Lust for life

A new look for my blog site… But the quote which followed the header seems to be lost…. Needs to be investigated…

Watched two Hollywood flicks: Iron Man, The Forbidden Kingdom. The good thing about Iron Man was the humor which thankfully stayed till the end. And the bad about The Forbidden Kingdom was that the two teachers Jackie Chang and Jet Lee could not carry humor when together. They looked too old and Jet Lee was too stiff to be humorous… esp. the scene where he snatches the wine jug from Jackie was too animated…. And the boy-turned man-turned boy again was too boyish to be taken as a man…. he kept failing at all the occasions….. The fight sequences were the usual ones…. fight scene b/w Jet Lee and Chang was too long and boring…..

I have started jogging everyday in the evening and my Squash has taken a backseat at the moment….. The new tee that I’m wearing today is cool…. soothes the eyes….. The life is beautiful….

Started with The Conquest of Happiness by Bertrand Russell….  the book is gripping… i like it… a line from the book - “Animals are happy so long as they have health and enough to eat”

Last weekend I watched ‘Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro’

Sudhir Mishra and Vidhu Vinod Chopra were assissting the Direction and Production work in this movie… both of them went on to become well known names in Hindi cinema….

Anybody who is interested in parallel cinema should watch it…. the movie very well depicts the rampant corruption in those times and how it was so very difficult to earn a livelihood honestly….

I dont think the scene is so bad nowadays but you often encounter pieces of it everyday…

Watched a good movie after a long-long time…. despite being a Shahrukh fan I don’t like all his movies - and the reason why I’m a Shahrukh fan has probably got something to do with his in-your-face attitude.

Talking of the movie…. well, it was once again a subject well researched and pasteurized. And I’m no critic to talk of the finer points but yes! I liked the pace as well. Actors were meticulously chosen and for a change did not have some larger than life image. Normal set of mohalla girls - dreaming big, fighting male domination and having their own set of cultural differences and moments of mutual misunderstanding. And, Shahrukh has been natural and been given a role which suits his age. And, he has played his role very convincingly…

A must watch for everyone……

Happyness - Yes! that’s the way it is spelled in the movie. Mr Gardner found it spelled wrongly on a DayCare centre his son attended.

I watched this movie y’day after i had literally exhausted myself with another AIMCAT and had no energy left to attend a boring class on RC by Miss-Know-All-But-Can’t-Convince-Me. It’s fun bunking classes. It somehow makes you smarter …. at least that is what I felt when I smiled at other morones while coming out of the class with a helmet in one hand and an ADIDAS bag in another. Or may be it gives me a fleeting moment of unacknowledged limelight. i have always believed that it is more joyous to go to a lecture hall, sit for a while and then bunk it rather than not having gone there at all. In the first case, you are noticed and pitied or who knows may be even envied but in latter case you are an outright LAZY ….. nothing more.

Oh! i was talking of the movie…..

Let me tell you what i felt after having watched this movie…. i felt fresh, enrgised, hopeful and marvelled at the strength we all possess without ever realising it. The movie is about a father who loves his son and a land where you rise only when you work really hard, about a dream and the ways in which such dreams are realised. There were moments in the movie where i was reminded of ‘Life is beautiful’ (another lovely movie) and that’s the message you carry after it ends. Life is beautiful and we just need to view it right. I can’t talk of hardships or identify with those possibly because i haven’t faced those. But, my parents did face those to ensure that i live my life doing more than merely earning my living and making my ends meet. And few of us might be trying at this very moment to stand upright, to make a failed relation work….. there is hope and light at the end of the road!! Dont be afraid if you are alone/lonely. There are far more things to desire for in life. And above all, we wouldn’t have had Metamorphosis had Kafka not been lonely and cut-off.

….. I was talking of The Namesake and Dor….There is Indianness about both the movies which appear to have an appeal that goes beyond boundaries……

A typical Bengali couple immigrated to ‘Land of Opportunities’ and trying to find sync with ‘It’s America’…….

The book had also impressed me but the movie is more than a mere adaptation…..

It clearly shows how a man keeps wondering about, searching for an identity, a truth to substantiate their existence……. only to have found nothing in the end and feel more than Lost……. So when does this self identification really occur - when you find your roots and start accepting those roots -howsoever awkward those may be…… We accept so much of newness these days that there hardly seems to be any place for the old and beautiful! There is hardly any coherence between Old and the New and this lack of coherence results in a state of ‘belonging to nowhere’….. Some small incidence brings everything into perspective and we see ourselves more as what we are rather than what others expect us to be…….

ll continue!!

Last week I watched 2 movies - Dor and The Namesake. Many people must be doing it every week if not every day but for me sitting for 2:30 hrs continuously waiting for an end which you normally know as soon as the movie starts is too much

But, i must say - Bollywood has come of age now.

Both the movies had great names attached to them - Nagesh and Mira Nair so the expectation was high and after watching the movies I must say they are not great for nothing.

ll continue from here in my next blog!