M S - Q T - K H: Interesting connection

In the past couple of weeks I saw few interesting and important movies (among few other movies as well). Interesting - for me; Important - for the people involved in those movies. The movies are:

Martin Scorsese - Taxi driver, Goodfellas, Raging Bull
Quentin Tarantino - Reservoir dogs, Kill Bill - 1 and 2, Jackie Brown

These movies were important milestones in the career of the directors - Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino, and actors - Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Uma Thurman, to name a few. No doubt I thoroughly enjoyed these movies. Especially Goodfellas & Raging Bull - not just for De Niro & Scorsese, but for Joe Pesci's extraordinarily stunning performance. It is still hard to believe that I know Joe Pesci already from the movie Home alone. (He is the shorter one of the 2 stupid thieves who try to break in to the house). He won a well-deserved Academy award for supporting role in Goodfellas, the award which he surprisingly missed 10 years ago for Raging Bull.

I have the habit of noticing movies closely for minute details. Some scene from some movie will remind me of another scene of some other movie. While watching 'Kurudhippunal' recently (I hadn't seen it completely earlier) I noticed that the guy who played the role of 'Rat' Dhanush in terrorist gang is none other than Arvind Krishna - the now famous cinematographer of Kadhal kondein, 7 G Rainbow colony, Pachaikkili muthucharam, and the infamous Kuselan.

Raging Bull begins and ends with a monologue by a now older and fatter Jake LaMotta (Robert De Niro) - a former boxer. When the movie began, his old get-up and facial make-up reminded me of someone else. I couldn't quickly recollect who it was. Slowly as the movie progressed it became clear. The older LaMotta's big face reminded me of some of the Kamal Hassans in Dasavatharam, especially Chris Fletcher and Vincent Poovaragan. When the movie ended I realized I had just finished watching one of the best Hollywood movies of the 1980s. The surprise came to me when the credits started rolling. The make-up creator was 'Michael Westmore'. Since the name sounded familar, out of curiosity I googled and surprise surprise - he was the make-up director for not only Kamal Hassan's Dasavatharam, but also for Chachi 420. Dasavatharam came 28 years after Raging Bull.







Another surprise was in 'Kill Bill'. I saw the complete 4-hours version of the 2 parts stitched together. Not a moment I felt bored. After all, it is a Tarantino movie and I saw it just after his Reservoir dogs, how can I get bored! In Kill Bill part 1, there is a 2-D anime sequence showing the early life of a Japanese (woman) Don played by Lucy Liu. Tarantino would have used anime to avoid showing too much violence directly (and also for a possible commercial reason of making the movie more popular in Japan - the land of Animes). This reminded me of the 2-D anime sequence in Kamal Hassan's Aalavandhan. Kamal Hassan (ok ok, the director is Suresh Krishna, but who cares!) would have used anime for a similar reason. What surprised me was not that both Tarantino and Kamal used 2-D anime in their movies and for almost same reason, but that Aalavandhan (2001) released 2 years before Kill Bill(2003-04)!!

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