The year that was...

A sparkling 2012 inches to a close giving Hollywood one of its greatest years as the gross earnings from US box-office alone crept nearer to $10.8 billion which is the highest ever, surpassing the 2009 earnings. There were those that blew away expectations (The Hunger Games, Ted), ones that lived up to all the hype (The Dark Knight Rises, The Avengers) and there would always be those that failed to stand up and put on a show. Here are the posters of the 43 Hollywood movies of 2012, good, bad and ugly, that I watched in the year. 

  

The Cherry on the Cake (9/10)

1) The Avengers                                                      2) The Dark Knight Rises

The Special Ones (8/10)

3) The Hunger Games      4) Brave                 5) Snow White and the Huntsman
6) Skyfall                            7) The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Almost Classy (higher side of 7/10)         

8) Argo                               9) Prometheus           10) The Bourne Legacy
11)  Men in Black 3          12) Lawless                  13) The Amazing Spiderman
14) Looper                        15) Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

The Entertainers (7/10)

16) Contraband                  17) Safe House            18) Underworld: Awakening
19) The Lorax                    20) John Carter           21) The Woman in Black
22) Wrath of the Titans    23) The Raven             24) Ted
25) People Like Us            26) Taken 2                  27) The Expendables 2
28) Dredd 3D                     29) Rise of the Guardians

The Watch-it-Once (6/10)

30) Haywire                       31) The Grey                32) Red Tails
33) Dark Shadows             34) Battleship               35) Ice Age: Continental Drift
36) Total Recall                 37) Jack Reacher          38) Journey 2: The Mysterious Island
  
The Disappointments (5/10)

39) Man on a Ledge          40) Premium Rush      41) Madagascar 3

The 'I never Watched This' (4/10)

42) Resident Evil: Retribution                   43) Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance
      

Tom Cruise in Numbers

Tom Cruise has had an illustrious career so far spanning more than three decades. He started off as a young heartthrob that girls swooned over, with the uniformed role in Top Gun propelling his career further, and made a smooth transition into action movies through Mission: Impossible while enjoying success in sci-fi films like Minority Report as well. But three decades is a long time, and with the relatively poor collections seen for Jack Reacher, the question popped in my head -- has Tom Cruise lost his sheen? A look at the US box office collections of his last few movies should give us an idea. 

Rock of Ages (2012): $31 million (did anyone notice this movie?)

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011): $209 million (MI still sells, and Cruise still makes a good Ethan Hunt)

Knight and Day (2010): $76 million (another dud; Cruise reportedly rejected Salt for this, and the former went on to earn more than $100 million with Angelina Jolie as the lead)

Valkyrie (2008): $83 million (a good movie, though collections still lower than expected)

Tropic Thunder (2008): $110 million (Cruise played a cameo here, which is without a doubt one of his most memorable roles in recent times)  

Lions for Lambs (2007): $15 million (??)

Mission: Impossible III (2006): $133 million (a low gross for an MI movie, though the latest one has done much better)

The War of the Worlds (2005): $234 million (Spielberg directed this sci-fi movie)

While the jury may still be out, I find it unlikely that Tom Cruise can churn out hits on his own star-power any more. I still look forward to movies from Mission: Impossible series. But for any movie with Cruise's name on it, I'll need something more than that to deem it worth a watch. 

PS: 2013's Oblivion starring Tom Cruise is a sci-fi movie, starring Morgan Freeman too. Irrespective of what I said above, the initial trailer of Oblivion still makes Cruise look good. Maybe sci-fi is where Cruise will fit in best! Here's a poster of Cruise's latest offering to be released in April 2013.  

Jack Reacher? Where?

I do not hate Tom Cruise. I loved his charisma in Top Gun, I was pleasantly surprised at his intensity in A Few Good Men (one of my favourite movies!), I have enjoyed the Mission Impossible series where he plays this agile smart agent quite satisfyingly, I even liked the grittiness he displayed in The Last Samurai. So I reiterate that I do not hate Tom Cruise. But I love Jack Reacher a bit too much to see it be so blandly portrayed. Tom Cruise may be gifted enough to play a lot of different roles. But a 6'5" tall guy weighing more than 200 pounds who can dish out cool one-liners in the wink of an eye isn't one of them. For that is what Jack Reacher, the character made famous in Lee Child's novels, is all about. He's an ex-military cop who has fallen off the grid and moves from one state to another, picking up battles along the way; battles that he does not intend to be a part of, but the bad guys make the mistake of pulling him in. An old passport, a toothbrush, some cash and the clothes on him, are all that he usually walks around with. Tom Cruise is too cute to appear as such a vagabond. A Mickey Rourke would have been perfect, a Clive Owen or a Liam Neeson would have lit the screen on fire in such a role, a Hugh Jackman would have made those one-liners his own... heck, even an ageing Clint Eastwood would have been better suited to play Jack Reacher. But not a Tom Cruise. 

Look at the above image for instance. It doesn't scare you, it doesn't make you wonder 'oooh... he is out of his car! What's he gonna do?'. All you think is... 'Hey, there's Tom Cruise!' Aargghh! The movie Jack Reacher ain't that bad, to be fair. It's just not good enough, considering the source material it has been taken from. Tom Cruise tries his best. But the direction is way too simplistic and the movie moves in an old-fashioned liner manner, losing its plot here and there as it tries to get back on the rails (What's with the 'eat your fingers' scene?). The depth of the title character is never studied in detail, nor does the mystery around him resonate through the story as it does in the novels. Jack Reacher could have been much more, the beginning of a franchise maybe. But with a partly $15 million collected in US during the first weekend, the potential of a series appears lost (unless some crazy fans around the globe decide they cannot get enough of Mr. Cruise). Maybe a few years later, someone would clean the slate, cast a guy that fits the broad shoes of Reacher and relaunch the series. Until then, as we bid the year goodbye, we bid goodbye to Mr. Reacher as well.   

Great Directors maketh Great Movies

Many reasons are attributed to the success of a film - be it a gripping screenplay, great acting, beautifully written lines, visually appealing cinematography etc etc. But a classic movie can never be made without the key factor that brings all these ingredients together - direction! A great director can make an average script stand out and a poor one can ruin the best of storylines. 2012 held its own in this regard, featuring movies of such skillful renowned directors - Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises, Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, Ridley Scott's Prometheus, Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, Joss Whedan's The Avengers and Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. These are directors who have carved a special place in cinema history through their previous works. Their movies carry their mark, their presence in the director's seat becomes a good enough reason to look forward to their work. So Lincoln is no longer simply Lincoln; it is Steven Spielberg's Lincoln. These are directors who do not just 'bring out a motion picture'; they change the manner of story-telling. Technologically well-versed, these gentlemen set a different path to how stories can be delivered to the audience, Peter Jackson's display of The Hobbit at higher frame rate of 48 fps apart from the conventional 24 fps being an example. 

2013 has its own list of amazing movies in store, but the ones with the backing of such 'gifted' directors seem limited -- Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street and J.J. Abrams' Star Trek Into Darkness only ones popping into mind. It would be worth peeking into the on-going directorial works of the other great ones too...

• Steven Spielberg : Robopocalypse, a sci-fi set in the futuristic world, slated for a 2014 release
• Christopher Nolan : Nothing announced yet; probably busy in post production work of Man of Steel, but his next project is sure to create tremendous buzz
• Ridley Scott : The Counselor starring Brad Pitt to release late next year, and possible sequels for Blade Runner and Prometheus announced as well
• Quentin Tarantino : Nothing announced yet; Can we have a Kill Bill 3?
• Joss Whedon : Working on the pilot of the SHIELD tv-series, a spin-off from The Avengers universe; The Avengers 2 slated for 2015 is another big project for Whedon
• Peter Jackson : With two more movies of The Hobbit series lined up in 2013 and 2014 with the sequel to The Adventures of Tintin to follow, Jackson has his hands full
• James Cameron : Avatar 2 and Avatar 3 are bound to be his next projects; more eye-popping exotic creatures await!

Groundhog Day, Groundhog Week, Groundhog Month

Wake up at 7.30 in the morning. Leave for office at 8.30. Reach by 9.15. Do something while the hour and minute hand recreate their positions. Leave at 9.15 in the evening. Reach home by 10 at night. Wonder how the day flew by. Wake up at 7.30 in the morning again and relive another day. Or wait! Am I living the same day? Waking up to the same sound of the alarm underneath the same roof. Driving the same car along the same roads. Working in the same office and meeting the same people. The same jokes. The same lunch. The same sounds and the same smells. Am I stuck? As the day keeps repeating over and over again, for what I think is a week, then a month.  

And amidst my grumblings, this kind of life reminds me of something pleasant too. In case you haven't guessed it yet, it takes me down memory lane to the time I watched this wonderfully written and enacted comedy movie of '93 -- Groundhog Day. 

Bill Murray plays Phil, an obnoxious weatherman, who finds himself stuck in the same day, and do whatever he might, he keeps waking up on the Groundhog Day again and again and again. Flustered at first, his anger and frustrations keep escalating to such levels that he repeatedly tries to kill himself until he realizes that even after dying he is not spared from waking up on the same dreaded day. Things change slowly, at its own pace and rhythm. Phil improvises, learns to value people, grows, matures, falls in love. 

Groundhog Day is the kind of movie you pick up on a lean day from your old DVD collection and run through it once more, smiling along, as Phil makes one mistake after another until he starts learning from them. The movie features in numerous top comedy movie categories, rightly so and is one of those that you wouldn't wanna miss. For like me, there would be many other Phils, somehow stuck in the same routine in life, failing to differentiate one day from another, until it will eventually hit you... that the day doesn't have to change, it is you who has to! And that is how one day when you'll wake up, the sounds and the sights around you would not be the same again. Groundhog Day would have been over!

Serkis - A man with multiple faces!

What's common to these characters?

In anti-clockwise fashion, that's Gollum from The Lord of the Rings fame, Caeser of Planet of the Apes and the growling giant is of course King Kong of the 2005 Peter Jackson film. So apart from the fact that meeting these creatures in real life is highly unlikely (ignore this statement if you are an adventure-hungry Hobbit), what else is common amongst them? They have the same face behind it all. The genius of Andy Serkis. And this is how he looks... taa daa!

Not bad, eh! Andy Serkis is a film actor and director from England who has made the technique of performance capture to bring such characters to life something of his own. A talented chap, Serkis shot to fame through his heart engaging display as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, that even led to the debate whether a computer created character could be in the running for an Academy Award! To understand it better, Serkis enacts the roles of the characters he plays wearing a special suit with 'markers' that allows the cameras to capture his movements (facial expressions, limb movements, etc etc) which is then morphed over with the character itself. This picture might give some idea to what I'm talking of. 

While Serkis never appears as himself in the final shot shown to the audience, his work in bringing the role to life is as integral to any character played on-screen. He needs to get into the skin of the character to understand its movements (which would be more difficult than playing a normal human role, for these characters are not humans after all!), its facial expressions, and finally add voice to complete the whole picture. A master in this trade, Serkis was also the second-unit director of The Hobbit, pushing forth his own dream of directing as well. Gollum is already back with The Hobbit series underway and we would be seeing more of Serkis' work in the Dawn of the Planet of the Apes featuring Caeser. Here's one to the man behind many faces! Serkis.... my preciousssss!  

After Earth Poster

For the ignorant, M. Night Shyamalan's next release titled After Earth is scheduled for 2013. Scared? Or excited? Mixed emotions are usually noticed in the buzz before a Shyamalan film release. No one really knows where the downfall began. Many attribute it from The Village, though mind you, that movie still grossed more than $250 million worldwide. Some lay it on Lady in the Water, though for some reason I still found that movie worth a watch. Then was it The Happening? If that wasn't it, then Shyamalan's last feature film, The Last Airbender did not help his cause any further. Whatever be the reason to this maverick's (if I may still call him that, for you can never take away The Sixth Sense from him) unceremonious plunge, it would give no one more pleasure than me to see him get his bearings back. And while I had my doubts with After Earth like any skeptic, the trailer has literally blown me away. Right from the first scene, where Will Smith plunges out of the airplane, the trailer is filled with action and thrills along with a visual treat in the form of exotic plants and creatures, in the backdrop of a rather soothing narrative being delivered by Will Smith to his son. The narration is heartfelt, the writing (at least what's been shown in the trailer) is engaging and we can keep our fingers crossed that the direction shall once again live upto the original Shyamalan's standards! A June release sounds good, as that shows the studio's faith in the film to release it in the prime summer period. Seeing Will Smith on screen is always delightful as MIB3 proved, and his chemistry with his son (now a replica of Will himself!) is something that would add another flavour to the movie. Watch the trailer, if you've been underneath your blankets all this while. To start off with, relish the new poster of the film. My expectations are up with this one... Shyamalan, don't disappoint!