OPM*
Presents – Ocean’s Thirteenth Year
Ocean's Thirteen, a film directed by Stephen Soderbergh, starring an ensemble cast led by George Clooney, Al Pacino, Matt Damon and Brad Pitt is set to release tomorrow. The third in the franchise that started with Ocean’s Eleven has spurred discussions on varied topics including Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, both self same people in India, their adopted kids etc, for months now. Apologetic mentions of the movie are included sometimes when these two very popular stars are photographed at locations like Pune, Cannes and their backyard. (Ex: Brad and Jolie spotted for the 13th time on the Pacific Ocean coastline, Brangelina to name 13th adoption Ocean)
Ocean’s Thirteen is the third in the Soderbergh series following the 2004 sequel Ocean's Twelve of the 2001 picture Ocean's Eleven, a remake of the 1960 Rat Pack film Ocean's Eleven (being a Rat Pack film all the stars consequently die of poisoning. Yes, rat poison) which was itself highly influenced by Jean-Pierre Melville's Bob le Flambeur (French, literally, ‘The Flambeur of Bob’ where several Englishmen spend hours, bobbing up and down, agonizing over what the hell a Flambeur is. No, they don’t find out)
After the hugely successful run of the first two movies, Soderbergh realized that though heist movies (Try: Jules Dassin’s Rififi, Kubrick’s The Killing, George Hill’s The Sting and Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon) would always have audiences, the arithmetic progression (with common difference 1) of characters and numerical suffixes in film name could not last for very long.
For example, in due course, when the 212th movie in the franchise is in the making it will be decidedly tough to fit in 212 different characters with as many sub plots into a 2-hour movie. Or for instance, the problems Ocean’s 666 will face, being condemned by religious groups as an act of Satan. If that isn’t convincing enough, think of some far future when half the world’s population will have to play lead roles in Oceans Three Billion Ninety Three Million Nine hundred Thousand Four hundred and Eighty Six? This arithmetic progression of characters, Soderbergh realized, was a very dangerous thing. Imagine the budgets he would have to organize! And the number of Vanity Vans!
Taking this into account, the filmmaker decided to put a new spin on the numeric in the nomenclature, using the numeric to denote something other than a character addition. Thus, Ocean’s Thirteen is about the teenage years of our heisting protagonists. There are rumours that the next film in the Ocean franchise will be Ocean’s Sixty Nine, the terribly interesting plot details for which are available on the Internet as an Oral clip.
Onwards to the movie releasing this week though – Ocean’s Thirteenth Year.
The movie begins with a pleasing close-up (particularly pleasing for the men folk in the audience to note that young George was a really ugly young boy, what with years of gushing from women about Clooney’s looks) of a 13-year-old Danny Ocean, played by a young George Clooney. All the other boys including Pitt, Damon and Andy Garcia join him, each competing for the years Most Annoying Child on Screen award. It turns out that all the kids are juvenile delinquents with a fetish for extra candy (sweets and toffees, not a girl named Candy. Candy, the girl, makes an appearance in Ocean’s Sixty Nine, as do some other interesting fetishes. My lips are sealed though! Anyway 13 isn’t that kind of movie. Kids can watch it, especially illegally)
Yeah, so the kids want extra candy and since this is a heist film, decide to steal it from the Candy Shop run by a 60-year-old failed white singer called 50 Cents for the Candy Bar (played by Al Pacino), who keeps lamenting his failed career as a hip-hop musician blaming his arthritis ridden hips for impeding his hopping.
What follows plays out like a sad rendition of ‘How much is that Doggie in the window?’ repeated over and over. Let me know if you liked the movie. Maybe I’ll send you some Candy.
* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.
Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.
**OPM appears in the Thursday edition of Bangalore BIAS and previews a Friday release
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Friday, June 01, 2007
31 May 2007 - Pirates III
OPM*
Presents – Poirots of the Caribbean
I have had it with Viagra Spam! Every day people called Patricia Webbe, Doco Loco and Porsche Mary send me email about how I can safely buy the performance-enhancing drug cheap, in just a few minutes, over the Internet. Since I am a pretty two-dimensional person (as you’ve all noticed I’m severely lacking in the third dimension – Depth) with severe low esteem, Viagra Spam has had me worrying about whether people know something I haven’t realized yet. I have spent many hours this past week analysing several rather embarrassing things at an anthropological level, involving complex physical phenomena such as levers and fulcrum. After spending several afternoons in despair, I was brought some cheer when it came to my notice that my favourite movie franchise would release its third instalment this week. Yes, Captain Jack and his friends are coming to your neighbourhood, in the summer’s most awaited movie: Pirates of the Caribbean – At Wit’s end.
This week’s OPM takes a look at what the movie promises. We will need a little background info to begin with –
As the second instalment of the franchise was not as well received as the first movie, the studio decided that they needed to change the plot substantially to revive interest in Captain Jack Sparrow and his cohorts. To this end they ran a workshop in the Caribbean (around the same time the Cricket Worldcup was being played there) to rework the script for the third movie. After a tremendous amount of waxing and waning, not to mention some amount of mooning by 3 sexually repressed writers (yes, most of us are afflicted), inspiration hit them when the Woolmer murder flew into the resulting public outrage, across media everywhere. Why not turn the third movie into a whodunit? Due to the inexperience of their writers in writing for the genre they decided to turn to the grand dame of mystery, Agatha Christie and her civilian gendarme protagonists, for help. The intricate universe of characters from Agatha Christie’s books sets up the basis for the movie’s plot, also borrowing heavily from her 1964 publication, A Caribbean Mystery.
The suitably renamed Poirots of the Caribbean sees Johnny Depp reprise his role as Captain Jack Sparrow, but with a psychodynamic twist that would make Freud proud. Captain Jack keeps his name, but inhibiting him, somewhere between his Id and Super ego, is Dame Christie’s well-loved Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot (pronounced Hercule, as in Ridicule, Poirot as in Poor Rot) No, I don’t believe in silent alphabets. I say, call a spade a spade, dammit!
Jack Sparrow is made resplendent as Depp meshes Captain Jack’s irrepressible irresponsibility with Poirot’s droll wit, Jack’s effeminate prancing with Poirot’s haute-couture French suits and Jack’s cavalier womanising with Poirot’s opinion of Miss Lemon.
Johnny Depp puts on several kilos and goes bald to play this memorable character, especially with his anagrammatic bon mots and tongue in cheek humour that causes severe embarrassment to several Victorian women as it usually involves his tongue in someone else’s cheeks.
Keira Knightley plays Miss Marple; a thin sickly girl who misses her friend called Marple sorely and is determined to be in an adventure to find her. Her curiously eponymous character is the object of Inspector Japp’s affections, who consequently proceeds to inspect her at every given opportunity. (Orlando Bloom, a famous flowering tree from the city of Orlando FL plays Inspector Japp) Having to contend with Japp at every step Captain Jack tries to make the best of the situation by quoting the anagram: Menage a trois is an orgies team. (not that this works, but life goes on as Jack continues to savour the joys of savium with Miss Marple!)
To this eclectic mix is thrown in Geoffrey Rush, playing a wretched version of Sherlock Holmes who sports a monkey called Dr.Watson (a brilliant bit of evolutionary reversal that this character poses: a monkeying doctor or a doctored monkey?) on his shoulder.
The villain of the piece, a cross between Moriarty and a Chinese villain called Ichi the Killer is played by Chow Yun Fat (as a result of which, he is very obese)
It turns out that every character ends up on a ship sailing to Europe from the Caribbean, for reasons of their own. Captain Jack is hoping to display some tongue-in-cheek humour for Miss Marple’s benefit when Japp is not inspecting her. Sherlock is onboard, as someone has fooled his monkey into believing that the boat is sailing to a Banana Republic. Chow Yun Fat is trying to lose weight by being the solitary oarsman for the ship.
Things go nutty, when halfway into the Atlantic Ocean; Chow Yun Fat discovers that all the rowing has made him extremely fit. He stops rowing and a row erupts among the passengers.
What will happen as the ocean churns unhappily around this stationary ship and Captain Jack goes on a roll with his pithy anagrams (Dual gender is general dud, Humble arrogance is changeable rumor etc), trying to figure out who will row the boat? Go watch the movie to find out!
* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.
Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.
**OPM appears in the Thursday edition of Bangalore BIAS and previews a Friday release
Presents – Poirots of the Caribbean
I have had it with Viagra Spam! Every day people called Patricia Webbe, Doco Loco and Porsche Mary send me email about how I can safely buy the performance-enhancing drug cheap, in just a few minutes, over the Internet. Since I am a pretty two-dimensional person (as you’ve all noticed I’m severely lacking in the third dimension – Depth) with severe low esteem, Viagra Spam has had me worrying about whether people know something I haven’t realized yet. I have spent many hours this past week analysing several rather embarrassing things at an anthropological level, involving complex physical phenomena such as levers and fulcrum. After spending several afternoons in despair, I was brought some cheer when it came to my notice that my favourite movie franchise would release its third instalment this week. Yes, Captain Jack and his friends are coming to your neighbourhood, in the summer’s most awaited movie: Pirates of the Caribbean – At Wit’s end.
This week’s OPM takes a look at what the movie promises. We will need a little background info to begin with –
As the second instalment of the franchise was not as well received as the first movie, the studio decided that they needed to change the plot substantially to revive interest in Captain Jack Sparrow and his cohorts. To this end they ran a workshop in the Caribbean (around the same time the Cricket Worldcup was being played there) to rework the script for the third movie. After a tremendous amount of waxing and waning, not to mention some amount of mooning by 3 sexually repressed writers (yes, most of us are afflicted), inspiration hit them when the Woolmer murder flew into the resulting public outrage, across media everywhere. Why not turn the third movie into a whodunit? Due to the inexperience of their writers in writing for the genre they decided to turn to the grand dame of mystery, Agatha Christie and her civilian gendarme protagonists, for help. The intricate universe of characters from Agatha Christie’s books sets up the basis for the movie’s plot, also borrowing heavily from her 1964 publication, A Caribbean Mystery.
The suitably renamed Poirots of the Caribbean sees Johnny Depp reprise his role as Captain Jack Sparrow, but with a psychodynamic twist that would make Freud proud. Captain Jack keeps his name, but inhibiting him, somewhere between his Id and Super ego, is Dame Christie’s well-loved Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot (pronounced Hercule, as in Ridicule, Poirot as in Poor Rot) No, I don’t believe in silent alphabets. I say, call a spade a spade, dammit!
Jack Sparrow is made resplendent as Depp meshes Captain Jack’s irrepressible irresponsibility with Poirot’s droll wit, Jack’s effeminate prancing with Poirot’s haute-couture French suits and Jack’s cavalier womanising with Poirot’s opinion of Miss Lemon.
Johnny Depp puts on several kilos and goes bald to play this memorable character, especially with his anagrammatic bon mots and tongue in cheek humour that causes severe embarrassment to several Victorian women as it usually involves his tongue in someone else’s cheeks.
Keira Knightley plays Miss Marple; a thin sickly girl who misses her friend called Marple sorely and is determined to be in an adventure to find her. Her curiously eponymous character is the object of Inspector Japp’s affections, who consequently proceeds to inspect her at every given opportunity. (Orlando Bloom, a famous flowering tree from the city of Orlando FL plays Inspector Japp) Having to contend with Japp at every step Captain Jack tries to make the best of the situation by quoting the anagram: Menage a trois is an orgies team. (not that this works, but life goes on as Jack continues to savour the joys of savium with Miss Marple!)
To this eclectic mix is thrown in Geoffrey Rush, playing a wretched version of Sherlock Holmes who sports a monkey called Dr.Watson (a brilliant bit of evolutionary reversal that this character poses: a monkeying doctor or a doctored monkey?) on his shoulder.
The villain of the piece, a cross between Moriarty and a Chinese villain called Ichi the Killer is played by Chow Yun Fat (as a result of which, he is very obese)
It turns out that every character ends up on a ship sailing to Europe from the Caribbean, for reasons of their own. Captain Jack is hoping to display some tongue-in-cheek humour for Miss Marple’s benefit when Japp is not inspecting her. Sherlock is onboard, as someone has fooled his monkey into believing that the boat is sailing to a Banana Republic. Chow Yun Fat is trying to lose weight by being the solitary oarsman for the ship.
Things go nutty, when halfway into the Atlantic Ocean; Chow Yun Fat discovers that all the rowing has made him extremely fit. He stops rowing and a row erupts among the passengers.
What will happen as the ocean churns unhappily around this stationary ship and Captain Jack goes on a roll with his pithy anagrams (Dual gender is general dud, Humble arrogance is changeable rumor etc), trying to figure out who will row the boat? Go watch the movie to find out!
* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.
Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.
**OPM appears in the Thursday edition of Bangalore BIAS and previews a Friday release
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