Sneha Jaiswal's Blog, page 241

Dhamaka Review – Skewed Tale of Live TV Lacks Spark, Spirit, Spunk

To a broadcast journalist’s eye the trailer for the 2021 ‘Dhamaka’ didn’t seem impressive enough. However, it managed to pique my interest a little, so I chose to stream the film on Netflix, telling myself ‘don’t be too cynical’. Directed by Ram Madhvani, the film is an adaptation of the 2013 Korean movie ‘The Terror Live’.

The movie starts with happy snippets of a married journalist couple Arjun Pathak (Kartik Aaryan) and Soumya Mehra Pathak (Mrunal Thakur), told through ‘memories’ on a social media app. It’s done well, and had me smiling. Promising start indeed. We are informed that Arjun was an award-winning news anchor of sorts, but was demoted to being a radio-jockey by his firm. His marriage with Soumya hits rock-bottom too and the two are getting a divorce. But Arjun smells a shot at redemption when he receives a call during his radio show. The caller threatens to blow up the Mumbai sea-link and follows up on his word. Instead of alerting the cops, Arjun promptly calls up his former TV boss, strikes a bargain for his exclusive call with the terrorist. What happens next forms the rest of the plot.

Unfortunately, the plot loses steam after the intriguing first 15 minutes. Ram Madhvani isn’t able to conjure up the madness of a real newsroom. There just isn’t enough tension for the viewer to be at the edge of their seat and the story is muddled with deliberate emotional scenes that don’t feel legitimate. Amruta Subhash plays Ankita Malaskar, the ruthless tv boss/editor, who wants to beat all competitors with their exclusive, she does a better job than Kartik Aryan.

One of the biggest problem with the film is the inconsistent characterization of Arjun Pathak, one one hand he is shown as an unscrupulous journalist, who immediately sniffs up a chance at climbing the career ladder; yet minutes later, when is on a call with the terrorist, he starts sniffling like a sad puppy when the man who just blew up a bridge recalls his sob-story of how hard life can be for a poor construction worker. What was supposed to be an emotional scene made me laugh out loud at the ridiculousness at it all. Dudes! – decide if you want your lead journalist to be a spineless vulture or a hardened professional with a heart of gold. The confusing plot-points are annoying and laughable. Yes, a character can be grey, somewhere between good and evil, but Kartik Aaryan fails to pull it off. “I CAN’T DO THIS” Aaryan’s Arjun screams at one point in the second-half, where he finds it difficult to go on with the live broadcast, and the funny thing is – he isn’t able to act out the emotionally turbulent scene either. It’s double irony and unwittingly funny. “He really cannot do this” I chuckled.

A signification chunk of the movie depicts live negotiations with the terrorist, and it’s vexatious and not in the least bit engrossing. There’s some boring/idiotic cross television banter, where two anchors on different news channels are talking to each other, washing their dirty linen in public. There are a lot of other movies out their who’ve done a better job of bashing the media, ‘Dhamaka’ however has no spark to it. Even though visually, the film looks pretty believable, the VFX of the blasts look authentic enough. The makers also get a lot of the nuances of doing live tv quite right, including how viewership oriented producers can be, although it’s all exaggerated a little too much. Which is fine, exaggeration is fun in films, but at least make it entertaining.

As the climax approaches, things only get tedious, ridiculous, even though what seemed like a big plot-hole (the identity of the caller) is explained in the end, and even though it’s not very convincing, one can roll with it. But holy shit, the ending is just disappointing AF – “what a pointless film!” I screamed as the end credits rolled in.

‘Dhamaka’ is too bloody long, could’ve been sharper, and might have even seemed brilliant if some other actor had been cast for the lead role.

It’s a 4/10 from me. You can stream it on Netflix.

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Listen to Episode 56 for three fun Netflix Show Recommendations

Gazing At The Adiyogi Statue

The Isha Yoga Centre is nestled in the beautiful hills of Coimbatore, India. The crowning jewel of the property is the Adiyogi Shiva Statue, a grand bust of one of the most revered Hindu God. We were visiting family in the city, so we decided to do a little outing to visit the center, which was only about 15kms from our residence.

How To Get There: While there are direct public buses to the spot, we booked an out-station cab for four hours and it cost us Rs 699, although the driver demanded Rs 200 more, so we ended up paying Rs 900 in total, which is about 12 USD. We picked a week-day (Wednesday) to visit, hoping there wouldn’t be too many people, considering the covid19 pandemic is still lurking around, even though we are all completely vaccinated. Luckily for us, the crowd was thin for a tourist spot and most people were wearing masks.

As far as the Adiyogi Statue is concerned, it’s definitely a sight worth beholding for a while. Smiling against a blue sky, with clouds floating over the hills behind, the bust looks surreal and peaceful. It was raining, we had umbrellas, and the statue glistened under the drops, looking even better.

There is no entry fee to visit the center. Visitors are given paper tokens to go beyond the statue and visit a temple, but there is no fee for the tokens either. The temple is in a separate enclosure, along with a meditation center, so there’s another entrance for them and people cannot take their mobile-phones along. I chose to sit at the benches outside the enclosure, but most of the family went to see the temple and meditated a bit too. “It was very peaceful, we could experience positive vibes” was the general consensus. So it’s probably a great place for those who are spiritual and do yoga. A friend who lived in Coimbatore for a few years had recommended that we take a dip in the water pools at the center, but none of us were interested in wading into a public bathing place, so nobody saw the pools.

Some locals feel that some of the area’s former peace has been robbed off due to the statue’s fame with tourists. Regardless, it’s remains a beautiful property, with hills on three sides. And the clouds feel like they are within your reach. Those interested to stay at the property need to make prior bookings via email or through their help-desk (ishastay@ishafoundation.org – email)

What came as a surprise to us was the fact that the canteen was closed and so was the Pepperwine cafe that’s listed on their website. A handful of small shops were open, but there wasn’t any dine-in place where we could all sit and have lunch. There was a tempting ice-cream shop with interesting flavors on offer, but seeing a visitor feed most of their cup to a stray dog didn’t inspire confidence. Either they love animals or hated the dessert. Who’s to say? So we didn’t eat or drink anything during our visit. Instead we had lunch at a small place that was one kilometer away.

The Adiyogi Statue holds a Guiness book of World records for being the world’s “largest bust sculpture”. And while that makes it a bit of a marvel, I feel like it’s a place worth visiting only for people who already live in Coimbatore or around. Or if you have a long south-India trip planned, and Coimbatore happens to be on the way, then you could make a small pit-stop. Avoid summer months.

Turtle In Paradise Book Review – ‘Diaper Gang’ is Fun Enough

“You’ve got a club called the diaper gang? What do you do? Change diapers?” the protagonist asks a bunch of boys, tone filled with sarcasm. The boys look at her as if she is “dumb as a post” and one of them responds in a matter of fact tone – ‘course we change diapers, that’s why we are called the diaper gang’.

That’s the kind of simple humor that readers will find sprinkled throughout Jennifer L Holm’s novel ‘Turtle In Paradise’. It’s meant for children, although adults might equally enjoy this tale of a 11-year-old girl Turtle, who is packed off to her aunt’s house in Key West, in a poor community living on public relief. It’s heartening how despite the impoverished setting, the author manages to write an optimistic fun tale about a bunch of cheeky kids. Turtle doesn’t really like her first cousins at first sight, they are all a bunch of dirty little boys and they have a club that helps tired women out with their babies in exchange for candy. Money is hard around, it’s the 1930s, the time of the great depression, every body is in need of a job and some hope.

The story is in first person, narrated by Turtle, who comes across as a dry miss ‘know it all’. She loves listening to the radio and isn’t fond of the child-star Shirley Temple, who everybody else seems to be fond of. The little boys in the novel are absolute imps, somewhere between adorable mongrels and evil rascals. It was amusing to see the unruly bunch run a gang that takes care of babies and doesn’t allow girls to be members. Wouldn’t mothers in the real life love that? A world where men are completely in-charge of baby-care, while the moms relax a little and take care of other things!

In the author’s note, Jennifer talks about how the story was inspired from her great-grandmother’s life, who used to live in Key-West. So a lot of characters are based on real people, giving them a touch of authenticity. Most people in the area depend on fishing for their livelihood and the author does a fantastic job of conjuring up a friendly community. Folks may not have money, but still look out for each other.

The language is simple but laden with a lot of colloquial American terms, some of which are specific to the 1930s era. So a few things will be lost on both young and old readers, especially if they aren’t Americans. There is a sub-plot about a treasure-hunt, that felt a little abrupt. It pops out of nowhere, kind of like a storm that rips through the town in the latter half of the book. Nobody likes a bad storm. Although, it might seem forced and out of place only for adult readers like me. Kids might love it.

The climax is practical, sweet and heart-warming. It’s a 3.5/5 from me.

Don’t Look Up – ‘This Is The End’ Meets Sci-Fi Satire

Netflix finally unveiled the full trailer for its 2021 ensemble satire ‘Don’t Look Up’ directed by Adam McKay, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as an astronomy professor and Jennifer Lawrence who is his student. The two are convinced that a powerful comet is headed for the earth and could wipe it out. But nobody cares or takes them seriously. Not White House officials. Not folks on news channels. And definitely not random strangers they meet at the store. So it’s up to the duo to do something about it.

Going by the trailer, it seems a lot more promising than the other ‘end of the world’ movies out there. Like the 2013 ‘This Is The End’, the post-apocalyptic disaster movie that had a whole bunch of actors in it. Although, it’s hard not to make comparisons, and both films don’t take themselves too seriously. Also, it feels like a Hollywood after-party, because ‘Don’t Look Up’ has Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Jonah Hill, Timothee Chalamet and a dozen of other familiar faces.

They really didn’t need to make a 3-minute-long trailer, because it sort of gives a lot of the story away. This is a little weird, because off-late, Netflix has been getting good with editing intriguing trailers, making even horrible films look like they have a lot of potential. Anyway, Leonardo & Jennifer Lawrence make a fun team, add to that the innumerable cameos by famous faces and it’s got a lot of movie enthusiasts excited for its release.

It’s going to be interesting how this film plays out with the audience, because with Covid19 pandemic is still on, many might not be in the mood for watching another film where the world might end. Or maybe it would be fun watching the comet destroy the earth and put us all out of our endless misery.

US Release Date: December 24, 2021

Father Christmas Is Back Review – Insidiously Boring

It’s been a while since we finished watching the 2021 comedy ‘Father Christmas Is Back’ and just thinking about it makes me feel sleepy. So here’s a quick review of a shitty film from a person trying to keep their eyes wide open, just so you can be warned about the perils of watching this Christmas disaster.

Directed by Mick Davis and Philipe Martinez, the story revolves around the Christmas family (it’s their surname), comprising of four sisters, who were all abandoned by their father James Christmas (Kelsey Grammer) on Christmas day. Elizabeth Hurley plays the eldest sister Joana, who loves fashion and abhors kids. Nathalie Cox is second in line, the neurotic Caroline Christmas-Hope, who is obsessed with the festive season and hosts her family for the holidays in her husband’s sprawling Yorkshire Mansion every year. Her plans for a perfect Christmas are completely ruined, when their father shows up unannounced at her doorstep after 27 years, with a young blonde girlfriend.

Confession time, I saw the trailer and it was easy to understand this was going to be a mediocre Christmas comedy, a 5/10 types, but the sort of light film you wouldn’t mind watching with friends on a weekend. And we had friends over for the weekend. So we saw the trailer, thought “oh yeah, this could be fun”. Nobody was prepared for just how bad it was going to get. It’s not the ‘what the hell is going on?’ kind of bad, not even the ‘this shit is giving me a headache’ sort of boring, it’s so mundane, you just want to fast-forward through it all and go take a nap. Some porn movies might have better plots, and even if they don’t, at least they have sex. ‘Father Christmas Is Back’ has nothing.

The big twist towards the end is predictable, I was able to take a guess within the first half-an-hour of the story. So no surprises. Except for a mildly entertaining first few minutes, ‘Father Christmas’ is completely snooze-worthy. Skip skip skip. It’s a 2.5/10 from me. My friends may think that’s generous.

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Listen to Episode 56 for some fun Netflix Show Recommendations

Three Netflix Shows Worth Checking Out

In the latest podcast episode of Abstract AF! We recommend you three shows you can stream on Netflix and the best thing – you can watch them with pretty much anybody.

Listen in and please subscribe to the channel.

Red Notice Review – Mind-Numbingly Dumb, With Dull Jokes & Old Tropes

“Hum dono hai alag alag, hum dono hai juda juda”, I couldn’t help but sing this 90s Bollywood song from ‘Main Khiladi Tu Anari’ as Dwayne Johnson and Ryan Reynolds embarrassed themselves onscreen. If actors Akshay Kumar and Saif Ali Khan teamed up together to make a smart cop vs dumb actor movie again, it would probably be a 100 times more entertaining than Johnson’s latest. Ryan in an interview had talked about how his film ‘Free Guy’ took inspiration from Bollywood, but he & Johnson take direct notes from Indian super-star Rajinikanth’s playbook in ‘Red Notice’, sans the swag.

Directed and written by Rawson Marshall Thurber, this 2021 Netflix film costs a crazy 200 million dollars, and is the streaming site’s most expensive movie yet. But for all the money they blew on this project, they couldn’t afford decent scriptwriters, CGI artists or even a believable Buddha statue that could pass off as an antique piece. It looks like they just picked it up from some flea market downtown. Thurber got a 10 million dollar paycheck for writing & directing, so some more work to show for it would have been nice. He does spin an interesting (fictional) historical legend as backstory for this heist/treasure hunt story, but after that he seems to have just given up.

Let’s talk plot. Dwayne Johnson is interpol agent John Hartley, who is on the heels of renowned art thief Nolan Booth (Ryan Reynolds). Both these men are conned by a mysterious super-thief ‘Bishop’ played by Gal Gadot, who is pretty much wonder-woman with a snooty attitude. Seriously, she mysteriously appears out of nowhere all the time and kicks the butt out of hulking men. And what are these super-thieves after? The legendary eggs of Queen Cleopatra. Well, not her literal eggs, they couldn’t freeze them back then, but three mythical bejeweled eggs that were gifted to the Egyptian queen by her lover Mark Antony. The makers take every opportunity to make egg jokes, to the point that they get annoying as fuck.

This movie looks like a giant excuse for the stars and crew of the film to go vacationing around the world. The story is spread over Rome, Russia, Indonesia, Egypt and whatever else. Everybody was clearly just having some fun with this, nobody probably had the time to actually finish the script. So they just did some random fill in the blanks. And what’s with almost every character having ‘daddy issues’? Ryan Reynold’s Nolan Booth is exactly like Deadpool, except he gets to keep his cute face while making dirty jokes. “Top or bottom?” he asks from a bunk-bed, when Hartley enters his prison cell. Few seconds later, there’s a shower scene where Booth is talking about soap, and it’s almost disappointing that they didn’t make him drop the soap bar to make another inappropriate comment. There are a few clever lines that will crack viewers up, but for most parts, it’s hard to pay attention. The story is stretched so much that you’d rather go sleep than suffer through this brainless creation.

For the kind of budget the movie has, even the cinematography isn’t all that great. A lot of the camera-work is shaky, making scenes annoying on the eye. Especially in the very first few minutes of the film where Dwayne chases Ryan though a museum. The mind-numbingly dumb incidents that follow don’t help. For example there’s a scene where a bazooka is shot at a fleeing chopper, and miracles of miracles – the rocket flies right through the open doors of the flying machine. L-O-L. Or how about a 1935 car model lying unused since the 1940s roaring to life and running like a badass in 2021.

Netflix has clearly placed its money on the A-list actors headlining ‘Red Notice’. Storytelling be damned.

It’s a 4/10 from me.

Lucky Penny – Quick Graphic Novel Review

‘Lucky Penny’ is the kind of book you’ll love as you read, but forget about it after a few days. And that’s absolutely fine. Created by Ananth Hirsh and Yuko Ota, this graphic novel is cute, funny and entertaining. It helps readers escape into the world of the not-so-lucky Penny; for a while.

I love how the story begins with conflict in the very first page – Penny the protagonist is fired from her job. She also loses her apartment and is close to broke. Her best-friend helps her move her stuff to a little rented storage space, and Penny has the bright idea of moving into the place herself when she sees it. And yes, it’s illegal. But cheap. What follows next is Penny’s attempt at getting her life together, or not, as she lives in the garage-like space, with no bathroom. How she manages her ill-fortune forms the rest of the novel.

Anybody who’s experienced days where nothing seems to go right, will completely relate to the ditzy mess Penny is. She is a total dork who survives by getting around on her cycle, eating ready-to-make ramen and reading smutty novels before falling asleep. The story is a weird mix of childish innocence and adult comedy. Some things don’t even make sense, like why a bunch of boys are constantly trying to freak our poor Penny out or why a laundromat is supervised by a little kid. But all these plot-holes don’t even matter, because ‘Lucky Penny’ is a fun tale that keeps you turning pages and before you know it – it’s already over!

The art is adorable, and while it’s only in black-white-grey tones, the panels are joyous and feel bright. Penny’s romance with a nervous but cute nerd Walter was realistic, with the kind of awkwardness that comes with going out with someone for the first time. The climax like the rest of the story was packed with a series of hilarious/unfortunate events, wrapping up with a tone of hope & happiness. Ananth Hirsh and Yuko Ota make a fun team on paper. It’s a 4/5 from me.

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Listen to Episode 48 – Three Underrated Graphic Memoirs To Read

My Sweet Dear Review – Served With Excess Sugar & Cliches

Between ‘The Tasty Florida’ and ‘My Sweet Dear’, it’s hard to say which BL Korean mini-series was more boring, cliched and cringe-y . Both are set in the culinary world, with a lot of the story unfolding in a restaurant filled with good-looking men. And both shows lack a well-written script.

Directed by So Joon Moon, “My Sweet Dear” stars Jang Eui-Soo and Lee Chan Hyung. Jang Eui Soo looks completely different (handsome still) as Jung Woo, a rookie chef who can re-create any dish he tastes, but has no formal training in cooking. Lee Chan Hyung plays Do Gun, the talented experience ‘head chef’ of a michelin star restaurant called “Laura Dining. The the owner isn’t very happy with Do Gun’s old-school approach to food, and brings in Jung Woo to shake things up. Will the two chefs get along? And is there more to Jung Woo’s entry to the kitchen than meets the eye? That’s the rest of the story.

I am freaking tired of saying the same thing over and over in my reviews – the show looks good, the actors do their parts well, everything is sparkly/pleasing to the eye, but the story is a snooze-fest. It’s only 8 episodes long, 10-11 minutes each, but after episode 5, I was already fast-forwarding stuff. The dialogues are overly cheesy and some scenes are predictable AF. It’s your typical ‘foes to lovers’ type of plot. Two attractive strangers meet, cannot stand each other in the beginning, but as they begin to spend more time together…. sparks fly. Duh. Towards the end, the makers throw in a conflict, make the leads fight, scream, cry. Eventually they clear things up and patch up again. Fin.

A simple story is dramatized excessively, as if they are making some sort of tragic romance movie. There weren’t any fun moments, clever banter or anything worth remembering. A lot of us love it when the actors look like desserts, but that doesn’t mean makers can simply skip working on having an entertaining/decent story. It’s like they went “hey we have a bunch of cuties, just make them do whatever, people will watch”. Guess I am guilty of watching the show for the exact same reason. But we are all allowed to have regrets.

It’s 4/10 from me. Watch it if you are a Jang Eui-Soo fan, he is dashing as the suave chef, a complete departure from his older roles.

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Listen to Episode 34 – 10 Fun LGBTQ+ Books To Read

Reading ‘The Invention of Hugo Cabret’ As An Adult

‘The Invention of Hugo Cabret’ by Brian Selznick is an intimidatingly big book. It has a beautiful hardback cover, with over 500 pages of story interspersed with illustrations. It’s neither a graphic novel, nor your regular historical fiction pick, making it a genre of its own. And it mixes the three loves of my life – books, movies and drawings. So to put a potentially long review short – I love love love this novel!

The last few pages of the story moved me, and I was wrapped in a sense of awe combined with joy for all storytelling mediums. Brian Selznick’s simple story was able to take me back to my childhood. I can’t imagine how many buckets of tears I would’ve shed if I read it as a school-girl. I wasn’t my usual cynical adult self as I carefully read each page, some filled witch simple pencil drawings, narrating the story, like a silent black & white film from a lost era. I saw the Martin Scorsese movie based on the book in 2011, so despite being familiar with the plot, it managed to be a magical portal to a different world.

We have a Dickensian protagonist – 12-year-old Hugo Cabret is an orphan taken in by his drunken uncle who works at the railway station, after the boy’s father dies in a tragic fire. The only tangible memory left of his clock-maker father is a notebook and a mechanical-man he was working to fix. The story follows Hugo’s adventures and his efforts to fix the mechanical-man. His life is complicated when his drunk uncle disappears one day, forcing Hugo to do his job of maintaining all the clocks at the station. Because if the authorities find out the boy is by himself, they will pack him off to an orphanage.

Hugo is a liar, thief, clock-keeper, aspiring magician and a bit of an imp. He can get on the reader’s nerve sometimes, but one has to remind themselves that he is but an orphaned boy, with little knowledge of how the world works. Selznick’s artwork is simple, childlike, there is a raw rough draft element to them, as if they’ve been torn off from an artist’s personal diary. Had the novel just been filled with those illustrations, with the text just serving as caption, they story wouldn’t have been as compelling. The artwork is sprinkled in just the right amount, enough to captivate and carry the story forward.

The real twist in the tale comes when the young Hugo locks horns with a grumpy old toy-shop owner Papa Georges, from whose shop Hugo often steals parts. Papa Georges isn’t just another ordinary old man, he has a lot of cryptic angry questions for Hugo, hinting at a mysterious past. Sleznick’s story is a tribute to storytellers of the past, the dreamers, the magicians, and the first filmmakers who brought the magic of cinema to the common man. For fellow-creators, it will be hard to not fall in love with the tale.

‘The Invention of Hugo Cabret’ is the perfect gift for young readers and also for adults who still have a childlike spark left in them. It’s a 5/5 from me. I am thankful to a new friend for lending me their gorgeous copy.

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Listen to Episode 55 – Ending of ‘Sputnik Sweetheart’ Explained