Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence?
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| High Concept Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence? |
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Thursday, August 14, 2003 The Pitch: It's like Koi... Mil Gaya meets 28 Days Later...! Really, life can't be all bad when you can see an Indian musical one day and a Scottish zombie movie the next. I mean, I just saw two movies with ellipses in the title in two consecutive days. How cool is that?28 Days Later... was decent--extremely strong for the the first three quarters, it has everything you want to see in a post-apocalypse movie and that digital video gives it not just a documentary feel, it also makes everything seem excruciatingly fragile. All the characters seem vulnerable and raw, which helps give the movie a tension it wouldn't otherwise have since they don't break out the zombie flick moves too often. In fact, the first two-thirds plays like the movie The Omega Man should have been, much closer to I Am Legend than you would think. And then.... I don't know--it all must have looked good on paper but the last third is a bit disappointing, the bit where the audience gets ahead of the film, and the only way the film gets any surprise back is by being more dumb or more hackneyed than you would expect. It's not just the reshot ending either; we stayed for the original and it didn't do much to explain why Selena got so incredibly passive, much less how Jim managed to become Rambo. You don't have to go back to the theater to catch it again, I would think. You can wait and be disappointed on DVD if you want. A shame because Boyle is incredibly talented filmmaker and so much of what he doesn't show is as powerful as what he does. As for Koi... Mil Gaya, well, it was pretty satisfying. You wouldn't think a checklist of setpieces taken from Close Encounters, E.T., Spider-Man, Big and Shaolin Soccer would hold together and....well, technically, Koi... Mil Gaya doesn't. But Hrithik Roshan and Preity Zinta are a charming and talented enough to make it work. Plus, you know, there's like a big Sound of Music style musical number on the side of a hill with a beautiful couple, and all these smiling kids, and a midget wearing a modified catfish mask. Whose heart could be unmoved by that? posted by Jeff Lester | 6:10 PM | |
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