Avatar!! - Not a movie but a life!

I am a big fan of neo-realistic movies; so, to start with I was very skeptical about this movie, and when I saw the trailer, it was a definate NO for me. But if I had missed this movie, I would have never called myself a movie buff and cursed all along my life for not watching this.

Its not a movie, its a life! I could connect the movie because I am a nature lover. Others may not connect as well as I could, but surely not a movie to be missed. James Cameron creates life, visualizes every creature on Pandora and gives it life. The connection with the animals that he talks about, we all must have felt it. "What have we done of our planet?" you will ask this question to yourself for sure. I wish I could go to pandora.

The Lush green landscapes, the jaw -dropping waterfalls, the Hanging mountains! oh Lord, I just can't get enough of it. Didn't I say anything about the CGI? No, Why not? well move your bums to the neares 3D theater and go watch this movie.

A Near death experience....

While in sleep I felt a sudden pain in my back... it isn't pain.. it is as if some creature is moving there... it moved pretty fast as i am moaning in pain... it moved till toe and then to my neck..

It is intolerable now... I curl myself and fall off bed....

And this moves to my leg... and starts dragging me... my mom comes running to me and she is crying... this thing is dragging me by my leg... away from her... I look at her and scream "no i don't want to go"...

I try to hold the stairs on my way... still screaming "I don't want to go...." I become helpless now.. it gives me a big jerk.. and my hands let go the stairs....

She is still crying and running behind me... and now I give up.. i thought I had to go.... so to make her happy, I want to tell her that "its God"..... but then my tongue becomes too heavy to control..I become desperate ..I want to hold my tongue in my hand and lift it but its too heavy... I can't speak those words.... and tears roll out of my eyes out of helplessness....

As a last resort... I want to scream... I give all my energy and scream.... this sound falls on my ears and I wake up. Thank God it was dream... but the thought thats bothering me since then is .. what if I had not screamed?

Kurbaan - Overrated stupid thriller

First of all, to all those who are giving high ratings to this stupid movie, this blog is going to disappoint you.

The movie in itself is confusing, non-conclusive and at times stupid. Now a pregnant lady waiting for husband, enters the "creepy" neighbor house to figure out, whats wrong in the house. How stupid, i thought. A big terrorist operation is to be carried out and they recruit a guy without doing any background check on him ( i even saw an engagement ring in some scenes), I got to tell the director, every big small company carries out a background check for recruiting guys(for jobs that don't require brains), how stupid I thought.

Movie is about battle of conscience and its inconclusive. The performances are good. Especially the chemistry between Kareena and Saif in the first part just sizzles. The music is good. The screenplay is good.

But again its a movie thats going to hurt many people.

Busy as a bee!

"that saves my 10 mins", I spoke these words and realized how busy my life had become. I was just taking my seat in the company bus. I disconnected the call, took my seat, and sighed. Took a deep breath and I closed my eyes, and there were flashes of my early career, flashes of college life, flashes of teen life, flashes of my dad playing with me, flashes of my school life as a cricket lover, flashes of my mom's tears when i was heading away from home.

In school, we played cricket for almost about every minute that we got away from studies, even for a "short interval" ( meant strictly for offloading all the excess water you drank in the morning), we would stack up our school bags( as wickets) and finish off 4 balls of the first over. And then finish our lunch in one of the maths periods so we get full playing time in the "lunch interval", and now I play cricket once in two years, as I am busy adding buffer in my estimates.

I would spend hours on my friends terrace watching my crush play with little kids, and the spend all the evening with friends discussing about all the crap in the world from movies to the latest "late night" shows being aired on television, and now when my Dad calls up and asks me did you speak to your sister, I say "no" with a guilt of a sinner, because I am busy adding buffer in my estimates.

Bunking in college was so difficult, yet we would do that, any latest movie released and the last bench guys go missing, "the league of extra-ordinary gentlemen" would be busy sitting in those wooden chairs in a theatre with so bad accoustics that the noise made by fan overlapped with the powerful dialogues of the actors. And now, my leaves get elapsed, because my buffer got filled with the "high-priority-blocker-must have" change request of the client.

The driver applies brakes infront of the office gate, and all those flashes come to an end. I get down with a fresh mind and smile on my face, time to add "more" buffer to my estimates.

Gulaal....

Scorsese of India has arrived. Anurag Kashyap's Gulaal is a work of a Genius and by far his best. The dark and gruesome lyrics and the haunting music is something which just adds to it and makes Gulaal a fantastic movie. How about this, the character Prithvi Bana always busy playing music and writing lyrics in movie is actually the music director of the movie (Piyush Mishra). Almost every character in movie will hover over your mind for quite a few days, particularly that of Bhati ( Deepak Dobriyal, fame omkara).

The movie revolves around the student politics and the contemporary divisive politics. How a simple, good for nothing guy is dragged into this mess. Its a Anurag kashyap movie so don't expect dialogues to be like in the movies of suraj barjatiya, I don't know whether i should term this movie as a vulgar movie, but yes this movie has lot of swearing and dialogues filled with filth, which i feel are part of life for most of us ( there are some who live in denial). Seems like Anurag got everything right for this film, the characters, the locations, the music.

If there is something negative about this movie its the climax, it just drags a bit. But overall its just a fascinating movie that sucks you in around those characters. Go watch it, to know the Scorsese of india has arrived. Here are some lyrics of modified "sarfaroshi ki tamanna...."

sarfaroshi ki tamannaa ab hamaare dil me hai.
dekhnaa hai zor kitnaa baazuve kaatil me hai
waqt aane pe bataadenge tujhe ae aasmaan
hum abhi se kyaa bataaye kyaa hamaare dil me hai

o re bismal kaash aate aaj tum hindustaan
dekhte ki mulk saara kyaa tashan kyaa chill me hai
aaj kaa laundaa yeh kehta hum to bismil thak gaye
apni aazaadi to bhaiyaa laundiyaa ke til me hai.

aaj ke jalson me bismil ek gungaa gaa raha.
aur behron kaa wo relaa naachta mehfil me hai
haath ki khadi banaane kaa zamaana lag gayaa
aaj to chaddi bhi silti englison ki mill me hai

Boys' don't cry ... men do....

"Maybe I'll try later. God, it's killing me," and he started sobbing, I cried along, with a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes, I was shouting at the Television Set, "Cry Roger... Cry.. let it go... you are champion... boys' don't cry.. men do...".

I have seen this man, conquer the tennis court with the same poise that sachin has conquered the cricket field ( Sorry for the comparison, "sachin" means a lot to me). I have seen tennis players, shouting, growling, throwing their rackets, arguing with the referes, but Roger Federer, walks with a poise, plays with poise, wins with poise. You watch him agaped, when he hits that, on-the-line backhand, you ask yourself, "how did he do that???", even a computer can't simulate that.

I apologise to all the nadal for writing my next line,
"Nadal can be defeated by any tom(Joachim Johansson) dick(Mikhail Youzhny) and harry(Tomas Berdych) of tennis, but federer can't be". After the defeat when somebody asked federer whether he could defeat Nadal in future, the champion answered,
"For sure," he said. "I didn't spend 4½ hours out there (not) believing it." Go Roger, I will cheer for you till your last match.

Rendezvous with the "Royal"

After spending 5 grueling hours in the forest, and spending over 5 grands,we had seen umpteen pug marks, deers, antelopes, wild pigs, and even God (reclining statue of Vishnu in that dense forest) but we were yet to see a glimpse of Tiger. It was 5 PM and 5:30 was the scheduled exit time from the forest, everybody was disappointed to the core, so much so that we started cracking jokes to make each other happy, but everybody had this request in his heart "God please, just one glimpse of tiger". Our prayers were answered, our guide heard something ( we did not at first), it was shout of the deer, we looked at each other, the guide looked at the driver and commanded "Sunil palta lo gaadi..." ( Sunil take a U turn), and the very efficient, docile sunil, turned the Gypsy, caring little about who will fall from it.

As we reached the location, there was a second alarm, this time we heard. And then the growl of the tiger, it was like rain in a city facing years of drought, we were so happy, I was breathing high now. Reason, we were alone in that way, and the growl was heard pretty close ( at least I thought like that), "looks like its a male one" guide told the driver, raising my heartbeat a little, growling male tiger, he surely is not in a good mood. Everything went silent again, "seems like he has sat again" guide told us "lazy bastard", I thought. "Sunil palta lo gadi...." the guide told sunil, and sunil was as obliging.

We reached at a point, choc-a-block, with other tourist gypsys, close to 30 of them, and there was a lot of movement, and we could guess it, it was the tiger. There were 20 vehicles, between us and the tiger, we thought we will not see it. And then sunil started showing his skills, navigating the gypsy like he was in rally racing. "Hold tight.." that was all the warning that we received from sunil and our gypsy was moving like a snake on hunt. We were well placed to see the tiger, "its female.." the guide told us. "It is spraying perfume, to attract the tiger...", the tigress was in no mood to give any kind of attention to all the 35 gypsys and close to 200 tourists, it was in its own world, scratching trees, rubbing her back on ground, playing with water.Royal indeed. She stared coming close, and she was about 10-15 meters from us and walked back. And it was 5:45 time for us to go out or the gypsy would face a ban for next 10 days. We all were happy, though we forgot to give sunil the ice-cream that we had promised to give him on seeing the tiger ( ofcourse, we didn't see the tiger, we saw tigress), we thanked him a zillion times.

I realized while sleeping that the fun part was tracking the tiger, its pug marks, its territories, its eating habits, so much so that, as i closed my eyes to sleep, I saw the pug marks and not the tigress. I understood why bandhavgarh has pug mark as its sign and not the tiger and why that signboard at the entrance of the Bandhavgarh.

Movie:The FountainHead

I always ignored this channel, TCM, and then a day before yesterday, I thought there was nothing to watch on any of the channels ( even FTV was not so interesting ), I decided to take this "bitter" dose of old movies. I sat on sofa, I was laid back as the movie (The Fountainhead) began and by the time movie reached its climax, I was little closer to the idiot box, watching the movie, fully engrossed. Based on Ayn Rand's novel,the movie is a must watch for every professional.

The engrossing tale of the struggle of the "Genius" against the "Mob", his passion for work, he doesn't want money, he doesn't want fame, these are all given by society, he wants something from himself and not from society. Some dialogs of the movie ( the protagonist is a genius architect)

"I don't build in order to have clients. I have clients in order to build!",

"A building has integrity, just as a man and just as seldom! It must be true to its own idea, have its own form, and serve its own purpose!"

or this fantastic conversation with the negative character.

Ellsworth Toohey: There's the building that should have been yours. There are buildings going up all over the city which are great chances refused and given to incompetent fools. You're walking the streets while they're doing the work that you love but cannot obtain. This city is closed to you. It is I who have done it! Don't you want to know my motive?

Howard Roark: No!

Ellsworth Toohey: I'm fighting you and shall fight you in every way I can.

Howard Roark: You're free to do what you please!

Ellsworth Toohey: Mr. Roark, we’re alone here. Why don't you tell me what you think of me in any words you wish.

Howard Roark: But I don't think of you!
[Roark walks away and Toohey's head slumps down]

Its a must watch movie.