A Fan’s Five Film list!

Hello hello hello! Bwoyss and gurrlss  and all you beegees out there! (I meant busy people, but for those of you who remembered the band, you are ‘Stayin alive’.)

So this is my first article on Filmistani and after wasting some good 10 minutes on choosing the topic, I came up with this! A Fan’s Five Film List! This is a list of those 5 films that I hold most special to myself. Now before I start, there are a couple of disclaimers that I think I should give so that you can criticize this article for other things like grammar and spelling mistakes. Cool? Cool!

Disclaimer no. 1 - So this is a self-indulgent article so I might digress from the point at a lot of places and start writing random things that may not be entirely necessary for the topic here. But I will try to keep it entertaining and not make it too lengthy.

Disclaimer no. 2 - The films on this list are not the most high rated films on the IMDB and may not have huge commercial or critical value to the others. But for me they managed to win the little shaktiman posed statues of mine in the Internal Shreya Award Ceremony conducted from time to time in my heart.  See I’ve never liked to call myself a movie buff even though I have been watching thousands of films on tv since I was in class 5, because for me movie watching is an extremely personal thing. I did not have friends at that time who were that much into movies so I hardly discussed anything about them with anyone. But as I grew up, I realized people take movie watching soo seriously that they start making notes on them and competing with the other movie buffs with the quality and quantity of films that they see. So when someone comes up to me and says “Dude you haven’t seen Departed?? How can you even say you have seen English films?” or “Dude! You are lying right when you say you haven’t seen The Godfather” or “DUDE!!!! You haven’t seen The Shawshank Redemption???? Drop everything you’re doing and just watch it RIGHT NOW!!” I have a few things that I say to them in my mind. Firstly, not a Dude! Stop calling me that! Secondly, I will watch whatever the fuck I want and whenever the fuck I want and now you have already spoiled the film by pissing me off and giving me your ugly face to remember while m watching the film with an already high expectation! Also, I did see all these films and loved them, so thank you. But I still prefer watching films on tv jiska I don’t even know the name or the actors or the plot or its IMDB rating! So coming back to life/the point (not my OCD, just trying to be funny), the films, on this list, have made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside for different reasons at different points of time in my life. 

Disclaimer no. 3 – For those of you who know me or not and think that I’m not retarded enough or “too school for cool” (Pink didi ke gaane ke bol)  to talk or write like this, Yes I have been watching too much of SUPERWOMAN on youtube! Also, I do have a phobia of failing-at-things-that-I-take-up-too-seriously. And also, “I guess normalcy isn’t my style” (Juno didi ki line)

Disclaimer no. 4 – For people who might read the article and think that it was like finding a needle in the haystack, let me enlighten you by saying “itna hi hota hai” (Theseus ji ki nauv ki line. Nauv ne nahi kaha, picture mein tha)

So now that I have established that my attention span is a little more than that of a two year old, let’s move on to the list of my special films and end this list of disclaimers right here.  

Shall we? Le go!

 Spoiler Alert!

•       Paulie – Now the reason why this film is special to me has less to do with the film but the time when my level of understanding of things was on the verge of puberty. Yes this is the first English film that I remember watching as a child on tv. I had seen Titanic and the Golden Eye, 007 in the theatre with my parents and I can’t recall if I saw this film before or after them, but I remember spending an entire afternoon after school alone in the house, watching this film. Honestly before writing this article, I did not even know the name of this film and just for this article I googled “talking parrot film” and got its name, Paulie. I saw the trailer as well, just to relive that evening and try and remember what exactly makes me remember this film out of the many that I have seen when I was young. For starters I think it was the talking parrot that got my attention. Paulie is a parrot in the film that does not repeat words that he is taught but is actually able to have a proper conversation with humans. I think somewhere at the back of my mind I had started considering the possibility of the film being a documentary. But the real entertainment of the film that made it so special for me was the fact that this talking ability of his, got him in all kinds of trouble. Almost giving me a lesson that sometimes ignorance can be bliss and knowledge can be dangerous, even for a parrot with super powers! So the film went a step ahead of just entertaining a 12 year old me and overwhelmed me with the magic of storytelling. I still haven’t watched the IMDB rating of this film and would not recommend it to anyone just to avoid any criticism about it

.      

h

• .       Towel Head – Although, like I made it clear earlier, I hate recommendations, this film was recommended to me by a friend, who I kinda hold responsible for killing my big lawyer dreams and getting me interested in this film business. The film is about this teenage arab-american girl who is having puberty troubles. Her parents are divorced and exist at poles when it comes to taking care of a child, let alone a teenage arab-american girl struggling with puberty. The mother is too modern whose boyfriend is a pervert and can only see a vagina in the species called women. The father is too orthodox who does not let his daughter use tampons. The girl develops feelings for her new neighbour, a married man whose wife is pregnant I think. She tries hard to hide her feelings for him but the guy (Harvey Dent actor) comes to know and starts reciprocating after little hesitation. One day he ends up raping her. Of course he gets arrested etc. and the film reaches its climax. The special part of the film for me comes here. The girl is sitting with Harvey Dent’s wife (who is the brave lady to call the police on her husband when she finds out, actually Harvey Dent makes the phone call in his guilt….whatever watch the film) and confesses to her that she is partly responsible for the entire mishap. The beauty with which this conversation proceeds made me long for somebody to talk to me like that when I feel guilty of complaining about someone who gets a thrashing because of me, when I might also have done something which led to his unjustified reactions. Again this film may not have the same effect on everyone but for me it was beyond expectation.

      

•   .       Persepolis – Ok. So this film became special to me because it was made on the book Persepolis which was the first graphic novel that I managed to read. Now I am not much of a reader, infact after years of trying big font, thin novels and short story reading, I have officially stopped being so hard on myself and made peace with the fact that people who don’t read books are not all that dumb as propagated to be! When I picked up the novel, I knew that there was a film already made on it and you can understand my temptation to just watch the film instead of giving up on the book after the first few pages. But then it was a book with pictures. So I thought I should give it a try. I absolutely loved the book. But being a hard core movie goer I immediately sat down to watch the film as well. The film still managed to work on me brilliantly. And so my little Shaktiman posed Statue Award found itself a winner.

• .       All about eve – Now hold your horses before all you IMDB maniacs who target the top 250 list as your life time goal start accusing me of my disclaimer that the films in this list are not highly rated etc. Yes it is a brilliant famous film but it is black and white! And for an ignorant person like me black and white films automatically mean “Might be good and all but BORING” Of course after watching this film, that notion for me has considerably changed! So when I started watching this film, after watching a couple of disappointing chick flicks, it was a new world altogether. The film is about a girl called Eve who is a crazy stalker of her favourite actress. She spends days and nights standing outside the theatre where the actress performs her play. Eventually the actress notices her and invites her to live with her in her house. The journey of Eve from being the crazy stalker of this actress to eventually taking her place in her future projects is very entertaining with the brilliant dialogue writing of the film. But again the film became special to me (apart from all the black and white entertainment explanation that I gave earlier) when the film without being judgmental about this character, Eve, gives us a glimpse of the existence of that vulnerability in all of us. I mean even the best and most righteous people I know, could have done the same thing that Eve did, to that actress.  

     

Also Marilyn Monroe did a chindi cameo in the film. That makes it the only film of hers that I have seen!

Bas thak gayi yaar likhte likhte! Acha bas one more.

•      Main, meri patni aur vo -  Ab is film ke baare mein zyada kuch kya kahen? Mithlesh Babu ne dil jeet liya! And this film was special to me because I have not seen a lot of Bollywood classics. So this film made me become as respectful of Indian filmmakers as I was of Hollywood people. Mithlesh’s short-heighted insecurity resonates with all of us feeling insecure about ourselves when we have a crush on the cutest girl or boy in school or college and occasionally makes us thank our stars that that crush did not give in to our persuasion of being with them and made us get on with our lives to pursue better things after facing some disappointment. Again, this argument and interpretation of mine is debatable and not the only thing that I took away from the film.

     

Phew! I think I am done! There are a lot of other films that are special to me and could not make their place in this list because I cannot think of them right now and a list of 5 is preferable to non-readers like me to give such articles our precious time. A list of 6 is bloody lengthy!

So Thankyou for reading this and for people who found it lame …..haan to agli baar mat padhna yaar, matlab aisa bhi kya hai.

Also Don’t vote for Modi!

Cheap publicity stunt? Sowwy!

So give me some comments about the article and if you are a fan too, give me a list of your five films as well, along with the reasons why they are there! I promise to read it even if it is a list of 7 or 8! And don’t think too much, just do! Because when we think too much, we don’t do! And if you do, do ……don’t do yahan, do vahan jhaadi ke peeche.  (‘Joke’ – Kangna didi style in Queen) Also for those of you who remembered Chandler and Pheobe with the “do, do” give yourself a V. V. Good and two stars with a red pen on your friends notes copy!

        Acha chalo bye!