlighting the analytical and sharp minds of the detectives in that era is simply remarkable. It has all the 'Masala' of 'violent' scenes and 'abusive' dialogues.

Snip-out
The music at many occasions doesn't commensurate with that of a Period movie. Especially when Shosanna was getting ready before the big massacre in her own cinema hall. Her make-up at that time is also not in-line with '40s. One Trivia I got to read, an interesting one- The opening sequence has a wide frame panning through the country-side and fields. According to the observation, the fields are farmed using mechanical equipments which is absolute no-no in the Nazi ruled France of that time :-).

Snip-O-Meter
Brad Pitt - His accent and mannerisms as Lt. Aldo are stealing, unbeatable. And even if his accent sounds a little odd for the period movie, he is awesome. But, but, but, the real brilliance comes across through Colonel Hans's character played by Chrisoph Waltz. This Austrian (most likely a stage actor) has rocked and moved the screen without doing any flamboyant stuff like 'Aldo'. In fact he has underplayed 'Hans' very commendably, and undoubtedly went on to win the OSCARs for the 'Best Supporting Actor' in 2010. Is that a signal to Tarantino for not having too much flamboyance in the movies - Or is it because amongst all the flamboyant stuff, the very composed 'Hans' gets superimposed on top of everything else?

Net-net it's a must watch and can get into merit of a personal DVD collection, however if you can manage to censor/mute/mask all the abusive words in the movie :-).

Snipper: Shutter Island

Opening the new doors of psychological thrillers / Vortex of emotions

Snip-in:
A period movie, takes place in mid 1950s.It revolves around a mental asylum located in the East coast of the US (Boston).On the face of it hosts psychopaths who are dangerously and criminally insane. Whereas the undercurrents are, the hospital is 'ginny-pigging' the 'so called patients' to analyze the functions of human brains, develop medicines/therapies so as to create 'Humanoids' with specific mindsets. U.S. Marshal 'Ted' Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DeCaprio) hears about this undercurrent and was sent on an investigation mission to the 'Shutter Island' with a colleague of his. The story moves on revolving around his shrewd investigation techniques, his beliefs on his skills and dedication towards his job, his 'head-ons' with the Head Psychiatrist Dr. Crawly (Sir Ben Kingsley), love towards his dead wife and children, the never-say-die attitude till the very last frame of the movie.

The movie starts with a snow-whitish screen and a silhouette of something. That something starts appearing to be a big vessel emerging out of the dense fog as it comes closer to the camera. The movie takes the grip from the very first sequence and doesn't let you think about anything at least for next few days after watching it. It scores very high in all aspects of film-making and probably one of the greatest adoptions of a novel on the silver screen.

Snip-out
I simply couldn’t find any flipsides to the movie. However they could have done away from the violent scenes and could have made it just a psychological thriller. One thing which looks odd considering the very nature of Ted and his duties as US Marshall - a) At the start of the movie on the ship, he meets Chuck (Mark Ruffalo) as his colleague for the mission, wherein someone else was already identified and supposed to be joining him. b) In the subsequent shot, Ted is shown surprised when Chuck struggles to get his gun out of the holster while surrendering at the hospital / prison. The struggle is weird by the US Marshall standard. Even after coming across these 2 strange incidences about Chuck, Ted keeps faith on Chuck and shares all the secrets of his mission with him. Instead he could have shown as a little alerted / withdrawn / isolated from Chuck. The last one is about the gun that is used by Ted and Chuck, it's worth while validating the make to see whether it’s the same thing being used by US Marshalls during '50s. But again these need not be considered to be the Snip-outs.

Snip-O-Meter
Well a sure-winner for the Oscars (Academy awards 2011) in the below categories:
1. Best Movie: Apart from every thing else a great team of the Director-Actor duo one more time (The Aviator, The Departed)
2. Best Actor: Leonardo DeCaprio. He lived the 'Ted'. You can see the difference portrayed in his 2 characters- one as a WWII soldier and other as the U.S Marshall (The way he walks and carries as both these characters). But Ted as the Marshall is simply awesome. He has a wide scope of putting a number of emotions in the character and he has done that to more than perfection. Definitely the role of his life.
3. Best Director: Martin Scorsese. Should be his best work so far. Aviator was a great period movie as well and was nominated in number of categories.
4. Best Supporting Actor: Ben Kingsley may get nominated. However Mark Ruffalo has lots of chances to actually win this :-).
5. Best writing - Adapted Screenplay
6. And last but not the least, it can definitely be considered as one of the best DVD covers / Posters. And if a category exists for the same, it's a sure-shot winner, being a very captivating poster.

And well Big:-) thanks to the 'BigFlix' guy who recommended me this movie on a busy afternoon, and who was moreover kind enough to offer me this movie overruling the sequence of movies in my queue :-)