Oxytoxic's Rants

The Wrestler (2008)

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 01:37:36 GMT

I'm loaded in all six compartments with prejudice on this one. Be ready to bite the bullet. So, Darren decided to make it more real for us than we know it is. Half an hour into this film, and I was still watching the gratuitous violence and wondering. Wait, let me summon up the right American phrase? Guts and Glory? A world weary, slow- witted, once successful wrestler who has to put up with the vagaries of creativity in the world of pro-wrestling. Blades, staples, forks, what have you. Beats me why I have to watch and sympathize with a third of screen time about this medieval sport. Oh no, not a sport, but a show - that the performer puts up for his followers. The blood he purposefully gushes for his fans. This shit he puts up with just because it's the only thing knows to do for a living. The only respite being the cheering he gets in the ringside and back in the wings from fellow performers. What the bleep. Him trying to apologise and get back into his daughter's life after god knows how long is the so not convincing middle of the film. Marisa Tomei, his love interest has nice tits. And if she was a career stripper instead of an actor, she'd make it to Vegas as a star with the Cirque Du Soleil. I don't know about this being the Mickey Rourke performance of a lifetime. It's not even the accurate working class hero that we try so hard to make out to be - what with his binges of drinking and sex with a girl his daughter's age. He does'nt come across as a hercules of the human condition. And because he can't even pick up the pieces in his life, he reconciles to being the fading star carrying the burden of WWF. And goes on to live his death wish in the end. I don't mean to be a prissy prude and this might have been a cockle-warming candidate for the bleeding heart non-critic that I once was, but this movie made me want to puke the beer and glazed chicken wings I had for dinner.

Sweet Seventeen

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 13:23:22 GMT

Create Fake Magazine Covers with your own picture at MagMyPic.com
Subscribe to Seventeen Magazine at a 67% discount!

U2 18 Singles, Teenage Poems, Walk on Water

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 07:56:39 GMT

I just love these recent U2 videos called Window in the Skies.

First Video

Second Video

And Bono will continue to remain one of my favorite vocalists.

~

I've put up some of my teenage poems on my writing blog, writerlytense. Go take a deek in your free time.

~

In other news, i saw the Israeli film Walk on Water by Etyan Fox.

Back after a hiatus

Mon, 21 May 2007 05:41:54 GMT

I'm back with some big news, me babies. I'm engaged to be married to Divya, the gal stuffin chow in the picture. Everybody, give me a high 5! She's a sweetie with a heart of gold. But more on that later. I don't want to join the hordes that feel obliged to bore the general population with their incessant squeeing about their newfound soul mates. From me, you'll only get some interesting posts every once.

~

VS

I finally saw Infernal Affairs. I'd wanted to see this film even before Marty decided to plagiarize it as The Departed. I was aghast to observe that the Marty's story is ditto down to the last detail (except for the romance which gets a Hollywood twist).

Infernal Affairs, which is a Hong Kong production, seemed more slick to me than a lot of Hollywood thrillers which get killed on cliches'. Minimal dialogue and the effective use of visual cues, traditional and high-tech, to progress the plot makes for more attentive viewing. The visual consulting of Christopher Doyle is evident in the film.

Marty had his star cast and his ability to New-Yorkise a script like Infernal Affairs going for him. But it is disappointing to know that he does'nt bring anything new into the script apart from the snappy dialogue, a murky romance and an irreconcilable ending.

This has left me wondering now - why did the Academy finally shower him with awards for a film that that does'nt even come close to his all of his original work till now?

~

In other news, I've been listening to a lot of Frank Zappa since last night and digging the musical philosophy of The Mothers of Invention. Music for the here-now, with no past or future. Music that combined medieval precision and futuristic experimentation to come up with sounds that were very contemporary. Yes, they were contemporary because i think i was born a good thirty years late.

And Zappa was quite an articulate spokesperson for his music too - his interviews are very stimulating and educating. He truly represented the quintessential sound of the 60s-80s and was'nt ever bullied into the genre "stereo"types of record houses back then. He eventually segued into independant music production.

By his own admission, people either love his music or abhor it and compare it to noise. I used to count myself in the latter category till lately. But through one night of listening only, I have discovered the exquisite genius in his experimentation and am gorging on his material.

Here's some of his stuff on youtube for you to sample:

Cosmik Debris

Stinkfoot

Whippin Post

Montana

City of Tiny Lites

Apostrophe

Curses on youtube management for castrating the song endings!

And here's a little treat:
Zappa composing on his Synclavier

Scorsese rules....

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 07:34:48 GMT

Missed seeing Oscar Nite coz i don't own a fuckin' telly.
But that right there is a cinema moment worth beholding (though it was planned). The 4 (there were others of course, these 4 were the fresh out of college kiddos) people that started the American New Wave - 3 past winners handing over a first Oscar to probably the most deserving of the four - but who never really tried for an Oscar. Lucas and Coppola started out together to went on do their own things. Around the same time Spielberg and Scorsese started out with their own agendas and got to where they are now. More on that later. Here are the rest of the recipients of the statuette this year.

Also found out today that there's something called Google Books! Check this one out -> The New American Cinema by Jon Lewis.

Mon, 14 Aug 2006 11:13:32 GMT

Friends, please go thru my new profile and decide whether you still want to keep me here or rather just add me on one of my other journals.

Really diverse spoof of Shakira's "Hips Dont Lie!"

Sun, 13 Aug 2006 06:04:07 GMT



"Really diverse spoof of Shakira's "Hips Dont Lie!"" on Google Video
See all kinds of people shake their moneymaker to prove that fact! ----- Shakira spoof. Shakira - Ryan Gangsters - Sal, Matt Directed/Filmed/Edited - Tom Go to the official shakira spoof... - > www.allthesevideos.net

my new journals

Fri, 04 Aug 2006 22:07:20 GMT

Hi Friends,
I've created 4 new journals in the following areas of my interest:

Writing - writelytense
Films - 24_7films
Photography - picturetheory
Mobile Photography - mobiledagtype

Add me wherever you want to follow me.

Tue, 18 Jul 2006 08:46:47 GMT

Calling all livejournallers in Pune and Bombay!
Am in these places on the following days:
Pune: Tuesday-Friday evening
Mumbai: Friday night-Monday morning
Holler at me here if you want to meet up or call me on 98950-35557!

meme time: flicked from vaguelyalive

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 11:09:36 GMT

1. Pick your birth month.
2. Strike out anything that doesn't apply to you.
3. Bold the 10 or so that best apply to you.

JULY: Fun to be with. Secretive. Difficult to fathom and to be understood.Quiet unless excited or tensed. Takes pride in oneself.Has reputation.~~Easily consoled.~~ Honest. Concerned about people's feelings. Tactful.Friendly. Approachable. ~~Emotional temperamental and unpredictable~~.Moody ~~and easily hurt~~. Witty and sparkly. Not revengeful. Forgiving but never forgets. Dislikes ~~nonsensical and~~ unnecessary things. Guides others physically ~~and mentally~~. Sensitive and forms impressions carefully. Caring and loving. ~~Treats others equally~~. Strong sense of sympathy. Wary and sharp. Judges people through observations. ~~Hardworking~~. No difficulties in studying. Loves to be alone. Always broods about the past and the old friends. Likes to be quiet. ~~Homely person~~. Waits for friends. ~~Never looks for friends~~. Not aggressive unless provoked. ~~Prone to having stomach and dieting problems~~. Loves to be loved (who fucking doesn't). ~~Easily hurt but takes long to recover.~~

Go here for the rest of the list.

Cochin Port Boat Ride: on my Nokia 6681

Tue, 20 Jun 2006 03:30:36 GMT

Thu, 15 Jun 2006 14:04:16 GMT

i felt like indulging myself today. bought myself a Nokia 6681.

why am i telling you this? i don't know. i guess i've nothing else to report.

very interesting concept!

Tue, 16 May 2006 14:52:36 GMT

Here is a novel proposition. Are you up to it?

http://www.noveltwists.com/

as seen on damninteresting.com

Tue, 09 May 2006 09:38:44 GMT

Eyewitnesses to Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Posted by Alan Bellows on May 3rd, 2006 at 11:22 pm

On 6 August 1945, a number of eyes in the Japanese city of Hiroshima turned skyward at the drone of a US B-29 bomber flying across the cloudless sky, accompanied by two other aircraft. Their arrival was not a surprise; the early warning radar net had detected the incoming planes and an air-raid alert had been issued for the city. But soon the Japanese military realized that only three planes were incoming, and the alert was lifted. The anti-aircraft guns sat silent, and the fighter planes lingered in their hangars. A mere three planes were considered incapable of posing a significant threat, so it was presumed that these craft were weather planes– a precursor to a true attack. The Japanese military opted to conserve their diminishing supplies of munitions and fuel for use against more serious threats.

The sound of the American planes drew the attention of the city's residents, many of whom were outdoors participating in work programs. A few saw a large parachute unfurl beneath the B-29 before it flew away, but most saw only the flash that soon followed. The events that unfolded that morning on the streets of Hiroshima were recorded by those who survived. These survivors would come to be known as hibakusha– "people exposed to the bomb."

For those who didn't see the planes, the sudden flare of harsh light was the first indication that something unusual had happened. In that eerily silent moment, white clouds sprung from the clear blue sky as the Little Boy spilled the destructive equivalent of thirteen thousand tons of TNT over the city, projecting intense radiation in every direction.

Yoshitaka Kawamoto was thirteen years old when the bomb exploded over Hiroshima, in a classroom less than a kilometer away from the hypocenter:

"One of my classmates, I think his name is Fujimoto, he muttered something and pointed outside the window, saying, "A B-29 is coming." He pointed outside with his finger. So I began to get up from my chair and asked him, "Where is it?" Looking in the direction that he was pointing towards, I got up on my feet, but I was not yet in an upright position when it happened. All I can remember was a pale lightening flash for two or three seconds. Then, I collapsed. I don t know much time passed before I came to. It was awful, awful. The smoke was coming in from somewhere above the debris. Sandy dust was flying around. I was trapped under the debris and I was in terrible pain and that's probably why I came to. I couldn't move, not even an inch. Then, I heard about ten of my surviving classmates singing our school song. I remember that. I could hear sobs. Someone was calling his mother. But those who were still alive were singing the school song for as long as they could. I think I joined the chorus. We thought that someone would come and help us out. That's why we were singing a school song so loud. But nobody came to help, and we stopped singing one by one. In the end, I was singing alone."

A bit farther away at 3.7 kilometers, a chief weather man for the Hiroshima District Weather Bureau named Isao Kita describes his experience:

"Well, at that time, I happened to be receiving the transmission over the wireless. I was in the receiving room and I was facing northward. I noticed the flashing light. It was not really a big flash. But still it drew my attention. In a few seconds, the heat wave arrived. After I noticed the flash, white clouds spread over the blue sky. It was amazing. It was as if blue morning-glories had suddenly bloomed up in the sky. It was funny, I thought. Then came the heat wave. It was very very hot. Even though there was a window glass in front of me, I felt really hot. It was as if I was looking directly into a kitchen oven. I couldn't bear the heat for a long time. Then I heard the cracking sound. I don't know what made that sound, but probably it came from the air which suddenly expanded in the room. By that time, I realized that the bomb had been dropped. As I had been instructed, I pushed aside the chair and lay with my face on the floor. Also as I had been instructed during the frequent emergency exercises, I covered my eyes and ears with hands like this. And I started to count. You may feel that I was rather heartless just to start counting. But for us, who observed the weather, it is a duty to record the process of time, of various phenomena. So I started counting with the light flash. When I counted to 5 seconds, I heard the groaning sound. At the same time, the window glass was blown off and the building shook from the bomb blast. So the blast reached that place about 5 seconds after the explosion. We later measured the distance between the hypocenter and our place. And with these two figures, we calculated that the speed of the blast was about 700 meters per second. The speed of sound is about 330 meters per second, which means that the speed of the blast was about twice as fast as the speed of sound."

The sky became reddish over Hiroshima, and saturated with smoke and dust. All who were alive and mobile quickly began to try to help the injured or flee the area, few realizing the magnitude of the destruction. The scent of char was on the air as fires began to break out around the city. Ninety percent of Hiroshima's buildings has been pulverized or damaged by the pressure wave– which had swept virtually unhindered across the flat landscape of the area– and tens of thousands of people were dead or dying.

Of the survivors, Akiko Takakura was among the closest to ground zero at only three hundred meters. She was twenty years old at the time, and she had just started her morning routine at her job in the in the Bank of Hiroshima.

"Well, it was like a white magnesium flash. I lost consciousness right after or almost at the same time I saw the flash. When I regained consciousness, I found myself in the dark. I heard my friends, Ms. Asami, crying for her mother. Soon after, I found out that we actually had been attacked. Afraid of being caught by a fire, I told Ms. Asami to run out of the building. Ms. Asami, however, just told me to leave her and to try to escape by myself because she thought that she couldn't make it anywhere. She said she couldn't move. I said to her that I couldn't leave her, but she said that she couldn't even stand up. While we were talking, the sky started to grow lighter. Then, I heard water running in the lavatory. Apparently the water pipes had exploded. So I drew water with my helmet to pour over Ms. Asami's head again and again. She finally regained consciousness fully and went out of the building with me. We first thought to escape to the parade grounds, but we couldn't because there was a huge sheet of fire in front of us. So instead, we squatted down in the street next to a big water pool for fighting fires, which was about the size of this table. Since Hiroshima was completely enveloped in flames, we felt terribly hot and could not breathe well at all. After a while, a whirlpool of fire approached us from the south. It was like a big tornado of fire spreading over the full width of the street."

Soon the control operator of the Japanese Broadcasting Corporation in Tokyo noticed that the Hiroshima station was off the air. Unaware of what had happened, he tried to re-establish his program by using another cable, but that attempt failed as well. The Tokyo railroad telegraph center also discovered that the main telegraph line had stopped working just north of Hiroshima. From those stations which were within sight of Hiroshima and still in contact, confused telegraph reports of a terrible explosion began to arrive in Tokyo.

As the mushroom cloud towered over the city, the smoky sky churned with lightning and thunder. Within a few hours, a sticky black rain began to fall which blackened everything it touched. Makeshift hospitals treated overwhelming numbers of injured as thousands of wounded left the city and hundreds of people attempted to enter the affected area to find their loved ones.

Hiroshi Sawachika was an army doctor stationed at the army headquarters in the neighboring city of Ujina on that day:

"I was told to go to the headquarters where there were lots of injured persons waiting. I went there and I started to give treatment with the help of nurses and medical course men. We first treated the office personnel for their injuries. Most of them had broken glass and pieces of wood stuck into them. We treated them one after another. Afterwards, we heard the strange noise. It sounded as if a large flock of mosquitoes were coming from a distance. We looked out of the window to find out what was happening. We saw that citizens from the town were marching towards us. They looked unusual. We understood that the injured citizens were coming towards us for treatment. But while, we thought that there should be Red Cross Hospitals and another big hospitals in the center of the town. So why should they come here, I wondered, instead of going there. At that time, I did not know that the center of the town had been so heavily damaged. After a while, with the guide of the hospital personnel, the injured persons reached our headquarters. With lots of injured people arriving, we realized just how serious the matter was. We decided that we should treat them also. Soon afterwards, we learned that many of them had badly burned. As they came to us, they held their hands aloft. They looked like they were ghosts."

Several hours later, word reached the Japanese government in Tokyo that some kind of catastrophic explosion had leveled the city. Sixteen hours after the event, Tokyo finally learned what had caused the disaster when the White House made a public announcement in Washington regarding the nuclear attack. Three days later, the city of Nagasaki was attacked by a second atomic bomb, and though the hilly terrain there protected much of the city, tens of thousands were injured and killed by the twenty-one kiloton Fat Man and the radiation it produced. Japan shortly surrendered, ending the Second World War.

Radiation sickness took many lives in the following days, and over two hundred thousand people were exposed to heavy non-fatal doses of radiation during the attacks and due to fallout in the intervening weeks. These men, women, and children who were exposed to the bomb are the hibakusha. This status entitles one to a monthly allowance from the government as compensation for injuries, since many of them have lingering health problems from which they will never recover. The radiation exposure has also left them much more susceptible to cancer.

From the flattened ruins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki sprang new cities, each of which are vibrant and active places today. Most of the surviving hibakusha still live in Japan, which to date are numbered at 266,598. At last count in August 2005, the death toll from these atomic weapons stands at 379,776– some from the blast itself, and others from radiation and fallout exposure in the following months and years.

But health problems are not the only difficulties faced by the survivors of the nuclear attacks of 1945. A general lack of knowledge as to the effects of radiation has caused considerable discrimination against these individuals. It seems that a great number of Japanese citizens are under the impression that radiation sickness is contagious or hereditary, causing many communities to ostracize the hibakusha, and causing many employers to refuse to hire the hibakusha or their children even today.

The stories of the eyewitnesses to Hiroshima and Nagasaki are moving, though disturbing. May humankind never again err so spectacularly as we did during that week in 1945.

Further reading:
Voice of Hibakusha
Hibakusha Testimony Videos
Wikipedia on Hibakusha

backmasking and teenage curiosity

Tue, 09 May 2006 09:16:36 GMT

dated skeptic.com link, but interesting if you've always wanted to try it yourself

Sat, 06 May 2006 15:27:49 GMT

You're Ulysses!

by James Joyce

Most people are convinced that you don't make any sense, but compared
to what else you could say, what you're saying now makes tons of sense. What people do
understand about you is your vulgarity, which has convinced people that you are at once
brilliant and repugnant. Meanwhile you are content to wander around aimlessly, taking in
the sights and sounds of the city. What you see is vast, almost limitless, and brings you
additional fame. When no one is looking, you dream of being a Greek folk hero.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

You're Mother Night!

by Kurt Vonnegut

Nobody knows what to believe about you, and you know least of all. You
spent most of your time convinced that the ends justify the means, but your means were,
well, downright mean! And the end is nigh. Meanwhile all you want is to travel back in
time, if not to change, then to just delight in the way it used to be. You are who you
pretend to be. Oh yes, you're the great pretender.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

You're Waiting for Godot!

by Samuel Beckett

Many people think you're extremely dull, but you're just trying to
patient. Really patient. Patient to the point of absurdity, quite frankly. Whatever
you're waiting for isn't going to just come along, so you can stop waiting. I promise.
Move on with your life. Change of scenery might do you good. Heck, any scenery might
do you good. In the meantime, you do make for very interesting conversation.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

You're Inherit the Wind!

by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee

To you, the learning process is inherently about controversy. If
people aren't having their minds stretched, how could they possibly be learning? This
makes you a good but unpopular teacher, and the people around you are ready to make it
a federal case. All you're asking them to do is evolve a little. But they would like
you to be more creative. You would make an excellent lawyer, even though people think
you love monkeys.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Music divine

Mon, 24 Apr 2006 19:21:48 GMT

I was watching parts of my Woodstock 69' DVD and i got transfixed on the Jimi Hendrix performance towards the end. I have acknowledged the man as a musical genius since as I was 15. I knew there was something about his music that was very profound but could'nt put my finger on it then. And once when i was called to the front of the classroom and asked if i still consider Jimi Hendrix's music music by the drummer of the school band, i ashamedly stated that i had moved on and preferred Jazz now. I was a fucking wannabe Jazz purist right there at 15.

I now admit to a knowledge i did'nt have then - and will reclaim my pride in liking Jimi hendrix. Feels a bit like Salman Rushdie must have felt after recanting twice over after his "satanic verses" took a test of his political will. In the Woodstock performance referred to, Jimi comes in suavely and quips "i see we meet again hmmm" and lets his guitar do the talking from there on. Segueing with ease and without pause from one track to the other and taking a half a million THC'ed crowd on a magic carpet ride. The track that caught my attention was the "star spangled banner". On the face of it, it appears to be just a distortion and feedback induced version of the american national anthem. But the song was the most politically loaded song that must have been played in the whole festival.

It starts with a mock celebration of the anthem with a rising oriental tempo (read America's big brother policy in Red Vietnam) and moves slowly on to a deafening crescendo of screeching planes and plunging napalm. It concludes with an anti-climactic misspent cadence. The whole song evokes a drama of apocalyptic proportions. I envy the scale of acheivement of the man because he died at 27, and thats how old i am now. To lend some more intertextuality to this article, I feel like Antonio Salieri felt when he realised that God was mocking at him by giving him the ability to realise the greatness of Mozart but never acheive the same. Am i suffering a similar fate by being haunted by the greatness of my thousand heroes and knowing of course, that Salieri did make his famous operas all the same. I'm beginning to wonder if my faithlessness is in vain.

breaking news like wind

Sat, 22 Apr 2006 18:23:14 GMT

Pramod Mahajan, the general secretary of the BJP, a political party in india, got shot at today by his brother over a squabble. His condition is critical and it will be known within 48 hours whether he will survive.

The above two sentences should be enough to convey the importance of the news, breaking, shmaking or such-like. But it's obviously not enough for Indian news channels, no way. They're acting like they've been awoken from some stupor and scurrying about like restless moles finding out all there is to find out about Mahajan's condition.

The tizzy the incident seems to have sent the government machinery into saving his life - flying specialists from London, conducting mass prayers, all bigwigs flocking at the hospital - is surprising considering how easily they let their loan-strapped farmers and disenfranchised weavers commit suicide. But let me not belabor a self-obvious truth - that of our callous politicians and bureaucracy - and risk digressing from the topic of "news value as defined by the indian media".

Today's news at nine on our premier news channel, NDTV, seemed to start off like an episode of ER. I haven’t seen newsreaders as concerned even when there’s a natural calamity taking countless lives. They beamed reporters grilling medical experts undertaking his case on every aspect of his anatomy and health. On finding out that he was diabetic, one of them feisty reporters continued asking questions like a medical intern should, about the impact of the bullet that had hit Mahajan's pancreas. As if I need to know about how many liters of blood his punctured liver has bled. They also dwelled for quite some time on how he was popular "across party boundaries" and eulogized the not-quite-dead-yet hero*. The whole "thing" took on the proportions of reality TV, only it wasn’t quite reality TV - which reminds of Jean Baudrillard's famous premonition that the simulacrum becomes more real than the real.

And it isn’t just the english-speaking urban middle-class who has the luxury of this fare. Elsewhere, a hindi news channel wanes eloquent to rural hindi-speaking India through an impromptu news program titled "Mahajan ghayal(injured)".

But let me not demonize Glam News for the wrong reasons - the emotion these news-deskers are exuding seems borne out of a certain bonhomie that they share with this very press-friendly politician who has graced quite a few studio shows. Reading news from the desk must really be tedious and uninspiring - 20 dead from heat wave, farmers and weavers commit suicide again, et al. It does raise eyebrows when your favorite TV politician gets a bullet or three.

Meanwhile a Malayalam channel obliviously does a keen report on how aiswarya rai fell off a bicycle while shooting on her next film and got a blood clot on her knee.

Indian news channels all seem to have lost all conviction. News might as well be classified as genre of entertainment in Journalism schools here.

*I personally consider Pramod Mahajan a fundamentalist freak who's good at realpolitik. I've seen footage of him belligerently touting the cause of "hindutva" during a BJP rally in one of Anand Patwardhan's documentaries.

p.s. the BBC seems to be the only world news organization which has a certain ethic regards qualifying news value. there was quite an interesting and candid program today on the failings of the recent EU summit.

p.p.s. which makes me wonder if a CNN or Fox News would give a minute-by-minute medical condition report if Bush were to fall off his horse at his ranch and break his nose.

Side sory: My search for Baudrillard's context led me to this interesting academic link on the hyperreality of Wikipedia.

In other news: I bought 30 DVD movies today!!

Edit: List of films bought included below on sat2</lj>'s request.

Film	Director (s)
Diabolique	Henri George Clouzot
The Bride wore Black	Francois Truffaut
Hoffa	Danny DeVito
The death of a salesman	Volker Schlondorff
Southern Comfort	Kate Davis
Smalltime Crooks	Woody Allen
M	Fritz Lang
The Color of Pomegranates	Sergei Paradjanov
Tango	Carlos Saura
Monsieur Verdoux	Charlie Chaplin
Ten	Abbas Kiarostami
All About Eve	Joseph Makiewicz
Kadosh	Amos Gitai
Driving Miss Daisy	Bruce Beresford
Wings of desire	Wim Wenders
The Scar	K. Kieslowski
A Short film about Killing	K. Kieslowski
A Short film about Love	K. Kieslowski
Together	Chen Kaige
Father and Son	Alexander Sokhurov
A Woman is a Woman	Jean Luc Godard
The killing of a Chinese Bookie	John Cassavetes
The Sun	Alexander Sokhurov
Oedipus Rex	PP Pasolini
Turtles can Fly	Bahman Ghobadi
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring	Kim Di-Duk
A Year of the Quiet Sun	K. Zanussi
American Splendor	Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini
The Big Lebowski	The Coen Bros

mhhmm

Thu, 20 Apr 2006 08:08:38 GMT

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

thats me alright

Thu, 20 Apr 2006 07:52:38 GMT

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

flicked from notanangel's journal.

Mon, 17 Apr 2006 20:30:04 GMT

prenju was right when he said - "you can't always marry your best friend".

flicked meme from vaguelyalive

Sun, 16 Apr 2006 13:38:58 GMT

1. If you could go back and relive one moment or day from your life, without changing anything, what would you re-experience?
In bed with my teenage ayah (nanny) as a 6-yr old, with whom i shared a special relationship.

2. If you could witness a moment in history, again without changing anything, what would you want to see?
Mahatma Gandhi being shot by Nathuram Godse.

3. If you could talk to a younger version of yourself, what age would you visit and what message would you give?
16. Run away from home.

4. If you could choose one moment that would be guaranteed to happen in your future, what would it be and when would it happen?
My magnum opus in film at 40.

5. Pretend you left a time capsule for yourself 5, 10, 15, 20 or more years ago. You just opened it. What three things from your past are you now holding and what age were you when you buried them?
- candy floss that Malar (my ayah) bought me from her allowance
- my brother's copy of "catcher in the rye" when i was 16
- my regular high-tar cigarette while listening to P.O.D's "alive" 4 years ago

Fri, 07 Apr 2006 06:03:52 GMT

it's a shame.

an associate of our company, Rakesh Rajan, passed away last night in his sleep. he died of a heart attack.

but he had just started making it big at 25. he co-authored this book and was an MVP in C#.

and now....tornatore's tribute to jazz!

Sun, 02 Apr 2006 18:00:26 GMT

absolutely loved this one from guiseppe tornatore. classic lajos koltai. divine film music by ennio morricone and Accademia Musicale Italiana.
wonderful acting performances by tim roth(as Danny Boodmann T.D. Lemon Nineteen Hundred '1900'), pruitt taylor vince(as Max Tooney) and Clarence Williams III (as Jelly Roll Morton). and the title track by Roger Waters and Edward Van Halen, "lost boys calling" is amazing.

Lost Boys Caling
Come hold me now
I am not gone
I would not leave you here alone
In this dead calm beneath the waves
I can still hear those lost boys calling
You could not speak
You were afraid
To take the risk of being left again
And so you tipped your hat and waved and then
You turned back up the gangway of that steel tomb again
And in Mott street in July
When I hear those seabirds cry
I hold the child
The child in the man
The clild that we leave behind
The spotlight fades
The boys disband
The final notes lie mute upon the sand
And in the silence of the grave
I can still hear those lost boys calling
We left them there
When they were young
The men were gone until the west was won
And now there's nothing left but time to kill
You never took us fishin' dad and now you never will
And in Mott street in July
When I hear the seabirds cry
I hold the child
The child in the man
The child that we leave behind

weekends in cochin with my parents

Sat, 11 Mar 2006 19:56:30 GMT

i feel bad today. because i hit my mother. but here's the whole story:

my mum and i went for a walk today morning. she kept stealing flowers on the way for her deity at home. it embarassed me quite a bit. she was like a little girl, looking this way and that for flowers sticking out of people's compounds. saw a bunch of common fowl (free range chicken) sharing a patch of greenery with some migratory birds. remembered the avian flu epidemic documentary on BBC i saw last december. and my mum, she showed me the most beautiful view of a river that flows not very far from our house. even saw a biggish ferry called "aiswarya" plying on it. it was very relaxing to take a walk around a pristine environment you did'nt know existed in your backyard.

we came back and i got down on the film website i've started to work on. i hear our 4 month old pom (dog) barking incessantly. i go out to see that it's tied to the gate. my mum says she's put her there because she would'nt do her poo-poo outside. i took the dog outside and let her loose. waited for her to do her thing but all she did was bark at some invisible canine voyeur.

took her back in and let her loose in the compound thinking she did'nt really want to poo. she bounds around wildly for a bit and then does her thing in the garden pathway. i tell my mum she's done it again. my mum comes out chiding the dog saying that she's going to teach it a thing or too. i wanted to see how she went about it. she dragged the pooch by her leash to the spot where it had relieved itself. and the poor thing started whining and straining against the leash in resistance though my mum kept tugging it towards the spot. i could'nt bear to see it. i told my mum to let it go. she would'nt listen to me. i said it two more times forcefully. she was too busy traumatising the pooch for it's lack of toilet manners. i grabbed the leash and smacked my mum's hand hard so she would release it. i let it go away to wherever it wanted. my mum was hurt and defensive but tried to argue rationally by saying the dog strains against the leash by itself all the time and that if it is not taught it will never learn. i sternly told her that her means are wrong and i would'nt allow it. and that it would be dad's responsibility hereforth to take care of the dog, she need'nt bother. it aggravated me more since i had seen her doing this once before. kicking the little cur in annoyance. i had yelled like i had then, that i would'nt have the dog suffering like this in this house. what pisses me off more is that my dad's, though he certainly cares for the dog more, would'nt entertain the thought of returning the dog since he thinks atleast he can talk to "somebody" in the house. pets just like children do not deserve to suffer for the misgivings between its owners/parents.

i came back into my room to continue work but felt bad after a while. went to the kitchen to apologise to my mum. she had tears in her eyes while she prepared breakfast for us. i said i'm sorry but what she was doing was wrong. i disagreed with her judgement that that was the only way to teach a dog. later, when my dad came back from shopping, i told him that either the dog should be returned or only he should take care of all it's needs. i would'nt listen to his usual "dogs are better than human beings" spiel and told him that if i see that dog in stress again i'm not coming home for weekends. i even told him to take the dog to a vet to diagnose if it's experiencing stress. i've noticed that it acts unusual off late - getting all excited on seeing me and barking for my attention all the time. well, what can i say? it's a dog's life.

p.s. i wonder if we're a pet-friendly country at all. i've often seen pet dogs let out on streets in india after they've outlived their utility value.