October Sky [1999] (English): Some dreams do come true

It was a dark winter evening. Just past 7. The room was dark, as I put on the TV. It was the year I had to take a drop during my Engineering studies due to too many KTs. My confidence was running low and I found myself in a self-imposed house-arrest.

So there I was, unable to concentrate on the studies, with my mood as dark as the evening, I put on HBO. The movie had just started. I had missed the name by seconds. I was about to switch the channel, when the screen told me that this particular anonymous flick was based on a true story... 'Oh, is it?' I thought with mild interest and decided to stick around and see what it was about...

To my surprise, the very first scene started with the radio broadcasting the launch of Sputnik - the first man-made satellite to be launched into space... From that point on, I was hooked.

During my childhood years, I had a fascination for space and space-travel... So any movie having anything to do with space was bound to capture my interest... So I stayed on for a while... And ended up watching the entire movie....

The start is a bit slow. Its where the stage is set, the characters sketch themselves, slowly taking shape as they blend into the story.

Its a biopic of a boy named Homer H Hickam. Homer is born and brought up in Coalwood, a typical American "coal town" - a town built around the coal mine. A town where each boy follows his fathers footsteps into the coal mines as a miner. Only one lucky guy will escape this predestined fate - the one who can bag the sports scholarship.

Homer is no good at sports, unlike his brother. His father, a supervisor, who has spent all of his career in the mine itself - for whom mine is the only way of life - wants Homer to either win a sports scholarship or follow his footsteps into the mine...

Overshadowed by his brother's achievements, stifled by his dad's expectations and unable to come to grips with the fact that he may well have to spend the rest of his life working in the mine, life looks grim for poor Homer...

Then one day, a single little event changes the straight predestined course of his life. On an evening in October, he sees a majestic shooting star in the sky. But this is no ordinary celestial body. Its the first man-made object to revolve in orbit round the earth.Its the recently launched Russian satellite Sputnik. As he gazes with awe at this man-made wonder in the sky, he suddenly realizes what he wants to do in his life...

Does a movie require bad guys, super heroes, gorgeous heroines, romance, disaster and the climactic fight between good and evil, to be entertaining? This movie proves that age old formula wrong. Here dream and determination are the heroes, and difficulties, obstacles and fate are the villains.

It glorifies a boy who dreams to be different. A father who wants the best for his son. The clash between a fathers expectations and his sons dreams. A teacher who inspires her students and shows them that sports is not everything, and that science can be a fun hobby too.

Its a movie about an era that's now long gone. And yet it manages to entertain as well as inspire even today...

May be I like this movie more than others will. It still featured at the top of my most favourite movies list. And there is a reason why...

It was my dream to become an astronaut or at least an astronomer. As I grew up, I went for Engineering instead. It was my dad's dream, and I just went along with the flow. And the dream remained just that - a dream.

And here I was at a point where I seriously doubted my choice of a career and how good or bad I was in it... It was at this low point of my life, that I stumbled upon this gem of a movie... Not that it changed me for the better. But it gave me hope that some dreams do come true...

My rating: 5

Ship Of Theseus [2013] (Hinglish): A thought provoking art flick

It was the name that captured my attention first. Ship of Theseus. Sounds like a sci-fi movie. And I am a diehard scifi fan. So when my friend sent me the link to its trailer, I watched it enthusiastically. But the trailer turned out to be anything but scifi... Not that i was disappointed. For there were scenes and dialogs in the trailer that promised a 'hatke' movie experience - something unfortunately difficult to come by in Hindi or indian-made English movies.

My curiosity was piqued. So this rainy and traffic-ridden Saturday (20 May 2013) found me sitting in the PVR Theatre reading the meaning behind the title of the film.

For that's how the movie starts. It displays what exactly the Ship of Theseus means. Its a pretty interesting premise. If you plan to watch the movie, then don't skip this start. Otherwise the basic concept behind the movie and why its named this way, will be lost on you.

If you have seen the trailer you will know that the film has at least 3 central characters. The film gives us a glimpse into the life of each of these characters. Each story is different and unconnected. These 3 stories form 3 different parts of the film. Each narrated at a stretch from an unspecific start to an apparently incomplete ending. There is no visual cue to indicate an end of one story and the start of another. Suddenly the scene changes, the characters and the settings change and the viewer is plunged straight into the next story without warning.

The first story is of a lady suffering from cornial infection. So for all practical purposes she is blind. And guess what she does for a hobby? Photography... Its interesting, even inspiring to see her capturing pictures in spite of her disability. But in some scenes, the movie drags a little. At least I found it a bit slow-going. People having interest in photography and a deeper empathy would find it more interesting than I did.

The next story is about a monk. Frankly speaking, it was this character that I found most fascinating when I watched the trailer. And certainly it was fascinating at the start. There are a lot of philosophical ideas, discussions and debates thrown around during this story. But after a while it became too much for my mind to grasp it all and process it. I was there with 2 friends. One dozed off during this part while the other found it pretty thought-provoking (to quote in his own words he had "goosebumps" and his "mind was numb"). Me, I thought there was a lot of 'intellectual masturbation' (to borrow the term used in the movie itself) going on. But it left me with no release and a mild case of intellectual blue balls.

I finally found my intellectual release in the 3rd story. It was funny and serious, thought provoking and entertaining, unbelievable yet realistic... Everything a good movie should be...

And then there was the climax. It was cherry on top of this tri-layered cake. An expected yet perfect surprise ending that wraps it all up pretty neatly. After the climax, all the 3 apparently incomplete stories become complete.

The movie is full of some pretty serious speculations. It raises some very serious questions. And it tried to give some very important messages. The cinematography is awesome. Some of the scenes are breath-taking. Without much use of CGI or SFX or fancy sets, they have made good use of the real-life surroundings and natural light very effectively. And my friend tells me it was shot entirely using a DSLR camera! The lead actors have done some pretty decent acting. But kudos to the writer-director, for coming up with such thought provoking stories, sketching such believable and well-defined characters and yet managing to keep it all entertaining...

It is not a commercial movie. If you are looking for mere entertainment, please find it else where. But if you like some good thought provoking and eye opener unusual film, then go for this one...

My rating: 3.5