I’m not doing predictions for the Oscars, because that’s boring. Here are the awards that I would give out, based on the nominees. The ones in italics are the ones I’ve seen, bold is the one I want to win. As an over all philosophy, I want Inglourious Basterds to win as much as it can and I want Avatar to win some but not sweep the awards. Continue reading →

So- we were watching Pyaar Impossible yesterday, which is a silly little movie starring [Priyanka, Uday] Chopra and directed by this guy.

I’m not going to tell you if you should watch it or not– figure that one out for yourself.

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The movie is laced with all kinds of geekery. Uday Chopra is ostensibly a geek– his room has pictures of Asimov, Star Wars posters (vote Grievous ’08!) and a picture of Steve Jobs on his bedroom door.

His dad (Anupam Kher) had a picture of Bill Gates.

Later on, Uday Chopra has a lightsaber battle with a kid and the visuals are reminiscent of the carbon freezing facility in The Empire Strikes Back.

Also, he’s created a software called Unity that lets you run software from OS X, Windows, Android, Palm, Ubuntu, Symbian and other stuff on the same computer, with the flip of a keystroke, like VMWare on steroids. No, he doesn’t say all those names, but those are the icons I saw. Those, and one generic tux penguin.

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In the olden days, I would have sat watching the movie wondering who had all those ideas. Is Jugal a not-so-closeted geek? Uday Chopra? Some random writer in Bollywood?

But these are modern times. I just fired up Tweetie and asked Jugal Hansraj and Uday Chopra.

ooh more Pyaar Impossible geekery– a lightsaber battle! was this your idea @udaychopra or @JugalHansraj’s?

And four hours later, @JugalHansraj’s reply:

@devanjedi The light saber was Uday’s idea – he’s the Star Wars fan -as for me – give me ‘Lord of the Rings’ anyday!

Another glourious day for the Internet!

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The only thing that bothered me about the geekery in the movie was that they kept using the phrase “program files” when they meant source code. As in, “I can’t give you the program files, but I can give you the executable”. Why trust the audience enough to use the word executable, but not to say source code?

Bottle Shock (2008) is a great little film, about Napa Valley in the ’70s. It tells the story of a time before anyone took American wines seriously, when a little winery named Chateau Montelena competed in a blind taste test against the best of the French wines, with French judges, and won.

It’s “based on a true story”, but knows enough to tell the story as a small comedy of quirky characters and unassuming underdogs. It stars Bill Pullman as the owner of Montelena, Chris Pine as his son and Alan Rickman as the British wine snob who is organizing the competition. Freddy Rodriguez (El Wray of Planet Terror!) is understated, but good as Gustavo Bramila, who works for Montelena and has wine in “his blood”.

We watched Whip It a couple of weeks ago, and it was fun. It’s about a misfit teenager, played by Juno’s Ellen Page, who takes to the violent, extreme sport of Roller Derby. Much to the chagrin of her parents. It’s a quintessential sports movie, with the loser sports team coming from behind to win the great championship, and love, and acceptance. It’s everything that Eastwood’s Invictus wasn’t.

Yeah, I’m comparing a roller derby movie to Invictus, and I’m saying roller derby wins.

But the real feature of this movie is that it’s the directorial debut of Drew Barrymore. And she shows she’s got it where it counts. Every major character in this movie is female, and the point-of-view shows. It’s a movie by women about women, but it’s hard hitting and takes no prisoners. The reason it’s worth pointing this out is that this is extremely rare in Hollywood. This year we have two examples– Whip It and Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, which might clean up at the Oscars.

[P.S. Manohla Dargis at the New York Times did an extraordinary piece on the lack of women filmmakers in Hollywood.]