I saw two Oscar movies, Hugo & The Artist.
While they were very different in many aspects, both celebrated old movies. It was really great to finally watch Oscar movies that live up to some of the hype.
While the Artiste took the literal take with a black and white movie and a predictable love story done differently, Hugo is also a simple tale, told from adolescent perspectives. Both feature simple stories, that are well told, with an ensemble cast, and engaging characters. However, both lack serious twists and turns, villains, are fairly predictable and lack grittiness. I would hope that some offbeat dark movies like Drive (2011) should also get nomination since they too satisfy the urge to watch a good wholesome intelligent action flick.
Read my review on 'The Artist' burrp here (as cloverfield)
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I like watching animated movies. In India this is considered to be a bit unusual, and very few full length animation movies are made here, and none for adults. Luckily, my wife enjoys animation movies too. However where we differ is in my interest in watching "serious" animation / adult animation. Today, I had a chance to watch the Watchmen Animated movie, Tales of the Black Freighter (not the one currently running in theatres). I had never heard of Watchmen, and I am not too much into graphic comics, though I have read a bit of Neil Gaiman (Sandman series). The animation of this movie is so beautiful, yet quite horrifying too. While seeing it in my home on a laptop is one thing, I am sure if I had to watch it in a movie hall, it would be quite satifyingly terrrifying. Strong emotions conveyed through animation can be really amazing.
Here I would also like to mention a few other strongly presented beautiful animations that I have nejoyed recently. An animated movie called Metropolis, that was a japanese sci-fi, showing a huge city run by robots, had great emotional scenes between a boy and a girl who turns out to be a robot. Final fantasy-the spirits within was another really enjoyable 3-D animation sci-fi flick. I really enjoyed Persepolis, an Iranian B & W animation about the life of a women before, during and after the revolution. There are certain things that animation can convey so beautifully, probably more vividly, than even real life movies. This was something that I was not aware of. Finally, no unconventional (read outside hollywood movies) can be complete without talking about Japanese anime, specifically Hayao Miyazaki and his beautiful, female centric, strongly plotted animated classics like Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, My Neighbour Totoro and many others.
I look forward to watching the Watchmen on big screen if and when it comes to Chandigarh.
