Celebrating 30 years of being a Def Leppard fan. This was the first song of theirs that I heard/saw the video for.
Day: September 30, 2017
Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge
Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge (2017) is the fifth installment in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series and the sequel to On Stranger Tides (2011). The film is directed by Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg from a script by Jeff Nathanson, with Jerry Bruckheimer serving again as producer. Johnny Depp, Kevin McNally and Geoffrey Rush reprise their roles as Jack Sparrow, Joshamee Gibbs and Hector Barbossa, respectively, while Javier Bardem, Brenton Thwaites and Kaya Scodelario join the cast as Armando Salazar, Henry Turner and Carina Smyth. The film also features the returns of Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley as Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann, following their absence from the previous film.
The movie starts off with Henry Turner, the son of Will and Elizabeth, trying to contact his father’s ship The Dutchman, which was cursed to be swallowed the sea. Not sure how many years have passed since At World’s End (which came out in 2007) but the boy wants to rescue his father. Henry is made aware that only the mythical trident of Poseiden can free the crew of the Flying Dutchman and that Captain Jack Sparrow is his only hope to get it. A few years later Henry is part of the Royal Navy but is put in the brig for mutiny when his ship sails for the supernatural Devil’s Triangle. The ship comes across a shipwreck, the Silent Mary, and are attacked by its ghostly crew led by Captain Salazar. Salazar and his crew kill everyone aboard except Henry. Salazar, seeing a wanted poster of Jack allows him to live so he can deliver a message to Jack that he is coming for him before leaving.
In Saint Martin, a young astronomer and horologist named Carina Smyth is sentenced to death for alleged witchcraft, but escapes custody. She briefly runs into Captain Jack Sparrow who, along with his crew, is attempting to steal the money from the bank’s vault. However the end up losing the money but dragging the whole bank with them. The crew leave Jack behind as they have lost faith in him. Depressed, Jack forsakes his magic compass to pay for a drink, subsequently freeing Salazar’s crew from their imprisonment within the Devil’s Triangle. Carina learns Henry is looking for the Trident’s location and offers to help him using a diary left by her unknown father. Carina and Jack are both captured and face execution, but are saved by Henry and Jack’s crew, setting sail on the Dying Gull.
We have Barbossa’s ship and crew are destroyed by Salazar but he ends up saving himself by telling him that he will apprehend Jack. He tells Barbossa that long ago he worked for the Spanish Navy hunting down pirates. However, a young Jack tricked him into sailing into the Devil’s Triangle, cursing his crew. Salazar pursues the Dying Gull, forcing Jack, Henry, and Carina to flee to an island while fighting off Salazar’s cursed sharks, discovering that Salazar’s crew cannot go on land. After saving Jack from a forced-marriage, Barbossa allies himself with Jack and provides him his compass, obtained from the sea witch Shansa. He uses the Sword of Triton to restore the miniaturized Black Pearl, trapped in a bottle by Blackbeard, to its original size but betrays Jack and takes the Pearl for himself once more.
During the voyage, Jack and Barbossa realize Carina is the latter’s long-lost daughter who he had left her at an orphanage with his diary so she could live a better life. Jack, Barbossa, and Carina use the island’s magic to open a path to the Trident’s spot on the ocean floor, parting the ocean. Salazar captures Henry and possesses his body, chasing Jack and the others across the ocean floor and seizes the Trident, freeing Henry. Henry shatters the Trident, breaking all curses upon the sea and restoring Salazar’s crew to life.
However, the divided sea begins to collapse in on itself. The Pearl drops its anchor to lift them to safety, but Salazar, not satisfied with being human, follows Jack, still hell-bent on killing him. Carina realizes that Barbossa is her father when she spots a tattoo on his arm identical to the diary’s cover. Barbossa sacrifices himself to kill Salazar, allowing the others to escape alive. Some time later, Henry and Carina reach Port Royal, where Will appears, free from the Dutchman. His wife, Elizabeth, appears moments later and the Turner family reunite. Jack watches from the Pearl sailing away into the horizon. In a post-credits scene, Will and Elizabeth sleep in their bedroom but the silhouette of an apparently resurrected Davy Jones appears. Will wakes up, assuming it was a nightmare, but a small puddle filled with barnacles under the bed implies that Jones has indeed returned.
I kinda found the film quite boring and muddled in it’s storyline. It was a good decision to not watch it in the theatre. While I enjoyed the first two films really well, it’s been going downhill since then. But the film grossed $172.6 million in the United States and Canada and $621.6 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $794.2 million, against a production budget of $230 million. So you can be sure atleast one more film will come out of this and probably then, or maybe in a few years time, they will reboot it again. Johnny Depp though is a treat to watch. 6.5 outta 10!
RIP Tom Alter
Veteran Indian film, television and theatre actor and Padma Shri Tom Alter has died aged 67. The renowned actor and one-time sports writer and author had been battling stage four skin cancer. Alter acted in over 300 movies apart from numerous TV shows, most famously as the gangster Keshav Kalsi in the hit soap opera Junoon which ran for a record five years during the 1990s. In addition to acting, Alter also ventured into direction and was a sports journalist in the 80s and 90s. Alter has written three books, one non-fiction and two fiction, and in 2008 was awarded the prestigious Padma Shri by the Indian government in recognition for his services to the field of arts and cinema.
Born in the hill station of Mussoorie in 1950, Alter was a third-generation American in India who studied at Woodstock School in the Himalayas and then briefly at Yale University in the USA, before returning to India in the early 70s. In 1972, he was one of three men – the others being Benjamin Gilani and Phunsok Ladakhi – chosen from over 800 applicants across north India to be enrolled in at the prestigious Film and Television Institute of India in Pune, where two years later he graduated with a gold medal diploma in acting. Among his notable roles during the first decade of his acting career were Satyajit Ray’s Shatranj Ke Khiladi (1977), Shyam Benega’s Junoon (1979), Manoj Kumar’s magnum opus Kranti (1981) and Raj Kapoor’s Ram Teri Ganga Maili (1985).
Other notable directors he worked with during the 70s and 80s were V Shantaram, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Manmohan Desai, Subhash Ghai, Chetan Anand – who gave him his first break in the Dev Anand-starrer Saheb Bahadur – and Vidhu Vinod Chopra, who gave him the pivotal role of the gangster Musa in the critically acclaimed hit Parinda. n the 90s, Alter was seen in many films, prominent among them Mahesh Bhatt’s Aashiqui, Junoon and Gumrah, Ketan Mehta’s Sardar and Priyadarshan’s Kala Pani. During this time, he also acted in regional cinema – Bengali, Assamese, Telegu, Tamil and Kumaoni films. Among his foreign films are Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi and One Night with the King, in which he acted opposite his idol, the legendary Peter O’Toole.
On TV, Alter’s leading work came in Junoon, Zabaan Sambhalke, Jugalbandi, Bharat EK Khoj, Ghutan, Shaktimaan, Captain Vyom, Mere Ghar Aana Zindagi and Yahaan Ke Hum Sikandar. Most recently, he was seen in a pivotal role in the ongoing serial Rishton Ka Chakravyuh on Star Plus. At the time of his death, Alter had approximately 16 unreleased films lined up as well as a web series by Eros Now titled Smoke. He is survived by his wife Carol, son Jamie, and daughter Afshaan.