Lost In Tranquility

My Love Affair with Mass Effect

Posted by Balaji Sivaraman at 10:56 pm No Responses »

Apr 142013

What makes the Mass Effect trilogy one of the greatest game series of all time? That question will understandably generate a myriad of responses from the series’ long-time fans. Some will highlight the breathtaking science-fiction world the creators gave us, vaguely reminiscent of Star Wars and Star Trek, yet completely new all the same. Some will point to the abundant gameplay options available to the player; whether playing as a Soldier, Engineer or Biotic, there was always something new to be found in each playthrough. Nearly everybody will point to the consequences the players’ decisions have on the game world, with [Read More...]

Thank You and Farewell, Roger Ebert!

Posted by Balaji Sivaraman at 12:00 am No Responses »

Apr 062013

Roger Ebert passed away yesterday night, finally succumbing to his long, arduous struggle with cancer. I woke up to the news today morning and haven’t been able to think clearly, if at all, for the better part of the day. How can I even begin quantify the impact Roger Ebert has had on me, as well as scores of other filmbuffs? For me personally, he was the baptist. He was the one who inducted me into the world of cinephilia by a trial-by-fire. It was somewhere between 2003-05 when I began reading his reviews. I clearly remember thinking he was [Read More...]

The Rhythms of Argo

Posted by Balaji Sivaraman at 11:23 pm No Responses »

Mar 082013

A couple of days back, courtesy of a birthday gift from my mother, I got my hands on the combo pack (cover shown above) of 2012′s Best Picture winner Argo and decided to give it another whirl. Having seen it twice already and being engrossed each time, I chose to fall back into a detached mode and try to nitpick what it is exactly that makes this film tick. So I popped the BR-DVD in and started taking my notes, but as the film neared its inevitable climax, something fascinating happened. The Houseguests along with Tony Mendez got aboard the [Read More...]

Haridas (2013)

Posted by Balaji Sivaraman at 7:44 pm No Responses »

Mar 052013

There’s a beautiful moment in the second half of Haridas where the child lets his father know exactly what it is that excites him. It is, at once, the first time the father stoops down to truly understand what drives his autistic son; the scene where the audience understands the significance of a totem the child has carried thus far; and the instant where the film finally kicks into gear. It is also one of the few truly cathartic sequences in a film which is otherwise muddled in the melodramatic conventions required of Tamil films. Not surprisingly, my mind floated back [Read More...]

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

Posted by Balaji Sivaraman at 7:40 pm No Responses »

Feb 192013

As I exited the theater after watching Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, I had a sinking feeling that had nothing to do with the film’s quality and everything to do with the real-life events it recounted. I thought to myself, “The United States not only killed the most wanted man in history, they also made a fucking brilliant film about it. Respect! What has my country done lately? Nothing.” This realization was quite depressing because of the truth in it. Zero Dark Thirty’s retelling of the painstaking efforts of the CIA to find Osama Bin Laden’s location followed by the US Navy SEAL’s assault on [Read More...]

Lincoln (2012)

Posted by Balaji Sivaraman at 12:20 am No Responses »

Feb 132013

When Lincoln was initially announced, Liam Neeson was signed up to take on the challenge of bringing to life the 16th President of the United States. As someone who holds a great deal of admiration for Neeson, I was intrigued, not the least because it would’ve been one of his more showy roles in a long time. Of course, we all know what happened, Neeson, having lost his wife by the time the film went to floors, opted out of the project saying he was a little too old for the part, and Daniel Day-Lewis was roped in and what was already [Read More...]

Special 26 (2013)

Posted by Balaji Sivaraman at 6:42 pm No Responses »

Feb 092013

P.S.: Although I’ve tried to avoid major spoilers, Special 26 is one of those films which works better if you enter the theater with no preconceived notions. So be warned! One of the defining aspects of Neeraj Pandey’s films so far seems to be his usage of offhand shots/scenes to establish his characters. How else can you explain Naseeruddin Shah’s conversations on the phone with his wife in A Wednesday! which are perfunctory to the overall plot? They serve no purpose other than to reveal something about this character. Will the film lose anything without these phone conversations? Certainly not. But they [Read More...]

Random Thoughts on Conversations with Mani Ratnam

Posted by Balaji Sivaraman at 12:24 am 1 Response »

Feb 092013

Random Thoughts on Conversations with Mani Ratnam

Back when I was a Denarian, I remember catching glimpses of Mouna Ragam, Agni Natchathiram, Roja, and Bombay on TV. This was a time when I didn’t place much importance on wordly things, let alone cinema, kind of like those kids in Anjali. Yet I could sense that there was something in these films, something that made me watch them again and again without making any sense of it all. Later when I entered the latter part of my teens, but still before I was the ardent filmbuff that I consider myself to be now, I saw a couple of movies that knocked the stuffing [Read More...]

Kadal (2013)

Posted by Balaji Sivaraman at 2:24 am No Responses »

Feb 062013

P.S.: This is not a review. There’s too much going on in this film for me to talk about it without giving away spoilers. Before I begin, I’d like to point you to Baradwaj Rangan’s Raavan review and his brilliant book Conversations with Mani Ratnam. I don’t think I would have appreciated Kadal as much as I did if it weren’t for both. I completed the latter on Friday night just in time for the film, and although I do hope to churn out a review, I’d like to digress a bit here to say that there’s nothing better than reading a filmmaker, that too [Read More...]

Life Of Pi (2012)

Posted by Balaji Sivaraman at 12:41 am No Responses »

Feb 052013

Watching Ang Lee’s breathtaking (in a purely visual sense) Life of Pi, I found it surprising that I was constantly reminded of that great survival motion picture of the last decade Cast Away, a film I’ve not seen in more than a decade. But what surprised me even more was that despite its trivial visuals, Robert Zemeckis’ film resonated much more strongly with me – even after all these years – than what I saw today. That is to take nothing away from Life of Pi, which is the most visually stunning motion picture I’ve seen in 2012, but there was no point in the [Read More...]

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