Vermeer at the Rijksmuseum

I visited the bumper Vermeer exhibition today in Amsterdam. I had previously seen many of the works separately in different galleries in the USA and here in the Netherlands, but there's certainly a raw power to bringing them all together in the same space.

Above all, it was the still city landscapes from Delft that left the biggest impression. These small scenes captured so much and seemed to pull you in as if weighted down from within.

I'm glad I managed to get tickets to the exhibition, but will enjoy revisiting the two Delft paintings when they return to the Hague later in the year.

Sholay

**Some spoilers ahead**

Sholay was not what I was expecting. Somehow the posters or some imagery that I'd seen had led me to expect a film that was about grand politics, perhaps vast armies fighting in the desert.. Instead, and this is all I have to compare it to, some kind of western?

I enjoyed the plot twists. I wasn't expecting the various deaths in the film, especially towards the end. The songs were all pretty good. One felt almost modern somehow.

Some scenes I felt went on quite a bit longer than they needed, particularly early on. I am told that the action scenes were praised at the time, though they too felt a little too long for my tastes.

All in all, some strong character portraits, and I feel some precedents set for future films. I half wonder if there's a sequel where Gabbar escapes from the surely-minimum-security prison to which he gets sent.

Kapoor & Sons

A bittersweet family drama set in Coonoor, Tamil Nadu. This was a picture of India I wasn't familiar with, and purely as backdrop this went a long way for me. The story with Tia (played by Alia Bhatt) seemed vastly underfunded in the plot, and the stumbling block was artificial. A number of strong ensemble scenes, though, and just enough grit in the ending to make sense to this viewer.

Dil Dhadakne Do

A family travels around the Turkish coast on a cruise ship, while romance and past transgressions erupt among them. Some catchy dance moments in this film, but the plot felt too scripted, too unnatural. Too much like Titanic, or perhaps Midsummer Night's Dream at times. Fun, but forgettable.