OCEAN’s
12
Review
by Gokhra
This is one of
the coolest movies out in recent times. This new "Ocean"
returns the ensemble gang of thieves and angry vengeful victim. In
the first movie, Terry Benedict (Garcia) was robbed off of $160 million
from his Las Vegas casino which of course he recovered from the insurance.
But this guy is spiteful so he wants the money back……
with interest. This brings up the amount closer to $200 million. Benedict
drops in on nearly everyone in the offending crew giving them glimpses
of what is in store for them if they do not giveback what he believes
is rightfully his.
Danny Ocean's
(Clooney) gang is ruffled as most of them have been trying to go straight
with pointless results. The 11 reassemble, tally how much of their
haul they have spent, and try to devise a gig with a payday that will
make up the difference. Since they are too hot in the States they
go for a series of meticulously planned and ridiculously elaborate
heists all over Europe. So it's off to Amsterdam, Rome, and Paris
albeit without a member of their gang Reiner, who, at his age, decides
it's better to take the risk and enjoy his spoils.
By
the way, the 12th member of the gang is Julia Roberts who in the last
movie was torn romantically between Ocean and Benedict. Here, she's
married to Danny again and by the end is a full-fledged robber. Love
can do strange things.
Of course if that
were all then it would have been a simple movie narrating one robbery
after another. There's a twist or rater several twists along the way.
One of the twists is a complication in the form of someone who calls
himself Francois "Night Fox" Toulour (Vincent Cassel). He
is a legendary thief who is miffed that the 11's international renown
is encroaching on his. So he offers to compete with them for the title
of "best thief in the world." He monitors their every move,
swooping in to grab the loot before they can and sneering at them
al the while proving to be a real annoyance. The catch is that if
Danny wins, the Night Fox foots the crew's bill.
Twist
number two is in the form of Rusty Ryan's (Pitt) international cop
ex-girlfriend Isabel Lahiri (Zeta-Jones). All in all the gang is being
pressed down from three sides. Speak about a rock, a hard place and
another hard place.
The heists are
silly but beautifully choreographed to make you stop thinking too
much. The dialogue is also very frivolous as the players in the game
are very relaxed in the face of such insurmountable odds. The way
they remain cool despite knowing that their life is on the line is
an ode to cool. It's very well made and undeniably entertaining movie.
This is despite the fact that it suffers from a bit of overkill with
all these fancy multi million-dollar jobs going fancily wrong.
Time to say
hello to “Uncle Oscar”!
By Ashfaque Kabir
“9.00 pm, Kodak Theatre, Hollywood.
Chris Rock (this year's host) is about to announce the winner of this
year's Oscar. I could hear my heart pounding…there was a rush of cold
blood that shivered my nerves, procession of trickles of sweat rallied
down my neck. Rock's words faded out before they reached me….everything
seemed blurred. Suddenly 3300 pairs of hands busted in tremendous
applause…the name must have been announced. I wondered…could it be
me?"
That's exactly how an Oscar nominee's
dreams would be if he or she were to organize it in words. And why
not? The people of the world's richest and finest film industry are
on the edge of their seats to celebrate "Uncle Oscar's"
77th Birthday on 27th February. With less than a month to go, millions
of cine-lovers are probably biting their nails along with the nominees
in their agonizing period of waiting till the show time on 27th February.
The international media and film critiques have already preoccupied
themselves in predicting the winners and with the nominations announced
on 25th January, it looks like we are about to witness an "interesting
horse race" (as Oscar president says) that might have a very
close finish indeed.
Now before going through the nominations,
lets have a quick review of the history of one of the most prestigious
awards of the world. The idea of Oscar's came from Louis B. Mayer
( co-founder of the MGM-studios). It was 1927, while having dinner
in Crystal Ballroom of Biltmore Hotel, Los Angeles, Mayer and his
colleagues were discussing ways in which they could honour outstanding
achievements in film industry. Hence the idea of "The Academy
Award of Merit" (the name Oscar was not used then) was born and
within a short period of 2 years, the first Oscar Ceremony was held
on 16th May, 1929 at Hollywood's Roosevelt Hotel's Blossom Room. It
was rather a pretty quite start to the Oscars as only 15 awards were
given out with 250 people attending the ceremony. The first event
did not receive any media coverage! From the second ceremony onwards
it was only covered by the radio until 1953, when the event was first
televised!
Designed
by Cedric Gibbons, the golden statuette of Oscar is 13-1/2 inches
tall and 8-1/2 pounds. It is made from copper and nickel silver, and
finally, is covered with 24-karat gold. The statuette depicts a knight,
holding a crusader's sword, standing on a reel of film. The five spokes
of the film reel signify the five original branches of the Academy:
actors, directors, producers, technicians and writers. Although financially
an Oscar statuette is not really valuable, its moral values are inestimable.
How the name Oscar came is actually
quite unclear. But one of the most popular stories is that, in 1931,
Margaret Herrick (an academy librarian) once mentioned to her colleagues
that the bold head of the statuette resembled her Uncle Oscar. Since
then the Academy staff along with the media started referring the
award as Oscar until it was officially used in 1939.
Oscar has never had to look back (not
even during the World Wars) since its start to till present. There
were only three occasions when the ceremony was delayed but not postponed.
They were, in 1958 when floods washed out Los Angeles, in 1968 when
Martin Luther King was assassinated and in 1981 when there was an
assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan.
Going through several websites I came
across many interesting facts about Oscars. Like, in the early days
of Oscars, the winners were known prior to the ceremony. Results were
given in advance to the newspapers for publication at 11 p.m. on the
night of the Awards. In 1940, guests arriving for the affair could
actually buy the 8:45 p.m. edition of the Los Angeles Times and read
the winners. As a result, the sealed-envelope system was adopted the
next year and remains in use today.
It
was surprising to know that eminent film personalities like the glamorous
Marilyn Monroe and " Pshycho" director Sir Alfred Hitchcock
are omitted from the exclusive club of Oscar owners. The ravishing
Katherine Hepburn holds the distinction of most Oscar wins by a performer,
with 4 Leading Actress Oscars. Walt Disney is the all-time winner
with 26 Academy Awards to his name. Amongst the films, "Titanic"
(1997) and "Ben-Hur" (1959) holds the record of winning
most Oscars by a single film.
In the Academy's 76-year history,
only three films have won awards in all of the following main categories:
Best Picture, Directing, Writing, Actor and Actress. These films are:
It Happened One Night, in 1934; One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest in
1975; and in 1991, The Silence of the Lambs. Shirley Temple was the
youngest winner when she won the Juvenile Academy Award at age six
years. The youngest winner of a regular Oscar was Tatum O'Neal, who
was ten years old when she won the statuette for Best Supporting Actor
in "Paper Moon".
Woody Allen is probably the most controversial
winner of Oscar. He holds the record of of being nominated 17 times
and winning only 3 times. Moreover, he didn't even bother to turn
over in one of the ceremonies and later said in an interview that
he had more important things to do like "having breakfast in
bed"!! In 2000, just before the Oscar, 4000 ballots along with
55 statuettes were stolen and fortunately were recovered few days
before the presentations.
Well, besides the awards and the winners
there's one more thing, which makes the Oscar very famous. That is
the "Red Carpet". Well this is the term used to describe
the gorgeous dresses the film stars wear in the ceremony. Believe
it or not, more than 1500 journalists have their cameras flashing
the moment stars get out of their Mercedes or BMW limousines and step
onto the "Red Carpet". Wearing world famous brands like
Armani and Versace and dazzling diamond jewelry of Tiffani, these
stars perhaps sparkle more than the actual stars on the sky.
So..lets get a quick round-up of this
year's nominations before wrapping up the article, The Aviator seems
to be leading the race with 11 nominations in it's tally. Million
Dollar Baby and Finding Neverland are also viable contenders with
7 nominations each. Ray's Jamie Foxx looks to be the no. 1 contender
for the Best Actor Award.
He has also been nominated for the
Best Supporting Actor category, which makes him the only performer
to have won both accolades in the same year in the Award's history.
As far as Best Actress Award is concerned Kate Winslet looks pretty
ahead of everyone as she delivers unprecedented heart-wrenching performance
in Finding Neverland and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. But
don't forget Imelda Staunton's superb performance in Vera Drake, which
might be just enough to fetch her the award.
All in all, with no big Oscar grabbers
like Titanic or The Lord of the Rings, this years Oscar promises to
be worthwhile waiting for. So friends.. bet you've already started
your countdown for the Hollywood extravaganza…27th seems to be few
years away, doesn't it?
Ranma
and Akane
Anime's got some
really special couples. Really special ones. Those of us who've been
fortunate enough to see them have loved for their charm, exuberance,
romance, or just how plain cute they've looked all along. In keeping
with the season, then, we felt it only fair to mention a few of these,
if only for love's sake (and cause we love them too much to not want
to make the reader feel the same way about them, too).
All time tops,
despite stiff competition from classic shows like Robotech and others,
must go to Ranma and Akane, from Ranma ½. Despite being always
at each other's necks, particularly given Ranma's rather frequent
morphing to a female that gets Akane rather worked up, the two have
got moments of incredible sweetness, and while they're always pretending
to hate each other's guts you can just TELL that Ranma'd give his
life for Akane, and vice versa. Which might seem mildly corny and
extremely soppy, but is actually very cool indeed.
Close
on the heels of Ranma come the lead characters from Robotech: Rick
Hunter and Lisa Hayes, who most of us have known since the mid 90s
when Robotech aired in Bangladesh; and the chemistry between these
two people has been evident. ALL the time. What makes them feel special,
of course, is that they've been struggling all along to get to each
other, despite having been through hell and back again on more than
one occasion.
From
Rurouni Kenshin, we have Himura Kenshin and Kamiya Kaoru. Though there's
many who'll argue about the more tragic Yukishiro Tomoe's story, we
like Kenshin and Kaoru because they stay together and each goes on,
in the face of adversity, for the other. And, of course, Kenshin's
good with laundry while Kaoru gets drunk easily. And other utterly
irrelevant matters, too.
Love Hina's Urashima
Keitaro and Narusegawa Naru are another pair we can't get enough of.
Sure, Keitaro gets punched into orbit more times than NASA can afford;
and sure, Narusegawa can be quite in denial for just about all of
the show. But for laughs, and for some seriously sweet character play,
and Naru's really cute, too.
Vision of Escaflowne's
Van Fanel and Hitomi Kanzaki. Against all odds, from worlds apart
and while each has their own retinue of doting admirers, Hitomi and
Van manage to fall in love, stay in it, and defeat the machinations
of fate in so doing.
From Kare Kano
we have Arima Souichiro and Miyazawa Yukino. We love them cause they
love each other enough to grow and mature beyond a mere high school
romance and to accept the deeper, darker sides of each other, and
they're both so completely human for every instant that we saw them.
And they look really nice together, but mostly because theirs IS a
story of guy meet girl, etc; it's just a real one.
