Million Dollar Baby

Knockout punch!!!

AV: ****
EV: ***First things first, does this movie deserves all the Oscars it has won. Well, if we look back at the previous winners, Oscars generally have a soft corner for stories of human endurance in difficult circumstances. 'Million Dollar Baby' fits into this very mould of cinema.

Frankie (Clint Eastwood) is a trainer/manager who runs a gym for boxers assisted by Eddie(Morgan Freeman). Both of them are former pugilists. Into this world enters Maggie (Hillary Swank), a waitress with a rustic accent with a desire to learn boxing . What drives her to focus on this with single minded determination? The answer can be summed up in one of the lines in the movie, “ The magic of chasing a dream which no one else can see but you”. Maggie approaches Frankie for assistance but he brushes her aside with indifference. Undeterred by the taunts and criticism , she keeps on practicing with some help from Eddie. However when one of Frankie’s boxers leaves him, he decides to take up Maggie’s case as a challenge. From there onward Maggie becomes ‘Mo Censuaca’ and moves from strength to strength, until the World Welterweight Championship Title Match.

The narrative is crisp and dialogues are interspersed with nice anecdotes on boxing. Comic relief is provided by a skinny guy called Danger who dreams of becoming a boxing champ. The beauty of this movie is that it focuses on the three characters and each shares a different relationship. All three of them have to fight the demons within themselves to carry on their existence.
Few scenes which stand out in the movie:
· Scene where Maggie vents her frustration at Frankie
· Sequence when Eddie advises Maggie to change her manager
· Final frames of the movieClint Eastwood (who still retains some of the aura from his ‘Dirty Harry’ days) comes out with a stellar performance. The dilemma which Frankie faces in the latter part of the movie is brilliantly captured by him. Hillary Swank slips into the role with effortless ease. This is her second Oscar winning performance after her gritty role in ‘Boys don’t cry’. She just gets better with every movie and her best is yet to come. Morgan Freeman has a short but nevertheless important role as the retired boxer with one eye. I have always believed he is one of the finest black actors of all times.

‘Million Dollar Baby’ is definetely worth a watch, however give it a skip if you are looking for something light and funny. It gets quite depressing towards the end.

P.S – Back in India, a movie is being made based on this one with Sohail Khan in the lead. It will be interesting to see how that shapes up.

- Suprateek Sinha

Meet the Fockers

Fockers rule!!!

A.V – ***

E.V – ****

What do you expect from a movie with such a risqué title? Rip-roaring sequences and dialogues, predictably the “non-veg” types? Well, the sequel to the hilarious Meet the Parents takes you off on a two hour non-stop rib tickling journey from where it ended in the last instalment. This time the brilliant cast of Robert De Niro, Ben Stiller and co. are joined by the Fockers, Barbra Streisand & Dustin Hoffman, to make the proceedings even more madcap.

Story is wafer-thin; Greg/Gaylord Focker (Ben Stiller) takes his fiancee and her parents to meet his folks, who are a one of a kind couple. Greg’s loony father (Hoffman) left practicing law long back and is happy practicing martial arts at home. His mother (Streisand) is a sex counsellor/ therapist to the old and “needy”. Together the eccentric couple is too much Mr. Byrnes (De Niro) had asked for as the latest addition to his “circle of trust”. Their laid back attitude and lack of discipline in everything was enough for Byrnes to have second thoughts about this alliance. Add to the woes, he stumbles upon a strange "fact" about Greg's past which almost puts the marriage in jeopardy.

Meet the Fockers is the perfect adult comedy you would want to watch. The gags and dialogues are such that you’ll laugh till it hurts. It’s a real treat to watch star performers De Niro, Ben Stiller, Hoffman and Streisand share the same screen space. The kid and the dog that “humps anything that moves” deserves special mention. After Kisna, Black & Aviator, MTF comes as a welcome relief. Go for it and watch the Fockers transform your friendly neighbourhood multiplex into a laughter club.

-Arun Ganesh

White Noise

White noise is white sound. It contains all the sound frequencies. I am not out to teach you signals and systems! The abstraction and philosophy in the title is present all through out the movie.If page 3 was a page, White noise is clearly a coloumn article out of it. With movies on the lines of white noise, the parallel cinema gets a fresh lease of life. Parallel is no longer parallel and third world movies are as dominant and acceptable as the mainstream movies. Very structured with sunken thoughts, dialogues seemingly simple but cryptic deep with in, this movie invovles itself in a race with the abilities of the audience to understand, relate, cope and digest.

All happy n mushy movie seekers will be in for a tragedy of their life and will struggle with an unprecedented challenge of seeing drama in reality or reality in drama. Predictability takes a back seat and twists are not profound, the main characteristic of a realistic movie. The impact of the movie on me are clearly seen in these lines; so let me do some straight speak before I sign off.

Story is as much a story of script writer (Koel Puri) for small screen as is the story of the editor(Rahul Bose). Her heart breaks, her failures-depression, self destruction, unkind society, his reclusive attitude, culmination of their stories in Hrishikesh. Hrishikesh scenes are as fresh as the entire movie. Never cling on to your past. Just let go. Because "winners always move forward".

The relative-time philosophy with the example of train, 3 kinds of men, lines of Jim Morrison are superlatives of parallel dialogue writing. Rahul bose, is best at his best. Koel puri's out burst scenes and drunken scenes are to be frozen in time.

Thanks Vinta Nanda for all the morals.

There are 3 kinds of men: Those who read the lines, that in between the lines and that is *not* in between the lines.