Four Feathers : British History Thru Indian eyes.

Video Source: Amazon Prime

Shekhar Kapur the director is known in India for small personal films like 'Masoom', a comedy called "Mr. India" and the biographical "The Bandit Queen". So it was really surprising for me to see him direct movies like "Four Feathers" and "Elizabeth" which have a wider canvas and are based on British history and have not much to do with India.

Link To Four Feathers Trailer....

Four feathers reminds us of old movies like those of David Lean. The story is about a man who does not want to fight in a war and so is dubbed a coward by his wife to be and is given the customary 'white feathers' but there are only three instead of four. The hero (Heath Ledger) then tries to redeem himself by following the troops on his own. Most of the movie is about the suffering he has to go thru in the desert and later as part of a labor camp where he manages to find his friends who preceded him. The war scenes are shot in  a unique style. I was  especially impressed with the scene where the rectangular formation made by the British soldiers is slowly overtaken by the Sudanese; like a pack of wild animals attacking their weakened prey from all sides.

Heath Ledger and Wes Bentley act very well and remind you of dignified actors of old. Shekhar Kapur has added emotions, like genuine friendship between men , which is very rare in modern English movies (from the western hemisphere) unless they are gay and there is sex involved!! 

Lucky Numbers - Getting Lucky In Pennsylvania !!

Video Source: Amazon Prime.

This is a simple comedy like many others, however, it is a little more 'real' and is set in a winter of Harrisburg in PA [ where I had spent couple of years 'way back when....'!!]. The popular weatherman and the lady host of the live Weekly Lottery drawing conspire to 'rig' one such drawing so they can win the 6.4 million dollar jackpot. The honest weatherman is forced to compromise because his house goes in foreclosure!! The lady host has no guilt in pulling the stunt !!

                               

They put glue in all the balls, except in those that correspond to the numbers on their ticket, I believe,.The lottery machine therefore ejects only the numbers the weatherman's team has on their ticket. What follows is the usual mayhem associated with comedy movies including the overturning of a moving truck on a frozen street in Harrisburg and the high pitch screaming of the angry heroine!!

It is nice to see John Travolta in a comedy. However, the movie version I watched on Amazon does not have all his funny scenes shown in the trailer above. Harrisburg and the Susquehanna bridge look bigger and cleaner than they are in real life, probably because of clean up work of the post production crew.

Lovelace : Biography Of A Porn Star!!

Video Source: Amazon Prime


You can fast forward most of the embarrassing mating scenes between the young girl and her rough man friend which are mostly in the beginning of the movie!! [The makers of this movie could have easily skipped showing these scenes and gained a wider audience.] In fact, I was hesitant to include a review of this movie in the blog but the fact that it was a biographical movie of a young girl's life who is forced into being a porn star makes it interesting. People who are not exposed to the entire spectrum of life in America might find this movie educational. 

The young heroine of this movie who is in love with a mustached jobless man gets seduced into making her first porn film so the couple can survive. That is a short cut for making a living. Unfortunately, for the girl, her boyfriend keeps all the money. He even "roughs" her up when she refuses to make more porn. In fact, he deceives her by inviting her to a party where she is turned into a prostitute. When the scared girl runs back to her mother for help, the mother refuses to keep her and sends her back. Such is the tough life of some girls in USA, when the parents cannot afford to keep their them at home and send them out into the world at a young age!!! [At least , she knows who are parents are, unlike many others!!

We learn that young Linda Lovelace, the porn star, was only paid $1850 for her first porn movie that made hundreds of millions of dollars. We also learn that porn movies are made by rich looking 'professionals' with a small staff .