blue. 42nd street . three monkeys. fando and lis . the manchurian candidate . grave of the fireflies. gaslight

please, no one watch blue! i admit to making the mistake in spite of detesting akshay kumar films. it was only because amit insisted that i sat through the awful film where motorcycle chases go on endlessly with no one caring to know who is chasing whom or why; lara dutta wears a bikini and otherwise mouths three unnecessary sentences to showcase her acting skills, sanjay dutt mumbles incoherently about a childhood trauma that keeps him from the ‘lady in blue’ and akshay is just plain annoying as the cool dude. there is nothing to recommend the film- not even as bollywood fluff. it is boring.

the whole of 42^nd street concerns the putting on of a musical. the mousy first timer ends up becoming the star and everyone ends up happy. the busby berkeley showstopper at the end has all the ingredients of an oscar interlude. grand staircases leading to the sky that light up with every step, showgirls kicking high heels high and top hats on most of the men.

so very avant garde was alexandro jodorowsky’s ‘fando and lis’. fando pulls along his lame lover lis along a barren landscape on a cart with a drum and a phonograph towards the mythical city of tar. along the way flashbacks and surreal madness include seductions in a graveyard to cars, bodies slithering in a muddy swamp and a spiraling canyon.

the apartment where most of the drama of ‘three monkeys’ occurs is shot as a labyrinth of doors, mirrors, glass and wood frames. spaces open and close as characters move in and around the labyrinth. through the window beyond the tracks and the highway is the mediterranean. the story concerns an affair between the wife of a chauffeur and his employer politician as he takes the fall for a hit and run accident that he was no part of. the son gets to know about the affair and hell breaks loose.

a perpetual downer but so beautifully made is ‘grave of the fireflies’. it starts off by the death of a young man in a trains station and flashes back to the last days of the war when his family was torn apart by the bombing of his hometown. losing his mother and father he tries to take care of his little sister as a vagabond living in a bomb shelter on the outskirts of the city. the sweet girl dies of malnutrition. terribly serious and extremely beautiful.

nothing special but entertaining enough was ‘the manchurian candidate’ a spy drama about the evil communists using the evil ambitions of american politicians to take over the united states of america. a killer is created out of a war hero by hypnosis. he can do absolutely anything after game of solitaire and a look at the queen of diamonds including murdering his fellow officers and even his wife. angela lansbury plays the scheming woman. in ‘gaslight’ she is the tough talking maid who keeps ingrid bergman prisoner in her own house. she inadvertently is party to the grand plan by bergman’s husband to convince her that she is mad. the gaslight in the rooms mysteriously goes up and down and dark shadows crawl up the walls in classic noir style.