Mar 31, 2009

Why so serious?


Why so serious?
Joker's dad asked him!
Why so serious?
Joker joked with me.

The smile streched from one end to another.
Its elastic almost ready to snap.

The full moon stories were told in vain.
Some humorous innuendoes were narrated with fake pleasure.
The sky crystal clear and the throat was blocked.
The air was so pleasant and the brain was jammed.

Why so serious?
Joker pointed at the lovely weather.
In an answer, it burst open.
Rained, till it drenched him.
Crying in the rain my friend?

Joker, Joker, Joker
No need to be a cynic, I spoke for a change.

He turned around, smiled,
The elastic stretched and broke
He walked away.

I was just being a joker.

Lil Zizou


Watching a good movie on a bad day is a great idea!!!! That's exactly what I did. With all the humdrum inside my head, I decided to catch a movie with a friend and ended up watching a cute little flick called Little Zizou. Quite a refreshing movie! Some of the nuances were obviously not understood very clearly as I am not that familiar with the Bawa community. But interesting glimpses in the movie.

The secret underground airplane project by the teenage boys was awesome and enviable. So is the awesome graphic novel by the angry, interesting and calm teenage guy (Imaad Shah) who hates his father and is little cynical and a little “love lost”.

The healer/feeler pronouncing the chants every morning to solve the community’s “problems” and then expressing his disgust at his healer/feeler companion when she suggests that he should continue doing it even when the entire community has turned against him, is fun.

Good performances by everybody. Good use of John Abraham as just a show piece. He doesn’t deserve to act!

Anyways, the two people who take the cake are Lil Zizou himself (His late mother is an angel who gives him a sign of things to come by sending hottie Kamal Sidhu! and soccer star Zidane needs to come to India especially when he can go as far as France) Another good actor: Boman’s wife. Super good. Almost like Arjun Rampal’s wife in Rock On. Impressive. Go watch it, if you have not!

Mar 26, 2009

Read the signs

The reasons that I have not been able to write since last few days is that a) I was excited about and busy with the poetry group blog I started and b) I was uninspired. However, there is one thing that happened recently that inspired me to put in some words here. I had gone to a friend's house to celebrate her birthday and to have a girls' night out. Don't worry this post is not about the escapades of that night.

I happened to meet her sister who is a handwriting analyst (People who analyse handwriting and signature). I am always fascinated with handwriting analysis as there is some scientific approach involved in it as compared to horroscopes which are just 'bollocks' (as a friend mentioned last night).Anyways, I put my humble signature on a crisp white sheet of paper and there you go...one point after the other...some made me think, some made my smile and some embarrased me.. But the common thread: they were all so fucking accurate. I am impressed. Period.

She even mentioned some interesting points about cryptography. There are some people who write right to left and in the process make a cut on the alphabet in the same flow (for example t)..That's apparently a destructive aspect of personality. I am not saying that its all true but I just feel there is some sort of science in the analysis. Wotsay?

Mar 13, 2009

Long and lyrical . Truly magnificent performance

Long and lyrical
Saw The curious case of Benjamin Button this Sunday. Hadn't heard great reviews about the movie. But like any intelligent person, I chose to figure it out for myself. Once in the theatre, I was in for a long, slow but rythmic and lyrical experience of almost two and a half hours. What if we were born old and grew young and died when we are babies. Surrealisitc? Well, that's the basic storyline of the movie.
Life of Benjamin is interconnected to a clock which moves backward and is created by a desolated father who is hopeful to get his son who has been killed during a war. He is born as a old man-child and has been discarded as a monster child. Nevertheless, he continues to lead his super weird yet normal life as a wonderful lady decided to take care of him.
The movie traverses Benjamin's journey. BTW do check out Brad Pitt in his youngest avtar- too hot to handle! Anyways, he falls in love twice, once as an old man who is 17 years old and once as a charming (super hot) young dude who is about 40-50 years old. Cate Blanchett (his second love interest) is just about ok in the movie. But she cant be blamed much as the movie belongs to Pitt. The scene that I enjoyed the most is where a priest thinks that he is making seven year old OLD man walk and dies of a heart attack with the excitement.



Truly magnificent performance
Saw The Reader on Thursday night and had no idea that I would be so f****** mesmerised by Kate Winslet who plays Hanna Schmitz. I think she has outdone herself (won the oscar for this one). However, let me warn you at the outset that if you are planning to watch it in a theatre in India, please be ready to get irritated as so many scenes are cut inspite of the fact that it has an adult certificate (WTF)! I wouldn't go into the story of the film, you can read the synopsis here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Reader
There is something heartwarming about Hanna (former guard who worked during the Nazi regime in Germany) being illiterate. She has a desire to be read to. The film opens on her reader who is a 16 year old boy who has a torrid "love" affair with Hanna. The expressions when she is being read to are simply mindblowing. The scene where she is asked to give a sample of her handwriting during a court trial is my personal favourite. Hanna refuses and accepts the blame which leads to life imprisonment!
I also like the scene when her young ex-lover Michael meets her when her life imprisonment is about to get over. He removes his hand when she keeps her hand over it. Complicated poignant scene. Michael's predicament as a young lover who is always trying to understand Hanna's weird mood swings is interesting.
The larger issue of her getting a life imprisonment for locking up jewish women in a church during a fire twenty years ago when she was working as an SS guard during Nazi regime is worth pondering over!

PS: Both the movies are book adaptations. While Benjamin has been adapted from F Scott Fitzgerald's short story (READ THE FULL STORY HERE: http://www.readbookonline.net/read/690/10628/), Reader is adapted from Bernhard Schlink's book The Reader.

Mar 10, 2009

Movie Marathon

Well guys, after a very long time, I spent the last Sunday all by myself. It turned out to be a decent one. Had taken five movies from a colleague in the office (God bless him!) and saw the three of them on sunday, back-to-back...Let me tell ya people, there is a thrill in watching movies "back-to-back".Shawshank Redemption, The Prestige and Burn After Reading are the three movies that I saw:

Shawshank Redemption: Pretty motivating movie but in a kind of cliche way. It was predictable till the end. It was obvious that Andy (Tim Robinson) didnt kill his wife, it was obviuos that he would get all the library books that he wanted, it was obviuos that the general would kill the young bloke who was ready to give statement in Andy's defence. Morgan Freeman was pretty much wasted. Atleast I didnt see any layers to his character. So it was just about OK. Good story fallen prey to predictability!

Burn After Reading: Now that's my kind of movie. Its a really dark comedy, so dark that you would almost forget that its a comedy thriller. Understated cynicism. Awesome characters from George Clooney to Brad Pitt to the Gym girl to Osborne's wifey and to Osborne himself...Finely etched, well laid out on the platter. The best part is the pace of the movie.. It moves at an eclectic pace, really wonderful. Do catch this one if you haven't seen it already!
The Prestige: Haven't seen the last ten minutes of the movie so cant write any comments!!!