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Chandni Chowk to China, a review by Tom

Title: Chandni Chowk to China
Year: 2009
Director: Nikhil Advani
Rating: FSK-12
Length: 144 Min.
Video: Anamorphic Widescreen 2.35
Audio: German: Dolby Digital 5.1, Hindi: Dolby Digital 5.1
Subtitles: German

Stars:
Mithun Chakraborty
Akshay Kumar
Deepika Padukone
Ranvir Shorey
Roger Yuan

Plot:
Have you ever dreamed of being more than your circumstances? Sidhu (Askay Kumar) longs to escape his dreary existence cutting vegetables at a road-side food stand in Chandni Chowk, one of the oldest and busiest markets in Delhi, India. When two strangers from China proclaim he is the reincarnation of a Chinese war hero, Sidhu envisions fame, fortune and adventure. Journeying with them back to China, Sidhu meets the alluring Sakhi (Deepika Padukone) and love blossoms. But can it survive the vicious smuggler, Hojo (Gordon Liu) and his cadre of kung-fu assassins?

Megalomaniacal villains, crazy inventors, Chinese mystics and outlandish kung-fu assassins all get thrown together in this joyful, uplifting adventure full of beautiful landscapes, attention-grabbing songs, and high energy dancing.

Awards:
Extras:
Bonus Trailers
Deleted Scenes
Poster
Scene Access
Trailers

A silly Bollywood kung fu movie with the familiar story of a nobody getting accidentally involved fighting a (Chinese) gangster gang and then starting to learn martial arts "Karate Kid"-style and defeating them. The star reminded me of Adam Sandler. So essentially this could be classified as a Bollywood Adam Sandler movie. The fights were okay, also the songs. Beautiful Deepika Padukone stars in a dual role as twin sisters who were separated as babies. One was raised by the gangsters, the other by the mother in India.



Rating:

(From Tom's Random Reviews on July 25th, 2010)

The Man Who Knew Too Much, a review by Dragonfire

The Man Who Knew Too Much - 1956 James Stewart and Doris Day give magnificent performances as Ben and Jo McKenna, an American couple vacationing in Morocco, whose son is kidnapped and taken to England.  Caught up in international espionage, the McKennas' lives hang in the balance as they race to save their son in the chilling, climactic showdown in London's famous Royal Albert Hall. My Thoughts This is the first time that I've seen all of this one.  I saw a little of it on television before.  I've also seen the earlier version.  The basic story is the same, though several things have been changed.  The pace is slower while everything is set up and introduced.  I wasn't bored by what was going on, though that did make a few scenes drag a bit.  The movie probably does move too slow for some people.  The slower pace does help to allow for the build up of tension that culminates in a wonderful sequence during the concert.  The ending does drag on a bit too long and is more anticlimactic, though it does resolve things.  I think the ending could have been handled better. There is a decent amount of mystery in the movie, most of it tied to Hank being taken.  I thought that Louis seemed a bit suspicious with how he dodged any personal questions.  Jo seemed to have some of those same feelings.  After Louis is murdered, things do pick up more, and the mystery starts building as well.  Like I mentioned, Jo is suspicious a few times, but she does do a few things that I didn't think were that smart.  She and Ben very quickly accepted Louis and a few other people.  They barely know Louis, yet they have him in their hotel room.  That just doesn't seem smart to me.  Of course, maybe people were more accepting when the movie was made.  For me, I would be way more cautious of strangers while traveling, especially if I had a child.  It did seem like Jo and Ben were a bit gullible once or twice, but that didn't really make me like the movie less.  Several scenes were shot on location in Morocco and some scenes in London.  With some of the scenes set in Morocco, I noticed that the backgrounds looked slightly off and I think they were probably done with projection or whatever it was called.  At one point, Ben and Jo are walking in an outdoor market.  For the beginning of the scene, it looks like they are on the real location.  Then the shot changes and the backgrounds look off again.  The scene changes again, and is back to footage shot on location.  Some kind of reshoot might have been needed for that sequence.  It is a bit different for music to be used so much in a Hitchcock movie.  The song that Jo sings with Hank does seem like a song a mother would sing with or to her child, but it still seems slightly out of place...even when it plays a more important part again later.  That doesn't mean that Doris Day doesn't sing beautifully.  The songs just seem a bit odd in this type of movie.  The characters are interesting and I think the cast does well with the parts.  I honestly can't remember having seen Doris Day in anything else.  She does really well in this one.  Jo does sort of flip out when she finds out about Hank being taken, but that seems like a natural reaction for a mother to have.  Jo and Ben seem to have a good marriage, though they have a few disagreements. This isn't one of Hitchcock's best, but it works as an entertaining movie.  It does deserve to be seen.  The slower pace will probably turn some people off.  I did get a review posted on Epinions if anyone would like to take a look. The Man Who Knew Too Much

(From Alfred Hitchcock Marathon on July 19th, 2010)

Tom's TV Pilots marathon, a review by Tom

Veronica Mars: Season One (2004/United States) IMDb | Wikipedia Warner Home Video (Germany) Length: 883 min. Video: Anamorphic Widescreen 1.78 Audio: English: Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround, French: Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround, German: Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround, Hungarian: Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround, Italian: Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround, Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround Subtitles: Danish, English, French, German, Finnish, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Hungarian

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Plot:
A little bit Buffy. A little bit Bogart. A dash of Nancy Drew. Veronica Mars takes the best and brainiest of the American culture of crimesolving and adds a unique vision of its own - brooding, edgy, darkly funny and just plain dark - to become one of the hottest, sleekest series of the new century.

Veronica (Kristen Bell) is an outcast in a trendy SoCal beach town. Once she ran with Neptune High's in crowd. But she's on the outside after her best friend is murdered and her sheriff father accuses the wrong man as the perp: the dead girl's billionaire father. Dad loses his job, Veronica loses her popularity and both struggle to build a detective agency and new lives. E-mail scams, cults, car thefts - you name it, Veronica investigates it. But her obsession is the murder of her friend. And she'll take any risk to solve it.



Veronica Mars
Season 1.01 Pilot
Writer: Rob Thomas (Writer)
Director: Mark Piznarski
Cast: Kristen Bell (Veronica Mars), Percy Daggs III (Wallace Fennel), Teddy Dunn (Duncan Kane), Jason Dohring (Logan Echolls), Francis Capra (Eli "Weevil" Navarro), Enrico Colantoni (Keith Mars), Michael Muhney (Sheriff Don Lamb), Corinne Bohrer (Lianne Mars), Amanda Seyfried (Lilly Kane), Lisa Thornhill (Celeste Kane), Kyle Secor (Jake Kane), Daran Norris (Cliff McCormack), Brandon Hillock (Deputy Sacks), Brad Bufanda (Felix), Patrick Wolff (Hector), Tom McCafferty (Fireman Bill), Duane Daniels (Vice Principal Clemmons), Kirk Fogg (District Attorney), Benito Paje (Phuong), Randy Seidman (Clown), Ruth Stehle (Mrs. White), Linda Castro (Teacher #1), Jonathan Chesner (Corny), Mark Styles (Boy at Keyboard), Zac Henry (Mouth), Elvin Lai (Favorite Band Sucks T-Shirt), Nicole Monica (Dance Team Advisor), David E. Taylor (Steve), Seraina Jacqueline (Inga), Amber Ojeda (Cat In The Hat Raver), Chris Wiley (Band Dork), Heather Brittany (Pep Squader), Joshua Levine (Pencil-necked Geek), Annie Hinton (Judge), Jon Epstein (Stunt Coordinator), Scott Barry (Tony), Christian Clemenson (Abel Koontz)

A good introduction to an uneven series. The first season was very good. The second not so much. The opinion on the third and final season is split, but I enjoyed it more than season two.
The main character always reminds me of Chloe from Smallville.

Rating:

(From Tom's TV Pilots marathon on November 14th, 2012)