The Spiderwick Chronicles

Can you ever think that there are goblins, boggarts and orgs all around us and invisible to us all the time - while they could see us. And if we see them, they could sense it. That's what this movie is about. It is basically a children's movie - a mix of "Alice in wonderland" and "harry potter".

I generally love such movies. The concept of the movie itself is non-realistic and that makes the movie more interesting. The author or script-writer can open up his imagination and write whatever he could possibly think of.

The movie starts off with "Mr Spiderwick" writing a book and sealing it to hide its secret. And after many many years, his grand-grand children come over to that place to stay. How they become acquainted with the "other" world and then see the boggards, goblins and the orges. And then they have a mission to save the book from the hands of the big bad shape changing orge - "Mulgarath".

The special effects are good and you probably would sit on the edge of your seat throughout the movie. A movie worth watching...

legends cannot be remade

Yup thats true. You cannot remake legends. The originals are still the best. Why am i saying this? Well, recently i had a chance to watch the recently remade bollywood legend "sholay" - "Ram Gopal Verma ki AAG".

There has been remixes of all types of classic old songs. And remix videos with all "beautiful" gals dancing here and there. And yes upto some extent i tend to like them. But i cant hear them for ever. I can hear those remixes for some time. But the original songs are still the best and can be heard again and again.

There was the remake of the bollywood and amitabh bacchan classic - "DON" starring shah rukh khan. And it was not that good. The remake had one good quality that in the new version of "DON" - bad wins over good as opposed to the original version where good wins over bad. So though the movie was not that good the climax saved the movie and it did make some news. People liked it.

But then, what is wrong with "AAG"? Let me put it this way - it is a terrible mix of old and new. The movie is simply a very bad version for sholay. You cannot replace "Gabbar Singh" with "Babban" or "Thakur" with "mohanlal" or "Veeru" with "Heero" or "Jai" with "Raj" or "Basanti" with "Ghungroo" or "Dhanno" with "Laila". The original characters and their names were the best suited. Babban and mohanlal does not ring at all. Nor could you modernize the dialogues

Orignial - "Kitne Admi the?"
Remake - "Kitne ... Kitne"

It just does not ring. The final fight sequence is also very sick. And the mix of original sound track with modern sound track during the final fight sequence makes things terrible. You cannot remove thakur's fingers instead of his hand. And of course the thakur has to kill gabbar with his special shoes (with nails) rather than kill him with an axe or whatever...

Earlier bollywood movies used to be remakes of origial hollywood movies. Like the recently hit "Partner" was a remake of "Hitch". Though i enjoyed the orignial hollywood movie a lot more than the remake. But it still did make sense for those audience who do not watch or do not understand the hollywood movie/culture/language. But remake of a hindi original does not make sense at all.

It seems that the bollywood directors and producers and script writters have run out of new and fresh ideas and have also run out of more hollywood movies to remake. Though there a lot of hollywood moives which could be remade still... Or maybe, they are just tired of remaking hollywood movies.

Hope that "Victoria No 203" remake is better... Will watch it soon.