Review - 9

Right, so I had no clue what I was being dragged to, but I tagged along to watch 9.

Firstly, the animation is brilliant! But what is the movie about?

Without giving too much away: This is a movie set in a post apocalyptic world. The Machines have risen and mankind to the last human apparently been wiped out, but hope survives!

How you may ask, well hope survives in the form of 9 'sack' things, that have feelings and can walk, talk, dance and fight.

Then there is this round object where the latest of sack people inserts into a machine and wakes it up and all hell breaks loose.
They tighten things up and the movie ends.

So this is a thriller, that is definitely not for kids, but then it is not aimed at the adults completely either. The entire movie has a melancholy atmosphere and ends in a weird way, which is at least consistent with the feel of the whole movie. So well.

I am not waiting for 10, 11 or 12.

The Travel Update :)

Here is the list and how I fared against it!

(18th and 19th July) - Pondicherry

Status: Done!
Highlight: Hiring a fishing boat to take us out into the sea

(25th and 26th July) - London

Status: Done!

Highlight: Having a bumbling idiot sitting next to me. First he dropped a heavy bag, as he was trying to place it in the overhead compartment that almost fell on my head, second he elbowed me as he was trying to open a packet of peanuts and last he dropped the contents of an entire glass of Rum and Coke! over me.

(31st July) - Back to Bangalore

Status: Done!

Highlight: Alvin and the Chipmunks on the flight.

Weekend of 8th Aug - Calcutta!

Status: Done!

Highlight: Shopping for the most beautiful sarees ever! and Road side food :D

Weekend of 15th August - Definite trip with friends - place not planned

Status: Not Done :(

Highlight: Getting a much needed breather from weekend travel

Weekend of 23rd August - Sawantwadi, native place for Ganpati festival :)

Status: Done!

Highlight: Ganpati !! :D

Weekend of 30th August - Goa !

Status: Done!

Highlight: Performing the play "Chronicles of the Dark Nightie" and the "TW alphabet song"

London Walk

On my previous visits to this city, I have either been staying very close to the workplace or too far off, in the former case, it normally turns out to be a 2-5 min walk and in the latter there is no alternative but to take a tube ride to office. This time around however, I am staying about 3 kms away from office :) This means a perfect distance for a lovely walk to and from office!

When I got in all jet lagged on Sunday evening, I asked the chap at the reception how far it was to the place where my office was located, "its a 20-25 minute walk sir!" he said. I made a quick mental calculation, this guy says 25minutes that means at my walking pace I should be in office in 10-15 minutes, or so I thought.

Turns out, back in Bangalore I may be quicker than most when it comes to walking, but here I am just about average speed. Everybody is rushing along at a very brisk pace, which is extremely refreshing to see. :)

Walking quickly or not, the walk still gives me more than enough time to take in the sights and sounds of good old London.

The route I take on the walk itself is quite special.


(view enroute my walk)


I start from my service apartments (Bermondsey Street in East London), walk through a park that has tennis courts on my way to the Tower Bridge road. Once on Tower Bridge Road, its a walk straight past the very modern looking Mayor's office on the banks of Thames, over Tower Bridge itself, all the way across the Thames.
The river itself is a joy to see despite its brown muddy looking waters, there is always the large group of tourists taking pictures and pointing out to HMS Belfast (the WW || battleship that is moored on the Thames, now a floating museum) to one another.

On crossing the Tower Bridge one comes right at the popular and infamous Tower of London (Where the Kohinoor resides), from there on its a walk towards a more modern tower, namely the Gherkin - London's phallic symbol.

A 5 minute walk from the Tower of London is my workplace. It takes me about 25 minutes to walk the distance, just like the man at the reception told me :)

On the tube

London is super cosmopolitan, made more apparentto me by my tube ride yesterday to Oxford Street (a very popular shopping area, much like the Brigade and M.G. Road back in B'lore :) ) and back.

The guy sitting across me was reading a novel in Chinese, I guessed so b'cos it had a picture of Mao on the cover, the guy sitting to my right was reading a book in a language I could not begin to guess; I tried peeping in and reading it, thought it could have been German, but it may have been in Flemish for all I know.
A couple of girls standing by the doorway were definitely Sri-lankan. There was an Italian looking guy on one of the seats, there was an Ethiopian chap as well. All in all I could not find a single Englishman in the crowded coach!

Until a father and son walked in arguing about probability, "If you knew there was a low probability of getting caught, but the severity of punishment if caught is harsh, would you still commit the crime" argued the father... the son continued arguing for or against the topic, but i paid no further atttention. These guys were definitely British.

All in all, my almost voyeuristic trip proved to me just how cosmopolitan this place is!

Of course there is a lesson in there somewhere and that lesson is: I should take something to read on the tube next time, lest I make a habit of peeping into other people's books or eavesdropping on random conversations :)

Loads of travel coming up!

Here is a list

Last weekend (18th and 19th July) - Pondicherry

This weekend (25th and 26th July) - London

Next weekend (31st July) - Back to Bangalore

Weekend of 8th Aug - Calcutta!

Weekend of 15th August - Definite trip with friends - place not planned

Weekend of 23rd August - Sawantwadi, native place for Ganpati festival :)

Weekend of 30th August - Goa !

Whew!... How does that sound for travel?

X-men Origins -Wolverine

Right, so due to public demand , here is my review of the latest in X-men :)

The story-line is as follows:

Boy realises that he has a problem of err bones growing from the vicinity of his knuckles, when he kills the man who shot his dad. But wait, the man he kills is his real dad, and his mom hates him for it (I think b'cos she did not get to kiss her lover goodbye before he got killed, but we shall never know).

IMHO, this kind of confusing trauma should be enough to turn a normal boy into a mutant.

So boy and his new found elder brother run away. Of course his elder brother is also a dude who has this issue of nails growing instantly, and he can leap around like a Labrador after chewy soft toy.

Now boy and elder brother cannot grow old and have the tendency to heal quickly, but they do grow up to become Hugh Jackman and Liev Schrieber, but mysteriously stop aging after that.

They fight in all wars possible, become part of a rouge mutant mercenary group led by Colonel Stryker.

Then Wolverine, as the boy is now called, gets his bones metal plated and gets to run around naked, before getting his hands on a jacket and a bike. Then he zooms around like nobody's business, and fights some crazy mutant and his brother who has turned evil towards the end of the movie.

Ok story over.

It is sad to see that after movies like Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and Iron Man. Hollywood still writes scripts like StarTrek and Wolverine.

So much scope for characterization (especially with a complex superhero like Wolverine), and all wasted away.

I shall definitely rate Wolverine higher (rated 6/10) than StarTrek(1/10).


Anyway, despite this movie, Wolverine does remain one of favourite superheroes :D

Trek - Mulayangiri

Mulayangiri is supposedly the tallest peak between the Western Ghats and the Himalayas, it is also the tallest peak in Karnataka. The trek up to the summit begins at a place called "Sarpadari" that is 15kms away from Chikmagalur (the famous coffee plantation town of Karnataka).

We started off on Friday night around 11ish and reached Chikmagalur at some 5am on Saturday, since it was foggy and dark, we decided to freshen up and start the trek only once the day brightened a bit.

The journey from Chikmagalur to Sarpadari began refreshingly, with all of us sitting on the rooftop of the "Tempo Traveler". We reached the place and started the trek close to 6am on Saturday.

The trek in itself is very easy, there is a simple trail that you follow all the way up to the summit. It takes about 2 hours and you are right at the top!

However the weather was fantastic (at least for me), it was wet, foggy and lovely. We were basically trekking in the clouds.

The temple poojari at the summit provided us with breakfast of steaming hot lemon rice and hot black coffee which was one of the high-points of the trek :P.

And it was cold, brrrr. After a leisurely breakfast we headed down hill. The trek was prettier now and though I tried my best to make things interesting by moving away from the trail. The rest of the gang wanted to stick to the old beaten path (Which I thought was the safer but boring option).

I did have my way eventually though when I convinced 3 others who were with me to take an alternate route to the destination, this alternate route led us to a dead end of sorts with a vertical 14 foot drop to the tarmac :D

We eventually found another way down, that was relatively errr less vertical in nature, the other 3 had their great falls and I was fortunate to make a safe landing *grin*.

We decided not to continue on further, because the majority of us were wet and miserable.
Instead, we headed to Chikmagalur, where we freshened up and spent the night at a wonderful wonderful coffee estate right up in the hills :D.

The next morning (Sunday), we trekked through the coffee estate itself, followed by a few games of cricket at the most wonderful location ever!
By the foot of cloud covered hills, right in the middle of the coffee plantation.

On our way back to Bangalore, we stopped for a bit at the temple at Belur, which I personally think contains the best architecture and carving on the whole planet!

here are some pictures

10 things I learnt from watching StarTrek, the movie...

#1: You can do anything you want. anything, given that after you do it, you must say out aloud and in suprise "Wow, that's the first time I have done <enter what you have just acheived>"

eg: If you have just teleported a goat, a zebra and a water buffalo onto your spaceship from 3 different places at the same time, then all you need to do is say, "Wow, this is the first time I have teleported a goat, a zebra and a water buffalo onto my spaceship from 3 different places at the same time"

#2: Scotty can beam anybody/anything up to anywhere/anytime.

#3: If you want to name something, do not bother with scientific jargon, just keep it simple and call it what it looks like. eg: If it is red in colour and its is some kind of matter, then just go ahead and call it "Red Matter"

#4: It takes a drop of red matter to convert a planet into a black hole and destroy all its inhabitants, but make sure to use about 40 gallons of it in order to destroy an enemy space ship that is 1/900th the size of the planet. Oh! but wait, just 40 gallons will not destroy the ship, you may need to fire at the ship for about 10 minutes before the ship is destroyed.

#5: The Starship enterprise fleet has only a couple of senior members, the captain and someone named spock, everybody else is just a cadet. So if the Captain is indisposed the cadets can play musical chairs to choose a captain. Make sure you practise.

#6: Lets see, the enemy ship though 50 times bigger that your ship will only contain about 5-6 crew members, so all you need to do is ask Scotty to beam you to the enemy ship (see point #2), and shoot up most of the people there. Make sure you leave a couple of them alive in order to have a more fitting climax involving gallons of red matter and a black hole.

oh before I forget, your relatively smaller ship will have, around 20 members just in the 10X20 feet control room. you ship will have hundreds of crew members.

#7: If you are named Kirk, you will be made captain in about 3 years after having a bar room brawl, you need not possess any skills other than having the ability to be in the right place at the right time and a thorough knowledge of musical chairs (refer to #5). Ability to "emotionally compromise" a colleague and cheat in your exams is an added advantage.

#8: Everyone speaks the same dialect of the same language (read. "English"), irrespective of what planet or or universe you come from.

#9: If you have pointy ears and a tendency to be "emotionally compromised", then you are most definitely from the planet Vulcan. You may have a mother who is an Earthling, this may mean that the Vulcan society looks down upon you and consider you weaker. however your mother will most definitely be one among the Vulcan Elders and not shunned as you are.

#10: If there is anything that has a higher gravitational pull than a Black Hole, then it is the latest "Star Trek" movie. This is because nothing SUCKS more than Star Trek.


Note: I have not even written about the more obvious things such as, how the villans are such wimps who do nothing but put a rhino beetle into the captain's mouth as a means of torture.

Movie review time...

Ok so here are some more movies that have been watched

P.S: I love you

Sugary/nostalgia evoking romance with Gerard Butler in the lead, the premise of the movie is interesting enough to make one continue watching it :)

Boy loves girl, boy dies, girl (who also happens to be boy's wife) cannot get over his death until she starts receiving letters and gifts from him, that he had written before he died and planned it such that she would receive them after his death. The letters help her get over him :)

I found it a decent watch

Madagascar 2 : Escape to Africa

Not as good as part 1, but I found King Julian hilarious again! :D especially the scene where he plays agony aunt to Melman the giraffe :)


The bicycle thief

Lovely Italian movie about a father who loses his only source of income - his bicycle, the entire movie follows father and son, try and seek out the bicycle thief. This movie is as good as they come! must watch.

Pride and prejudice

Decentish, Keira Knightley does a good job in this remake of a classic, pity then that there is no Colin Firth to play Mr. Darcy...

Boy in striped pyjamas

Take one ounce of Pan's labyrinth, tone it down a bit, mellow down the drama, set it up in Nazi Germany as opposed to Civil War torn South America and you have a boy all dressed up in striped pyjamas.

This tells a story of a boy, who happens to be the son of a Nazi officer who is assigned to manage a death camp, Auschwitz. The boy of course knows nothing about death camps, but hates moving away from all his friends in Berlin, to a lonely country side, this remains so until he meets a boy in striped pyajamas (the clothes given to the jews languishing in the death camp).

This chance meeting across barbed wires, soon blossoms into a friendship with tragic consequences.

Watch this movie for a comparison study made between the life of the son of a successful Nazi officer versus that of the son of a Jew.
Well made, but mind you this is no "Pan's Labyrinth" it is very similar yet very different.

Deception

How can you take Hugh Jackman and Ewan Mc Gregor and end up making a pathetic movie? Watch this one to find out...

Felon

A man accidentally kills an intruder in his house, and unfortunately ends up in jail for 3 years. This movie follows the protagonist in jail and how he is labeled a felon and ends up having to survive one of the most toughest sentences. Quite well made, a modern take on "Shawshank redemption" if I may dare say so.

Vicki Cristina Barcelona

oo la la! most beautiful are the women and most beautiful is Spain! Penelope Cruz excels in this movie, Javier Bardem is awesome! watch watch watch now!


Shadow of a doubt

This is Alfred Hitchcock's personal favourite :) I quite like it too. A typical American family has a visitor, the charasmatic uncle Charlie, and suddenly everyone is happy... but is Uncle Charlie really all that he seems to be?

Nicely made movie.

Irma La douce

This Romantic comedy features Jack Lemmon as the bumbling cop who is thrown out of his job and Shirley Maclain as "Lady of the night", Lemmon takes up residence with Shirley and falls in love, only to realise that her profession does not let him have her all to himself.

He hits on a plan to get her to be his, and hilarity ensues. A good classic!

The rains are here...

Its been raining every other day, the heavenly summer evenings have given way to evening showers. Now this is wonderful if one is sitting indoors, gawking at the rain thundering against the windows. The traffic suddenly disappears and the rain brings down visibility to about 20 feet.

Rains do sometimes bring along unscheduled power cuts, but these can be turned to one's advantage, like on Sunday when the power failed followed by the generator, it was carrom time for the family, with each member holding a torch and planning out the shot's :P

But most painful are the roads, that always seem to be under repair right when the rains arrive, or it could be that they are constantly under "repair" all through the year but I notice them only during the rains.

But all said and done, I think I do like the rainy Bangalore, at least it adds more joy to life to be able to sit in the balcony sipping tea and eating hot bhajis :)

It's been a while...

...since I last blogged, a lot has transpired since :)

The IPL has been dominating TRP ratings, viewed by one and all. The Fake IPL player has been providing juicy tidbits of the going ons behind the scene, the IPL trophy looks as ugly as ever, the commentary team collectively has got dumber ("what a beautiful IPL trophy this is...", "South Africans love the IPL, they have come in droves to watch the match...", "You've been left out of the playing eleven, how happy do you feel right now?"),the going has been decentish for the team I support (Royal Challengers Bangalore) and in related news, the zoozoos have finally attacked!

On the personal front, I have had yet another trip to Mahabalipuram with wifey and a couple of friends (and our faithful Karaoke machine) which went well (especially the karaoke and the monopoly part). The door painting project was completed quite a while ago, here is a picture of how it looks now *grin*.



Also, my batting form has returned (with an offside six!) and the bowling form is doing well :D. We have finished watching all 4 seasons of "How I met your mother" (I watch it just for Neil Patrick Harris' "Barney Stinson"). I have finished reading the wonderful wonderful "Ode to Kirihito" by Osamu Tezuka and am currently reading "The man who kept secrets" (Peter Lawford's Biography) and "Road to dusty death" by Alistair Maclean.


I am hoping to blog more frequently and am hoping that it will be "Legen - wait for it - dary" !

The Top 5 Graphic novels/comics I have ever read

Here is a list of my all time favourite graphic novels in the order of Best First :)

Batman: year one - Frank Miller

I know, there are hundreds of Batman comics out there, but trust me, if you want to get to the crux of Batman, then this is the book you need to read!
This flawless piece of art was the inspiration for 'Batman Begins', this book is as much about Commissioner Gordon as it is about Bruce Wayne's foray into the night dressed up as a bat! The art and the colouring is of the classic style of comics, very unlike the graphic complex comics that we see today, the artwork is simple yet compelling, the story is wonderful and this one is a must read!

Buddha - Osamu Tezuka


Osamu Tezuka is definitely the GOD of comics/manga/ everything.
This was his last epic, and what an epic this is :) As the name suggests the set of 8 books, tell us the story of Buddha, from his birth to his Moksha. Tezuka introduces some ficitonal characters to add comic relief and move the story along.
This piece of work narrowly misses being my most favourite, and that because I LOVE Batman and am biased :)

This book intorduced me to Tezuka and his art and since then I have been hooked!

Sandman - Neil Gaiman

I am a big fan of Neil Gaiman's writing, American Gods, Neverwhere etc but Sandman his graphic novel about the Lord of dreams a.k.a Morpheus is unparralled.
There has been no protagonist darker that the lord of dreams, the Sandman pack consisting of over 200 books is a long read, but each subset can be read on its own, though it interwines with the others. I have the entire collection in .cbr format, and its a great read!

I wonder how Gaiman could dream up of something like this :P

Sin City - Frank Miller


Unconventional artwork(to my untrained eye), fast paced story telling, with the central theme being vengeance, it cannot get better. Add Frank Miller to the equation and you get a dynamite of a Graphic novel.
Awesome!


Ode to Kirihito - Osamu Tezuka


This is an 800 odd page epic, I am reading it as I compose this post. It cost around 1200 bucks and I was in two minds, I had never heard a lot of it before, and did not know if this was worth the investment. I however knew that this was an Osamu Tezuka book and my mind was made up. Amu and I spent hours in Landmark before deciding to buy this though :)

It has been a great buy, Tezuka does not dissapoint in this medical thriller about a disease that turns its victims into dog like beings before taking their lives, and how Kirihito, a young doctor decides to get to the bottom of the cause for the disease only to succumb to it while doing his research in a remote eerie village that seems to be the source of the disease.

He does however manage to figure out what causes the disease, but a plot by some authorities and a set of unfortunate circumstances ensures that he travels far and wide, getting kidnapped to be displayed in a freak show, getting beaten up mercilessly by villagers, hunted by his foes and aided by some strange allies he makes in his journey.

I am reading it and I am loving it. Tezuka is GOD :)



Other books that are wonderful:

300 - Frank Miller
Made popular by the movie, but a classic book in itself!

KnightFall/Broken Bat
Bane breaks Batman's back (Check out the alliteration :P)

Fables- Bill
Read a post regarding this I made 4 years ago :)

Lucifer
Oh yes, Lucifer the fallen one makes an awesome hero, a worthy protagonist, as he embarks on a set of adventures with oodles of style and charisma.


Books that I have not yet read but have the potential to be good:

- Bone by Jeff Smith
- Y, the Last man


Book(s) that I have read but find over rated!

- Watchmen by Alan Moore (Though Rorsharch is one of my favorite characters)

Hmmm seems like my blog just reviews movies....siggggh

Watchmen

Now I consider the Alan Moore's cult classic graphic novel an effort that is just above average, except for the Rorschach character who is exceptional, I would state the same about the movie. Watch it for Rorschach if nothing else, but beware, this one is a 3 hour long movie that takes some watching, it stays quite loyal to the original graphic novel, but then by now, Zack Snyder must be pretty used to taking comic books and making them into movies :)
You won't recognise even a single actor, unless you are a huuuge movie buff, but that one must say is one of the positives from this movie.

'Who watches the Watchmen' should one ask? heh.

The Wrestler

A wonderfully made movie, one you would enjoy if you like drama. I am not a huge fan of Mickey Rourke, but like in 'Angel Heart' before, he impresses again here as an aging professional wrestler who struggles with the 'real' life outside the ring.
Unfortunately, another performance by Marisa Tomei, where she has to strip (professionally for this character she plays), I bemoan the loss of a great actress such as her.

The Reader

Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes do a great job in this movie, I quite enjoyed it and thought it had parts that impressed and some that were average. But watchable nevertheless.
p.s: I read Chekov's "Lady with the dog" but was not impressed.

Lives of Others

Another movie depcting life in Germany, East Germany of the 1980's this time and this one is a German movie.
We follow the lives of 3 characters, A Dramatist, his girlfriend who is an actress and a Secret Service surveillance officer who is given the job spying on them. Mostly we get to know the characters from the point of view of the Secret Service officer and just like him we get drawn to their lives and the movie that is slow to begin with grips us suddenly, as we begin to relate to the principal characters, including the lonely SS officer who from being a staunch socialist soon starts to draw inspiration and changes, after following the lives of the very people he is spying on

A brilliant movie, one that I rate very highly.

Vertigo

Alfred Hitchcock present's Kim Novak and James Stewart in Vertigo!
Brilliantly made movie, a true classic. Must Watch!

An Englishman who went up a hill but came down a mountain

Hugh Grant plays a cartographer, who along with his senior visits a small Welsh village, to chart the height of a local hill. This is 1917, the World War is on and the quaint village and its people take offence to their mountain being called a hill!
They reckon it is over a 1000 feet high and must be called a mountain but the Catographer measures its height as being 986 feet, 14 feet short of a mountain.

Romance and hilarity ensue in this wonderful plot, as the villagers ensure that the hill becomes a mountain.

Nice movie!

Movies...

Armageddon- Decentish movie with all the expected thrills and chills

Zodiac - Average, thriller about a real life serial killer

The renaissance man - Hmm, Danny De Vito plays a English 'professor' trying to teach a bunch of dumb army cadets, not very impressive

Hannibal Rising - badly done prologue about Hannibal the Cannibal

Music and Lyrics - sweet and sugary romance, I like Hugh Grant so did not mind this a lot

Analyse This - BAD BAD BAD yuck puke

December Boys - A coming of age movie about 4 orphans who hope to get adopted one summer vacation. I quite liked this.

City of Angels - Nicholas Cage hams his way through an otherwise decent plot :)

Valkyrie - Loved this movie, despite watching it in a London Movie hall (Watching a movie in a theatre in London is one of the worst movie experiences one can have)

RockNRolla - Guy Ritchie, decent, not as good as his previous ones, but not the worst either.

How to lose friends and alienate people - This comedy could definitely have been better made.

Three to Tango - hmmm, not too nice.

Constant Gardner - Slow, but I really like Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Wiez so well I liked it quite a bit

Conspiracy Theory - Pathetic!

Big Lebowski - Overrated, emperor you are making a habit of roaming about naked

Ronin - Another overrated movie, this action thriller did NOT thrill me one bit.

Curious Case of Benjamin Button - See Post below

Road to Ladakh - Irrfan Khan and Koel Purie star in this short film about 'love', this 50 minute movie leaves a lot to be desired.

Meet the Fockers - As one would expect it to be.

To catch a thief - Cary Grant and the very beautiful Grace Kelly star in this Alfred Hitchcok classic! Fantastic!

Old Boy - Fantastic! Brilliant and a definite must watch if you like action and don't mind a bit of weirdness (Eating of live octopodes for example) in return for truck loads of style !
This was remade into 'Zinda' in Hindi, but the plot was defintiely changed a lot.

The Curious yaaaawn case of yaawn Benjamin Button

Well, I had heard so much about this movie, about how awesome this was and how its brilliance outshone the sun etc etc

Well Sorry Emperor, but you are err naked !

Well I found the movie bad in almost all the criteria by which I judge the movies I watch. This was like watching Forrest Gump in reverse, the plot had one idea, a guy lives his life backwards and that's it!

There was no development of character, there was absolutely no substance, it was almost as if the makers had bet on how good Brad Pitt looks riding a bike with the wind blowing in his face or how pretty the full moon looks!

When it comes to movies I have quite a bit of patience, but the last time I was so bored in a theatre was when I watched Salaam Namaste by mistake!

Cate Blanchett I hated, there was almost no romance between Brad Pitts character and Cate's character.

The lamest scene was where Benjamin describes how the heroine would have missed being hit by a car if even one thing had changed. Man!

The only good parts were the CGI, the costumes and to some extent the cinematography

I have this director marked, I am not going to waste anymore time of my life on his movies.

The enigma that is Nicholas Cage

On a long flight back home I happened to watch 'City of angels', A nice plot for a romantic movie :) but what struck me was the enigmatic Mr. Cage, now here is an actor who has movies of various genre under his belt, and yet has managed to get through them all with the same expression on his face.

Now that is enigmatic.
How Nicholas Cage can romance Meg Ryan (City of Angels), Run about on 'The Rock', sit around with a group of convicts (Con-air) , Try and ferret out a snuff film maker (8mm), hot-wire cars with Angelina Jolie (Gone in 60 seconds), Sell ammo (Lord of war) all with the same look on his face !

People may describe this expression as 'wooden' or 'stonefaced', but to me this more of a 'I-swallowed-a-stress-ball-this-morning-and-it-is-stuck' kind of expression

I know you think I am exaggerating, hell! When I started off this post I thought I would exaggerate a lot of stuff in this post, but after some rigourous research around Cage and his movies, I can assure you none of what is out here is an exaggeration.

Here is some proof:

Consider

Exhibit A: Cage in "Lord of war"


It is quite obvious that during the filming of this scene, cage has zonked out, and this very moment (where his character is supposed to be trying to sell arms and weapons of mass destruction), the expression on Cage's face seems to suggest he is thinking of whether he has fed his pet panda this morning.


Exhibit B: Con-Air


From his expression I do not know whether he is checking out a chick on the beach or whether he is trying to solve the problem of rounding up escapee convicts (well if you are still wondering, its supposed to be the latter)


Exhibit C: Leaving Las Vegas


While Elizabeth Shue seems to be quite happy 'Leaving Las Vegas', our pal has managed to get his brilliant expression on the movie poster!!


Exhibit D.1 and D.2: Gone in 60 seconds




We can see only half his face in both the captures, but given previous evidence I am quite sure that, front on, the expression on his face has not changed.
The first picture is where they are hotwiring a car and the second is an intense romantic moment between the protagonist and the leading lady, one would never have guessed.

Exhibit E: City of Angels



Our man has fallen in love with Meg Ryan, or at least that is what his expression in this scene is supposed to indicate, but it remains "I-swallowed-a-stress-ball-this-morning-and-it-is-stuck"

I rest my case

p.s: Despite all this I thought, he was pretty much at his best in 8mm and his worst in City of Angels and Ghost Rider

Mission: Paint the door - Episode 1

Amu and I have decided to paint a door in our room, we mulled on this decision for a couple of weeks and yesterday got down to actually starting off on the project.

Phase1: Decide how we want the door to look...
The door is a long and narrow canvas, hence deciding what to paint on it was a little confusing. Should we draw a giraffe? A trapeze artist? or some colourful blotches and call it art (ala M.F. Hussain), we just could not decide, Hussain seemed to be the easiest way forward. :P

But finally in a moment of epiphany, we decided we wanted to have a door painted on our door with a little girl and her cat peeping from behind it. :D

Phase2: Some initial sketch work...





We started sketching the door at 11pm last night, and surprisingly it came out quite well :)
Got dad (who is a professional artisit), to look at it and he said it was quite nice :D

Yet to come: buying paints and starting the paint job...

A unique team bonding exercise

Arrright! What better way to have a fun team outing than to gather together and go plant trees?

About 10 of us headed to J.P Nagar 7th Phase, to plant trees with the help of the Treesforfree.org who "plant trees for free to heal the earth." :D

It was a wonderful experience! We got to the site where the planting was planned and the volunteers from TreesForFree were already there with the saplings and neatly dug holes that would be the future homes for these saplings.

We had around 21 saplings to plant and as we got on with the dusty, tiring but fulfilling work of doing so a couple of residents from the locality came over to help us out water the saplings and plant them.

The best part of this for me was to see 2 kids, come with little pails of water to water the saplings :) They did this off their own accord!

This is how the TreesFor Free works:

- You get in touch with them and they will tell you the location where the trees are to be planted
- They choose these location only after enquiring whether the locals would support planting of trees and would water them for the next few months
- Pay 100 rupees per sapling and go plant a tree!

I have had lots of team outings with great food, wine and dance, but none has been as satisfying as the one today!

Thanks to Sripad and Anand Vishwanath for organising this.

I would highly recommend this to all those of you who care about your environment, here is a chance to do something simple but useful!


Here are some pictures


Luka planting the first one


A kid who came to help us water the saplings


The whole gang

Dev D

This movie deserves its own separate review :D

Abhay Deol and Anurag Kashyap's take on Devdas works wonders.

If Dilip Kumar's Devdas was classical music this is the rock version, both great in their own ways, the acting is fantastic. Abhay Deol as usual impresses with his attitude and ability to carry a movie off single handed, though this time he is supported by some brilliant acting by Kalki(Chanda) and Mahi Gill (Paro).

This is Devdas on dope, vodka and ecstasy. The story line remains more or less the same but at the same time it is different in its treatment and in how each character handles the situation.

The music is great! especially the 'Patiala Ke Presleys' and Paradesi.

Anurag Kashyap, the director, excels ! Hoping for more such movies from him ('Gulaal' looks promising!)

If this movie was batting it would hit a sixer of each delivery!

A must watch!

White London

I read in a newspaper that it had not snowed this much in 18 years and it was the first time that anyone can remember that all the buses were taken off the road...

I thought it was beautiful :)

Here are some pictures

From the window:)


The window again


Gherkin