Walking with Dinosaurs 3D, English Hollywood Film Movie review, Johnson Thomas, Rating: * * * 1/2

Movie (Best Release)of the Week  27 Dec 2013/Johnson Thomas

Walking with Dinosaurs (3D/English) : Rating: *  *  * ½  Enlightening pre-historic saga with stunning vistas, superbly amalgamated live action and animation and a power house of knowledge for everyone. It’s an a-z on pre-historic creatures(mainly Dinosaurs) and gives you an education without putting you through the trauma of regimented learning. Can you beat that. Audiences of all ages can make a beeline for this one! 

English Film Review

Johnson Thomas

Intriguing Animation Adventure

Film: Walking with Dinosaurs(3D)

Cast(Voices): John Leguizamo, Justin Long, Tiya Sircar, Skyler Stone, Angourie Rice

Director: Neil Nightingale, Pierre De Lespinios

Rating:  *  *  * ½

It started off as a humble educative BBC television series and now has been transformed into a big screen animation adventure. The six-part series that inspired the movie  originally aired on the BBC in 1999 and was ultimately seen by 700 million viewers globally.

This live action/CG animated adventure feature follows a courageous young Dinosaur on an incredible journey through a pre-historic world. The film obviously has a much bigger budget and state of the art technology to create a much bigger and intricately rendered canvas from the pre-historic era in order to bring it’s  Cretaceous creatures to vivid life. The creatures are all remarkably life like and the colorful prehistoric parrot (voiced by John Leguizamo)steals the show.

Especially evident is the superb care and detail that went into all the character renderings. From Documentary style TV series to the more traditional animation one, the transition seems to have happened very smoothly, thanks to co-directors Barry Cook and Neil Nightingale who have made several documentaries and features.  

The film opens with a modern day live- action sequence which opens into the pre-historic era through an anthropological expedition that unearths some prehistoric skeletal remains. Uncle Zack (Karl Urban) takes his disinterested nephew Ricky (Charlie Rowe) and dino-obsessed younger niece Jade (Angourie Rice) to see some dinosaur remains. When Ricky is handed a tooth by his uncle, it magically becomes colourful talking Alexornis bird Alex (John Leguizamo), who proceeds to narrate the rest of the (now animated) film. It’s basically a family-friendly film that combines computer-generated dinosaurs and real settings to tell a story of a herd on the move, struggling to survive and facing a leadership change complicated by budding romance.

 

The parrot  Alex, is telling the coming-of-age story, going back some 70 million years, about  Patchi (voiced by Justin Long), an underdog of a young Pachyrhinosaurus who’s shown the ropes by the flighty Alex (Leguizamo). Enroute to adulthood Patchi crosses paths with various prehistoric predators, including the fearsome Gorgosauraus, as well as locking horns with his older brother and the eventual leader of the herd, Scowler (Skyler Stone), and experiencing love at first sight courtesy of the fetching Juniper (Tiya Sircar).

The plotting, credited to screenwriter John Collee (Happy Feet, Master and Commander) is standard animation coming-of-age issue but the visual element, employing the cutting-edge 3D Fusion Camera System used by James Cameron for Avatar, delivers near perfect dimensions for the dinos  set against actual backdrops in Alaska and New Zealand. And the 3D effects make it look all the more real!

Johnsont307@gmail.com

Mokssh, Hindi Bollywood film Movie Review, Johnson Thomas, Rating: * * 1/2

Hindi Film Review

Johnson Thomas

Well short of Enlightenment

Film: Mokssh

Cast: Chinmay Mandlekar, Sukhada Yash, Edward Sonnenblick, Suhas Shirsat, Umesh Jagtap

Director: Ajit Bhairavkar

Rating: *  * ½

Mokssh is built around a unique cinematic experience -the story of self-discovery and transformation of Parth during his 18 days Journey of pilgrimage (Waari). The genesis of this idea originated from the teachings in the Bhagwad Gita and the legend behind this particular enactment comes from the Warkari(Pilgrim) belief that non-stop chanting and musical celebration in the name of God Mauli(Mother Goddess) leads one to Mokssh -liberation or release. In eschatological sense, moksha is liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth.  Moksha is also liberation from ignorance to a state of enlightenment and self-realization.

Ajit Bhairavkar’s film does try to represent that challenging aspiration with humble integrity and faith. His story is located around the pilgrim town of Pandharpur where the eleventh day (Ashadi Ekadishi)of the lunar month, Ashadi. has a special significance. Mokssh , is in fact a Hindi remake of his own celebrated(winner of 32 awards) Marathi film, ‘Gajaar- the journey of the soul’  and has retained the flavor and color of the original but the change in language does come across as alienating even though it was legitimately done to garner a wider audience.

 Mokssh( as in Gajaar) tells the story of a budding film-maker, Parth who rediscovers himself during the pilgrimage. Parth’s transformation from an urban, egoistic adult to a more spiritual and responsible person is captured with easily identifiable goal posts. Bhairavkar in fact incorporates several of the Pilgrims’ real-life anecdotes. A large part of the film was shot live with 50 members of the unit following the warkaris along the 240-km pilgrimage. The director even conducted a month-long workshop with the cast to explain the concept, the history of warkari and dialogue delivery. For Mokssh too, the same principle was employed and the cast and crew had to follow the warkaris for nine days. The hindi dialogues and the incantations do not have the heart-touching effect that the Marathi ones did. Also, the performances veer towards the theatrical( possibly deliberate) and this makes the ensuing drama a little less affecting.

The concept and depth of the story and content is unimpeachable. It’s the treatment that draws a yawn from time to time. The narrative does tend to sag midway through the runtime because of  the  sedentary pace and unviable indulgences in narration. The focus of the narrative is also off. As a result Parth’s journey to salvation  does not appear as acceptable to an audience that is lulled into lethargy by the slow, un-livening, in-effectual plotting and the resultant experience is much closer to exasperation than Mokssh!

Johnsont307@gmail.com